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Writing Notes: Blue and Gray - Ch. 6 (spoiler warning)
6 years ago
SPOILER WARNING: THE BELOW TEXT MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
The character of Jonathan, introduced in this chapter, is the oldest character in this book. Of course I don’t mean his age in the story, I mean that in terms of characters I’ve had in my mind. Long before I thought of Flynn or Calvin, their journey or this story at all, there was Jonathan.
I had an idea years and years ago for a story I thought might make a good novel. Basically the idea was that it would be an inversion of John Bunyan’s 1678 work “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” That work is a religious text in which the protagonist travels from his home, the City of Destruction, on a journey of salvation to the Celestial City. Along the way he meets many people and has many adventures, but the overarching idea of the book is that the protagonist stays on the good, godly road and finds salvation.
My idea was that Jonathan would go on a journey of his own, only this journey would start with someone who has been religious their whole life and is convinced that this is the truth, having never been challenged or confronted about some of the more disturbing elements of their faith. He’d be forced from his comfortable home and idyllic life by some outside force or conflict or trouble that he had to escape from. The adventures Jonathan would have along the way wouldn’t reinforce what he’d thought to be true his entire life, but rather they would, one by one, challenge the notions that he’d held onto since childhood and accepted without critical thought. He’d meet people he’d been told were evil who would help him, save him, become his friends. Over the course of the story he would come to realize that so much of what he’d believed for so long was wrong, and by the time he reached his own “Celestial City” he would be a changed man.
Never wrote that story! Never wrote it for a lot of reasons. I didn’t feel I could do it justice, in the first place, since my knowledge on the subject isn’t to the point where I feel it would need to be to produce something like that. I’m not religious and never have been; I have always been interested in religion from a kind of social and historical perspective but I feel like the person who could write a story like that for real would need to be a theologian or something like that, which I am not! In the second place, I didn’t (and don’t) feel like I have the writing chops to even attempt something like that without making it sound preachy, or presumptuous, or condescending, or any of a hundred other pitfalls a writer can fall into when attempting a project like that. And in the third place, I didn’t feel like I could make it fun to read! Social commentary is fine, but if the reader is bored it literally doesn’t matter at all. I kind of feel that way about all writing, honestly… probably from all the lessons drilled into me from the time I was working as a journalist where being concise is hugely important. If the reader isn’t having fun in a work of fiction, why should they stick with it? Why would you expect them to? Don’t waste their time!
Don’t waste their time… perfect segueway for me to finish this tangent and actually start talking about the chapter! Lol
I thought the best way to frame Jonathan and Emily before they meet Calvin and Flynn was by starting the chapter on them. This is the first time I break entirely from either Calvin or Flynn in the book, and I only do it once more (not counting the epilogue), at the beginning of chapter 10 with the Nix’s. In other examples where the focus starts on another character and follows them – and really even the example in chapter 10, albeit a little afterward – it then intersects immediately with Calvin and Flynn and their journey. Not here. The framing anecdote with Jonathan and Emily hiding in the elderly skunk’s crawlspace takes place almost a month before their story and Calvin and Flynn’s story intersect.
I didn’t even think about it at the time, but I think the reason I did this was because Jonathan IS such an old character for me and I wanted him to have legs, so to speak. I’m never going to write that Pilgrim’s Progress inversion story, but I felt like I could at least embed it into this one. I feel like now, that story is kind of contained within the larger narrative of Blue and Gray in a way. Richmond is the City of Destruction, New Orleans is the Celestial City, and the change that happens in Jonathan’s heart is caused by his interactions with Calvin and Flynn. In my mind there’s a full story there and we’re just seeing part of it, that brief window when the foxes’ story meets up with, runs along with, and then once again departs from Calvin and Flynn’s story that we are following. I think it’s good to think of your supporting characters in that way in general because if YOU as a writer believe they have lives outside of their role in the story, it gets reflected in the writing and it ends up adding depth, but in this case it’s absolutely true.
I guess I should also make the note that when I say “Jonathan” I’m talking about Emily too. In Pilgrim’s Progress it’s one character, but I thought splitting the elements of that character into two would make for a better narrative. Emily is the religious side of that meta-character, but also the willingness to change, whereas Jonathan is the stubborn, obstinate, set-in-his ways traditionalist whose mind is closed but gradually opens up. I dunno, I felt it just played better with that meta-character as a couple rather than just one person, as a kind of contrast or mirror image or something to Calvin and Flynn. I just thought it worked better that way.
Also as an aside, Emily mentions “Pastor Bunyan” a couple times. His name and Jonathan’s were kind of my direct nod to the origin of Emily and Jonathan’s characters in John Bunyan’s work.
Funny thing: Emily’s original name was “Sarah” and I wrote the entire chapter with that as her name. Then I oofed hard when I realized the names Jon and Sarah Turner sounded like they were going to be fighting Terminators after SkyNet kicked off Judgment Day and I had to change Sarah to Emily. I was actually kind of worried I would call her “Sarah” later in the book but I don’t think I did. I hope I didn’t!
Anyway, once I finish with the anecdote of Jonathan and Emily escaping from the Confederate Homeguard, I start up again to place them on the flatboat. I also introduce the heron Cletus here, but I try to keep the entirety of the situation a little mysterious until we rejoin with our protagonists again.
Sidenote: I realize how silly Cletus’s name is, but there’s a reason I named him that. I think next chapters writing notes are a better place for that though.
When we do rejoin with Flynn and Calvin, I spend a little time introducing the reader to what a flatboat is and what it’s all about. History lesson! I figure that’s not really common knowledge and I can’t just dump it on the reader and expect them to know about it, and I really NEED them to understand it because we’re going to be spending the next 2 and a half chapters on one of the things, ha.
I tend to do a lot of planning before I actually write things out, and that’s true to a greater degree in this story than in anything I’ve ever written since it’s so much longer. That said, things still pop up that work in ways I hadn’t been planning. One of those things was the fact that Flynn and Calvin arrive in Pittsburgh on the 4th of July. I didn’t even realize it until I started actually writing this chapter, but once I did I thought it would be a great way for them to slip through the city to the docks without standing out too much. I also thought it would be a great way to introduce the reader to Calvin’s PTSD flashbacks, this one brought on by fireworks. Like I mentioned in the writing notes for the previous chapter, Calvin might be big and strong, but he’s not nearly as mentally tough as Flynn. Him getting past the horrible things that happened to him in the war, no longer having nightmares and recovering from PTSD is a subplot I wanted to explore, and these flashbacks are something that pops back up in more stressful situations a couple times later in the book. I thought this would give me a chance to introduce them so that they don’t come out of nowhere later on when lives are on the line.
When Calvin and Flynn get to the docks Cletus recognizes them as deserters right away. This was so they didn’t really have the option of turning back, more than anything; Cletus wasn’t gonna tattle on them but as he points out, if he could figure them out so quick they’d be found out by someone sooner rather than later if they didn’t commit to something fast.
I didn’t reveal about Calvin and the money he had from soldiering until here because it wasn’t relevant until they needed passage on the flatboat. I did include the cigar case he used to keep his money in in chapter 3 though, when Calvin stripped the dead Confederate soldier and had to make sure he didn’t leave it behind. Didn’t elaborate on what it was or why it was important, but it was there. Flynn of course had no money, and even if he did Confederate money would be worthless. Also I felt like the fact that Calvin was ready, immediately, to spend almost a year’s wages for Flynn showed that he was serious about their budding relationship.
They get to know Jonathan and Emily, Jonathan has his suspicions about them, kind of just a needed setup and not much to say there.
I wanted to use the scene after that where they go back to their bunk to bring Edward back into the story. He dies early in the book, of course, but I think of him (or at least the memory of him) as a major character in the story. He was Flynn’s best and only real friend for Flynn’s entire life up until he met Calvin, and at this point in the story he’s only just died, so I wanted to make sure I included some stuff about how Flynn is grieving for him. It’s a weird place Flynn is in, the high of Calvin and everything about him mixed with the loss of his best friend. I wanted that to be made a little clearer for the reader. Like I said Edward is an important character in the story, very special to Flynn, and I made sure to at least mention him in every chapter of the book.
Skipped ahead a few weeks here for the chapter’s sex scene. I could have set this one anywhere on the river between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, but I chose to set it in Wayne County, West Virginia as a kind of reference and nod to the novel ‘Addiction’ by Rufus01 on SoFurry. I read it last year and in a way it inspired me to get back into writing and, ultimately, to write ‘Blue and Gray.’ It impressed me that someone would write something of that length and of that quality with no expectation of getting published. I think one of the hangups that kept me from writing for a long time was that I thought I needed a perfect idea and that I needed to write to get published. When I read ‘Addiction’ it kind of clicked for me that it was okay to just write for the sake of writing and produce something that I wanted to write, just for me, without worrying about getting published. Anyway, I thought setting this scene in the same county where his story takes place would be a nice way to acknowledge that!
Sex scene… what can I say? It’s a sex scene! Haha. Through the story I kind of try to make them go further with each other and get more comfortable with each other in each successive sex scene, so you can figure out where we are, lol.
Didn’t want to end the chapter on the sex scene, and also I wanted this conversation about the moon and connecting with loved ones far away to happen this chapter. It was actually one of the earlier scenes I figured out when I was outlining the story, and it comes back later in the book; the names of chapters 9 and 10 are callbacks to this conversation, and looking at the moon in chapter 10 is kind of the moment where Calvin truly stops fighting once and for all. Plus I just think it’s neat. Today we can just send a text or make a phone call or anything to be connected with anyone instantly, but that’s a really new development, and for most of history if you were physically distant from a loved one you might as well be… well, on the moon. The idea that you can be so far apart and still be looking at the same thing in a time when communication is primitive when compared to today is something I like and wanted to include.
And of course we end with Calvin telling Flynn he loves him. Naive? Maybe. But they are kind of naive together and figuring all this out together as they go. That’s how I look at it anyway!
The character of Jonathan, introduced in this chapter, is the oldest character in this book. Of course I don’t mean his age in the story, I mean that in terms of characters I’ve had in my mind. Long before I thought of Flynn or Calvin, their journey or this story at all, there was Jonathan.
I had an idea years and years ago for a story I thought might make a good novel. Basically the idea was that it would be an inversion of John Bunyan’s 1678 work “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” That work is a religious text in which the protagonist travels from his home, the City of Destruction, on a journey of salvation to the Celestial City. Along the way he meets many people and has many adventures, but the overarching idea of the book is that the protagonist stays on the good, godly road and finds salvation.
My idea was that Jonathan would go on a journey of his own, only this journey would start with someone who has been religious their whole life and is convinced that this is the truth, having never been challenged or confronted about some of the more disturbing elements of their faith. He’d be forced from his comfortable home and idyllic life by some outside force or conflict or trouble that he had to escape from. The adventures Jonathan would have along the way wouldn’t reinforce what he’d thought to be true his entire life, but rather they would, one by one, challenge the notions that he’d held onto since childhood and accepted without critical thought. He’d meet people he’d been told were evil who would help him, save him, become his friends. Over the course of the story he would come to realize that so much of what he’d believed for so long was wrong, and by the time he reached his own “Celestial City” he would be a changed man.
Never wrote that story! Never wrote it for a lot of reasons. I didn’t feel I could do it justice, in the first place, since my knowledge on the subject isn’t to the point where I feel it would need to be to produce something like that. I’m not religious and never have been; I have always been interested in religion from a kind of social and historical perspective but I feel like the person who could write a story like that for real would need to be a theologian or something like that, which I am not! In the second place, I didn’t (and don’t) feel like I have the writing chops to even attempt something like that without making it sound preachy, or presumptuous, or condescending, or any of a hundred other pitfalls a writer can fall into when attempting a project like that. And in the third place, I didn’t feel like I could make it fun to read! Social commentary is fine, but if the reader is bored it literally doesn’t matter at all. I kind of feel that way about all writing, honestly… probably from all the lessons drilled into me from the time I was working as a journalist where being concise is hugely important. If the reader isn’t having fun in a work of fiction, why should they stick with it? Why would you expect them to? Don’t waste their time!
Don’t waste their time… perfect segueway for me to finish this tangent and actually start talking about the chapter! Lol
I thought the best way to frame Jonathan and Emily before they meet Calvin and Flynn was by starting the chapter on them. This is the first time I break entirely from either Calvin or Flynn in the book, and I only do it once more (not counting the epilogue), at the beginning of chapter 10 with the Nix’s. In other examples where the focus starts on another character and follows them – and really even the example in chapter 10, albeit a little afterward – it then intersects immediately with Calvin and Flynn and their journey. Not here. The framing anecdote with Jonathan and Emily hiding in the elderly skunk’s crawlspace takes place almost a month before their story and Calvin and Flynn’s story intersect.
I didn’t even think about it at the time, but I think the reason I did this was because Jonathan IS such an old character for me and I wanted him to have legs, so to speak. I’m never going to write that Pilgrim’s Progress inversion story, but I felt like I could at least embed it into this one. I feel like now, that story is kind of contained within the larger narrative of Blue and Gray in a way. Richmond is the City of Destruction, New Orleans is the Celestial City, and the change that happens in Jonathan’s heart is caused by his interactions with Calvin and Flynn. In my mind there’s a full story there and we’re just seeing part of it, that brief window when the foxes’ story meets up with, runs along with, and then once again departs from Calvin and Flynn’s story that we are following. I think it’s good to think of your supporting characters in that way in general because if YOU as a writer believe they have lives outside of their role in the story, it gets reflected in the writing and it ends up adding depth, but in this case it’s absolutely true.
I guess I should also make the note that when I say “Jonathan” I’m talking about Emily too. In Pilgrim’s Progress it’s one character, but I thought splitting the elements of that character into two would make for a better narrative. Emily is the religious side of that meta-character, but also the willingness to change, whereas Jonathan is the stubborn, obstinate, set-in-his ways traditionalist whose mind is closed but gradually opens up. I dunno, I felt it just played better with that meta-character as a couple rather than just one person, as a kind of contrast or mirror image or something to Calvin and Flynn. I just thought it worked better that way.
Also as an aside, Emily mentions “Pastor Bunyan” a couple times. His name and Jonathan’s were kind of my direct nod to the origin of Emily and Jonathan’s characters in John Bunyan’s work.
Funny thing: Emily’s original name was “Sarah” and I wrote the entire chapter with that as her name. Then I oofed hard when I realized the names Jon and Sarah Turner sounded like they were going to be fighting Terminators after SkyNet kicked off Judgment Day and I had to change Sarah to Emily. I was actually kind of worried I would call her “Sarah” later in the book but I don’t think I did. I hope I didn’t!
Anyway, once I finish with the anecdote of Jonathan and Emily escaping from the Confederate Homeguard, I start up again to place them on the flatboat. I also introduce the heron Cletus here, but I try to keep the entirety of the situation a little mysterious until we rejoin with our protagonists again.
Sidenote: I realize how silly Cletus’s name is, but there’s a reason I named him that. I think next chapters writing notes are a better place for that though.
When we do rejoin with Flynn and Calvin, I spend a little time introducing the reader to what a flatboat is and what it’s all about. History lesson! I figure that’s not really common knowledge and I can’t just dump it on the reader and expect them to know about it, and I really NEED them to understand it because we’re going to be spending the next 2 and a half chapters on one of the things, ha.
I tend to do a lot of planning before I actually write things out, and that’s true to a greater degree in this story than in anything I’ve ever written since it’s so much longer. That said, things still pop up that work in ways I hadn’t been planning. One of those things was the fact that Flynn and Calvin arrive in Pittsburgh on the 4th of July. I didn’t even realize it until I started actually writing this chapter, but once I did I thought it would be a great way for them to slip through the city to the docks without standing out too much. I also thought it would be a great way to introduce the reader to Calvin’s PTSD flashbacks, this one brought on by fireworks. Like I mentioned in the writing notes for the previous chapter, Calvin might be big and strong, but he’s not nearly as mentally tough as Flynn. Him getting past the horrible things that happened to him in the war, no longer having nightmares and recovering from PTSD is a subplot I wanted to explore, and these flashbacks are something that pops back up in more stressful situations a couple times later in the book. I thought this would give me a chance to introduce them so that they don’t come out of nowhere later on when lives are on the line.
When Calvin and Flynn get to the docks Cletus recognizes them as deserters right away. This was so they didn’t really have the option of turning back, more than anything; Cletus wasn’t gonna tattle on them but as he points out, if he could figure them out so quick they’d be found out by someone sooner rather than later if they didn’t commit to something fast.
I didn’t reveal about Calvin and the money he had from soldiering until here because it wasn’t relevant until they needed passage on the flatboat. I did include the cigar case he used to keep his money in in chapter 3 though, when Calvin stripped the dead Confederate soldier and had to make sure he didn’t leave it behind. Didn’t elaborate on what it was or why it was important, but it was there. Flynn of course had no money, and even if he did Confederate money would be worthless. Also I felt like the fact that Calvin was ready, immediately, to spend almost a year’s wages for Flynn showed that he was serious about their budding relationship.
They get to know Jonathan and Emily, Jonathan has his suspicions about them, kind of just a needed setup and not much to say there.
I wanted to use the scene after that where they go back to their bunk to bring Edward back into the story. He dies early in the book, of course, but I think of him (or at least the memory of him) as a major character in the story. He was Flynn’s best and only real friend for Flynn’s entire life up until he met Calvin, and at this point in the story he’s only just died, so I wanted to make sure I included some stuff about how Flynn is grieving for him. It’s a weird place Flynn is in, the high of Calvin and everything about him mixed with the loss of his best friend. I wanted that to be made a little clearer for the reader. Like I said Edward is an important character in the story, very special to Flynn, and I made sure to at least mention him in every chapter of the book.
Skipped ahead a few weeks here for the chapter’s sex scene. I could have set this one anywhere on the river between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, but I chose to set it in Wayne County, West Virginia as a kind of reference and nod to the novel ‘Addiction’ by Rufus01 on SoFurry. I read it last year and in a way it inspired me to get back into writing and, ultimately, to write ‘Blue and Gray.’ It impressed me that someone would write something of that length and of that quality with no expectation of getting published. I think one of the hangups that kept me from writing for a long time was that I thought I needed a perfect idea and that I needed to write to get published. When I read ‘Addiction’ it kind of clicked for me that it was okay to just write for the sake of writing and produce something that I wanted to write, just for me, without worrying about getting published. Anyway, I thought setting this scene in the same county where his story takes place would be a nice way to acknowledge that!
Sex scene… what can I say? It’s a sex scene! Haha. Through the story I kind of try to make them go further with each other and get more comfortable with each other in each successive sex scene, so you can figure out where we are, lol.
Didn’t want to end the chapter on the sex scene, and also I wanted this conversation about the moon and connecting with loved ones far away to happen this chapter. It was actually one of the earlier scenes I figured out when I was outlining the story, and it comes back later in the book; the names of chapters 9 and 10 are callbacks to this conversation, and looking at the moon in chapter 10 is kind of the moment where Calvin truly stops fighting once and for all. Plus I just think it’s neat. Today we can just send a text or make a phone call or anything to be connected with anyone instantly, but that’s a really new development, and for most of history if you were physically distant from a loved one you might as well be… well, on the moon. The idea that you can be so far apart and still be looking at the same thing in a time when communication is primitive when compared to today is something I like and wanted to include.
And of course we end with Calvin telling Flynn he loves him. Naive? Maybe. But they are kind of naive together and figuring all this out together as they go. That’s how I look at it anyway!
Zenithian
~zenithian
As always it's great to hear a little more about the writing process. But there is one tiny complaint I have about this chapter, I kind of wish that Jonathan was a little more involved after the drowning incident. He was really well written don't get me wrong but I felt like I didn't get enough of that confusion of him realizing that something he believed all his life was just... wrong. Maybe an extra day on the flat boat would have been nice, a little extra time for him to struggle with that cognitive dissonance and to really help us see his growth as a person. But hey, I'm just some guy commenting on a journal post. Other than that little nitpick this chapter was great. Even though the whole 'I love you' scene was a bit corny it felt really great to see them finally realize it together instead just in their separate thoughts. Keep on writing!
minoan
~minoan
OP
No I think you're probably right, I feel like maybe I should have added a scene there from his perspective to better emphasize his personal growth. In a weird way maybe the fact that I had a personal history with that character made it kind of more difficult for me to see that there wasn't enough meat on the bones in the story itself to really explain his change of heart? Hmm. Something for me to think about going forward, for sure. This is a learning process for me so I really appreciate feedback like this, thanks so much! :]
