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nym_wibblyI’ve begun the mammoth task of revising A Bed of Thorns. It won’t be the Big Final and Forever Edit, which can only be done once I have a finished WIP in hand, but it should tidy up a lot of little things that have been making me feel bogged down, including the boring technical stuff that gets neglected when I get all experimental and ambitious. (I’m over it and just flailing for the finish line.)
So much for literary ambition.
One of the most ambitious aspects of the project crashed and burned due to me losing the writing momentum so often, and also because the storyline ended up covering a far shorter period of time than I’d anticipated, making it choppy when it was meant to be a visibly smooth transition from one state to another, so I’m editing most of it out of the piece completely and softening the effect of the rest.
Canon, fanon, schmanon.
Canon has moved on so far since I started writing ABoT during the second half of Season One. It’s moved on so far that, in one key area at least, it’s circled back around to meet my plotline halfway.
Other areas are hopelessly jossed, which I don’t actually mind. I tossed a coin about whether to make Prince James a decent bloke like his twin or an amalgamation of the worst traits in his adopted father, for example. I got the wrong side of the coin, but I like how he turned out anyway.
It’s the small jossings that niggle at me; the ones where my guesses, assumptions and extrapolations were partially right and so look weird rather than plain out-and-out wrong. I’ll fix whatever I can there without changing the storyline.
For example, Rumple’s canon history with Cora fits in well enough; just another Issue on his plate when it comes to trust in a relationship, and a sick little twist to what he’s doing with Regina. There’s no reason not to assume his backstory with Zelena, Jefferson, Viktor and Pan is in there somewhere, either, even if it’s (with the exception of his father) too irrelevant to this plotline to come to Belle’s notice during the course of the story.
On the other hand, I’m honestly not sure that ABoT!Rumple was ever far gone enough down the dark road to rip out Milah’s heart and set Hook off on a multi-generational quest for vengeance. ABoT!Rumple’s anachronistic respect for the role of “wife”, as well as for the actual woman who’s become his wife, is intrinsic to the plot; it was the seed that sprouted the whole story. Maybe I could spin it in such a way that it was the same crumbling of the totally unrealistic “wife” pedestal on which he’d placed Milah that snapped him, just as he snapped and then truly regretted it when he was certain that Belle had been unfaithful, but that would be a stretch. ABoT!Rumple’s been terrified from day one that he’ll snap and kill Belle, and he’s very justified in being afraid, but he is ultimately in control of himself and on top of the Dark One curse in a way that later canon doesn’t support.
ABoT!Rumple has so much more self-restraint than canon!Rumple does, a trait that I extrapolated from his epic, human-lifespan-transcending, patient manipulations in Season One. I can’t really undo that now, but I wish I could. The Rumple who murdered his first wife truly has redemption to fight for with the second–and a vital piece of character development to explore for each of them when Belle finds out. Just like they did on the show.
[Oh, no, WAIT…]
Effing Manhattan.
After “Manhattan” aired I had a big decision to make about how to handle something from canon that blew my most plotty plotline for ABoT out of the water. I had a choice to make and I blew it. I just blew it, trying to compromise between canon and the ideas I’d spawned out of Season One when we knew nothing much at all about Rumple’s time as the Dark One before Regina came along. I’m not sure it’s fixable, because while the practical aspects of the sub-plot could be ditched in a heartbeat, and even the minor characters that belong with it could go, the character development for Belle and Rumple that took place as the sub-plot evolved can’t be worked in elsewhere; they’re too much a reaction to and a reflection of the situation, and too vital to the relationship that evolved to the point of Rumple allowing the curse to break.
Rumple’s Leg. Foot. Ankle. Erm.
I didn’t toss a coin when I decided what to write about how Rumple was crippled and how he’s affected by the injury, but I knew it was a gamble; wherever possible, I’ve left details like that open to interpretation so that I could go back later and tweak them to fit whatever the show eventually came up with. That one was too central to his character to be left vague, though, and Belle had to be told something, so I got specific.
I’ll be editing that to match the version of events from the show. Canon! Rumple’s pretty ambivalent about his motives for crippling himself even now; that injury is the symbol of his self-loathing as much as the chipped cup is the symbol of his love with Belle or the dagger is the symbol of the Dark One. There’s nothing there that I can’t use to make my story stronger, but it’s going to be the edit that affects niggling little continuity issues the most, and where I’m most likely to end up breaking it worse before I manage to fix it. I don’t have a functioning short-term memory, so I think I’ll need a humping great big whiteboard to keep track of What I’ve Done With Rumple’s Leg.
Foreshadowing the really awful bit.
I really, really, really tried to foreshadow the loss of the baby so that nobody could be completely taken by surprise/shocked, or more importantly have their own memories of loss triggered without any warning. I also made it clear whenever anyone asked that this wasn’t going to be a babyfic. People still were shocked, though, and I still don’t know how much of that was because they personally wanted and so expected to get a babyfic; how much was because my foreshadowing sucked rancid balls; and how much is down to the fact that miscarriage, particularly early pregnancy loss, remains a taboo subject that’s either portrayed unrealistically or not acknowledged at all in the mainstream media. I can’t do much about the first possibility or the last, but I’ll have a good hard look at my foreshadowing.
Baelfire.
Still not dead.
So much for literary ambition.
One of the most ambitious aspects of the project crashed and burned due to me losing the writing momentum so often, and also because the storyline ended up covering a far shorter period of time than I’d anticipated, making it choppy when it was meant to be a visibly smooth transition from one state to another, so I’m editing most of it out of the piece completely and softening the effect of the rest.
Canon, fanon, schmanon.
Canon has moved on so far since I started writing ABoT during the second half of Season One. It’s moved on so far that, in one key area at least, it’s circled back around to meet my plotline halfway.
Other areas are hopelessly jossed, which I don’t actually mind. I tossed a coin about whether to make Prince James a decent bloke like his twin or an amalgamation of the worst traits in his adopted father, for example. I got the wrong side of the coin, but I like how he turned out anyway.
It’s the small jossings that niggle at me; the ones where my guesses, assumptions and extrapolations were partially right and so look weird rather than plain out-and-out wrong. I’ll fix whatever I can there without changing the storyline.
For example, Rumple’s canon history with Cora fits in well enough; just another Issue on his plate when it comes to trust in a relationship, and a sick little twist to what he’s doing with Regina. There’s no reason not to assume his backstory with Zelena, Jefferson, Viktor and Pan is in there somewhere, either, even if it’s (with the exception of his father) too irrelevant to this plotline to come to Belle’s notice during the course of the story.
On the other hand, I’m honestly not sure that ABoT!Rumple was ever far gone enough down the dark road to rip out Milah’s heart and set Hook off on a multi-generational quest for vengeance. ABoT!Rumple’s anachronistic respect for the role of “wife”, as well as for the actual woman who’s become his wife, is intrinsic to the plot; it was the seed that sprouted the whole story. Maybe I could spin it in such a way that it was the same crumbling of the totally unrealistic “wife” pedestal on which he’d placed Milah that snapped him, just as he snapped and then truly regretted it when he was certain that Belle had been unfaithful, but that would be a stretch. ABoT!Rumple’s been terrified from day one that he’ll snap and kill Belle, and he’s very justified in being afraid, but he is ultimately in control of himself and on top of the Dark One curse in a way that later canon doesn’t support.
ABoT!Rumple has so much more self-restraint than canon!Rumple does, a trait that I extrapolated from his epic, human-lifespan-transcending, patient manipulations in Season One. I can’t really undo that now, but I wish I could. The Rumple who murdered his first wife truly has redemption to fight for with the second–and a vital piece of character development to explore for each of them when Belle finds out. Just like they did on the show.
[Oh, no, WAIT…]
Effing Manhattan.
After “Manhattan” aired I had a big decision to make about how to handle something from canon that blew my most plotty plotline for ABoT out of the water. I had a choice to make and I blew it. I just blew it, trying to compromise between canon and the ideas I’d spawned out of Season One when we knew nothing much at all about Rumple’s time as the Dark One before Regina came along. I’m not sure it’s fixable, because while the practical aspects of the sub-plot could be ditched in a heartbeat, and even the minor characters that belong with it could go, the character development for Belle and Rumple that took place as the sub-plot evolved can’t be worked in elsewhere; they’re too much a reaction to and a reflection of the situation, and too vital to the relationship that evolved to the point of Rumple allowing the curse to break.
Rumple’s Leg. Foot. Ankle. Erm.
I didn’t toss a coin when I decided what to write about how Rumple was crippled and how he’s affected by the injury, but I knew it was a gamble; wherever possible, I’ve left details like that open to interpretation so that I could go back later and tweak them to fit whatever the show eventually came up with. That one was too central to his character to be left vague, though, and Belle had to be told something, so I got specific.
I’ll be editing that to match the version of events from the show. Canon! Rumple’s pretty ambivalent about his motives for crippling himself even now; that injury is the symbol of his self-loathing as much as the chipped cup is the symbol of his love with Belle or the dagger is the symbol of the Dark One. There’s nothing there that I can’t use to make my story stronger, but it’s going to be the edit that affects niggling little continuity issues the most, and where I’m most likely to end up breaking it worse before I manage to fix it. I don’t have a functioning short-term memory, so I think I’ll need a humping great big whiteboard to keep track of What I’ve Done With Rumple’s Leg.
Foreshadowing the really awful bit.
I really, really, really tried to foreshadow the loss of the baby so that nobody could be completely taken by surprise/shocked, or more importantly have their own memories of loss triggered without any warning. I also made it clear whenever anyone asked that this wasn’t going to be a babyfic. People still were shocked, though, and I still don’t know how much of that was because they personally wanted and so expected to get a babyfic; how much was because my foreshadowing sucked rancid balls; and how much is down to the fact that miscarriage, particularly early pregnancy loss, remains a taboo subject that’s either portrayed unrealistically or not acknowledged at all in the mainstream media. I can’t do much about the first possibility or the last, but I’ll have a good hard look at my foreshadowing.
Baelfire.
Still not dead.