What are you writing about now?

Fixing this last chapter is a real slog.

I had to deal with the manoeuvres of 4 armies plus the characters joining one of them. It required a chart of "who is where, when?" to keep it all straight before I wrote it. Even then, it was an overwhelming task to cover what was happening from a single character's POV.

The quality of the writing suffered. There are gobs of "echoes" in the text. Echoes are when you use a word or phrase, then re-use it again (and maybe again and again and again) in fairly close proximity.

There are great rhetorical reasons to echo something. A few stray echoes are no big deal. But a few hundred in one chapter become noticeable!

Worse, they are often a symptom of repeating oneself. Of saying the same thing more than once, but slightly differently. (Like I just did there by way of example.)

I'm down to 37 distinct words or phrases that have been echoed, with a total of 98 things to inspect.

The text is definitely improving. I'll need to go through the text again with a fine-tooth comb to look for disorganised or fragmented paragraph ideas.

Then do a map of the battle and see what I can simply out of the text because the map better conveys the information .

Editing is hard work.

The battle chapter is done until I get a map done. Then I'll revisit it to see where it can be simplified.
***

I've had a story problem in book 1 for a while. Our heroine wants to wed and her king won't let her marry the man she's chosen. Now, to be fair, he's got reasonable objections. Then again, she's got reasonable solutions to, over time, prove to him whether his fears are correct or without merit. He's always been portrayed as a good, just, and fair ruler. (Which he is.)

But he simply will not budge and will not explain beyond what he already has.

It makes for some great story drama EXCEPT it doesn't seem right - it's out of character for him to be so unreasonable and unyielding. So it's very easy for a reader to think to themselves, "Oh, the author just made this bit up for some drama." Worse, they should, given what the POV characters reveal to the reader.

The problem is the king made an oath long ago that has come back to bite him. He cannot agree to the marriage or be foresworn. Nor, according to the oath, can he tell others why. The people whom he made to oath to will not be talking about it. And they DO have good reasons, which the reader will learn in good time in books 2 and 4.

So, what to do?

I figured it out this evening!

Yeah!!!!

My reader has edited up to page 329 of 486. The main story ends on page 416. 3/4ths of the appendices should be pretty easy to edit.

Shared a chapter of Book 2 with my writer's circle last night.
We have a newish member who's a poet, and he has been making really good comments on people's work.

As you may remember, my work is a "translation" of an ancient history, one compiled by two different historians from a collection of documents. This particular chapter is part of an epic poem describing a quest. Except I'm no poet, so it's presented as a prose translation.

One of my questions for feedback was "Does this read like a prose translation of poetry?"

I got a resounding yes from all hands. Yeah!
But my most exciting comment was when the poet said, "This has motivated me to go read Tolkien!"

Have a zoom meeting with a book editor tomorrow afternoon!

Even better, part of their editing process is noting "echoes" in the text and making suggestions to remove them. This is great because I have learned this is an editing task I have learned I hate.

This morning, I went seriously pruned my list of illustrations to put into book #1. I also wrote a brief description of what should be in the illustrations. I need to mine my book for physical description characteristics of the characters and add those details to the descriptions.

Working on an illustrationto put in the frontispiece. It will be at least 11x17, maybe four times that in size. It will have two narrow side panels, each with one of the Two Trees, Laurelin the Golden and Telperion the Silver, each beaming with its gold or silvern light. Between the two tree side panels will be a map of NW Middle-earth in the 1st Age. The caption will be "Map of Northwestern Middle-earth, showing the lands illuminated by the Two Trees. I'll have a slight shadow-tinting on the parts that the trees would not lighten (due to mountains being in the way).

I'm turning the current 1-page Title page into a 2 piece spread that will appear directly after the map described above. The top two corners will have the heraldic badges of the two main characters, the antagonist and protagonist. The two side panels will have portraits of the two characters.

After that will be the table of contents, also to be turned into a 2 piece spread. Same heraldry in the top corners, but the two side panels will show the two trees after they've been slain by the Morgoth and Ungoliant. I'll have the Morgoth spearing one tree, Ungoliant sucking the other one dry, and the light beaming off of them faded. Stars will show faintly in the sky.

I think this will replace a whole bunch of exposition text otherwise needed to explain about the two trees, how they provided light to the world, and how they died. That means my story can jump right into the action without having to explain all that.

Or so I hope...

Got my first 3 chapters back from my editor. She's made some good suggestions and a few I'm not sure on or not understanding. We'll be meeting for about an hour every week.
Progress!

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.

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About 7 months ago I came up with a good idea for my book.

This was the story I already had. An impressionable young man narrates a journey he takes with a lovely, gracious, bardic woman. She is, without his knowledge at first, moulding him to improve key survival skills where she is honour-bound to take him (but does not want to). I was happy with the story, but felt that it would be really cool if some of her bardic speech patterns rubbed off on him over time.

And so it remained, an idea I had no idea of how to pull off.

Then I learned about the e-prime writing style mentioned above. Ta-da! I can modify the bard's speech patterns using e-prime to remove most of her uses of the "to be" verb forms. I'll start with her as a young bard and work through the chapters she narrates. I expect to get better at doing this as I go forward, which should track with her increasing ability.

Then, I plan to pepper the young man's narration with e-prime phrasing, with more seasoning added to the later chapters he narrates.

That was the plan. Simple. Understandable. Actionable.

I've gone through the first two chapters narrated by the young bardic maiden. I have a problem with my plan. She ALREADY doesn't use the "to be" verb very much! Now, there are thousands of "to be" verb forms in the novel, but only a very few of hers in these two chapters. I'm going to carry on, I wrote the chapters in a non-sequential order, so it's possible that other chapters don't have such vibrant phrasing.

But it is still a very happy discovery!

Got chapters 4 & 5 back from the editor this afternoon. Woot!
Good comments, too.

If you know, you know... 😏

Glad you are ready to leap back into your story!

I've been doing some thinking about the structure of my book series. I think I want to split Book 2 in the series into two parts. That will make it two normal sized books instead of one monster one. Plus, it should make it faster to finish the new, smaller Book 2, which might affect whether I can get a license to publish.

The Elvish translations for books II and III are my best 1am guess. Which, sadly, isn't much worse than my normal work-a-day guess. I'll try to get confirmation/correction on the Sindarin titles before I officially use them.

The book editor I hired has handed back the first 10 chapters. Her comments and suggestions are excellent. And, as a major bonus, she's got a very good ear for the style I'm aiming for!

This is definitely money well spent! I'm learning a number of things that will help my writing in general, and I'm getting excellent suggestions for when I wander away from a proper Tolkien voice.

I'm moving the edited chapters into Adobe Indesign for layout. Getting close!!!

Spotted two tiny plot holes in the editing process. And since they were tiny instead of structural, it only took changing a couple sentences each to fix them.

Since we were doing word definitions recently, this seemed useful:

I'm working through the edits for chapter 13. My editor really has a great ear for a Tolkien feel to the text. So happy!!!

david_wendelken said:

Since we were doing word definitions recently, this seemed useful:
View attachment 48156

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I remember learning about this! It was quite a delightful little surprise. Who would've known three such words would have come together to mean something quite different?

I have a few minutes before the meeting with my editor, so I thought I would inventory the various songs and poems I've come up with for my book series.

Book 1:
1) A sea shanty for a trip from Beleriand to Valinor as they struggle against contrary winds and waves after the Morgoth slay the Two Trees and steals the Silmarils.
2) A poem, Tale of the Harper's Tears, about captivity in Umbar.
3) Two Linnods from a love interest to our heroine.
4) Six Linnods from our heroine to her love.
5) A song of defiance, "The Love that I have chosen" to our heroine's king over a decision he made.
Book 2
1) A lullaby to birdies.
2) The first few stanzas of a canto of an epic poem.
3) Working on another song now. Longest one yet! I may be biting off more than I can compose.
Book 3
1) A song of parting for the funeral of two young men.
Book 4
1) Our heroine is revealed as the composer/lyricist for a well-known song in LOTR about Amroth and Nimrodel. (Some character had to have written it, and it fits the story in Book 1 perfectly for her to have been the one to do it.)

That's all that come to mind at the moment.

I must confess, I am especially interested in the lullaby to birdies and the sea shanty. This is already quite a lovely amount of songs/poetry for a book centered in Arda!

The difference in number between the Linnods sent by and received by the main character has me raising my eyebrows. Did some of her love interest's linnods get lost, or does he just compose much less than she?