Oldscript notes from last read-through

Notes from last read-through 1.11.25

From the blue/red stripey notebook. Shit, I have to try and read my hand writing.

• Last note first, after returning months later: the opening is opaque and baffling. "How to do the same thing, or not at all? How to do in way that actually draws reader in? It's in there, just needs knocking about. Cf. p.130 "how important the story is". Nice idea for beginning too."

• Need better Ipai intro in first Hill section (think I've got plan for that, tying into making Tru better too).

• "Someone owns every concept and every story." ("Explain why seems dystopian but isn't," it says here!)

• More Tru: have him explain more about how exactly he got into debt. (Ties again to bigger aims for that char, the bet..) Who hard-sold him?

• Lab destruction - motivation is still tepid/opaque/out of the blue/out of place. Is it? All of that might need some rethinking, in combo with Tru. What actually are the stakes, is it possible to gain early understanding of why Hill might do that? (Or was it a pantsing too far?)

  • What would be compelling? What's whole hill structure/arc?

• p.84: Hill - "Work was destroyed". Can I think through a better thing to convey the hole she's in? What kind of hole is she actually in anyway? This is classic Princess falls on hard times type thing isn't it?

  • How to get the reader into Hill's head on this? Plus, does it actually make sense? (Did something else pre-date it, how does it fit with fam history?)
  • Actually does get good post-lab-destroy: Just gotta get there. "Proposal" is great, lab destroy does work as instigating wotsit. But...

• p.93: "Petulance so powerful": piece Hill's story together. [Huh? Make it make sense with everything else?]

• Really need to show how much losing IP access fucks things. That's the job of the Tru thread, no? Do I actually know how it fucks things?

• 129: "needs sunlight of attention". Is there any way to get nature of IP thing right at beginning? Again, every Hill section should be doing that at the start. Go through and be clear on what each is achieving in rel2 that. Write that down. That's in "the plan" - can def get some of it into e.g. the Axiom Hack and the exhibition. And how it differs still from the street, its relative safety and playfulness?

• Says here: hmm - street convo in 'seed planting' could do half the job of the axiom hack seminar, maybe. Most of it. Could be right near start, properly show off the voice system.

  • How though? What would happen near the start? Does Tru actually come along, bring someone else? That might work, esp if he's coming to egg on, push Hill into making mistakes. He might bring someone who doesn't have so many restrictions. Leveraging connections. (Can he pass paper notes, or is that not allowed for some reason? Could make that entertaining - Hill can call him out, he can shrug, his accomplice can say, "There's nothing to stop me saying what I want. What I want just happens to be what's written on this piece of paper." But then, what is Tru trying to achieve? Win a bet? Maybe. Maybe he's not so nice after all.

• This is nice to read: "Am reading A-B and remembering why I wrote this, how much it does exactly what I wanted."

• "Can I up the AI gen aspects of Terry Saucer?" Yeah there's a lot there to think through too.

• 179: How to sell IP - where Tru tells Hill a lot of stuff it might be good to show. [Let's see - full check on Tru's thread, may well be possible to do this as we go.] Instead, this scene could be picking apart what's happening.

• "Street" is confusing term, possibly? Better?

• More of an arc for Remzi: how to connect that to the levels? What's his relation with street level? Am I clear in my own mind all the diff social rels there, layers in the school, where everyone fits and what their function is in the story? Esp given I want Tru to have a larger role there.

• Says here: "Consider all points Tru making p.178." What are those? Just I think about his and Hill's differences.

• I could do with doing something to make the school more tangible, weirder, more baroque. A large dark academia rabbit hole awaits.

• Some of the street people Hill connects to - tie to what Rem/Hill do, then maybe have it show up with cx2 what John's layer becomes.

• Better word than "context"? Clique?

• p.183 = good (IP / getting laid). Something like that nearer to the beginning? Lay out intro to how the whole system works?

• Predator prey: give them a touch more life? [Do they really need it? Dunno. Connect to John's memories? (The shark memory, introduce the ocean book earlier, so it's not so suddenly introduced. And can be John applying memory at different levels.) Shadow of sharks, all teeth and knife-sharp focus? Add noise, hiding in dark of trees.

• Says here: "brief chat with I + B at start." (Of predator prey. Why / what for?)

• Cauliflower: path of discovery could do with being smoothed out and clarified. Reader needs to be clear why we're now talking about DNA. Depict actual DNA strands and RNA reading. Take time. [And think about what this is trying to achieve - might be that dropping the romanesque is sensible. Who the hell is going to know what I'm talking about there? But what else would do the job? Something else that turns up again later.]

  • Hexaflex: "You saw how vital geog is for protein function." Depict that in cauli plz, in some way.

• One millimetre: it's only a page, but how the new IP thing is communicated is still overly flowery. Would prefer something else. See note P.391. [OK, what does that say? "Can this be massively cut down? It's confusing and self-indulgent." Well that doesn't sound good!] One suggestion I have here: have Hill/John translate Ipai's pompous twattery into pisstaking English.

  • Ooo note: same page, some def franken overtones here on how the skin's assembled from different people. I can say something about trying to find all commonalities, use some statistics language.

• Says here p.423, "looking skin" got dropped. But it totally didn't, appears also on p.391. I do need to consider what I think the frankenskin thing is, how best to convey it (to myself included).

Other thoughts as they occur:

• The other animal people - they appear to make a single point but can't they do more? Be more of a part of what they all get combined to become? That does happen as John blends with them, but what does that mean for the connectome?

  • Ah yes, this turns up in previous notes: "J's false memories just make me think there's a better book where those connections have more plot meaning." Yes.