... And better and better

This follow-up post is part review of Avatar, and part continued discussion of my story, A Far Sun. (Hey, it's my story; I'll talk about it if I want.)

I've read a few reviews/commentaries on James Cameron's newest movie blockbuster, Avatar. Some guy on Reddit posted "$300 million, and all we get are Native American space elves?" I responded sarcastically, something to the effect that I was sure he's done much better. He seemed to feel that for the money a better story could have been written, but one tends to forget that putting butts in seats is the primary objective of any movie--i.e., it's entertainment--so we will just have to forgive Mr. Cameron that he made his native people so ... human.

There will be no spoilers in my review, so don't worry. I really enjoyed the movie, and I highly recommend it. Visually it's stunning, and (almost) worth the ticket price on that basis alone. I suppose 3D is an added bonus. (There is one point where you'll be swatting insects--it's a real immersion moment.) Visually quite stunning. I almost even said 'wow' at a couple points (but then I'm old, and easily impressed. Huh).

The story is not as strong as many would have liked. John Scalzi, in his blog Whatever, felt that way, but I think he also gets it, too. The most thorough review/comparison I've read is on chud.com. That guy read Cameron's earlier treatment, called Project 880, and notes many differences between the movie originally envisioned, and the finished product. It's a rather long blow-by-blow comparison; I won't recap it here, except to say that Avatar is more streamlined and even less preachy than Project 880 would have been.

Now on to my favorite subject: A Far Sun. Both my wife and stepdaughter mentioned the similarities between it and Avatar. I don't paint a picture highlighting the evils of technology, which I think could be inferred from the movie, but I do have gentle native people (who even speak a little English. Both writers plausibly handle the reasons why). My natives aren't 10' tall with blue skin (no spoiler there--the movie trailer shows this clearly). Instead, they're regular-sized and orange-ish. No, the sun-skins aren't oompa-loompas, and quite honestly I never even thought about that when I envisioned them. Of course, I can see why you might think that. (I did think of sun-skins as 'native Americans meet the Amish,' but with a slightly orange tint to their skin. Just enough to make them different. That was the point. Besides, I really liked the name 'sun-skin.')

I have an evil bad guy--the 'Head Librarian' (of all the titles for him to have!)--though by the end of book 2 I've hardly done more than introduce him. All his evil has come out by proxy. His 'minion' in the story, the 'chief ambassador' is a powerful, ambitious man who is following his master's orders very faithfully. We don't find out why he's doing this, yet, but I have certainly set up this promise. In fact, we don't really know why anyone would be following the Head Librarian, but we do know how afraid they are of him. Perhaps they have good reason.

So, I'm now sitting on a blank page at the beginning of book 3. Some might be wondering how I could possibly have an entire novel still to tell (especially some of my friends and family who have been patiently listening to me talk about this for forever), but actually, having reached this point in the process, another 100K words feels about right. It gives me a chance to more fully flesh out the insanity of my big bad guy and more thoroughly draw out the distinctions between sun-skin philosophy and 'pale-skin' philosophy. Oh, and plenty of knuckle-chewing action. The 'cold war' between them will become a hot, shooting war, with the potential for more death (and destruction).

The inhumanity in my story is not 'big' inhumanity the way it is in Avatar. Mine is small, on the scale of just one person. Though, to be fair, this one man's hold over the others could not have been accomplished without help, or at least 'inertial neglect'. Or, perhaps he's really not so different from them, after all.

With my decision to keep on truckin' with the story (I had intended to end it with this second book), it now means I can also extend the time line, somewhat. I had always wanted to write about their survival over a winter, since in primitive conditions it can very trying. Also, since at least one of my heroines is pregnant, with more time to fill in a third novel, we get to follow her over a much longer period during her pregnancy. Also, being 'with child' will heighten the tension, later, when things are coming to an exciting climax. There are other motivating factors, as well, that I must, alas, continue to keep secret.

On a final note: last night my wife was talking about this current work in comparison to the one I had been writing back about 2004-ish. I know that other work isn't very good, for several reasons. She likes the current one, a lot, and says that not only am I a better writer, but that my story is also much, much better. I've read both works; it's not hard to see why she says this.

That's all for now. Maybe sometime I'll talk about how one turns a very rough story idea into a fully fleshed-out work, because that's about all that's required to write a novel. Everyone comes up with story ideas that could maybe fill two chapters. How you turn those two chapters into fifty is the trick. But, it's not that difficult. Or, then again, maybe it is. We'll find out.

It just keeps getting longer and longer ...

Well, this is interesting.

I was determined that during my holiday this year I would make some really good progress on my story, A Far Sun. Well, I did. I worked through the blocker I'd been facing, got some really good inspiration, and shot right through to ...

The end of book 2. Book 3, and the exciting conclusion is to follow. Sometime over the next year, probably.

Now, I have no freaking idea how long book 3 will be. Book 1 was about 117K, book 2 has come in at just over 97K. Book 3 will be ... er, whatever it turns out to be. The story is damned good, so there's no worries over whether I'll have enough story to tell. I've learned very well by now that I always have enough story to tell. The challenge for me is ending it. It's been moving along, though (214K worth, so far) and I really do know where it's going and how it's going to end. Trust me, I really, really do.

So, I will continue following the travels of Adam and Jane and their friends Lina and Rëmi. Actually, these last two are a bit more than just "friends," but you'll have to read the books to find out more about them.

I had thought I would get him introduced earlier, but our good buddy Cameron Fralick, the "big bad guy" in the story (oops, did I give something away? If so, well then too bad) finally makes his most auspicious appearance right at the end of book 2. And it's a memorable appearance, as well. Can you say "cliff-hanger ending"? Yep, that's what it is. And I'm loving it!

Readers, don't hate me, because you're going to like what's coming up. Oh, I forgot I don't have any readers, yet. Well, never mind. For now you'll just have to take my word for it--the story is good. Maybe it's not for everyone, but that doesn't matter because you simply can't please everyone. It pleases me, and I'm not some 16 year-old kid who's going to read this thing in a few years and think it's a piece of shit. But then, I'm feeling pretty good right now, so please forgive me if it sounds like I'm gushing all over myself. Someone has to do it.

Stay tuned. There's more to come.

Happy Thanksgiving from A Far Sun

I got so busy (and feeling somewhat burned-out, as well) so I put the story down awhile. I think I last wrote some content on October 31, and not until Sunday night did I start back into it, again. I did write about 7K words in my other story, Rider on the Storm (the current working title), and I've figured out a few things in that plot, too. I also realized I transited into act two at about the 20K word mark, so the estimated length of 80K is sounding about right. Of course, because of the way I work I won't really know how long it will be until I actually get there. It's more funner, that way!

I'm still not completely satisfied with how I'm introducing my main antagonist in A Far Sun, though. It seems it ought to be more grandiose in keeping with his personality, but I'm going to write some more and see how it goes. He will start causing some real trouble, and really soon, so perhaps my worries are unfounded. Somewhat.

On a related note, my stepdaughter Emily has moved in with us. I haven't started prevailing upon her for story collaboration, yet, but could that be far behind? She's very intellectual (which I knew) and I'm finding she keeps me on my mental toes. Feels good. One of the very necessary abilities for writing (that I've found) is the ability to pour out the words very quickly, and the constant need to keep up with her, conversationally speaking, helps keep those gears well-oiled and functioning smoothly. As I said: it feels good.

Also, with her in residence it might make for more convenient illustration cajolery. I'd like to get some illustrations of my characters to begin adorning the website with. We'll see.

A Far Sun: Update

As a follow-on to my post last month, I am making very good progress. The tendency to which I had eluded--that of being an inveterate story-teller and discovery writer--well, I am getting better at recognizing this in my writing, and catching myself before I've gone off on any really long tangents. This time around I detected no fewer than four sub-plots I was following (how does this happen? he asks), and while they are/were all interesting, they did not all get me closer to the end. As in: they weren't necessary to the plot.

Let me just say for the record, that I really, really want to finish this damn thing. I'm loving it, but I'm ready to put it down awhile and work on something else.

I unwrote two sub-plots and materially changed one other to set it up for a quicker ending. I also figured out I had three sub-plots all converging on a single point, so that enabled me to keep the really interesting one involving the native girl who gets hurt, because I knew it was ending. No, she doesn't die.

Her story is being used to show the larger cultural conflict in microcosm; I think it fits perfectly. This story is being told at human level. No grand, sweeping movements of hundreds, just the good (or bad) intentions and flawed actions of human beings trying to do what they think is best.

In all I cut about 8K words, setting my new total about 80K for "book 2," after having cleaved off "book 1" after 118K words. So, that puts my grand total about 198K. I am counting, since I really don't want this second volume to go over 120K. I still think I can do it.

On a final note: I know why I got off track and wrote more than needed. In this part of the story my heroes are at "the Library" where the remaining "pale-skins" live, along with a larger number of natives (I call them "sun-skins"). While sun-skin life is interesting in its own way, it's not nearly as intriguing as all the politics and competing agendas in place at the Library. It's too easy to get off-track chasing down everyone's story, which is exactly what I'd done. There may be a thousand stories to tell, but only a few will get me to the end. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Until it's done, anyway.

A Far Sun: Alive and going well ... I guess

It's been a few months since I posted about my current story, A Far Sun. Since then I've written about 30K words (bringing the word count to just about 191K). Though I've said this before, I'm definitely into the third act. There's a risk of bogging down in a lot of complicated sub-plots, but I'm aware of the danger and I'm taking steps to minimize the confusion. This means there are a few things that will no doubt have to be cut. That's fine. I know what has to happen to finish this thing, and I'm well on the way.

There's a whole set of scenes where one of my minor characters tries to warn my heroes and breaks her arm falling off the 4-meter-tall keep wall. While I like the perspective gained through the girl's eyes (she's 15), it's not terribly relevant to the plot--yet. It just supports the idea that people care about my heroes, and are willing to risk things for them. I think it's about 2-3 chapters, including her father's reaction and the set up with the doctor, but it can very likely go.

There are also a couple good chapters where one of my heroes finds out some important news. While this series of scenes isn't necessarily important to the plot, it certainly strengthens my hero's resolve: it raises the stakes for her in a very real and significant way. This part I will very likely keep.

Of course, in June I was saying I thought I needed another 40K words to finish the story, and here I am 30K later and I'm still saying I need about 40K more. Well, maybe only 25K, but it certainly sounds as though I haven't made much progress in getting to the finish though I've put down a bunch of words. That could be correct. I guess when I finally get it done I'll look back and laugh.

I tend to get off track because at heart I'm a story teller, and there are a million stories to tell. I always know my characters and their histories and motivations intimately, so it's not hard to talk about what they do and say. I just start writing and they tell me where to go. The challenge is knowing which stories need to be told, and which are only fluff. Since I'm a discovery writer, I never know which new stories will add to the plot, and which ones will not. At least, not ahead of time. So I tell them and then decide if they need to stay.

There is so much more to my world than I've been able to tell. It's really a model universe, where things are fairly black and white, and where everything is painted with primary colors. I like it that way, because for the intended audience it keeps things from becoming too ambiguous or nuanced. I could have written for adults, but it would have been a rather different story.

Meanwhile, as I have time, I write.

Progress on "A Far Sun"

It was back at the end of April that I last talked about it. I was discussing how I was changing it to appeal more to a young audience, and I am happy to report my progress since that date.

I finished reading aloud to my wife up to the end where I'd chopped off the last 55K words. I got to that point a few weeks ago, and since then have starting writing, again. It took me some time to think through a few things, but eventually I figured out what I wanted to tell and where I wanted to go. So now, I'm off and running again. As I write this I'm into chapter 51 and just over 161K words. That puts me 20K words past where I made the chop, and that feels really good.

Something I've noticed is that by reading the story it's helped me write it. Now I know how to put things together better, and I don't have to make as many impromptu edits later. I still have to go back and go over my rough draft copy, but that comes together pretty quickly.

Also, I've reached the end of the second act. From this point forward my heroes will be on the offensive, and the action has ratcheted up considerably. Just within the past two chapters people have even died, and that proved to have just the impetus I needed to springboard the story through to the end.

As an aside, I've been saying I know exactly what's going to happen, even though I don't know exactly what's going to happen. I don't know, not in detail, but in terms of the major events left to occur, I know what they all are. I just don't know when these things are going to happen, or exactly what will precipitate them when the time comes. That's the fun of it--not knowing exactly what will be around the corner. I'm probably all wrong about this, but I'd like to think it makes the story more exciting, as there is some sort of 'element of surprise' evident in my prose when I twist it this way and that. Or maybe not.

I had a lot of good stuff in the part I cut out. A few good characters and some pretty good interactions. But none of that will survive into the story, now. It's too bad, but it just doesn't fit. There may be one character (or two) that I reintroduce, but other than that, I think I have all the characters I need to carry this thing through to the end.

I'm really excited, because when I read these last five chapters between Friday evening and this evening, I got a very big thumb's up from my very literate wife. She still thinks the story is really good, and even though I know she's biased, it gives me a lot of encouragement. Enough to blast out the final 40K words and call this thing done. That's 11 to 12 chapters, which means I don't have a lot of time to mess around.

Recasting "A Far Sun"

I've been working madly on my story. I haven't made as much progress forward as I'd anticipated, but working with my wife I have made some very important progress.

First, I started reading it aloud to her. It's practice for when/if I podcast the story, and the reading helps me find and fix all the places where the prose is awkward or stilted. If I can't read it smoothly with all the right inflection, then there's something wrong that needs to be fixed.

There are a few reasons why I'm reading it to her. First is that it helps me. That I've covered, above. Secondly, she is an English Literature major, and therefore "an expert." Believe me, she snags a lot of problem areas I miss, and the story keeps getting better. Less fluff, more stuff. Thirdly, she suggested I convert the story into YA--Young Adult. Because of the premise and the characters, that is turning out to be a really good idea. The only problems I've run into are the few spots where adult things were handled in an "adult" manner. A little too much graphic detail, even though I had practically no graphic detail at all. With her cogent suggestions I've been fixing the adult interactions to be a little less literal.

The final motive for my reading the story is so she can help me work out the last ten to fifteen chapters. As a critic of fiction she's quite good, and I am very lucky to have her "on board" helping me. Makes my decision to marry her a couple years ago look pretty smart. But I digress.

So, we've read up to page 450, or so, out of about 750 pages of manuscript. So far. I hate to estimate how much is remaining because of my dismal abilities to predict the length. I always think it's going to be shorter than it ends up being. I might hope it will be only ten chapters more, but in reality it will probably be more like twenty. At 3K per chapter, that's 60K words on top of 143K.

She has suggested ending the first "book" when my heroes get to the village. It's really not an ending, but it is at the 39K word point, which would be a good length. And it would definitely spur the reader to get the next book in the series. For grins I've looked at other points throughout that could become "endings." I suppose I could break this thing down into 40K "chunks," but really the stuff set up in the very beginning doesn't get resolved until the 200K word point. For YA this would be a very large book, but I think getting it written is probably more important than worrying about the length, right now. Besides, my wife is quite interested in the story, and really wants to see (hear?) how it comes out.

Stay tuned.

What am I thinking about?

Well, it's not the economy. I suppose I could be obsessing over it (I mean: I was, back in February) but I'm over that, now. What I've been doing is trying to finish the story I've been writing, A Far Sun. For what seems like a very long time. More than a year, and about 6 months too long by my initial estimate.

I was up to about 195K words when I took a look at where I was and how many more pages would be required to get to the end, and decided it wasn't progressing quickly enough. I had introduced too many subplots and other things and it was going to take many, many more pages to write my way out of it. It wasn't that I couldn't, it was that I realized it wasn't where I wanted the story to go. Bad juju.

So I cut the last 55K+ words off the end and started back up. I figured out where I went awry and how, and now I'm giving the ending another try.

I know I'm a perfectionist. Whether I'm "too much" of a perfectionist, or not, remains to be seen. Something bothered me about where I'd gone in the story, and it took a lot of thinking and rethinking to figure out exactly what was wrong. I think I've figured it out, now.

Of course I have the remainder of the story plotted out. There are only a handful of "really big" plot points yet to come, including the story's climactic scene. Frankly, I really want to get to that scene, because I've been visualizing it for more than a year.

Something I've discovered during this project, as well: Rewriting is something you just do. A lot. I'm learning how to let go of the words, my golden dewdrops of prose, and not be too much in love with what I've written. Sure, I come up with good ideas and construct well-written scenes. Over and over again. No reason to think I won't be able to do it again. So, throw away what doesn't fit or isn't working. Save it (maybe) in case you find a place for it, later, but for now, cut and rewrite. Oh, and keep doing that until you get what you want.

And less can really be more. I'm starting to trim down words (and recognize some of my own bad habits when I'm writing draft copy--which I don't try to fix in the first writing). The technique I've been using lately involves the following:

1. Just write the scene. Don't do too much editing or wasting time looking for the exact right word. Get it down as best you can. Try to say what you're trying to say, in whatever words that seem to convey your intent. (You'll fix it later.)
   
2. Keep writing until you feel like you've reached a good stopping point. It could be the end of a lengthy scene, or it could be the end of a chapter. It could even be the end of the page, if you're called to dinner.
3. Take a break. Eat dinner, watch TV.
   
4. Now, go back one or two chapters before your most recent starting point. Read from there, mostly to get back into the flow of the narrative.
   
5. Edit as required, but of course you will begin editing a lot when you reach the newest part. Don't fix everything now, you will go back over it, again.
   
6. If you get to the end, go back to step 1 and start writing, again. This is important, to keep progress going. Start writing even if you only write one paragraph.
   
7. Of course, stopping at any point may be necessary, since life sometimes must intrude. If this is the case, start working again at step 4.

I've also found that if I can't seem to go further in a given scene, I just stop there and start the next scene. On the go-back I usually figure out what was stopping/blocking me, and fill in and fix. I don't do this much, but rather than spend all day stuck somewhere, I'd rather forge ahead. The "go-back" is becoming a routine way to work through the story, though I don't necessarily reread every scene. Sometimes I've read (and edited) the same scene so many times that I'm getting bored of it. That's fine; there's always another edit in the future. Always.

As a wannabe writer I read and listen to a lot of writing advice. Michael Stackpole recommended not editing what you've written. He says you should make notes (handwritten notes, even!) and rewrite/edit on the second draft. If it works for him, then that's fine. As I gain more experience I may even start working more like he does, but for now I'm very comfortable with my overlapping write-edit-write-edit technique. I didn't recognize it before, but it's basically been working for me throughout this whole project. It's true--I'm not done, but I have written quite a bit and I'm making progress, and more importantly I'm happier with what I've got.

Here's a test I use in my story. The universe of choices for the writing is quite large. There are so many aspects of the story you could write about, and so many plot points you could hit, and these are even the ones that still tend toward your eventual ending. With this many choices it's easy to get sidetracked or lost. Since I'm a "discovery writer" I never really know what's going to happen before I write it, so every page is an adventure. Unintended consequences are always biting me. So the difficulty is figuring out what can happen that doesn't push your characters off into some unanticipated direction. That would screw up the whole thing. (And then you trash 50,000 words and rewrite, for example.)

With respect to deciding whether or not I have included all the sufficient and necessary things in my story, I do this: I take a particular plot point. A particular necessary plot point, one I would not change or remove. Then I look back over everything leading up to that point. If anything seems excessive, or doesn't fit, or makes me uncomfortable--then that's what I fix. It sounds simple, but ...

This is one of the things that convinced me to cut 25% of what I'd written and retell it. Well, it's worse than that: I couldn't even get to the next big plot point and that was beginning to frustrate me. I just knew there was a way to tell the story that would get me to the ending more quickly, so now I'm exploring the second try.

So that's what I'm thinking about.

Fascinating article on religion and the human brain

I found this article on SuicideGirls.com, a place most would probably not associate with such scholarly things. The article discusses the connection religion has to our more primitive "primal" brains. HOWEVER, before you all go off on me for "being unfair to religion," please go read the article.

I saw the idea of fictive kin being quite apropos to my story. My native people have the notion of having "brothers" and "sisters" who are not blood kin to them. It's their way of establishing extended trust relationships with others--specifically those who are not their true brothers and sisters. I have looked at it from the "since I call you brother you know I would trust you with my life; you can trust me with yours." Explicitly. I may be naive, but it seemed important for them to establish these kinds of strong bonds with others as a means of enhancing everyone's own chances for survival. From the Evolution of Religion article, this idea is borne out in the role that religion (or more accurately, religious organizations) play in our lives, and more to the point: in our psyches.

I'm not commenting on whether religion is valuable or appropriate. Clearly, since so many people believe it to be important, it must provide some kind of benefit. The authors seem to imply that over time we may "grow out of" this attraction to religion, but until our "smart brains" totally win out over our "primal brains" this cannot happen. I'm guessing it will not happen. My only wish is that the message of many religions will be changed to one more rationally based. I suspect my wish is in vain.

Back to the philosophies of my fictional native people: they don't have a "religion," as such. They have an amorphous "mother earth spirit"--essentially a pagan belief in the natural world. Their god (if you could call their earth spirit a god) confers judgment on all creatures, and this belief proscribe them from deciding the fate of anyone. If you murder someone, they would not murder you. To do so would be to judge, and judging is only allowed by their earth spirit. They would exile you from their midst--cut you from the herd, as it were--but only their earth spirit can decide whether you live or die. Or how.

I will have to think about the role religion plays in the forming of fictive kin--communities of support acting like tribes/extended families. Clearly, having more ritualized religious practices for my natives feels better than not having them, but is it really true they would have come to the conclusion that sacrifices are necessary to appease their god? (You might ask how I came to this conclusion, seeing as how it seems unrelated to religious rituals, in general. Keep reading.)

I believe religions are all about control. The rituals of belief only exist to homogenize the adherents. In other words: monkey see; monkey do. In crowds, we feel much better when we're doing what everyone else is doing, regardless of whether we know it's right, or not. I know this reaction to be true. So, this means religious ritual is necessary to make everyone feel better about who they are and where they are. The clergy, therefore, has a very important and exalted position. They get to interpret the gods for the masses, and establish (and lead) the various rituals in supplication to the gods. Our primitive brains know that in order to coerce the gods to act on our behalf, we either need to 1) do something they like, or 2) show how much we are willing to give up for them. Either way, we're extending them a lot of power, and power is cool. We're only doing what we would want our worshipers to do for us. Like I said: power is cool.

All this alludes to the uniquely human ability to "see" the purposes and motivations of others. It's what causes us to assign anthropomorphic qualities to the natural world. Hurricanes probably do not have purpose; by extension, neither does the universe. IMHO, anyway. It's because we assume nature has a reason that we're mystified when we can't fathom it. This hole in our understanding has historically been so huge as to fit the proverbial truck. A gap that large is just begging to be filled, and we do: with religion.

For my natives, the clan leaders would probably seek to tie into the religion, and therefore the second most powerful person in the clan would be the high priest. That I haven't invented the role of high priest seems to be an oversight. I don't want it there. I have the role of "philosopher-historian" which is a surrogate for the priest, but frankly I just didn't want religion to be an important part of the world of my natives. If you have to give them a religion, they would be Taoists. Simplicity. Flow. Patience. I really gave them a rather evolved perspective, but I reasoned it to stem from their long-time relationship to the technological "pale-skins." The native people don't believe the world has a purpose--it just is. They don't have science (and they don't want it), but they know science exists and that it explains many things. It's just that it explains the things they don't care about--that don't matter to them. Whether that's right or wrong, ultimately ... well, that's what the story is about (at least partly).

I'm back from vacation and the world didn't end

Not that the one has anything to do with the other.

I've learned that Florida in the winter is as about as unpredictable as winter in Ohio, except it's about 50 degrees warmer. Or so. Once again we had "cold" weather (in the 50's during the day) but didn't let that stop us.

I've been trying to figure out why I've been "stuck" at the scene in my story where my heroes go before the "Council of Librarians." This is an important point, because it's where I intend to show how misguided (and quite possibly insane) these people are/have become. It should take about two (maybe three) chapters to write out, and should set the stage for the exciting events to come. The climax, of course. Fun stuff, but I've been hung up on how to start and what to say.

On the subject of how to start and what to say, take a listen to this week's episode of the Writing Excuses podcast. It's all about this subject. They also talk about two nominal types of writers: Outliners and "discovery" writers. Outliners figure everything out beforehand; discovery writers start writing and figure out what's going to happen as they go along (more or less). Of course, all writers need to know where they're going ... er, somewhat.

I am a discovery writer. Of that I'm quite sure, but I have come to realize that I need to know where I want to go/need to go. In my current story I definitely know where it's going and what's going to happen. I'm really pumped, too; I just need to get there. I'm also not worried about making it perfect on the first try. I know how important it is just to Get It Down, because it can be fixed, later. It will be fixed, without a doubt. I've rewritten quite a few scenes, already, where I didn't think the originals worked very well. Some writers say don't edit until you're done, but my method of "making notes about what has to change" is to actually make changes. I feel better about doing it, and it means I can easily go back and reread if I've forgotten. Both of which I do.

In retrospect, I was in a good spot back in October with the escalating action I was writing at the time. I felt anxiety about it, though, because my heroes were still basically in the dark and they needed to be in a more proactive position. It is act three, after all; they're supposed to be on the offensive. So, I stopped moving the story forward so I could go back, retool, and have my protagonists learn a few more things before the danger really amped up. I could have just decided there were a couple chapters where they did all this learning about the Library, and written those chapters later. Oh, well. Lesson learned.

Since I'm now sitting at the door to my Really Big Reveal (the Council meeting), it's now time to figure out what's really going on. I guess, since I haven't started writing this scene, it means I haven't quite figured it out, yet. It's that pesky inevitable plot twist. Maybe I should just start writing and discover the plot twist as I go, as I almost always do. Then, even if I don't like everything it should still be good enough to keep moving. I'm about 20-30K words from the end, maybe less. I'm so close, I can taste it.

The first 40 chapters are up to second draft strength. In the second 40 chapters I have 12 chapters yet to write. At about 2.5K words per chapter ... that's about 30K words. I'll let you know how it goes.

Post-holiday update

No one reads this, but readership isn't the reason I write this blog. (What is the reason, you ask? The one I always give is: Because I can.)

Over the holiday break I worked on my story. I didn't made the progress I wanted, but I did make really good progress. I have the first 36 chapters in second-draft readiness. I know I'm not done with the story, but because I've been so freaking busy at work since ... some time ago, I sorta got out of the habit of writing daily. I know I could still do it, but I am so tired by the time I sit down, all I want to do is listen to music and play Spider Solitaire.

So, I went back to page 1 and started reading it. Again. Carefully. Very carefully. I cut much more than I added, especially trimming excessive adjectives (a bad habit of mine, but somewhat useful) and descriptions of Things That Aren't Important. I cloned a copy and converted it to single-spaced text, and then printed out something like 400 pages. Single-spaced, dual-sided to save paper.

Rereading also helps me when I get discouraged, because I get to read stuff I'd forgotten, and once again come around to realizing that I can write. And I'm getting better all the time.

In rereading, I began rethinking some things, and decided to change the order in which I had intended some events to occur. This means inserting a crucial section of exposition (enlightenment for the heroes, who are mightily confused about what's going on), thus raising the intensity level even more. Once my lead characters understand what's really happening, they will absolutely feel the pressure. Even more than they do, now. I just need to work out the details so it all makes sense.

Speaking of making sense: I discussed some of my plot points with my story critics (my spouse and stepdaughter) who seemed to find a lack of logic in them. When I explained that the person who's doing these bad things is insane, and getting insaner as he goes along, they seemed to accept the illogic more willingly. Insanity and mental illness doesn't have to be logical or make sense. There may be many reasons why other, basically rational people will go along with the insanity. Chief among these reasons is fear. Other reasons are ambition and greed. Complacency and apathy are others. I'm probably going to need all of these before I'm done.

My stepdaughter suggested I need a name for my invented language (the language of the native sun-skins in my story). I will work on this, but I'm still not sure I need a name other than "sun-skin language." I'm up to something like 500 root words, which equate to about 1,500 words, more or less. I have settled the grammar fairly well, and have a bunch of verb cases/conjugations. I'm still undecided how I should present the language in the book other than to show «I will follow you» cool double brackets around spoken words. In many places I have mixed English-sun-skin speech, but so far I have avoided long passages of sun-skin speech in sun-skin. No one can read it but me, so it seems excessive. Just know it's there, in case I ever want to make a movie of this. (Note the "elf" language in the beginning of Hellboy II.)

After Thursday I'm off to Florida for a week. Last year I used the poor weather as an excuse to write about 100 pages (the first 100 pages, more or less), but this year we have family going with us, so I doubt I will be able to bury myself in my laptop. I will just take my notebook and make notes as the mood strikes me.

I'm overdue finishing this story. I really want to get it done so I can move on to the next project. I have several ideas floating in the back of my mind; each one deserves my full attention. One of them is bound to be good enough to publish. So, until next time ...

It's been a while

I haven't blogged about my story, A Far Sun, in some time. I've been crazy busy at work, and the energy that works requires often means I have no desire left in the evenings to write. I can change that--I need to change that so I continue to make progress. I've been "stuck" at 175K words for a while, now, and despite stopping and restarting twice in the past 6 weeks, all I've succeeded in doing is red-pen-to-paper editing of the last 300 pages (or so).

Off topic but apropos, sometimes it pays to print out the damn thing and edit it on paper. Better than editing on screen, but obviously more costly in time and resources. A 6,000 page laser printer cartridge is about $130. Red rollerball pen refill is $5. Printer prints 19 pages per minute. Editing at the dining room table ... priceless.

But now to the reason for this post: I think I'm about ready to start podcasting the story. I've decided to keep the thing in present tense (i.e., "Adam looks to Jane, who is staring wide-eyed at the amazing sight before her.") But I'm still trying to decide what a sun-skin accent sounds like. I'm tempted to treat it like a Russian accent, but that still seems cliche and a bit obvious. Or maybe it's not obvious at all. As for male and female voices, I'm just going to soften my voice for the women (mostly just Jane) and probably just deepen my voice for Adam. This is just so you can tell when the narrator is speaking. I know I'm going to have to put in a bunch of "Adam says" and "Jane says" so you will know who's talking.

I've been worrying about the length of the story, as well. The story has these basic parts:

• Adam and Jane (my heroes) find themselves in a "new world" that has apparently been destroyed. They find people--a native race of primitive folks who call themselves "sun-skins," and they go to live in a sun-skin village, the guests of a young woman named Lina (my third hero).
  
• Adam and Jane have some important realizations during their live in the village, and decide they need to leave the village (all three of them) to go in search of a cure for the "disease" that's been killing newborn babies.
  
• The next part of the story is their journey to this place called the Library, where it seems the last scientists are to be found. Several things happen on this journey to color their impressions of the Librarians.
  
• They arrive at the Library, and discover that things aren't quite what they expected. Can't say more without spoiling it.
• They save the world. This is not a spoiler, is it?
  

Do they find a cure for the disease? What about the Librarians? There are revelations to be revealed. Heh.

So back to what I was saying about the story's length: I think I will not hurry through this "final" part, but instead take the time to more fully explain and describe the Library and the Librarians. Allow Adam and Jane a chance to interact with these people. It was always what I intended; I just moved away from it in the desire to keep the story shorter. OK, so it's not going to be that short. Maybe 250K words. If you knew how I write, that's not going to be hard to do. It's keeping it short that's hard.

I know all the background stuff, and I also know what's going on there that might be interesting to write about. Is everything specifically relevant to the plot? Not sure, but there are plenty of things already written that might be candidates for trimming. It's all interesting to me, so I'm pretty sure it will be OK if I write it.

As a final point of style: In the first few hundred pages I had things in the story that were not, strictly speaking, something you would write in a novel. Things such as "we watch as our heroes slog through the rain throughout the day." I have a bunch of this kind of stuff to clean up. Later in the story I adopted more of a narrative style, and very little talking directly with the reader as if we're both watching the action. No "jumping out of frame."

But to summarize, I think I will start working on podcasting this story, time allowing. I'll be off about two weeks around Christmas, so who knows? As I often say: stay tuned.

Some observations on dialog in my story A Far Sun

In listening to the podcast Writing Excuses, episode 35, this morning (don't tell anyone!), I was moved to do a little research into "said bookisms" and "Tom Swifties." These resources led me to some tips on writing dialog, which I want to discuss, here.

Learn how people talk to each other. Dialog should convey the person's intelligence/education, culture, and personality, without being too distracting. One thing I've struggled with continually is "translating" into English the conversations native sun-skin speakers have, in sun-skin. They would have excellent command of their own language, but if the English words I use are not typical for most native English speakers ... that is, if I have made them sound too educated, with large vocabularies, or worse (and more commonly) made them sound pompous or posturing ... well, you get the idea.

Furthermore, there are some words and concepts lacking in the sun-skin language, that if left out would make the English translation sound very odd or broken. And vice versa. My approach has been to insert the English words and constructions, even if the actual words the speakers use are different.

Dialog is not exactly like real speech, but it should read like real speech. Except that I intend my dialog to be spoken aloud in a podcast. Regardless, I take it into account. So, when my characters talk they need to sound good out loud as well as when read. In constructing the novel, later, I will probably recast everything to be read, and not spoken.

I do have a really bad habit of inserting ... ellipses to indicate pauses into my characters' spoken dialog. I use ellipses in place of "uh" and "ah" (though I do use "ah" as an interjection, like one would say "uh-huh" instead of "yes") Yeah, my ellipsis is just a long, long comma (with a silent "uh" in the middle). And I do use full stops, sometimes, in place of commas, just to put pauses where I think they belong.

I could write a complete post discussing comma use alone, since I've waffled on this idea quite a bit. My current rule is to put a comma where I want one when I'm reading the story aloud. If it was only to be read, I would use far fewer commas. Such as in the previous sentence, where I would not have used the comma unless I wanted it to read better aloud. After a while it becomes habit to put in commas to break up the words into speakable chunks. Otherwise I tend to get tripped up when reading it, and that's a bad thing. If I can't speak my own writing without stumbling, then there's something wrong with the writing.

Cut words and phrases that don't serve the conversation's purpose. As I'm writing the story, I read everything aloud, mainly because it will be read aloud. I pay special attention to things that don't sound right, except that I have not (yet) translated every conversation in sun-skin into the actual sun-skin language. Many of them are, and it occasionally causes me to modify the English to more closely match the actual sun-skin. That's right, I have invented a language (the sun-skin language) and can arbitrarily translate anything into it. Of course I need to invent words, but I have a grammar and a syntax, and even some colloquial expressions.

Beyond the language, I try not to have any gratuitous conversations. Every one of them serves at least two purposes. Usually it's character development (or character relationship development), plot development, and/or exposition. Having something of all three is better, of course. I don't have a character talk about sun-skin culture or philosophy just to talk about these things. It has to come out in the course of discussing something else more important to the story. I never have two characters talk about things they already know. That's bad. It's the "show, don't tell" method.

Don't try to provide too much information at once through dialog. No monologues, in other words. I have only one place where a character does this, and it's wonderfully relevant to the story. He spends an entire chapter talking, because he's telling my heroes the history of how he got there, and what happened along the way. I just chose to make it into a first-person passage in a third-person narrative. He even answers implicit questions that my heroes are asking, though I have left out the actual questions. Maybe I'm not explaining it well, but when you read it it will make sense.

Break up dialog with action. I do this. I rarely have more than two or three lines before interspersing some kind of action. People don't just stand still and talk. They move, they shrug, they frown, smile, pick things up, and perform all manner of non-essential things indicating their current mood.

Don't try too hard to vary your tag lines when writing dialog. Maybe I do too much of this. A tag line is the "he said" thing used to identify who is speaking. My only concession to the "Adam says" tag line is to simply eliminate the "says" part (since I am writing in present tense). So, when needed, I say:

Adam, "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Jane replies, "What do you mean?" Grins, "Of course I want to nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

The jury is still out on this, because I get very tired of always saying "Adam says," or "says Jane." When I only use the character's name, it seems more like I'm reading a play (which of course, it is, somewhat). What's a boy to do?

Avoid stereotypes, especially when it comes to dialect. My concession to this is the unknown stereotype of the native sun-skin speaker, who when speaking English would not use the word "the" (sun-skin has no definite article) except in special cases. They also don't use contractions. I shy away from most slang or colloquialisms for my native English speakers, except for the occasional "gonna" and "sorta" and "kinda" kinda thing. Heh.

Don't overuse profanity and slang when writing dialog. I hardly have any profanity. My story is for a PG audience, so I only use the occasional "damn" or even "shit." Actually, I think I took out all the expletives. I don't remember. But suffice it to say: I don't use profanity out of respect for my younger audience. Of course, adults tend to slip when they're angry. That said, my natural tendency is to write for adults, so I am quite conscious of the language my characters use.

Slang? I covered that, above. Also, I have to be aware my characters would not say things the way we would say them, today. They left their world in 1979, so they really wouldn't be "all over that." You know? It's been a long time, and I'm no longer hip with 1979 lingo. I mean, I hardly remember the late 1970's, but not for the reasons you're thinking.

Read widely, noting both good and bad dialog. This is very generic advice. It means "know your craft" and understand the difference between cheesy dialog and good dialog. I think I recognize cheese rather well. I guess I don't read too many bad books (anymore), but bad movie dialog ... Oy!

Punctuate dialog correctly. Yeah. This is the one that says put the period inside the final double quote, among other things. The only concession I make to this is in sun-skin speech. I use the double angle quote «I do not believe so» and place no punctuation before the speech, or at the end of the speech. Now, if there's a needed comma or period inside the quote, then it absolutely needs to be there. For timing reasons. I decided not to invent special punctuation for the language, especially since it's not even a written language--their history is entirely (or almost entirely) an oral history. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Of course one can break all the rules when writing, but you absolutely must know what they are, first. You need to demonstrate you understand the difference between being ignorant and only sounding ignorant. Deconstructionism is all well and good, as long as it has structure.

Go forth and conquer. Be fruitful and multiply. Live long and prosper. So sayeth the shepherd, so sayeth the flock. Now go get the flock out of here.

I see a website update in my future

It's been months since I updated my website. I discovered, in the process of re-hosting it to a new hosting service, that some pages are out-of-date and (now) inaccurate. The "About Me" page says I'm in an LTR (long-term relationship), which is technically accurate. However, since I've married the girl in question, perhaps I ought to update the page. Among others.

In other news, designing houses is no longer my current hobby. I've been writing a freaking novel for the past year, or so, and that little endeavor is taking all my spare time. And then some time that isn't quite so "spare." I think I will return to do more designs, some day in the next year or two (along with an upgrade to the CAD software, as well), but for now I'm writing, and having a damn good time doing it.

No, writing really isn't my hobby; it's the job I wish I had.

What's happening with A Far Sun?

September was "exciting" from the perspective that my former web hosting service was down about half the month. I have since transferred my main web site (rlaenterprises.net) to a new hosting service, DreamHost.com. They are many times better than the old one. I have been trying to transfer my story domain, afarsun.com over to my name so I can re-point it to my new web hosting service, but so far they haven't seen fit to respond to my correspondence. I may try contacting them via phone, today.

So, I have purchased a new domain name for my story, afarsun.net, and have put up the content, such as it is. At the same time I updated the pages, and even added a few. That's right, both domains are active, but not in the same place. When the transfer is complete, I will have both afarsun.com and afarsun.net point to the same place. Should be fun.

I'm in the last third of act III of my story, A Far Sun. Things are starting to pick up, both in terms of action and suspense. Revelations are abounding for my heroes. They learn something new at every turn. Allies and enemies are coming together to set in motion the events that will lead to the very exciting conclusion. And yes, it's the same conclusion I've been planning since I first envisioned it back in January. As I said, it should be fun.

Multiverses and the nature of creation

I read this post concerning the existence of multiple universes, and the existence of a creator. But of course, it made me think of the story I've been writing. I have a multiple parallel universe story. In fact, my two universes (that I've invented, so far) are very, very close together. But so far, I have not injected the notion of god or a creator.

One of my characters is starting to wonder if their sudden transportation to this alternate universe has a meaning. She speculates about it, apparently trying to reconcile the unknowable, in her mind. Of course, we all want meaning in our lives; she's no different. (And here I am treating a made-up character as if she's real! Well, she is real, she's just not physical.)

I tend to believe everything is simple coincidence. There's no reason for it; it just is. Of course, how we react to what we find and what we do in response to it ... that is where the rubber meets the road. We don't need a reason other than to be able to say: I saw an opportunity, so I took it. We only fail if we don't act, and with everything we have, as well. I'd want my creator to think that way. Who's to say it isn't that way?

So, one of my characters believes that everything is coincidence. The other also pretends to subscribe to this idea, but she still wants there to be something ... more. That they were engaged in time travel experiments without knowing it, and that something went very wrong that they didn't/couldn't predict ... that smacks of "things man wasn't meant to know." As if. The only crime is not using what you have, no matter how it was acquired.

I know my story is made up. I'm leaving all that creator stuff to someone else much smarter.

Writing: Viewpoint and Tense

I subscribe to a blog/podcast called Writing Excuses. This week's episode is "Viewpoint and Tense, part 2" though it certainly stands on its own.

Most genre fiction (in my case, science fiction) is written in third person "limited" viewpoint. That is, an invisible narrator is telling the story, but the narrator doesn't know everything that's going on. Usually this means the narrator gets inside the head of a character and tells the story from that character's viewpoint. Until he/she switches the viewpoint to another character. Some writers can juggle several different viewpoints and keep them all straight. Brandon, Howard, and Dan (the Writing Excuses guys) recommend keeping to two or three characters.

The story I'm writing is told in the third person limited viewpoint, and mostly from one viewpoint as well, that being of my male hero character. Most of the rest of the story is told from my female hero's viewpoint. Sure, there's gender bias in my choices, but since I'm male it makes (some) sense. It's easier for me. A small, but significant percentage of the story is told from my secondary female hero's viewpoint. The rest is told of necessity from the viewpoints of various other characters, mostly in scenes where my heroes are not present.

I've written extensively in first person, but not in the sci-fi genre, yet. First person can be interesting, but of course you're limited by what your story teller knows and sees. Third person lets you know and tell more, but in the limited viewpoint you still can't jump outside the knowledge of the characters, since you are always working from some given character's perspective.

Now, on to tense. My first draft is written in present tense, mostly because when I began I was working on the draft for a script. Well, I'm still working on a script so almost everything is happening "now." This does make things like flashbacks somewhat tricky to baseline, but as long as I can establish that we've jumped out of strict timeline order, then it works reasonably well.

On the subject of tense, I've noticed I have a tendency to slip into past tense. It happens all the time, and I am continually fixing these lapses. Kind of makes one wonder if it would be easier simply to write in past tense and be done with it, eh? All writing is practice, so I suppose it just means I need more practice.

On a slightly different topic, but still apropos of writing and my story, in particular, I believe I have come up with a way of showing the progression of time. If we were still in our world, then showing the date at each such juncture would be appropriate. That would help set the timeline pretty accurately. That is, if we had a calendar in the world of my story. But we don't. So, how then can I show the passage of time, unless I am continually saying things like "fifteen days from then" or "five days in the past"?

I've decided to show the phases of the moon. There's enough of a correspondence between chapters that the changes should be fairly representative. What I mean is, between scenes or chapters, there shouldn't be too much change in the moon such that it would be confusing. I might also show a text label, such as "waning half" or "nearly full" or "new." I haven't tried out this idea yet, so I have yet to see how well it will work.

I have dates assigned to the entire storyline. Most of them are 117 years in the future, though. With the exception of the few scenes that take place in the "facility" where they have a computer that knows the exact date, the rest of the story takes place in a primitive world where the most reliable way of reckoning time is the moon. And the seasons. Besides, in many ways, does it really matter if some event takes place on June 6th or June 8th? For the most part, it's quite good enough to say "several days later" and be done with it.

Followup to my previous post, and Hellboy II

Last week I posted that I'd come up with the ending to my story, "A Far Sun." Now, I've written it, and not only that I have a song to go along with it.

This epilogue is a bit more than one page (it's just over 4 pages--1,200 words), but it puts the final "period" on the story, and sets up the next one. Oh, and speaking of a set up ...

There will definitely be a third Hellboy movie, assuming this new one (Hellboy II: The Golden Army) doesn't bomb in the theaters. It shouldn't. It may have its flaws (it definitely has some rough edges) but overall it's a really good story and I enjoyed it almost as much as I did the first one. But you have to know this: it's a love story. On more than one front.

I won't spoil it with any ... er, spoilers, but it starts rather slowly and has an odd scene near the end of act II that seems to be a set up for a theme in the third movie, since this particular subplot doesn't resolve, here. There is also a prophesy (I think they're almost required in today's action-adventure, superhero movies) and of course the thing being prophesied doesn't happen in this movie. Go figure. I'd say more, but to go further would be to go too far. Heh.

If you liked the first movie you'll probably like this one, so check it out.

I now have the final page of my story: A Far Sun

Yesterday I had some "downtime" so I wrote out several pages of notes in my Moleskine notebook, and in the process of thinking through where I wanted my story to go and how I wanted to end it, I actually did come up with the ending.

And I like it a lot. I'd just love to tell you all about it, but I really must keep it secret so you'll all be willing to read the thing when it's done, just to find out what happens at the end.

My ending idea also set up, at a minimum, the second story. And at lunch today I speculated on the nature of the third story (OK, I had some help from teh Spork--he's really good with that sort of thing). It's not that I'm planning to write three stories based in this world and on the culture I've invented, it's more that I could write more than the one story I've already got.

Over the long holiday weekend (since American Independence Day was this past Friday), I sat down at the computer and read through the entire story (all 120K words), again, just so I could get back in gear to write some more. Oh, I'm writing, all right! Now, I'm comfortable with what the story is about (I was a bit sidetracked, before), and I know exactly what the primary conflict is. And yes, they defeat it at the end. Why, of course they do.

I'm less concerned with the length and the pacing, but I think it will still work out. I've also been looking into the possibility of podcasting the story as a radio play, and getting voice actors (most likely friends) to do the various parts. I don't read that badly, but I still don't like my voice all that much. On the other hand, I do have a theme song for the podcast, and considering my budget for such a production, I can even afford the licensing fees.

And yes, eventually I want to make this into a web comic. I think it could really benefit from the visuals, and I'm not crazy enough to think it would ever become a movie.

So stay tuned. Things are going to get (more) interesting.

A Far Sun: changes

Cross-posted to my LiveJournal writing blog.

Let's see if I can summarize what's going on:

• I've been figuring out who the Librarians were/are (as a group). Determining the history of the place, the people who were there originally, and the subsequent 'history' of what happened after. The Librarians call the disease 'the Pathogen.' How nice.
• The pseudo-scientist in me ran into problems with the 300+ year time line. You had to know this was going to happen sooner or later. Even if I could delude myself into believing the Librarians could survive that very long time (317 years), many wouldn't buy my cheesy explanations.
• So I cut 200 years out. It's now 117+ years instead of 317. This actually improved my 'moon phase' problem because I had fewer days to adjust, but it does mean it will most likely be fairly cool when my heroes first show up. Not a major problem, just a reflection of my own lack of planning. Oh, well.
• I kinda like the notion that one of the following would be true: 1) either the sun-skins would want to start the planting at (or after) the first spring full moon, or 2) they would want to have their spring celebration at the (same) full moon. As it stands, the moon is almost new when they have the celebration.
• If I move everything to make the full moon line up with planting and spring festival/ celebration, then my heroes get there when it's still pretty cold. If I wait a month (well, move everything about 2 weeks forward), they won't get to the Library until summer is almost over. Perhaps that's a good thing ...

I have noticed a distinct lack of proper planning prior to writing the bulk of the story. I sorta went for it without having figured out what was going to happen and how long/when, and now much later desiring to line everything up all nice and neat. Honestly, the time line isn't all that critical except for certain events that need to line up with moon phases, like the planting/ celebration and the 'midnight battle' which logically shouldn't occur when the moon is new (or just a sliver).

I am OK with the idea that I don't do enough planning before writing. Writing is a creative right-brain endeavor that is only balanced out by left-brain rigor and structure. I did pretty good with my impulsive right brain; now it's time to place some structure and logic to the story flow. I really think by spacing out some things more it actually makes more sense. It wouldn't just be a few days here, a few days there. I think we get a much better idea of the pace and flow of sun-skin life if we really just take our time and let things meander forward. So ... maybe the full moon in May (though they don't know it as May) is when the spring celebration happens. And if we have Adam and Jane leaving the village at the full moon in July or August (instead of the full moon in June) ...

Ah, so there's another problem. They need to plan to get back to the village before winter. This means leaving the village sooner instead of later is important (now I remember why I 'rushed' this in the story!).

Argh! Pushing the story too early in the spring means cold weather and possibly snow; pushing things later mean there wouldn't be time (necessarily) to make the trip before it gets cold again. My left brain is about to asplode, now. My right brain is saying everything is OK the way it is.

Stay tuned. I'm still working this out.

A Far Sun: update

Word count: ~113,400
Pages: ~448

I'm three scenes into act III. I've introduced the Head Librarian, but not named him. My heroes have just crested the hill and like Dorothy looking through her open doorway, they suddenly see the Library before them. And the contrast is just about as obvious, too. In a destroyed and decaying world, the Library is an outpost of activity and order--a relative civilization.

But of course there's something wrong in paradise.

My progress is slower than I'd initially hoped. I understand it now, because I'm having to make sure everything I've said up to this point (everything that's happened and everything my characters have said) is consistent with what's now unfolding. I had to change three small scenes and identified some other changes I'd like to make, but can wait.

In case anyone wonders, this is why I like to write my stories serially--in the order things happen. Even though I know what's going to happen at the macro level, there are a million details (some quite significant) I cannot know until I've written them. Sure, I could write scenes in any order because arguably the rewriting I do (to scenes that happened earlier) isn't less than the rewriting I'd have to do (to later scenes, previously written) if I wrote things out of order, I just prefer to work this way. But now I'm to the good part, and things are gonna pick up speed. The first bunch of pages in act III are expositional (because of introducing a bunch of new characters and in some ways--a whole new world), but pretty soon things are going to get interesting.

Last night I worked through a bunch of stuff in talking with my wife during (and after) dinner. It's that left-brain--right-brain thing. I have a couple important details about the Head Librarian I need to work out, and one or two about another key character, but all in all the story is coming together nicely.

I suffer some anxiety because my "action-adventure" story has a lot of "character stuff" in it. For me the most interesting part of the writing is the characters and their relationships to (and with) each other. So I'm writing what I want, and my story is about what I want it to be about. There may be some larger things going on, but I'm telling this story from ground-level--from the human level. I am aware not everyone will want to read it, but it's still very interesting to me, so I forge ahead.

A Far Sun update: story moving again

Cross-posted to my LiveJournal writing blog.

It's been a while since I blogged progress on my story, "A Far Sun." But now I'm moving again on the story, and I'm about 20-25 pages into act III. It's hard to estimate exactly, because I have a bunch of pages already written that aren't yet woven into the greater story, yet.

I had a lot to think about, and in the meantime I decided to invent the sun-skin language (which I have done, essentially). My heroes are fairly well beat up at the end of act II. In good story structure, they're supposed to be in big trouble, and of course they are. Act II is supposed to end at the lowest point for the heroes. Tied up as prisoners and injured is about as bad as it can get, for them. I just needed to figure out what they were going to do and how they were going to do it. And I have.

Of course they're going to continue on with where they're going. This is an action-adventure, and these are heroes. Only death can stop them (and maybe not even then). But I still wanted to have a good reason for them to be so determined. Well, that reason is pretty simple (but no spoilers at this time, however).

I have many good plot points to explore in act III. A big surprise, some smaller surprises, and a finale worthy of all the effort I've put into this story.

Moonrise, moonset, and midnight fighting in the ... dark?

Argh! I've been writing my story "A Far Sun" in earnest since January (2008). Because I can, and because in the story the phases of the moon (and the relative light emanating therefrom) are important, I've been keeping track of where the moon is and what phase it's in.

And gotten it all wrong.

No, it's not because my moon phase calculator is wrong, it's because the "calculator" is visual and I cannot seem to fathom that a dark circle means the moon is "new" and a light circle means the moon is full. So, I'm off by two weeks in the story. Exactly. As I said: ARGH!

Actually it's not that much of a problem since no one (in the story) cares what date or day of the week it is. Moving forward (or backward) two weeks does have an impact on the weather, however (since the protagonists arrive sometime in late March/early April) but of course I can fudge the temperatures and the dates that trees begin to leave and flowers begin to bloom.

Two weeks forward is my current plan. Going back two weeks places my protagonists in a position to be cold and perhaps even deal with snow. Moving forward (a whole month swing) means the weather will be warmer and really bad weather (i.e., snow) much less likely.

Why do I even care? Well, when the story goes out into the woods and the protagonists are walking and camping, it really doesn't make sense that the big battle in the middle of the night should happen right when there's a new moon. It's dark on these nights. People are rather unlikely to see much in such dark, so describing what goes on from the POV of an observer doesn't exactly work.

Why correct the error, since no one knows what the moon phases will be in the year 2297? OK, that's a good question. But trust me, someone will check, and it's a detail I'd rather get right, than stupidly wrong. So you ask, what are the moon phases in 2297? Well, find them here. You can find a really accurate sunrise/moonrise/moon phase calculator here. It only does 185 days at a time, but that's good enough.

And off we go!

I finally figured out how to handle the appearance (or non-appearance as the case may be) of two "new" characters in my story. These guys both appear in the very beginning, then don't come back until much, much later in act III. I was worried their introduction (and disappearance) might seem odd and was considering writing in their backstory throughout the bulk of the story. Well, that's not what I did.

I simply changed the initial "accident" scene in the beginning where Adam and Jane are transported into the future (I'm not really giving anything away, here). And by "simply" I mean I changed the POV in the scene away from Adam and onto a perspective from inside the control room, which overlooks the Chamber where Adam and Jane are monitoring the experiment. So we get to see Adam and Jane disappear, then we see Brian (and some others) disappear a moment later. Poof! Now it's obvious to the audience that everyone is somehow linked to the accident, though we only get to see Adam and Jane as they awaken to a somewhat different set of circumstances than what they'd known. We're all left wondering what's happened to Brian and Fralick. Wondering, indeed.

So I've worked through the crisis at the end of act II. I know I said I was there before, but I realized I needed to more completely wrap things up in the aftermath of the big battle. I won't give anything away, though. Yes, there is a big battle and for a time it's quite uncertain if Adam and Jane will survive, but of course ... they do. Now I'm off and running in act III (hence the title of this post) and finally getting to write all those "candy bar" scenes I've been imagining and holding in my head for months and months. Yes folks, our heroes finally get to the Library. And not only that, we are quite nicely set up for a really big reveal. Shocking, some might say.

Well, I'm going back to writing, now. And this is the really big fun part, too! Can't avoid getting to the ending, now. The only difficulty I can see is making the "big bad guy" big enough and bad enough.

For those keeping score, I'm just past 104,000 words and 415 pages. Approximately 140 pages remain. So stay tuned.

Followup to my Earlier Post

This past Friday I blogged about recent progress on "A Far Sun." Since then I've met with a couple of my story consultants (my wife and her oldest daughter, the scientist), and they have helped me work through some sticking points. To wit:

1. I will write in some pages (30 or 40) about the two characters who will be making their appearances in act III. The audience will be in on the surprise/secret, just not my heroes.
2. I have also figured out why the two others left the Facility (in the beginning of the story) and did not ensure they had a way to get back in. Something to do with not having any power ...
   
3. I have some pretty good inklings why Adam is so critical to the sun-skin people (this was Lina's intuition/premonition when she first finds them). Jane will figure out how to beat the disease; Adam is the key. And it's only Adam, as well.
4. Adam will get to save the world, and not just by donating some of his genetic material, either. In the end at the big climax, he will be the one who shuts down the Chamber and keeps the reactor from going into melt-down.
5. However, in the process of reactivating the Chamber the big bad guy (the Head Librarian, in case you wondered) gets his comeuppance. He gets zapped into another universe, but can you guess where?
6. Someone else will sacrifice himself/herself to save the others. No, it's not any of my three heroes or Jane's love interest, either. At least, I don't believe it will be him.
   

My biomedical researcher stepdaughter (she really is a scientist!) has been über helpful. Her PhD researcher husband also had some comments, too. Let's just say I have sources to help make all the biological stuff Jane gets to do in act III, make sense.

And perhaps most importantly I have some reasoning to explain the observed effects of the disease that's killing most of the newborn babies in this new world. When I explained how my invented disease (so far it's a virus) was affecting people, my stepdaughter immediately had some really good explanations for why it might work the way it does. Why some live and some die. Of course for Jane to figure out what it's doing will take some experimentation, and with only people being affected by the disease it will be quite difficult to test her theories. She'll just have to make a few educated guesses and hope she gets it right. Because people's lives are at stake.

Fun stuff!

Progress on "A Far Sun"

It looks like it was the end of February when I last mentioned where I was with my current writing project "A Far Sun." Back then I was about 86,000 words and working hard on getting to the end of act II.

Now I'm somewhere past 105,000 words and I haven't begun act III, yet. Act II is complete, and the crisis right at the end (of act II) is pretty good. So, what happened? Surely I didn't have 20,000 words left when I really thought I was almost there?

Well, in the process of trying to craft act III I was given a really good suggestion (thanks to teh Spork) that has forced me to go back and "slightly" alter things in the very beginning. I'm still not completely satisfied with how I've set things up, but suffice it to say I have written in a couple of (what were previously very minor) characters who will have significant roles to play in act III. My dilemma is how (or whether) to weave them into the greater story (you know, the 400 pages between the first couple scenes and act III).

Perhaps the audience should be in on what's happening. Maybe they should know what my heroes will discover when they get to the Library (yeah, the second half of act II is all about Adam and Jane--my heroes--traveling to this place called "the Library"). I'd like to keep it a surprise, except for the jarring disconnect I have at the moment.

What's this all about, you ask? I'm damned confused, you say? When a writer introduces a couple of characters in the beginning of the story you might reasonably think they have some role to play. Actually, you know they do, or the writer wouldn't be telling you about them. But in my story you aren't hearing about them at all until many pages later (in act III). I'd really like to link them in along the way so the readers aren't going "so that's why they're there!"

So, I'm deliberating and working through this (small) partial rewrite. If I write their actions into the story, which I can certainly do (because I've already sketched out their backstory), then the audience will certainly know what's going to happen. Somewhat. Maybe it enhances interest in the conflict I've set up, particularly if I make the "big bad guy" pretty ... er, big and bad. If so, then I've got about 30-50 pages to write and weave in. Not altogether bad, and it causes act III to be a little longer (because I want to keep the lengths of the acts balanced).

I don't know exactly how long this rewrite will take. My illustrator said the current semester/term was ending May 9, so by implication this means she'll have some time to work on character concepts. I sent her the latest character bios and second draft of the first two acts (about 440 pages in the fixed font, 380 pages in the nice proportional font, i.e., it's rather long). Needless to say I am all atwitter to see her ideas, and I am already priming myself for her ideas to completely not match mine. And that's fine with me.

Stay tuned.

End-of-the-month Status Update

Here we are again. Another February gone by, and what do we have to show for it?

Let's see:

1. I was sick for about 8 days with some kind of flu/serious cold. All better now except the cough is still hanging around. Yeah. I missed almost an entire week of work. Major suckage.
   
2. I finally got my promotion (and accompanying raise). No suckage. Can you say discretionary income?
   
3. I switched to Open Office 2.3.1 for my writing, then bagged it because of a couple of problems saving my document, then went back to MS Word 2007 (which works pretty well), then decided to go back to Open Office. No suckage. Just indecision.
   
4. With respect to the story (A Far Sun or here, too), I had to put it down while I was sick, so I was stalled and it took a whole week to get back into it. I got it started again and now I'm past 86,000 words. I have a really good confrontation/crisis happening, which will help lead up to Act III. No suckage.
   
5. I changed fonts in the manuscript, so my 86K words are now about 306 pages. Act I is 115 pages, so ... that means the whole thing should be about 460 pages. Unless I change fonts, again. Or decide it needs to be longer, or something. Again, no suckage.
   
6. My home computer speakers, (Altec Lansing) which have served me exceedingly well for about 4 years, are gradually crapping out. Sad, sad, suckage. However, I have purchased primo replacements. No suckage. But to make room I now need to clean up my home office, which has borne the brunt of my procrastinatory slothage for quite some time. Self-induced suckage. But, just think how much better I'll feel when everything is all clean. Huzzah!
   
7. I looked into online/remote backup programs/services. Huh. Major suckage. The first company had a stupid restriction about writing or saying anything about them without their prior written approval. Adversarial, so I ran. The next company was nice and friendly, but their backup program crashed about 20% through my 2G free backup. Uh, no sale there, either. They shall remain nameless.
   
8. I found a not-free program that can sync and/or backup (though not online or remotely) any kind of files I want. Very simple to use and so far it appears to work. I have it backing up documents and stuff every half hour. It's called GoodSync, and you may have heard of it if you know RoboForm. No suckage.
   

While we're on the subject of writing, I must say I really like Open Office. Current version is 2.3.1, and you can download the whole suite from here, quite easily. There's also a portable version that I find eminently suitable for my laptop (where I have it installed on my external 80G USB hard drive). Install the Portable App menu/launcher, because you'll want to install a bunch of other free portable applications (which include WinAmp, Firefox, and Thunderbird, among others). On second thought, just get the whole Portable Apps Suite and be done with it.

MS Word still has some features this program lacks, but there are cool features in Open Office Writer that Word doesn't have. First, you can modify the colors (page background, text, etc.) as it displays on the screen. Like the blue background and yellow text of WordPerfect for DOS? You can have it. I like a pale yellow background for the page. Enhanced contrast and all that good stuff. Among other features, F5 brings up a navigational window where you can navigate to chapter headings, page numbers, bookmarks, you name it. Let's see, I did have some issues with "smart quotes," but solved them. Seems some fonts don't support fancy, curly quote marks quite as fully as you might want. (Can you say Optima?)

Oh, did I mention that it stores documents in Open Document format? This is an XML format, but they are stored compressed so they're about 1/4 the size of the same documents in Word format. I cannot speak for Word 2007 format, but Word 2007 is much more efficient storing documents in Word 2003 format (.DOC extension) than Word 2003 is, itself. Yes, we're talking 200K .ODT vs. about 1M .DOC. There is a plugin (two of them, actually) to permit Word to load/save in ODF. Open Office Writer itself loads and saves in Word 2000 format (.DOC), should you feel the urge. The coolest thing about Open Office is that it's free. I may have an MSDN subscription, permitting me "free" copies of almost all Microsoft stuff, but not everyone is so "blessed".

I am a font geek. I also change my tastes from time to time, and believe it or not the choice of font is important to the written piece. Times New Roman should be banned, along with Arial. I never want to see either of them, ever again.

In my story, I had been using a Microsoft font called Consolas, that MS released for use with Visual Studio 2005, which I happen to have. This is a very nice fixed-spacing font, really good for programming (duh), and I have no complaints about it. I also really like Maiandra GD, which comes with MS Office, I believe. It almost makes a good book font, too. Now, though, I've switched to Myriad Web Pro, from Adobe, a font I purchased as part of a font collection. It's a nice Gothic-looking font (think Century Gothic or Franklin Gothic, you get the idea) with good balance between dark and light that enhances its readability. Yes, really.

For classic book fonts, I most heartily recommend Garamond and Palatino. Many books have been published in these fonts. I used both of these for my earlier novelistic attempt. You can't go wrong, but for my story they just don't quite make it. Not for the first draft, anyway.

So, another cold-ish February is by the boards. Let's see where I can get to by the end of March.

No obvious reason for this post

Except to say I have passed 74,000 words (302 pages) in my story. I'm well into the second half of Act II, but still with about 100 pages to go to get to Act III. Maybe 80, but you get the idea.

It's definitely looking like the finished first draft will be about 500 pages, which works out to about 122,000 words. But of course anything between 100,000 and 150,000 words would be OK, too.

Once completed, I will then begin to craft the second draft. In it I will focus on a few things I left out of the first draft, mainly the mythology and quasi-religious rituals of the sun-skins. I will also shift into third person past tense, which will be the basis of the novel. Before working on the second draft, however, I will attempt to mercilessly cull the bits of the first draft that can be safely lost. Honestly I haven't found much that isn't relevant to the story I want to tell, but we'll see how creative I get.

Some folks have expressed interest in reading what I have, but I hesitate to share because it's a work in progress and because it's a rough draft (well, rough for me). I always like to re-read dialog and action and refine it. Over and over, and over again. Until I can't find a single word I would change. But, that's just a bad habit I've developed, because I really need to get the first draft done. Then (and only then) can I go back and revisit stuff.

Oops, too late for that, I guess.

A Far Sun

My web comic/graphic web novel "A Far Sun" is on its way. I will be finishing the draft of the "screen story" (or would it be the web play story?) in the next few weeks. I already have over 50,000 words written, which constitutes the first half of the story, and I've plotted out the second half. This half may not be 50K words, but we'll see.

I am really jazzed about this story. It's really good, and when I told my collaborators (you know who you are!) they all agreed that my ending is "really cool." But, I'm not bragging, I think the ending is pretty good, too.

My spouse, who is my #1 collaborator, has been quite instrumental in my story development. She has a most exquisite grasp of the higher ideas (and ideals) I'm trying to present in the story, and always has the very best feedback as I run all my crackpot ideas past her. Yes, she'll be the one to whom I dedicate this work.

She has suggested I turn the story into a regular novel as well as a graphic novel. Obviously that gives me some additional leeway in the story telling that might be interesting. At the least it gives an additional dimension to the telling: the internal story of the feelings and thoughts of the characters. Of course, we can and do show these things visually. It's just a little more "robust" treatment in the conventional novel form. We'll see. Once I've finished the web play for the graphic novel I may be storied-out on this particular tale. But then there's the sequel, etc., so maybe it never ends.

No, the story doesn't end with this ending. It's really just another beginning. You see, I believe in keeping hope alive. Not that I hope I get the chance to write the sequel, or anything, but that I would not end this story without making sure hope was alive in the story. And if hope is alive, then there's more story to tell. There's always more.

Meanwhile my artist is quite busy trying to maintain her 3.9+ GPA in art school, I kid you not. I will just have to be patient, because I absolutely believe she will do the very best job illustrating this thing. And the best part of all this is that everyone on this project is family. I am literally on top of the world, so lucky am I!

Today I bought the domain name "www.afarsun.com". Nothing online for it, yet, but soon (as soon as I get a little more time) I will be putting up a nice (empty) main page so folks have somewhere to navigate to.

So, as I often say: Stay tuned.

I am excited

I have started to blog my progress on my latest project: A Far Sun. It's a web comic/graphic novel idea. The story is an action/adventure tale with two protagonist heroes, Adam and Jane, who are (were?) researchers on a "suspended animation" experiment. However, on the day of their first full-power trial, something goes wrong and they both black out. They awaken later, but very quickly they discover that things aren't quite right.

What really excites me about this project is how good I think it will be when it's finally illustrated, and we get to fully visualize all my ideas. There's plenty of action, plenty of mystery, and plenty of good, well-rounded characters and a story that the readers should identify with.

Check it out. It's really starting to get good!

Blogging: A Far Sun

A Far Sun is the title of my latest writing project. Eventually I plan to publish it as a web comic/graphic novel, but for now I will be blogging the interim results as I work through the plot, characters, setting, and various other items of importance. Look for entries tagged A Far Sun if you want to read just the posts related to this project.