jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Man, that last chapter kicked my ass. It's hard to deliberately write a chapter where the character is purposely performing in a void--and reacting to said void. What can you do aside from have him react with 'this wasn't here before...'? There's only so many times you can have him have that reaction, and even when he figures it out, you can only have him think 'what should I do to change this' so many times before he finally does something about it.

That said--this chapter was pretty short, probably about five pages, and may or may not stay (bringing up the question "well, why write it in the first place?!??"), but it's done now, so there ya go. If I do use it, it'll most likely be retooled a bit, and a lot of additions in earlier scenes to build it up--specifically, building up the reason why he reacts to the void the way he did. Nothing too involved, just some character actions in earlier scenes that should build up to this.

So if anything...I probably have four more chapters to write, and then I'll be done. I've already done a bit of outlining--that is, the outlining I've done in the past, where I make very vague mapping notes on who ends up doing what, and where they end up. In this case, I made a list of all the primary and secondary characters and a word or two on their setting, to be used as triggering keywords. Most of them have been taken care of, but I now have four columns sigifying the next chapters. These columns basically just have the character names in them, with headers being another trigger keyword: Vigil, Trisanda, Denni, and Denouement.

That's pretty much how I've outlined in the past, and it's worked well for me. Doing an extended one like I did with Can't Find My Way Home probably hindered that story more than helped it...but that's another writing post altogether. For now, I'm working off this piece of paper (originally drawn up at work, natch). Hopefully if all works out, I'll have everything done by next month.

Woohoo, the trilogy's nearly finished!! :D
jon_chaisson: (Default)
Reached 1193 words today over the course of a four hours (sidetracked by football and Holmes on Homes, of course), but Chapter 36 is DONE. I'm quite happy with this chapter--I feel it's some of the best work I've done in a long time. Sure, that isn't hard to believe, considering my last serious work was done quite some time ago, but still...I really like how this one worked out.

The next scene's going to be a tough one, though...I could have multi-POV in one chapter on this, or I could continue with the change of POV per chapter and draw out the ending LotR-style (sort of), but it's going to need a lot of POV nontheless. What happens next directly affects a goodly amount of characters of all tiers, and I don't want to leave anyone out, at least not in the first draft. Keep in mind, this isn't a post-climactic "this is what happened to everyone" ending--this whole passage is the climax of the novel and the trilogy itself, and this is what it all led up to, and it's not just affecting the main characters. And it's not just internal change, either.

This may take some time, but I'm hoping this will turn out great.

Also--still need to expand on Chapter 34. Major scene with D'kami/Saishourenzyoushu, and at five pages and only 1500-plus words, it seems a bit short. I may move it to post-Chapter 36, as I think it might flow a little better there...but we'll see.

Either way...I'm thinking right now, it's time for me to use the old standby for mapping out what I want to do--some scrap paper at work, frantically jotting down notes of where I want everything to go. May take a day or so, but I'm sure I can come up with something by then! Definitely looking forward to this...it'll be just like old times again... :)

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jon_chaisson

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