I've broken down the fanfic o'doom into fourteen approximate chapters. I'm sitting here, staring at chapter one. I realize now that I have no clue where to begin as far as editing goes. Well, that's kind of a lie. I know where to start, especially with chapter one.
Chapter one gets the reader up to speed as far as my divergence from canon, which means it is, unfortunately, long-winded and rambly; not only does it cover where/how I broke free of official events, but it collapses time and space and glosses over the events of approximately five years in two pages.
I have to decide what information is essential to the story and to the reading experience, and that's hard. I'm the sort of reader who wants to know everything. I feel like I'm cheating people when I take out nonessential-but-potentially-interesting stuff. I also know that I need to fix the perspective...with the exception of chapter one, it's third-person limited. Chapter one waffles all over the place, and I definitely don't want that. On the other hand, it's going to be incredibly tough to transform it all from total omniscience...
What's the rules? Would it be too disrupting to go from omniscience to limited, if the perspective changes over at the beginning of chapter two?
*sigh* Maybe I should just stick to spell-checking until I get my opinionaries reading.
29 March 2009
28 March 2009
Quick note!
Someone mentioned to me recently that the "follow" feature wasn't working correctly. Therefore, I took the liberty of hooking the followers into the email system. Hopefully now, every time I make a post on here, you all will get an email! *Testing, testing, 1,2,3.*
(If you don't want this potentially irritating method of notification, let me know and I'll take you off the list. ^_^ )
(If you don't want this potentially irritating method of notification, let me know and I'll take you off the list. ^_^ )
Hooray!
At last, the two parts of the story have merged and become one humongous file on my computer! It took me a little more than a paragraph to join them... like three paragraphs and a conversation, hahaha, but they're together now, and that's what counts. (Probably when I go back through it'll get even longer. I feel a little rushed, but I'm so glad I have only one giant document instead of flipping back and forth between two.)
I'm at a whopping 16568 words for the whole enchilada. I shudder to think how much time I've poured into it. Truthfully I lost count along the way, but let's make a guesstimate! If you spent 3.5 hours a day every day for five weeks, that's 122 hours. That's the time I worked solidly on the story. I worked sporadically after that for a week, and then ignored it until a couple days ago. Hence, my guesstimate is that I have spent probably around 140 hours on this so far, just typing on the computer. That's three and a half weeks of a nine-to-five sort of job!
I'm in deep.
Someday in the near-to-middling future there will be actual evidence of this as yet unsubstantiated monster story, right here on this blog...just don't hold your breath!
I'm at a whopping 16568 words for the whole enchilada. I shudder to think how much time I've poured into it. Truthfully I lost count along the way, but let's make a guesstimate! If you spent 3.5 hours a day every day for five weeks, that's 122 hours. That's the time I worked solidly on the story. I worked sporadically after that for a week, and then ignored it until a couple days ago. Hence, my guesstimate is that I have spent probably around 140 hours on this so far, just typing on the computer. That's three and a half weeks of a nine-to-five sort of job!
I'm in deep.
Someday in the near-to-middling future there will be actual evidence of this as yet unsubstantiated monster story, right here on this blog...just don't hold your breath!
26 March 2009
Teaser time!
This is just a little blurb from the recent past. It comes from the exciting random ideas pile. I didn't get past more than a page or two, plus a vague outline of plot. However, it has...potential for awesome! ^_^ It has no title to speak of. I have done no editing, save spellcheck and exchanging some instances of pronouns for the character's name.
(Really, I'm just putting it up because it's kind of silly.) Enjoy!
_____________
The trouble had begun, Paul supposed, when he had started school. Before then, his parents hadn’t bothered trying to get him to do math. But once he started to learn numbers, things had gone terribly awry, and no one could explain it. You see, any math equation or use of a ruler led Paul to the inevitable, single conclusion of three-eighths. One plus one? By the time he was done, it equaled three-eighths. The length of the school desk, in centimeters, meters, or acres? Three-eighths. If Suzie has three apples and gives away one each to both Jim and Andrea, she would, indisputably, have three-eighths of an apple left when Paul solved the problem.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know that one plus one equals two, or that the desk measured to eighty-seven centimeters. He was simply, completely incapable of writing or speaking the answer. He tried. He really, really tried. It was an inexplicable and probably magical compulsion to put down, shout out, whisper, or scrawl across the blackboard three-eighths. The teachers all saw him struggle. If Paul tried to write anything other than three-eighths, he scribbled wildly, trying to force out other numbers. Eventually, the lines that might have been the beginning of a four or a one devolved into a convoluted mess and came out the other side as three-eighths. The same thing happened if he tried to say it: a hopelessly garbled noise at the start and an emphatic “Three-eighths!” at the end.
Math was exhausting, and so, from nearly the start of school, he sailed through math on a pass-fail basis, determined by his attentiveness in the lecture parts. His school records had a somewhat cryptic note to this effect. Occasionally, stubborn or puzzled teachers tried to get him to answer a problem. One particularly odious fellow had had him caned every day for a week before finally giving up on “exorcising that willful boyishness” from him via a bamboo switch to his buttocks. Paul failed that year’s math class, but the headmaster overturned the grading decision once Paul’s parents got wind of the whole affair.
_______________________
Tada! It interests me to think where I could go with Paul at the helm.
(Really, I'm just putting it up because it's kind of silly.) Enjoy!
_____________
The trouble had begun, Paul supposed, when he had started school. Before then, his parents hadn’t bothered trying to get him to do math. But once he started to learn numbers, things had gone terribly awry, and no one could explain it. You see, any math equation or use of a ruler led Paul to the inevitable, single conclusion of three-eighths. One plus one? By the time he was done, it equaled three-eighths. The length of the school desk, in centimeters, meters, or acres? Three-eighths. If Suzie has three apples and gives away one each to both Jim and Andrea, she would, indisputably, have three-eighths of an apple left when Paul solved the problem.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know that one plus one equals two, or that the desk measured to eighty-seven centimeters. He was simply, completely incapable of writing or speaking the answer. He tried. He really, really tried. It was an inexplicable and probably magical compulsion to put down, shout out, whisper, or scrawl across the blackboard three-eighths. The teachers all saw him struggle. If Paul tried to write anything other than three-eighths, he scribbled wildly, trying to force out other numbers. Eventually, the lines that might have been the beginning of a four or a one devolved into a convoluted mess and came out the other side as three-eighths. The same thing happened if he tried to say it: a hopelessly garbled noise at the start and an emphatic “Three-eighths!” at the end.
Math was exhausting, and so, from nearly the start of school, he sailed through math on a pass-fail basis, determined by his attentiveness in the lecture parts. His school records had a somewhat cryptic note to this effect. Occasionally, stubborn or puzzled teachers tried to get him to answer a problem. One particularly odious fellow had had him caned every day for a week before finally giving up on “exorcising that willful boyishness” from him via a bamboo switch to his buttocks. Paul failed that year’s math class, but the headmaster overturned the grading decision once Paul’s parents got wind of the whole affair.
_______________________
Tada! It interests me to think where I could go with Paul at the helm.
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