Words and Promises

[rolanni]

Busy writing day. Kinzel still struggles with the rewrites for Sword of Orion while I push on with Cantra and crew. I keep intending to expand on Things Promised, as requested by aireon, but that's obviously going to have to wait until the rest of this gets cleared out of the way. I will post a portion of what I want to say, as a way of keeping track of it. The computer desktop -- not to say the office, the living room, the kitchen and let's not even talk about the bathroom -- of a writer on deadline is a hideous sight.
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Things Promised:

A discussion in aireon's lj about them what outlines and them what don't, and how knowing too much of the story beforehand spoils the fun of actually writing for some writers led me to comment that, while I don't outline, I do find it helpful, especially in series books, to make a list of Things Promised and another, of Known Scenes. The request was for an expansion of Things Promised, and here it is:

In telling stories, there are two levels of promise operating: those made, explicitly or implicitly, to the reader; and those made to the characters -- and you don't want to cross your fingers when making either sort.

The broadest explicit promises made to the reader are the Romance HEA (happy ever after) ending (when the writer says to the reader, "Yes, some tough things may happen during the course of the events I am about to relate, but it all ends well for the hero and heroine. I PROMISE."), and the promise that who-and-how-dunit will be revealed by the end of the mystery novel.

There are, however, other, more subtle, promises made to readers within the text of a story/novel/series.

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Project: Crystal Dragon, Second Draft
New Words Written: 2250
Total Words: 97,293
Goal: 120,000+/- on or before March 31
Notes: I have Just Now hit the point where the first attempts at telling this story, back in Eighty-Aught-Eight, began. Yes, we were not ready...

Comments

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's very interesting.

I liked Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which is a comedy (as far as I could tell), and comedies are 'promised' to end happily, while Pendulum was suddenly cut in with an ending that suggested (at least to me, and I'm sure that I missed 75% of the subtext and allusions in that book anyway) a tragedy. So I felt that he hadn't quite had the courage of his convictions and wasn't quite able to fulfill the promise of the comedy he promised the reader to begin with.

Unfortunately, now I want to hear more about the "other, more subtle promises made to readers within the text of a story".

I mean, in your copious free time.