What are you writing about now?

[david_wendelken]

Succour(it does look better with British spelling: assistance, help, rescue.

Sustenance: means of sustaining oneself, commonly food. Nourishment is, I believe, a synonym.

Yes!

 

[david_wendelken]

Popped the word braies in the word game. It's apparently a stumper. I think my clues are pretty good...

 

[WatcherWraith]

Stumpers can be good :>

We all get a chance to stretch our brains a bit.

 

[david_wendelken]

On the writing side, I'm rewriting chunks of one chapter. I had a big chunk of spycraft exposition in the second scene in the chapter. A big hairball of explanatory text.

Added a trainee (bright but timid and shy) to the prior scene. She asks a question a novice would ask. Since they need to train her, the POV character diverts from the mission briefing to do a bit of Socratic method training. Instead of lecturing, she asks questions. The others, when the trainee gets stumped for too long, silently act out a clue. Hopefully, the reader will be drawn into wanting to know the answers to the questions, too.

Needs lots of editing; the verbiage is still very raw. (Just finished it before dinner.) But I think it will polish up nicely. The scene is much better for it. It's also expanded the page count for this portion of the scene from 5 lines to 2 pages!

Next, I'm turning a single letter (a page and a half) that summarises what happens off-camera into a series of scenes. 7 or 8 scenes. No way I'll get that many scenes to fit in a page and a half. Page count is bound to go up by 5 to 10 pages. But it should be much more exciting that way.

 

[david_wendelken]

Well, so far, that page and a half letter has grown to five and a half pages of 1st person story telling. I've got at least another half page to go, probably a page. Most of it makes for a better story, I've got one scene that needs some more pizazz. And I've got to work on the style, it reads too much like a John Le Carre' story in the new material - which is natural since it's got lots of spycraft in it. Arrrgh.

 

[david_wendelken]

If anyone can think of a Middle-earth-appropriate phrase for these spy terms, I would be grateful!

dead drop
tail
drop point
tradecraft

 

[Glorfindel Goldtress]

The one I thought of first was this:

tail

Cloaked in shadows, the Enemy creeps ever nearer behind us.

 

[david_wendelken]

Well, I've completed the first draft of my re-worked chapter, "Love Conquers All." It's gone from 3073 words to 6692, which is a pretty massive increase. In the original version, I had some very compressed exposition to explain espionage concepts and how they were used. Ok, it was a hairball of exposition. I also had a page and a half summary of what non-characters did off-camera to complete the spy mission, as it made no sense to type up the character's team with the final tasks, which would take a couple of years (or more). Good spycraft but not good storytelling.

So, I added a trainee to the team and, instead of lecturing her on why their approach was chosen, the team used the socratic method to pull the information out of the trainee, by having her to think through the problem under pressure (with a bit of miming given as clues). To return the favour, the trainee comes back to give a final assessment of the mission results. (The mission was to get the bad guys to kill their own spymaster, thinking he was a traitor, so they have to deduce whether their plan worked.) To return the favour of being grilled so much, she gave her report in a series of riddles, which the character team had to puzzle through. I think it's better story telling. Or, at least, I hope it is!

Still needs a fair bit of polishing and editing. Simplifying some sections, trimming others, and adding all 5 senses into the descriptions as needed.

I also learned a concept for writing called e-prime. Basically, you avoid the use of the verb "to be" in all its forms (am, was, were, is, are, will be, being and been). Why? Because it's a very passive verb. So, instead of writing "There was a big desk and two nearby chairs in the room," you might write "A desk loomed over a pair of nearby chairs." You've gone from a passive verb to a desk that seems to be doing something. Much more drama in the latter description.

 

[david_wendelken]

Ran my newly edited chapter past my alpha reader and they liked it. Yeah!

 

[david_wendelken]

I'm editing chapter 36 of 52.

 

[WatcherWraith]

I'm editing chapter 36 of 52.

Only sixteen more to go! That's good :]

 

[david_wendelken]

Got through #40 and part of #41 this evening.

 

[david_wendelken]

I'm on chapter 43 and flagging... Unless I get a second wind tonight, that's it for the day.

 

[WatcherWraith]

I'm on chapter 43 and flagging... Unless I get a second wind tonight, that's it for the day.

Oof, that is quite a lot of work. Do take some rest for yourself.

 

[david_wendelken]

I have a question. Someone from Angmar would be Angmarin or Angmarim? Or?

 

[Glorfindel Goldtress]

I think it would be Angmarim. Just sounds more correct. But I don't think Angmarin is necessarily wrong.

 

[david_wendelken]

I'm editing chapter 52 of 52. I have an earlier chapter that needs serious tightening and simplifying, I skipped it. Now it's time to go back and fix it.

My reader is only up to chapter 42, so I'll have changes to make as they catch up.

My editor is recovering nicely from her eye surgery, I'll be sending my work to her in a few weeks.

It's been a long 4 months of editing.

 

[david_wendelken]

Finished Chapter 52 of 52 of A Tale of Two Tales

Now I need to draw a map for, then condense and simplify chapter 14, in which our one-time hero and his heroic but duped sidekick participate in the Nírnaeth Arnoediad.

It does not go as one of them expected.

I am hoping the map will make it easier to relate the story in text format, as the bigger movements of military units over the Anfauglith will be on the map. I.e., I won't need them in the text.

I also have 4 additional @todo: markers in the text. Add another additional map, maybe turn a small info dump from a messenger into a discussion about it between two characters afterwards. And I never mentioned who the Vanyar are, which would be confusing to non-Silmarillion readers when they go stomping the Morgoth's forces in Beleriand at the end of the First Age. Oops. Need to add a tad of exposition somewhere...

I have one more I'm considering. I've got an impressionable young man travelling with a beautiful, classy and eloquent lady for six months. She is mentoring him while they travel alone together. I think her speech patterns and word choices would rub off on him. I just wasn't sure how to go about it, I hadn't figured out a specific mechanism to do that with. I had it filed away under "great ideas I lack the skill to do". But I learned a new writing technique a couple of weeks ago, it's called e-prime. It's designed to make one's writing more vivid.

The concept is simple. Do not write using the verb "to be". That would include "am", "are", "is", "was", etc. Example: Instead of describing a room like, "There was a massive massive desk in the centre and there were two chairs to the right," say "The desk in the centre loomed over the two chairs to the right." Was & were are passive, loomed is active. Since the lady in question is a skilled bard, the difference in word choice would be substantial. And, what's more, it's actionable advice.

I'm going to do all the other things first, then make a save copy and give this a whirl. It is not a trivial project. In The Forest Maiden tale, there are 810 uses of "was" in the story text, 771 of "is", 360 of "are", 277 of "were", 181 of "am", for example. I'm guessing the bard will account for about half those numbers. I'm not going to make a religion out of it, but if I like the result of the test, I'll try a few passes through the text. I'm also assuming it will get easier as I go forward. Or maybe I'll dislike it and quit. I can't do the entire book that way, there are 4 major narrators in the 2 tales. They need to sound like different people!

Enough of editing talk. Here's some story talk!

Book 1,, A Tale of Two Tales, spans from the last Year of the Trees to the 2006th year of the 3rd Age. The FIrst Tale, "Emissary of the Valar", covers events from the last Year of the Trees to the end of the First Age, approximately 590 years. The Second Tale, "The Forest Maiden", picks up in the year 1389 of the 3rd Age and continues to 2006.

Book 2, Shadow War in Middle-earth, picks up in 2014 of the 3rd Age and goes to 2155.

Book 3, The Shadowed Elf-maid, picks up in 2157 of the 3rd Age. Not sure of the last year, but approximately fifty years.

Book 4, Lórien in the War of the Ring, covers exactly one year of time with the War of the Ring in the middle. The appendices have additional entries from the Annals of Lorien that extend the time period out to 311 of the 4th Age.

The timeline for Book 5, A Long-expected Meeting, will remain undescribed at present.

 

[WatcherWraith]

The speech patterns are definitely something I also have to think about when writing certain characters. As an example, some of my readers have noted the differences between how Hannah talks in my On Behalf of the Dead story, and how Fëanor talks. His language is very formal and theatrical, whereas Hannah is much more casual and normal when speaking to herself. She does try to adopt Fëanor's speech pattern when speaking to him or his family, though.

 

[david_wendelken]

My reader is up to page 293 of 415 for the story. There's another 65 pages in the Appendices on top of that.