Writing diary 10/28/05
Oct. 28th, 2005 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossA great writing day -- rearranged Chapter 27 of SHIELD, moved a chunk to the next chapter and then fleshed things out with love and sex and spooky things and hints of dire things to come. It's now looking like 29-30 chapters total. Getting exciting! This last 1/3 will need major, major revisions, but at least I will have the armature in place. I am a writer who loves to revise; not everyone does. Sometimes the battle is just getting something down so I know where not to go with it.
Felt so good, I sat down with THE CHILDREN OF KINGS, the next Darkover book (after THE ALTON GIFT, which I turned in in June). I'm still on the first chapter, no prologue (yet) and so am still in the flopping-about, trying to get all the necessary elements in the right places. The trick here is to push on through and then come back to it. Often I don't know when many of these elements are best introduced, so I just throw them all in -- like a crockpot stew. Then, as form emerges, I see where some could be placed later and that uncomplicates things. Beginnings are tricky -- you want enough movement (note I did not say "action") to pick the reader up and carry him along, but you also need a comprehensible world/situation, as well as introduction to characters.
I am not sure I will be able to use this opening, but I do like it:
Every year at Midsummer Festival, Gareth Elhalyn y Hastur, the uncrowned and in all likelihood uncrownable King of the Domains of Darkover, had made a single prayer: Let nothing happen this year.
Felt so good, I sat down with THE CHILDREN OF KINGS, the next Darkover book (after THE ALTON GIFT, which I turned in in June). I'm still on the first chapter, no prologue (yet) and so am still in the flopping-about, trying to get all the necessary elements in the right places. The trick here is to push on through and then come back to it. Often I don't know when many of these elements are best introduced, so I just throw them all in -- like a crockpot stew. Then, as form emerges, I see where some could be placed later and that uncomplicates things. Beginnings are tricky -- you want enough movement (note I did not say "action") to pick the reader up and carry him along, but you also need a comprehensible world/situation, as well as introduction to characters.
I am not sure I will be able to use this opening, but I do like it:
Every year at Midsummer Festival, Gareth Elhalyn y Hastur, the uncrowned and in all likelihood uncrownable King of the Domains of Darkover, had made a single prayer: Let nothing happen this year.
