What are you writing about now?

This issue of 'hope' is huge.
Why do various 'religions' and 'spiritualities' exist to begin with?
And why does Tolkien say all good fantasy/mythology MUST contain the elements of morality and religion?

And what is the human, without some kind of measuring stick to strive toward, except a self-serving, grasping, "gimme gimme gimme' individual?
What is the human without some hope of the future? The one for whom the grave is the end of all things?

What a desperate plight.

The difference between a history book, and a story, is the history book needs no 'hope.' It simply writes what is.

Those involved in a war do not necessarily see the war as it is... or the future as 'without hope.' Else, why would they fight? (Unless they're just automatons - sheeple convinced they must do as their leader says, and their fear of the leader is greater than their fear of death in the war.)

No, no... there must be hope.
I would go on with the difference between the 'normal' human and the truly 'criminal' human... but will refrain at this point.

However it's handled, however contained, however frequently alluded to... whether as a part of an individual circumstance or situation, or the broader picture of a work, 'hope' must be incorporated. Even if its target is far, far distant in time, or in presence, within the scene.

There is more Tolkien also referred to, to continually keep in mind - it surrounds his comment that death and the fear of death must be present in Story. This plays hugely, in all his works, and should be kept in mind as well.

I am currently working on writing the final epilogue chapter to I Will Hold Your Hand Again (the companion story to The Works of Curufinwë, my fanfiction about Curufin and Celebrimbor).
I'm almost 800 words in.

Writing usually takes me a bit of time, of course. Often I'll only add a few more sentences to it per day.
But it's still an enjoyable process: I am mostly imagining each scene as I get to it. My ideas/notes for this final part of the story were quite brief, and the more extensive ideas need a bit of reworking, as I thought them up a long time ago, and they no longer fit perfectly with the details of the story as it now stands.

So I stop writing now and then, and just stare at my document while interesting and heartwarming scenes take shape like little mostly-silent films in my head. And then I try to find the words to describe what I'm seeing accurately. :3

After thinking about the overall structure and plot of volume one, I've identified 29 issues I want to address. Some are very fast and easy to do, and a few are bigger tasks. I think it will tighten up the plot, make the cause and effect chain more clear, a few chapters more impactful, and a couple more compact.

I had a book editor go through one of my scenes and give her comments. They were extremely helpful.

She divided the scene into a five part structure: Entry Hook, Anchor, Middle, Climax, and Exit Hook. She also color-coded them.

I found it so useful to do this that I'm going thru my manuscript doing the same thing for each scene.

I created 5 MS Word character styles. a1-Entry Hook, a2-Anchor, a3-Middle, a4-Climax and a5-Exit Hook. Each style has a different background color.

I've gone thru the first 144 pages of 381, marking each scene's text. In the process, I've split a bunch of long text segments into multiple scenes because the scene goal changed.

Here's what I've learned (so far) by doing this.

1. There is a strong correlation between scenes that I like best and those that have a very clear (and in proper order) delineation between those 5 styles.
2. There is a strong correlation between scenes I think are a bit flat and those that are missing a style or have styles interleaved together.
3. There is a strong correlation between scenes I think are pretty blah and those that are missing two or more styles.

It makes it much easier to find where to set to work to improve the scene.

I've created two more character styles that I'll use in a second pass through the document. a6-Redundant and a7-Head Hopping.

Then, when I work on improving the scenes and other fixes I've already put on my to-do list, I can add in these fixes too.

Hope you find this useful!

PS - Make sure the styles are CHARACTER styles, not PARAGRAPH or LINKED PARAGRAPH/CHARACTER styles. It's important!

david_wendelken said:

She divided the scene into a five part structure: Entry Hook, Anchor, Middle, Climax, and Exit Hook. She also color-coded them.

I found it so useful to do this that I'm going thru my manuscript doing the same thing for each scene.

I created 5 MS Word character styles. a1-Entry Hook, a2-Anchor, a3-Middle, a4-Climax and a5-Exit Hook. Each style has a different background color.

Click to expand...

Up to page 333 of 381. Almost done with this task!

I'm learning a bunch about how I have structured different scenes. Sometimes I've varied from the above formula and the story is better for it. Sometimes it's worse. But either way, I've got more understanding about what my options are, how to recognise them (either before or after I write it), and how to fix it if whatever method I chose didn't work.

Grammarly just got bought out.

They've updated their terms of service. If you don't go into your account and turn it off, they will train their AI on your writing.

With the AI explosion going on, we're all going to have to start reading the terms of service for any software product - including our word processors and the websites we post our fan fiction to, to make sure they don't arbitrarily change the terms of service.

And we need to contact congress to tell them that allowing one party to a contract to arbitrarily change the terms of service is unacceptable. We don't accept that kind of behavior from other industries. It's time to scrap individual privacy policies for a national one that actually protects people. I suggest the EU model as a starting point and not watering it down.

3 1/2 chapters to go on the color-coding pass-thru my manuscript.

Then I'll start editing the chapters from the front. I have 2 beta-readers lined up, plus I have an in-person writing group.

Getting closer!

david_wendelken said:

3 1/2 chapters to go on the color-coding pass-thru my manuscript.

Then I'll start editing the chapters from the front. I have 2 beta-readers lined up, plus I have an in-person writing group.

Getting closer!

Click to expand...

Have you ever considered posting your draft in the forum, as a alpha-test to discuss and revise your recent progress, maybe the staff can set another forum for gathering draft of all the writters to post their alpha-test products apart from the forum for done-works.

In addtion, I wonder if anyone of you are writting stuff about the 1944 Wain-riders War. The link below is my recent job, written in genre of annuals this time. I found out that many of writters writting non-annals genre fanfic, such as @Tyelkormo the Fair didn't introduce her created characters before these roles starting stroyline in their context, but just let the readers follow the progress of the plot and discover these roles's characteristic. Do you think it's better to have some introduction of self-created characters in annals genre fanfic instead of novel-genre, or...so on?

Hisoka Morrow said:

written in genre of annuals

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Do you perhaps mean "annals"?

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Do you perhaps mean "annals"?

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Oooppsss, me bad, error revised. 😅

And here Ent was looking forward to the Annuals..! Anticipating a year-by-year accounting he was, he was.

@Hisoka Morrow , I don't want to put my work in progress up in an open forum. It's still in flux as I nail down inconsistencies and unpolished wording.

I have an alpha reader I've been working with for the last 2+ years and a few beta readers lined up for when this manuscript is ready in the December-February timeframe.

I do have two chapters that deal with the 1944 Wainrider war. Raiders pushed across the undeeps and ravaged their way across scattered settlements in Calenardhon (later known as Rohan). No particular details and not on large enough a scale that it would get remembered in the accounts of the big events of the war. (Kind of like the Aleutian island campaigns in WWII or the Japanese firebombing of the Pacific NW coast via balloons.) In addition, the main character meets up with the shattered northern army of Gondor the day before Eärnil does, but takes no part in either battle.

Another chapter recounts a fictional tale about scouts patrolling the southern border before Eärnil defeated the Haradrim. It's a made-up tale by the main character to hide information within - it was presented as having happened but it never did (and never could have). In effect, it was steganography using word pictures instead of actual pictures.

That's it for me on the Wainrider wars.

Had a big scare a few minutes ago!

I was adding to a scene and needed to reference a character name that's not commonly used. (A short-term alias for someone.) I didn't remember the exact spelling so I did a search for it using the parts that I did remember.

I didn't get enough hits. I got references in later chapters but not in the one where the character (with that alias) was introduced.

Darn, must have spelled it in the later chapters! So I broadened the search terms to find that first chapter.

GONE!

The entire chapter was just gone.

Somehow I had inadvertently deleted it. (Or one of the cats did.)

Thankfully, after searching through various copies, I found it. Whew! I did NOT want to write it again.

A great editing day!

I started out with 45 to-do items on my list (not counting all the technical grammar and word polishing stuff). In this editing pass, I'm focusing on the things that are either missing from the story or needed to bind the story more tightly together. Some are small, some are as big as a whole new chapter.

I'm down to 33, and one of those is half done. Woot!

First 7 chapters of A Tale of Two Tales are done. Now back to my to-do list!

Which format is better? First or second?

You'll l ikely get different responses to this... it is a long-lasting preference/argument among writers.
As you can see in the first, exammple following "mell", the superscript can become almost "lost" in some cases - so often it is included in parens to help it stand out a little more. (1) Your use of red helps, but it took my old eyes a minute to find the 1. (The 2 was easy.)

Personally I dislike encumbering text with added "words" like "mell (friend)" as it jars my own 'reading mind' more.
But others say having the explanation 'in line' is actually quicker for them, than needing to glance down at footnotes - and especially better when footnotes are off at the end of a chapter or something.

(Of course, imagine needing to 'click' the superscript and switch to the 'glossary' then back to the text - even more jarring than looking at the bottom of a page.)

If explanations as footnotes would not be "on the same-page" then I would recommend using the in-line text - as long as the explanations are simple one-word type translatiolns. If lengthy, the choice is even more difficult,

david_wendelken said:

Which format is better? First or second?View attachment 45511

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I personally think the footnotes are better, since they don't interrupt the flow of reading. But the footnotes would only be helpful if they were on the bottom of the same page. I would find it more tedious hunting for them at the end of the chapter, or the end of the book.

Down to 23 To Do items. Added 495 words to a new chapter today. Fun ones, this character is a hoot to write. He jots down journal entries as short phrases, often opinionated ones. Was able to illustrate the mental toll on main character from this observer's viewpoint.

Chapter is about 20% done, and the next bits are sketched out in another 245 words scattered across 5 ToDo items. Hope to finish it tomorrow or the day after, depending on chores.

As for footnotes vs endnotes. We hates endnotes, we does. Hates them! Definitely will use footnotes if I go that route.

I'm down to 14 issues plus the basic wordsmithing tasks. 4 of those are actually graphic layout items, so it's really just 10. Finished the draft of the one new chapter, need to do the first-cut editing on it in the morning.

Progress!