The big question on the table is if I’ve overintellectualized parts of my book. Me? Overintellecutalize something? Please, quit your laughing. My ceilings are high and it’s echoing.
I was talking to my professor a couple of weeks ago about the language in my flashback chapters. He argued that it was inconsistent with the rest of the prose. I didn’t fight it; in fact, I agreed with him. As far as I’ve come to understand, the shift in tone is intentional. As my character is recalling these facts about his past, he is at a point where he is most tender, most vulnerable, most raw. He is not focused on the intensity to create and uphold his facade, nor does he need to convince himself he is something else. He is confronting pain with defenses down. And, in my mind, the language should reflect that. While I was writing, I never consciously wrote saying, “Make this part different,” but being completely in Christian’s headspace and writing as him, I could even feel a physical transformation when I wrote about his memories. The shift in voice was a natural thing, and only later when I came to see how the chapters felt and read differently did I understand why it was so.
Stephen objected heartily. “We don’t see this as readers,” he said. “It just reads as weaker and out of place.” I made an argument that the vagueness of the flashbacks compared to the specificity of the main story chapters followed suit, too; they are more vague because he is recalling selectively. “It’s all overintellecualized,” Stephen rebutted. “The train of justification that’s in your head never made it to the page.”
While I don’t believe “never” is necessarily right for these chapters, Stephen has a point worth considering. While I was brainstorming about the framework for the new additions and endings, all I could come up with was motivations for action to happen and then intellectual structures that would follow was a result of that action. But I couldn’t figure out what the action itself was. I suppose this is overintellectualization at its finest.
When it comes to the voice of the flashbacks, most of my readers have seen what I’ve tried to do with the split in those chapters, and they’ve picked up on it without a word from me. So, while I don’t think I’m at a point where I am going to rewrite them entirely, I’ll take Stephen’s advice instead as a lens to reexamine that prose and make it stronger - figuring out what stayed in my head instead of ending up on the page. But I think I’ve taken it to heart when thinking about new material. While these characters don’t have to stop being smart, cerebral characters, I need to have enough of a real connection to my new composition to make sure that even if there’s thought in the background, the actions on the page and the language with which I describe them are ripped from my scary, scary playground of intellect and become real, useful prose on a page.
You know. Not like I have anything else to think about.
M
