Novel discussion post 3

hoho now Stick wakes again and here's my thoughts: but hey no, before my thoughts, I must give my previous batch of thoughts/intentions, which consist of the following—
1. nah Stick is hardly THE mapmaker. Neither is Stick a female. In my head it went like this: since Novel X is a doll-within-doll affair, the outermost layer is of course the man at the desk in an empty room writing the detective novel, and in the tentative prologue I named this man SlapStick, who is schizophrenic, who splits into two major personalities that's Us! This lays the grounds that Us can take turns to write and the differential styles explained for. In a style like “stick writing chap one”, “slap writing chap 2”, “stick continuing chap25””slap revising chap 14””diary: by stick/slap” etc etc, so as to give ourselves flexibility and control over the developments at any one time. Hence, Slap is THE OTHER IMPORTANT HALF OF a mapmaker, just like how it works here in the blog enterprise hehehehe. Exactly which differing aspects of personality in Us (us us us) we want to reflect here in novelist SlapStick we both will have to start another discussion on. My tentative ideas now: Stick as the angry, anxious, impatient, violent, fatalistic, and always theorizing about HIS (since Slapstick was defined to be a man biologically) sexual identity or lack thereof (therefore the she/he/it thought, a minor point of interest which could be played out more if it becomes more relevant later), and Slap as gentle maybe, easier going, trying to be brighter, but still a bit sulky about life n acrid. We'll have to make them two distinctly different, if not contrasting, yet subtly sharing some character too, say sentimentality, that underlies the united individual Slapstick. Gotta arrive at a consensus later.

2. So Slapstick being a terminal case of schizophrenic (refer to Prologue) constantly switches back and forth between Slap and Stick (reminds of Fightclub huh?), either self quite unconscious of the switches. He may keep a personal diary too, so while detective novel under his pen unfolds, his own personal history and problems and realisation of his split can be disclosed on a parallel line. (how very complex! But hey, we are challenge-loving souls!)

summary of chat history, 2004-12-01

1. agreeing on the girl being a schizo…there's distinct difference between schizoid and schizophrenic and i am not sure which would fit with her THE FOOL identity better, if at all. NB: gotta do research on that.
2. named the fool Alice, from Alice in wonderland. Her mom is the high priestess, tentatively
3. the novel has 3 layers: slapstick, tarot set ppl, tarot ppl novel
4. hourglass structure probably. the first and third layers being the bigger ends, the second layer a connection between the two worlds
5. characters sorta abstract and eccentric and surreal but hauntingly make readers have to identify with one or another trait in them
6. the personalities of characters remain largely unaltered, we assume that's where slap and stick have unwittingly agreed upon. only the fate of the people are steered around. like in a whirlpool they are pulled by contesting forces （ that's us), not knowing if in the end they'd be swallowed alive or escape
7. we write diary entries and letters and 3rd person narratives on 2nd layer but the weightage needn be as big as on 1 and 3
8. characters in layer2 have real life names, like alice. they arrive at the scene of confine, say an island, a mountain resort, and are asked to draw tarot cards.
9. we have to come up with characters and establish their basic relationships or else this's gonna run into a hodgepodge given how inexperienced we are. although individual pictures will be perfect, impressionistic, coloured, the whole plot can't be void or else we'll be 张艺谋ｎｏ．２
10. a bit like nausea/fightclub/ten little niggers/run lola run/conan/the talented mr ripley/*more to come* rolled into 1
11. http://www.themysticeye.com/info/tarotcardm.htm
12. stick's fav cards ( which are suitable to adapt into persons): fool, magician, hanged man, hermit, devil
13. maybe an inner circle of ppl writing the novel, say five, plus the ruling one, who can be the Emperor going all wrong in the head. and there's an outer circle, relatives and friends, whom the inner circle communicate with via letter, telepathy, whatever
14. the devil in particular in slap's impression is a very charismatic person
15. fool and magician are lovers
16. slap was thinking of a character, not exactly hermit, someone inconsequential who has extrememly low self esteem n watches others in silence, always there in the shadows and he has lots of secrets too. Stick thought that's the hanged man.
17. there are just 9 ppl cards among the 22.. 9=fool, magician,high priestess,empress,emperor,hierophant,hermit,hanged man,devil
18. slapstick himself could be the tenth one. Nice number.
19. summary of chap1: alice is departing from train station, saying bye to her mom who's tentatively the high priestess, going to the mountain resort/island. a 3rd person narrative, maybe plus a short diary entry
20. if we auteurs can't agree on one ending, we can write multiple endings...like run lola run
21. advice: don't look too far and speculate immoderately, or you shall get vertigo and writer's block.