hrj: (Alpennia w text)
hrj ([personal profile] hrj) wrote2016-01-12 07:42 am
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Alpennia Blog: Slow progress

I'm gradually working my way through a first pass on Mother of Souls. This isn't a serious re-read yet. The overt purpose is to create my chapter-by-chapter table of who appears in, or is mentioned in, each chapter. This helps me tell whether I'm tracking all the minor characters properly. (Or when I've mentioned a minor character who never appears again and should be cut.) It makes it easier to tell where I should do an "introductory description" at the earliest opportunity. And it points out when I should remind readers who a minor character is, if they haven't been mentioned for a while.

The second purpose is to begin making mental notes about larger elements that need to be fixed up. Continuity issues that have changed, pieces of action or backstory that I decided to include in later chapters and need to be removed from earlier ones, places where I need to plant seeds for events I introduced later. I'm not making active notes for this yet (although I occasionally circle bits of text for later review).

In the mean time, I'm having a lot of fun with my little Musketeer thing. Well, maybe not so "little". It's over 8000 words and less than half done. I suspect I'm going to hit a point where I have to make a decision about whether it wants to be a novelette or a novella. Fortunately, marketing doesn't have to factor in to this decision, since I've decided to use this as a freebie for promotional purposes. (I'm thinking of timing the release to draw people to my upcoming renovated website.)

[identity profile] madbaker.livejournal.com 2016-01-12 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
The little Musketeer thing sounded intriguing, and I don't normally read that era.

[identity profile] lifeofglamour.livejournal.com 2016-01-12 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Looking forward to all 3 - the new book, the Musketeer thing, and the new website!

[identity profile] hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com 2016-01-12 05:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Musketeers!

[identity profile] katerit.livejournal.com 2016-01-12 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it is really good for my students to hear about all the levels of work and rewriting that go into a text. I do use you as an example at times.