Novel progress
I finished another chapter last night, and I have to say that I'm very excited about how this is shaping up. I know I'll have a lot to do in rewrite to get it where it needs to be--tweaking the characters so they have more consistent developments, setting up some of the plot points so they don't come quite so out of the blue (and some of them really did as I was writing), etc.--but that's fine. I think where it's at now is showing me that it will reward that full rewrite process and become a very solid manuscript. It's very different from the other things I've written in some ways, especially on the surface, but I'm sure that those who've read Darkness and Genies would see connections there, probably even many that I'm unaware of.
One thing I know I'll need to do before the rewrite (and really before the final chapters of the first draft), is a map of the city. I love maps--I'm sure I've mentioned that here before--but usually my maps have been on a bigger scale, showing a country or continent or even world (usually not quite that big of a scale, though). I guess on family car trips when I was young I'd entertain myself drawing maps of invented national parks (which had to include a canyon the size of Grand Canyon, a waterfall as wide as Niagara and as tall as Yosemite, and towering mountains for scenery, so that's not really a small scale) and invented campgrounds (with trails and ballparks and playground-type equipment that would appeal to whatever age I was at the time). So we'll see how the city map drawing goes. I sketched one this morning and realized that the full city is too big to map in the kind of detail I want, so I'll try another that zooms in on the southern part of the city.
Anyone else who is as fascinated with maps as I am (or even just a little curious), I'll recommend both Strange Maps (a blog that collects a variety of fascinating maps of real and imaginary places) and the series of columns at Strange Horizons about the cheese map of France, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
I finished another chapter last night, and I have to say that I'm very excited about how this is shaping up. I know I'll have a lot to do in rewrite to get it where it needs to be--tweaking the characters so they have more consistent developments, setting up some of the plot points so they don't come quite so out of the blue (and some of them really did as I was writing), etc.--but that's fine. I think where it's at now is showing me that it will reward that full rewrite process and become a very solid manuscript. It's very different from the other things I've written in some ways, especially on the surface, but I'm sure that those who've read Darkness and Genies would see connections there, probably even many that I'm unaware of.
One thing I know I'll need to do before the rewrite (and really before the final chapters of the first draft), is a map of the city. I love maps--I'm sure I've mentioned that here before--but usually my maps have been on a bigger scale, showing a country or continent or even world (usually not quite that big of a scale, though). I guess on family car trips when I was young I'd entertain myself drawing maps of invented national parks (which had to include a canyon the size of Grand Canyon, a waterfall as wide as Niagara and as tall as Yosemite, and towering mountains for scenery, so that's not really a small scale) and invented campgrounds (with trails and ballparks and playground-type equipment that would appeal to whatever age I was at the time). So we'll see how the city map drawing goes. I sketched one this morning and realized that the full city is too big to map in the kind of detail I want, so I'll try another that zooms in on the southern part of the city.
Anyone else who is as fascinated with maps as I am (or even just a little curious), I'll recommend both Strange Maps (a blog that collects a variety of fascinating maps of real and imaginary places) and the series of columns at Strange Horizons about the cheese map of France, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
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p.s. I found your blog via Speculative Faith