Chapter 16 — Stop It
Rufus talks about plot holes and where they fit into the reader-author relationship.
Followed by Chapter 16 —— Stop It, in which Saskia calls Mica out for telling Hugo about time travel.
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Hello Friends,
About a month ago I talked about faith, and towards the end I alluded to the faith I hoped you would continue placing in me. Specifically, the faith that continuing our journey together would all be worthwhile.
Today, I’d like to examine one element of that trust you’re placing in me, and more broadly the trust readers more generally place in the authors they read.
There is a pact between the reader and the author, wherein in return for the reader’s attention, the author promises to patch up any plot holes that he or she sees by the end of the book. I take this responsibility very seriously. It’s one of the reasons that established authors acquire a devoted following; they have shown themselves trustworthy.
Those of you who read my first book, The I.F. Zones, will hopefully have that with me. For the rest of you, it is my express intention to earn that faith by the end of The Curve of Time.
What makes this trust so important is that it changes the fraught anticipation that maybe you, the reader, are being duped, into tantalizing anticipation about how the various plot strands will pull together. The former is certainly a form of tension, but it’s a tension that stems primarily from hoping that you won’t be disappointed; it’s not a very optimistic tension. As an author, I’d rather that any foreboding you felt had to do with anxiety or trepidation you have for the characters and their world. Once you trust an author this way, you can let yourself be swept away by the story.
One way for writers to reassure readers along the journey is to uphold smaller promises they’ve made on the way (in the parlance of my theory of questions, it’s about answering a smaller emotional question while the big ones remain). Today, for instance, Saskia will call Mica, upholding the promise of the first few chapters that it was worth your time to invest emotionally in Mica. Of course, it’s no good if the writing becomes predictable. It is after all the thrill of being surprised that keeps us reading. However, even romance novels, while promising their lovers will ultimately end up together must keep you guessing as to the how, and sometimes even the who.
Ours, however, is a more intimate connection than most author-reader relationships, for as I’ve made clear from the beginning, I’m soliciting your feedback, which means you have more recourse than most readers.
Feedback you’ve collectively shared, has already caused me to make changes, though, nothing, to this point, that requires the re-issuance of a chapter already dispatched. But in the spirit of this open back and forth, I encourage you to keep sun-shining any jitters you might have; any questions that have collected in the back of your mind that you definitely want answered before the novel is done. Obviously we’ve a long way still to go——and as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m well aware that I must observes the rules of the universe we’re exploring, and at some point actually articulate them (which I will)——but please do keep giving me feedback. I have a pretty clear roadmap, but there’s still plenty of room to incorporate suggestions and I certainly want to attend to any plot holes you see before the end.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
And now, without further ado, here’s chapter sixteen in which Saskia calls Mica out for telling Hugo about time travel.
— 16 —
Stop It
Mica answered on the second ring: “Saskia?”
“Hey.” There was wind in the background, and Saskia’s mind worked to flesh out the scene on the other end of the line. “I was thinking about you.”
“Oh.” Mica paused. She’d felt guilty about fleeing, and after the Hugo disappointment she was conflicted about which direction to take her story. “Sorry about the other night. I——”
“No, I shouldn’t have ...” but Saskia trailed off. “Hey, a guy called Hugo showed up this morning.”
“Really?”
“Yeah . . . look, I didn’t think you believed me when——”
“I didn’t. But I didn’t think Hugo would either.”
“Mica, you can’t go around telling people that I can slip in time.” Saskia’s double, who was listening in with the second earbud, gave Saskia a thumbs up.
“It’s not like I wrote an article about it.”
“Mica——”
“You told me, a complete stranger——”
“Which was probably dumb. But I needed to tell someone, and you——I got a good feeling about you——and——”
“And no one would believe me if I did tell them.”
“Hugo did.”
“Okay ...” Mica started, and then stopped. “Hold on, this might be easier if I can see you.”
Maybe easier for Mica, but Saskia almost dropped the phone when her screen flashed the video chat request. Steadying herself, she pulled on the wire to the second earbud, but her double held it firmly to her ear, and mouthed: “No, no, no.”
Saskia’s eyes widened as the video chat request chimed again. “Yes,” she mouthed back, tugging more insistently on the cord.
Her double pressed the earbud tightly in place, furrowed her brow, and gave Saskia a determined shake of her head. “NO.” She was resolute, but as an olive branch, of sorts, she also slipped down by Saskia’s side, below the height of the kitchen counter. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
Without another option, Saskia pressed “Accept”, and Mica’s face filled the screen.
“Hey.” There was blue sky behind Mica’s head.
“Where are you?” Saskia asked automatically, even as she surreptitiously pushed her evil twin’s head down.
“The beach.” Mica flipped her phone about to show Saskia the water and some kids splashing in the waves a little further down the sand. She returned the camera to herself. “Look, I’m sorry about Hugo. I never——”
“I’m not ready to let the world——to go public. I might never be.”
“Again, I apologize. It was wrong of me. But ...” Mica wasn’t sure if she wanted to excuse herself or press for more details.
So Saskia filled the void instead. “It’s fine. I sent him on his way.”
“Are you——was he...?”
Saskia laughed at Mica’s reticence. “Quintessential sniveling whiner.”
“I’m sorry,” Mica repeated, though she could feel the mood lighten. She suddenly decided to abandon the lottery story, and, instead, open herself to Saskia. “Look, try me again.” With the reputational risk of reporting a suspect story cast aside, she relaxed. “Tell me how it works. Your time travel.”
Saskia was disarmed by Mica’s switch in attitude. But she welcomed it. “Slowing time down? Or speeding it up?”
Mica shrugged.
“Slowing time down is a bit like that moment in an accident——when you come off your bike. When your mind goes fuzzy in anticipation of the pain. And the world around you seems to move slowly. But imagine your mind isn’t fuzzy.”
“That makes sense. Do you remember the first time it happened?”
Saskia balked. Her mind spun simultaneously in two directions; back to her backyard and below the counter to her double crouched beside her.
“Imagine you were there, to watch it,” Mica prompted. “The first time. What would it have looked like?”
Saskia knew exactly what it had looked like. “I actually went back to see it.”
Luckily, the “Wha——” that her double failed to mask was covered by Mica’s own surprised gasp. Mica glanced away from the phone, presumably out over the endless expanse of the ocean, and Saskia took the opportunity to steal a look down at her wide-eyed other self.
Her double mouthed a silent “WTF?”
“It’s kind of why I’m so exhausted,” Saskia explained to both women. Returning her eyes to the screen, she described how she’d gone back a week and watched herself as she first learnt to slip in time. “It wasn’t just snap my fingers, though,” Saskia clarified, and recounted her analogy of walking to San Francisco, though she finished brightly with the observation that beyond her haggard look there were no war wounds to show. “No blisters, or missing toenails.”
“Icky!” Mica stuck out her tongue. Missing toenails were something she could finally relate to, albeit——for the obvious reasons——they weren’t a topic that thrilled her.
“Though I get those once in a while from rock climbing,” Saskia teased.
This time, Mica laughed, shook her head and glanced away from the camera again.
“Show me that beach again,” Saskia urged, curious about what kept piquing Mica’s attention.
Mica flipped the phone around. Swapping her own rim-lit headshot with a dog splashing in the white water that churned at the ocean’s edge.
“Cute,” Saskia said.
“Come out to the Westside. It’ll make you feel better.”
Saskia conceded that the beach did look nice.
“You need to recuperate,” Mica told her. “Come over. Let me make it up to you, for Hugo.” She smiled and gave a little happy dance. “I’ll cook you dinner later.”
Saskia considered the entreaty.
“And I promise to stop quizzing you about time travel.”
She might have started grumpy at Mica, but Mica had broken Saskia down and it didn’t take much convincing to turn the offer into an acceptance.
As Saskia hung up the phone, her double just looked at her, stunned. “You went back to when this all started?”
