Confederate States of Australia – Annotations
Before Mike and I start on the next Collabowrite story I figured I'd revisit the first one and not down what worked, what didn't work and give you a look at what went on behind the scenes.
I'm not a huge fan of naming stories before they've been finished, but I guess because chapters of the story were delivered "live" every two days it had to be done. Going back and renaming every chapter once the last one had been delivered would've been a colossal pain in the ass anyway.
Just one more thing before we begin, I've designed these annotations to be read along with each chapter. It's purely 'stream of consciousness' writing, but I'll try to have my notes at least appear in the order they happen in the story.
Each chapter heading links to the respective chapter on our sites, or you can just print out the whole story and have it sitting in front of you.
Chapter 1: You're Late
I've mentioned Mike's programmer mind before and it's fun to see it at work in the first paragraph, which I've handily summarised:
set Variable: Yakov
set Yakov.description: dark hair, tall, lanky, doesn't bathe
Hans, Yakov's father, is mentioned a full paragraph before he in introduced. I liked that a lot and based my whole interpretation of Hans - the emotional ball of fuming, unfocused energy - on that one sentence.
Mike was very generous with how he left the story open and made it easy for me to pick up the threads and run with them. I don't think I was ever that nice in my chapters.
Chapter 2: A Flawless Argument
My first shot at the story.
About halfway through I realised I was channeling Mark Twain. Where Yakov and Pietra slot into the roles played by Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
In the first draft I wrote the fat man was Yakov's uncle. He and Hans also had a far longer argument that ended in fisticuffs, however due to the dreaded 500 word limit I had to scale it right back. There are some small of their "extended personas" remaining. Both men are extremely stubborn - to the point where they've fashioned this blinkered view of reality around themselves. At the end of this chapter I tried to have Yakov follow that tradition of stubbornness. I'm not sure how well it worked.
I just had to end the chapter with something a bit pulpy. Having lightning punctuate Yakov's declaration was more for my entertainment than anyone else's.
Chapter 3: A New Home
Before we'd started writing, Mike and I had sketched out a rough outline of the story including where all the story beats were to occur. This framework was loose enough that we weren't just filling in blanks like a homemade Mad Libs. It gave us both a chance to improvise a lot. However, I wasn't a big fan of his decision to include multiple teenagers preparing to embark on The Rite. After reading section I knew I'd be killing them off as soon as possible.
In the 15 odd years I've known Mike I've never heard him use the phrase "gas being passed". I just though you should know that.
By Mike's admission the last half of this part was incredibly rushed. He'd missed out on hitting a beat in his first chapter and didn't want to miss out again. I can't fault him that.
I do like how Mike wrote Yakov in this chapter. A kid who finds new and interesting things and just can't keep his hands to himself. Be it machine or milkmaid.
Chapter 4: Yakov Makes a Case
A few weeks after publishing this chapter I overheard a St Kilda resident refer to the suburb as 'Kilda'. I didn't feel so clever after that.
I should reiterate that the fat man is not related to Yakov. He would've called him 'Uncle' if he was. Obviously.
Towards the end of this chapter all the teenagers who'd ventured out with Yakov are now "missing". I suppose you could imagine they'd found similar farming communities to what Yakov had been exposed to, but decided against copping a feel off the comely milkmaid, and therefore ended up living happily ever after.
In my imagination though their fates involved bandits. Lots and lots of bandits.
Chapter 5: Eden
I do wonder who the "non essential people" in Kilda were. We, being Mike and I, never laid out the town's social hierarchy past the elected-on-a-platform-of-panting-and-sweating fat man.
Mike sure loves his semi-colons. Doesn't he?
The Yakov that appears in Mike's chapters is very similar to how I see him in my head. His Pietra seems a little older than I'm writing her. The Pietra I'm writing about is five to six 5 years old.
Chapter 6: Yakov Leads! (Sort of)
Again I'm paring down the bulk of Yakov's co-adventurers. Except this time I don't harbour a deep, burning hatred for them, so they off-page death.
Having Yakov luck upon the nearly fully functional farm does seem like a huge cop out at this point, but rest assured the universe will reassert itself shortly.
When I was growing up in Frankston there was a hedge of wild blackberries that separated two football ovals near my house. These blackberries never died off despite never being tended to (that I could tell) so it made sense to me that still thrive in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Chapter 7: Tractor Pull
I was wondering if Mike would reveal that the farm the kids ended up at wasn't Yakov's original destination.
Personally I would've written this chapter a little differently. Yakov seem a little too reluctant to explore the barn. He seems ot have lost the that curiosity that drove him at the beginning of the story.
Abdul survives the bandits. Go Abdul!
I wonder what sort of celebrations a group of starving kids with no food or party decorations could hold. Hide and Seek maybe?
If I'm not mistaken the tipping tractor is straight out of an episode of The Simpsons called E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt).
Again Mike seems to be writing Pietra a lot older than how she appears in my chapters. How else to explain how she knows basic First Aid?
Chapter 8: We're Not Fighters
In this chapter I started playing around with narrative styles a bit.
I made a conscious effort to keep Pietra young in this chapter. She really only has two states of mind: Hungry and Scared.
Sally is the name of the female character in 3rd Rock From the Sun. In that TV show she acts as the group's muscle and military know-it-all. So I thought having her appear at this point would make for a cool Easter egg.
One thing I think we didn't do very well in this story was indicate time progression. At this point in the story the kids have been separated from the adults for around three weeks.
This is another chapter that I had to cut back to fit within the 500 word limit. The original battle far more bloody and violent. But rereading it now it seems a lot more natural just having just one person fall and everyone reacting to that.
Chapter 9: Aftermath
Mike's final chapter. Will he wrap things up nicely or will he leave dangling plot threads?
As nice as the woman and the dark man are they don't seem all that remorseful for the death of Sean. They're either delirious from hunger or Sean was just some expendable orphan. At least Yakov seems to be harbouring some feelings of revenge for Sean's death.
In my idea for this chapter I had every adult miraculously swinging to the kid's way of thinking after Sean's death. Mike's version is far superior. I like that there's this splinter group within the adult faction that sympathises with the kids.
Chapter 10: Epilogue
Just before we started writing this story I'd finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This chapter is my homage to that novel. The style doesn'really t fit in with the preceding chapters at all, but I do like the pacing of it.
There's one thing I should've done in this chapter and thats name the two characters. It's not that clear, in the narrative but the man is an aged Yakov.
In our original plan this epilogue was supposed to be set about 20 years after the last chapter. It's probably more like 10 years later.
I'm not sure if anyone picked up on this, but the courtyard they end up at is the same one from Chapter 4.
Don't ask about the cows.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I've plenty of comments I'm sure I could write here, but I will bore neither myself or you reciting them; I'll put just a few here; I'm sure you like them.
One comment I wanted to make (after inserting a few semi-colons) is that I actually think we needed to flesh out the story a bit more before we started, although I think what we had was certainly enough.
Another is that I think we tried to stuff the plot of a novel into that of a short story.
And finally, since we've had very few comments from others, I'm glad you enjoyed reading my parts (even if you didn't always agree with the direction); I did enjoy yours (and had to finish off with another semi-colon).