Saturday, November 03, 2012

Day 3 ....

Three days in, at 15,000 words at present.The story is flowing decently though I'm going to have to pause soon and do a mad dash of notes to figure out the next few chapters as I am on chapter 4 and my notes reach chapter 6 with scattered point-form for the chapters after that. I do, however, know 2 major plot-points for the end of the novel, assuming I get there without too much difficulty. Been having fun with weird research and exploring some of the fun realities of 'person from earth on another world'.

The way I see it, most people wouldn't be able to improve another world directly. Oh, you know how X and Y work, yes, but to build them from the ground up sans any tools at all is something else entirely. Which means it's little things, like the characters wearing underwear and the astonishingly intricate seams of their clothing, that attract notice and the amazement of others. I'm also having fun lampshading worries, like eating the food on another world and worries over diseases you might get or bring with you. That said issues are taken care of via the gate between worlds doesn't stop the one character from getting worried about things like that.

Plot wise, the character that should be the most fun to write is showing up soon in the one timeline; I am not quite sure what is going to happen in the other though Jake being tried for war crimes is now complicated because he is travelling with a deserter from the army and said deserter's son.

Notes for me:
  • Having brought up skin tone, it shouldn't come up again often. Jake had no reason to mention it as he has been in the Kingdom before and is aware that, as a Caucasian male, he isn't common in some parts of the Kingdom but it's hardly cause for wonder or alarm. (At least in the southern parts of the Kingdom.) 
  • The deliberate lack of female characters thus far - Seri excepted - will come to the forefront soon as the status of rights in this world (both noble and commoner, male and female) collide with the sensibilities of Jake and Thomas and the extent one should impose on other cultures or seek to change them. 

9 comments:

  1. Awesome :)

    I picked away at AofD a bit last night, and woke up at 2am to scrawl down the following note:

    Only difference between gods & monsters -> people leave offerings for gods, monsters take offerings on their own

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    1. Intriguing... that is a cool thought (2AM always seem to bring the best ones, though, I guess). Interesting.

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  2. *laughs* Interesting idea as the only difference ... and makes one wonder at what point a monster is chosen/chooses to become a god?

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    1. ...will be a line the Lady of Crows says ;)

      Who is probably more on the monster side, rather than the god side of the equation ;)

      ...I think I feel a little Hitchcock coming out of this encounter

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    2. Yeah, was gonna ask if you had plans to throw in oblique references to The Birds. And to be fair to the god side of the equation, gods DO tend to provide a service of protection, real or imagined. In some ways the point of gods is to explain or stand between the world and the dark/monsters on some level.

      But god as reformed monster has less appeal to it, really :)

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    3. Yup, the Lady of Crows will probably draw a little blood ;)

      ...but Sikka & Komil will kill some of her flock, for reasons which involve a dog with the taste for god flesh, and the unfortunate side-effect of going insane.

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    4. Oooh. Now, of course, I want to know what the fortunate side-effects of going insane would be in said novel :)

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    5. well, for one, now that he like the taste of said gods, he's pretty motivated to track them down ;)

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    6. Gods: "Why DID we let the dogs domesticate the humans like this?"

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