Category Archives: Developing novel

A pre-natal and baby book of sorts

Tragicomedy

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I was just working out some story grids for my POV characters

[Character] wants [Goal]
In order to [Motivation]
But [Complications complicate]

And Tykone’s grid cracked me up. There seems to be a fine potential for comedy here (something I’ve felt deficient in), but I have to work into mean-author mode before it could be fully realized.

Tykone wants to rescue Linnea
in order to prove he has value as a protector, establish his identity as he wishes it to be
but other people keep doing it first.

I laughed out-loud just writing that. But Tykone himself is so serious and tragic it seems backward and near-cruel to make him the core of jokes or running gags.

I mean, in the end, in good comedic fashion, he needs to be rescued by her.

But I don’t think I can rub his face in his own weakness.

Yippee!

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There it is: I did it. 50,024 words in 30 days.

I have discovered things I didn’t know were in it (Basketball tryouts, just today), and found new things that were in me (attitudes toward the challenges and delights of witnessing).

A summary:

It’s not until 17-year-old Gydeon Calder visits his mother’s homeland for Christmas break that he discovers she is from another world. One where magic is very real. Back home on Earth his father wrestles with suicidal thoughts and the question of whether his family is better off without him.

When Gy’s mother becomes ill in her homeworld of Eshe, he brings her back to Earth with the help of a magical girl who for a time was a swan. Sharizalli is used to an openly violent world where she hid her true thoughts and feelings. In Moscow Idaho, Shay discovers a world where threats are less-open and relationships can hang on speaking the whole truth.

While Gy seeks to restore his parents’ will to live, and with it their marriage, fear mongers from Eshe infiltrate Gy and Shay’s high school in positions of authority. Shay must decide how much of her old life to reveal, and whether she can sacrifice the ease of her new life to save those she has just begun to love.

~

So does that sound melodramatic? Maybe confusing?

Between The Veritas Project and The Fairy Tale Novels (among other titles)  which I’ve read in the last year, I’m firmly convinced of a vibrant, if small, audience for solidly Christian and morally grounded fantasy and adventure stories.

I feel like I’m supposed to be a part of that, and prayed a lot through this month that my stories, however and whenever they become more widely read, will be useful and encouraging to those who read them.

Musical Profiles

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I’ve been benefiting lately from the extra perspectives that outsiders can provide to my story.

One of the more painful realizations was that I don’t love all my characters equally.  Or maybe that I don’t know them enough.

Now, I’m not the sort of writer who feels the need to have a year-by-year scrapbook for every major character, but I do think I need to know more about them than anyone else– including themselves.

~ ~ ~

Rather than “interviewing” my characters (so far) my method has been to collect an emotional profile.

I’ve given advice before that recording details of a significant event isn’t as useful as doing anything you can to root the emotions connected to the event.

My reasoning is that a writer’s skill will only increase, and if all you have is notes of a happening you will always be limited by what you’ve written down.

If, by contrast (or in addition), you can access a deep emotional core, you can use that as building material.

With this as a sort of guiding principle, rather than interview my major characters about childhood nicknames and how that made them feel, I’ve collected songs.

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Theology in my novel.

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“What a writer is intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally will radiate through the work, like the light on an overcast day in which there is no visible sun, so that all things appear illuminated equally.”

–Joyce Carol Oates

Started a new devotional this morning, and a quote from the first lesson brought me back to my novel:

“Man’s perennial efforts to take himself in hand, however he attempts it, lead to the greatest bondage in which man misses what he was meant to be…. He only gains this as he denies himself. Paradoxically, the free man does not belong to himself. He belongs to him who has set him free. “

–J. Blunck in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

This quote so intrigues me because for a long time it has been established that the djinn (by their nature) are bound in obedience to their parent(s), until such time as they owe someone else more.  In my story it is exactly true that each individual belongs to the one who freed him or her.

And it can be argued the result is not race-specific. As in (at first blush), this affect seems to hold true for humans as well.  (Does that count as a spoiler?)

Reality Check

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I’ve sometimes many times imagined the reason my book is taking years to write has something to do with it being one of four children.

This month’s opportunity to write for days uninterrupted by reality (other than hunger and the occasional dog) made it clear that imagination was a fantasy. Not only have I learned things over these four years (personally and skill-wise) that have made Lindorm a better book, but it really does take a lot of time to go through this many words.

And, um, No

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In case you’re wondering, I did not get to the end of my manuscript before the family returned. But I made peace with that.

I did get just over half way, and am almost done with a second pass through those chapters. Why? Because a formatting glitch in Word removed all the tab-indents.

While at first I was going to search for a mass cure, I found that the high-speed cruise was turning up some embarrassing useful things to fix, so I stopped fighting it and treated it as an opportunity.

~ ~  ~

I am delighted by the maturing I see with each revision, and correspondingly frustrated at my own blindness to the remaining immaturities that I see so plainly later.

But maybe I can just categorize that as regular living, and not something unique to the Writer’s Burden.

Ivan/Kal-lem-Din

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If you can visualize this guy with grey skin, you’ll have a pretty good image of how I see my character Ivan. You don’t actually see a good head shot until 1:08, but I like the song, so I linked this instead of a still.

I saw this guy a while back and he reminded me of Ivan, but seemed too young. This is more the look I have in mind. I expect when I Google him again in a few years he’ll fit even better.

Racing

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Three days left to get everything done. Here’s how the math works out:

  • Finished through Chapter 10
  • 349 pages to go
    • Plus 9 scenes to either write or revise (or explain away as unnecessary once I get there).
    • That’s over 100 pages/day plus three fresh scenes a day.  No play time here.

I’ve stopped worrying about word-count, and I think it’s helped.

I also was able to cut my Inn chapters from four, to two.  Which makes me feel better. I’ve never been comfortable with how long that series of exchanges takes.

Have addressed two main questions already:

  • how is Rickard connected, and
  • where did Linnea’s baby come from.

Very reasonable progress.

So it’s an Epic

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The constant feedback I’ve gotten so far (narrow selection but identical comments is significant to me), is variations on We want more information.

The comments have been mostly positive (they’re my friends, after all), but, in one person’s words, “I feel like I’m outside an ‘in’ joke. That there’s something to know that I don’t know.”

This week I am working to do my final clean-up, and I’ve decided to make it one book after all.

Jay pointed out that if it’s too long for a first-timer to be picked up, I can at least have it done and ready to be my second book published.

Lots of work I expect to get done this week.  (Prayers welcome.)