3 Green Fish

So, oddly, I keep on adding pages as I “revise,” without really getting very far in my revision process. Oh well. It all seems to be working better this time through, and I’m able to keep the better bits and toss the worse ones, and since I have a much better idea of which is which, that makes my job a lot easier. Also, these earlier chapters require a lot more rewriting than later ones will, so hopefully I’ll speed up as I go. I might even reach a point where I won’t need to revise much at all in certain chapters as I get closer to the end of what I’ve written. There’s always the third draft, anyway.

As for metrics, you’ll see that while I added 2.5 pages to my second draft, I’ve still only revised 2 of my previous 62 pages so far. The fun part will come when I reach the end of the revision process and see just how much everything has grown by!

Bandolor and Adrianna are still jelling as characters. That’s good. Adrianna has a personality from the beginning this time around, which is certainly an improvement, and I can save some of the revelation of trauma for later in the book. I’m off to a good middle.

I’m moving ahead with my revision. I need to move a little faster, but at least I’m making some progress. Today I added more to my new Chapter 1 (my old Chapter 1 is now Chapter 3), and began the process of reworking the old prologue into Chapter 2. Now that I’ve got a better handle on Bandolor it makes a bit more sense, and I can cut out some of the awkwardness that was there when I first wrote the prologue.

I’ve revised 1 out of 62 pages. That means that I have taken approximately a page of my previous draft and reworked it. In general, though, reworking means that I’m adding more text than I’m taking out, or so it seems, and most of that is just to make thinks flow well, rather than adding major plot changes or new events. Those come later in the redraft.

It’s nice to see how I’ve learned a little about these characters. Adrianna in Chapter 1 seems to be working better, and Bandolor is a bit clearer now that I’ve learned about how sorcery works in my made-up world (you wouldn’t think I’d have to learn that, would you?). So, progress is good. More tomorrow!

Here’s Bandolor’s opening as it stands. Still a little awkward, but it’s getting better. It’s closer to what I’m looking for in my final product, and I’m still expecting another revision process after I get to the end of the book.

Bandolor O’Sorce stood on Mount Jormu’s plateau and stared deep into the stone serpent’s gullet, its carven head and fangs looming above him. From deep within the mountain’s twisting caverns, the true Serpent’s breath drifted out as a dank wind. Bandolor inhaled deeply, letting the beast’s breath swirl down into his lungs, tasting the magic in its exhalation, the invisible particles of sorcery like burning embers in his mouth.

“Egads,” you say, “what happened? Did your computer crash and lose your entire book? Was all that hard work for naught? Why did I say ‘egads’? Who says that, anyway?”

Good questions.

Okay, I’m not really back to square one, although I kind of feel like it. After another long weekend away from my book, I’m able to notice some major deficiencies in what I’ve written so far. It’s not so bad that I have to scrap it all and start over, but I have decided to do some big revising now rather than later. It’s a method I’ve gotten used to at school: write the first section of a story, get critiques from fellow writers, then redraft the first section and continue on from there. In this case, I’m able to skip the critiquing part and address some issues with plot structure and character development. I need to complicate some characters and flesh out others, as well as add a bit more excitement up front, so for approximately the next two weeks I’m going to be working through what I have and rearranging it, at times supplementing it with new material.

I actually added 2.5 pages today, but I’m still at 0 out of 62 pages in terms of revised pages, and I haven’t quite decided what the best marker of this revision process is going to be.

With luck, the end result of this process will be a firmer structural basis for when I start part 2 later this month.

Today, though, I mostly added a scene at the beginning with Adrianna getting some advice.

“You will never amount to anything,” the college advisor said. He was thin-lipped, thin-cheeked man with a sallow complexion and a pencil moustache. Adrianna found herself staring at a large brown wart on the side of his nose. It trembled as he spoke, expanding and deflating with each nostril-flaring breath, the two wiry black hairs sticking out of it twitching like insect antennae.

Lois McMaster Bujold has firmly established herself as one of the masters of imaginative fiction with her previous work. Her Miles Vorkosigan series (which you should read, if you haven’t) is one of the best science fiction series I’ve read. In recent years she’s turned towards writing fantasy, and it’s clear that she has a solid sense of just how much to reveal to the reader, and when to reveal it. She manages to continually supply just enough information about this world of her devising to keep the story interesting.

It’s a nicely imaginative world, filled with just enough magic and mystery to seem fantastical, but not so much that it’s overdone. There are strange monsters known as malices, the magical groundsense of the Lakewalker people, and hints of a long-lost connection between them and the normal folk they protect. The story focuses on Fawn, a young farmer woman running away from home, and Dag, a grizzled, one-handed Lakewalker, the veteran of many battles with malices. You can see the romance coming from a mile away, but Bujold has a talent for writing these sorts of romances and characters, and it’s quite an engaging book.

Bujold has a knack for presenting setting in an unobtrusive way, a few short sentences here and there making up the bulk of the scenery description. It’s not enough to distract from the story, but just enough to give you the picture you need to go on. She also has a good sense of humor and an easy-to-read style that keeps the pages turning. My main complaint is about the narrative arc, as there seems to be a tendency for the stakes to be lowered rather than raised as the pages go by. The story starts off with a bang, and never quite gets back to that height by the end of the book. There is, however, a second volume that just came out in hardcover, so this tale might be one that needs to be read in full before such judgments can be made.

The Sharing Knife, volume 1: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold. New York: Eos, 2006. $7.99 in paperback. Amazon link.

Welcome to Round 3 of my conceptual* comparison of the three current generation video game consoles. You can go back to round 1 and round 2 if you like.

(*I say “conceptual” because I don’t own any of them. I have played extensively on the 360 and Wii, and very briefly on the PS3. This is not in any way based on direct comparative playtesting.)

Coming into this week, the Playstation 3 is barely in the lead, with the 360 close behind and the Wii trailing. It’s not really the Wii’s fault. Round 2 looked at power, an area where the Wii is outclassed significantly, and Round 1 despite being all about controllers, ended up a wash. Today we look a few things that the Wii just might have an advantage in: price, and backward compatibility.

For those who aren’t aware, backward compatibility is a feature in consoles that allow them to run games programmed for previous console generations. This usually increases a new console’s software library and also allows gamers to play their favorite games from previous generations, at least in an ideal world.

Playstation 3

When it comes to price, the PS3 is like a mugger demanding your wallet. Currently clocking in at $499 for the 60 GB model and $599 for the 80 GB model, it’s easily the most expensive console on the market. Still, I can’t ignore the fact that the components that go into the PS3 still cost more than the final price. As for backward compatibility, the cheaper model actually contains PS2 hardware(!), thus providing a great deal of support for PS2 and PS1 games. The newer models use software emulation for this feature, reducing the percentage of games that can be run. The number currently stands at about 72% in Europe (that’s 1,782 games), and a similar number can probably be expected in the United States.

Xbox 360

The Premium 360 (with a 20 GB hard drive) costs $349 in the US, while the Elite model (with a 120 GB hard drive) costs $449, undercutting the PS3’s price considerably. The less useful Core model, which lacks a hard drive entirely, retails for a mere $279, but is still more expensive than Nintendo’s rather cheap Wii. The cost for components on the 360 is actually less than the the current market price, but I’m unclear on whether Microsoft is really making a profit on consoles after things like marketing are added into the mix. The 360’s backward compatibility isn’t particularly impressive, and is limited to emulating the original Xbox’s software library. 394 Xbox games are currently playable on the 360. Since it took until November of 2006 for the critically acclaimed, award-wining Psychonauts to show up on the 360, It’s pretty clear that Microsoft isn’t too big on the whole backward compatibility deal.

Wii

The Wii is cheap. You get a console, a remote-shaped controller with a “nunchuk” attachment, and a Wii Sports game for just $249. Given that new games generally cost about $50, that’s about 200 bucks for the console itself. GameCube games can be played right out of the box, and Nintendo is releasing older games from its older console via its online Virtual Console (many of these require that a separate Classic Controller be purchased). With the exception of the GameCube games, these are all emulated, and the selection is entirely dependent upon what Nintendo chooses to release.

And this week’s winner is…

Next Week: The Media take over!

I got two pages done yesterday, and another two and a half done today, the last day of August. You know what that means! That means I need to look back at my goals for August… let’s see. Ah, yes:

1. Finish Part 1.
2. Average 2 pages per day.

Where am I at? Well, I didn’t finish part 1, although I came awfully close. I have another, say, two chapters and 10 pages, maybe, before part 1 is finished. Not bad. And, I’ll have you note, I accomplished goal #2, and just barely squeaked out 62 pages in a 31-day month. Woo!

I’m pretty happy about that. I also broke into the official ranks of the novel, by increasing my word count to over 40,000 words! Okay, so I’m at 40,920 words right now, but still. If I keep up this rate I’ll be at 120,000 words by the end of October. Pretty spiff.

On the flip side, I’m burning out again. Not really happy with anything I write, which means it’s time for another break. It seems I need a weekend every two weeks, approximately, so that’s not too bad at all. Especially if I make lots of progress in the meantime.

So yep, no excerpt as I’m too tired to find something I actually like that doesn’t give away big plot points. I’ll be back at it in a couple days, hopefully refreshed and working at a higher caliber. Have a nice Labor Day weekend, everyone!

Well, I added over 5 pages today, but it feels pretty rough. There’s some nice action in this section, and things are starting to get bad for my characters, so that’s all good. I need to go back and flesh things out here later, though, and add in more personal stuff about Adrianna. That’ll happen later, though, as I need to do some heavy rewriting in the earlier chapters first. The bad part about getting to know my characters better is that it means that my earlier stuff is less apt than it needs to be. Ah well.

Either way, the purpose of this draft is to get a solid sense of the structure of the story, and to flesh out the characters in such a way that I have a really good sense of them for my later drafts. Which isn’t to say that I don’t want it to be good to begin with, but a least I’m keeping things in perspective.

No excerpt today. Bedtime.

Wow! My most productive day yet, in which I added 5 pages to my manuscript (one previous Novel Watch was also +5 pages, but covered multiple days). This thing is really starting to gel, I think, and that helps it go faster. I’m still getting a better sense of the characters, and to a certain degree this section is driving itself forward. It also helps that I got started earlier and that I’m up almost until 4 in the morning.

My little book just moved up my top 15 list, too! Now it’s at #5, and will be staying there for quite some time, as you can probably tell from the following table. I’m rapidly approaching Official Novel Length, at 40,000 words.

Most of what I worked on was in Chapter 10. This section involves a trip into town, meeting new and interesting people, and visiting the local church. Bandolor got to make a dramatic speech, which was really fun to write, and then Adrianna got put on the spot.

Here’s how she feels about that:

With a magnanimous wave, Bandolor motioned for Adrianna to join him on the dais. The crowd eyed her with curiosity, much like that which she’d received on their way through town. Hundreds of pairs of eyes bored down on her, and she wanted to just shrink away. A few years ago she’d had a dream, almost the archetypal nightmare in which the dreamer goes to class only to discover that she’s naked, only in Adrianna’s dream, she’d been wearing normal clothes. It was everyone else who was naked, bare from head to foot, and shaved of all hair, even their eyebrows and lashes. She could still remember the looks those naked dream people had given her, the odd questioning expressions on their faces, and this situation right now brought that image rushing back. She felt like she was fully clothed in a church full of nudists.

Next up: Things get really bad. Yay!

I’ve always loved comics and comic books, but in the last ten years or so the availability of quality comics has declined. All of the superhero comic books I was reading got cancelled, one by one, and I came to realize just how seldom it is to find a funny joke on the newspaper’s funny pages. As things turn out, however, it’s not as grim as it seems, and the internet holds the answer. Webcomics, though they abound in quantities large enough to choke a webhorse, can fill that gap simply through the vast variety available — you’re bound to find something you like. So, today, I bring you one of the cream of the crop of the webcomics that I have discovered: Girl Genius.

Originally a print comic that has since migrated to the web, Girl Genius bills itself as a “gaslamp fantasy” — similar to steampunk, for those more familiar with that term. Three things stand out to me about this comic: first is the artwork which, while slightly cartoony, has a very consistent style that fits the never entirely serious storylines. With the exception of the first “issue” (which is a small portion of the archives at this point), each page is lavishly colored to boot. Second, the world and the characters are very well developed, and the story constantly reveals new details in the process. It’s a unique setting that really drives the story along. Thirdly, mad science. I love mad science, and this has it in spades.

There isn’t much to criticize here. I do occasionally feel like there’s too much going on behind the scenes, and would like to have a bit more backstory available. Also, it only updates three days a week — which is just never quite enough! Perhaps these two complaints go hand in hand. That’s not much to complain about, especially when you take into account the wonderful story filled with talking cats, airships galore, complicated lineages, issues of history and mythology, and a wonderful protagonist coming into her own as a spark, as these “mad scientists” are called.

Girl Genius, by Profs. Phil and Kaja Foglio, can be found at http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

Added another 3 pages today, and introduced some more townfolk like Bobby Hollowleg, the town drunk, and Herick Poorman, who hails from a long line of professional beggars. More importantly, I introduced Janekyn Smith, the son of the local blacksmith. He’s going to be somewhat important in part 2, if all goes according to plan…

Woo! I’m up to 47 pages and 30,762 words! That moves this book up my chart, two whole slots to #6!

Only 10,000 words more to go and this’ll be officially a novel. No worries there. The real question in my mind is how much longer than 40,000 words is it going to be? Can I keep it going at this seemingly slow but probably fairly fast pace? Hmmmm…. Well, the good news is that things are going to start going really bad soon, so that’ll keep things lively.

Bandolor is worried about the Tongue of Erskavit. Janekyn doesn’t know that. An excerpt:

Bandolor straightened to address Janekyn, who happened to be staring at Adrianna. She found herself sweating, wondering suddenly if he could see through her disguise.
“I would have a lock,” Bandolor said. “As hardy as thou canst make it.”
“A lock?” He smiled, both at Bandolor and Adrianna, and that put her at ease a little. Such a nice smile, he could hardly be suspicious of her, and if he was, she was comfortably secure that he wasn’t the type to go around telling everyone about it. When he spoke, it was with a voice both calm and measured, with the slightest hint of amusement. “Fear ye intruders, mighty Bandolor?
The sorcerer chuckled. “Nay, I fear them not. ’Tis for them I fear, in truth.”