SFR progress (day 8)

Well, basically what it boils down to is no progress whatsoever in terms of wordcounts. I spent all weekend brainstorming and worldbuilding for Temple, and not writing anything for the draft itself. I got stalled out by the concept that Draft 3 isn't going to be the final order of scenes either, and therefore why should I write it when I will have to rearrange it again later anyhow?

Well... thinking it over for a good long time, my current conclusion is that I should go ahead and follow the plan I had for Draft 2, more or less, just because it needs to be done as an interim step before I can have any hope of figuring out what the final form is supposed to be. Also, after all the updates to the setting, I badly need a complete draft that incorporates all the changes. Right now there are large portions of Draft 1 that have been rendered obsolete.

The other thing I probably need to do is work out some of the details of what happened back in Amulet I, so that I can fill out the Iorli plotline for Temple, but I can certainly do stand-in scenes until I get around to that. The depressing thing about that thought is that it means nothing will be ready for submitting anywhere for a really long time. I need to do all of the books in the series together so that they stay consistent with each other, and so I can change things from previously written books depending on what I come up with to solve things in new books. I guess one could call it a Holistic Approach. Not an incredibly bright method economically, sadly.

Of course, I kind of knew that already.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that several of my blog entries have a structure of storytelling that's remarkably similar to what I'm trying to do for Temple. Start with the main point that I want to talk about in a single emotion-laden sentence (e.g. "I figured out how not to kill Janis!" compared to "I thought about joining a new game on rpol" compared to "The temple is doomed."). Then, go forward slightly to fill out explaining what I meant (e.g. "it all started with my last blog plus comments from others" compared to "my ongoing Anitaverse game is dead" compared to "the king wanders around the battlefield with his advisors, thinking 'what the frell was all that about?'"). Then go way to the back, beginning of the story (e.g. "Thomas must sacrifice Janis in order to save her life" compared to "I miss my chars, want to write a novel with them, saw this other Anitaverse game..." compared to "It all started when Ian Wormon was found near-dead and taken to the Temple of Healing...").

(For that last bit with Temple above, that bit about Ian Wormon is in my notes and outline and semi-there in Draft 1, but not written yet for Draft 3).

I should pay more attention to this and use it as a template. It's apparently how I tell stories, in miniature.

As for roleplay, not only is it deader than dead, RPoL itself has been down since Saturday night and the current ETA is that it will be back by Thursday. Might be sooner, but we shouldn't count on it. Basically, the hosting company is migrating its servers from California to New Jersey, and a) they didn't bother to actually tell anyone about this beforehand, b) they're doing this apparently without having anything prepared to receive all the massive amounts of data at the other end, and c) they're doing this apparently without having any kind of plan in place to coordinate the migration, either.

As I'm understanding it thirdhand, they got bought out by a larger company which is notoriously incompetent with customer service. I suspect RPoL's days with that hosting company are numbered, as jase (the guy who codes and admins RPoL) finds somewhere else to host the site.

I'm not actually suffering from roleplaying withdrawal as much as most of the other people I've heard from, though. I've got writing to do, and it's actually been a relief to not have to worry about the games as much.