The Dread Rewrite

gday gentle reader, 

Now that  The Break of Civilisation  Vol 1 of The Restoration Legends trilogy is out there, both as an eBook and as a trade paperback, I’ve been working on rewriting Vol 2; not just editing but rewriting significant bits.

Originally, that is, way back in 2000 on finishing Vol 1, I ploughed straight into  The Face of the Goddess  Vol 2 writing 50,000 words in a couple of months. 

I kept my trio of POV characters from Break and added two more, a son of one, and a daughter of the other two. Five POV characters, complicated, yes?  

But wait there’s more .....

I always intended each book would be a new generation, so I started roughly 20 years after the events in Vol 1.  But then I, the author, felt I needed to know what happened in between and began filling in the 20-year gap, eventually pushing the story back to where it finished, and adding a 6^th POV character.  Chapter 1 was now Chapter 42, 60,000 words later, half of them (30,000 words) before the heroine, the daughter, is born.

The reason for all the above is attempt to explain why I'm rewriting. I'm trying to recover my original vison. It’s not all bad but I’ve slashed 40,000 words, from the opening, and will reduce the POV characters to the three children. 

All that background material that I needed to know, so I could write with authority I can and will re-use in short stories.

Speaking of which brings me to the just self published (15/12/23) collection  Colony Worlds: 13 of my award winning stories but that  story is for my next blog.

ooroo Rob

A horse of different colour

gday gentle reader 

Taking a quote from my novel, and extending the wriding metaphor of my last post, "First rule of mounted troops, care for your animal or walk."  The animal I had been riding was the trilogy but I got back on a horse of different colour, a new short story, and paid scant attention to the one that had carried me so many miles. At the time the theory seemed sound - to quote from last post - 

It worked until I finished the short story, which then had to edited - oops. I now had two animals needing attention and I was walking, it all became too hard, I fell off - again. 

  And that's about as far as this silly metaphor will stretch without surpassing it elastic limit.

Then Harper Voyager opened their transom for unsolicited manuscripts for 14 days a magnificent opportunity too good to miss.      

 
205,000 word to edit in 10 days, leaving a couple for the synopsis and query letter.  20,500 a day - midnight oil was burnt - rest of life put on hold.

 It got done, it got sent. 

It is not as good as I would have sent if I had continued as I was. I now think however that with out the impetus of Harper/Voyager's deadline it might never have got finished. 

There was so much more I wanted to do. For example the story takes place over a year. I have a chart with every POV characters birthday marked. Another has the daily temperature and rainfall for every day of the year. telling details which never got used. 

Then (of course) as soon as it was sent I found an error on the first page - consecutive snatches of dialogue from the same character and the response from the other character in the scene  (supposed to be between those snatches) was missing. 

   

I now have a new editing philosophy, which works the same for me as the "write book three in a year" did to get the trilogy finished, 
to wit: For book two I've given myself until the end of the year to edit it (overly generous I now think) The total words divided by number of days give me a daily target to edit. Since today's target was reached yesterday I had time to blog about it today  

ooroo until my next post 

Rob

 

The tyranny of distances

gday gentle readers

I've moved glacially onward from ch2 to ch3 and struck exactly the same problem. 

They say write what you know. Well I've lived in Adelaide, Woomera, Darwin, Sydney and Bruny Island (south-west of Tasmania) and I wanted to include my experience of that diverse geography in my made-up world. Hence the mud map made a decade ago resembles and has the rough dimensions of Australia. I set the protagonists home town of Deep Creek in the foothills and the capital Grundston on the coast then set Deep Creek at Adelaide's latitude - where I have lived most and live now.

The first thing to note is my careless positioning of the main range in my quick sketch - much further inland (MISTAKE #1) than its Australian template and thereby hangs this tale, quite literally; like that little blue circle on your PC screen that says "I'm thinking I'll get back to you". I wrote book one, the one I'm trying to edit, using this map as a guide, guessing the distances (MISTAKE #2) and then as I wrote, mentally substituting the Adelaide hills for the Great Dividing Range (MISTAKE #3). 

The tale hanging tyranny of distances are those between the Mountains and Coast.

Adelaide 10 miles. 

Sydney 40 miles  
and according to my map
Grundston 250 miles 

So in ch3 when Averil, one of my heroines, sits on rock comparing the roof styles of the town below and the capital she's got damn good eyesight. Locally that's like picking out Adelaide's rooves from Woomera (in the US try seeing Washington's rooves from New York) 

Which brings me full circle. In my last post I figured I had to delay Averil 12 days so she couldnt catch the contingent before they reached the pass 500 miles away. I'd only just measured that distance and calculated the relatives speeds. Now my dividers have wandered further over my map.

During the original writing I imagined Averil was only a days journey from the contingent's starting point - Grundston. I wrote imaging the distance from the mountains to the coast was about 10 miles not 250 miles. At 250 miles its going to take her 12 days anyway. The one-day delay I already had is enough for her to need a horse or a short cut.

The problem resolved itself. 

If only I had read ahead I wouldn't have had to write an extra scene (600 words) or wonder how to get her story back on track after it.

Unwittingly (me being witless) I also have her sister Kezia, in the first scene of Ch3, make the same 500 mile return journey in a single day. That I fixed by having her go only to the next town not to the capital Grundston. But even with my godlike authorial powers I can't move these mountains. The story returns to this area in the last book using the later, detailed, upside-down and carefully measured map. 

until my next post problem

ooroo

RoB