thuviaptarth | Unwriting

Yesterday I unwrote. To be precise, I moved about 300 words from the story file to the story notes file, in case I should later change my mind, which I do not think I will do. I feel great satisfaction over this. Today and tomorrow and Sunday I can finish up this story that has been broken for about six months. It is not a long story, and there was no mystery about where it was broken; all three of my first readers agreed on where it was broken, and I agreed with all three of them. But I kept trying to fix the broken scene by making the action more plausible, and that is not what it needed. What it needed was for the action not to happen.

This is how you can tell a Thuvia Ptarth story: Things don't happen in it.

(Also, there will be lots and lots and lots of polysyndeton. What a wonderful word! I am grateful to

ellen_fremedon for introducing me to it.)

This leads me to notes on my Yuletide story:

There was something approaching an explicitly romantic (if not sexual) scene in the zero draft -- the boys brushed up against each other, or possibly held hands -- but I cut it because it didn't belong there.
My challenge to myself before I got my assignment was that this year I was going to write plot. It had been a long time since I wrote plot, and I wanted to stretch. And I had forgotten how much I liked plotting; I had forgotten what it felt like to be shifting plot-pieces around in my head until they snapped into place.
It is a pity most of that plot did not make it into the story.
I think it isn't a bad first draft; it's just that the story needed a second or third. It needed to be half-again to twice as long for the plot to have the right effect -- Milagro needs to get used to Kubota and Tokito and they need to get used to her in order for the final twist in the relationship to have any impact. As it is, it doesn't feel like a twist, just like another turn.
Also, I had a nifty idea about WA really being a retrovirus instead of a drug. Oh, well.
Milagro's characterization also should have been smoothed out: the angry fighter we see in her first chapter doesn't make much sense with the defeated fatalist of the last. Making the draft longer would have helped with that a lot -- some more details about her life (she has an amazing amount of freedom for an illegal in Japan), some more restrictions, some beefing up ofher relationship with Concepción to contrast with Kubota and Tokito.
I wanted to write something like the manga, see. And the two volumes in scanlations--well, most of them is told from the point of view of an outsider, someone neither Kubota nor Tokito, someone who will clearly make a single appearance and then disappear from the continuing plotline; someone who is fascinated with and puzzled by one or both of the heroes. By the end of the volume, we get a solved mystery and a clue or two about how Kubota's mind works. But what this meant was that I didn't (and still don't) feel like I have a really good grasp of what makes either Kubota or Tokito tick; and that I'd need to write most of it from the POV of an original character.
Which -- great. No one likes original characters, right? It's not what people come to fanfiction for. So I had to figure out a way to keep the story -- and my new character -- really, really focused on Kubota, in order to make readers happy, and yet give her enough of her own storyline that I would be happy writing her.

This was the part of the planning that drove me craziest.
I figured out the bar girl aspect early on; the Filippino part came in much later, when I stumbled over an interview with a Japanese feminist on how Japan's post-war financial success and family re-invention depended to a great extent on the unacknowledged exploitation of Southeast Asian sex trade workers, mostly Filippino, Thai, and Cambodian.
I went with Filippino because I had a Jessica Hagedorn novel to read for dialect research. This is not enough research, and I knew it. I still feel bad about this.
Also, I looked up some Tagalog and Spanish curses.
A lot of the time, when writers are putting on accents, they drop them when the scenes get most emotional or most intense. This is sadly the case for me, too.
I am happy with how different each of the characters sound from each other; I tried to make the syntax as well as the vocabulary different, and I think that worked pretty well.
I am unhappy with Mira's accent, which is an ungainly mismash of regular American and street New York and street New York Spanish (several varieties). If I'd had time to redo it, I'd have taken out more of the street New York and added more Spanish words. I am ashamed of using "gonna" and "wanna"--that's really a cheat, using those spellings to indicate poverty and lack of education, since in my dialect, that is really how everyone says the words, most of the time, except in formal circumstances.
I tried not to condescend to Mira; I thought of her as someone very smart and very sharp, just not very educated formally, and if she works at all as a character, it's because of that.
Wild Adapter has such gorgeous art. It's not my favorite Minekura for story or characters, but I do think it has her very best art. And it's so stark and minimalist and striking. I wanted to recreate that in prose. I think the closest analogue is probably Dashiell Hammett; but unfortunately I hate Hammett. The hard-boiled writer I like is Chandler. So I tried hard to keep the floweriness out of the canon characters, but it escaped into Mira.
This made me realize why I love writing Yami no Matsuei and Angel Sanctuary and X, and why I have a terrible time writing Saiyuki: I love manga that gives me an excuse for purple, flowery, drenched language, and that's appropriate for the first three series and really not appropriate for Minekura. Minekura expresses intensity through understatement, through glimpses of things too terrible or too bright to look at straight; she's a very controlled writer, in contrast to the way that Kaori Yuki is completely and gloriously out of control.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For some reason, unwriting is often more satisfying than writing.

Hi, I know you posted this a long time ago but...

Also, I looked up some Tagalog and Spanish curses.

If you still need help with the Tagalog curses, oh its Filipino btw, I'd love to help:D

Thank you for the correction, and for the offer! I finished the story (http://melymbrosia.gatefiction.com/misc/wilddogs.html) for the

yuletide challenge, but I will definitely keep the offer in mind if the need comes up again. :)

Ooh... the story was very lovely, moody and well, it felt like I was reading something straight from a noir story. Although it was a bit strange hearing Milagros speak in Spanish since, from what you indicated she wasn't part of the upper class (Philippine schools stopped teaching Spanish 'round late 70s, I think) but I can handwave that and say that Mila's from one of the provinces that speak Chabacano (pigdin Spanish).

But I just have to ask, what's hiwi baboy? I mean, I know baboy means pig, so, what's hiwi?

Thank you! I'm glad the noir aspect came through, since that's how the manga reads to me.

I feel done with the story, so I'd rather move on to the next thing than do a massive re-write, but if you wouldn't mind advising me on the details, I can certainly fix some of those. I don't want to bother you if you're busy or disinclined! But if you're still interested, I would love to get your advice.

You're right that Milagro wasn't meant to be upper-class. Hmm. I feel like the names themselves are pretty central -- do you think they're just not very likely for Filipino poor? Or does that work with Chabacano? What are endearments a woman might call her best friend from childhood? And is there anything else that strikes you as wrong or as stereotypical?

According to my reference (http://www.insultmonger.com/swearing/bisaya.htm), "hiwi" means pervert, though I mostly used it because I liked the way it flowed in the sentence.

I'd be glad to help! The names are believable as Filipino since most of us have Spanish names but its very unlikely Mila would speak Spanish unless she's from Cavite or Zamboanga (mostly places where Chabacano is spoken).

But since you've included 'hiwi', which is visayan (another dialect, which is why I didn't recognize it since I mostly speak Tagalog).

Then again, a lot of people from the provinces migrated to Manila in hopes of a better life but instead they end up being poorer than they were and end up living in slum areas.

So, in the end they're forced to go to other countries to help their family. Sad thing is when they go to Japan, most of them are classified as 'Japayukis' and when they go home, people still end up treating them with contempt and disdain and greed.

What are endearments a woman might call her best friend from childhood?

Technically, we don't use endearments when talking to our friends, if we do use one we use well, cariño brutal kind of effect, like we call each other 'Bru' (short for Bruha, or Old Hag) instead of mijita or other well, 'showy' endearments.

But I think, in the context of this: "Concepción—Conchita, mijita, calm down, explain to me what's —"

Mila would just omit 'mijita'.

BTW in Tagalog best friend is, 'Matalik na kaibigan', or if you want to say friend from childhood, you can also use, 'kababata', literally meaning from childhood.

Kababata actually connotes a deeper relationship, so instead of saying: 'She's my friend, mi hermana — like my sister."

It could read: 'She's my friend, kababata ko, like my sister.'

And just so you'd know, in Tagalog it would read: 'Kaibigan ko siya, kababata ko, parang kapatid na ang turing ko sa kanya."

What are endearments a woman might call her best friend from childhood? And is there anything else that strikes you as wrong or as stereotypical?

Actually, I like you're portrayal of Mila, she's tough and a survivor, most people I know who's from the same background as Mila are like that. I kind of see Mila, years on, as a cigar chewing old broad hawking god knows what items in divisoria and making if not a lot, but sufficient money to tide her family over. :D

Hope these help, I think I've gone on a bit rambly on this:D

P.S. Just for fun, I'd like to share the all purpose Filipino curse word, 'putang ina!', or the shorter form, ''tang ina!'. (or in English, sonuvabitch!)

Thank you so much! I have been distracted for the past few days, but I hope to get a corrected version up today or tomorrow.

I think of Milagro as someone who manages to survive, goddamnit, whether she or anyone else is happy about it or not.

And I will keep the curseword in mind for general diversion. :)

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