Thursday, April 17, 2008

Crowd Control


Yeah, today, blogger let me put the picture up. Isn't it cute?
Okay, blogger has decided to give me fits today, after being nice all morning. What's up with that? Why is always when I decide I want to post a picture that blogger gets all bitchy?

Well, today's theme is crowd control and I had a really great picture to post but it will have to wait until blogger behaves better. When I mean crowd control, I'm talking about those scenes in a novel when you have lots of people around doing stuff. Generally those scenes occur, in historicals, at fancy balls or on the battlefield etc. I try to avoid these scenes as much as possible, because I'm always worried, I'm going to forget someone right in the middle and leave them stranded, until I remember they need to be in the scene.

So far in my WIP, I've managed to keep the crowd scenes down to a minimum, but it gets rather hard at times, since my main character is attending a women's college in 1895. At some point, I have to have scenes with more than 3 people in them. I've had to go back and rewrite scenes set in the dining hall just to give a sense that there were more people in the room then the 4 characters talking.

Now I have my characters at my fictional equivalent of Lake Mohonk, and the Mohonk Mountain House. They are having an outing involving the freshmen and junior classes, including the chaperons, I have about 8 characters who need to speak to move the plot along, which means a lot of juggling. Not only do I have 8 characters who need to speak, but I have to make sure that they are all clearly defined so that they all don't sound alike. Oh, and I have to move the plot along as well.

Fortunately, this is the only huge scene that I have until Thanksgiving in the book. But its taking me ages to write this one chapter, and that's even without going back and editing it. I feel right now like I'm going to be stuck on chapter 9 forever.

Sigh!

1 comment:

Kwana said...

Good luck with the crowds. Keep pushing forward.