back to the novel::
Edit: The story is almost 10,000 words.
You might not want to read all this behind-the-scenes info. The "Shooting" story was like me doing protracted brain surgery on myself, and this LSR entry is me cleaning off the tools and putting them away again. Also, I can't emphasize this enough: If you didn't read the actual story yet, please go back and do so. This post-mortem is spoilery as hell.
Holy shit. I finally finished this on August 12 - over two weeks after I began it. I can't believe I wrote this whole thing.
Several times I almost gave up on it. What I'd do is kind of say to myself, "This is such a wordy, overworked story..." and I'd go back and read it, looking for stuff to take out - and be captivated again by the story and where it was going. I don't expect anyone to agree with me, but I definitely love this post and think it's the best thing I've ever written, by far. I must take off points for its extreme lack of brevity, though.
The first part, with Jim in his office, came to me quite a bit before the rest. I feel the style is markedly different from the rest of the text, although it's obviously all my voice. I feel like that introduction bit is kind of a set-piece, and that's why it reads so differently. It could've been the opener, with minor changes, to a lot of other kinda mysterious events that I could've written instead.
The best part of writing this story was writing the part with Eddie, the Eldust freak. (If you don't know what Eldust is, the first time it's mentioned prominently in the story I have linked to an earlier blog entry- a snippet about Eldust, what it is and what it does.) I did a lot of fun tricks writing that part; most I called out in the narration, but one or two I didn't.
Not only does Eddie know what Cecilia said to Jim in spite of being unable to hear it, he is revealed to know what the other characters are thinking without them even saying it. Also, at one point, Eddie's words are a reference to the narration in the previous paragraph - that is, words none of the characters said or thought, but words that the reader just read! I really had to go with that as soon as I thought of doing it. If there's a substance that makes it believable for a character to break the fourth wall, it's Eldust.
Also, note that Eddie's words in places sound like garden-variety non-Eldust-related craziness, which was no accident; he even indulges in a little clanging, a real symptom of real psychosis. As an added bonus, the actual words he uses demonstrate an awareness on his part - probably not fully conscious - of the importance of Cecilia to Jim! Yep, I had a lot of fun with the Eldust part.
I didn't have much "screen time" to establish the importance of Cecilia to Jim's life, even though the entire narrative kind of hangs on how much he loves her. I hope I brought it across anyway during the two scenes they had together. I wanted Cecilia to seem more than just a one-dimensional love interest plot element, so I tried to make her a little funny and gave her a bit of fight. Are Jim and Cecilia good together? Yeah, I think so.
Many times the resolutions to scenes in the story surprised me. I knew that Jim was going to retire after the bank robbery scene, but I didn't know what would have to happen to cause him to retire. I toyed with the idea of an evil super-human forcing him to relive the death of his wife, but it wasn't plausible; he relived it every year on the anniversary of her death. Probably much more often than that.
But, it made sense suddenly that he'd retire after saving a bank's entire staff from getting shot to death, after stopping a bank robber from shooting himself in the head right in front of him. And he saved the life of the orphan, Logan, in the earlier scene. He constantly saved the lives of others, against big odds, at ENDGAME.
In the end he only caused three deaths: His wife's death (he blamed himself), Eddie's death (really it was Eddie's own fault for pulling the trigger), and the unnamed person outside his window he shot to precipitate the entire story (and that was Jim's fault, but the death parallels both his wife's death and Eddie's, in that it was basically an unintended consequence of Jim's being impossible to kill, himself). Everyone else he dealt with, all his cases at ENDGAME, he saved. But after coming so close at the bank... he'd just had enough.
The ending is ambiguous. I originally wanted to have one ending, with one choice, and then this LSR entry would be partly devoted to the "parallel universe" -if you will- where he makes the other choice; the alternate ending. But that did the same thing that this ending does, which is to leave the actual result of Jim's choice a mystery.
Off the record? I like to think he chooses to serve out his 25 years. I imagine him becoming a holy terror at ENDGAME when he returns. I think he stops his little yearly ritual, but I think he becomes willing to shoot and kill others. Eldust dealers, producers if possible. The causes of the plague on society. No, Jim - if he doesn't take the Hush and die when his powers are removed - Jim becomes, I'm afraid, rather a frightening guy. No longer living for the sad memory of his wife, he lives instead to enact revenge on the people he feels are indirectly responsible for killing her.
But I don't know. Maybe the second the Doc leaves, he takes that glowing blue pill and dies in 5 minutes.
I just made him up. I can't claim to really understand him.
