Let’s Go Fly A Kite

I’ve had to take a couple days break due to non-NaNoWriMo related issues and now much confront Edgar Caswall and his Giant Kite. Although I feel like I get Caswall’s character, or what I think Stoker was going for, the real issue I’m having overall is the absolute pedestrian manner in which most of this prose is coming out.

I’m something of an anti-dialogue bigot—certainly for anything horror-related, sharing HP Lovecraft’s notion that it tends to remove the mystery. But I also see why writers do it so much: It’s easy. You just imagine a conversation and boom, there’s all your exposition without having to do any pesky, y’know, writing.

The real question is how much do I go into each character’s head. Stoker was in Adam’s head for most of the book, even to the point of when the book is wholly focused on Caswall, with Salton nowhere to be found, you get a pretty straight recounting of events without real thoughts or reactions.

Mixed bag: Familiarity breeds contempt. Distance, on the other hand, breeds confusion.

Meanwhile, the English concept of kite runners has been completely eclipsed on the Internet by that Persian (?) book. That makes researching a bitch. I tragically do not have any books on kite-related activities. Maybe. I’ll have to check the stacks.

The Kite and Mesmer’s Chest should be related. The weird thing about the chest, though, is that Stoker presents it to us in Chapter XIII as a mysterious puzzle—and then Chapter XIV is “The Chest Opens”. Well, who needs a mystery.

This is one of those pieces that doesn’t go anywhere, but I think it should. Obviously Stoker was influenced by Mesmer’s less reputable ideas vis a vis animal magnetism, as that is a theme here and throughout Dracula. The chest represents something Caswall should not be tempted by, at his peril, but we don’t have enough back-story on Caswall to appreciate his corruption, if that’s what this is to be.

Gonna hafta backfill.

And after this? More Oolanga. He’s just so barely in the story, it’s like he’s there to make a point (one for Stoker, and an entirely different one fro Price).