Crimes (Story Structure)

[valyssia]

One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…nine…nine…nine…ten…ten…ten…ten.

The storytelling in the second act of Crimes is non-linear, switching back-and-forth between dream and something close to reality. Faith's so traumatized that her view is pretty askew. The dream is the one thing that truly is contiguous with no gaps in the passage of time. It was written as a single 17,786 word scene and broken up. I use a different font color as a visual cue that there’s something unusual about those parts.

The concept of breaking the dream scene up was actually something I arrived at late in the game. I think it's very effective, though it caused my test audience a bit of stress. I asked them to go back through and look at what I'd done. It doesn’t change the nature of the story. It simply heightens the sense that the protagonist has lost her purchase on reality.

If you look at the pattern of the numbers in the Table of Contents, you'll notice that the dream falls into the cracks, or parts denoted by ellipsis. That’s because this story is actually the oddest piece of song fic you're ever likely to read for one of the least imaginative tracks on the Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle. The song has no appreciable lyrics. The numbers one through nine are read in order. Once the vocalist, Maynard Keenan, arrives at ‘nine,’ the numbers repeat. ‘Nine’ is spoken four times, and ‘ten’ is repeated the same four times.

I’m pretty sure none of this will mean anything to anyone who reads, but I liked the structure. The story was always going to have sixteen proper scenes. Each scene is associated with a corresponding number thusly:

One through nine: Faith does something naughty. Imagine that. A character that’s drawn to darkness snaps and acts on the less desirable parts of her nature. But instead of being punished, she is led into an unexpected, unconventional relationship that is potentially rewarding.

Nine, nine, nine, and ten: The past catches up causing something terrible to happen between acts. The gap is filled in for the reader while Faith and Buffy both attempt to process the fallout.

Ten, ten and ten: With the major, negative events behind them, they struggle to pick up the pieces and move on.

The song ends with an unintelligible conversation taking place in the background. Here we’ll rejoin the ongoing story and tie Crimes into the previous arc.

Once the second act is fully published, I’ll release the dream sequence in its original form for those of you who are curious. There were some minor changes. A challenge exists within the scene that’s also interesting. Howard asked me to reproduce an effect seen quite frequently on television where a single topic is addressed by multiple people in multiple settings. In that medium this is easy. The camera view switches fluidly from place to place while the dialog remains on a specific track. The characters are even seen to answer one another from different locations. Obviously written as a first person narrative the effect is quite different…and difficult, so basically, I took a stab at it.

Comments

[frogfarm]

I fundamentally loathe most criticism and analysis, but I almost always love reading this kind of thing, and I can't tell you why it's different or what I consider this. Now I feel less guilty about deciding to wait for it all to be posted before I read it, and look forward even more to sitting down with the finished piece.

[valyssia]

I think analysis takes on a different flavor when it's the author offering it. It becomes something closer to 'this is why this particular insanity exists.'

As to waiting...I can't say that I blame you. Reading smaller fragments can be frustrating. This thing is particularly butchered. I actually posted this because I was concerned that even with four sections of the second act up that people would still be lost. I figured it couldn't hurt to explain.

The change I made was about the impression of the whole, not the fragments. The fragments are hard to follow, but when you look at the whole, there's sense to be had.

Hope you enjoy it when you get there.

Val