While she keeps trucking in the writing of the following chapter of Falsebound Kingdom, thanks to the bowl of coffee she prepared before the writing session started, Anna and Yulia are increasingly worn out by the fatigue writing at night has caused them.
Anna realizes, prior to going to sleep, there is more to extemp, or more to judging extemp, than yakking about a sociopolitical topic the pubic would be clueless about for 7 minutes (especially true of international extemp, whereas, in electoral years, domestic extemp topics become better-known among the public), or listening to 6 or 7 high school students doing so, respectively. And no, she had no memory of Chantal resurfacing in her sleep, presumably because she never attended any extemp game.
When she awakens, by a ping on Wattpad, she reads the notification on her cellphone, or rather, a batch of notifications. A new vote, a new follower, apparently from elsewhere in the state, and a handful of new comments on Falsebound Kingdom. And only a handful of new reads.
She reads one of these comments out loud. "You're trying to juggle too many themes and subplots at once"
Let's see: trying to explore how it would feel to be a teenage campaign volunteer, go on exchange as a cover for spying, deepfakes in politics, extemp, the early stages of entrepreneurship, acting in loco parentis when you are a host family to high school kids on exchange, I admit it's a lot, though, Anna tries to ascertain what these themes are made of, slowing down her writing.
Yet she looks back on what others around her wrote, both for NaNo and their previous work. Like the all-too-common "opposites attract" and that led to disaster for Sam's characters in her first book. About how desperate the mean girl was in the prequel to Expiry Date.
Or the lingering paranoias of the civilian populace when one's country is at war in Gruesome IRGC and how religious tensions play into these.
Or power-at-a-price and alcoholism in Alcoholic Massacre. And combined arms; yet, at the stage Yulia is at, she writes her main character being deployed mostly for the magical equivalent of electronic warfare.
Some people like complex characters. But did I take it to mean having them explore a lot of themes at once? Just not on purpose, however, Anna starts questioning her project. The core theme is youth involvement in politics. I have too much skin in the project to scrap it now; it would jeopardize what I hoped to accomplish through bowls of coffee and sleep deprivation! There's no shame in going over the 50k words, but the lowest-hanging fruit to cut themes is extemp. However, there is no good representation of extemp in literature, despite extemp being around for decades. I don't know.
Anna then starts looking for resources from the judge's POV in extemp as well as watch videos from past extemp tournaments to see how she could more accurately portray a lower-level extemp round beyond simply "yakking about a sociopolitical topic the public is clueless about for 7 minutes". And also what the extemp circuit is made of. The realities competitors face.
She quickly realizes that she could have Cuh-laire excel at international extemp and Massiekur excel at domestic extemp. Relatively speaking of course. And she also finds allusions to what people called lazy extempers when reading comments on these extemp videos.
Yet, she adds another item to the Manifest of No's when she finishes watching an extemp video: No text talk unless it's made clear they're texting beforehand.
I must find a satisfactory way to have them give up on extemp, or at least put extemp aside! Putting extemp aside if the candidates they support don't make it past the invisible primary without rallying behind someone else's campaign, in which case they may resume extemp. "Massiekur" might feel forced to give up on extemp the way this is going, she keeps trying to figure out how she could cut down on the theme bloat, but doesn't write anything. I'm not sure if I should cut extemp for both, or just "Massiekur"; "Cuh-laire" won't be on the campaign trail much... However, if I had "Cuh-laire" keep doing extemp, the theme bloat will remain.
YOU ARE READING
Cliche Manifest
HumorAnna, a psychologist working with gifted youth and other high achievers, takes to writing indie literature since she was disillusioned with what she managed to read. She decides to enter NaNoWriMo for the first time in her life. But little did she k...
