That’s the last one. I think it’s a contender. Illustrate pulls at me.
The chapters are getting longer. I tried to fight this, but I’m giving up. It’s too early to worry about it and constantly renumbering things is getting expensive. I’m writing as a file per chapter, so renumbering changes all the filenames. In retrospect, that may not have been the wisest choice, but it does keep everything nicely organized.
I both plotted and wrote (and played with covers) this weekend. “Plotting” means creating the chapter files and putting “ZZZ: This happens” at the top. “This” may be long or short, depending on how much I know at the moment.
For example, Chapter 21 is Cattle Drive. I don’t know from where or to where (more than “ish”). I know nothing about driving cattle. The chapter summary is “ZZZ: Figure this out.” with the quote, “We’re not sheepdogs!” Chapter 15 has a bit more: “ZZZ: Back to Belle Foursch to recruit the guys. Why? Ugh. That means they all need stat sheets. Not a lot of time for introductions. Chapter 11 needs to carry a lot of water.”
“Writing” of course means writing, while solving those problems. Chapter 15 and 11 are entwined, so 11 will get edits as 15 unfolds.
I’m looking forward to reading these posts in a couple of years and laughing at how much I’m overthinking this. But, it’s my first. And I really want to avoid “first book sucks” syndrome, as much as possible. Unknown unknowns and typos will take their toll – and neophyte writing, too. Is having a structure that makes sense really asking too much? More relevantly, will anyone even notice if the chapter lengths bounce around?
I’ve made it most of the way through Ring of Fire, again. I don’t think I’ll be finishing it. Not only am I incapable of writing something like that, I don’t think that I want to. It’s so complicated. Even that is simplification of reality; it’s just so much to track. I want to write something “fluffier” (werewolves are fluffy, right?)
Re-reading myself, I’ve realized that I’m writing a cozy/slice-of-life. That’s not exactly my intent, but our intrepid heroes need to figure out what’s going on, make friends, settle down somewhere, etc… That’s not the usual Hero’s Journey or Chosen One LitRPG style.
I’m enjoying it and think there are several fun scenes (e.g. the cow with chocolate milk) in addition to the requisite fights (I’m sure the neophyte writer will not show through in those at all). Book Two is also going to slice-of-life. They (a whole town) are hunkered down for the winter. Book Three is when people start rampaging across the country-side, in true RPG style.
In Book Two, we’re going to meet amoral army guy (haven’t decided on rank, yet). He’s not “bad”, per se. He’s just happy he gets to level up from killing bad guys, by his lights, without politicians getting involved (for now, anyway). In Book Three, they’re going to out “I’m badder than you are” him by asking if he happens to know of any evil mages in the area because they need to torture one so he might as well be an evil one. Even amoral army guys asks them to please leave Roundup alone; everyone likes him (he wanders around killing all the weeds in farmers’ fields). That’s more slice-of-life than heroic. (It will probably be a necromancer; no one likes them.)
Enough of plotting Book Three. I need to finish Book One, Chapter 8. It refuses to complete gracefully.
Oh. It’s Monday, now. I can hit publish and close this browser tab. Picture generation finished. Let me check for a good one to use as the featured image… If anyone from work is reading this, I got booted from RDP; helpdesk request sent.
Marked Up 