Final wordcount: 51317.
I wrote about 1300 words while at the last official write-in of the month, but mostly I was just there to give other people moral support and was a total slacker about doing any of my own writing.
All of the new words were in Birthright. I wrote a scene where Allen tells Nathaniel about seeing the phoenix, and had to reread chunks of Triangle I to figure out what he would've known about and when. I don't think I quite have that part down yet. There'll have to be some revision later for the parts where he's talking to Janis and Elena, I think (from yesterday's words).
I guess now that the month is done, I should give it a break for a week, then go into revision mode. There might be more unofficial write-ins if anyone besides me is interested. Those turn out to be pretty helpful actually for keeping me focused. December will probably turn out to be a bad time to do more of them overall, but maybe in January I'll see who's still hanging around on the Nano forum....
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
2014/11/30
2014/08/11
Second Draft: The Second Drafting ...
So far my second draft process for Fortress Launne seems to be:
1. Assemble all the drafts into one big file.
2. Skim them while compiling them into the one big file, but don't edit anything.
3. Make a duplicate copy of each draft to actually work on.
4. Do detailed rereads of each one. Make an outline of what the story looks like it's supposed to be.
5. Iterate. Rewrite the older stuff, write new stuff to fill all the holes.
I haven't done #4 for Amulet II or Myan yet, but it's certainly been a helpful exercise for the others.
The Flattening of a Temple
This was the one I wrote first (2004), and it has by far the most setting holes. It was also highly melodramatic - I can definitely tell that my writing skills improved as the years went by. The ones from 2007 forward are very readable as-is. Temple on the other hand, I think I'm basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
I'm probably going to keep the original structure idea, sort of. Start the story with the epic battle scene. Then have the king start an investigation into why that happened. Once the background is laid out, go back to the battle and cover all the parts that the king isn't going to find out about. End with Pedro. Of all the parts of the original draft, I really like the last few sentences with Pedro and Sarabelle.
The outline I made has pointed out a number of important holes in the story, too. Notably with Felicia. By the time I figure out how to fix that, I'm hoping it will also help with figuring out Antoine and the rest of the mages.
Other than that... well, I tried to reread my notes from all the tinkering I did between 2004 and 2006 or so. But I'm probably going to ignore most of it. It was a useful exercise for something, I'm sure, and all part of the process.
Amulet II
It basically has occurred to me that Triangle I -->Amulet II --> Temple is a story arc about the Reiter House. The tower gets built in Triangle I and demolished in Temple. So this one will likely make more sense from Antoine's point of view when I figure out what his point of view was in Triangle I - and also what Felicia's goals were in Temple.
Triangle II
The outline for this one turned out to be straightforward, much to my surprise. The first half is going to draw heavily on the Janis draft of 2006, where I basically wrote everything Janis is going to do and why, but didn't have the scenes in the right order, or the right setting elements pinned down yet. Then in the middle will be the court scene from Taint. And then there's a whole other half I haven't written yet, which will be from Jacob's point of view.
In general, the structure reminds me of Amulet I because it's in three parts (sort of). Only, the middle part with the king's court is actually quite short - only about 3 chapters or so. Whereas Aunlania is the longest part of Amulet I (so far, anyway). Also: the Janis part of the story, which will be around 20k words long, just like the Edward part of Amulet I ... can in fact actually be a completely complete story with all loose ends wrapped up and etc ... just like Edward's story would be if Lucien's spell actually worked.
I still find it kind of amusing that I had no idea that there was going to be a single coherent book in this part of the timeline until after I'd finished Nano 2006. Of course, on the other hand. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I'm writing isn't actually 7 novels. It's more like 15-20 novelettes, where each segment is 20k words long....
Amulet I
The broad outline for this one is relatively straightforward ... probably. I sort of plotted out a sensible order of useable scenes from the 2006 and 2007 attempts. And then there's huge new blanks to fill in again for what happens after I run out of outline, that explains why the Duchenes and the Eenin are talking to each other.
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. I'm starting to have doubts about whether the Duchenes are even supposed to be in the Fortress Launne series, since, as noted, the Edward part of the story could be its own completely independent story. Plus the random scene about Charles and a tree and a prophecy and etc. I kind of wish I'd gone with it now, just to see where it went, because the only other time a scene like that randomly appeared (Thomas and Arrun fleeing Edward in Amulet I 2005), it was because I was doing the whole rest of the story wrong.
The Fall of Myan
So far I've reread the first draft and reread my notes from this blog. The rough outline I'd figured on before is probably what it'll end up being - where it starts out by following Suunja, then he eventually runs into Martha, whereupon it then goes over Martha's storyline about Endron Oil, and then moves Suunja and Martha forward together until they run into the zombie storyline. Then it would cut back to the Rouge Rogues. Something like that.
Eventually I run out of both outline and draft, though. I haven't written what happens after the zombies start their attack. I stalled out on what specifically the attack strategy was. At some point I'm still going to have to figure that stuff out.
Birthright
This one also has a three-part structure. It starts with scenes of Janis and Felicia at the Culture Center, and ends with Jalai in Mindy's house (along with others). The whole middle is a mobster story where they fight over possession of the magic box. I don't think I should intersperse anything in between - better to just let the readers immerse in that one for the whole go. I have a fairly detailed outline for the mobsters. The biggest problem is that it needs some kind of satisfying ending, where everything gets resolved to the mobsters' satisfaction. I can't just suddenly take the box away from them and leave them all hanging.
Triangle I
A lot of this one is ready to go as-is. The biggest problem is a complete lack of motivation for Antoine. I need to give him either a really good reason to try to kill Frank, or, he was trying to do something else and poisoned Frank by accident. Either way, there needs to be more to the character than what I have at the moment. And have it somehow also be related to everything else the mages do in the other books.
I guess that's it for where things currently stand.
1. Assemble all the drafts into one big file.
2. Skim them while compiling them into the one big file, but don't edit anything.
3. Make a duplicate copy of each draft to actually work on.
4. Do detailed rereads of each one. Make an outline of what the story looks like it's supposed to be.
5. Iterate. Rewrite the older stuff, write new stuff to fill all the holes.
I haven't done #4 for Amulet II or Myan yet, but it's certainly been a helpful exercise for the others.
The Flattening of a Temple
This was the one I wrote first (2004), and it has by far the most setting holes. It was also highly melodramatic - I can definitely tell that my writing skills improved as the years went by. The ones from 2007 forward are very readable as-is. Temple on the other hand, I think I'm basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
I'm probably going to keep the original structure idea, sort of. Start the story with the epic battle scene. Then have the king start an investigation into why that happened. Once the background is laid out, go back to the battle and cover all the parts that the king isn't going to find out about. End with Pedro. Of all the parts of the original draft, I really like the last few sentences with Pedro and Sarabelle.
The outline I made has pointed out a number of important holes in the story, too. Notably with Felicia. By the time I figure out how to fix that, I'm hoping it will also help with figuring out Antoine and the rest of the mages.
Other than that... well, I tried to reread my notes from all the tinkering I did between 2004 and 2006 or so. But I'm probably going to ignore most of it. It was a useful exercise for something, I'm sure, and all part of the process.
Amulet II
It basically has occurred to me that Triangle I -->Amulet II --> Temple is a story arc about the Reiter House. The tower gets built in Triangle I and demolished in Temple. So this one will likely make more sense from Antoine's point of view when I figure out what his point of view was in Triangle I - and also what Felicia's goals were in Temple.
Triangle II
The outline for this one turned out to be straightforward, much to my surprise. The first half is going to draw heavily on the Janis draft of 2006, where I basically wrote everything Janis is going to do and why, but didn't have the scenes in the right order, or the right setting elements pinned down yet. Then in the middle will be the court scene from Taint. And then there's a whole other half I haven't written yet, which will be from Jacob's point of view.
In general, the structure reminds me of Amulet I because it's in three parts (sort of). Only, the middle part with the king's court is actually quite short - only about 3 chapters or so. Whereas Aunlania is the longest part of Amulet I (so far, anyway). Also: the Janis part of the story, which will be around 20k words long, just like the Edward part of Amulet I ... can in fact actually be a completely complete story with all loose ends wrapped up and etc ... just like Edward's story would be if Lucien's spell actually worked.
I still find it kind of amusing that I had no idea that there was going to be a single coherent book in this part of the timeline until after I'd finished Nano 2006. Of course, on the other hand. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I'm writing isn't actually 7 novels. It's more like 15-20 novelettes, where each segment is 20k words long....
Amulet I
The broad outline for this one is relatively straightforward ... probably. I sort of plotted out a sensible order of useable scenes from the 2006 and 2007 attempts. And then there's huge new blanks to fill in again for what happens after I run out of outline, that explains why the Duchenes and the Eenin are talking to each other.
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. I'm starting to have doubts about whether the Duchenes are even supposed to be in the Fortress Launne series, since, as noted, the Edward part of the story could be its own completely independent story. Plus the random scene about Charles and a tree and a prophecy and etc. I kind of wish I'd gone with it now, just to see where it went, because the only other time a scene like that randomly appeared (Thomas and Arrun fleeing Edward in Amulet I 2005), it was because I was doing the whole rest of the story wrong.
The Fall of Myan
So far I've reread the first draft and reread my notes from this blog. The rough outline I'd figured on before is probably what it'll end up being - where it starts out by following Suunja, then he eventually runs into Martha, whereupon it then goes over Martha's storyline about Endron Oil, and then moves Suunja and Martha forward together until they run into the zombie storyline. Then it would cut back to the Rouge Rogues. Something like that.
Eventually I run out of both outline and draft, though. I haven't written what happens after the zombies start their attack. I stalled out on what specifically the attack strategy was. At some point I'm still going to have to figure that stuff out.
Birthright
This one also has a three-part structure. It starts with scenes of Janis and Felicia at the Culture Center, and ends with Jalai in Mindy's house (along with others). The whole middle is a mobster story where they fight over possession of the magic box. I don't think I should intersperse anything in between - better to just let the readers immerse in that one for the whole go. I have a fairly detailed outline for the mobsters. The biggest problem is that it needs some kind of satisfying ending, where everything gets resolved to the mobsters' satisfaction. I can't just suddenly take the box away from them and leave them all hanging.
Triangle I
A lot of this one is ready to go as-is. The biggest problem is a complete lack of motivation for Antoine. I need to give him either a really good reason to try to kill Frank, or, he was trying to do something else and poisoned Frank by accident. Either way, there needs to be more to the character than what I have at the moment. And have it somehow also be related to everything else the mages do in the other books.
I guess that's it for where things currently stand.
2014/08/03
Post-Camp Progress Report
The biggest thing that Camp Nanowrimo 2014 did for me was force me to actually look at all the first drafts of Fortress Launne, figure out where things stand, and start to work out what needs doing next. I now have everything organized into a single Scrivener file and I've started "Second Draft" sections for all of what I think will be the actual books. This may actually still change around later, depending on what happens.
In general, Nanowrimo 2004-2010 were about figuring out what happens in the first half of every story. While at the same time working out settings, characters and their motives, etc. Once I have the first half figured out, I should (in theory) be able to write the other half.
Surprisingly, some of these first halfs are more organized than I would've thought. I can combine the useful parts of what happened in the two attempts at Janis (20k words in 2006 and 15k words in 2010) to make an actual coherent story with its own beginning, middle, and end. The total length of this will probably only be about 20k words by itself, so it also serves as the first half (or third?) of Triangle II. What happens after the parts I have first draft material on? Well, I have basically a paragraph summary on that - Jacob is going to help Janis build the cultural center. I have nothing else.
Triangle I is about 2/3rds there. I just need to figure out how Antoine fits into everything. He really needs a compelling motive for poisoning Frank. Preferably so compelling that it will also carry over with consequences into Amulet II.
Amulet I sort of has a very rough outline. I'm basically keeping all of the first third, where Edward is in Lagarnica. Then the next part is in Aunlania, and really needs to show off who the Eenin are. Then there needs to be a third part that's back in Lagarnica so that the overall story can have an actual satisfying ending of some sort, and I have nothing on it except the vague inkling that it will probably be from James's point of view.
I suspect that as I keep digging around (and I'm doing this via Distraction Method more than anything else), all of the other stories will be like this too.
SO. New plan for Nanowrimo 2014: "Fortress Launne: The Second Half of Everything."
If I can get my act together on organizing where things stand with every story by November, complete with detailed outlines of what has already been written and what needs to be written, then I can spend November writing new material toward the second half of everything. All of this will also be essentially first draft material, doing what I did with the first halfs, only it'll be adding on. It technically probably breaks their rules, but from my perspective it will count as first draft from scratch.
I also added what I have from Emerald Sword into the same Scrivener file. It isn't part of Fortress Launne, but in the back of my mind it's a story about Lucien Duchene, so it's in the same universe and therefore belongs. No idea yet if I'll actually do anything with it in the near future. The first 6k words were really damn amusing though, and I do want to finish it at some point.
In general, Nanowrimo 2004-2010 were about figuring out what happens in the first half of every story. While at the same time working out settings, characters and their motives, etc. Once I have the first half figured out, I should (in theory) be able to write the other half.
Surprisingly, some of these first halfs are more organized than I would've thought. I can combine the useful parts of what happened in the two attempts at Janis (20k words in 2006 and 15k words in 2010) to make an actual coherent story with its own beginning, middle, and end. The total length of this will probably only be about 20k words by itself, so it also serves as the first half (or third?) of Triangle II. What happens after the parts I have first draft material on? Well, I have basically a paragraph summary on that - Jacob is going to help Janis build the cultural center. I have nothing else.
Triangle I is about 2/3rds there. I just need to figure out how Antoine fits into everything. He really needs a compelling motive for poisoning Frank. Preferably so compelling that it will also carry over with consequences into Amulet II.
Amulet I sort of has a very rough outline. I'm basically keeping all of the first third, where Edward is in Lagarnica. Then the next part is in Aunlania, and really needs to show off who the Eenin are. Then there needs to be a third part that's back in Lagarnica so that the overall story can have an actual satisfying ending of some sort, and I have nothing on it except the vague inkling that it will probably be from James's point of view.
I suspect that as I keep digging around (and I'm doing this via Distraction Method more than anything else), all of the other stories will be like this too.
If I can get my act together on organizing where things stand with every story by November, complete with detailed outlines of what has already been written and what needs to be written, then I can spend November writing new material toward the second half of everything. All of this will also be essentially first draft material, doing what I did with the first halfs, only it'll be adding on. It technically probably breaks their rules, but from my perspective it will count as first draft from scratch.
I also added what I have from Emerald Sword into the same Scrivener file. It isn't part of Fortress Launne, but in the back of my mind it's a story about Lucien Duchene, so it's in the same universe and therefore belongs. No idea yet if I'll actually do anything with it in the near future. The first 6k words were really damn amusing though, and I do want to finish it at some point.
2014/07/19
Second Draft Progress
Well, I've finished Step 1: copy/paste the first drafts of everything into a single Scrivener file.
After thinking it over, I've decided that Step 2 is: copy/paste everything again, within the same Scrivener file, and then delete all the parts that I'm definitely not going to use anywhere.
This is much harder than it sounds. Since I'm being chronological, I'm starting with Amulet I, and large chunks of the 2005 drafts are fairly cringeworthy.
So, what am I doing instead? Blathering about it in a blog post, hoping that I'll be able to pep talk myself into actually doing that.
After thinking it over, I've decided that Step 2 is: copy/paste everything again, within the same Scrivener file, and then delete all the parts that I'm definitely not going to use anywhere.
This is much harder than it sounds. Since I'm being chronological, I'm starting with Amulet I, and large chunks of the 2005 drafts are fairly cringeworthy.
So, what am I doing instead? Blathering about it in a blog post, hoping that I'll be able to pep talk myself into actually doing that.
2009/10/31
Nanowrimo 2009
Once more unto the breach...
I've prepared notes to finally get around to writing Birthright this year. I've detailed out the treasure box that everybody wants. I've detailed out all the opposing mobster factions that want it and why. I've even come up with most of what I need to get a good start on the Felicia/Janis secondary plotline.
What I don't have at all, so far, is anything whatsoever about the originally-intended protagonist. o.O
She's supposed to be a 12 year old girl, living in poverty with a single parent and a half-brother who is getting sucked into a life of crime. But everything about the plot so far is stuff that happens to her because of the box; she has no motives of her own. I don't have a good feel for what she's like, or what her purpose is in the story, other than as a plot device. This does not bode well for the original story I had in mind, I think...
On the other hand, I'm not sure what story I originally had in mind, either (if there ever was one).
On the good news front: it is possible to get back into Hobgoblin.net - by signing up anew. Whatever is keeping out the established membership, it doesn't block new members, so I signed up with a different name to be able to reach the members-only portions of my past blog posts. Those have now been copy/pasted over, leaving just one completely-private post that I still can't reach. No Birthright notes were in them, however.
On the bad news front: no luck on the job. The interview went well enough, but they went with someone else. So I'm back to idling while I continue sending out apps and collecting rejections. At least this means more writing time. Some of it will be spent building up my list of science articles at BrightHub - the pay isn't great, and the pageviews seem to be lower than eHow, but it'll be good to have a variety of writing samples that I can show off for better-paying gigs later. Also, they're pretty fun to write due to actually being about stuff I'm interested in, which is definitely a plus.
On a somewhat neutral front: this year I'm test-driving Scrivener as my writing software. It has rave reviews, it's in active development, and there's a Nanowrimo-specific trial going on, so I'm hoping it'll be useful. On the other hand, I really liked Jer's Novel Writer, which I'd been using since 2005. Jer is busy with other things in life at the moment though, and not paying much attention to JNW. I suspect what will likely happen is I use Scrivener to organize my notes, and Jer's to do all of the actual writing. But we'll see, depending on how much I like Scrivener's full-screen mode.
Anyway. Last day before the writing starts. I'm going to sleep some, relax some, maybe get a pizza, and probably start at midnight. Should be fun. :)
I've prepared notes to finally get around to writing Birthright this year. I've detailed out the treasure box that everybody wants. I've detailed out all the opposing mobster factions that want it and why. I've even come up with most of what I need to get a good start on the Felicia/Janis secondary plotline.
What I don't have at all, so far, is anything whatsoever about the originally-intended protagonist. o.O
She's supposed to be a 12 year old girl, living in poverty with a single parent and a half-brother who is getting sucked into a life of crime. But everything about the plot so far is stuff that happens to her because of the box; she has no motives of her own. I don't have a good feel for what she's like, or what her purpose is in the story, other than as a plot device. This does not bode well for the original story I had in mind, I think...
On the other hand, I'm not sure what story I originally had in mind, either (if there ever was one).
On the good news front: it is possible to get back into Hobgoblin.net - by signing up anew. Whatever is keeping out the established membership, it doesn't block new members, so I signed up with a different name to be able to reach the members-only portions of my past blog posts. Those have now been copy/pasted over, leaving just one completely-private post that I still can't reach. No Birthright notes were in them, however.
On the bad news front: no luck on the job. The interview went well enough, but they went with someone else. So I'm back to idling while I continue sending out apps and collecting rejections. At least this means more writing time. Some of it will be spent building up my list of science articles at BrightHub - the pay isn't great, and the pageviews seem to be lower than eHow, but it'll be good to have a variety of writing samples that I can show off for better-paying gigs later. Also, they're pretty fun to write due to actually being about stuff I'm interested in, which is definitely a plus.
On a somewhat neutral front: this year I'm test-driving Scrivener as my writing software. It has rave reviews, it's in active development, and there's a Nanowrimo-specific trial going on, so I'm hoping it'll be useful. On the other hand, I really liked Jer's Novel Writer, which I'd been using since 2005. Jer is busy with other things in life at the moment though, and not paying much attention to JNW. I suspect what will likely happen is I use Scrivener to organize my notes, and Jer's to do all of the actual writing. But we'll see, depending on how much I like Scrivener's full-screen mode.
Anyway. Last day before the writing starts. I'm going to sleep some, relax some, maybe get a pizza, and probably start at midnight. Should be fun. :)
2008/11/21
45,048 words in 20 days
And now for some more brainstorm notes...
To tie the Endron plotline in with the rest, the bad guy of the Myan Invasion plotline needs to be the same one. Furthermore, an additional side effect of the new experimental gas is that it invigorates zombies. That would give the bad guy an actual reason to want to build a factory to make the gas. (Endron Oil itself is either unaware of this particular side effect, or they don't consider it particularly important.)
I've decided his name is Mort Lewis. He only just got mentioned by name tonight. I have no development on him whatsoever. Basically, his role is to plot the overthrow of the Myan court on ideological grounds. He thinks that the people should be ruling themselves, not constantly submitting to immortal kings. So he has a deal with the demon, which is that the demon will raise the zombies for him to use as a decoy during the attack, and then after he's done flattening Myan, the demon gets to march the zombies on Fortress Launne. The demon, meanwhile, sees the attack on Myan as the decoy activity, when the real objective is to destroy the spells that bind him underground in Fortress Launne.
The Rouge Rogues are in charge of the zombie-raising aspect of the attack, and he has other bands that have been preparing the other parts. Whatever those other parts may be - I haven't decided. In fact, I have no idea how one goes about taking over a city. It would probably help if I had any kind of political structure in mind for Myan, but thus far the only structure I have is one king and one prince (that acts like an XO). There ought to be more people in this government... well, I suppose there are a large number of coexisting mob organizations in Myan, which is the actual governmental bodies in practice, but there should probably be some figureheads, shouldn't there?
Meanwhile, the king of Myan also has no idea that an attack is coming. That's the simplest way to explain why he has no preparations whatsoever against it (because, as a corollary to not having any idea how one goes about attacking a cityy, I also have no idea how one would go about defending one).
I suspect that this particular story would've been a great one for snowflaking. Oh well...
Meanwhile, I've gotten much slower on the writing. I never know what I'm going to write next. At the moment I'm trying to wrap up the serial killer plotline - they've captured Zeke, and now they're in the process of getting the spell on him broken. After that their attention will turn to the other three plotlines. Because the zombies are going to get released next, I think.
To tie the Endron plotline in with the rest, the bad guy of the Myan Invasion plotline needs to be the same one. Furthermore, an additional side effect of the new experimental gas is that it invigorates zombies. That would give the bad guy an actual reason to want to build a factory to make the gas. (Endron Oil itself is either unaware of this particular side effect, or they don't consider it particularly important.)
I've decided his name is Mort Lewis. He only just got mentioned by name tonight. I have no development on him whatsoever. Basically, his role is to plot the overthrow of the Myan court on ideological grounds. He thinks that the people should be ruling themselves, not constantly submitting to immortal kings. So he has a deal with the demon, which is that the demon will raise the zombies for him to use as a decoy during the attack, and then after he's done flattening Myan, the demon gets to march the zombies on Fortress Launne. The demon, meanwhile, sees the attack on Myan as the decoy activity, when the real objective is to destroy the spells that bind him underground in Fortress Launne.
The Rouge Rogues are in charge of the zombie-raising aspect of the attack, and he has other bands that have been preparing the other parts. Whatever those other parts may be - I haven't decided. In fact, I have no idea how one goes about taking over a city. It would probably help if I had any kind of political structure in mind for Myan, but thus far the only structure I have is one king and one prince (that acts like an XO). There ought to be more people in this government... well, I suppose there are a large number of coexisting mob organizations in Myan, which is the actual governmental bodies in practice, but there should probably be some figureheads, shouldn't there?
Meanwhile, the king of Myan also has no idea that an attack is coming. That's the simplest way to explain why he has no preparations whatsoever against it (because, as a corollary to not having any idea how one goes about attacking a cityy, I also have no idea how one would go about defending one).
I suspect that this particular story would've been a great one for snowflaking. Oh well...
Meanwhile, I've gotten much slower on the writing. I never know what I'm going to write next. At the moment I'm trying to wrap up the serial killer plotline - they've captured Zeke, and now they're in the process of getting the spell on him broken. After that their attention will turn to the other three plotlines. Because the zombies are going to get released next, I think.
2008/11/11
Days 9, 10: 22,465 words
This year is turning out to be the fastest I've ever written anything. It takes very little effort to get going once I start - on the other hand, it doesn't take much to stop, either. I can start and stop and be interrupted and pick up where I left off with ease, which is a lot different from needing big stretches of unbroken time, during which I have no distractions.
I guess to summarize what I'm learning about myself, writingwise: plot and setting needs to be thoroughly detailed before I start. Characters need to be severely underdeveloped before I start. If I have that, writing it takes about as much effort as falling off a log.
Of course, it also feels sort of boring, because there aren't really any surprises. The characters pretty much do what I want them to, and don't deviate much. Still, it's good to know that I can write a passable story this way, if I really wanted.
And the story does appear to be passable. I'm starting to get ideas about its overall structure - which parts of the plot to tell in what order. There seem to be four main subplots:
1. Zombies.
2. A serial killer.
3. Endron oil.
4. A governmental overthrow in Myan.
The first two are pretty well-developed at this point. So far I've only hinted at the fourth. 1, 2, and 4 are all being caused by the demon buried under Fortress Launne, while 3 is a coincidence that works in the demon's favor, and therefore he's trying to exploit it.
So far I'm still writing out the setup. I have no idea what will happen when I actually set the fully explained plot in motion - that is, when I unleash the zombies. Currently they're all sitting in a warehouse awaiting the signal to start their rampage. I guess it depends on how informed and prepared everyone else is when that happens - which I haven't decided yet.
As for what order to put them in, my thoughts at the moment are:
1. I need to write a precursor scene that shows Zeke defeating the Rouge Rogues, and possibly also killing his secretary. That's what sort of sparked it all off.
2. Fast forward to the middle of the tale, where it follows the discovery of the serial killer through the eyes of Suunja Henderson. Keep going on his plotline until he runs into Martha.
3. Stop Suunja's plotline and start at the beginning of Martha's, about Endron Oil. Go until she runs into Suunja.
4. Continue the story from the point of Suunja and Martha meeting each other, until they run into a third subplot (I haven't written far enough yet to know which one it'll be. Tentative speculation suggests the zombie one).
5. Do the zombies subplot and the overthrow of Myan subplot in the same way - Sarabelle of the former has run into Jacob and Kim of the latter now.
6. Once all four of those subplots have run into each other, start over at the beginning of the Rouge Rogue's side of things. Which explains where the zombies, the serial killer, and the governmental overthrow are all coming from.
7. Then move forward from there. The zombies get released, mayhem ensues, etc.
I didn't write as much today as I hoped - got distracted by a quest for sushi that took longer than it should've. Yesterday I got in over 4k words, which is the highest day for this marathon so far. Even so, I'm still about 10k words behind where I want to be. Tomorrow isn't looking too good either, because I have work and some other non-novelling things to do. Wednesday I have a couple appointments as well, though they'll be done with by mid-afternoon. Hopefully I'll manage to catch back up on Wednesday evening and Thursday.
I guess to summarize what I'm learning about myself, writingwise: plot and setting needs to be thoroughly detailed before I start. Characters need to be severely underdeveloped before I start. If I have that, writing it takes about as much effort as falling off a log.
Of course, it also feels sort of boring, because there aren't really any surprises. The characters pretty much do what I want them to, and don't deviate much. Still, it's good to know that I can write a passable story this way, if I really wanted.
And the story does appear to be passable. I'm starting to get ideas about its overall structure - which parts of the plot to tell in what order. There seem to be four main subplots:
1. Zombies.
2. A serial killer.
3. Endron oil.
4. A governmental overthrow in Myan.
The first two are pretty well-developed at this point. So far I've only hinted at the fourth. 1, 2, and 4 are all being caused by the demon buried under Fortress Launne, while 3 is a coincidence that works in the demon's favor, and therefore he's trying to exploit it.
So far I'm still writing out the setup. I have no idea what will happen when I actually set the fully explained plot in motion - that is, when I unleash the zombies. Currently they're all sitting in a warehouse awaiting the signal to start their rampage. I guess it depends on how informed and prepared everyone else is when that happens - which I haven't decided yet.
As for what order to put them in, my thoughts at the moment are:
1. I need to write a precursor scene that shows Zeke defeating the Rouge Rogues, and possibly also killing his secretary. That's what sort of sparked it all off.
2. Fast forward to the middle of the tale, where it follows the discovery of the serial killer through the eyes of Suunja Henderson. Keep going on his plotline until he runs into Martha.
3. Stop Suunja's plotline and start at the beginning of Martha's, about Endron Oil. Go until she runs into Suunja.
4. Continue the story from the point of Suunja and Martha meeting each other, until they run into a third subplot (I haven't written far enough yet to know which one it'll be. Tentative speculation suggests the zombie one).
5. Do the zombies subplot and the overthrow of Myan subplot in the same way - Sarabelle of the former has run into Jacob and Kim of the latter now.
6. Once all four of those subplots have run into each other, start over at the beginning of the Rouge Rogue's side of things. Which explains where the zombies, the serial killer, and the governmental overthrow are all coming from.
7. Then move forward from there. The zombies get released, mayhem ensues, etc.
I didn't write as much today as I hoped - got distracted by a quest for sushi that took longer than it should've. Yesterday I got in over 4k words, which is the highest day for this marathon so far. Even so, I'm still about 10k words behind where I want to be. Tomorrow isn't looking too good either, because I have work and some other non-novelling things to do. Wednesday I have a couple appointments as well, though they'll be done with by mid-afternoon. Hopefully I'll manage to catch back up on Wednesday evening and Thursday.
2008/11/04
Day 3: 9926 words
Well, I'm basically back on track for doing double-words (goal was 9999). This is a relief, and I'm amazed I made it considering I stopped in the middle of the day to attend a yoga class. (Just trying to counter the effects on my back of sitting in front of a computer all day every day for 16 hours a day...)
I've figured out how to write fast too. I think. Basically what I need is to work out setting and plotlines in advance, but do no character development whatsoever. It's working out a lot better to have characters that start out with barely more than name, general abilities, role in plot, and maybe a personality quirk or two. I don't have to psyche myself up to write for them, and I don't secondguess whether a given phrasing is the way they'd say it or not. I just write down what they're trying to say without worrying about how they'd say it, and move on.
So where last we left off with our anti-heroes, they'd just launched their practice weapon of mass murder. Norm Owani shot up a bunch of mob fronthouses before eventually getting captured by one of the bosses and locked into a dungeon somewhere. Because of the spells on him, he's basically unkillable - and now I'm thinking he might make a reappearance later on, near the end of the story. (Of course, as I type this, I've forgotten what I was thinking to do with him there ... but no matter. If it doesn't come to me by the time I get there, I'll think of something else.)
Meanwhile, our anti-heroes went on to capture their real target, whose name is Zeke. There were many words spent on getting him into the binding ritual - but now he's successfully launched too.
So I'm fast forwarding to a timepoint several years later. (Hrm. I might shorten it to months instead of years, depending on how that might work.) The "good guys" have discovered, for the very first time, the remnants of the zombiemaking ritual that Zeke is using on his victims. Now that they have that info, they can figure out everything they ever wanted to know about the serial killer - and work up to figuring out who his next likely target is. They haven't figured out the link to the zombies yet, and I'm not sure how they'll stumble on that, but that's for later. For the time being I finally have a protagonist! His name is Suunja Henderson, and he's the son of Janis and Mark. I worked out that by that point in the timeline, Janis's kids were going to be grownups, and since I had no existing characters that fit the role of a police investigator, voila. ;)
The next likely target is named Martha. (Yes, the one I was confused about back on Day 1.) She's posing as an executive secretary to a VP of an oil corporation, gathering intel about a new product they're about to release that will ... well, destroy the world, eventually. ;) Her group wants that to not happen. At some point after I've written out the serial killer info with Suunja, I'll be switching to her viewpoint from inside the corporation and with the group she's working with. How does this tie in with the rest of the plot? Well, see. The demon that's ultimately behind the serial killer wants the new gas to be released into the world, which means that Martha needs to be eliminated.
At the moment, I'm not really finding the concept of corporate board meetings that interesting to write about. Hopefully I'll warm up to it though. They are going to be talking about exciting things. I just need to get past the part where I invent all the people in the meetings (by names and roles - e.g. Head of Finance, Head of Research etc.). I've never been a business drone, so without any clue how these things actually work, I'm a bit lost. There are some friends I'll have to pin down and ask about that...
I guess that's where things stand at the end of Day 3. Tomorrow I have to put in a cameo at work, plus the election results are going to be coming in, so I'm not expecting to get much writing done. We'll see though. I don't really want to be 3333 words behind on Wednesday...
I've figured out how to write fast too. I think. Basically what I need is to work out setting and plotlines in advance, but do no character development whatsoever. It's working out a lot better to have characters that start out with barely more than name, general abilities, role in plot, and maybe a personality quirk or two. I don't have to psyche myself up to write for them, and I don't secondguess whether a given phrasing is the way they'd say it or not. I just write down what they're trying to say without worrying about how they'd say it, and move on.
So where last we left off with our anti-heroes, they'd just launched their practice weapon of mass murder. Norm Owani shot up a bunch of mob fronthouses before eventually getting captured by one of the bosses and locked into a dungeon somewhere. Because of the spells on him, he's basically unkillable - and now I'm thinking he might make a reappearance later on, near the end of the story. (Of course, as I type this, I've forgotten what I was thinking to do with him there ... but no matter. If it doesn't come to me by the time I get there, I'll think of something else.)
Meanwhile, our anti-heroes went on to capture their real target, whose name is Zeke. There were many words spent on getting him into the binding ritual - but now he's successfully launched too.
So I'm fast forwarding to a timepoint several years later. (Hrm. I might shorten it to months instead of years, depending on how that might work.) The "good guys" have discovered, for the very first time, the remnants of the zombiemaking ritual that Zeke is using on his victims. Now that they have that info, they can figure out everything they ever wanted to know about the serial killer - and work up to figuring out who his next likely target is. They haven't figured out the link to the zombies yet, and I'm not sure how they'll stumble on that, but that's for later. For the time being I finally have a protagonist! His name is Suunja Henderson, and he's the son of Janis and Mark. I worked out that by that point in the timeline, Janis's kids were going to be grownups, and since I had no existing characters that fit the role of a police investigator, voila. ;)
The next likely target is named Martha. (Yes, the one I was confused about back on Day 1.) She's posing as an executive secretary to a VP of an oil corporation, gathering intel about a new product they're about to release that will ... well, destroy the world, eventually. ;) Her group wants that to not happen. At some point after I've written out the serial killer info with Suunja, I'll be switching to her viewpoint from inside the corporation and with the group she's working with. How does this tie in with the rest of the plot? Well, see. The demon that's ultimately behind the serial killer wants the new gas to be released into the world, which means that Martha needs to be eliminated.
At the moment, I'm not really finding the concept of corporate board meetings that interesting to write about. Hopefully I'll warm up to it though. They are going to be talking about exciting things. I just need to get past the part where I invent all the people in the meetings (by names and roles - e.g. Head of Finance, Head of Research etc.). I've never been a business drone, so without any clue how these things actually work, I'm a bit lost. There are some friends I'll have to pin down and ask about that...
I guess that's where things stand at the end of Day 3. Tomorrow I have to put in a cameo at work, plus the election results are going to be coming in, so I'm not expecting to get much writing done. We'll see though. I don't really want to be 3333 words behind on Wednesday...
2008/08/12
Shifting my writing schedule and priorities ...
I finished Chapter 3 of Vengeance last night. It's not as pretty as the first two chapters, but it's done. Everything that needed to happen in it happened, and a motive for why Hernando wants Craig alive just dropped out of the sky while I was writing it. In short, Jessica's task can no longer be completed by any vampire, and here comes a non-vampire who could possibly do it. Just because he's a mortal enemy is only a minor problem. ;)
So in Chapter 4, Craig will be visiting the bookstore, and I'll be introducing Aaron to the non-game audience for the first time. Should be fun. While Craig was talking to Hernando, Aaron's love interest Alice was getting kidnapped by Hernando's rival, so Aaron isn't having a very good day...
That's what's happening with the front half of Vengeance. The back half, meanwhile, is now the opposite side of Tragedy of the Hand - which, right on schedule, I've still not gotten Round Tuit and it'll be what I tackle for Labor Day Novel 2008 coming up in a few weeks.
In general, I realized last night that at the rate I keep pushing fiction to the bottom of the priority list, I was never going to get anything done. Meanwhile the not-having-written pressure mounts while I'm at work or trying to sleep. So I need to prioritize better. I have four workdays and three free days per week. I have four categories of writing things to fit into those three free days - fiction writing, roleplay writing (RPoL), free nonfiction (my blog), and mercenary nonfiction (eHow and whatever I expand to for writing for pay).
Mercenary writing has to be at the top, just because I will be needing that money in a few more months when it (hopefully) starts paying off, assuming I invest enough time-capital into it at the beginning (i.e. now). Ideally I'd like to be making at least as much with it as I was getting from the takeout on weekends - around $200 per month. It wasn't a lot, but it took the edge off on rising gas prices and such. At the moment I no longer have that padding there, and while I'm not in trouble, it's still alarming to see how close I come to running down my checking account to the no-fees minimum.
RPoL writing I really can't seem to get away from. I'm in five slow but stable games, and I run mine slowly as well. None of them are at all likely to end anytime soon. I have no plans to join any more of them, like, ever. As a general rule, I pretty much have to devote one full day out of those three free days to RPoL to keep up.
Blog writing, on the other hand, I can draw back a bit. Daily posts took a lot out of me, and I'm down to 1-2 times per week nowadays, but the community I'm in doesn't at all mind. There's about 20 of us who read and comment each other's blogs, and I can just comment on theirs without posting much on mine.
So that leaves fiction. As with roleplay writing, to really do a good job it's better to give it big chunks of uninterrupted time. Last night I squeezed it in after I got home from work and before bed, but that meant going to bed at dawn, so I don't know if that's such a good idea every time. Certainly not if I have something scheduled in the morning/early afternoon.
So... merc writing gets one day, RPoL gets one day, and fiction gets one day. Blog now goes to the bottom, basically to squeeze in whenever I'm taking a break from the other three (instead of having fiction in that capacity and therefore never doing any).
One thing I've noticed is that the nonfiction writing can be done basically anywhere, and I can be interrupted without too much impact. Fiction can really only be done from home; with roleplay, I often have to look up stuff in my books, and with the writing I need to avoid distractions. So, I just need to do more nonfiction writing while I'm waiting around on errands (in lines and waiting rooms, etc.) to make better use of that offline time, and therefore give me more time for the fiction.
So in Chapter 4, Craig will be visiting the bookstore, and I'll be introducing Aaron to the non-game audience for the first time. Should be fun. While Craig was talking to Hernando, Aaron's love interest Alice was getting kidnapped by Hernando's rival, so Aaron isn't having a very good day...
That's what's happening with the front half of Vengeance. The back half, meanwhile, is now the opposite side of Tragedy of the Hand - which, right on schedule, I've still not gotten Round Tuit and it'll be what I tackle for Labor Day Novel 2008 coming up in a few weeks.
In general, I realized last night that at the rate I keep pushing fiction to the bottom of the priority list, I was never going to get anything done. Meanwhile the not-having-written pressure mounts while I'm at work or trying to sleep. So I need to prioritize better. I have four workdays and three free days per week. I have four categories of writing things to fit into those three free days - fiction writing, roleplay writing (RPoL), free nonfiction (my blog), and mercenary nonfiction (eHow and whatever I expand to for writing for pay).
Mercenary writing has to be at the top, just because I will be needing that money in a few more months when it (hopefully) starts paying off, assuming I invest enough time-capital into it at the beginning (i.e. now). Ideally I'd like to be making at least as much with it as I was getting from the takeout on weekends - around $200 per month. It wasn't a lot, but it took the edge off on rising gas prices and such. At the moment I no longer have that padding there, and while I'm not in trouble, it's still alarming to see how close I come to running down my checking account to the no-fees minimum.
RPoL writing I really can't seem to get away from. I'm in five slow but stable games, and I run mine slowly as well. None of them are at all likely to end anytime soon. I have no plans to join any more of them, like, ever. As a general rule, I pretty much have to devote one full day out of those three free days to RPoL to keep up.
Blog writing, on the other hand, I can draw back a bit. Daily posts took a lot out of me, and I'm down to 1-2 times per week nowadays, but the community I'm in doesn't at all mind. There's about 20 of us who read and comment each other's blogs, and I can just comment on theirs without posting much on mine.
So that leaves fiction. As with roleplay writing, to really do a good job it's better to give it big chunks of uninterrupted time. Last night I squeezed it in after I got home from work and before bed, but that meant going to bed at dawn, so I don't know if that's such a good idea every time. Certainly not if I have something scheduled in the morning/early afternoon.
So... merc writing gets one day, RPoL gets one day, and fiction gets one day. Blog now goes to the bottom, basically to squeeze in whenever I'm taking a break from the other three (instead of having fiction in that capacity and therefore never doing any).
One thing I've noticed is that the nonfiction writing can be done basically anywhere, and I can be interrupted without too much impact. Fiction can really only be done from home; with roleplay, I often have to look up stuff in my books, and with the writing I need to avoid distractions. So, I just need to do more nonfiction writing while I'm waiting around on errands (in lines and waiting rooms, etc.) to make better use of that offline time, and therefore give me more time for the fiction.
2008/07/01
just to break the bloggy silence...
I've noticed an interesting trend these past few weeks. I only ever want to write right after I've gone to bed, or when I'm hard at work at work. During those times I angst a lot about how I never do any writing. But when time rolls around when I can write, I never write. It's starting to get annoying. -.-
2008/01/14
Thoughts about Vengeance
Last night I cranked out another scene to the story that I'm now going to call Vengeance as its working title. The "present day" part of it that follows Craig is now about 2000 words or so.
I also wrote nearly 3k words over Christmas break, on a "flashback to 200 years ago" segment that follows Rumen.
The two parts are coming out very differently, in terms of how I write them. The Rumen part just flowed along with very little editting. It stalled out when they finally reached the town, and I've not yet figured out what exactly will happen next. So now they're standing outside a tavern while I ruminate. In general, this part of it has been a lot like writing a Nano, except very low-key and unstressy. The story wants to write itself. I just have to sit down and get away from life distractions enough to do it.
The Craig part, on the other hand, consists of a lot of editting. I'm very slowly cranking out perfect prose. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds; generally I'm doing the same thing I've always done - write a draft to figure out what happens, fiddle with it to death, then chuck it and start over. Before last night, I'd been fiddling around with scattered fragments that were going to be somewhere in the scene but I didn't know where. Last night I got around to tossing it all out and writing the "real" version (the one that's presentable to the general public).
In a lot of ways, this is exactly how the roleplaying game went. We advanced at a glacial pace, largely because we had to wait for each other to post. There was a lot of in-between waiting time. This turns out to be helpful for the Craig part now - because even though I sometimes go a long time without actually writing anything, the story is still right there where I left off, waiting for me to come back and work on it some more. As long as I have a clear outline (which I do, two blog posts back) and know what I'm doing, it doesn't stall out too terribly. It doesn't disappear into the murk of my subconscious, never to be seen again, like a lot of my other stories have done.
It probably also helps that one of my most strong-willed characters is involved. Rumen can be very demanding and exacting for what I do with him and how I write him. During the game, he would often drown out anything my other character Aaron might want to say, sometimes making it very hard to post for Aaron. So now that Rumen is awake in the back of my mind, he's quite insistent that I proceed with this project. Ahh... muses. :)
And the finished segments end up very readable. Back when I was doing it for the game, they had to be - because people would be reading whatever I wrote within minutes of posting. All in all, the game has trained me very well.
I have one alpha reader for this. Fortunately he's very appreciative and encouraging - which is exactly the kind of support I need while it's still an alpha.
In general I don't actually know where I'm planning to go with all this. I'm writing it because it wants to be written, and there's only so long I can hide from it by doing other things (bill paying, household chores, playing endless rounds of jigsawdoku, stressing about work or moderating a chat channel, blogging, etc.). Every time I sit down and look at it, it's calling to me. I don't even know how long this is planning to be yet, or what its future is after I'm done. It's all kind of irrelevant in the moment, and who am I to question why. :)
I also wrote nearly 3k words over Christmas break, on a "flashback to 200 years ago" segment that follows Rumen.
The two parts are coming out very differently, in terms of how I write them. The Rumen part just flowed along with very little editting. It stalled out when they finally reached the town, and I've not yet figured out what exactly will happen next. So now they're standing outside a tavern while I ruminate. In general, this part of it has been a lot like writing a Nano, except very low-key and unstressy. The story wants to write itself. I just have to sit down and get away from life distractions enough to do it.
The Craig part, on the other hand, consists of a lot of editting. I'm very slowly cranking out perfect prose. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds; generally I'm doing the same thing I've always done - write a draft to figure out what happens, fiddle with it to death, then chuck it and start over. Before last night, I'd been fiddling around with scattered fragments that were going to be somewhere in the scene but I didn't know where. Last night I got around to tossing it all out and writing the "real" version (the one that's presentable to the general public).
In a lot of ways, this is exactly how the roleplaying game went. We advanced at a glacial pace, largely because we had to wait for each other to post. There was a lot of in-between waiting time. This turns out to be helpful for the Craig part now - because even though I sometimes go a long time without actually writing anything, the story is still right there where I left off, waiting for me to come back and work on it some more. As long as I have a clear outline (which I do, two blog posts back) and know what I'm doing, it doesn't stall out too terribly. It doesn't disappear into the murk of my subconscious, never to be seen again, like a lot of my other stories have done.
It probably also helps that one of my most strong-willed characters is involved. Rumen can be very demanding and exacting for what I do with him and how I write him. During the game, he would often drown out anything my other character Aaron might want to say, sometimes making it very hard to post for Aaron. So now that Rumen is awake in the back of my mind, he's quite insistent that I proceed with this project. Ahh... muses. :)
And the finished segments end up very readable. Back when I was doing it for the game, they had to be - because people would be reading whatever I wrote within minutes of posting. All in all, the game has trained me very well.
I have one alpha reader for this. Fortunately he's very appreciative and encouraging - which is exactly the kind of support I need while it's still an alpha.
In general I don't actually know where I'm planning to go with all this. I'm writing it because it wants to be written, and there's only so long I can hide from it by doing other things (bill paying, household chores, playing endless rounds of jigsawdoku, stressing about work or moderating a chat channel, blogging, etc.). Every time I sit down and look at it, it's calling to me. I don't even know how long this is planning to be yet, or what its future is after I'm done. It's all kind of irrelevant in the moment, and who am I to question why. :)
2007/12/03
Continuing on toward the end of the story
Well, it's not Nanowrimo anymore, but I'm still working on the story. I'm basically just one big scene from the end, though it may turn into several more scenes of aftermath. They're now at the point of the big climactic ritual that I've been building toward since they set foot in Aunlania.
And I'm now at 53,312 words. Tonight I finished the scene I'd started last Thursday; basically I got distracted by a bout of temporary insanity completely unrelated to writing fiction, but I think I'm getting past that now. So the rest of that scene netted me 1200 words. Then I went back and changed the ending of another scene, adding another 300 or so, making it around 1500 new words for the evening.
Overall, even though my wordcount hasn't been as high as the past couple years, it was a good Nanowrimo. I have a story that is almost all "right" - and the stuff that needs fixing is relatively minor. This is much different from my previous two attempts. The very first version only barely got past 20k words, and that was already stretching things. It just felt wrong the entire time I was doing it. The second version got to nearly 54k words, and more of it felt right than wrong, which is how I got that far - but eventually the total weight of major things wrong dragged it to a stop.
Which means that I basically followed the same process as I do for writing supershort stories in the form of roleplay posts. I write a first draft, then rearrange it into a second draft, then tweak the second draft to death. Then I dump the whole thing and write a third draft from a completely different starting point than the first two, using material from the second draft as content fodder. This can take anywhere from four hours to a week.
Apparently when it's a novel, it's the same process, but it takes three years. I'm discarding a total of 74,296 past words, though I'll probably go back and cannibalize chunks of the second draft later on when I flesh out some of the character bits that aren't directly relevant to the main plotline. There were some really nice scenes that I'm hoping to use somehow.
This year the story is still dragging me along. I didn't think I was going to get back to it, but then I sat down and my brain demanded that I start writing. So I did, and I'm glad I did. :)
And I'm now at 53,312 words. Tonight I finished the scene I'd started last Thursday; basically I got distracted by a bout of temporary insanity completely unrelated to writing fiction, but I think I'm getting past that now. So the rest of that scene netted me 1200 words. Then I went back and changed the ending of another scene, adding another 300 or so, making it around 1500 new words for the evening.
Overall, even though my wordcount hasn't been as high as the past couple years, it was a good Nanowrimo. I have a story that is almost all "right" - and the stuff that needs fixing is relatively minor. This is much different from my previous two attempts. The very first version only barely got past 20k words, and that was already stretching things. It just felt wrong the entire time I was doing it. The second version got to nearly 54k words, and more of it felt right than wrong, which is how I got that far - but eventually the total weight of major things wrong dragged it to a stop.
Which means that I basically followed the same process as I do for writing supershort stories in the form of roleplay posts. I write a first draft, then rearrange it into a second draft, then tweak the second draft to death. Then I dump the whole thing and write a third draft from a completely different starting point than the first two, using material from the second draft as content fodder. This can take anywhere from four hours to a week.
Apparently when it's a novel, it's the same process, but it takes three years. I'm discarding a total of 74,296 past words, though I'll probably go back and cannibalize chunks of the second draft later on when I flesh out some of the character bits that aren't directly relevant to the main plotline. There were some really nice scenes that I'm hoping to use somehow.
This year the story is still dragging me along. I didn't think I was going to get back to it, but then I sat down and my brain demanded that I start writing. So I did, and I'm glad I did. :)
2007/11/23
Back to the circles!
Well, I've managed to pass 40k, and I've noticed that not only don't I have a Bad Guy in this part of the story, I pretty much suck at making bad guys in general. Anytime I think I've made a plausible bad guy, he turns into a good guy. Edward was originally supposed to be the bad guy in this thing after all. I think I must be doomed to write stories where everyone always gets along. Either that or I need to make them more 2D from now on.
Maybe not all stories need bad guys though. Some of my favorite ones didn't really have one - just lots of people all working toward a common goal, and overcoming obstacles along the way. Of course, the two examples off the top of my head (IDIC Epidemic, Hellspark) are also both examples of bad writing, so that probably tells me something too.
There also keeps popping up weird bits of scenes that point toward a completely different story than what I think I'm writing. Something about a prophecy, with a tree that is really a door to the lands of the fae. I think some of the Emerald Sword themes are trying to bleed over or something.
Anyhow. At the moment, they're all in one of the native folk villages, called Glavni. The natives didn't know quite what to make of Edward and didn't take very good care of him, so now Charles and James are trying to put him back together again.
I guess the next thing to do is introduce the kid that Charles is supposedly going to take under his wing. We'll see if that actually happens...
Maybe not all stories need bad guys though. Some of my favorite ones didn't really have one - just lots of people all working toward a common goal, and overcoming obstacles along the way. Of course, the two examples off the top of my head (IDIC Epidemic, Hellspark) are also both examples of bad writing, so that probably tells me something too.
There also keeps popping up weird bits of scenes that point toward a completely different story than what I think I'm writing. Something about a prophecy, with a tree that is really a door to the lands of the fae. I think some of the Emerald Sword themes are trying to bleed over or something.
Anyhow. At the moment, they're all in one of the native folk villages, called Glavni. The natives didn't know quite what to make of Edward and didn't take very good care of him, so now Charles and James are trying to put him back together again.
I guess the next thing to do is introduce the kid that Charles is supposedly going to take under his wing. We'll see if that actually happens...
2007/11/08
Beginning of Day 8
So where last we left off, I had 12,863 words. I'm now at 13,368, and I did finish Chapter 10. My new short-term goal is to reach 20k by the end of Friday night's writing session. Then the weekend probably won't be terribly productive, because I'll have work and a local nano meet to distract me. Then we'll see how next week goes. I'm still considering a shot at 100k, same as I try every year, but that'll depend on how close I am to 50k by the 15th.
I might just put it all in one novel this time instead of splitting attention on two of them. That depends on whether I get stalled out on Edward anymore. So far it's going really well, and I have short-term plotting ideas in mind for at least a few more chapters, which will hopefully spawn more ideas by the time I reach the end of the current batch.
Things I'm doing differently this year: didn't start with any plans (though several months of back-of-the-mind rumination, plus running my semi-related game, certainly helped). Not letting anyone read any of it as I go along. Only one MC. Not sure which of those are what I'm doing right for a change. If I do manage to do Edward as a complete story of over 50k, and there's still time left, I might use the rest of the month to work on Emerald Sword. That story is actually related, oddly enough (albeit very much tangentially). It's its own complete story but has at least one character in common.
[members-only cut]
So. To continue the synopsis from before:
Chapter 7 - one week later, Edward is used to nightly feeding, but unfortunately hadn't figured out how not to kill his victims. Rumors of his disowning have reached the townspeople he's freeloading off of, and also there's news of a murderer on the loose. He did manage to collect the clothes he ordered from the tailor, though he had to talk his way out of going to jail.
Charles found him and they had a lovely chat before he left again, never to return. Charles told Edward he needed to find his new path and to do that he needed to go into the woods.
Chapter 8 - first day in the woods. He gets attacked by a pack of wolves, but his Inner Predator flares up, he discovers he can turn into a wolf himself, and he defeats them.
Chapter 9 - three months later, he's comfortably settled into being the leader of the wolf pack he'd defeated on the first day. It's winter now, he's discovering snow, and he encounters another Wilds Tainted named Gremlof. The two of them have a lovely chat discussing politics, and in the end Edward follows Gremlof to a Wilds moot.
Chapter 10 - the moot. They make plans to capture Edward's sire's boss and turn him in to Edward's father so that Edward's father will stop trying to kill them all on account of what happened to Edward.
And that's where we are now. The next thing I write will be the action-adventure segment of storming Mario Romero's HQ. Then the tentative plan is to send Edward in to deliver the guy to his father. Whereupon his father will capture Edward, because he's been spending his three months trying to work out a ritual to reverse Edward's tainting and turn him into an Abyssal after all.
Then we get a whole bunch of extended torture, because the ritual doesn't work as well as it was supposed to. Edward manages to escape eventually, in terrible shape. And now he has to hide from his father to avoid an unpleasant demise.
Which, aside from any sideplots that need resolving, basically brings us to the beginning of Amulet I proper. At that point, Edward is slowly dying unless he can somehow reverse the botched ritual. Meanwhile, the indigenous natives of Aunlania are in dire need of someone to teach their lone spirit shaman how to do an important ritual that none of them know. As you might guess, they're going to be doing a bit of a trade. But we'll see if I even get to that point of the proceedings...
I might just put it all in one novel this time instead of splitting attention on two of them. That depends on whether I get stalled out on Edward anymore. So far it's going really well, and I have short-term plotting ideas in mind for at least a few more chapters, which will hopefully spawn more ideas by the time I reach the end of the current batch.
Things I'm doing differently this year: didn't start with any plans (though several months of back-of-the-mind rumination, plus running my semi-related game, certainly helped). Not letting anyone read any of it as I go along. Only one MC. Not sure which of those are what I'm doing right for a change. If I do manage to do Edward as a complete story of over 50k, and there's still time left, I might use the rest of the month to work on Emerald Sword. That story is actually related, oddly enough (albeit very much tangentially). It's its own complete story but has at least one character in common.
[members-only cut]
So. To continue the synopsis from before:
Chapter 7 - one week later, Edward is used to nightly feeding, but unfortunately hadn't figured out how not to kill his victims. Rumors of his disowning have reached the townspeople he's freeloading off of, and also there's news of a murderer on the loose. He did manage to collect the clothes he ordered from the tailor, though he had to talk his way out of going to jail.
Charles found him and they had a lovely chat before he left again, never to return. Charles told Edward he needed to find his new path and to do that he needed to go into the woods.
Chapter 8 - first day in the woods. He gets attacked by a pack of wolves, but his Inner Predator flares up, he discovers he can turn into a wolf himself, and he defeats them.
Chapter 9 - three months later, he's comfortably settled into being the leader of the wolf pack he'd defeated on the first day. It's winter now, he's discovering snow, and he encounters another Wilds Tainted named Gremlof. The two of them have a lovely chat discussing politics, and in the end Edward follows Gremlof to a Wilds moot.
Chapter 10 - the moot. They make plans to capture Edward's sire's boss and turn him in to Edward's father so that Edward's father will stop trying to kill them all on account of what happened to Edward.
And that's where we are now. The next thing I write will be the action-adventure segment of storming Mario Romero's HQ. Then the tentative plan is to send Edward in to deliver the guy to his father. Whereupon his father will capture Edward, because he's been spending his three months trying to work out a ritual to reverse Edward's tainting and turn him into an Abyssal after all.
Then we get a whole bunch of extended torture, because the ritual doesn't work as well as it was supposed to. Edward manages to escape eventually, in terrible shape. And now he has to hide from his father to avoid an unpleasant demise.
Which, aside from any sideplots that need resolving, basically brings us to the beginning of Amulet I proper. At that point, Edward is slowly dying unless he can somehow reverse the botched ritual. Meanwhile, the indigenous natives of Aunlania are in dire need of someone to teach their lone spirit shaman how to do an important ritual that none of them know. As you might guess, they're going to be doing a bit of a trade. But we'll see if I even get to that point of the proceedings...
2007/01/31
Zette's class, Roundrobin Storytime
Well, the first month turns out to be pretty easy. We're apparently easing our way into things slowly, and a lot of people are impatient as they wait for the next assignment to go up. The first three weeks could probably have been combined into a single week, but at the same time I suspect the padded time gave people a chance to get comfy with the forum setup and get acquainted with each other. And also to drop out if it turns out that they weren't serious when they signed up. Seeing as how there's 160 people signed up at the moment, a high dropout rate would probably be good for the rest of us. A large number of people haven't even done the first assignment yet, so I guess we have plenty of no-shows right off the bat.
So far Zette herself hasn't gotten involved in discussing the assignments. She posts them and leaves us to fend for ourselves. I assume that at some point she'll actually look at what her students are doing... otherwise it might've been better to stick with a format where all the assignments are posted at once where everyone can see, that way it is with Uncle Jim's forum thread.
As for me, I've taken to rambling on at length in response to the assignments. I figure nobody is actually reading them anyway, so I might as well indulge. I do the actual assignments themselves, explain in excruciating detail how I arrived at the answers I did, and also argue with anything in Zette's posted material that I disagree with. It does help me think. Much like blathering over here does, from time to time. ;)
The story itself is starting to form up pretty well as I attempt to do the assignments. It's looking like it'll be fairly straightforward for a change. Thankfully. ;) I really do need to do something that's not as convoluted as my other stuff.
In other news, I'm involved with one other writing project that's been very addictive so far. Group Story Project is basically a roundrobin story where each participants writes a chapter, then passes the last ten lines to the next person in line. Eventually when the story is finished, it gets assembled and read by everyone for the first time. So far we're on Round 1 with four people - I wrote Chapter 2 and passed 200 words to alcar, and now I'm breathlessly waiting for my turn to write chapter 6. And sitting around insanely curious what alcar did with my 200 words - what kinds of conclusions he came to about the plot, given the hopelessly incomplete info. ;) I'll be trying to stick with the plot ideas I came up with when it's my turn again, though by that point they might make no sense. All depends on what analog feeds me.
Eventually I'm thinking to make an RPoL game based on the concept. But it would probably be better to wait for an entire story to get finished first, in case any glitches come up.
Sadly, that's all the writing I've been doing lately. Roleplay is still crawling along as well, though every game is still dead including mine. With occasional spurts of activity here and there.
And now to keep things from getting hopelessly long and sucking up all the space on Blogs, I'll post my assignments to Zette's class behind a separator... Basically I want to save them here too as backup in case something happens to Forward Motion.
[cut would be here if Blogger did cuts - 28 Sep 2009]
(...and also because I suspect Galen would enjoy all the extra reading. ;) )
Week 1: State an idea in 50-100 words.
Short Version:
Two diplomats from warring nations try to make peace by drawing on a childhood bond.
Long Version:
Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?
Week 2: What genre is it?
Possible genre definitions for my idea:
a) going by Agent Query - commercial fiction, military or political thriller (depending on which way I go with it)
b) going by http://www.cheapest-book.co.uk/book-retailers/about-genres.shtml - realistic fiction
c) going by http://dannyreviews.com/subjects.html - war fiction
I've noticed that not everywhere agrees on the definitions. What Zette says about "mainstream" and what Agent Query says about it are somewhat contradictory, for example.
My particular story could also easily fall under "science fiction" or "fantasy" depending on what kind of setting I decide to use. (Somehow, setting is always the last thing that gets pinned down when I'm writing a story. I always start with a plot, derive characters from it, and then figure out setting last.)
At the moment, I'm thinking to use something similar to Earth. But not necessarily with the same nations and cities that actually exist. Nor necessarily with the landmasses in all of the same places. But it would have the same kind of sky, seas, rocks and trees, plant and animal life, and humans as the people. It would have cities, contemporary technology levels, and no magic. Perhaps "alternate Earth" would be a good way to describe it.
Zette says that genre decision would likely depend on how the Earthlike place is related to 'real' Earth. I say that it doesn't matter. It matters to the story about as much as the name of the world mattered to the Black Company (Glen Cook) - that is, we never even get a name at all. Of course, The Black Company series is clearly fantasy because it has a lot of swords & sorcery elements in it, so it was never hard to classify for publishers.
Week 3: What's the theme?
It took me a while to figure this one out. Again, like with the first assignment, I found it easier to first start with the long-form version, and then derive a single-word version out of it.
Theme: Communication
Communication is the key to everything.
***
Okay, so what I have is a war between two nations. I also have two MCs who knew each other in childhood and haven't seen each other since their families went their separate ways. They recognize each other as adults due to things like personality quirks, characteristic gestures or identifying spoken phrases.
Why did the war start? Well, why do any wars start? The most obvious (and possibly easiest to resolve) would be: a misunderstanding of some sort. Could be a cultural difference. Could be the way one group views the other is detrimental to the second group, even though the first group thinks that they're doing "good" by subjugating/converting/annihilating them. Could be that the first group is actually trying to achieve something else entirely, and the second group started out as either a convenient means to that end or "collateral damage." Could be whatever the heck the U.S. is presently doing, mucking about in the Middle East - I'm still not entirely sure why we're there (though I've read some interesting rumors about a deadly combination of power-mongering and incompetence), only that as far as I can tell the U.S. is definitely the Bad Guy in that particular war.
Anyway. A misunderstanding of some collossal sort, that the two MCs have to sort out by building from their long-ago common ground.
I've long thought that human social interactions are fundamentally the same at every level. It all scales up and down the same, from two people to two nations.
Things that cause people to want to hurt each other:
1. A hurts B. Could be because B was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could be that A is a natural phenomenon (earthquake, hurricane, flood, etc.). Could be a misunderstanding about something. A might've hurt B on purpose or entirely by accident.
2. Three possible reactions:
a) B retaliates by hurting A.
b) B hurts C, because C reminds B of A in some way.
c) B hurts C, because C is the nearest convenient target.
3. 2.a) would be the most straightforward thing. A lengthy conflict begins between A and B. This is probably the form of plot my story will take.
The other two, B turns around and hurts C, causes C to react in some way in turn, which can cause a chain of hurting to begin.
To summarize the above a bit:
Pain springs from Nature, from ignorance and naivete', misunderstandings and retaliations. Pain begets pain down unending chains, until someone is strong enough to break free, sometimes (rarely) even turn it to joy.
Also, the possible reactions aren't mutually exclusive. It could be more than one, or a combination of things.
So I'm focusing on a misunderstanding as the main cause of this war. Misunderstandings are overcome by communication - telling each other truths until both sides understand why the war is happening. Realizing that there doesn't need to be a war at all.
Other possible themes:
1. pain and joy
2. experience and innocence
3. An end to world suffering, a moment of peace.
As for symbolism. For me, a lot of the symbolism will naturally emerge as I'm writing; I don't need to figure it out consciously beforehand. So this is the sort of thing I'll worry about when I'm doing final-polish on a story - making sure that symbols are referred to consistently and in appropriate places.
Week 4: What are the goals of the main characters? What are the conflicts they must resolve/overcome?
To recap, my story is about two childhood friends on opposite sides of a war, who are meeting again for the first time after 50 years.
So, goals. There are two sets of goals here. First, the nations who are at war with each other. Second, the actual MCs themselves.
So why is there a war?
A long time ago - maybe 50 years, maybe longer ago than that - there was another war. Several different nations sought to destroy each other, but none could prevail. Instead, over a decade, they wore each other down until finally the victor was the last one still standing in an utterly defeated land.
Just as this last nation (A) was about to declare victory, however, another nation swooped in, easily crushed A which had no reserves left to defend against it, and claimed victory for itself. That nation (C) had been standing on the sidelines the whole time, neutral, hiding from everyone and doing its best to pretend it didn't matter.
Nation A was much angered by this. A small, cowardly nation who hid during battle, only to steal the victory at the end. Secretly, as C built up its misbegotten empire now that no one could stop them, A plotted its revenge. Fiftyish years later they were ready. C had grown complacent during the time of peace. A caught C entirely unprepared in a surprise assault that wiped out the nation almost instantly. But then they kept going. They saw that Nation B had been actively trading with C and mistook B for just another colony - part of C that also deserved to be wiped out. They attacked.
B defended. B had no idea who A was or why they were attacking, having of course always been told the winner's story of the last great war. Some people of B wanted to take the offensive and go wipe out A, while others wanted to find out why A was attacking at all.
Goals
1. Nation A wants to annihilate Nation B because it thinks B is a part of C, and they hate C.
2. Nation B doesn't want to be wiped out, and some of them want to find out what A wants with them while others want to go wipe out A.
3. Character X is from nation A. He's a standard, straightforward military officer of some sort, leader of one army among many. He is a strong believer in the goals of his own nation, and wants to do his best to destroy nation B.
4. Character Y is from nation B. He's also military, but more of a spy/special ops sort of skillset than straightforward battle. He has been tasked with finding out why A is attacking them to help his nation decide what to do next.
Let me pause here to mention a few other working details. First, the above scenario is based on the outcome of a Starcraft game I watched a few years back, on Battlenet USEast. Nation A was named Tesseract, C was named omray. Omray stole Tess's win in a FFA game, at the last minute, and was quite pleased with himself and how clever he was. I must say I'm going to get a lot of cheap thrills whenever an opportunity comes up to describe nation C being soundly thwacked.
Second, I'm still thinking about the nations in terms of the actual real nations they're based on. Nation A is Nordic, Nation B is Japanese. So what we have here are Vikings vs. Samurai. :) I might push back the technology level a bit to accommodate this version of setting.
Moving on to the MCs then. I have an opening scenario in mind to get them together. First, X's army is ambushed and defeated in battle by one of B's armies. As the fighting comes to an end, Y's special task force sneaks around back and captures X. The idea is to acquire a high-ranking officer in A's military so they can interrogate.
However, before Y's task force can secure X and bring him back to B's strongholds, something bad happens and the task force is also wiped out. Maybe it was an unexpected, unfortunate spot of bad weather. This leaves X and Y with just each other, X nominally Y's prisoner (but not really; X's bluff is probably going to get called early on), and having to team up if they want to survive whatever Nature is now throwing at them.
Opening Conflicts
a) X and Y have to work out their differences enough to cooperate with each other. On their side of things, they recognize each other, which helps give them a common frame of reference to work from.
b) X and Y have to survive and overcome Mother Nature's obstacles and make it back to somewhere civilized.
c) Once they make it back to civilization, they have to convince their governments to end the fighting and begin working out their differences on an international scale. They have to find common frames of references to work from for their nations, not just themselves.
About Taking Control
I don't take control. My characters and I cooperate and compromise. That's the best way to really describe it.
Basically, I start each scene with a list of plot points I want to cover in it. Could be key bits of info that need to get passed from one character to another. Could be specific small events that need to happen. Could be particular characterization I want to see revealed.
I start the scene and give this list to the characters that are going to be in it. I then let them loose. They may do my list of points in any order they choose. They may do whatever else they'd like with the scene, so long as my list is covered by the end.
Occasionally I discover that I've cast the scene wrong. Then I have to pause it, take out the character that isn't cooperating, and replace with a different one. Then unpause and let things continue.
Reading over Zette's comments about "control," followed by her first example where she says "MC will attempt to kill his wife and her lover," I can't help thinking that it would never work that way for me. If my characters don't want to do what I want them to, they won't. I actually had a story stall out because I had a plotline like that - "MC will kill Bad Guy and then find that this has doomed him, and now he feels bad." Well, it turns out that that particular character would never do such a thing, and when it finally occurred to me to ask what would cause him to do such a thing, he told me that it would never occur to him to want to kill the Bad Guy under any circumstances; it just wasn't in him. That's why the story wouldn't go.
So I guess it was a matter of wrong casting. If I want to tell that particular story, I need to start over with a new set of characters that are more appropriate. Meanwhile, the first set of characters continue to thrive in an entirely different story that will hopefully have the same broad end goals, but will probably get there in a completely different way than I had in mind.
For this 2YN story, I haven't cast anyone yet. I've sketched out the roles that need to be filled, but not yet started coming up with characters to fill them. Maybe I won't. For something like this, where plot comes first and characters are derived from plot, perhaps it should be the roles that define the characters. Who they are beyond their roles is secondary.
Hmmm. Interesting lesson.
So far Zette herself hasn't gotten involved in discussing the assignments. She posts them and leaves us to fend for ourselves. I assume that at some point she'll actually look at what her students are doing... otherwise it might've been better to stick with a format where all the assignments are posted at once where everyone can see, that way it is with Uncle Jim's forum thread.
As for me, I've taken to rambling on at length in response to the assignments. I figure nobody is actually reading them anyway, so I might as well indulge. I do the actual assignments themselves, explain in excruciating detail how I arrived at the answers I did, and also argue with anything in Zette's posted material that I disagree with. It does help me think. Much like blathering over here does, from time to time. ;)
The story itself is starting to form up pretty well as I attempt to do the assignments. It's looking like it'll be fairly straightforward for a change. Thankfully. ;) I really do need to do something that's not as convoluted as my other stuff.
In other news, I'm involved with one other writing project that's been very addictive so far. Group Story Project is basically a roundrobin story where each participants writes a chapter, then passes the last ten lines to the next person in line. Eventually when the story is finished, it gets assembled and read by everyone for the first time. So far we're on Round 1 with four people - I wrote Chapter 2 and passed 200 words to alcar, and now I'm breathlessly waiting for my turn to write chapter 6. And sitting around insanely curious what alcar did with my 200 words - what kinds of conclusions he came to about the plot, given the hopelessly incomplete info. ;) I'll be trying to stick with the plot ideas I came up with when it's my turn again, though by that point they might make no sense. All depends on what analog feeds me.
Eventually I'm thinking to make an RPoL game based on the concept. But it would probably be better to wait for an entire story to get finished first, in case any glitches come up.
Sadly, that's all the writing I've been doing lately. Roleplay is still crawling along as well, though every game is still dead including mine. With occasional spurts of activity here and there.
And now to keep things from getting hopelessly long and sucking up all the space on Blogs, I'll post my assignments to Zette's class behind a separator... Basically I want to save them here too as backup in case something happens to Forward Motion.
[cut would be here if Blogger did cuts - 28 Sep 2009]
(...and also because I suspect Galen would enjoy all the extra reading. ;) )
Week 1: State an idea in 50-100 words.
Short Version:
Two diplomats from warring nations try to make peace by drawing on a childhood bond.
Long Version:
Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?
Week 2: What genre is it?
Possible genre definitions for my idea:
a) going by Agent Query - commercial fiction, military or political thriller (depending on which way I go with it)
b) going by http://www.cheapest-book.co.uk/book-retailers/about-genres.shtml - realistic fiction
c) going by http://dannyreviews.com/subjects.html - war fiction
I've noticed that not everywhere agrees on the definitions. What Zette says about "mainstream" and what Agent Query says about it are somewhat contradictory, for example.
My particular story could also easily fall under "science fiction" or "fantasy" depending on what kind of setting I decide to use. (Somehow, setting is always the last thing that gets pinned down when I'm writing a story. I always start with a plot, derive characters from it, and then figure out setting last.)
At the moment, I'm thinking to use something similar to Earth. But not necessarily with the same nations and cities that actually exist. Nor necessarily with the landmasses in all of the same places. But it would have the same kind of sky, seas, rocks and trees, plant and animal life, and humans as the people. It would have cities, contemporary technology levels, and no magic. Perhaps "alternate Earth" would be a good way to describe it.
Zette says that genre decision would likely depend on how the Earthlike place is related to 'real' Earth. I say that it doesn't matter. It matters to the story about as much as the name of the world mattered to the Black Company (Glen Cook) - that is, we never even get a name at all. Of course, The Black Company series is clearly fantasy because it has a lot of swords & sorcery elements in it, so it was never hard to classify for publishers.
Week 3: What's the theme?
It took me a while to figure this one out. Again, like with the first assignment, I found it easier to first start with the long-form version, and then derive a single-word version out of it.
Theme: Communication
Communication is the key to everything.
***
Okay, so what I have is a war between two nations. I also have two MCs who knew each other in childhood and haven't seen each other since their families went their separate ways. They recognize each other as adults due to things like personality quirks, characteristic gestures or identifying spoken phrases.
Why did the war start? Well, why do any wars start? The most obvious (and possibly easiest to resolve) would be: a misunderstanding of some sort. Could be a cultural difference. Could be the way one group views the other is detrimental to the second group, even though the first group thinks that they're doing "good" by subjugating/converting/annihilating them. Could be that the first group is actually trying to achieve something else entirely, and the second group started out as either a convenient means to that end or "collateral damage." Could be whatever the heck the U.S. is presently doing, mucking about in the Middle East - I'm still not entirely sure why we're there (though I've read some interesting rumors about a deadly combination of power-mongering and incompetence), only that as far as I can tell the U.S. is definitely the Bad Guy in that particular war.
Anyway. A misunderstanding of some collossal sort, that the two MCs have to sort out by building from their long-ago common ground.
I've long thought that human social interactions are fundamentally the same at every level. It all scales up and down the same, from two people to two nations.
Things that cause people to want to hurt each other:
1. A hurts B. Could be because B was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could be that A is a natural phenomenon (earthquake, hurricane, flood, etc.). Could be a misunderstanding about something. A might've hurt B on purpose or entirely by accident.
2. Three possible reactions:
a) B retaliates by hurting A.
b) B hurts C, because C reminds B of A in some way.
c) B hurts C, because C is the nearest convenient target.
3. 2.a) would be the most straightforward thing. A lengthy conflict begins between A and B. This is probably the form of plot my story will take.
The other two, B turns around and hurts C, causes C to react in some way in turn, which can cause a chain of hurting to begin.
To summarize the above a bit:
Pain springs from Nature, from ignorance and naivete', misunderstandings and retaliations. Pain begets pain down unending chains, until someone is strong enough to break free, sometimes (rarely) even turn it to joy.
Also, the possible reactions aren't mutually exclusive. It could be more than one, or a combination of things.
So I'm focusing on a misunderstanding as the main cause of this war. Misunderstandings are overcome by communication - telling each other truths until both sides understand why the war is happening. Realizing that there doesn't need to be a war at all.
Other possible themes:
1. pain and joy
2. experience and innocence
3. An end to world suffering, a moment of peace.
As for symbolism. For me, a lot of the symbolism will naturally emerge as I'm writing; I don't need to figure it out consciously beforehand. So this is the sort of thing I'll worry about when I'm doing final-polish on a story - making sure that symbols are referred to consistently and in appropriate places.
Week 4: What are the goals of the main characters? What are the conflicts they must resolve/overcome?
To recap, my story is about two childhood friends on opposite sides of a war, who are meeting again for the first time after 50 years.
So, goals. There are two sets of goals here. First, the nations who are at war with each other. Second, the actual MCs themselves.
So why is there a war?
A long time ago - maybe 50 years, maybe longer ago than that - there was another war. Several different nations sought to destroy each other, but none could prevail. Instead, over a decade, they wore each other down until finally the victor was the last one still standing in an utterly defeated land.
Just as this last nation (A) was about to declare victory, however, another nation swooped in, easily crushed A which had no reserves left to defend against it, and claimed victory for itself. That nation (C) had been standing on the sidelines the whole time, neutral, hiding from everyone and doing its best to pretend it didn't matter.
Nation A was much angered by this. A small, cowardly nation who hid during battle, only to steal the victory at the end. Secretly, as C built up its misbegotten empire now that no one could stop them, A plotted its revenge. Fiftyish years later they were ready. C had grown complacent during the time of peace. A caught C entirely unprepared in a surprise assault that wiped out the nation almost instantly. But then they kept going. They saw that Nation B had been actively trading with C and mistook B for just another colony - part of C that also deserved to be wiped out. They attacked.
B defended. B had no idea who A was or why they were attacking, having of course always been told the winner's story of the last great war. Some people of B wanted to take the offensive and go wipe out A, while others wanted to find out why A was attacking at all.
Goals
1. Nation A wants to annihilate Nation B because it thinks B is a part of C, and they hate C.
2. Nation B doesn't want to be wiped out, and some of them want to find out what A wants with them while others want to go wipe out A.
3. Character X is from nation A. He's a standard, straightforward military officer of some sort, leader of one army among many. He is a strong believer in the goals of his own nation, and wants to do his best to destroy nation B.
4. Character Y is from nation B. He's also military, but more of a spy/special ops sort of skillset than straightforward battle. He has been tasked with finding out why A is attacking them to help his nation decide what to do next.
Let me pause here to mention a few other working details. First, the above scenario is based on the outcome of a Starcraft game I watched a few years back, on Battlenet USEast. Nation A was named Tesseract, C was named omray. Omray stole Tess's win in a FFA game, at the last minute, and was quite pleased with himself and how clever he was. I must say I'm going to get a lot of cheap thrills whenever an opportunity comes up to describe nation C being soundly thwacked.
Second, I'm still thinking about the nations in terms of the actual real nations they're based on. Nation A is Nordic, Nation B is Japanese. So what we have here are Vikings vs. Samurai. :) I might push back the technology level a bit to accommodate this version of setting.
Moving on to the MCs then. I have an opening scenario in mind to get them together. First, X's army is ambushed and defeated in battle by one of B's armies. As the fighting comes to an end, Y's special task force sneaks around back and captures X. The idea is to acquire a high-ranking officer in A's military so they can interrogate.
However, before Y's task force can secure X and bring him back to B's strongholds, something bad happens and the task force is also wiped out. Maybe it was an unexpected, unfortunate spot of bad weather. This leaves X and Y with just each other, X nominally Y's prisoner (but not really; X's bluff is probably going to get called early on), and having to team up if they want to survive whatever Nature is now throwing at them.
Opening Conflicts
a) X and Y have to work out their differences enough to cooperate with each other. On their side of things, they recognize each other, which helps give them a common frame of reference to work from.
b) X and Y have to survive and overcome Mother Nature's obstacles and make it back to somewhere civilized.
c) Once they make it back to civilization, they have to convince their governments to end the fighting and begin working out their differences on an international scale. They have to find common frames of references to work from for their nations, not just themselves.
About Taking Control
I don't take control. My characters and I cooperate and compromise. That's the best way to really describe it.
Basically, I start each scene with a list of plot points I want to cover in it. Could be key bits of info that need to get passed from one character to another. Could be specific small events that need to happen. Could be particular characterization I want to see revealed.
I start the scene and give this list to the characters that are going to be in it. I then let them loose. They may do my list of points in any order they choose. They may do whatever else they'd like with the scene, so long as my list is covered by the end.
Occasionally I discover that I've cast the scene wrong. Then I have to pause it, take out the character that isn't cooperating, and replace with a different one. Then unpause and let things continue.
Reading over Zette's comments about "control," followed by her first example where she says "MC will attempt to kill his wife and her lover," I can't help thinking that it would never work that way for me. If my characters don't want to do what I want them to, they won't. I actually had a story stall out because I had a plotline like that - "MC will kill Bad Guy and then find that this has doomed him, and now he feels bad." Well, it turns out that that particular character would never do such a thing, and when it finally occurred to me to ask what would cause him to do such a thing, he told me that it would never occur to him to want to kill the Bad Guy under any circumstances; it just wasn't in him. That's why the story wouldn't go.
So I guess it was a matter of wrong casting. If I want to tell that particular story, I need to start over with a new set of characters that are more appropriate. Meanwhile, the first set of characters continue to thrive in an entirely different story that will hopefully have the same broad end goals, but will probably get there in a completely different way than I had in mind.
For this 2YN story, I haven't cast anyone yet. I've sketched out the roles that need to be filled, but not yet started coming up with characters to fill them. Maybe I won't. For something like this, where plot comes first and characters are derived from plot, perhaps it should be the roles that define the characters. Who they are beyond their roles is secondary.
Hmmm. Interesting lesson.
2007/01/11
Beginning of the New Year: State of the Union (or at least my Writing Life)
Well, Zette's class is off to a rousing good start. So far, for the first week's assignment, we just needed to post up 50-100 words describing an idea. Here's mine:
Obviously I decided against the plot I mentioned in my last entry (though I might use it for something else later on). The above idea came to me last summer, while we had two visiting scientists on campus, one from Japan and one from Norway. They were both here for several months and they'd brought their families. They each had sons that spent a lot of time playing together.
I came up with the idea, didn't really know where to go with it from there, and filed it away. It occurred to me that Zette's class would be a perfect place to try to develop it, since I'm not doing anything much with it anyhow, and it's very different from everything else I'm doing.
Meanwhile, I wrote 992 words last night toward Amulet I. Since Nanowrimo ended I've managed to come up with around 4500 new words, mostly in fits and starts as the mood moves me. The good news is that the mood moves me rather more often than for either of my previous Nanowrimo novels. I've barely looked at Amulet II since Nanowrimo 2005 ended, and I'm holding off on any more fiddling with Temple (as well as Janis) until after Amulet I is done, and the setting ... umm, settles. Right now it's about as solid and stable as quicksand. Every time a character sneezes, it turns out I need to do more worldbuilding and change things around. (Note: no characters have ever actually sneezed in any of my efforts thus far. Hmm. Maybe someone should.)
As for Stranger on a Bus, it's still languishing on the backburner. I've decided that the next scene will involve a blizzard, however. So far I've managed to go ten chapters without any whiteout driving conditions; I need to "fix" that.
[members-only cut]
Then there's Dragonfly. I needed to get far enough away from it before I could figure out what it meant. Eight months later, here I am.
The main problem I struggled with is that, looking just at the framework of the actual story, what I have is a choice between death and death. So the question was: what's the difference?
That's not what the story is about though. What we have is a man that is bored (and boring), because from his view, he's sitting there waiting while nothing much happens. Ultimately his existence is meaningless. As far as he can tell, nothing much will ever happen, there will never be anything but the waiting, and eventually at some point it will end.
Then a dragonfly comes and shows him that there is a different way. That there is a place with meaning, and it's over a line that he didn't know about before.
Once he knew it was there, he had to make the decision to cross it. He knows that there's a lot to explore on the other side, and elephants to find, but he can't see them without crossing the line - he has to trust that they are there. It's a leap of faith that he has to take.
So it's not a choice between death and death. It's about either staying still and dying where he is, or crossing over and transcending into new life.
This is a metaphor that I've been discussing with my brother for a long time now. Life is like a holodeck. Everything is illusory on the inside, which means that everything is ultimately meaningless. But there's an outside to the holodeck. It's a scary place, and you can't know what's out there unless you actually leave. There's only so much information you can gather about the outside from the inside, and at some point there's nothing left to do but to actually go there and see.
My brother is still stuck in that holodeck. I took a leap of faith and crossed over. My dragonfly was a young girl named Dana who came along in 2002 and dragged me out of an abyss. The line appeared while we roleplayed. And now I know what's on the outside, but I can't show him. He demands proof that there's meaning and wondrous elephants. But he has to come over on his own.
How to convey all that in Dragonfly though. I could take the easy way out and make that playground more significant instead. Give the man a choice - get well and be able to go out to the playground with the laughing children, or die and be able to explore the other side of the line and find the elephants.
Hmm. I guess I'm still not really sure what the elephants mean. Memory would be the obvious thing. But memory of what?
Also, why a dragonfly? I think I know the answer to that one, though whether it's relevant to the story remains to be seen. My grandfather was born in a dragon year (Chinese zodiac). In early 2004 we all had to fly out to see him because he'd collapsed and everyone figured he was about to die. He was on a respirator when I got there; he'd survived tuberculosis several decades earlier, but it permanently damaged his lungs. When I went to hold his hand, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. After that he made a miraculous recovery, and not long after I left, he was able to go home. There's a bit more to that than I'm saying, but I think that's where the dragonfly came from.
I guess my grandfather, being a grandfather, would have a lot of memories. Hmmm.
So that's where I am with that.
Two young boys from different nations played together as children when their families met while stationed in a third nation. Fifty years later, their nations are at war with each other, and they meet again as emissaries for peace. Can they draw on their shared childhood to find common ground?
Obviously I decided against the plot I mentioned in my last entry (though I might use it for something else later on). The above idea came to me last summer, while we had two visiting scientists on campus, one from Japan and one from Norway. They were both here for several months and they'd brought their families. They each had sons that spent a lot of time playing together.
I came up with the idea, didn't really know where to go with it from there, and filed it away. It occurred to me that Zette's class would be a perfect place to try to develop it, since I'm not doing anything much with it anyhow, and it's very different from everything else I'm doing.
Meanwhile, I wrote 992 words last night toward Amulet I. Since Nanowrimo ended I've managed to come up with around 4500 new words, mostly in fits and starts as the mood moves me. The good news is that the mood moves me rather more often than for either of my previous Nanowrimo novels. I've barely looked at Amulet II since Nanowrimo 2005 ended, and I'm holding off on any more fiddling with Temple (as well as Janis) until after Amulet I is done, and the setting ... umm, settles. Right now it's about as solid and stable as quicksand. Every time a character sneezes, it turns out I need to do more worldbuilding and change things around. (Note: no characters have ever actually sneezed in any of my efforts thus far. Hmm. Maybe someone should.)
As for Stranger on a Bus, it's still languishing on the backburner. I've decided that the next scene will involve a blizzard, however. So far I've managed to go ten chapters without any whiteout driving conditions; I need to "fix" that.
[members-only cut]
Then there's Dragonfly. I needed to get far enough away from it before I could figure out what it meant. Eight months later, here I am.
The main problem I struggled with is that, looking just at the framework of the actual story, what I have is a choice between death and death. So the question was: what's the difference?
That's not what the story is about though. What we have is a man that is bored (and boring), because from his view, he's sitting there waiting while nothing much happens. Ultimately his existence is meaningless. As far as he can tell, nothing much will ever happen, there will never be anything but the waiting, and eventually at some point it will end.
Then a dragonfly comes and shows him that there is a different way. That there is a place with meaning, and it's over a line that he didn't know about before.
Once he knew it was there, he had to make the decision to cross it. He knows that there's a lot to explore on the other side, and elephants to find, but he can't see them without crossing the line - he has to trust that they are there. It's a leap of faith that he has to take.
So it's not a choice between death and death. It's about either staying still and dying where he is, or crossing over and transcending into new life.
This is a metaphor that I've been discussing with my brother for a long time now. Life is like a holodeck. Everything is illusory on the inside, which means that everything is ultimately meaningless. But there's an outside to the holodeck. It's a scary place, and you can't know what's out there unless you actually leave. There's only so much information you can gather about the outside from the inside, and at some point there's nothing left to do but to actually go there and see.
My brother is still stuck in that holodeck. I took a leap of faith and crossed over. My dragonfly was a young girl named Dana who came along in 2002 and dragged me out of an abyss. The line appeared while we roleplayed. And now I know what's on the outside, but I can't show him. He demands proof that there's meaning and wondrous elephants. But he has to come over on his own.
How to convey all that in Dragonfly though. I could take the easy way out and make that playground more significant instead. Give the man a choice - get well and be able to go out to the playground with the laughing children, or die and be able to explore the other side of the line and find the elephants.
Hmm. I guess I'm still not really sure what the elephants mean. Memory would be the obvious thing. But memory of what?
Also, why a dragonfly? I think I know the answer to that one, though whether it's relevant to the story remains to be seen. My grandfather was born in a dragon year (Chinese zodiac). In early 2004 we all had to fly out to see him because he'd collapsed and everyone figured he was about to die. He was on a respirator when I got there; he'd survived tuberculosis several decades earlier, but it permanently damaged his lungs. When I went to hold his hand, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. After that he made a miraculous recovery, and not long after I left, he was able to go home. There's a bit more to that than I'm saying, but I think that's where the dragonfly came from.
I guess my grandfather, being a grandfather, would have a lot of memories. Hmmm.
So that's where I am with that.
2006/11/28
Lather, Rinse, Repeat ...
So, 2600 words later, I believe I've detected a pattern...
Two observations:
1. Yes I can trust my characters to come up with stuff to talk about if only I would just start the scene and let them do the rest.
2. The stumbling block comes in when it's my turn to come up with something to happen. I'm slow during those parts. Once it's the characters' turn to react to whatever I just made happen, I've got nothing to worry about.
Mainly, as long as I'm clear on what they know and don't know, and all the worldbuilding is actually in place, I can roll along at high speed. Worldbuilding is what slows me down. Namely, a character needs to know some kind of minor detail in order to make a tangential passing remark. But before they can do that, I need to create a whole new category of setting stuff and then figure out what subset of that do they know about. Someday I'll be rock-solid familiar enough with my own setting, with everything built, that I can write as fast as Robert does when he's playing in his favorite gigantic setting. But I'm not there yet.
Some other observations that I've been noticing overall:
1. Sunkist has way more caffeine in it than Mello Yello, despite expectations to the contrary when comparing it to Mt. Dew. Mr. Pibb has way more than Sunkist.
2. I've figured out what my successful stable routine is. Two writing sessions of 8 hours each. One session between the time I wake up in the afternoon, and midnight. Second session from midnight to dawn. (Sleep from dawn to afternoon.) Goal of 2k words per session. 2 hour break between sessions.
Looking at it that way, each session goal looks really modest. If I'd figured that out a lot earlier, I would be a lot closer to 100k than I am now. Next year it'll come into play, though...
3. I do not have WolfDreamer or Jeanene on my nanowrimo friends lists, and I've not managed to guess what your names are. Wanna fess up? ;)
Oh and. It turns out that instead of the evil shadowlord ever attacking the fort, my crew at the fort have decided to relocate to the village instead. The plot twists continue...
Two observations:
1. Yes I can trust my characters to come up with stuff to talk about if only I would just start the scene and let them do the rest.
2. The stumbling block comes in when it's my turn to come up with something to happen. I'm slow during those parts. Once it's the characters' turn to react to whatever I just made happen, I've got nothing to worry about.
Mainly, as long as I'm clear on what they know and don't know, and all the worldbuilding is actually in place, I can roll along at high speed. Worldbuilding is what slows me down. Namely, a character needs to know some kind of minor detail in order to make a tangential passing remark. But before they can do that, I need to create a whole new category of setting stuff and then figure out what subset of that do they know about. Someday I'll be rock-solid familiar enough with my own setting, with everything built, that I can write as fast as Robert does when he's playing in his favorite gigantic setting. But I'm not there yet.
Some other observations that I've been noticing overall:
1. Sunkist has way more caffeine in it than Mello Yello, despite expectations to the contrary when comparing it to Mt. Dew. Mr. Pibb has way more than Sunkist.
2. I've figured out what my successful stable routine is. Two writing sessions of 8 hours each. One session between the time I wake up in the afternoon, and midnight. Second session from midnight to dawn. (Sleep from dawn to afternoon.) Goal of 2k words per session. 2 hour break between sessions.
Looking at it that way, each session goal looks really modest. If I'd figured that out a lot earlier, I would be a lot closer to 100k than I am now. Next year it'll come into play, though...
3. I do not have WolfDreamer or Jeanene on my nanowrimo friends lists, and I've not managed to guess what your names are. Wanna fess up? ;)
Oh and. It turns out that instead of the evil shadowlord ever attacking the fort, my crew at the fort have decided to relocate to the village instead. The plot twists continue...
Top of the 28th: 4600 words to go. No clue what to write next.
So now the score is:
22,075 - Janis
45,422 - Amulet I
67,497 - total
I'm actually right on track for doing 75k words, if that were my goal for the year.
Let's see ... things that have happened since my last entry.
1. I had a nervous breakdown. It came right after I finally got around to making my Excel progress charts for this year, and noticing that compared to last year, I'm sucking it bigtime.
2. During said breakdown, I decided that I suck as a writer, and I couldn't possibly write as well as I've somehow managed to write over the previous three weeks, despite clear evidence to the contrary. And even with that evidence, there was no way I was ever going to write that well again.
3. This was followed by noticing that all of my work indeed is claptrap, like I've been fearing since 2004. Which meant it was totally pointless to continue. Somewhere in this part of the proceedings, I discovered what it feels like to laugh maniacally and sob at the same time. At great length.
3. This caused me to stall out for a good long while. (The "nano time" version of "good long while"; in this case it was about 36 hours).
4. Then I got better and wrote some more. I managed to come up with 5167 words of a serious side tangent that will probably be completely discarded in the first editting pass.
And so now I'm back to reasonably sane again. :) In a reasonably good mood for some writing progress, just as soon as I figure out what I'm going to do next.
Sadly, my side tangent kind of stole all the thunder from the planned evening scene. That is, the evil shadowlord showed up over in the villages where some of the other natives tried to fight him, and although they were largely ineffective, one of them did manage to set him on fire.
So now he's not going to make an appearance at the fort, since he's not up for it anymore. Which leaves me with nothing obvious to do next.
Let's see... where last we left off, it was mid-afternoon at the fort. Charles is stringing up Christmas lights (sort of), Ahlosarka is clearing out a giant barnyard, and the tribal chieftain (thus far known as [leadername]) is talking to birds. Edward and Aliacorba just got done doing their little thing.
I guess I might as well fast forward to the next morning.
In other news, my sinuses are behaving strangely. I'm hoping that will go away sometime soon...
22,075 - Janis
45,422 - Amulet I
67,497 - total
I'm actually right on track for doing 75k words, if that were my goal for the year.
Let's see ... things that have happened since my last entry.
1. I had a nervous breakdown. It came right after I finally got around to making my Excel progress charts for this year, and noticing that compared to last year, I'm sucking it bigtime.
2. During said breakdown, I decided that I suck as a writer, and I couldn't possibly write as well as I've somehow managed to write over the previous three weeks, despite clear evidence to the contrary. And even with that evidence, there was no way I was ever going to write that well again.
3. This was followed by noticing that all of my work indeed is claptrap, like I've been fearing since 2004. Which meant it was totally pointless to continue. Somewhere in this part of the proceedings, I discovered what it feels like to laugh maniacally and sob at the same time. At great length.
3. This caused me to stall out for a good long while. (The "nano time" version of "good long while"; in this case it was about 36 hours).
4. Then I got better and wrote some more. I managed to come up with 5167 words of a serious side tangent that will probably be completely discarded in the first editting pass.
And so now I'm back to reasonably sane again. :) In a reasonably good mood for some writing progress, just as soon as I figure out what I'm going to do next.
Sadly, my side tangent kind of stole all the thunder from the planned evening scene. That is, the evil shadowlord showed up over in the villages where some of the other natives tried to fight him, and although they were largely ineffective, one of them did manage to set him on fire.
So now he's not going to make an appearance at the fort, since he's not up for it anymore. Which leaves me with nothing obvious to do next.
Let's see... where last we left off, it was mid-afternoon at the fort. Charles is stringing up Christmas lights (sort of), Ahlosarka is clearing out a giant barnyard, and the tribal chieftain (thus far known as [leadername]) is talking to birds. Edward and Aliacorba just got done doing their little thing.
I guess I might as well fast forward to the next morning.
In other news, my sinuses are behaving strangely. I'm hoping that will go away sometime soon...
2006/11/25
Wow am I severely underestimating my characters ...
Well, it turns out that before I could have them sit around looking hopelessly lost on what to do, first I had to have them explain clearly to each other exactly what the bad guy was. What his abilities are, what his weaknesses are, etc. All the great gory details.
And while they were doing that, they all started figuring out things to do on their own. Now they have all sorts of things they want to do with their afternoon. And one of them will even be a scene that's going to have enough plot-relevant material to write it up as my next chapter. Wooo. :)
So that was somewhere around 2k words, which is the average size of most of my chapters for this story. The shortest so far has been 600 words, and the longest was somewhere in the 2500 word range. I'd update the nanowrimo counter, but for some reason the page isn't loading. I guess people are hitting the validator hard, now that it's active.
Meanwhile, while I was stalled out earlier this afternoon, I read over Robert's Organic Linear Plotting article. I paid a lot more attention this time because, wouldn't you know it, Amulet I (take 2) looks remarkably like organic linear plotting. I'm somewhere in The Middle of the book at the moment, where everything is basically set up, and there's stuff I'm still throwing in here and there to keep things agitated, but the characters pretty much seem to know what they're doing. The only downside is that I don't think I'm going to be typing "The End" at 50k words. This is bad for the Janis novel. But this "Middle" business has been a lot of fun so far, since I transitioned into it at some point a few days back, so I'm not exactly broke up about it. :)
And while they were doing that, they all started figuring out things to do on their own. Now they have all sorts of things they want to do with their afternoon. And one of them will even be a scene that's going to have enough plot-relevant material to write it up as my next chapter. Wooo. :)
So that was somewhere around 2k words, which is the average size of most of my chapters for this story. The shortest so far has been 600 words, and the longest was somewhere in the 2500 word range. I'd update the nanowrimo counter, but for some reason the page isn't loading. I guess people are hitting the validator hard, now that it's active.
Meanwhile, while I was stalled out earlier this afternoon, I read over Robert's Organic Linear Plotting article. I paid a lot more attention this time because, wouldn't you know it, Amulet I (take 2) looks remarkably like organic linear plotting. I'm somewhere in The Middle of the book at the moment, where everything is basically set up, and there's stuff I'm still throwing in here and there to keep things agitated, but the characters pretty much seem to know what they're doing. The only downside is that I don't think I'm going to be typing "The End" at 50k words. This is bad for the Janis novel. But this "Middle" business has been a lot of fun so far, since I transitioned into it at some point a few days back, so I'm not exactly broke up about it. :)
2006/11/14
Bottom of the 14th
At the moment, I have 16,370 on Amulet I (take 2) and 15,344 on Janis. This puts me at about 10k behind for each.
This second week went a lot more productively than the first week overall. My wordcounts are still not as high as they need to be, but I've gotten into the swing of things. The first week, I was still adjusting to the concept of not going in to work. Now that I'm used to that, though, it should work out better.
Last night I had probably the best writing session thus far. There's a Raymond Chandler quote that cycles through the randoms, about being pulled by the words instead of pushing. Most of the time I have to at least nudge things along. Last night, two of my characters in Amulet 1 got to talking, and I could barely type fast enough to keep up. It was awesome. :)
I wish my characters would do that more often.
Overall, I'm still continuing with Amulet I until I run into a major block point. There's at least a couple more scenes in the pipeline before I run out of working outline and have to figure out more outline.
There's a scene for Janis Part 1 that I need to do retroactively, where someone explains the Vinithi* creation mythology in detail. So far I don't really know how to start Part 2 with life in the city, nor what specifically needs to go into it. Hopefully I'll figure something out by the time I get back to it. Either that or I'll skip it entirely and just go straight to Part 3.
*The word "Vinithi" was stolen straight out of "The Three Minute Universe" which is a Star Trek TOS paperback. At some point I'll need to change it. But not right now.
There are a lot of minor characters (and place names) in both books where I've thus far just given them numbers instead of names. It keeps things moving to not have to sit there figuring out how to stay consistent in my unwieldy Vinithi naming scheme. ;)
I back up my writing to two independent online places after every scene. One is to an RPoL game and the other is in my LJ. The side effect is that people can read along if they really want, though there's no sign that anyone actually is. However, I stand less chance of losing work than if I only kept a copy on my hard drive. Even the loss of a few hundred words slays me and makes me mope and sulk for days, so I tend to be very paranoid about such things. ;)
This second week went a lot more productively than the first week overall. My wordcounts are still not as high as they need to be, but I've gotten into the swing of things. The first week, I was still adjusting to the concept of not going in to work. Now that I'm used to that, though, it should work out better.
Last night I had probably the best writing session thus far. There's a Raymond Chandler quote that cycles through the randoms, about being pulled by the words instead of pushing. Most of the time I have to at least nudge things along. Last night, two of my characters in Amulet 1 got to talking, and I could barely type fast enough to keep up. It was awesome. :)
I wish my characters would do that more often.
Overall, I'm still continuing with Amulet I until I run into a major block point. There's at least a couple more scenes in the pipeline before I run out of working outline and have to figure out more outline.
There's a scene for Janis Part 1 that I need to do retroactively, where someone explains the Vinithi* creation mythology in detail. So far I don't really know how to start Part 2 with life in the city, nor what specifically needs to go into it. Hopefully I'll figure something out by the time I get back to it. Either that or I'll skip it entirely and just go straight to Part 3.
*The word "Vinithi" was stolen straight out of "The Three Minute Universe" which is a Star Trek TOS paperback. At some point I'll need to change it. But not right now.
There are a lot of minor characters (and place names) in both books where I've thus far just given them numbers instead of names. It keeps things moving to not have to sit there figuring out how to stay consistent in my unwieldy Vinithi naming scheme. ;)
I back up my writing to two independent online places after every scene. One is to an RPoL game and the other is in my LJ. The side effect is that people can read along if they really want, though there's no sign that anyone actually is. However, I stand less chance of losing work than if I only kept a copy on my hard drive. Even the loss of a few hundred words slays me and makes me mope and sulk for days, so I tend to be very paranoid about such things. ;)
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