Coincidencing

Editing is going smoothly, and in trying to reorganize scenes and make connections between characters, I've come across things that rely on coincidence.

In my story this doesn't happen as often, as my setting is in the first volume limited to three small kingdoms, and it has a lot of everyone's-related-to-everyone-else happening, especially among the upper classes. However, I've come to ask myself- what is taking coincidence too far in a story?

In life there are crazy coincidences. For instance, my brother and I visiting family months after our grandfather died and going to a 'paint your own pottery' place only to meet a woman whose own grandfather died on the same day as ours, across the street from our grandparents' house.

If this turn of events happened in a book, would you find it believable? At what point is coincidence too much?

The general consensus seems to be that coincidence becomes unbelievable when it becomes too convenient to the characters or the plot- once it becomes a deus ex machina.

A general rule also seems to be that if something makes things worse for your characters/protag, you're doing it right. However I'm sure it's possible to overdo that as well.

A good example of this would be Les Mis, where coincidences (as with most things in Les Mis, to be honest) are usually unfortunate for Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo also, as I have been informed over-enthusiastically by two friends in the room with me right now, plays a lot with coincidence purely because he can.

I feel like it also can make a world more real, to have random coincidences, because these things do happen in real life. To make a random character related through some convoluted tale and happenstance event, or have that apple fall on the old alchemist's head. It makes a world just as messy and intertwined as ours, just like having a character trip or stutter over their words makes them more relatable and susceptible to gravity.

I'm carrying on, in the meantime, and adding more connections and subplots- most of which revolve around family members and their hidden mischief.

Breaking Ice

I've just written a new scene-- not really a whole scene, just a new addition-- but it's the first really new material I've put into the manuscript in a while. It feels like breaking fresh ground.

Excitement is high though. I'm all settled back into school and life is a little less hectic now. I've been getting some organizing done, rearranging things in the outline and outlining new scenes that have to be put in. But this is the first actual change I've made to the document. It's the beginning. This is the big edit.

I'm ready to chop up this thing and make it good! TOUGH LOVE!

I'm only a little overwhelmed thinking about it.

There's a new thing, though! I'm in the writing club at my school, and we meet every other week to workshop. I'm starting to send them all my manuscript bit by bit so I can get critiques on it. The first meeting was the other night and it was the first bit of the prologue- the absolute oldest part of the manuscript (though arguably the most heavily edited so far) and it went really well. For what I think is one of the choppiest and immature bits, getting good comments really gave be some hope.

Hopefully this will give me momentum to be ruthless.

There's just so much of it.

That's all for tonight, I'll be back in a week with more.

Jigsaw-ing!

I'm currently going back through my problems outline-my giant list of doom- and fitting things together. 

I'm just going through and figuring out solutions, where i need to add/drop a scene, which characters need more page-time. I also have a list of new conflicts and subplots I'm going to expand, and I'm going to fit those in as well. It's a lot of color-coding and marker-juggling, but it's coming along.

Right now I'm not panicking- everything is pretty easy to solve according to this. Fitting things into the current writing however will be another task.

The last few weeks I've taken some time from the story, started a new novel that I may end up saving for nanowrimo, and done some illustration and reading.

I've just finished my first week back at college and getting back into classes and learning things is really energizing. I'm up for challenges right now.

I'm still running the writing tumblr, were I'm posting more about my other writing and illustration projects. Feel free to take a look! The url is wilsathethief.tumblr.com!

Here's what my mess of a notebook is enduring right now:

 

Have a great Saturday everyone!

Next Step

Alright so since I last posted I've done a lot of stuff, including finishing the read-through.

I have a notebook now of all my problems and even have the two problems I was most worried about kind of solved in my head. So it's a successful step in this whole beast of a project! The 'Giant List of Doom' method totally works and I maybe should have done that first. But it was easier to read now that I've gone through it all for phrasing already. So no regrets.

I'll start the actual going-back and chopping things up next week. For now I have a million other projects to get started on/work on/finish before I go back to school in a few weeks so I should do stuff with that.

Other news! I'm making a tumblr. You should all go check it out in a few days once I start posting. For further reference though the url is wilsathethief.tumblr.com! It'll be great fun. It's going to be a writing blog, but not just for my manuscript like this one is. I'm going to supplement this blog, as well as promote it on the tumblr but I'm going to do the more tumblr-esque reblogging and general writing nerdery as well. I used to have a tumblr way back when and the writing community on there is really fun.

The tumblr will also update on my other writing projects, and probably some illustration as well. So yay! more projects! and Art things!

Speaking of illustration: I have like three more painting ideas for this story, and I really want to start working on a full-cast painting, or at least a couple of different-setting casts. I've been doing more digital painting and it's beautiful to work with.

New inspiration: Wildweasel339 on deviantart, I believe his name is Lane Brown? this is a link to ONE of his beautiful paintings: http://wildweasel339.deviantart.com/art/Rooty-Tooty-196344648
but really he does the most amazing things. especially fantasy landscapes and scenes. It amazes me beyond words.

That's all for this post! More next time! (hopefully that won't be three weeks from now!)

On to Part Three

Well I'm over halfway through the story on the read-through. Now we're getting to the action.

Part Two is a little beat up, but in a good way. There's a lot I left undeveloped, and a lot I can add to make it fit even better into the story, which was a main concern from the beginning. I've got my notes and while I'm sure when I go back and fix things this part will take more time than the first, I'm not worried.

Going into Part Three I've got to look at a lot of pacing, and this is where many of my main logistical and agreement concerns lie. My notebook's about to get much busier.

So far I've had mostly local problems, and very few if any that affected larger parts of the story and plot. Going forward there's going to be bigger problems. I'm going to try my best to brainstorm solutions as I go, but also to try my best not to get overwhelmed.

It's hard changing something you spent so much time creating, and I find myself wanting to be lazy and saying that something's "good enough." But I can't allow myself to fall into that trap. You don't get better by accepting your faults, but by striving tirelessly to fix them. I have to stay vigilant, no matter how much more work I discover has to be done.

Here's hoping everyone's having an inspired week, as I am.

Reading Through the Mountains

I'm most of the way through Part Two now, still, whichever. It's been slow going this week because I've been doing a bunch of other projects as well. But I'm actually being productive, so that's good!

The Mountains section of the manuscript is as I remembered, a lot of fluff and just pretty things. I'm not going to cut any, just add a lot of information and character development that I was too lazy to put in while I was writing it. I'm going to make it a more important part of the story.

This is just a quick update, my eyes are drooping as I type this and I have a lot to do tomorrow. Sleep tight, everyone.

Wow, That Was a Month.

So this is good, instead of once a week I seem to be keeping very nicely with a monthly posting rate.

Oy.

I finally started editing again, life and being generally in a funk having kept me from it almost completely. This week has been good, though. I'm almost done with part two, and I seem to have different opinions on things than I did while anticipating problems, which is both good and bad. Good because some things don't need to be cut or completely rearranged as I had thought, but bad in that I need to add a lot, especially to part two. I also have found myself thinking things like this:

(Photo: actual note on the manuscript that I found minutes ago)

One habit I've discovered is that of making half-baked characters. Especially with fantasy stories, the cast of characters can become overwhelmingly large, and I'm not that experienced with handling that kind of responsibility. Apparently I can kill hundreds at a time, but God forbid I actually develop a minor character past a name and vague profession.

So I have a lot of that kind of thing to fix.

This weekend I'm going larping again- one of the few activities I've kept up with this summer and is keeping me relatively sane.

Or at least, as sane as someone can be when they rely on larping for a sense of normality.

So I won't be getting any editing done tomorrow through Sunday, but there are people at the event I'm going to ask about some things. I know of others who write, and certainly most everyone there is familiar with fantasy writing. (Seriously, so many there are such amazing storytellers.)

Hope everyone is having a good summer so far!
Have a safe Fourth of July!