Posts Tagged ‘NitS’

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?

Yeh! another thousand words of Night in the Sidhe bit the dust yesterday as I found a way from the bit of dialogue to the climactic fight sequence. I then immediately found I didn’t have a good idea for the fight but didn’t let that stop me so I just pushed on past it and I’ll fix it in editing.

I also had had an idea for some stuff that I wanted to happen early on in the story so I went back and added two paragraphs in one section and one to another. Now most books on writing I’ve read say not to do that till you’ve finished the first draft. I’ve come to the conclusion that writing a novel is a messier process than writing books suggest so this was a metaphorical gesture of a rude nature to them. It also saved my file of notes on things I need to do during editing from getting any bigger. I was starting to get a bit nervous that it would end up as long as the story…

Tonight I didn’t feel the urge to write but I did start to draw a couple of maps of the setting I want for continuity checking the story during editing. Just because it’s a fantasy city doesn’t mean I don’t want it to have a certain believable quality.

It’s taken nearly two months but Night and the Sidhe finally crept past the 80K word mark thanks to two nights when the police helicopter woke me up this week. Each time I had a random fragment of the story in my head. Not the next bit which I’ve been stuck on which I really need to write before I can move on but useful bits. I scribled them down on paper and typed them up tonight. Not the best way to find inspiration as I’d rather sleep through uninterupted but sometimes you just have to take the words where you find them.

After a seven week break trying to formulate how I’d get through the climatic scene of the inner story I threw a couple of thousand words for Night in the Sidhe on to the virtual page tonight. 79,500 words are now on the page. 80,000 would have been a nice point to finish on tonight but I’m running out of steam.

Last day of my week off today. I’ve done a lot this past week although as is normally the case with a week off not as much as I wanted to. I started the day with a trip into the city centre with plans to get some photographs for Wordless Wednesdays and to do a few bits of shopping. I got about twenty pictures with very dramatic clouds before the heavens opened and I was driven to abandon the idea of taking any more photographs.

After doing some other mundane household stuff I’ve managed to crack on with making some pictures John wanted for the next issue of Ragnarok and a thousand words on Night in the Sidhe. The writing required some serious DVD watching from 1970s childrens animation and will require the watching of a film by Terry Gilliam before I can finish the scene.

The reaction to yesterdays Vue tutorial has been really positive too. I’d like to thank everyone whos said nice things about it.

1. My First Post which isn’t particularly exciting: Staring at a Blank Page.
2. Favourite picture: A reed in the fog.
3. After years of struggling to create a logo for impworks finally making one I like.
4. Relaunching my impworks web site in June last year.
5. My favourite article on writing I’ve written: Characters on the Couch.
6. Post with the most comments: Thursday Thirteen #8
7. My favourite film review since starting this blog Hot Fuzz
8. Favourite random stuff post: The Bank of England
9. Shameless promotion for a friend: Nimues Price
10. Not so much a single post as a variety of mentions of my short story become novel work in progress: Night in the Sidhe.
11. 12. Favourite TT: About Toasted Cheese Sandwiches because the feedback was so good.
12. Most traffic post: Vue Python for Beginners – a tutorial on using Python in Vue Infinite.
13. My first Python Script for Vue – I didn’t expect these to be such a big part of what goes on here but I’m not complaining that they are proving popular

In a fortnight I’m looking to do a TT of 13 other people’s favourite posts from their blogs. If you leave a link to yours in the comments this week I’ll add it to the selection I’ve got to pick from.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Really early on in writing my Noir Fairy Tail I decided to make the main character a former soldier. For a bit of colour in his background I decided on the unit he served with and a couple of operations he had been involved in. I’ve just finished reading Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (a good story but not as good as The Big Sleep) and strangely three of the characters served in pretty much the same unit and one of the same actions. A strange coincidence but one I think I can work in to the story.