Enough to know/ they dreamed, and are dead

[hawkwing_lb]

Progress, Tuesday 13 December 2005:

"Dreamdark, or, the Confused-Title Story"

New words: 336
Previous words: c. 5871
Total relevent words: c 6207
Words typed: 436
Total relevent typed words: 6207
Old-and-now-irrelevant-but-I'm-still-counting-them words: c. 20,000
Total words: 26,207
Estimated words required: 120,000
Words left (#1): 93,793
Words left (#2): 113,793
Unpleasant things that characters were subjected to: Elise: bad news, death of a prince.


The real "Dreamdark":

6,207 / 120,000 (5.2%)

"Dreamdark" and Ye Olde and Abandonned Drafte:

26,207 / 120,000 (21.0%)

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I have much to say, and no brains with which to say it. This is because all of today's allocated brainpower went on two pieces of French that had to be done and handed in to college before the end of this week, and I went into college today to get that done.

It has been done, and I am now Officially On Holidays. There shall be no talking about French until after December 26. Ancient history I reserve the right to blither on about in my free time, since I actually enjoy the subject.

Writing. Gods and little fishes. Who is this damned story about, anyway? You, yes you, down there in the back of my brain, stop jumping up and shouting and waving. I have enough characters, thank you very much. So many that some must die! during the course of the narrative.

All the interesting deaths are still in the future, unfortunately. We are left with attempting to shoehorn exposition! into the opening pages and trying to disguise it as CharacterDevelopment®!

I like intrigue. I like it too much. This I conclude, on the basis of the evidence. I must also conclude that I have a fascination with scenery and rain. Rain. I have to get that out of my system.

This is my hundredth LJ entry. You'd think I'd be more profound. *g*

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Orion - let your light come down the open starways, from the black horizon, to the pillow where I lie." IIRC.

Rain. (grin) Well you are writing from IIRC the second largest peat bogs in the world (after Suharto burned the second largest, thereby achieving CO2 emissions than the US and Europe combined over a 30 year period. An environmental crime of genocidal proportions never ever mentioned by environmental campaigners) so rain is a basic fact of life.

While character development is essential, it's the 'whys' I wish to ask about. Have you sorted out motivation? Otherwise it will suck no matter how brilliant the descriptions (sorry, but true)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

That you, Monkey?

I must inform you, sir, that I'm not from the bog. No sir, coastal Dublin all the way down to the bone :-).

Strangely, it hasn't been raining all that much here lately. Lots of cloud, no rain.

While character development is essential, it's the 'whys' I wish to ask about. Have you sorted out motivation? Otherwise it will suck no matter how brilliant the descriptions

It sucks anyway. :-) This is my I'm-going-to-finish-something attempt. I do happen to know why my characters are doing what they're doing, most of the time, but I'm still just messing around with setup. Need to get characters to the place where they're doing all the interesting things that are why I want to finish this thing in the first place, and, unfortunately, I kind of think that needs a small bit of introduction.

Shortly, important people will start dying. And no one will know why. (Except meeee, cackles the writer) This is why I know I like intrigue too much :-).

Another Jethro Tull fan? I'm listening to War Child right now. :-)

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

I forget to sign in. "dance the days, dance the nights away." Yeah. I seriously admire the lyrics, and his ability to stand on one leg. Besides I tried really hard to look like the cover pic on aqualung when I was younger.

On motivation. I find if my characters have that the story finishes itself. Otherwise it's like pushing through treacle.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Jethro Tull are pretty cool. Discovered them via the wonderful Internet, through which I have discovered so much other wonderful music, and books :-).

And of course, on motivation, you are the experienced one, oh wise monkey. My characters, hopefully, are sufficiently motivated not to die. Otherwise I'm going to be writing an entirely different story to the one I thought I was writing ;-).

Motivating me, now, that's another thing :-). It's a really good thing that writing doesn't feel like work, most of the time. That way I actually get some done.