Asking myself questions about what I wrote

So I've thought a bit more about what I wrote and posted here awhile back and talked to a few people about it. I think the best way for me to "collect my thoughts" about this whole thing is to do like,  Q&A sort of formatted thing that's sort of almost a sales pitch for it? I dunno you'll get the idea in a second.

1. What is the plot?

In chronological order, the events of the story:
Edgar Wallace and his wife, both lawyers, move to California to start a family. David is born. Edgar starts a career in politics. They have a second child when David is 12, named Alice. Her mother dies due to complications of the birth. Alice begins to show signs of being a prodigy and the story of the family becomes quite famous. This helps Edgar's political career. David, conflicted at the idea of the family's success and their mother's death, drops out of high school. The year David is 22 and Alice is 10, Edgar runs for Senator and David is convinced to attend a local famous arts college by one of Alice's special psychiatrists.

At college, David meets several people, including a girl he is enamored with and an eccentric professor he admires. His college experiences become tainted by his family's fame as his relationships with people outside of these two become strained and insincere. He is encouraged by the girl to join a fanclub for the eccentric professor near the end of the year. However, even this fanclub begins to degrade.

In his second year, David takes over as president of the fanclub. He restores it to some of its former glory and begins to use his status as the son of a senator to promote and fund it. He decides that the fanclub should try to accomplish goals that the professor himself has, and begins to research the professor's past. He discovers that the professor had run a society of his own in college, known mysteriously as The Arc. David begins to align his club with the views of the Arc. Once he has done this, it is revealed to him that the Arc is still active and was lying dormant until someone independently had the same principles and attempted the same sort of organization. This is explained to David by the professor himself.

In his third year, David, now a member of the Arc, becomes concerned about the coincidences that were required for these events to occur. He discovers that both Alice's psychiatrist and the girl were members of the Arc, the latter being the disappeared founder of the fanclub. David feels he has been manipulated and that once again he was merely being used for his connections. The girl and psychiatrist, who had acted independently to try to restart the Arc, plead for David not to tell the professor. David agrees, but his relationship with the girl becomes very strained. The girl, unable to prove to David that she is attracted to him as a person, kills herself.

This leads to a major police investigation into the group. Edgar manages to clear David's name of everything, but refuses to help the professor. David spreads the message of The Arc in an attempt to prove that the group was harmless and didn't contribute to the girl's death. As he spreads the message, he becomes more and more disillusioned with it.

In the year of Edgar's attempted reelection, the professor has been freed and the Arc is now a major movement across the state. A representative of the Arc is running for senator as well. The messages of The Arc and Edgar's campaign are directly against each other. David meets with his sister and they discuss how each candidate claims to be representing each of their interests, but having put each philosophy into action, they are apathetic and pessimistic about the success of either. The book ends with the election results being revealed.

2. What do you like about the plot?

I like a lot of the plot elements. Secret societies, academia, politics, "spreading the word", etc. I especially like the idea of a secret society lying dormant until it is independently created again as a sort of validity proof, I think that's pretty novel and I can't think of anywhere something like that's been done. I feel I have a lot of freedom with these characters and settings to write a lot of things that I find interesting. I like how the characters' actions are motivated by developing philosophies that carry through the book, and how the plot will discuss the merits of said philosophies. I like how I can have some cyclic events that have the characters revisiting situations and showing how they've changed.

3. What don't you like about the plot?

I really don't like the two deaths, that is, the death of David's mother and the girl at his school. Both of these are more deaths of convenience than anything, I came up with them because they solved a lot of "plot problems" and provided "easy" character development. I don't think they're especially well motivated, though. I hope I can somehow make the idea of the girl's suicide plausible and not overly melodramatic. It's such a tricky subject. I feel like I "have to do" that one, though, because of this whole parallelism with cLOUDDEAD and other silly things like that. Plus, as I said, it makes a lot of other events much more plausible.

The idea of the mother dying of birth complications is unlikely, and kind of trite. It's mainly to give David and his father more of a "heart", and to provide another way for them to contrast to Alice. Plus, I couldn't think of much for her to do if she was alive, which really bothers me. For that matter, I'm concerned about my ability to show a parallel story with Alice and Edgar. I have a lot of ideas for plots and such for them, but I also want to do a first person narrative, and I dunno, I just don't like the idea of jumping around like that. I also don't really like the idea of being stuck with one character, though.

4. How are you going to fix the plot?

I dunno, I figure at this point I should just write what I want of it and see if I can come up with ideas for the parts I don't like.

5. How is the story going to be presented?

I liked the non-chronological way I did the first chapter. In general I like when stories have that sort of, thematic instead of sequential transition, although it makes it sort of hard to read and harder to write. It does make it easier to pace, though, or rather, you have a lot more control over the pacing and then an almost obligation to make it excellent because of that. So I don't know how far I'll go in that direction. As far as actual structure, I'd like to break it up into four major sections: one focused on David's college life, one focused on his discovery of The Arc and the history of The Arc, one focused on the police investigation into the Arc and related trials etc, and one about David's life after The Arc. Again, I feel like things would be lumped into here more based on subject than time. In retrospect, I think the episode I posted would be better suited in the second section.

6. Why is the reader going to want to read the book?

What I really hope is that the reader will find what I write entertaining and interesting enough to just want to see more. Like, not just that the prose is so good, but that they enjoy the characters, or enjoy the setting, or whatever, and they want to see more general adventures and events. On top of that, I hope they're intrigued by the mysteries of the book, and are curious to learn more and enjoy piecing together whatever hints or information I dole out about them. However, I feel like the "twists" and "exciting parts" of the book should be the best written and suitably climatic and memorable. It should be like, a rollercoaster with a good view. The tension and suspense are built around the development of the plot, but the experience is saturated with something contemplative and enjoyable.

Simply put, I want readers to read this book for the same reasons I wanted to keep reading Infinite Jest. Is that an impossible dream? It's what I'd want to shoot for, at least.

7. What are the "themes" of this book?

A lot of the plot is motivated by David's admiration of the teachings of his professor's club/cult dealie, The Arc, so I figure I really ought to do a good job with them. Make them halfway conceivably convincing, at least. Basically the idea is that David feels very limited by society, even though he is in an affluent position and is, strictly speaking, completely free. He has a difficult time connecting his problems with the problems of the real world, and is frustrated by the way his concerns and quandaries are viewed as irrelevant by society at large. The Arc promotes societal freedom and an idea of commonplace enlightenment, where the sort of high level cultural advancement that David enjoys becomes the norm. This is in contrast to his father's campaign of very practical and progress-oriented education. Essentially, Edgar's campaign, motivated by what he felt was his daughter's time being wasted by the school system, promotes pushing youth to their limits and applying their talents immediately to the betterment of the world. The Arc promotes a lack of responsibilities and a transition into a society that focuses on cultural evolution instead of practical evolution.

I haven't really fully thought through these and I could probably try to explain them better but I feel like I should be able to convey them more through the plot itself than anything. They're both views that I find interesting.

8. What inspired this?

The book is an amalgamation of several ideas I've had for awhile. The main one is one I've had since like, 2008, I guess. I followed the 2008 election pretty obsessively, especially around the middle when Obama and McCain were the obvious candidates but before McCain's entire campaign went to hell. Basically I romanticized and idealized the two and found the whole situation very interesting. Even McCain's "corruption" by his party into what they felt the voters wanted I find fascinating. I wanted to write a story about an veteran politician who runs simply to get attraction to his pet causes and unexpectedly ends up a forerunner against a bold, new opponent. This developed into a story about the whole family of the old politician.

The major other idea I remember I had at work one day when I was reading some articles about Freetown. I remember going to the bathroom afterwards and thinking a lot about The Arc of Peace, the "heroin house"(?) mentioned in some articles, and then thinking about like, the cycle of Advent, where you light candles on a weekly basis up until Christmas, each of them symbolizing something: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. I thought it would be neat to write four short stories on those themes, calling them "The Arc of Hope" etc. I still think I have some good ideas for that, but it then developed into those being the names of four stages of something. And then because I love conspiracy theories and secret societies and cults and what have you, the idea became what I'm using now.

 The last thing I wanted was to try to tell the story I felt I had "pulled" from cLOUDDEAD's self-titled albums (which is seriously one of the greatest albums of the last decade or like, ever; I'm more sure of this every time I hear it). Basically, I've always felt it was pretty clear that this was some sort of concept album with recurring characters and a plot and such. Namely, I felt the plot was about Yoni going to art school and becoming disillusioned with it and wishing for some abstract, pure art place. And then he meets a girl in a monster mask and she kills herself. And other stuff like that. I don't feel like I really should just try to straight up write the story of the album as I see it, although at one point I would like to write like, a cited essay or something explaining my theories, but I wanted to use some of these ideas in a story.

The idea of the main character's level of fame and sort of how he deals with it I feel like came a lot from Anders Loves Maria, which I read last year sometime and thought was pretty cool. Basically I think if you have a semi-famous character, especially one famous for being a relation to someone famous, you have a lot of freedom in what you can have him do but aren't really obligated to have him do anything.

I think a lot of my decisions about structure and stuff come from what I liked best about Infinite Jest and Catch-22. I really like how those often get a "conversational" flow to how they present themselves, like each episode is just someone relating stories to a friend in a natural order for such a thing. I like how those stories use characters before they're properly introduced, or properly introduce them well before they're used, or make a side character of no real importance really likable or compelling so that when they're even just in conversations or being mentioned later they still really contribute. That's what I'm going to be going for, at least.

9. In your vaguely synaesthesiac way of thinking of every book, album, movie, etc. as a mental "colour", what colour would you say this is?

Sort of a light bluish-gray.

10. I guess that's about it. I hoped you realized more about your own undertaking.

I did! Thanks!

11. What else have you been up to? (NOT DOING YOUR BEST ALBUMS OF 2010 LIST I SEE)

I've been programming a lot. Things are really getting exciting on that front.

I've also been reading a lot. I feel bad because I wanted to make blog posts about every book I read, but I've read The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters, The Idiot and The Bell-Jar (all excellent) since then, plus a few books about Finnegans Wake and Joyce in general I found at this really swag library. I'd like to write about them in the future, though.

I've been writing more of the book or whatever I was just talking about, just kinda random parts here and there as I think of them. It's been pretty enjoyable. I also wrote some other random crap that I might post or might not. Lately I've had a few really weird but intriguing ideas that I'm having a hard time writing down. Specifically I've been "bumping" tons of Li'l B and find his whole like, Based God image and stuff really compelling for some reason. I feel like telling the story of someone's ascent to God through the 32 Levels of Base would be really fun and could give me a chance to just write a bunch of cool things. Dunno if I'm up for it though.

I also want to make a game about it in RPG Maker. Every once in awhile, especially after I've been programming and getting frustrated at it, I think about how easy RPG Maker is and instantly I'm like, well, I'll just tell the story of Li'l B in RPG Maker! I'll do Ulysses in RPG Maker! I'll do Finnegans Wake in RPG Maker? I'll do my own Yume Nikki-esque exploration game! And then I try spriting and suck at it and get lazy about making maps look good and give up. So there isn't that.

Uh, listening to some music, namely new Cunninlynguists which is quite good. And The King of Limbs still.

Oh and scanning a bunch of manga, I scanned the latest two volumes of Oyasumi Punpun, which look fantastic. I can't wait to read the translations and such. Er well I can and will wait but I am excited is what I guess I'm saying.

 Playing some video games, a friend of mine ordered fight sticks so for awhile I was playing a bunch of Vanguard Princess and Third Strike and BlazBlue and such, but I sorta lost interest with no one my skill level (crappy) to play against. Still playing Cultris II, though, getting decent at that. Also finally broke a minute in 40 lines mode in Nullpomino. And the 3DS! Mad excited for that!

TV stuff... watched a bunch of The Ricky Gervais Show when I was scanning. Quite entertaining. I feel like this blog is sorta like Karl's diary? I wish more people recorded their useless thoughts, though, I often find it compelling. Also think there's room for a Karl_Pilkington reddit novelty account but I doubt I'll be the one to do it.

Watching Index and Hidimari Sketch. These are two shows that I've sort of known about for a long time and figured I would have to watch at some point, I guess. For posterity, I wrote down what I thought they were going to be before I watched them, based only off seeing posts about them on /a/ and not even reading those pretty well.

Hidamari Sketch:  Like Lucky Star and/or K-On!

Index: The main character rescues an alien, Index. Or like, some sort religious alien in the vein of Aeries in FFVII. The alien is that sort of "prim tsundere", if you know what I mean. He ends up having to protect her from some sort of evil organization leaded by Railgun, aka Biribiri, a girl who can shoot lightning. And accelerate things with electricity. But I'm pretty sure Accelerator, who cannot be killed, is some other guy. Plus there's a bunch of girls and I don't know what they're there for. Maybe a harem show.

Anyways H. Sketch is exactly what I wanted and fantastic. Index is also pretty good, but the plot is kinda stupid I think. It makes me realize even more just how wonderful Madoka is when I compare it to a show where things seem arbitrary and characters act unbelievably, which, really, is most shows in these sort of genres. Oh, Madoka!

I guess that's all for now.