Whoo, what a slog this has been so far! Nevertheless, I'm only about 10 pages away from finishing Part 1 of the revamped "Oh, Cheers," or "Phoenix Soars!" as it will be called in its final Kindle release.
What started out as a 42k 3 part story is already at 33k so far, and diverging greatly from the source material. I'm literally at a point where, for parts 2 and 3, I'll be going through and making notes of a few key parts I want to keep, but for the most part both parts (as opposed to my initial plan for just part 3) will be almost entirely new material.
Heck, who am I kidding, they WILL be entirely new material, just with a few plot points carried over.
It's really interesting how the characters have changed in the rewrite so far. Perhaps it's because I know who they are better now than I did at the time, and their personalities are so much more fleshed out, but I'm finding that many areas of the original story simply don't fit with who the characters are any more, and I'm having to rethink vast swathes of how characters handled situations, or interacted with one another, or even the roles characters had to play in the story as a whole. So many characters that were background or even hardly mentioned in the original version have come to the fore as major players now, and, well, you'll all see when I get it finished. :P
The new title really is appropriate. It's almost not even the same story any more. But I think that's a good thing. After I finish Part 1 I'm going to take a brief break from the core story and write the first Gaming Session piece, then dive back in with Part 2. Hopefully the extra freedom I'm giving myself with the content and format of parts 2 and 3 will mean I can write them faster than I've managed Part 1 (I've been working on it since, what, November? Geez!) and I'm aiming to have the entire book finished by midsummer at the latest. Let's see how far I miss THAT mark by!
Anyway, wish me luck, back to writing!
Melanie E.
Comments
Apple Core
Did you make it to NYC?
Your writing sounds exciting.
At the point where you are with this story you might find it interesting to draw a diagram of your characters.
Put your protagonist in the middle and all the other characters in a circle around her.
Now start drawing lines of "tension" between your characters. You should have quite a number of triangles.
How does each character prevent the protagonist from achieving major or minor goals? How do they help? What goals do each of the other characters have that might impact the protagonist?
Can you combine two or more characters?
Do the characters need more development to show the reader the tension that exists?
I need diagrams, so this works for me. If it works for you . . . great.
If not, just chalk it up as a doting old friend's rant.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I am in fact in New York!
Not New York City, though. Waterford for the moment, just outside Albany, though soon we'll be moving to the Scotia area, if all things go well.
As for the diagrams... that would just confuse the heck outta me! I do keep a character list, with a short description of each, mostly so I can keep names straight (when I redo Echoes I'll have to decide on one of the three I think it was names I gave Miriam's mom)but for the most part I don't really find it necessary.
I am working hard to prevent character bloat, though. At this point I've only really added one major character to the story and revamped a few who were there before (Patty's a much better friend now, for instance, and the cheer captains will both be much more real people) but I'm still keeping the major players below 10, though there will be a number of secondary or tertiary characters who appear mostly for flavor every now and then.
The gaming sessions are where the REAL fun's gonna happen!
Melanie E.