Traveller's Tales

No, not me — the owner of the fey mood would be Casnodyn ap Eira, a major character in The Grey Knight, and the target of yet another long-overdue character interview.  Casnodyn is a native of the Chrysialbau — in other words, he’s a fey beast in a very literal sense, and to get him right I needed to really dig into the mindset of these alien creatures.  So Cas gets a little free with his thinking, and the result is… well, very Fey, I think.

Go ahead and have a look for yourself; I’d love to know if he has the same effect on you that he does on me.

I obsess over research.

I mentioned this in passing a while ago, but I really didn’t get into how much I really obsess over it; just that I like to do it.  The example I gave then was about researching suspension bridges so I could extrapolate to make a magical one; what I didn’t mention was that I researched for two days solid, and then a bunch of hours stolen from work (er, I mean while I was having lunch) rounding out the details.  Now I can tell you about the oldest suspension bridges, about contests that were held to develop creative means of making them, about components of a suspension bridge, variants, and all sorts of things that, trust me, you probably don’t want to know.

Anyway, I’ve got a new bit of research going on now, inspired by the growing prominence of the Fey in the second book.  Casnodyn was the sole representative of the Courts in the first book (and, as he repeatedly insisted, he was never there in his official capacity at any rate), but their influence is going to be felt much more strongly in the second and thereafter.  Since I’d already used the name ‘Casnodyn’ as a prototype name, and since I know Casnodyn is Welsh, I figured, what the heck, I’d get some more Welsh names to cover the other Fey.

That’s when I found the Enwogion Cymru.

By Monday I’ll most likely have launched right past simply grabbing some Welsh names, sped at top speed through the obsessive loop and crash-landed in a place where I know enough about Welsh historical figures to teach a class.  This, of course, was not my intention, but I’m too caught up in it now to care.

That’s why I love research.

(Yes, I did the above pixelart as a mind break from the research.  I shamelessly stole the pattern from here, so if you want to make a more real-world version than mine, go for it.)

Just a quick update really, as it’s been a while and I’ve been busy as, um, a generally very busy thing, being exceptionally busy.  But of interest to the writerly:

An Interview: Fellow author Realm Lovejoy and I met via the twitter #amwriting tag-community (which, if you’re a writer using twitter, you should most certainly join!), and while she’s got some great art up at her site for her upcoming novel CLAN, she was also kind enough to give me an opportunity to run off at the mouth during an interview at her site, where she also put my lead antagonist, Paldor, together for the first time in a visual format.  The interview may be more of the usual Finch drivel, but her art isn’t, so go have a look!

Sherlock: I’ve finished reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for the first time, and oh man have I been missing out all these years.  Aside from the stories being individually quite good, the characterizations priceless and my own affinity for Holmes growing as I realize how utterly anti-social and unlikable he really is, I’ve found that Arthur Conan Doyle was, apprarently, as likable and forthright a gentleman as one could hope to be.  I can’t do ACD’s story justice here, but I’ll say that knowing the author of these famous and respected tales was humble, easy-going and generous definitely enhanced my own enjoyment of them.  If you’re not familiar, I urge you to learn more for yourself.

(I also have a personal theory now, that Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft were the bastard children of Edgar Allen Poe by different wives, but that’s a story for another day.)

Stormbringer:  Now that Sherlock’s on the “have-read” pile, Elric is next on the list.  I’ve already downed two of the seven prime Elric stories, and I’m finding myself enjoying them a lot more than I remembered I did the first time through, many years ago.  Full report when I’m done.

Scriptwriting: This is what I’ve been up to lately; while my super-agent Colleen goes through the latest version of the manuscript for The Grey Knight, I’ve been working on alternate media to tie into the novel’s backstory.  I’m really excited about the script, and while I can’t really go into detail quite yet, it’s turning into quite a serious live-action video production.  I’m very much looking forward to sharing the results with everyone when it’s finished.

That’s it for now; work on the sequel to The Grey Knight continues, but there’s a lot of forward momentum on Knight, and I’m enjoying the oblique approach to the fantasy world in my head, so while I’m still doing a lot of scenework on the sequel… I’m still having fun with Knight now, too.

Now that the edits are over — for now, at least! — I’m working on the second book again.  I’ve been doing what I always do when I’m working on a new story, which is writing all the cool scenes that come to me.  What eventually happens is I take those scenes, toss them back into the framework I created in the outline, and then stitch them together with all the other cool scenes until a novel happens (yeah, okay, it becomes a little more complicated than that at some point, but that’s the general idea).

(Tangent: new character alert, which means you should probably expect a new character interview in the next few days.)

(Second tangent: I once tried writing in linear fashion, beginning to end, but I just can’t do it — too many things pop into my head and need to get written; different scenes generate higher energy levels on different days, and while it’s all still forming I think it’s important to let the scene that’s screaming the loudest have the pen for the day.)

Anyway, the neat thing that happened today was that, for the very first time, I saw a scene from the third book.  The last book in the first part of the story; the end of the beginning, and I just saw how it ends.

It was awesome.

I have no idea if I can write it so it’s as awesome as I saw it, but when I saw it while I was sitting on the bus, stunned and watching it in my head as though it had been cast, filmed, produced and projected directly into my skull, I knew that’s how it had to go.  Because it was so totally awesome.

I’m excited because while the end of the overall story doesn’t come with the third book — this is a story of three threes, for reasons that become immensely clear — still, it represents a serious hard stop; the world changes viciously, violently and irrevocably at the end of the third book, and it’s a big enough leap, barrier, shift or evolution that it may almost feel like a new story when the second three kick in.  Anyway, while I always knew where things were heading, and what in general had to happen, the specifics were veiled to me.

Well, not after today they’re not.

Anyway, I love it when I see new pieces to the puzzle like that.  I know it’s going well when the scenes are revealed to me so clearly that all I have to do is sit my ass down and write as fast and as hard as I can before I forget what I just saw.  The psychotic break does all the hard creative work for me; all I have to do is take notes.

So while I’m not going to give in to the temptation of writing more of the third book, it really gives me another really cool thing to shoot for, you know?

Love this writing thing.

Yes, that means the edits to The Grey Knight are done!  Complete!  Finito!  This version, at least, is finished at last; huge structural changes blew through the manuscript, not entirely unlike how large cars blow through outdoor advertising signs during a tornado, and the result, much like with the signs, is a highly positive improvement on the original.  Colleen now has it, it’s out of my hands for at least a while, so now…

…now I have a lot to do!

I’m working on the sequel, of course, as well as its own sequel, in a tangential sort of way, and by definition worldbuilding and such.   I’m working pretty hard on putting other material together as well, stuff I’ll be adding here in the weeks and months to come.  Not giving anything away yet, but it’s fun making it so I hope it’s at least as fun getting it.

I have to admit, though, with the last month being pretty hot and heavy on edits… it’s a little odd to boot up the laptop and NOT open up the Knight manuscript.

With all due apologies to JRRT, it was too appropriate not to use as today’s subject.

I’m back into The Grey Knight, the first book.  I’m executing some structural changes primarily based on good thinking from my kick-ass agent, who may have hit the nail on the head with a fascinating bit of counterintuitive, er, intuition.

I don’t want to gush too much just yet, mainly because there’s no guarantee that this change will result in a sale — but I do like what it’s doing to the story, and her fresh perspective has absolutely helped make things gel.

Basically, the critiques I’d been getting had been about pacing (of the ‘builds too slow’ variety).  My agent’s advice was to make the chapters longer.  I gave that a little WTF at first myself, and then I went back and re-read the first few chapters.

And you know what I found?  Holy shit, they’re too short.

The Grey Knight’s story is a whirlpool, not a straight line; there are three primary stories that begin separate and unconnected, and then slowly come together until they smack head-on into each other with a bang near the end.  Practically, that means a lot of scene switching, and, logically, I need to really get a reader invested in each primary character, to make them interested enough in each to want to go back to them after a scene switches to a different primary POV.

Short chapters, clearly, would not facilitate this reader-character bonding process, and as I re-read those early chapters, I’m forced to agree with her analysis: the early ride is way too bouncy.  Later on, I think it works just fine, first, because the reader is familiar with the characters now, and second, because the pace of the chapters speeding up as they near the conclusion makes perfect sense.  But early on… man, really bad idea.

I’m midly surprised I didn’t see it myself, but focusing so much on keeping things fast-paced, I wasn’t looking at the manuscript with the right set of eyes.  It’s a great bit of Craft wisdom to pick up, and already the story reads MUCH better as a result of the change, even to me.  I do hope it’s not just me, but I really think we’ve got something here.

Edits are in progress; my new netbook is a truly excellent technical partner, but I also have to give some credit to TextBlockWriter, which helped me visualize the structural change in the document before I started dragging chapters all over the place.  I’ve got a self-imposed completion date of 3/12 and a self-imposed delivery to my agent on 3/13.  She keeps telling me end of the month, but the writing is hot and fast, there’s some great stuff coming out in between the structural edits, and I want it out there again.

So, apologies if I’m a little scarce between now and then, but I’ve got a novel to polish.

I haven’t talked about the writing for a while.  That’s not because nothing has been happening, but rather because it’s been happening quite a lot and, well, I wanted to actually write, rather than write about it.

So, although I haven’t stopped writing, it’s time to write about it now, because something neat happened and I want to blather about it a bit.

There’s a part of the story where Erik, our leading man, finds himself in Highbranch, a city (if you choose not to tangent on the link) predictably tree-ish in nature.  It’s not a casual visit; in fact, he’s a prisoner there, and finds himself under heavy suspicion and questioning by various and sundry officials, but he’s not strapped in chains just yet, as the people who live there believe in things like due process, at least to an extent.

At one point, Erik is instructed to visit a specific place in order to see some ancient artwork that his enemies claim prove his association with the fellow currently giving everyone fits.  The first time I wrote this bit, I assumed that this location was just your basic art gallery sort of place, and I simply segued to Erik seeing what he needed to see.  It worked at the time, but as part of the overall re-treatment I’m giving the story, I realized there was another way to do this that would have a great deal more impact.

So, rather than letting Erik just bamf into that art gallery, I decided to let him walk there, as I had a scene in mind where his entry and journey to the center of the exhibit was a slow crescendo to panic and revelation.

That’s when the throwaway detail became not so throwaway.

I had never really fleshed out the art gallery concept beyond it being, well, some random art galleryish sort of place, so while I gave Erik and his new friend, Elori, some time to get acquainted on the way, I ruminated on it a bit.  Erik’s antagonist in this part of the story tells them to go see an exhibit ‘near’ this specific place, so obviously the antagonist had known something I didn’t.  So, as I wandered the massive, curving boughs with Erik and Elori, I had this sudden vision of what that place really was.  Suddenly I had a new hook into the world, a new insight into the people, a new subtly impressive place to see and a feeling to share.  I’m endlessly excited when I discover new places in this poor, ruined fictional world of mine, and this no-longer-just-an-art-gallery place quickly became an object of wonder and delight — so much so that the pages that followed were an utter blur.

I won’t give the details away, because a blog post won’t do it justice.  But not only does it give Highbranch yet another level of depth and realism it didn’t have before, it reconnects Erik with the tragedies of his recent past in a way I hadn’t been able to work out before, and it gives he and Elori an awesome, genuine bonding moment they will need in the hours and days to come.

So, moral of blog post, never throw away a detail — you never know what you’re selling short when you do.

So, wow.  Stared at TGL’s manuscript yesterday night.  Flipped pages, pondered paragraphs, tinkered with sentences, but all in all was pretty much a zero-sum on the writing front.

I’ve suddenly realized it’s time to read the damned thing front to back and see where I’m really at.

This is part of the curse of non-linear writing: sometimes, I have to stop myself, get my head out of the weeds, get a look around and figure out what I was doing. It’s not that I don’t know where things are going, but the interactions between all the different threads is getting a bit fuzzy in my head and I really need to be precise about how they wind together.

So I guess that  means I get to read for a couple of days!

So today, I needed to get my awesome go-getting literary agent a copy of the one-page synopses that detail what happen in the second and third books of the series — The Grey Lord, which I’ve mentioned here before, and The Grey God, the third book, which I haven’t.

There is, of course, an excellent reason for me not having mentioned The Grey God before, and that’s because, well, I haven’t really thought much about it yet.  Oh, sure, I knew it was the end of the first big story arc, and it was going to be awesome and have armies and fights and climaxes and heroes and villains and dark evil wicked cool things in it, and I even wrote one scene of it as a prologue to the first book that I’ll probably leave out, but aside from that it was a bit… oh, amorphous, I suppose.

Anyway, I had a one-page synopsis already written for The Grey Lord, and it wasn’t even all that bad, so I sent that along quickly with a modicum of spit and polish (light on the spit).  I was delighted to discover, as I went through my files, that I had also dutifully written a one-page synopsis for The Grey God at around the same time as I’d written the one for TGL.  Eager to send it along, I popped it open to see what I’d come up with, and immediately saw that it was Cack.

The reason it was Cack, of course, has something to do with not having thought much about it yet.  I’d even go as far as to say that it had a Lot to do with it.  Quite a lot, in fact.

So that’s what I’ve done, from mid-afternoon until, well, about twenty minutes ago: I’ve thought long and hard about The Grey God, and ultimately come up with some stuff I really like.  New places to go, new things to see, new research to do and, most importantly, some great conflicts to mark the end of this particular cycle in the story.  Hopefully, I’ve also come up with a one-page synopsis that is not only Not Cack, but is also a reasonably good representation of where I want to take the story and how I intend to get there.

So that was my day, which was awesome, providing yet more circumstantial evidence that I really do enjoy this writing thing.

As for the reasons I’ve been away for a bit, I’ll cover that in a later post.  Not quite ready to talk about that other stuff yet, because I’m superstitious, but I’ll get around to it.

Good things happening in my writing world.

Old: In a well-worn notebook I’d hidden in one of the Myriad Boxes I Have Not Unpacked From My Move, Way Back In February*, I discovered a seriously huge number of notes regarding worldbuilding and forward series thinking.  The best part of this isn’t the recovered notes, which alone will be lovely to re-assimilate (and will contribute copiously to the Codex Vocrotha in the weeks to come), but in fact a long-lost character interview with none other than my very favorite arch-nemesis, the Warlord, Paldor Daln.  Expect to see him as exposed and self-referential as you’ll ever see him, in a post very soon.

New: a scene rewrite, for The Grey Knight.  Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to be done with this one, and normally I won’t “optimize” a scene, but this just gives me so much more bang for the page space that it has to be done.

Also new: movement in the agent category.  Nothing definite at the moment but forward momentum is always positive; when I have actual news I’ll report it.

*I’m not actually averse to unpacking, it’s the Finding A Place For The Things Which You Have Just Unpacked process that’s tricksy.