|
Hello CC! NaNoWriMo has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never got around to because reasons, including all the classics: “I don’t have time”, “I have no idea what I’ll write about”, “I have a concept for a world but I don’t have characters or a story”, “What if my writing sucks?”, “I’ve got more important things to do”, “My idea isn’t original”, etc. This year I decided to stop making excuses and get it done. What are you attempting for NaNoWriMo? I’m going to rewrite the first part of Sharon Green’s The Blending series, a terribly written 8 book romance that was deceptively marketed as an adventure/fantasy epic. If you’re not familiar with it, you can check out the hate-read over in The Book Barn for the full experience, though as part of my planning process, I will do a post summarizing the flaws. Why not write your own story? TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm really not sure why you think this series deserves a rewrite to be salvageable. The prose is bad, the characters are two dimensional, nothing has happened except Tamrissa assuring us how special these protagonists are for presumably future sexy times. Our protagonists are a generic farm boy who is a powerful wizard, and a prostitute traumatized from sexual abuse who manipulates men as a result who is being set up to lead our team of generic fantasy people. There are no stakes, there is no antagonist, there is a vague mention of some prophecy that laid down the law but has no impact on day to day life, and the best that can be said is that there is a bunch of minutia you can put on a wiki. I gave Robert Jordan a lot of poo poo, but his works have the occasional effective passage (for instance, Rand trying to get help for the wounded Tam in the first book) and actually try to be about something. This just squanders any mildly interesting potential it has to be a mediocre formulaic fantasy bad even by the low standards of the fantasy shovelware publishing industry. It has no soul. Even the magic system is just ripping off Wheel of Time but without the spiritual overtones and ties to the Wheel which tied into the work's greater symbolism. It's a stunning failure of imagination. Leng posted:it's a writing exercise for myself where I can focus on the mechanics of establishing setting, character, plot and overall narrative structure. I don't have to spend time doing a lot of world building, coming up with ideas for characters or plotting, because that's all been done. Green's output is obviously bad, but all writing is bad to begin with, so I can basically treat these books as a super detailed outline. The goal is to write a better version of the story Green is trying to tell, while improving myself as a writer. I know I need to work on the following:
For anyone who’s coming over from the Let’s Read thread and hasn’t read the series before, be warned that because Book 1 was so…unsatisfying, there’s a good likelihood I’ll be pulling from material in Book 2 (and potentially Book 3) in order to round out a satisfying narrative. How will this work? Essentially, I’m going to do my best Brandon Sanderson/Will Wight impression. That means leaning into the action/adventure side of the narrative, away from the romance aspects and aiming for “transparent” prose as Sanderson puts it. Sorry in advance to folks who don’t like their writing style! From past experience, I know my process goes something like this:
While I’ve done a lot of theorising of how I would change the books as part of the Let’s Read, I don’t have a concrete outline. That’s the mission for the next 2 weeks (significantly less time than I would usually spend outlining) using Brandon Sanderson's method (see https://youtu.be/Qgbsz7Gnrd8 and his outline for Skyward as an example format). To hit 50k words, I’m planning on 16 to 20 chapters (3000-4000 words per chapter). Despite my tendency to overwrite, I don't expect to pull a Sanderson where he plans to write a 30k word novella and ends up with 57k word novel instead. Once November begins, the goal will be to write 4-5 chapters a week. I know from past experience I do better writing in long solid blocks of time, so I’ll be aiming for 2 writing days a week, with 2-3 chapters per day (6000-8000 words), likely on Tuesdays and Thursday/Friday. In terms of the writing process, I'm going to try really hard to apply Sanderson’s method instead of my normal method (you can see in action here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3ZviGuhA9pT7ETB481Fw-VEL - it's a screencast of him writing the ~7600 word Rsyn interlude in Words of Radiance in 12 real time ~22 minute chunks - just over 3.5 hours in total) This leaves Mondays and Wednesdays for some quick self-editing before posting chapters for anyone interested in following along. Chapters will be posted as individual Google Doc links so specific line critiques can be done via comments. Higher level critiques on prose, plot, character, etc would be greatly appreciated as replies in the thread. Any critiques received will be taken into account when writing the next chapter, rather than going back and continually revising the chapter that was critiqued. Where there are major issues highlighted by critiques that can only be solved via major revisions (e.g. changes in plot points, character motivations, etc), we’ll just assume those revisions were made for the purposes of writing the subsequent chapters - I will list them in the post with the very next chapter. In theory and assuming I adjust quickly enough for any feedback received, this means the end of the book should have objectively better prose compared to the beginning AND the output should be better than the original  , but you guys will be the judge of that, not me.Why not attempt something on a smaller scale to hone your skills first, like Thunderdome? This is me attempting something on a smaller scale, as a diversion from a more ambitious creative project that I’m currently stalled on, 3/4s of the way to the finish line.  What kind of prose have you written before? I have been writing for a living for a long time now though the writing skill has always been secondary to technical skill in my field. Most of what I write is for business, technical non-fiction (textbooks) or fictional case studies (for education and training). Creating fictional case studies is what I enjoy the most: all effective case studies apply the core principles of good storytelling (including world building, characters, plot). Weirdly, that means most of the narrative prose I have written is generally in second person POV. INDEX Anyway, here goes!  I will update the bottom of this OP with links to each planning post I make and each chapter written.What has Green done (and why is it bad)?
 NANOWRIMO HAS
OVERALL PROGRESS: 113% (based on minimum word count) / 100% (based on planned chapters) WORDS TO DATE: 56,810/ CHAPTERS TO DATE: 10/ Wrap up
Leng posted:What next? Leng fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jan 1, 2021 |
#
¿
Oct 15, 2020 13:20
|
|
NaNoWriMo success!!! 
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 07:05 |
|
|
Everything wrong with The Blending by Sharon Green Let's start with the plot summary before digging into the issues: Leng posted:Book 1 (+ first five chapters of Book 2) Summary: Core premise and main conflict After further reflection, I think Green's story is about control - when is it good, when is it bad and why? She explores this concept at three levels:
ISSUES These are my main issues with Green's books as a reader, in order of book level to line level. Issue #1: Overall structure is broken Books 1-3 seem to have been plotted in reverse, with the highest stakes at the front (deadly assassination attempt by fireball) and the lowest at the end (whether the main characters will achieve their first level masteries which involves doing mundane exercises with magic, easily solved by taking in more power and braiding braiding braiding). Even just focusing on Book 1: Leng posted:Changing NOTHING ELSE about Green's plot, world, or characters, you could at least sort of fix the overall narrative flaws by rearranging the chapters: Issue #2: Repetitiveness Green got extremely carried away with her FIVE FIVE FIVE concept of Blending. As a result, she wrote 5 different variations on the same plot beats. The highlight (lowlight??) was an egregious bathhouse sequence forcing readers to experience the same dialogue back to back five times in a row. In this rewrite, we're going to pick one protagonist's POV. I am not ruling out writing from some other POVs if needed, but for the most part, I intend to stick with one primary POV. Issue #3: Flat characters The protagonist arcs are fairly one dimensional and there are only the barest hints of character growth. Even worse, the main characters often feel very similar to the point where I question whether they could all just be rolled into a single character. Worst of all are the antagonists. They have no arc, simplistic motivations and are all incompetent to the point where they never pose any credible threat to the protagonists. Characterization is hard, so I'm going to stay focused on developing about 10 characters with the goal of making them distinct and having some sort of arc (no matter how small). Issue #4: Plot is author driven rather than character driven Since the characters are so flat, there was never any way for Green to avoid this. Things in the plot simply happen because Green wants it to happen that way. And since the overall structure is broken, Green leans heavily on contrived plotting, unnecessary twists and overuse of "cliffhangers" in an effort to maintain tension. Issue #5: Bloat Besides the issue of repetitiveness, Green also writes a lot of bloat. We see practically every moment of every day for every character. Some of the moments are good character moments, but nothing happens to advance the plot. Often it's simply clumsy exposition. Most of the scenes and quite a few chapters seem to be written for a single purpose only, when they could be combined to be more interesting. Some things that can be summarized in a few paragraphs take up multiple chapters. Some events that should be a single chapter are split up across two chapters for the sake of having a "cliffhanger". Looking at the substance of Green's actual story, it feels small enough in scope that I could do "get good at the magic" in 50k words from a single POV. We'll see how we go when I get to outlining. Issue #6: Telling instead of showing Green's favorite go-to techniques include:
I'm going to work towards about 20-30% of internal monologue and the rest being dialogue/action/description (see Sanderson’s 2020 BYU Lecture 10: https://youtu.be/fJfE-HMfSkk?t=1135 and https://youtu.be/fJfE-HMfSkk?t=2079). Sanderson recommends writing introspection at the end to fill in any gaps left after you've fleshed out the dialogue/action/description. It's an interesting approach which is different to how I normally write. Issue #7: Being way too high on the pyramid of abstraction Most of Green's word choices and phrases are very vague. She'll often have her characters note that something is "odd", that they feel "disturbed", someone is "official-looking" or an object is "surprisingly large". The worst offender was probably "strong handsomeness". REMINDERS/SELF-EDITING CHECKLIST On that note and in no particular order, here's a list of reminders for myself before commencing writing and on self-editing days:
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2020 14:59
|
|
ensuing in one of the most stupidly repetitive sequences in the entire 8 book series because Green.
for Jovvi and Tamrissa, Jovvi verbally bitch smacking Beldara Lant (discount Tamrissa), Pagin Holter (token "guy who is an outsider but because we're nice people we're nice to him to prove that we're nice people") clueing the oblivious in to the fact it's a twenty-fifth year, and Vallant and Jovvi blasting Eskin Drowd (anti-Lorand) with some blatant moralizing on about how controlling other people and invading other nations is bad.
territory with early converts Tamrissa and Vallant, who brings Rion and Lorand for the ride. Eskin and Pagin get left out because reasons they're not main characters. It is all very boring since the Day 1 interlude spoiled the entire conspiracy the protagonists are in the midst of discovering.
|
PLOTTING: Promise, Progress and Payoff For lack of a better idea of how I want to do this, I'm going to follow Sanderson's 2020 BYU lectures during my planning. Here's the YouTube link to the full playlist, but in this post, we're focusing on Lecture #2: Plot (Part 1). The highlights from the lecture for me:
Now, let's apply these principles to The Blending. Promise I'm going to try and reverse engineer this based on the marketing that was done for the book, since the wisdom from the amazing Self-Publishing thread states that the cover, the blurb and the book itself are all equally important. That means, the cover plus the blurb combined is MORE important than the prose contained within the pages - which makes sense, because they are the first part of the promise that the reader sees. Here are the covers for all 8 books in Green's two serieses:         Now let's take a look at the blurbs - Let's Read goons, I'm going to spoiler parts of the blurbs for Books 6-8 in case you don't want the major reveal in Book 5 to be ruined for you now: Book 1: Convergence quote:"In a world of magical adepts, every quarter-century the five greatest talents must be brought together. For only this powerful union of strangers can prevent the prophesied return of the Evil Ones who once enslaved the land." Book 2: Competitions quote:The perfect Blending of the primary basics of the known universe-Earth, Air, Fire, Spirit and Water-will create unimaginable power. Power enough to hold off the dread Evil Ones for yet another quarter-century... Power enough to rule the world... Book 3: Challenges quote:The competition has begun. The band of five which best combines elemental magics into the most powerful alchemy will be chosen to win the throne and ward off doom for the kingdom. But the stakes are much higher than anyone suspects. Book 4: Betrayals quote:On a world of magical adepts, the five greatest talents are fated to unite and rule. But Tamrissa, Jovi, Vallant, Rion, and Lorand have been cruelly separated, struck down by treachery at the very moment of their greatest triumph. Book 5: Prophecy quote:The Chosen Five-wielders of elemental magic-have defeated their betrayers and are returning to the city behind a legion of their followers. Tamrissa, fierce lady of Fire; Rion, noble lord of Air; Vallant, brave captain of Water; Lorand, clever master of Earth; and Jovvi, passionate sorceress of Spirit have so far successfully met the challenges set by those who would prevent the Five from their rightful throne. But the struggle is not over yet. Still barring their way are the sinister usurping Five, an invading army and a peasant rebellion. The battle has never been more desperate, nor the stakes so high. But nothing can stop the forces of Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Spirit when they unite behind the greatest power of all the power of Destiny. Book 6: Intrigues quote:When the masters of elemental magic-six extraordinary men and women-merge the primal forces they represent, the ultimate sorcerous union comes to be: The Blending. Lorand, Rion, Vallant, Tamrissa, Jovi . . . and Naran, possessor of the newly discovered prescient power of Sight, came together to wrest a beleaguered empire from the strangling grasp of treacherous nobles and to save it from the savagery of invading armies. Now it is the benevolent Six who reign, and the common people have found a voice at last. Book 7: Deceptions quote:In the empire of Gandistra, a mystical union of elemental magics reigns... Book 8: Destiny quote:The Six are stronger than the Five ... Let's list out the plot promises as per the 8 blurbs:
Leng posted:The cover and blurb is promising political intrigue culminating in some sort of awesome action sequence using magic to defeat Super Evil that will otherwise destroy the world. After reading all of the books, I have no idea what the "fearsome depravity that hungers for their world" is (Books 5 and 8 spoilers: it's the general concept of depraved people ruining their children creating an endless cycle of abuse, which is most definitely not the Super World Destroying Evil that was promised). These promises can be reduced to three main plot arcs:
Progress The most painful part of these books is the progress part. Plot #1: Tournament plot archetype (i.e. magical Olympics) This should have been the easiest thing to nail. In a tournament plot, there's a clearly specified method of determining the winner, either through:
Leng posted:Now is a good time to talk about how Green has messed up the stakes all round in her plotting of the magical challenges across the first two books before the big competition: We have no understanding of the overall structure as it's linked up to the corrupt regime plot line, there's inconsistencies in the books so that some events that are promised don't come to pass, and the protagonists themselves are discovering the next stage one after another so whenever they win something, we keep finding out that there's another thing, so as a reader you get the sensation of constantly moving goal posts. Plot #2: Mystery + Rebellion plot archetypes This should also have been easy to nail, especially since rule of the Empire is directly tied to winning the competitions. Green does muddy the waters with the reigning Blending being puppets for the nobility who are the true powers behind the throne and thus they have rigged the competition process to ensure that every winner can be easily manipulated. Unfortunately, that means instead of going with a straight forward rebellion archetype (generally goes along the lines of small incidence of rebellion -> gather support/a large army -> black ops to take out powerful players/control key locations -> final battle - as seen in Mockingjay and Mistborn: The Final Empire) we actually have a mystery plus conspiracy archetype (  -> find clues ->  -> do something with the knowledge gained - see also Mistborn: The Final Empire).Now obviously the two things can be combined, as Sanderson shows, but Green doesn't do this at all. Instead, the mystery plot takes up Books 1-3 with the characters being extremely passive the whole time and never doing any investigating - new information is always just dropped on their laps as a side effect of Plot #1. They also never do anything with the new information, they simply decide that the new information means they should just go along with Plot #1. That effectively means ZERO progress with the mystery being solved basically because the characters never participated in it and didn't overcome it (the game was rigged, they suspected it was rigged, then they were victims of the results of the rigged game). The failure of the mystery plot arc kicks off the rebellion arc. The main characters defeat several enemies easily (no tension), acquiring an army in the process, and then the hard part of drumming up a following/support is done through by a faction off screen which until that point in the story had been basically painted as an administrative function only, with the clumsiest of foreshadowing the first book to set this up. Ergo, the main characters make NO PROGRESS on this plot either, stuff is either too easy or it's one for them. Nothing feels earned. Finally, I think Green ran short on word count for the sequel trilogy because while the main characters are off gallivanting around a neighboring country doing the A plot (Plot #3 below), half of Books 6-8 is ANOTHER rebellion B plot with a bunch of new protagonists and antagonists (like some 15 new characters in all) who decide to take advantage of the main characters' absence. Plot #3: Defend the castle The opposite plot archetype to "Defeat the Dark Lord", progress involves surviving increasingly dangerous waves of enemy attacks until aid arrives/a daring plan succeeds or defeat (which then becomes about escaping and regaining lost territory). The relevant Sanderson example is Mistborn: The Well of Ascension, but the standout example for me was from Daughter of Blood by Helen Lowe. She has a Q&A on her website listing the specific battles she researched in order to write that sequence. Maybe historians or military people can pick out errors in her text, but for someone who has no idea, the sequence made me feel terrified the whole time I was reading it and I could not put it down. But let's assume we're not going for historical accuracy or alternative history feasibility - merely a satisfying story. How did Green approach this?
 the invaders are slaughtering everyone in sight!" and then "I did one magic trick and now the invaders are defeated".Payoff As someone who has read all 8 books, I can honestly say that the blurbs are technically accurate high level plot summaries so someone playing rules lawyer could argue Green DID deliver on her promises. But here's where I, as a reader, felt like there was no payoff:
What does this mean for the rewrite? Leng posted:I would map Books 1-3 roughly as Act I (they become the most powerful mages), Books 4-5 as Act 2 (they fight a bunch of battles and end a war) and Books 6-8 as Act 3 (political hijinks and a new external threat must be overcome to stabilize their reign) in terms of the overall story in this universe. When we get further into the books, I can discuss that in more detail, but for now I think I would use the materials and plot a new trilogy like this: Hard to judge length without having done the outline, but let's take a few proxies for a tournament plot archetype:
Leng fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Oct 16, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2020 14:31
|
|
how???" and the character who did it goes "yeah I don't know either I just did")
|
WORLDBUILDING: What has Green done? This is going to be a bit of a grab bag of a post due to the constraints of the project. The objective is to summarize everything we know about Green's setting. Since the scope of this project is limited to the first "get good at the magic" act, I'll only be drawing on the things in Green's Books 1-5. Relevant Sanderson lectures:
PHYSICAL Magic Most of this is from the books, though I am filling out some of the details where Green didn't give things a specific name or put them in a particular category. Elemental-based magic system
CULTURAL Nations Gandistran Empire
Things we don't really know anything about
...that's literally the extent of the worldbuilding Green has done. It's alarmingly short, considering that it's supposed to be 5 books' worth of material, though since the books should only have been 1/5th the length, we could take the length of Book 1 as a proxy (~180k words). As a point of comparison, Sanderson's Skyward outline has about 2,811 words addressing the setting for a book that's ~135k words. I've got a lot of blank details to fill in, but I'll probably do characters first, and then backfill the missing worldbuilding based on the character arcs. EDIT: Caught an ability for Spirit magic that I forgot about because Jovvi uses it once and then never again. Leng fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Oct 18, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2020 08:39
|
|
|
CHARACTERS: What has Green done? Relevant Sanderson lectures:
There are 3 things we can do to make people care about our characters:
Let's try and see how many we can answer for Green's characters. MAIN CHARACTERS Lorand Coll - a naive dreamer desperate to escape life as a poor dirt farmer in Widdertown (Earth magic)
SECONDARY CHARACTERS Camil Coll - Lorand's father (Earth magic)
ANTAGONISTS Eltrina Razas - a Lady of the nobility (Earth magic)
 These are caricatures, not characters.  I need to make them human.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2020 12:46
|
|
|
Thanks!  The hope is that even if the output isn't so great, at least I'll have learned a whole bunch about my process and developed some good habits.Technically the requirement is to write down something that vaguely resembles a story with at least 50k words, so I reckon we'll both be fine!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2020 11:20
|
|
|
PLANNING: Planning the plan We're now at the point where I've covered most of the useful stuff from Green's material. Whatever I haven't covered/summarized is not going to be critical to the project. From here on, I need to start making decisions about what I'm going to do for this story. #1: Days left between now and 1 November 2020 Days I can't do NaNoWriMo stuff:
We're going to call this done when I can post an outline that basically looks more or less like Sanderson's Skyward outline but in dot point form (i.e. the plot and character arcs haven't been combined yet). The plan is to use that outline document as my guiding star on writing days - i.e. I take a look at all of the bullet points I've got listed under character arcs and plot arcs, pick 3-4 points, smash out the chapter and then cross them off. In the past (and what I've done for the big project I'm stalled on) is I used index cards. Then the index cards got messy, and I had to throw out half of them and write new ones and rearrange them. Then I found it hard to keep track of which character was up to where in their arc and where their arc was even going, so I had to create a spreadsheet/matrix to plot it all out. It's actually driving me completely mental to the point where I now avoid both the index cards and the matrix and just sit here pulling my hair out because the last 25% isn't coming together. If Sanderson's method works for me, then the first thing I do after NaNoWriMo is going to be redoing my outline, then comparing it to what's already been written and figuring out what's missing. In order of priority:
#3: Scheduling writing time I'm planning on 2 writing days/week with a target word count of 6000-8000 words per writing day - that's the best I can do with my schedule. From past experience, I can do 1000-1500 words per hour if I know where I'm going, so this word count should be achievable in two 4 hour blocks each writing day. As a point of comparison, Sanderson writes roughly 8k-15k words/week. Guess this'll be good training! Currently planned writing days that I'm putting into my calendar right now - some days I've had to split the sessions a bit unevenly; others I've slotted in some additional time to make sure I don't fall behind the word count:
#4: Decide on the protagonist This will be no surprise to anyone who's been following the Let's Read: Lorand is gonna be our man for a few reasons:
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2020 12:55
|
|
Vallant, I'd rather not have to write from your POV just yet
|
PLANNING: List of all plotholes in Green's canon In order from the Let's Read thread - this will be a good internal consistency check to see if I've miscounted anything :Leng posted:PLOTHOLES: 39
At least some of them overlap and others will be made irrelevant by changes to the plotting.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2020 14:13
|
|
|
PLANNING: Main characters Relevant Sanderson lecture (guest lecture by Mary Robinette Kowal): Lecture #7: Short Stories Technically 50k words is a novel, but in SFF it's close enough to novella that I think using the short story framework is helpful. Also it's a hands-on lecture where you have to write a 250 word piece of flash fiction using the given prompt and applying the concepts she gives you. I highly, highly, highly recommend doing it! MICE Framework This framework recognizes 4 types of conflicts/story threads:
code:code:Apparently there's some sort of rule of thumb: pre:Length of story = (Number of characters + Stages) * 750 words * MICE threads
-----------------------------------------------------------
1.5If my main plot is the 25th year (Event) and my subplot is the conspiracy (Inquiry), then that last one must be Lorand's arc as the protagonist (Character) since I don't want really want to write 50k words about the journey from Widdertown to Gan Garee (Milieu). That said, I could also shuffle off that conspiracy plot into Rewrite Book 2, which might be a better fit since that is planned to be more relationship heavy anyway. In that scenario, I'd cut a character and add a MICE thread so all of Act I would be a travelogue (Milieu), Act II as "how do I qualify?" (Inquiry) and then Act III as an Event (individual competitions), with the whole story anchored by Lorand's journey from farmboy to powerful High practitioner. It just means that I'd end nesting the plot like this: code:Lorand Coll (Earth magic) Our protagonist. He's a farmboy born and bred in Widdertown, the second of six children. By tradition, the farm is passed down to the eldest. He used to be a dreamer, but when Lorand was ten, his older brother burned himself out defending the farm against raiders. With Mildon's death, the family struggled to survive on the farm, often needing to borrow money in order to continue sending Lorand and his younger siblings to the Guild-run school. In his Earth magic classes, Lorand displayed an innate talent for Healing, particularly for animals. He also spent a year learning about cures and rare poisons from a travelling herbalist. There was talk of sending him to the nearest city to be apprenticed to a proper physician–sponsored by the Guild–but his father Camil refused as Lorand's ability to Encourage crops was the only thing keeping them ahead of their debt payments. Since then, Lorand has dreamed of being able to save up enough silver to make up for his absence. He hopes to be able to get a physician's licence, find patronage from a local lord and clear the debt from the family farm. Talitha Riven (Earth magic) She's Lorand's best friend and the third of five children. Her father, Phor Riven, owns the neighboring farm. She grew up listening to stories from her maternal grandmother (an outsider who was never quite accepted by Widdertown folk due to her different beliefs). Unlike her siblings, Talitha looks a lot like her grandmother; as a result, she was often bullied and excluded as a child. Talitha has a vivid imagination and is known around town for her escapades. Most of the time, Lorand ends up taking the blame for the consequences of her ideas. Despite her strong Earth magic talent, her parents have been unable to find her a match, and no one is willing to take her as apprentice, thanks to her reputation for being flighty. Not that any of it matters to Talitha - she intends to leave Widdertown the day she comes of age. The only reason she hasn't left yet is because of her grandmother, who is dying from an illness no one recognizes. Delin Moord (Earth magic) Born into nobility, Delin is used to getting what he wants by virtue of his position, wealth, or charm. He spent the last three years at Regisard's most prestigious university and was recently expelled for misuse of talent. Thanks to his father's influence, he evaded a sentence to the Deep Caverns and an official note on his Guild record. Unfortunately, due to this incident, his father has refused to name him as successor on the grounds that his temperament and abilities are unsuitable. He's got a year to change his father's mind, otherwise he'll be disowned for good. ---------- What did I change and why? I haven't written much yet so it feels really weird to have such a long list already:
|
|
#
¿
Oct 19, 2020 14:39
|
|
|
PLANNING: Main plot and subplots Relevant Sanderson lecture: Lecture #3: Plot (Part 2) (if you want to just watch the bit where he talks about his method, jump to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgbsz7Gnrd8&t=2116s) My notes:
. This is how I end up getting to a point of being too afraid to write, because I'm just going to end up spending the whole day in that spiral. What's really appealing to me about Sanderson's method is how it works to reduce cognitive load. An outline feels doable because it can be broken down into components; and that in itself makes the actual writing feel achievable, because you end up with concrete targets for each chapter that sets some parameters around the characters that need to be in scene, what they're doing and where it's taking place.For the record, thinking about the ending is the part that intimidates me the most. I think it's because I'm like, "what would be an awesome ending? I have no idea". Who cares, the first draft of everything is terrible, let's just get something workable down and go with it. I also have no idea how many points I need in each section. Would 3 points per chapter be too many? I have no idea. I'm going to trust in the formula that if I have 4 MICE threads, it'll be enough to get me to 50k words. Character Plot: Lorand overcomes his fear of his own potential Oh boy, this one was the hardest, because all I had to go on from the canon was "Lorand's scared of burnout, but whenever he's put in a life or death situation, he gets over it because obviously it's about the same thing so he's got nothing to lose, and then Jovvi just fixes it so he never has to overcome the problem on his own".
Event Plot: The Competitions The first five books of Green's canon focused exclusively on magical strength and ability. There's not really a lot of clarity around how the magic system works or what advancement looks like so I'm going to be making up a lot of things. Not sure how I'm gonna go writing action scenes. Oh well, here goes:
Milieu Plot: Leaving Widdertown In the canon, Lorand is required by law to leave once the local Guild representative confirms he is a Middle practitioner. He's given the means because the Guild provides a coach ticket and a small purse. Green basically shoves Lorand out of Widdertown so fast that we barely get an idea of the place, though we're told over and over that it's "bucolic".
Relationship Plot: Lorand and Talitha I was so tempted to make these two friends with benefits as a nod to the source material and there wolf's suggestions in the Let's Read. This may still yet happen, though I'm gonna wait and see first. If I start having trouble hitting word count, then yeah, we're gonna go there.
Ok, that was hard. I've spent most of the day procrastinating on this and this is probably my third attempt at getting a coherent outline together. If you're curious, I actually plotted the sections out of order to how they're presented: Event, Milieu, Relationship and then Character. At one point I had Lorand and Talitha making their way to Gan Garee on foot until I figured out that I really didn't want to spend a third of the book traipsing around western Gandistra. I've written about ~1300 words of outline and the same bit from Sanderson's Skyward outline is about ~4200 words. Since Skyward is about 2.7 times as long as my 50k word count and I've used point form, hopefully this is about the right amount of story. There's 23 bullet points right now and I was planning on 16-20 chapters, so maybe I overestimated and 1-2 bullets per 3000-4000 word chapter is ok, or my chapters are gonna be longer than I planned. I guess we'll see what happens! Maybe I'll have to come back and mess around with the plot more later. Now that I know where we're going plot wise, I can loop back to characters. Delin will likely get demoted from main to secondary character, since the main conflict is coming from the competitions and then internally from Lorand. This is basically consistent with Green's canon, and there are a few other things mirrored as well. At this point, it's easier to point out the essence of what I've kept, rather than explaining what I've changed and why:
I feel like everything I've outlined is...adequate but I can't tell if what I'm doing is good or bad and I don't know how Green's themes of control are going to get worked in. Maybe that's just going to be something I keep in the back of my mind as I write by focusing on how characters are controlled and try to control others. This doesn't really surprise me though - I have found that I rarely approach storytelling by consciously thinking about themes; my themes tend to emerge during the writing process and only become obvious later. On that note, if you're reading along and you'd like to critique anything of the planning to date, go for it. You don't have to wait until I start publishing chapters to critique - in some ways if you have macro level critiques it's much better for me to get the feedback now rather than later!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2020 14:14
|
|
|
PLANNING: Map Since I finished all of the plot arcs yesterday, I decided I could indulge myself. In this post, we're going to take a detour from fiction writing and work on a lower priority but fun thing - a map! This has been on my wish list since the very beginning of the Let's Read: Leng posted:Possible fixes wizzardstaff posted:I don't know that a map is necessary since the entire series (or just the first series, I never read the final three) takes place almost entirely within Gan Garee. This was a weird wish list item for me, since when I normally read books, I don't pay much attention to maps. That's not to say I ignore them - I usually like to look at them before I start reading, admire how pretty they are, and then forget about it when I start reading. This is the case even when the author spends loads of time on hiring an illustrator to do a map, etc. Usually the author does a good enough job of conveying setting that I can still evoke the world in my mind without a map. Unfortunately, since the Blendingverse has a serious case of white room syndrome, I find myself missing the map and the tone it sets for the story. Sanderson relies on his art director to do all things art related, including maps, so I had to go elsewhere for guidance. I took a year's worth of drawing classes long ago and it was the standard landscapes, still life, etc stuff. These days, I mostly draw doodles for my daughter. Drawing is fun though, I would love to do more of it. Good landscapes, still life, cartoons and people are beyond my skill level, but I figured a simple stylized map would be doable. WASD20 has a great overview of things to keep in mind for creating believable fantasy maps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17NU-io9dmA) plus a more detailed series on how to draw one (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8DIL0O-i-mYmd-rt-xvy-MfvkGMvJf7). My first attempt (before I had watched any of the videos) broke most of the rules and had me wishing I had paid more attention in geography classes. Drawing the landmasses gave me the most trouble. The detailed tutorial suggests several methods for drawing landmasses and I went with the random fractal generator method (https://donjon.bin.sh/world/) and then just took two screenshots of things that I liked the look of (keeping in mind that I had to go for a fairly wide continent given the canon):  (I'm not really sure why but imgur keeps uploading the screenshot as a rotated view, sorry guys) I eyeballed and freehand copied it loosely using my stylus and the Bamboo Paper app (free version) on my iPad. The stylus I have is the Maglus Applydea (https://maglusstylus.com/product.php/2/Maglus_Stylus_with_Removable_Tip_System). I have no idea how they got all these testimonials from people saying it's great for drawing. In my opinion, it is not great for drawing. I spend just as much (if not more) time erasing lines that were drawn slightly off because it's really hard to tell where the stylus is making contact with the screen:  I couldn't do a lot of the fine lines that the tutorial was doing to detail the map, so I decided to color things in using the highlighter, since using the pencil results in a super dark shade and I only have 9 colors to choose from. In Bamboo Paper, the highlighter is just a wide (wider, widest) brush with opacity turned way down. This means to get a consistent color, you need to keep the stylus on the screen down for the entire time you're shading an area, otherwise you start getting multiple layers. Bamboo Paper not being the best drawing app and the Maglus not being the best drawing stylus, I screwed up while filling in the ocean:  (yep, stylus lost contact with the screen when I was filling in the northwest corner and now I'm screwed - I'm gonna get weird overlapping layers of color now instead of one consistent color) Tried to "fix it in post" by copying/pasting squares of blue in Preview (because I don't have Photoshop or GIMP installed):  I had drawn individual tree symbols like the tutorial but couldn't do it at the small scale required with my stylus (since you can't zoom in on Bamboo Paper). I was hoping I could fix it by just copy/pasting my forests in Preview but it did not look good. Ugh. Revert to the untampered version and keep going. I'll just pretend I meant to progressively shade the ocean from the landmass, even if that technically means it looks weird since I'm fairly certain that the ocean becomes DARKER to the naked eye the further away you get from the landmasses. By this point, I've spent at least two hours on this so let's forge on and add: mountain ranges, rivers, a lake, forests, one swamp, two hillly areas, fill out everywhere else with grassland, mark the important named locations that we know of (despite a good handful of viewpoint chapters in Astinda, Green never got around to naming any of the places (they're all referred to as "the work area", a "town", a "house" and an "office") and draw a really basic compass rose. The text I had to type in Preview (the font is Trattatello if anyone is curious). And we have a map! Green had so little information in her books that I decided I could do basically whatever I wanted, including putting Gan Garee on an island in the middle of the continent's only lake. I'm not sure whether I should have drawn in lines to indicate the borders between the different nations, but I figured it'd be apparent enough based on the mountain ranges.  That was about 3-4 hours of work though I'm fairly certain half of that time was me battling my stylus and the drawing app. I didn't bother with other decorations and things, nor did I try to figure out a scale because it's not really going to be that relevant to the story. Maybe this will come to bite me later, but this is the one instance where I'm going to permit myself to handwave stuff with "because magic". Now I'm pretty excited about fleshing out the rest of the setting details. Factions will most likely be next so I can figure out the politics before circling back to secondary characters. I'll leave history to last since most of that will just be a backdrop and likely won't make it into the actual text (it'll just inform how I write the characters).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 21, 2020 14:23
|
|
|
PLANNING: Factions I have very little interest in real world politics so I find it surprising that when I read fantasy, I really enjoy seeing political intrigue that's well done. It must be something to do with strong character motivations, the mystery of figuring out what those motivations are and the subtext involved. Stuff I like:
Relevant Sanderson lectures - same as characters, since factions are composed of and run by characters so for all intents and purposes, they're like super-characters: Leng posted:
Green actually had 9 factions within Gandistra, none of which were very fleshed out. 9 is too many for a 50k novel, so I'm going to group some and then zoom in on a few. Most factions will just be background color and–as far as Lorand is concerned–are a homogenous group. If/when I do the follow on Rewritten Book 2, the worldbuilding on factions will get expanded to suit the conspiracy plot. The Seated Blending on the Fivefold Throne (the monarchs)
Adepts (effectively heads of the royal guard/army generals)
The Advisory Board/Nobility (basically stewards)
The Guild (a weird bureaucracy of priests, career advisors, recruiters and trackers)
It's past midnight and I no longer know if any of this makes sense. There's gonna be some cross jurisdictional problems for sure which makes for an inefficient government but interesting conflicts so I guess that's good for the purposes of writing fiction? EDIT: wow yeah reading over this the next day I clearly left incomplete sentences and stuff and also didn't type in stuff I was thinking. Fixed now, hopefully! Leng fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Oct 23, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2020 14:21
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:I don't remember if this comes up in the series, but what happens to people born with the "Guild talent" who don't want to join the Guild? I remember that (fifth book) some people with Sight magic are passed off as Guild members but this is kind of the reverse. Excellent question - I believe it's never actually covered in the series! Though spoilers for the second series which I think you haven't read: the High Master's 2IC goes rogue and takes a bunch of Guild people with them. They get hunted down and executed, basically. On your spoilered bit the Sight magic people were actually hidden in the communities for defective nulls, people who were born without talent, since the Guild never learned to recognize Sight magic and only begin learning that recognition in Book 6. I have some plans for the implications of the cultural shifts resulting from the acceptance of Spirit magic! These are great questions/ideas and I hope you'll be pleased when I figure out the history bit, which will mainly be filling in the backstory of how they went from a ruling Fourfold Blending to a ruling Fivefold Blending. Mostly more important for me to know when writing characters, descriptions and dialogue, rather than featuring front and centre in the story. Sitting Here posted:Skipping ahead (I just opened this thread) to say: I love this thread! What an excellent idea, and great comprehensive posts Thank you! I hope I can do the idea justice when writing time starts.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2020 06:31
|
|
|
PLANNING: Secondary characters Now that we know a bit more about our factions, we can figure out the secondary characters in this final planning post on character related stuff! Once again, these are the relevant Sanderson lectures: Leng posted:
Let's start with Delin, who has been demoted from main character to a secondary character. Edits to the earlier bit underlined or struck out, now that I know what I'm doing with factions. Leng posted:Delin Moord (Earth magic) Solthia Noll (Spirit magic) At fourteen, Solthia is a prodigy of Spirit magic–just like her common born mother Bensia who narrowly missed out on a place in the last round of competitions. The daughter of Lord Sembrin Noll (chief secretary to his brother, Spirit Advisor High Lord Ephaim Noll) is the pride of House Noll, pre-eminent amongst all noble houses, and their hope for a Noll seated on the Fivefold Throne. Now that Solthia is about to come of age, old and scandalous rumors about the circumstances of her parents' marriage are the talk of Gan Garee again. And after twenty years of playing dutiful wife and mother, it might be Bensia who's ready for a second chance at being the Seated High in Spirit magic. Camil Coll (Earth magic) Lorand's father and a family man. Camil is a potential Middle who never took the exams. He has a strong talent in Persuasion but his skill in Encouragement is so weak that Low talents with an affinity for Encouragement can do better. His dream was to explore the Gandistran Empire, by running a travelling menagerie of exotic performing animals. As the youngest, Camil was never meant to inherit the farm, however his elder brother and sister had such strong High potential that the Guild sent them to Gan Garee, and they both became High practitioners. Things were good for a few years and Camil got to travel around with his menagerie–he almost made it as far as Haven Wraithside–until the elder Coll siblings died defending the border against Astindan marauders thirty years back. Camil gave up his Bonded animals, and returned to Widdertown to run the farm and look after his aging parents (as was his duty). He married his wife mainly because she was a local girl with a strong skill in Encouragement to keep the farm going. Lots of late night heavy drinking (when he thinks his wife and children are asleep), resigned to never being able to leave Widdertown again. Grami Riven Talitha's maternal grandmother. She's an outcast from Astinda who somehow survived the climb through Ofgin's Teeth–alone, in winter–and found refuge and love at one of the smaller farms in Widdertown. Her eldest daughter inherited the farm while her younger children sought their fortunes elsewhere in the Empire. When her eldest daughter married Phor Riven, their farm became part of the larger Riven farm. Her eldest daughter died in childbirth and now she lives with her son-in-law Phor Riven and her grandchildren. With her husband and eldest dead, and other children gone, no one left in Widdertown remembers her real name. Most people call her Grami Riven (even though she's no Riven by blood or marriage) and think she's an eccentric recluse due to her worship of the Fates rather than the Prime Aspect. Elmin Ofgin (Earth magic) A member of the Seated Blending, one of the rulers seated on the Fivefold Throne. Their battle with the previous Seated Blending on the Fourfold Throne was just the first legend in a body of mythology. It is rumoured that the unnaturally long and youthful lifespan of the Seated Blending was due to his talent–according to Guild records, all members of the current Seated Blending have at least a century of years, yet they appear no older than four or five decades at most. Elmin’s strength in Earth magic is second to none, proven not just in the arena every quarter-century but every few years whenever the Astindans grow bold and come raiding at the western border. The small mountain range between Astinda and the western border of Gandistra (about a day’s travel by foot from Widdertown) is known in Gandistra as Ofgin's Teeth as they were supposedly created by Elmin's power–the few historical accounts from that time period and some academic treatises assert Elmin and his Blendingmates worked as Blending to augment the pre-existing terrain. Adept Hestir (Earth magic) Known as Elmin Ofgin's Shadow, first amongst the five Earth magic Adepts. Despite only being in her fourth decade, she's a battle-scarred veteran of two wars–one fought by Elmin's side and one against him, as a member of an Astindan Blending. People in Gan Garee learned long ago to keep their thoughts about her ultimate loyalties and her exact relationship with the Seated High in Earth magic buried so deep that a High in Spirit magic couldn't dig it out of their minds. Hestir is rarely seen in Gan Garee, as she and her group of elite Highs spend most of the year travelling around the Empire to carry out the will of their Seated High. Occasionally, a group of particularly promising Highs in training are permitted to join Hestir's band. Master Lugal (Guild member for Widdertown) A former High Master, Lugal took an early retirement of sorts to Widdertown twenty-five years ago, after thirty years of loyal service in Gan Garee. While he no longer leads the Guild, he is still held in high respect by Adepts, other Masters and the Seated Blending. Most of his time is spent running the Widdertown school, teaching children aged five through fifteen about the Prime Aspect, history, geography and basic magical theory. ---------- Who did I pick and why? Green's got pretty bad character sprawl for very little story across all 8 books so I had many options. I chose keeping in mind that I wanted to keep the focus on Lorand as the main protagonist, I didn't want to complicate his character arc by having to introduce the other four main characters of the series as a whole, and I wanted variety from the perspectives what we've already got in Lorand and Talitha. That meant picking at least 1 character from each faction and then using my remaining secondary character slots to round out the cast. This is the order I fleshed out the characters in:
Bonus content! At the beginning of this year, before I was even thinking of doing the Let's Read thread, I had set a personal resolution to 1) get better as a writer and 2) do NaNoWriMo this year. I had an original story I wanted to attempt for NaNoWriMo but wanted more practice so I decided I'd start a lazy rewrite of The Blending. This meant using Green's prose as a starting point and trying to improve it by cutting stuff, filling in details, attempting characterization, etc. Because Green's story was so crap, it soon morphed beyond that and I was moving plot elements around, introducing new plot elements and characters of my own, etc. I got as far as a new prologue and halfway through chapter 5 from a Lorand POV narrative (he's fought the fireball, left Widdertown, arrived in Gan Garee, passed the initial test, met Jovvi and then got sent off to do some training with Tamrissa and Vallant) before I stalled and realized I didn't know where the story was going now that I had changed so much stuff. Yeah, a discovery writer I am not. Then life got busy until August came around and I started the Let's Read thread, and here we are now! There's only one more planning post to do (and I think it will be a big one, since it's going to be history and I'm not exactly sure what I'll cover in that) but I won't get to it for a few days with the weekend. So I thought it might be fun to give you guys some bonus content ahead of NaNoWriMo. Elmin and Hestir were effectively new characters that I created in this world as part of my lazy rewrite at the beginning of this year. You can see the seeds of the ideas in the outlining I've now done in this thread: Leng posted:While my version of Chapter 1 stuck pretty close to Green's original sequence of events. From Chapter 2, I made more changes: In both examples, you can see small remains of Green's prose mixed in with new additions of my own. These chapters were written back in...late January and had 1-2 passes of a self-edit, so it's a good indicator of the quality of writing you'll get from me come November. Feel free if you'd like to offer critique, though don't feel obliged to, since neither of these scenes will reappear as they are. Bonus Content #1: Introduction to Elmin Ofgin Lazy Rewrite Chapter 2 (2557 words): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VPSrl7WIF6TSDuhYCF4aHfr2WjWpO-atsMZ5wyz_YF4/edit?usp=sharing (corresponds to the first half of Canon Book 1 Chapter 6: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3935822&userid=96871#post507328417) Bonus Content #2: Introduction to Adept Hestir Lazy Rewrite Chapter 3 (2943 words): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YztZUWA3x-w_XWFmYw2SP7NBoWzhQGA-I6CcgqrlyA4/edit?usp=sharing (corresponds to the second half of Canon Book 1 Chapter 6: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3935822&userid=96871#post507328417 and Chapter 14: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3935822&userid=96871#post507619123)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2020 15:08
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:I'm really hoping to see you salvage Talitha. Just from the outline she sounds a great deal more sympathetic and reasonable. Hat's whole arc in the originals is only really justified by him being so transparently stupid and entitled that he kind of deserves the karma. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm missing a few points in the Lorand/Talitha relationship plot arc, but I can't put my finger on exactly what. It's going to be one of those things that I'll only figure out when I start writing!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 00:21
|
|
|
PLANNING: History This is our last big planning post before NaNoWriMo starts! Most of what goes in here won't directly appear in the narrative; it's more for me to know and keep in mind while writing description and dialogue. We're back in worldbuilding so these are the relevant Sanderson lectures: Leng posted:
Green didn't leave me a whole heap to go off in her canon: Leng posted:Book 1 opens with a prologue. That's all I've got to work with. Let's see how I go constructing a very abbreviated history of the world as it applies to the continent of Gandistra. Creation Myth TheGreatEvilKing posted:This is where things get really weird for me. There's a Prophecy that no one questions per Tamrissa and her desperate attempt to mimic a Joss Whedon protagonist, and all we're given is that no one knows where it came from or that no one ever bothered to question it despite it being the foundation of the ancient laws set down by Ray, Lamb, Of Gin, and Failing. Generally prophecies in mythology are tied to the gods somehow such as the Fates or the Norns or Apollo or who have you, but there doesn't seem to be a creation myth around who created the sun. We get some yammering about "Chaos" later, but the idea that some random human created the sun is really weird - especially considering that this is a bog-standard uncreative "farm boy hates farming and wants to be a wizard" and our stereotypical accented farm dad isn't religious at all. Leng posted:What you have hit upon is the real missing element in the world building is religion. It is never mentioned at all in the books so I'm forced to conclude that there is no such thing in this universe, which is really weird, given that every human society ever has had some form of religion/creation myth. (as taught by The Guild) Long ago, the Prime Aspect carved our realm of existence from power, infusing our world with ordered manifestations of its aspects and holding back the void of Chaos in a perfect balance of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Yet as the inhabitants of the world moved without thought, according to their aspect, they were vulnerable to the insidious touch of Chaos. The Fates–in knowledge of all that was, that is and that will be–gave a portion of power unto the Prime Aspect, which did endow us each with our own Spirit. Now Chaos did, in its eternal quest to return all of the Prime Aspect's creations to the void, seed its own disorder into that power and thus our realm. So it is that the Spirit of all humankind, children of the Prime Aspect, returns first to the void before our bodies return to the Prime Aspect, each one having lived their life according to the Fates. So closely woven was the Chaos power that it could not be separated out from creation. Thus the Prime Aspect did sacrifice, dividing its own powers amongst humankind, blessing us with talent according to our Fates. And so each of us carries within ourselves a portion of the Prime Aspect, given to us to fight and control the hidden Chaos power within. Gandistran Empire Origins
The Fourfold Reign
The First Fivefold Blending
The Fivefold Reign
---------- And with that, I think that's the bulk of the outlining work done. I'm not really a history student, so who knows how many unrealistic details are in there, but fingers crossed that it kind of makes enough sense to pass as internally consistent. You can see how I've pulled some of the ideas Green used in her canon into the history (mostly the bits that I think are too hard to tackle in a 50k word rewrite). From here, I'm going to do a look back at all of the outlining thus far and do a tidy up of any plotholes either from canon or newly created. The last thing I'll probably attempt in my planning is a chapter breakdown by plot point - and it will be very interesting to see how closely I stick to that as I write and if/when I'll diverge from it. EDIT: caught a typo! Leng fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Oct 27, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 07:26
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:I feel like if you do go the FBW route you can short circuit the tedious epoch of 'Lorand is a prude' that happens in Gan Garee. Maybe still keep the tension by not having him quite know where he stands and feel guilty about it, and resolve that when Talitha shows back up in a way that gives him closure and leaves them both more developed? Yep, that's exactly the draw of putting in the FWB angle though I'm uncertain as to whether I need it for word count (and if so, whether it should already be an established part of their relationship or whether it should be developed as part of the plot) and whether it would be better to keep it in the theoretical Rewritten Book 2 which would focus on forming a Blending and fighting other Blendings. Though on further consideration, I'm not even sure that the FWB angle even needs to be there to hit Lorand's hangups. One thing I've been keeping in my back pocket is having Lorand find out Talitha decided to stay in Gan Garee and work for Jovvi, instead of going home to Widdertown. Talitha's justification would be that she needs the money to pay a High practitioner to travel all the way there to heal her grandmother, and being a courtesan is the fastest and most lucrative method left now that she's failed her High exams. That gives Lorand plenty of scope to put foot in mouth by being "no woman of good repute would do this" judgemental, etc in the way that recalls how other Widdertown kids used to judge Talitha in the past for how she looked, etc. Assuming this all happens by way of Lorand partaking in a drunken "woo, we all passed the High exams, now let's go get blind drunk and get laid" outing, I could even keep the spirit of the only decent sequence (the tavern visit) in canon Book 1 and give Jovvi, Rion and Naran cameos. I'll get a better sense when I do the chapter breakdown which
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 12:13
|
|
|
PLANNING: Canon plothole check With the heavy worldbuilding done, it's time to go back and close off the remaining plotholes from canon Book 1! Type of fix is noted in italics. Leng posted:1. How did people not apply basic logic and just try every single permutation possible for a Blending? (Book 1, Chapter 1) Two or more magic users can link by reaching out to each other with the power. Any combination of aspects is possible. Each aspect brings a unique advantage to linking. For example, Spirit magic grants the link the ability to communicate mind to mind, greatly enhancing the link's ability to function as a cohesive unit. Physical and emotional intimacy increases the strength a link between two people. A link is only formed when every person in the link is connected to every other person. Linking beyond six people is not done as past experiments have shown multiple link groups of smaller numbers outperform a larger link group with the same number of people. This is because the number of connections in the link grows at an increasing rate with each additional person. Linked magic users join together in a collective out-of-body shared consciousness that exists only for the duration of the link. That means while the link can act using the pooled magical talents, the bodies of the linked users are left vulnerable. Therefore, there are many situations where it is more advantageous to have practitioners functioning as individuals rather than link groups. Individual strength of will determines the extent to which a given magic user can direct the shared consciousness. Strong-willed individuals will be able to proportionally direct more of the link. Conflicting desires will result in the shared consciousness either doing nothing (mild to moderate disagreement) or dissolving (strong disagreement), which is dangerous in most situations that require linking (magical tasks that require great strength/concentration/skill). Therefore, a link is usually comprised of three or five people for maximum effectiveness (since the uneven numbers generally prevent a stalemate from occurring), though two-person links are also common, so long as there is agreement in advance on who will direct the link. Four or six person links are also possible, but the people involved must be very practiced at functioning as a single unit. Blending begins with linking but has a number of additional steps which cause the bonds within the link group to become permanent. Leng posted:3. Magical talent is basically equivalent to any other ability (e.g. artistic, athletic, etc), so why would the entire population be tested for their level of ability especially if Guild talents can rate them just by sensing them? And why would there be a belief that "there are only so many positions as High awarded"? A High practitioner is a descriptor of how strong someone's ability is, not a position. (Book 1, Chapter 3) Testing requires demonstration of both theoretical knowledge as well as practical application, rather than just raw magical strength. There's no limitation on the number of High practitioners; in fact the Empire can't get enough of them. The economic incentives to become a High practitioner are very strong. Housing demand from applicants is constant as testing happens all year around. High applicants normally live at the Gan Garee Guild House, unless they are exceedingly rich or well connected in which case they might make other arrangements, like live in their family's townhouse in the city or stay at a very exclusive inn. Everyone is assigned a Guild identifier at age five, when they become old enough to be counted as part of the Guild's annual census. Leng posted:9. Inconsistency between whether a Fire magic user needs to be running their flames over an object to sense it (Book 1, Chapter 11) Yes. If a Fire magic user is not actively using their talent to affect something, they get to rely on their eyes and other physical senses, like every other non-Earth magic talent. Leng posted:10. Does Gan Garee have mixed bathing customs or not?! (Book 1, Chapter 11) Varies according to which of the four original territories people are from. Mixed bathing is common practice in the north (where it's cold and therefore centrally heated communal bathing pools are the norm) and south (where it's tropical and people spend most of the year swimming in rivers/the ocean) but rare in the west (where families tend to bathe together but not whole communities) and frowned upon in the east (where traditionally men and women bathe separately). Gan Garee itself being a melting pot, private residences are designed according to each owner's taste while inns typically have a small communal mixed bathing pool with a number of private bathing stalls to cater. More exclusive inns eschew communal bathing facilities altogether and have in room bathing stalls. Leng posted:11. Can Water magic teleport water/ice or not?! Is direct line of sight required? Does being inside limit range? (Book 1, Chapter 12) No, they're not teleporting the water but they are grabbing it at such high speed that it seems like they are. Direct line of sight is not required, so long as the water has an unobstructed pathway between the source and the target. So being indoors with all windows and doors shut would mean Vallant can't pull ice down from the clouds, but if he wanted to, he could try and shove a thundercloud over the next town and cause it to rain on a street corner (though his chances of hitting a specific street corner as opposed to an area that's about the size of a street corner is very slim as the further away he goes, the lower his degree of accuracy). He can't evaporate water though, so if he decides to kill someone by desiccating them, he'll have to do something with the resultant water (near instantaneously returning it to the clouds if he's outdoors is the easiest). Leng posted:12. What exactly are the laws regarding the use of magic, High practitioners, applicants and the competitions? (Book 1, Chapter 12) No restrictions on use of magic, other than use of magic to facilitate a crime. Given the Four's abuse of Puredan, there was a fundamental law passed by the Five requiring uncoerced consent for arrangements, results or information to be legally valid (applies to everything ranging from employment, marriage, property laws, etc). The only exceptions are for prisoners of war (status must be determined by the Five) or individuals who do not have the mental capacity to give consent (e.g. people who are burned out). Forcing consent is considered to be a crime. That means mind control by Spirit magic users (or by use of Puredan) is outlawed, though mind reading or affecting emotions is not (though deep mind reads and strong tampering with emotions without informed consent is socially frowned upon). Use of elemental talents in a way that has the potential to result in serious injury or death to another person is also outlawed. There are exceptions for Highs in training under the supervision of an Adept, High practitioners acting in the course of their assigned duties to the Empire and challengers for the Seated Blending during competition activities. Leng posted:13. Why are "flawed potential Highs" bad and how are they different from Middles? (Book 1, Chapter 16) Low, Middle and High are arbitrary levels of accomplishment set by the Seated Blending. Leng posted:14. Why doesn't the corrupt nobility just drug everyone of Middle strength and higher? (Book 1, Chapter 16) The Seated Four did this and it was very bad. Leng posted:15. How big is the Gandistran Empire? (Book 1, Chapter 16) Handwaving this "because magic". Leng posted:16. What is the rough distribution of aspect and strength in the population? (Book 1, Chapter 16) Elemental talent makes up about 85% of the population. Thanks to the efforts of the Five, Spirit magic is about 6% of the population and increasing. Per Guild records, about 2-3% of five year olds are classified as nulls in each annual census. The rest (about 5% or so) are born as Guild talents. Leng posted:17. What exactly is the technique that an "ordinary talent" (read: Low) can use to neutralize an opponent to a certain extent before a fight turns physical? (Book 1, Chapter 23) Let's just call this Vallant being imprecise. There's any number of ways any of the aspects can neutralize or eliminate someone via use of talent. Leng posted:18. If it's unheard of for a High to be condemned, why would the penalty for trying to escape the tests still apply? (Book 1, Chapter 23) The tests are voluntary now. Leng posted:19. What constitutes "acting together" for the purposes of the anti-Blending law? (Book 1, Chapter 23) No anti-Blending law preventing different aspects working in concert; knowledge of how to Blend is still a secret though. Leng posted:20. Are Highs regarded as "a misbegotten plague" or incredible wealth, power, prestige and duty to the Empire? (Book 1, Chapter 27) The latter. Leng posted:21. Why do they all get "the speech" from their Adepts about getting used to using their talents to harm others when Tamrissa was told off for it during her initial test? (Book 1, Chapter 28) The tests for High are totally different from canon now. Leng posted:24. How exactly does "facility with one part of the aspect" translate "into facility with the others"? (Book 1, Chapter 36) It doesn't. Each aspect has four different abilities and it is normal for people to only be skilled in one of them. A strong skill in more than one area indicates Middle or High potential. Leng posted:28. How are people socially conditioned to accept that using their ability to affect other people is disgusting and absolutely forbidden? (Book 1, Chapter 40) The Counsellors who betrayed the Seated Four did this and were executed for it. It then became embedded within the cultural norms. Leng posted:29. If Rion has heard of people who were awarded High positions, how does he have no clue how this impacts the The testing process and competitions are completely different from canon now. Leng posted:32. How does Eltrina know so much about what's involved with Blending when it's top secret? (Book 1, Chapter 44) The only people who know are the Seated Five. After the Five defeated the Four in the first competitions, they reverted to the second and third competitions being individual challenges rather than a challenge as a Blending. Former High Master Lugal knows of the riddle but the Five never told him the solution or what the riddle's purpose was. There was only one copy of that particular Guild record, which Lugal gave to the Five, and it was destroyed in their battle against the Four. Lugal himself doesn't remember the words of the riddle. Leng posted:39. If Fire and Water can feel things through their elements, does this mean Air magic users can just feel everyone and everything within range? What is the standard Air magic range anyway? (Book 2, Chapter 5) Air magic can only feel things in contact with the parts of the air they are actively manipulating. Calling wind means they can feel everything the wind is blowing across, while using hardened air means they can only feel things in direct contact with the hardened air. All talents can affect things at range, but Water magic has the greatest practical direct range (they can reach ice/water in the clouds so 6 km/20000 feet). The practical direct range of Air and Fire magic about a quarter of that (1500m/5000 feet), while the practical direct range of Earth and Spirit magic is about a quarter of that again (400m/1300 feet). Inverse square law applies to accuracy and intensity of the ranged affect.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 15:06
|
|
|
PLANNING: Plotting sense check Since Liquid Communism likes the adjustment to the relationship plot, I'm going to add it in (additions bolded and deletions Leng posted:Relationship Plot: Lorand and Talitha Today I spent a few hours reviewing everything outlined and compiling it all into a single document for ease of reference while writing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QpKU-26lwtjR8gY9gjZqHEzjtrRNysU8qxtsLjD_444/edit?usp=sharing (copy/paste from existing thread content, just organized a bit better) During the process, it hit me that the missing piece wasn't necessarily specific to the Lorand/Talitha relationship plot, though the extra additions certainly made it stronger. Effectively, the story in Rewritten Book 1 is: "A young man leaves home to become a powerful magician in an attempt to save his family’s farm from being seized by a corrupt agent of the nobility. He discovers that the seeds of corruption are widespread across the Empire and vows to change that by becoming part of the next Seated Blending." The problem is that second sentence isn't really reflected in the plotting because I'm missing a freaking third act to the story! It's just sitting there, hiding as the last bullet point under whole "Competitions" stuff (which is not really the most accurate description of the plot): Leng posted:Event Plot: Alright, so let's pull that last bullet out as its own arc and flesh out more detail. We'll make it a short one to tie it in with the history and follow the cardinal rule of storytelling by choosing interesting moments that are not normal: Event Plot: The Competitions
What I'm conflicted on now is whether Talitha gets through to the competitions herself, or whether I seed some sort of sacrifice from her into the relationship plot, and if so, how serious that sacrifice should be. Possibilities:
Tomorrow is my last day of planning so it's definitely going to be chapter breakdowns. Eeeesh, I'm not looking forward to it because I am having a weird fear of "locking in" decisions that I think I might regret later but I know from experience if I don't I'll be extending outlining into writing time and I don't want to do that. If I only get through doing 10 chapter breakdowns instead of all 20, then so be it, at least the first 10 chapters will be easier to write. I can always spend the time I've allocated to editing to doing any breakdowns that I don't get to tomorrow.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2020 06:49
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:Maybe run with the reconciliation but to keep it in line with her base characterization it's because Talitha was mostly just looking for an easy, privileged life and has it now that she's not saving up for her Grammi's health? Being an actual High would be work, and duty, and all those other tedious things that mean others can make demands of you, while being a high-end courtesan is a lot more fun, at least in the near term. That's an excellent point. Not every character needs to be all fired up about saving the Empire and that means we could close off her arc neatly here!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 29, 2020 05:32
|
|
|
PLANNING: Chapter breakdowns This is the part in my process where I throw my hands up in despair. All my ideas are unoriginal and suck, yada yada yada. I have issues with writing endings. Whenever I get to that break into three, my brain always yells at me to give up because it sucks, everything sucks and I should toss it all out and start over. There's something not right with how the Highs in training part sits relative to the competitions bit. I have a feeling it's to do with the promise/progress/payoff relationship. At a guess, maybe the error is in sticking too close to Green's canon. One of the worst things about the original books is how bloody unwilling the protagonists are to DO anything. Having just finished rereading Sanderson's Words of Radiance, what I really noticed this time around was how character driven all of his plot is. Even when his characters are wrestling with something, stuff happens. All events, big and small, in the plot happen because the characters are actively making choices that lead to those events. There's nothing that just happens because Sanderson is moving around characters like chess pieces; his characters have strong motivations, problematic obstacles and are trying different things in order to achieve their goals. So the question that needs to be answered is: in Green's canon, the only two protagonists who even wanted anything to do with the competitions were Tamrissa (self-preservation) and Lorand (because he thinks it beats being a nobody hick farmer). They never run into any problems, because they're just the bestest and strongest talents ever. The rest of the main cast would much rather be going about their own lives and short of imminent disaster resulting in upheaval of said lives, wouldn't go anywhere near the competitions. Hrmm...alright so the answer is, we need to have some sort of imminent disaster resulting in upheaval of said lives. That would be required in order to go straight into the competitions stuff and have that be convincing. But that would mean the book would need to focus wholly on that so the competitions are firmly in Rewritten Book 2 territory. So what does that mean for Rewritten Book 1? I think I need to scale back the story, and not address so much of the world. Lorand basically wants to save his farm. There needs to be some obstacles in the way. Having him just diligently work away at being a High doesn't count. We need Delin to step it up as an antagonist. Alright, let's see what we can do: Relationship plot: Lorand and Delin rivalry
The other thing that occurred to me is the qualifying round as I had it feels more exciting than whatever the High exam is, and I have no idea what that training sequence looks like. It feels weird to have a training sequence after some sort of qualification round. This is another place where I've probably stuck too close to Green's canon. Being confirmed as a Middle should immediately qualify you for acceptance into the High training program, which should have an exam at the end of it. It doesn't make sense in any other way. Let's try swapping it around: Leng posted:Event Plot: At any rate, I'm kind of  with this chapter breakdown. It seems like my brain just doesn't work this way. I just end up questioning my own sanity and it does no good. Maybe I'm more of a discovery writer than I thought. Huh. Anyway, a chapter breakdown of sorts was attempted:Chapter 1: Widdertown, near Gandistra’s western border with Astinda Lorand is a precocious showoff Talitha’s great at getting into trouble Mildon is idolized by Lorand People think Grami Riven is weird Mildon’s burnout Saved by Elmin? Or Hestir? Chapter 2: Testing for Middle Talitha’s absence from the exam room Lorand working his way through the exam Practical exam–Talitha’s skill with Decay, Lorand’s skill with Healing Lorand’s scholarship, Camil’s refusal Chapter 3: A ticket out of Widdertown Saving money over the summer with a traveling herbalist Grami Riven’s sickness The audit Convincing Lugal to let him tag along with Talitha Lugal sends along a letter Chapter 4: Gan Garee Registering for training Exploring the Guild House Delin and Solthia make an appearance Rion cameo? Exploring Gan Garee Jovvi cameo Chapter 5: Training–overview of their schedule Group training on universal abilities Aspect specific training Combat training Chapter 6: Slice of life Talitha’s in theoretical lectures and hating it Solthia’s doing well, but subdued Lorand is embarrassed Talitha and Solthia go out, they invite Lorand but he says no Lorand writes a letter home Chapter 7: Specialized training–Healing clinic Meets Driffin, who is very impressed by Lorand, asks if he wants to earn extra silver in additional after hours shifts He finds out as much as possible about Grami’s illness Talitha’s spending a lot of late nights away from the Guild House Chapter 8: Specialized training–excursion to the western border? Deep Caverns? Lorand hates it There’s an accident of some sort; he saves Delin’s life Chapter 9: High exam–first attempt Magical spectacle! It’s a crazy maze Talitha passes Lorand fails Chapter 10: Return to Widdertown Discovers Delin’s done something to the agent Lorand visits Grami Riven, heals her, discovers Talitha’s not here Conversation with Lugal/his father/Elmin/Hestir? Chapter 11: Qualifying–Lorand’s last attempt Overcomes his fear of burnout Finally passes Runs into Solthia instead; they have a deep and meaningful conversation Turns out Talitha’s a working girl at Jovvi’s exclusive high end pleasure house! Massive, massive fight Chapter 12: Confrontation with Delin Set up next book for competitions Uggggghhh how do I plot good ahhhhhhh there's no more planning time life send help for next week when writing begins. This is not the 16-20 chapters I had in mind, but that only matters if each chapter's significantly shorter, like 2500 words short. Maybe I can do longer chapters. Or throw in a prologue. Or something. I don't know. Suddenly 50k words seems like a lot.Whhhhhhy why why why why did I think this was a good idea? Everything is terrible and I am terrible.  I hope at least you guys will get some amusement out of this, starting from next week.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2020 06:45
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:You can do it! Think of us as little spiders and birds, cheering you on from a distance. You Knight in Shining Aspect you, this is the best reference. Enchanted Hat posted:Looking at the chapter breakdown set out like that, I'd say that if anything, it looks like you have more stuff outlined than you strictly need! This is good to know! It helps hearing this from someone who's done it before, as I find it really hard to judge length. So I am not meant to start writing until tomorrow according to my own schedule but I'm getting super antsy about it so what the hell, I found a few hours this morning, let's see if I can knock out Chapter 1.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2020 20:56
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER ONE (5970 words) Day 0 (2/11/2020): I cheated and wrote 2213 words yesterday, and I'm glad I did. Day 1 (3/11/2020): 3757 words to close off the chapter. Phew. I wasn't sure I would make it. This is what I planned to write: Leng posted:Chapter 1: Widdertown, near Gandistra’s western border with Astinda It turns out that I edit a lot as I write, so this is a pretty clean first draft. I think I hit everything, more or less: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KealOvbVTAQnlYEkjPeQ7Ysf3CkLgH_xM0_YPDtM_e0/edit?usp=sharing (I apologize in advance to anyone who knows anything about farming, farm animals, growing up and living on a farm, etc. An hour of Googling doesn't take the city out of a city girl, though to be honest, a week on a farmstay probably wouldn't either) This makes for slow writing, so I'm gonna need that editing time I blocked tomorrow to make a start on Chapter Two. In the meantime... We are open for crits! General reaction crits, line crits, structural crits, crits on character/plot/setting are all welcome! Commenting is turned on in the Google Doc - my preference would be for line crits to be in the Google Doc so we can keep the in thread discussion to bigger picture crits. There are definitely things in the prose that bug me: - grammar: why do I like writing in past perfect so much when I'm in third person limited? - also grammar: someone good at grammar set me straight on how I should be using my commas, semicolons and em dashes - words I overuse: "actually" (there are way more but this is the one I have to backspace the most) - word choice: don't know how people feel about Lorand as a character using the word "preternaturally" to describe something. I feel like it's not a word a ten year old farm boy would use correctly, though on the other hand I feel like it fits him being a precocious little show off But what I'm most interested in is how you guys felt as readers. How did I do with regards to: - pacing? - hooking (and keeping) your interest? - making you care about the characters? (do they feel real?) - foreshadowing (big and small)? If you're short on time, an overall chapter rating out of five is also helpful, bearing in mind that I'm going to set the benchmark of Green's canon as a 2/5 (she gets 1 for the overall concept and idea, and 1 for everything else she's done). Let's see how you rate mine!Canon References/Easter Eggs Not sure of how many I can work into the overall narrative, but it's not that hard to do some this early in the rewrite. Featuring in Chapter One:
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2020 16:02
|
|
|
Thank you!! That's high praise so here's hoping I can keep you entertained as a reader for the rest of this ride. Don't ever feel like you can't crit because you're "just a reader" - I'd say that actually makes your crits more valid! Art is in the eye of the beholder and it's my job as a creator to make you feel things. If you have a different reaction to what I intended, then the fault is in my technique and my approach, not you! On a related note, I'm going to cross quote some amazing words of wisdom from the self-publishing thread from a very successful author who puts out 2-3 50k word novels every month. angel opportunity posted:I try really hard to put my own voice into this stuff and get elements in there that I appreciate myself (usually humor, for example, even if it's not a "comedy") but I am always hyper-conscious of what the readers actually want to read This is an entire lecture on how to be a commercially successful author crammed into a single eloquent post, and also very timely NaNoWriMo advice for me! I've got the exact problem angel opportunity pointed out: my pace is slow because I'm a "READER" when I write. It's true but counterintuitive, and I'm trying to wrap my head around it. No looking to Sanderson or Wight on this one since they both specifically talk about the fact that they write stuff that they want to read - and that nobody else was writing.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2020 00:28
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER TWO (5138 words) Day 2 (4/11/2020): 517 words. This was an editing day that wasn't supposed to involve writing but given how slow my pace has turned out to be, I decided I should make a start Day 3 (5/11/2020): 3463 words across 8 hours or so to get the bulk of the chapter done. Action sequences are really hard for me. Day 4 (6/11/2020): 1158 words to finish off the chapter: Leng posted:the thing that is slowing me down the most is my prose, because I'm working out so many details about character and setting as I write. In the last session, I stopped writing to: Anyway, here's what I was supposed to hit: Leng posted:Chapter 2: Testing for Middle Link to Chapter 2: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fhFUIT2773SjdkQeFtVSDeuGnBT7stv1t9EIp4obf_k/edit?usp=sharing (I'm not a fan of the chapter title, but I haven't exactly come up with anything spectacular in the prose to replace it with, so  ) Self-crit/Commentary
Questions for you guys: - Do you feel cheated that I skipped over Lorand's demonstration of Healing? - What did you enjoy the most? - Where did things drag or feel off? Canon References/Easter Eggs
Edit: Oops, forgot a reference! Leng fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Nov 6, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2020 03:33
|
|
I suspect the more detailed chapter breakdown will win out, because hey, what else is NaNo for if not experimenting with different approaches?
|
This is great feedback! Thanks for taking the time.wizzardstaff posted:I do feel like it would be nice to see Healing in action though. This is planned for Chapter 7 currently! Hopefully by then, Rhythm of War will have been released and I'll have indulged in a lot of Kaladin doing his new official surgeon thing and I can therefore cheat somewhat instead of slowing down my writing time by having to google stuff. wizzardstaff posted:My favorite part was the moment where Mollit slams the desk and breaks his slates. Mollit was an unexpected, fun surprise that came up during the writing! I had casually thrown him and a bunch of others in during Chapter 1 (like they were extras in a movie) because it felt weird to be describing Lorand and Talitha being in school and not mentioning any classmates, and just pulled the remaining named characters from canon Widdertown. When I got to Chapter 2, I realized I needed another character for the main characters to play off, so his role got expanded. wizzardstaff posted:I felt like some of the language choices were a little wordy You nailed it! I am struggling with tone and style a lot, particularly with dialogue. The conversation between Lorand and Talitha versus the conversation between Lugal and Camil almost feel like they're from different books. wizzardstaff posted:The other thing that felt the most off to me was Talitha catching up with Lorand after he fled from the test. I had to read that conversation three times before it sunk in what had happened. Even with numbing himself, it felt like Lorand was far too flippant about breaking his leg. But I guess maybe that's just how you are when you have access to instantaneous magical healing? Based on this feedback, I should have filled out more background information in that dialogue exchange. I was worried because I knew I was going to have a big infodump about Grami shortly after and I wanted to practice conveying these two characters through dialogue only (with the intent to avoid butler and maid dialogue). As a result, I kept back a lot of the details I had worked out in my head: like how Healing is not the best skill to demonstrate when you're going for exams, since you're very limited in what you can demonstrate. Deliberately causing a serious injury for examination purposes, then placing the patient at risk of further injury or potential death if the person taking the exam messed up, would cross some moral and ethical boundaries and in the rewrite canon, the powers that be aren't as callous with citizens' lives. So the answer is, anyone going for Healing usually ends up demonstrating on an injured animal that they provide themselves. Lorand hadn't planned on breaking his own leg–he was supposed to heal one of Phor Riven's cows (Willowbloom) that had gone lame–but once he did, he tried to capitalize on the situation because he guessed (correctly) that successfully Healing an actually broken human leg would be more impressive. And because he's a cocky idiot, he somehow convinced himself that exacerbating his injury to make his Healing demonstration even more impressive would be a great idea, because everyone's been telling him he's this genius talent.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2020 15:22
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER THREE (6281 words) Day 5 (8/11/2020): 839 words on a non-writing day, split across two sessions Day 6 (9/11/2020): 2291 words to finish off the first scene across a very interrupted morning, with a 2.5 hr session at night Day 7 (10/11/2020): 3151 words, split 1070 in the morning and another 2081 across 3.5 hours tonight Planned outline for this chapter: Leng posted:Chapter 3: A ticket out of Widdertown Since I've been struggling with getting my hourly word count up, I spent a little time on Monday breaking these high level plot points into a slightly more detailed outline: The Outline posted:Detailed scene by scene outline The first two scenes wound up much longer than I expected so last two high level plot points/3.3 are getting pushed to Chapter 4. Which is probably a good thing anyway, because I had a quick skim to remind myself of what's planned for Chapter 4 and while there are a lot of points listed, they feel quite fluffy so there should be room for Lugal's scene in there. Link to Chapter 3: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hRpV2b87aGda7FTNgYMZ8LhY1yXaCwLqB2WBg_zEAQk/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2020 16:12
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:I think the main thing that confused me about the scene was that it was tied to Lorand's flight from Mollit, so I thought the "convenience" of the leg break must be related too. Like I thought that Lorand was expecting a beating from Mollit's crew and that maybe they'd show mercy if he was already hurt. But I guess knowing that he could easily be Healed might just make them more aggressive. Ah! Yep, that's a totally valid way of reading the sequence as written that I hadn't considered. wizzardstaff posted:You are probably not looking for giant rewrites at this stage, but here are some random unsolicited suggestions for alternate scenes: I love this suggestion! I don't even think it'd necessitate a rewrite specifically, just the addition of a new scene between the end of Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2. Slapstick, when done well, is hilarious for me. My two favorite examples: 1. Sanderson - the scene in Bands of Mourning where the main cast is fleeing New Seran (Bands of Mourning, Chapter 16). It's a payoff after two and a half books of character set up and one specific chapter (Bands of Mourning, Chapter 10). Chapter 10 is hilarious in itself. 2. There's a very old movie called 雞同鴨講 (translates roughly as "Chicken and Duck Talk") made by Michael Hui, one of the greatest Hong Kong comedians of all time. The entire 90 minute film sums up Hong Kong in the 1980s in pure, glorious slapstick. You might be more familiar with Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer which I'd say was highly influenced by Michael Hui's work. At about the 1 hour mark, we get 1 minute of setup immediately followed by the most memorable 3 minute slapstick fight/chase sequence of the film, complete with an instance of wire fu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4lt1iBeiEs&t=3604s Based on the current rate of my writing (35% through the target word count but only 25% through planned chapters), I think Enchanted Hat was right in saying that I probably am going to hit 50k words well before I finish the story. That means I don't know if I will have time left over to write this but I'll put it on the radar as a fun stretch goal! Leng fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Nov 10, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2020 22:28
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:I definitely did not leave the chapter feeling upbeat. Mission accomplished then  Let's hope Chapter 4 makes you feel better.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2020 14:05
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER FOUR (5189 words) Day 9 (11/11/2020): 218 words on a non-writing day, though I did do some more detailed outlining Day 10 (12/11/2020): 1331 words, on a planned writing day that turned out to be incredibly non-productive because I was super distracted all day and had serious Blank Page Syndrome Day 11 (13/11/2020): 3640 words on a non-writing day. The words started flowing once I got past the first few pages of this chapter Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapter: Leng posted:Chapter 3: A ticket out of Widdertown The more detailed outline from Wednesday: quote:4.1: Lugal  Other than 4.1, I did...Leng posted:The first two scenes wound up much longer than I expected so last two high level plot points/3.3 are getting pushed to Chapter 4. Which is probably a good thing anyway, because I had a quick skim to remind myself of what's planned for Chapter 4 and while there are a lot of points listed, they feel quite fluffy so there should be room for Lugal's scene in there. I am a very bad judge of my own outline, apparently. Maybe it's a good thing though, because Chapter 5 didn't exactly have a lot in its outline. Link to Chapter 4: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-1Ivw0Tbo6QIzH9FSAHwvIk1oZiza22SKe3N9eRNQnc/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Canon References/Easter Eggs
Leng fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Nov 13, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2020 14:59
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER FIVE (5747 words) Surprise chapter release ahead of schedule! Mainly because I've been so panicked about my output per hour that I cranked up the writing on unscheduled days. Day 12 (14/11/2020): 799 words on an unscheduled writing day, which is very low output thanks to 4 hours of crippling Blank Page Syndrome Day 13 (15/11/2020): 797 words on a non-writing day Day 14 (16/11/2020): 4151 words on a non-writing day. This is my second highest word count in a day and a whole bunch of it happened during unscheduled nap time Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapter: Leng posted:Chapter 4: Gan Garee The more detailed outline: quote:5.1: The Guild House (not a typo, the detailed outline really does just kind of trail off there because I still have no idea what that looks like. At this stage I don't even know whether I'm going to try and flesh it out at a detailed outline level or just dive into writing it, because while the more detailed outline seemed to have helped in writing Chapter Three, it did nothing of the sort for Chapters Four and Five) As with Rewritten Chapter Four, I kind of did stuff that sort of but not really matched up to this. Perhaps I need to cut myself some slack from not slavishly following the outline, I mean not even Sanderson manages to do that perfectly. I had trouble understanding what he meant by him having to go and rebuild his outlines when he gets too far away from them and now I know. Link to Chapter 5: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1atVqcrQcwKlNCK37a7DNVgdyo1jkEZHi8UA4p0FQjM4/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Questions for you guys: - just the one really: what have I gotten wrong about writing from a fourteen year old boy's perspective? Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2020 15:00
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:I was going to say "needs more awkward horniness" but then I got to Jovvi's introduction. Well then, I'll have to dial it up for Chapter 6. I just finished the first scene and hopefully it hits the mark. 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2020 06:57
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER SIX (5418 words) Day 15 (17/11/2020): 1674 words on a writing day, as I had carved out some writing time to do detailed outlining time. Day 16 (18/11/2020): 1077 words on a non-writing day, around other appointments Day 17 (19/11/2020): 1980 words on a writing day, lower than what I would normally get on a Thursday. I blame this on the fact that Rhythm of War is out and a very bad morning. I have been staying away from the Sanderson thread because carving out 15 hours to finish the book when I've got a word count to hit seems like a bad idea. The book will still be there after NaNoWriMo and I'm gonna reward myself with one chapter every time I finish 2k words. Day 18 (20/11/2020): 687 words to finish the chapter, so I can get straight into the next one. Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapter: Leng posted:Chapter 4: Gan Garee The more detailed outline: quote:6.1: Lorand Is it a good or a bad thing that I keep over outlining? I guess it's probably neither good nor bad, and just a thing. I now totally understand how Sanderson starts out planning a novella and ends up with a novel because I guess I'm basically in the process of doing the same thing. Link to Chapter 6: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d-HdQ7oM3oQemWDgWxyJPc3hTEmiCVbbpQDPHc4BOnA/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Questions for you guys: - how are we doing now on the awkward horniness quotient? Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2020 00:57
|
|
|
wizzardstaff posted:You remember how I said the Sanderson influence was strong in your earlier chapters? This one, uh, diverges from his style a bit. I'll count that as a success on the awkward horniness quotient! wizzardstaff posted:One minor thing wasn't quite clear to me: what does it mean to "tie someone's ability to speak to their breathing"? The way both you and Lorand describe it sounds very clinical and special, but functionally it doesn't seem different from making someone mute. Spoilers for Canon Book 6: According to Green's text, an Earth magic practitioner can apparently manipulate neural pathways. In the book, Ebro Syant (an Earth magic High in Gracely) is a short and fat Assembly member who uses his Blending to kidnap and rape a girl he has the hots for. After he rapes her, he uses his Blending on her so that any time she tries to tell somebody that he raped her, she starts choking on the words. She's supposed to have a lot of suitors so she thinks she'll be able to escape by getting married but he's a member of the Assembly so he manipulates things to get suitors to leave, so he can keep raping her at his leisure. She decides that death is preferable so she deliberately chokes to death trying to speak out about his crimes. Muting someone is less complicated as I think it just involves an Earth magic user futzing with the vocal chords by like, introducing temporary laryngitis or something. Whereas linking two different abilities to each other makes one dependent on the other. I.e. if you want to continue to be able to breathe, then don't talk. Now that I'm thinking about it, it could be argued that if you're affecting neural pathways in the brain, that really should be the domain of Spirit magic rather than Earth magic. I couldn't remember the specifics of the canon scene when writing this so I might have messed up on that one. So theoretically, Earth magic should be about affecting someone's physical state while Spirit magic is affecting someone's mental state. But I guess since we know physical damage to the brain does weird stuff to the neural pathways, I guess an argument could be made that Earth magic could kind of do something similar, though the counter argument would be that's probably a level of precision that Earth magic shouldn't grant. So...if I ever go back and do a second pass on this, I would probably just change it so that Delin muted the Acolyte instead of doing something more complicated that he'd probably need Spirit magic help for. Either way, both of us have spent more time thinking about this than Green actually did!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2020 14:28
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER SEVEN (6032 words) Day 18 (20/11/2020): 1300 words. I had good intentions of doing more, but Blank Page Syndrome was really difficult to defeat this time, with Rhythm of War begging to be read. Day 19 (23/11/2020): 1855 words on a non-writing day, after a weekend long reading binge on Rhythm of War. It was so interesting to read this time around as I was hyper aware of things from a writer's perspective. Day 20 (24/11/2020): 2877 words to finish the chapter. I think I'm gonna aim to get another scene down tonight for the next chapter, because tomorrow's schedule is looking pretty bad for focused writing time Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapters: Leng posted:Chapter 5: Training–overview of their schedule The more detailed outline: quote:7.1: Lorand writes a letter home I had a bunch more points that were supposed to go in the clinic scene but when I got to writing it, none of them fit so I'm gonna shove them into the next chapter. Link to Chapter 7: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1180IhaZSFfHO9AWQzdeQ98pV5r8hfCOJBVFDLFhNBus/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Nov 24, 2020 05:57
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER EIGHT (5264 words) Day 20 (24/11/2020): 1249 words, which was a good start for a new chapter! Day 21 (25/11/2020): 90 words on a non-writing day. Any possibility of writing more got destroyed by a bunch of random urgent errands Day 22 (26/11/2020): 3925 words to finish the chapter. Pretty good output for me! Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapters: Leng posted:Chapter 6: Slice of life The more detailed outline: quote:Preparing for the Trials: Continuing with the trend since Chapter 3, the second half of that outline involving the Deep Caverns completely didn't happen so it's getting shoved into the next chapter. Link to Chapter 8: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10AWawzS1LW2nocUBZ2PbfHd18II5z0sDbSfHLXeWTMo/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2020 13:51
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER NINE (6124 words) Day 23 (27/11/2020): 1655 words, another good start for a new chapter! I had hoped for more, but writing time was eaten up by rebuilding the outline time, which is fine and good, especially when I can see the finish line in the distance. Day 24 (28/11/2020): 1295 words on my buffer writing day which turned into a non-writing day due to last minute plans. Some words happened first thing in the morning but the rest was done late at night. Day 25 (29/11/2020): 3174 words to finish the chapter. Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapters: Leng posted:Chapter 8: Specialized training–excursion to the western border? Deep Caverns? The more detailed outline, which included rejigging some of the original points so that I could finish off this rewrite in two chapters: quote:9.1: Lorand At this point, I have reconciled myself to the fact that the Deep Caverns are just not gonna happen in this rewrite. That's fine! That means there's a worldbuilding detail for Rewrite Book 2, if/when that happens. Link to Chapter 9: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RZjj-N4cb4DtUS2jhoKrlf7nLkBNGQ9H6Y5HElZkuiY/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Questions for you guys: - how did the chapter leave you feeling at the end? - did you buy the "twist"? - did you feel like there were any plotholes or stuff that came out of nowhere? Canon References/Easter Eggs
Leng fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Nov 29, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2020 07:11
|
|
|
REWRITE: CHAPTER TEN (5645 words) Day 26 (30/11/2020): 174 words. During a horrific meeting that I was desperately trying to pretend was not happening. Day 27 (2/12/2020): 606 words. Day 28 (3/12/2020): 4865 words to finish the chapter and the book!  Planned outline for this chapter, including overflow from the planned outline for the previous chapters: Leng posted:Chapter 10: Return to Widdertown The more detailed outline, which included rejigging some of the original points so that I could finish off this rewrite in two chapters: quote:10.1: Lorand Link to Chapter 10: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KfPG4vSaI1hTF16Yet2xJrM26QGgRjw8PCJanZggQJs/edit?usp=sharing Self-crit/Commentary
Questions for you guys: - now that we're at the end of all the rewrite chapters there's only really one question that matters, though it has two parts: what would you rate my rewrite out of five and did I do better than Green? Canon References/Easter Eggs
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2020 10:11
|
|
|
A Small Car posted:I don't have much to add (I'm rubbish at editing), but I will genuinely miss reading your chapters when this is done. Every one of them has left me wanting to read the next one to find out what happens (and this one is no exception), and the characters all feel like actual humans, a very welcome change from Green's writing. I hope you'll continue to rewrite her trash! Thank you so much for the kind words! The fact that the rewrite has been entertaining enough for you to follow along and post is really rewarding. Hearing that you–a random internet stranger–enjoy my writing actually means more to me than hearing it from friends or family (mainly because I feel like they have to tell me nice things). I'm going to deliberately refrain from re-reading anything from the rewrite for a couple of weeks, but will likely return to do an overall reflection some time at the end of the year when my brain's had an opportunity to refresh. And then, well, I guess we'll see what happens! EDIT vvvvvvvv: wizzardstaff posted:The US Thanksgiving holiday and family life in general has really done a number on my schedule so I am something like 4 chapters behind now, but I want to echo the kudos. I've enjoyed what I've read so far, and there's no question that it's better than Green's stuff. I think it's different enough to stand well on its own, not just in reference to her work. Thank you!! This is amazing praise, far beyond what I had hoped for when I started so I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed (in a really good way). Leng fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Dec 4, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2020 10:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 07:05 |
|
|
WRAP UP: Making an eBook! Given the number of projects and other pieces of work I've got going on, it's unlikely that I'll do another pass through what I've written so far. So I thought it'd be fun to wrap things up by taking a look at the production side of things and put everything together in one package! Designing a book cover  (note: do not do what I did if you are seriously considering self-publishing a book; pay an actual designer to design a good book cover, because the wisdom of the self-publishing thread says that your cover and blurb matter as much as your book) Looked at the Amazon Kindle store for best selling fantasy ebooks. They all have expensive illustrations of characters wielding swords or magic or both, or focused visuals on an important object (e.g. a crown) or badge or symbol of some sort. As I don't have the skills to pull anything like that off (and it's more time than I have to invest on a fun thing), I spent an hour on Canva.com and Flickr searching for free/creative commons licensed images of "magic" and "glowing", messing around with fonts and random font effects. I repeat: do not do what I did; this is not a good book cover!! Creating the Epub file I use Calibre as an eBook library manager and it has a built-in eBook editing function. Because I wrote each chapter as a standalone Google Doc, I needed to also install the EpubMerge plugin to compile everything into a single book. The default "Download" option in Google Docs allows you to download an EPUB file as well as a HTML file. Since ebooks are basically fancy file packages of HTML, either technically should work. In addition, Calibre has a built in ebook format converter so you can import a DOCX or whatever and it'd still be able to output an EPUB. Amazon Kindle accepts the MOBI format. I downloaded all of the chapters as EPUBs, imported them into Calibre, and then used EpubMerge to smush them together in a single file. At this point, you need to confirm the meta data for the book, which technically includes the blurb. I am bad at writing concisely and blurbs are a heck of a lot of work, so I just did a single sentence blurb. I will attempt a proper blurb later, probably after doing an overall reflection. By default, the cover page and title page are created for you, so all I had to do was edit it. A few sections had to be added in manually: the map, table of contents, acknowledgements. At this point, the book will look terrible. Like, really, really, really terrible. Mainly because whenever you export out of a word processor software into HTML it produces terrible code with in-line CSS everywhere. It will stick all of the general CSS into one <style> tag within the <head> section like this: code:This is before we even factor looking into the ridiculous nested tag nonsense around the actual text. Like this: code:code:The next two hours were spent using regex expressions to strip out all of the unnecessary span tags, replace the relevant ones with <em> tags for italicized text, then centering the section breaks and cleaning up other weird stuff. I either stuffed up one of my regex operations or the original output from Google Docs was terrible, because there were italicized direct thoughts that were completely messed up, with the wrong bits italicized. I had to add a few special classes to format the song Talitha sings in Chapter 3, Lorand's letter in Chapter 7 and the scroll he receives in Chapter 10 nicely. Then because I felt like it, I added some more classes to make the chapter headings and chapter titles look nicer, plus drop caps because why not? I don't know if the drop caps will come out nicely on other ereaders but hopefully I've written code that degrades gracefully so even if it doesn't show up properly, it won't look too weird. The EPUB looks pretty nice in the Calibre viewer:    And terrible as a MOBI (granted I haven't actually tried looking at this on my Kindle yet, maybe it doesn't suck so much on an actual Kindle, but wow does it look bad in the Calibre viewer as a MOBI file):   (why does MOBI split the title page across two pages? I don't know!)  (yuck, default ul list formatted bullets)  (oh those drop caps didn't work here) The AZW format seems to land somewhere in the middle, so if you're using a Kindle, that's probably the better format to download. After doing all of this, I can totally see why someone would want to pay US$45 for Scrivener or even US$199/US$249 for Vellum. There is no way that I would be spending any more time than this hassling with this annoying crap. And I'm speaking as someone who is an amateur level front-end web developer. If I had to do this by hand, I think I'd write in a HTML editor because of the agony of formatting the ebook file afterwards, though the writer side of my brain thinks that would be a horrendously bad idea because wow, is thinking about the correct HTML tags to stick in while I'm trying to get the flow and tone of the scene down the worst thing ever (besides Blank Page Syndrome). Download the eBook! (assuming you enjoyed this enough to want to add it to your elibrary) Available in AZW (Kindle), EPUB and MOBI (also Kindle, but uglier) formats. Well, this was a fun exercise in discovering just how annoying the ebook production process is. If/when I get into self-publishing, I will definitely be springing for Scrivener at least. No way am I going to repeat this exercise in self-flagellation; writing the book was hard enough!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2020 06:25
|
|