Hoo—

13 chapters sounds like a much more manageable animal than 43 chapters, doesn’t it.

Doesn’t it?

I just finished running through my 2-part idea and broke part-one into identifiable units.

Once they’re done being written (6 of the 13 are written, 2 more roughed in) I’m going to have to re-evaluate if this will work as a self-contained story.

It does have the unfortunate feel of an ending lying in wait for a sequel, but for the length of this project I believe that was unavoidable.

I always feel better when I can estimate a path (even if I improvise before the end) so I’m not “riding blind.”

“We’ve a long road ahead of us.”

“How long?” Kate asked promptly.

One of her chief trials during the last six days had been riding blind into completely strange country.

It had not been so bad at first… while she could still recognize the names on signposts… But early that morning they had turned off the road and ridden away over a desolate moor seamed with ridges and outcroppings of rock, as if the bones of the land were forcing their way through it.

From The Perilous Gard

The new opening I excerpted earlier has grown rapidly and well.

I’ve integrated two scenes so far from the first draft, changing POV on one and picking up the pace on the other.

It’s sitting just under 10,000 words right now, with roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the material being new with this revision.

Feeling very excited with the new angle.

The interesting thing to me (after beginning to toy with the idea of two books for this story) is that I may have found another blurb that lets me conceal the beauty and the beast angle in the description.

Not having to hand the reader my first major plot point makes me more comfortable with letting things lay as they fall.

~

Is anyone here familiar with the story of The Goose Girl?

Shannon Hale expanded it into a very good novel (though, keeping with the disappointing pattern of my other favorites the opening seemed too slow to be perfect).

Knowing the original story I knew the big shift happens when the maid steals the identity of the princess (sorry for those of you I killed it for).

Hale has some intriguing and well-written stuff before that big plot-point but I couldn’t properly enjoy it because I knew the event that was coming and guessed the real ingenuity would be after that.

That’s the difficulty I have with revealing in the blurb the girl gets her prince before the end of the story, because then (perhaps because this isn’t the romantic novel, Kaye?) there’s so much tension lost.

The road may wind, but it must also have been polished, because everything looks just a little too clean.

That would be my own fault, of course, but splitting the book without changing anything else lifted that feeling for me.  I’m still deciding what that means.

~

I think it’s way-cool that I get more scenes with the snake in this version, and I want the get-together question to be a little more hairy than your average RomCom.

Guessing ahead doesn’t bother me, but skipping without missing anything… That kind of defeats the point of creating the scene, right?

I’ve been aware, almost since day-one, that having a female main character severely limits my potential audience. Attempts like these (as an alternative to a Linnea POV opening) have been the result.

“Don’t do it Captain.  I’ll report you.  You’ll lose your post.  You’ll be demoted.”

Another choking sob filtered through the heavy oak door, followed by the unintelligible garble of a woman’s voice. Tykone laid his free hand on the doorknob.  The knuckles of his left hand were nearly as white as the ivory knife-hilt his fingers gripped.

“Do you doubt me, soldier?” Rickard’s face was frosted with sweat.  “I’ll kill you myself if that thing in there doesn’t.”

“Do you think it is fear of you that stays my hand?” whispered Tykone, hating himself more with every moment he hesitated.

“Ignore him, Captain.” The voice beside Tykone reminded him of the new recruits standing watch with them.  “You are Hjalmar, and no mere soldier.  I, at least, with follow wherever you lead.”

Tykone’s eye barely registered the fury this defiance had raised in Rickard before a shattering scream dissolved his indecision.  Tykone threw his shoulder at the door.

The grunts of the men instantly beside him let him believe the crack he saw was actually widening that fast.  He dove into the room before any of the others could have fit.

Before him was the stuff of nightmares.  The body of a gargantuan snake nearly looped the room, black except for the strip of dirty yellow where its belly showed.  There was no sign of the woman.

“Sanna!” yelled Tykone.  “Sanna! Can you hear me?”

Sword drawn he lept over the shifting body, looking for the head.  Then he saw it, black and yellow, tipping up to the ceiling.  Tykone saw the feet of a young woman—one still wearing its white bridal slipper—disappearing behind the creature’s dragon-teeth.

With a scream that nearly gagged him, Tykone stumbled over black coils toward the head.  Swinging his sword as he went, Tykone was aware of a bruising ache in his shoulder, and the exclamations of the soldiers that followed his example.  None of their efforts seemed to be noticed by the great serpent.  None broke through its scales.

And then the bit I love, but haven’t decided where it belongs.  Also between Tykone and Rickard, and designed to hint at their history/subtext.

“That was always your problem, wasn’t it, Rickard?  You tried not to see what a monster might be doing—because even you are man enough to know you shouldn’t leave a woman alone to face him.”

Tykone believes his co-captain’s brother, Magnus, attacked his good friend (the protagonist), while Rickard insists she was a willing party to her *Ahem* un-planned pregnancy.

Magnus’s story is unavailable because he disappeared right after killing the girl’s father in an honor-fight over the issue.

Still don’t really think so.

It’s just that I’ve started “composting” the idea of whether I could break up my current story into self-contained elements.

i.e., I need to poke around and decide if there is enough story to make the opening “Beauty and the Beast” section it’s own story, and if so whether the later adventures are also possible to disentangle from one another.

At this point I think they would still be pretty intertwined and dependent on one another. Kind of a Spiderwick series, highly interdependent, not a Redwall or Narnia type.

It would mean I’m looking at an utterly different animal, but maybe that could help work out some more kinks.

I doubt anyone has noticed, but I’ve updated my Infant Novel page half a dozen times in the last 3 or 4 months.

Mostly changes to the “What’s the novel about?” question, because it’s always been cluttered and convoluted. I know you’re supposed to be able to explain your story in one or two sentences, and I’ve not figured out yet how to do that.

The 9- or 10-year-old little brother of one of these kids came over to me while the 13-year-olds were reading my first chapters and asked what the story was about. I tried to rattle off my one-sentence summary and realized it was absolutely useless.

So I went home and changed it that night. Still no better.

But I just updated it again, because (seriously) the older version was worse. And since this one made me laugh— though I suspect it will be equally opaque to most readers— I’ll post it here too.

Getting a stranger out of a bad bargain he made with Hell wasn’t the first thing on the Beauty’s mind after disenchanting her Beast, but she needed something to do while on the run from the executioner.

I am definitely open to suggestions on how to do this better.

One plus about this rendition is that the situation sounds almost humorous. Which is weird, when you think about it.

Commencing revision #2.

I always wondered how other authors could count the number of revisions they’d made, because I’ve been constantly returning to “Revision #1” in my working moments, not feeling it was worth double-saving with a new number since it was obviously better the new way.

But now I’ve got an idea.

~ ~ ~

This latest talk on cutting (and the reading and thinking I’ve been doing) has brought me to a new outline, greatly streamlining the plot and action.

It’s 20% as long as the last one. Insanely simple. I’m hoping it proves to be more than a skeleton…

Yes, I feel like I’m losing some pet characters and interactions, but I also hope this new organization will be easier on the readers.

There’s too much fun stuff in my first revision to whittle any more at it, so I decided to set it aside in its own little folder (with it’s preface, postlude and 43 chapters), and start with a fresh canvas.

I expect to build the new revision by bringing in just the parts that are on my skinny new outline and see how it holds together with some new ligature.

It seems very exciting just now.

(And, no, no one else has to think so. :P )

I had the delight this evening of talking with a handful of Magic-playing “nerds” at the library.

Actually they started the Nerd v. Geek discussion a couple times, but ultimately said it was fine to call them nerds.

They were at the next table while I waited for other SCBWI members who never arrived. When a chair opened up I impulsively grabbed my character-list and (after verifying they were fantasy-readers) asked their opinion on the readability (and confusablity) of the names.

I got some useful feedback, and from the list began telling a corner of the story.

They were hooked, and I can’t say how exciting it was for me as a storyteller to have them hanging on and asking intelligent, clarifying questions.

One boy in particular was tracking very closely and made a couple connections on his own, which assured me of the story’s internal (fantasy) logic.

Jay said I should take the first few chapters back next week for them to read, and I think I will. The idea of instant feedback from my target-audience is very attractive.

Yes, they said they’d like to read it.

I’m currently trying to decide if there are any drawbacks.

I have 50 named characters in my calendar/time-line spreadsheet.

No, they don’t even all come on-stage, but yes, I needed to name them all to keep them straight in my own head.

I didn’t create them all at once, but I am pretty impressed that I even have 50 different names to offer up.

I guess all that prep-work I did right before NaNo ’06 is still paying off!