Bento Part II & Avoiding Melodrama

Well, the "Bento" is done and here it is! Karaake Chicken (Delicious), Rice Balls, Gyoza (Also scrumptious), and Japanese Curry (Quite good!). There's also some Gyoza sauce and a random bowl of Cream of Carrot Soup I made. The only thing that's actually missing is the Bento itself! Mom told me she saw them everywhere, but then when I made to actually make one, I realized she had only meant online. So then I had prepared all this stuff for the Bento, and there was no bento to put it in. :P I'm still glad I made it; it was scrumptious.

I mentioned avoiding Melodrama last time, and I thought I'd expound upon it more. For some of us, melodrama is a necessary means from getting to point A to point B. Life just seems to burst with dramatic fights, crying scenes, and suspense. Somehow, we find ourselves gravitating irresistibly towards it in our writing.

And then the main character gets unconscious. Or we "accidentally" throw them off a waterfall. Or they get violentally assaulted. Or the love interest "accidentally" becomes a sociopath. Or gets raped. Or some random unimportant character sudden starts thinking she's the main character.

Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. Don't let your inner editor cripple you. But also don't let your inner drama-queen cripple you either. Writing a rough draft is a lot like stumbling around a room in the dark. You have a sense of where you've been, but not a very good sense of where you're going, and the best way to go is to go slowly - to move in small increments at a time. And this what I mean by that: there's a scene right now in my novel where the love interest has ticked the main character off again. I'm pretty sure it's a bit over the top, especially since the main character keeps going up and down on an emotional roller-coaster (one minute crying, the next screaming, another minute crying, more screamed, then powerful feelings of remorse and irritation, more anger, then confusion, then anger, then confusion). It's tiring and melodramatic, but one good thing about it is it's small. Across the Frozen Wasteland goes pretty slowly anyway, but part of that slowness is its aid. It creates dense amounts of information around characters and scenes that aren't always well-written or well-planned, but allow for great revising material - giving me a plethora of options of things I might need to keep or hold onto. And I never get too far off track either, because of how slow the pacing is.

Make sure you always have time for mistakes and slip-ups and that you always have "trap doors" - means of getting out of the situation or switching to a new scenario should things fall apart. One of the worst things you can do in writing is corner yourself into a situation you don't like and can't get out of without extensive rewriting. Rewriting is something you shouldn't even think about in your rough draft. Just put out of your mind completely. I've definitely learned that through this novel. Because it's so slow paced and because my only true goal is to develop Gerda's unrequited love for Kay at this point, the actual plot hardly matters as they are mainly random segments that kind of go together. Gerda and Kay have a stupid fight in this chapter? Who cares, the next chapter has nothing to do with it and then can move onto something completely different by then. The awesome stargazing scene was awkward and short? Who cares, we'll just take them on a picnic and fix everything the star-gazing scene failed to accomplish. And in this way, I continue stumbling through the darkness of my own story. It's ot always clear what you're doing, but keep your options open anyway.