{"id":5529,"date":"2011-05-22T12:31:49","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T00:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=5529"},"modified":"2011-05-22T16:05:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T04:05:06","slug":"what-ive-been-doing-the-great-revision-rocks-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/05\/22\/what-ive-been-doing-the-great-revision-rocks-on\/","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;ve Been Doing: The Great Revision Rocks On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/05\/21\/the-excitement-mounts-tales-for-canterbury-goes-to-press\/\">Yesterday<\/a> I posted about proofing my short story <strong><em>The Fountain<\/em><\/strong>, which is part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/talesforcanterbury.wordpress.com\/\"><em><strong>Tales for Canterbury<\/strong><\/em> project<\/a>&#8212;now at the printers.<\/p>\n<p>The other main thing I&#8217;ve been plugging away on this week is of course&#8212;say it with me, or alternatively, groan, in chorus!&#8212;the GR or Great Revision of <strong><em>The Gathering of the Lost <\/em>(<\/strong><strong>The Wall of Night Series Part 2.)<\/strong> If you&#8217;ve been following these updates, you&#8217;ll know that I&#8217;m know into the penultimate section of the book&#8212;and since the ultimate section is basically an extended epilogue this means we&#8217;re getting close. But, but &#8230; (no, please don&#8217;t groan again, be nice, ok \ud83d\ude09 )\u00a0 those of you who have been following the conversation around my Thursday post on <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/05\/19\/time-quality-the-modern-sff-novel\/\">Time, Quality &amp; the Modern SFF Novel<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>may have picked up that I look for certain things in my SFF reading:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sustained world building;<\/li>\n<li>continuity and &#8220;consequence&#8221; in developing\/implementing either science or magic systems within the story;<\/li>\n<li>plot continuity and credibility; and<\/li>\n<li>characters that read as \u201creal\u201d people (or \u201cpersonalities\u201d vis-a-vis non-human characters)\u00a0 and who remain consistent throughout in terms of their development \/ response to events, e.g. I don\u2019t think it \u201cplays\u201d for an author to have a protagonist do something against their established character and values just to make the plot work: I believe there needs to either be a motivation provided where it\u2019s plausible for the character to behave in the way necessary to advance the plot\u2014or the plot needs to change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(In terms of the last two bullet points, I look for these in my non-SFF reading as well.)<\/p>\n<p>Since this is what I look for as a reader&#8212;as well, of course, as great ideas and stories that draw me in to the extent that I don&#8217;t even think about how the book is written&#8212;it&#8217;s probably not surprising that I try really hard to make sure that the positives of these elements, rather than the negatives, are present in my own writing.\u00a0 That&#8217;s a really big part of what I&#8217;m doing with the GR.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing I look for&#8212;I&#8217;m talking about big hits by the way, rather than basic spelling and grammar, repetition of words and phrases etcetera, which is all part of the process, as well&#8212;are instances where I slip into telling too much of the story in &#8220;retrospect&#8221;, i.e. where the protagonists remember events that they, but not the reader, have experienced&#8212;<em>especially<\/em> when that knowledge\/recollection becomes essential to the plot&#8217;s development or resolution.\u00a0 So if I see that happening I always ask myself: how can I retell this so the action is in real-time for reader, not retrospect?<\/p>\n<p>This is not to say that a protagonist cannot have secrets or be unreliable (in fact it has been argued that a great many of the characters in the Wall world are essentially unreliable), but I do feel that there should always be some sort of trail for the reader to follow&#8212;if he\/she chooses to hunt for it, and however much misdirection the author chooses to use&#8212;to figure out &#8220;whodunnit&#8221; (so to speak.)<\/p>\n<p>A lot of stuff to think about&#8212;and of course the &#8220;bigger&#8221; the story in terms of plotlines, numbers of point-of-view and also major secondary characters, all with motivations and back stories that affect the plotlines, the more &#8220;threads&#8221; the author has to keep tabs on. Obviously this is vital when a change in one place with character A, for example,\u00a0 could potentially throw out another plotline&#8212;or more&#8212;somewhere else with characters B and C.<\/p>\n<p>I know I&#8217;ve probably said this before, but it <em>is<\/em> hard work, no question&#8212;sort of how I imagine driving a coach and four might be.\u00a0 As the &#8220;driver&#8221; you know you gotta keep those horses running in harness and in step and not get the reins tangled&#8212;but when everything&#8217;s working together the hard work aspect fades and then it&#8217;s pure fun. And who knows, after a while, if you&#8217;re really lucky, you &#8211; may &#8211; even &#8211; pick &#8211; up &#8211; speed!<\/p>\n<p>The way I see it though, the hard work is all my part, as the &#8220;driver.&#8221; I may talk about it a little here, just so you know that things are happening, the pistons <em>are<\/em> cranking and the wheels <em>are<\/em> turning, but really&#8212;the reader&#8217;s part should be all the fun stuff: the horses striding out, the road rolling away beneath your wheels, and the dust all behind you.<\/p>\n<p>But tell me, is that the way <em>you<\/em> like it? Or do you like to a peek into the carriage-house, the tack room, and stable&#8212;just from time to time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I posted about proofing my short story The Fountain, which is part of the Tales for Canterbury project&#8212;now at the printers. The other main thing I&#8217;ve been plugging away on this week is of course&#8212;say it with me, or alternatively, groan, in chorus!&#8212;the GR or Great Revision of The Gathering of the Lost (The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-what-im-doing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5529"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5547,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions\/5547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}