Archive for the ‘NitS’ Category

I love it when research material falls into my lap. I came across a book about the espionage and shady goings on in Shanghai in the 1920s-40s era for the massive sum of £1.99 in my local remaindered book shop on Saturday. Handy since some of NitS is set there around then and involves shady goings on.

On top of that the second of the two Pulp Guns books from SJ Games came out today. Yes these are game books for players of GURPS but they also include lots of handy details. Including a description of the flame thrower Dirk Dangerous uses in a story I’ve been writing. Which is handy because up until now all I’d been able to find out was it was a flamethrower that was combined with a sub machine gun. Every hero should have one.

I did the last twenty pages of Night in the Sidhe draft 2 today. Now I have a complete list of all the characters, places and other important things that appear in the story. I also know how much work there is to do on finishing the inner story in draft 3 before moving on to the outer, real world story in draft 4. I cut a few pages off the end tonight because really they belong in a sequel rather than this story – if NitS was The Usual Suspects it would be as though after the credits we heard what they are talking about in the car after it pulls away.

So draft 3 here I come…

I’ve twenty pages of NitS left to work over on the second draft. I’ve now got most of the mini cyclopedia of locations, characters, species and other such stuff. That will help me flesh out the details and keep track of it as I go along. I’ve also got a short list of the three incomplete scenes that I’ll tackle in draft three.

I’m pretty happy with the inner story as told by the character in the hospital bed. I’m not so happy with the outer story as told by the detective investigating how he got to the hospital bed. Partly thats because the events of the inner story affect the outer story and I’m finishing firming those details up. Partly its because I need to do research on a few topics to give it more of the feel of a modern procedural detective story. Partly I’m just not as comfortable with the characters in the outer part. The ones in the inner story have a larger than life quality, the outer story ones need to stand up against that and act as a contrast by being strong characters but also being more believable in a real world context.

So I’m going to do my research for the outer story while doing the third draft and then I’ll write the outer story from scratch in the fourth draft. So I have a plan. Now I just need to find the time to do it.

I’ve an encounter in NitS where the hero tracks down the expert on how real world and fantasy world physics collide. I think it works pretty well but after reading John August’s blog post How to explain quantum mechanics I’ll certainly be applying his advice to make it better.

Today I passed the three quarters point on the first redraft. I’m doing a bit of polishing and fixing but mostly its about looking for plot holes so I can fix them in draft 2. Fortunately so far I’m plesantly surprised how few there are. The biggest one, a remanant from when the story was supposed to be a short story, will need some dialogue rewrites but actually opens up some real possibilities in the heroes back story to make things personal.

I passed the 50% mark on the first redraft of NitS tonight. A certain sense of relief tempered by a realisation of how much work I have left to do. This pass has been mainly aimed at picking up all the gross slips in continuity and the plot. By the endo of it I should also have a document outlining the characters, groups, locations, types of fay, time line and, most importantly, plot that evolved from the original idea into something far, far longer than I intended when I set out on this project.

Earlier this week I finished the first draft of the inner story that sits at the heart of Night in the Sidhe. It needs a lot of editing. There are lots of scenes that are too short where I sketched over the action to get to the end. I’ve started working my way through it taking notes on the various characters, places, factions and events. From these I can write the outer detective story set around the inner story as a detective and a diplomat try to make sense from what, on paper, appear to be the ramblings of a victim of a crime driven over the edge of his sanity. I’ve gotten about a fifth of the way through it tonight but now I’ve had enough for the moment.

I was worried about the structure of NitS. It lacked a climatic ending and I wasn’t too sure that the opening was really able to grab the reader. As I’ve been working towards the end I’ve discovered not one but two potential climatic confrontations so thats one problem solved. As to the opening I’ve decided to rewrite it to put a character right in the middle of events rather than hearing about them third hand in a report, and not entirely believing them. Less realistic but, given readers will have to accept some fairly outlandish concepts anyway, not such a stretch. Now all I have to do is put the words on the page. Another fifteen hundred today so I’m headed in the right direction.

… But if I had and it had been to get a shift on with Night in the Sidhe I’d be doing well so far. Admittedly tidying up the current draft last night actually cut it down by several thousand words. I’ve move note and fragments of story without a home in the current structure off into a separate file. Other fragments have now been slotted in to what looks to be the final form. The inner story, which take the form of a first person narrative by a character being interviewed by the police, is almost written. The outer story of the investigation surrounding the character being interviewed is a lot less complete. I know its shape but I need to finalise where it breaks up the inner narrative.

With this first draft heading towards completion I’m hitting the point where I need to do supporting research and fact checking. I used to do this when I developed the plot for a story but somehow that always took the life out of the exercise and the story didn’t end up being finished. So I’ve been switching things around and skipping any none essential research or anything that will need more than a quick flick through a book or a bit of a Google. After the first draft I come back, read it all and figure out what I need to research. So the second draft is not only a first polish and a fill in the gaps exercise but also a factually more accurate work.

Last night was positive for NitS in other ways too. I caught the end of a piece on the BBC local news about an exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery. It wasn’t the exhibition that really caught my interest but a new collection they have of pictures of Liverpool’s Chinese community in the 1940s. After looking at their web site I spotted the Bert Hardy credit and a bit more searching on Google and at Getty Images found a variety of pictures from Liverpool during the 40s and 50s that will help me refine the mood and the imagery in the upcoming editing process.

Not so much of a big bang of progress over the last few days but anoter 1000 words or so have tied together some fragments of plot. I’ve managed to inflict a bit of rewritting on myself that I’ll have to do to make an innocuous object appear earlier in the story but thats what second drafts are for isn’t it?