I am pretty comfortable the mess I have now is better than the mess that is my source material, but it’s still a far cry from good. So, how do we fix? First, we identify the main issues:
- The nature of the White Worm
- Arabella’s relationship to it
- The nature of Edgar Caswall
- Caswall’s relationship to the White Worm
Without the Arabella/Caswall/White Worm triumvirate—this is a sloppy but accurate use of the word “triumvirate”—there’s no book. Well, the book that’s left is some sort of Jane Austen/Henry James thing. (Which sounds pretty good, but focus, dammit!)
I actually have these four points nailed down, as far as my rewrite goes, but we need a lot more than this to make a good story. So let’s look at our characters, in a rough order of importance from the original:
- Lady Arabella March
- Edgar Caswall
- Mimi Watford
- Adam Salton
- Oolanga
- Lilla Watford
- Sir Nathaniel
- Michael Watford
- Richard Salton
- Cavendish
- Simon
- Ross
OK, I’m reaching there at the end. But no matter how I shake it, the main character of the White Worm is Lady Arabella. Even if Adam is meant to be the hero—and I put Mimi above him, since she’s the one who actually confront Edgar and is the last to see Arabella alive, and also the factor that keeps Caswall from dominating Mimi—he’s absent from, I dunno, half the book? And he just doesn’t do much on the pages.
He waits. He knows his opportunity will arise, so he waits for it. Then he blows stuff up.
For all that, though, his motivations are pretty obvious: He’s looking for an English adventure with his rich, long-lost uncle, then he wants to marry Mimi (or sometimes Lilla, but let’s assume those are typos), then he wants to destroy evil.
Fine, fine, we need someone to do all that. Our major change for Adam will be him actually doing stuff. Now, let me recalibrate for my rewrite:
- Lady Arabella March
- The White Worm
- Edgar Caswall
- The Caswalls
- Mimi Watford
- Lilla Watford
- Adam Salton
- Sir Nathaniel
- Richard Salton
- Michael Watford
- Cavendish
- Simon
The way I see it, Arabella needs to have her motivations and the White Worm needs to have its motivations. This is actually in the source, but it’s never clarified, and we end up gibberish like Arabella being a giant snake (with mind control powers?) who carries a gun for protection.
So, we need to set these things up. The motivations can be mysterious, they can be confusing, even to a degree—to the reader but never the writer—but without them, we have a whole bunch of pointless meandering.
The Edgar/Caswalls split is a little harder to justify from the source, so I won’t. I feel like Bram was revisiting Dracula, which is cool, man, but doesn’t give us a lot to work with. I like the idea of Edgar struggling with his nature in a similar way that Arabella struggles with hers, though with obviously different sources of problems.
In fact, duality is probably the way to go for all the characters. Mimi is proper English lady on the one hand, but in touch with her mystic southeast Asian (yeah, I know) roots; Adam is a down-to-earth modern dude on the one hand but wrestling with the ancient and supernatural elements—
—Let’s pause a moment to discuss Oolanga, because the Big Oo’s duality could actually be really cool: On the one hand, he’s an awful con man, but on the other, he could have powers comparable or complementary to Edgar’s. But his showdown with Arabella is the thing that convinces Adam of Arabella’s nature.
I don’t know about keeping him, but I do know I want that moment. I think I have it figured out, as well.
Lilla’s duality is between her spiritual and worldly nature. She’s genuinely holy—and I am amping up her religiosity—but she’s a little dumb about it, too. She believes God will protect her even when it seems to be Mimi saving the day. She’s attracted to Edgar (which is something that must be better defined than it was) but it’s a mix of romantic love and an ardent desire to save his soul.
That’s gonna be good.
Sir Nathaniel’s also going to be better. His duality is that he’s old (heh) but he doesn’t want to be. He’s going to be the Jim to Richard Salton’s Marlon Perkins. He’s going to do risky things that he can’t bring himself to talk about publicly, partly because they’re embarrassing superstition and partly because they’re deadly-if-true.
Salton’s going to be the research guy. His duality is in his “common touch”. He’s rich, or upper class, rather, even if the money isn’t there. But he’s conscious of his station in a kind of ex-post-facto way. That is, he wants to not abuse his position, but he tends to through absent-mindedness, rather than malice. He’s got some good bits already but I need to give him more to do.
I’ve got Watford pretty well figured out, too. He’s going to be oblivious, but not really. In the book, he was almost comical the way he walked in at awkward moments, and I’m going to keep that, but I’m going to give him a duality of “stiff upper lip English” and “semi-basket-case”. I mean, look, the guy has lost his wife, his two sons, and his two daughters-in-law.
Another interesting point: The girls all map to animals. Arabella is a snake. Lilla a dove. Mimi’s a mongoose, and don’t doubt it. Also, Edgar’s an eagle. There might be something there if we don’t get too goofy. (Adam’s a koala! Michael Watford’s a walrus!)
The White Worm
What does the White Worm want? In the original, it wants to marry Edgar which, I’m sorry, is not a proper goal for an antediluvian giant snake. Now, I’m not going to be coy here. I’ve figured all this out already, and I’ve figured out how TWW gets what it wants. That is, I have worked out the mechanism by which it achieves its goals generally—part of this is the greatest deviation from the original, and shameless borrowing from a pulp author who was just a bit after Bram Stoker.
The trick is trickling it out in a way that’s compelling and creepy.
Let’s say this: The central element of the plot is the seduction of Edgar by the White Worm. What are the things thwarting that? Well, Arabella doesn’t especially appeal to Edgar, beyond a social level, i.e., they’re about the same station. Lilla, being there and being more interesting to Edgar would seem to be a problem. I’ve made Adam a problem as well, just on the basis of Edgar’s being kind of a shut-in and not good at the social things.
Mimi is interesting because, on the one hand, she has no interest in seeing Lilla hook up with Edgar, which serves the snake’s interest. But she also susses out the snake-nature of Arabella instinctively. Besides being more attractive, Lilla’s an issue because of her holiness. She sees the good in Edgar and TWW does not want that. Besides which, her connection to St. Columba and the doves is a potential roadblock.
Nathaniel and the elder Salton are a problem because they know what’s going on. They’re our Van Helsings.
So, what’s a worm to do?
Lair Of The White Wyrm 