One Chapter

You know all those problems I was talking about with direction last time?   Well, it only takes one good chapter to right everything again and surely enough, shortly after I wrote the last blog post, I hit that chapter.   It's not that anything significant has actually changed in where I'm going with the story, it's just that I hit a certain tone in that chapter that reinvigorated the way I felt about the story.   Whenever I describe what the book is about I avoid the vampires and werewolves part, because that has obvious problems with people's assumptions. (Quite reasonable assumptions, I might add.)   But I think I'm doing okay with it now.   I do know that it's going to be more than 50,000 words long.   I'll definitely get to the 50k by Thursday, I'm at 43,413 now, so should be no problem.  

I also created a spreadsheet for An Odyssey of Shadows, that maps out how the word count is distributed between the different characters in the book.   It's quite cool, I like it a lot.   I like reading about those kinds of stats, I really enjoyed reading the Wheel of Time stats like this.   And I also found out some interesting stats about my own writing.   First off, my chapters are shorter than they were in Songlord.   I suppose it's because I'm jumping from character to character, but it was a bigger difference than I expected.   Clarissa has the longest chapters, on average.   Edric, obviously, has the most words from his point of view.

Looking forward to the big ramp up to the finish!

Day 21

Caught up with the required word count again!   That was close for a few days, I was trailing behind what I needed.   It was a busy few days and I didn't have as much time as I'd like to sit down and write, but I managed it last night.   The target for yesterday was 33,333 and I got to 33,335.   Well placed, it was the end of a chapter and everything.

I'm finding myself with a strange lack of direction though.   Ever since the large conflict earlier on the book, I've been branching out and while I like some of the ideas, the story has lost the sense of purpose it had originally.   I still have an overarching plot, but something is missing.   I'm sure an inspired idea will crack me over the head soon enough, but it's difficult to even decide on my point of view characters for each new chapter now.   Hopefully that will improve soon, I'll try to spend a bit more time planning.

Day 4000

Wait, what?   Today is day 11.   You didn't really think I was gonna blog every day seeing a 'day 1' post, did you?   If you did, I sincerely apologize.   I've been writing my novel instead of blogging; and I've gotta say it's going quite well.   At the risk of being, as one of my friends put it, 'fad-alicious' I've got vampires and werewolves (and a variety of other creatures of that ilk, but these two seem to classify the entire book automatically) in my novel.   Don't worry, I haven't set up teams or anything.

So, today I broke the 20,000 word mark, which is pretty cool.   I'm a little ahead, but I'll need it for tomorrow, where I don't anticipate getting any writing done for An Odyssey of Shadows, I'll be working on Aspect instead.   It's quite a breakneck pace I've set for myself this month, trying to simultaneously write two novels, one for assessment, the other under severe time constraint, but I'm getting it done.   December will feel like a big holiday by comparison (I hope).  

Around 20,000 words, I'm finally reaching a scene I've been planning for a long time, one that I've been really excited about.   Thankfully, I do also have some plans for what happens afterwards, so I don't just grind to a screeching halt once the awesome is over.   After all, there's still room for everything I've done so far, doubled up again, and then 50% again, so there needs to be a lot more story.   But by introducing a few new characters that I can edit earlier references to in later, I think I've given some serious longevity to my overall character arcs.

Day 1

Meet my protagonist: Vier.   He's a wraith that lives beyond the edge of time.   He's been observing humanity for some time, and has realized that their galactic empire will eventually collapse as humanity tries to 'conquer' itself.   His solution?   Introduce a common foe to unite the humans against.   But humanity exterminated the last of its sentient opposition, creatures such as demons and vampires, in the Dark Ages.   So Vier must travel back to the Dark Ages, a vastly different version from the real Dark Ages, and ensure that the creatures of darkness aren't driven to extinction.

The first chapter introduces Edric Sable, a Crusader of the Church of a Divine, a warrior tasked with slaying the devils and demons that lurk in the night.   He's a pious, righteous, and powerful individual, who we'll learn more about as we go.

And this is the progress of my first day!   Oh yes, the book is called "An Odyssey of Shadows".   I'm really glad I had the idea regarding Vier last night, and now I've been developing it.   I'm slightly worried about being cliched, using vampires and such, but given a NaNoWriMo novel is all about word count, that's something I can worry about later.   Even if this never sees the light of publishing day, I think it will be fun to write, and different enough from Aspect that the two shouldn't interfere with each other.   I can only hope.

2171 words out of my first day also means that I'm already ahead of my 1667 words per day average required to reach 50,000 by the end of the month.   Let's hope I can keep that up!

NaNoWriMo!

I know it's been a long time since I've written anything on here, I've been very busy, writing, programming, coursework, building computers, the list goes on, and I try to get my writing done before I do my writing about writing. (Metawriting? :D )   I'm by no means 'done' with Aspect in any respect, it's still in its infancy, but I've just had a great idea for my NaNoWriMo story!   Which is amazingly good timing, seeing as it's now 1:35 AM on November 1st.

Aspect, I've been experimenting with different character points of view, but I did so by writing a few scenes out of sequence, and, quite frankly, it was weird.   I normally write in chronological order, so I get to anticipate and plan my favorite scenes, and change the details as I 'discover' other facets of the story writing the parts in between.   Jumping straight into a scene I really wanted to write left me oddly short on material.   I wrote the part I wanted and suddenly had nothing else to say, because I didn't know exactly where the characters had come from to get where they were, or where they were going.

Now I have the monumental, self-imposed task of writing both Aspect and my NaNoWriMo novel at the same time.   Great idea, Stuart, this should be a fun month. :P   It will be enjoyable in the end, but it'll definitely be a chore sometimes.   But maybe, just maybe, some more Songlord quality stories are buried in there somewhere.   I have high hopes for Songlord in the long run, and despite all of my other writing projects, Songlord 2 is actually one of the things I feel most driven to write.   That bodes well for the story as a whole, but I feel I shouldn't rush on into the next book before standing back and editing the first one!   I wouldn't want to change essential story events and suddenly have to rewrite vast swathes of book 2.   Anyway, I look forward to the return (or not?) of Catherine Langord and Isaac Darksbane.

Another Name

Oh, how this tortures me.   I'm trying to name Aspect's protagonist, and have been for almost three days now.   I have a good picture of who he is as a character, though not as clear on what he looks like.   And the name is escaping me!   I've got a lot of ideas for the story that I want to write about.

Basically, since I haven't explained yet on here, Aspect centers around a magic crafter, a man who can create new spells and enchantments.   But he can no longer cast spells himself, he needs the aid of his three (much more inexperienced) apprentices to do the casting, and he can handle the manipulating of the magic.

In the world of Aspect, there is an event every ten years, referred to as a Passage, where an interdimensional creature enters their plane of existence and drastically alters the environment to suit itself.   The protagonist was partially, and unwittingly responsible for the previous Passage, and has taken on the task of manipulating the next one, to see if he can control which dimensional creature finds a pathway into their world, ideally one whose elemental affinity would cancel out the current imbalance caused by the previous three Passages.

More on the lore next time!

A Name!

Naming things is the bane of my existence.   Fantasy always involves unbelievable amounts of naming, and it always bugs me.   Sometimes the names just don't work, but I can't sit and ponder on the name of village innkeeper #4 for days at a time.   Sometimes I have to go ahead and just use whatever I can think of, and I can ctrl+f replace it later.   (That is a great function.)

But some things are worth stopping to think about.   My newest novel, an extract of which I'll be submitting as a college assignment, now has a name!   'Aspect'.   The name is central to the story, short, and hopefully catchy.   It seems to have some weight to it.   It's the kind of simple thing I was looking for.

Aspect's mythology is developing in my head now, and I'll get more into that soon, but I'm really looking forward to writing it.   Rather than my usual emphasis on first-draft speed, that I sort of inherited from NaNoWriMo, I'll be taking it slow, editing as I go, and see how that turns out for me.   Hopefully the mythology will develop more fully earlier on in the book, because looking back at Songlord and Kosmos, there's a lot to change in the opening chapters.