Far too late again
Every morning I wake at some gawdawful hour with my back seized up and promise myself that tonight I will stretch and go to bed early. No such chance again tonight. Sitting up until nearly midnight putting notes into the StorySpace demo on spinal cord injury. I think I have that part of the science sorted out. Just need to stop reading and start writing again. Instead I detoured off to the article I've been writing off and on about poisons for Vision (the eZine produced by the Hollylisle.com community). It's nearly finished: I just have to sort out what I want to summarize about psychoactive poisons. Like distill all of neurochemistry and 5000 years of human self-experimentation into about 4 paragraphs?? It will come clearer when my mind is clearer; I read a lot of this stuff while working on Noon.

Bubble Theory
Incidentally, having come a-cropper once again on The Problem of Exposition, I think I finally have a way to conceptualize it. The Bubble Theory of Exposition. As far as exposition is concerned, every scene lives in its own bubble. It is entirely self contained and should have no more exposition than is necessary for the events in that scene. No expository set up of other scenes. The only set up - the only thing that crosses the bubble boundary - should be dramatic, not expository.

Perhaps. Sounds 'video clip' to me. I think of applying such rules to some of my favorite books and they come out in my head something like "famous speeches translated by a computer". Half presumes a story is a series of short stories doesn't it? Although the principle no doubt has merit. I fear all this stress on cutting, of late, is not good for my productivity. I feel tired before I start typing. And vaguely guilty for every third word. Maybe I am just too, literally, tired. Haven't got more than six hours sleep in a week between one thing and the other, lately.

No, the intention is not that the plot or action be contained, only the exposition be. The story has to cross the boundaries, because otherwise it would only be a collection of short stories. But not information.
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