Charlie StrossMar 4

#WritersCoffeeClub Mar. 4: Share a recent experience where something just 'clicked’.

Been wrestling with a White Whale of a novel for years, all the way through multiple re-writes: finally realized (while finishing another one) that the problem wasn't the plot but the MCs, who simply don't work in that type of story. More importantly, the protags of the *other* book would work perfectly if I simply fired the cast of the White Whale and turned it into a sequel.

This was last month ...

Show threadLarry ClappMar 4

@cstross

How much is struggling with a difficult novel similar to debugging (or changing, or writing) a computer program? (I've never written a novel but I've debugged/changed/written lots of code.)

At a guess: They're related, in an a->b->c... kind of way, so, like, changing something in one place might ramify in many other places, but other than that, mostly dissimilar.

Show threadCharlie StrossMar 4
@lclapp My experience is that they're *very* similar indeed, only novels aren't as modular as modern source code so you're much more prone to getting out-of-scope side-effects (change how one character thinks of another in chapter 3, suddenly chapter 11 doesn't work even though those characters aren't explicitly on-stage in chapter 11).
Show threadLarry ClappMar 4
@cstross Global variables everywhere, oh my! :)
Larry ClappMar 4
Show threadCharlie Stross
@lclapp Also you're writing code in a very high level language that gets interpreted on a heterogenous range of platforms some of which are buggy and corrupt everything (human headmeat being what it is).
Mar 4 at 2:19pmWeb
Show threadLarry ClappMar 4

@cstross

You should write a book about people running software on their own brains and the Bad Things that can result from that.

Hey, wait a minute ...