On writing and editing

And now 35K into story. The actual plot proper is heating up, secrets are being revealed and soon the antagonist will reveal himself and his plans. Hopefully. I'm hoping to get a good chunk of it done this weekend as the Ghoulish story is nudging me to yell: 'okay, you've fixed plot issue. EDIT ME NOW!' though I'm starting to think the edit might be 'write draft 2 without looking at draft one', ideally. And I'm debating removing my favourite characters from Ghoulish Happenings in one way or another. I do need to fix stuff and get a far, far better handle on how magic works in said series.

To be fair, the MC of it is being lied to about magic for most of the story, but I also need to work that out as well. I think I need to scrap some of the basic ideas behind magic for it, but I'm not quite sure what will come of it at all yet. Shall finish this draft of Kiln and then dive back into that and see where it takes me. I at least have a far, far better handle on the MCs in Ghoulish now.

Small scene

 Mrs. Thompson began her lecture on world war two by explaining to showing the class baby pictures of Hitler, and photos and video of him smiling and flirting with people. “That is what makes people monsters, that none of them are wholly monstrous,” she explained after she shut the projector off. “We are, none of us, as evil we we think or as good as we pretend to be. Not even the superintendent of the school board.”

That didn’t even win weak laughs, but I’m not sure she noticed.

“Everyone who hates people who do monstrous things act as if they grew up in a vacuum. And sometimes people do, but a vacuum can suck as well as blow. It can pull ideas into it, and funnel out apathy – which is far more dangerous than evil, and more insidious beside. Who here watches those X-Factor and Talent shows? Enough of you,” she said, barely looking at raised hands. “In the last United Kingdon general election, more people voted for the winner of X Factor than voted in said election. We tell people that personal responsibility is a holy grail, that we alone are responsible for our actions, regardless of who put us in them or the actions of others!

“We say that no man – or woman – is an island, and yet we say that we have to take personal responsibility for our failings as if we were islands. We pretend that free will does not exist an an aggregate in order to punish criminals, in order to satisfy some primitive notions of justice. What do we reinforce by that? We punish people for not exercising their free will to avoid events, as if freedom and will were simple. As if we had a sound understanding of our own motivations of why we do the things we do. If we didn’t lack that, there would be no psychiatry.”

Emma raised her hand and coughed, loudly. “Mrs. Thompson? Is this about the DUI that Jane told me you got on the weekend?”

“It is not about that alleged incident at all,” Mrs. Thompson snapped.

A few people snickered, at which point she declared an impromptu quiz on the second world war and its impact on the cold war despite the fact that she hadn’t actually got around to teaching it yet.

Story fun....

It is fun when a story shifts and mutates into a stable form. (You can tell I just finished rewriting a poem, can't you?)

The story has passed the 30K mark by a bit and is chugging along nicely, the relationship between Jonas and Qirjin becoming even more uncertain now that they aren't merely friends and the latter has dropped the bomb that his family are not normal people at all. And Jonas is the one left trying to understand this. If a family has kept itself secret for centuries, how have they done it? Surely not by letting every teenaged kid tell friends about himself. How did they stop people like Jonas from telling the world, assuming things went badly with Qirjin? He doesn't know. As far as he can tell, it's never even occurred to Qirjin to wonder about that.

And Qirjin is more than just a djinn. The other boy has a talent for doors. The earth 'knows his name' and in dreams Death won't claim him. In other words, what do you do if you end up being friends -- or even more than friends -- with a Chosen One whose family has gone to great lengths to make sure they don't know of their status? A lot of Chosen One stories exist: this one gets to explore what it is like to be the other person in the relationship, the one who is without power and gets to watch from the sidelines. It should prove to be a fun dynamic for the story to explore, though much of that will be left unresolved by the end I think. (Whatever Qirjin is for is definitely about something in the future, after all.) It also means there will be more dream-world sequences than planned, since Qirjin's family use the dream worlds for many things, some of which are control. And some parts of those worlds are beyond even their power ....

Almost 26K into draft two....

I am at page 34, and just finished the scene that was on page 38 in the first draft, which is the turning point in the first third of the tale. I still need a lot more B-plots but plan to weave those in once Qirjin does his reveal of not being all that normal soon, which will be a nice juxtaposition with the weird stuff seeping into the story. So far Jonas has bit his tongue at the odd things Qirjin has gone or refuses to talk about but that point is about to end and the story shift gears. The fun part about the relationship building between both boys is that they are both aware of how unlikely it is on the surface -- become friends quickly, and within two weeks become more than that -- and both are leery of that. Jonas is convinced he'd abused Qirjin's friendship/trust of him, while Qirjin is terrified that he somehow used his gift of wishing to make Jonas fall in love with him. That both explanations are partially right will only add to the fun as the story goes on.

As a narrative level,the story is becoming about the gifted, how they're hidden and just how much Qirjin simply doesn't know or never actually thought about. What seems to be common sense to someone on the outside (i.e. how DO the gifted really hide themselves?) is something he's never thought of since to him that's just how the gifted live and the way the world is. The worldview of all the characters will be nicely shaken up and how they deal with it, and an antagonist who has actually not shown up yet at all, should prove interesting. Even if I am probably breaking rules in that the antagonist has yet to be mentioned by name -- his younger sibling has shown up briefly, but Qirjin hasn't been able to explain what she is to anyone else, or even knows what is going on himself.

Now, however: work!

Start of one scene....

I woke up in a dream to find myself crouched down, as if from a blow. I was wearing the same white clothing I’d worn in the forest and on the mountain, only as I stood I realized I had boots on as well this time; the clothing wouldn’t come off when I tugged at it but I didn’t try too hard. I don’t have dreams where I’m naked. I was standing on black asphalt in a narrow alleyway, the walls around me brownstone brick, like in movies, with old fire escapes and piping running down them and windows that were all narrow and shuttered. I was in the movie version of New York, or maybe Boston, and could see the tops of the buildings. Five or six stories above me, so nothing like the impossible forest.

The sky was a deep purple, like a kind of bruised twilight through which stars flickered weakly. The moon was large, at least twice as big as normal, and shone down on empty dumpsters, me, and distant sounds of vehicles. Not a single emergency siren. I took a deep breath and walked ahead of me. There were bits of newspaper on the ground, wrappers from McMeals and Starbucks coffee cups but no other fast food outlets. The newspaper bits were all written in what looked like Russian, or maybe Greek, walls of text and no pictures at all.

The alleyway opened up to a gleaming-new road with fresh white paint, while the sidewalks were filled with cracks from which greenery sprouted up like fungus between the toes. The building across the road was also a movie-style apartment, though done up in white brick. Further down the street it fell apart entirely as I stared up at one glass and steel building that rose at least twenty stories above me and ended in what looked like the scrapers used on car windows in the winter in place of a roof.

“A sky scraper.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. If someone ever made lucid dreaming an Olympic sport I figured I’d place somewhere near bottom. I could hear cars but still didn’t see anyone else. Some lights were on in buildings, mostly pale electric lights or what looked to the candles in the skyscraper. Further down the road were other apartment buildings, varying in size and style – sometimes within the same building, as though someone had cut apartments in half and simply welded them together. Most were vertical welds, though one looked like a broken jigsaw puzzle of brick, siding and stone. Weirdly, each building rarely had uneven windows as if my dream had some architect laying down certain rules while ignoring everything else. I spotted one distant building that looked to be made of honeycomb and tried not to think about what a dream interpreter would have made of any of this.

The street connected to another, and then another, and the apartment buildings gave way to empty strip malls, the parking lots littered with shopping carts and rusted out vintage cars. The street lights were lit by some kind of Victorian steampunk affairs that let off train-like whistles as they flickered to life each time I got close to them. Because motion-sensitive steam-powered streetlights made no less sense than the rest of the dream. 

On Second Drafts

I'm at the 12.5K mark of the second draft of Kiln and Kin. In about a thousand words I'll hit one pivotal scene I'd hit at before the 9K mark in the previous draft, which isn't bad at all.  That I'll be able to fit most of the scene in verbatim is also handy -- I'll likely read ahead in the first draft and see what else I can yank out soon, including a few decent bits of dialogue that will hold up just fine in this version.

The second draft does come slower, but I also know the characters better. I'm still feeling out where the plot is going but by this weekend I should have the end-game in mind and go toward that. Doing the second draft of this story is actually helping a lot with the second draft to Ghoulish Happenings, mostly in terms of figuring out how to decide what to keep and how best to keep it. I think I'll just go through the first draft of that again with a lighter and mark the passages that should survive in some form to the second draft, sketch out the plot a bit better and then discard everything else.

GH is going to need a few subplots added, since the one major one is being excised entirely. Since it was full of problematic issues and constant struggles to get it to make sense in the narrative, this is for the best. It also means the relationship between Bryce and Wray can be explored in different angles in that story and probably end up being a lot creepier. I hope.

As for this story: I'll probably be at the 15K mark before the actual antagonist shows up (by proxy, but even so), which does fit the story. Jonas isn't aware of what Qirjin is, or that the gifted exist at all among the masses of humanity. It also means that the characters have almost a week in novel-time just to become friends, get to know each other and have things be mostly normal before that all starts falling apart. Normal is good. It gives the characters some goal to strive toward, after all.

Now back to writing.....

Ah, world building....

I has notes. Specifically, over 1000 words on what the hell is up with the Kiln and Kin setting, what exists in the world, why it does and that it is no longer set in this world but one slightly off to the side -- specifically, that certain psychic abilities, known as talents, are known to the population at large but their provenance is variable and there are always con men willing to fake having them, some quite successfully.

Other stuff exists, but in general people with said gifts (like Qirjin's family) have learned through bitter experience to hide themselves from the world at large. There are also some stuff that simply isn't real, such as ghosts and chatting with the dead, no matter what some people claim or think. There is a kind of magic in the world, but it is hard to use and not remotely replicable most of the time so people pretty much don't bother with it, and there are odd people with elemental affinities having a private war in a dream-world. No one, not even them, knows how this started or what the point of it is.


In essence, I hit the 30K mark of the story, sat back and went: I need to figure out this setting, since what was meant to be the main plot has fallen away in favour of Other Stuff that, while decent, is a bit too knock-on-head for what I wanted from the story. I also need to redo the first couple of paragraphs entirely since they have a more 'this story is being told from the future' vibe that the story loses further in, and it's not a good future-vibe anyway. I need to develop secondary characters a lot more and put more into the story without it being 'oh, look, a Bully!' and the like as characters because that's pretty dull. There are some scenes from the first draft I am keeping close-to verbatim, others I won't.

I could finish the draft of the story as it stands now, in 30-40K, but there would be too little to salvage for a second draft, so I figure it's better to make draft 2 over the next couple of weeks. Also, I realized sometime over the weekend that the story Kiln and Kin is telling is in some ways a reversal of Ghoulish Happenings, with the POV shifted to Bryce instead of Wray, if Bryce had no kind of magic and Wray was human rather than a ghoul, of course. It's not really that at all but some parallels are there if I go hunting for them. I figure it means I can write this and get certain plot-ideas out of my head and entirely away from the Ghoulish story.


What I want the story to accomplish is that it is about a kid on the cusp of high school who learns the world is weirder and stranger than most people ever known. It's about magic, and secrets that are blessings and burdens, sexuality, friendship and growing up. It's about who we trust and why, and the ways in which people can always surprise you by stepping out of the boxes we shove them into. I shall see how it goes.... tonight shall be character building, and tomorrow I will likely begin the second draft. As a saner pace than I did this one.

Small break, as I figure out the next scene :)

It's always interesting to read comments and go "well, yeah...." Ended up browsing a tor article and came across a comment by Jo Walton:

It's much harder to write fantasy that avoids saving the world than it ought to be, and I think that's really worthy of consideration.

To some extent, this exists in many novels in a not-explicit form (the 'world' the character saves doesn't have to be literal, after all, and can be as small as friends/family/relationships). The magician series of stories is a direct 'nope' to this. There have been towns saved, and creates from Outside the universe dealt with but I began it meaning it to be small, that the magician is, in effect, a kind of janitor who cleans up small problems. And that's it. There are magicians who protect whole cities, being tied to the place in exchange for power, and they tend to have limited impact on the city proper, mostly making sure things remain the same in the world.

I like reading 'save the world' series. I have no desire to write one, and that does seem to be where most series end up* if they run long enough. Stakes get raised, the existence of magic changes a world, and so on. Most novels I write that don't directly deal with that issue avoid it. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. The magician series is going to get more explicit about that as it goes on, not that it's above the magician's pay grade but also above his power and what magic can do. The world outside the door in it is normal in the series. Most people have entirely normal lives. If magic could change the world, it would. It hasn't, but being a magician is still an important thing, perhaps because it helps stop the world from becoming the kind where magic has to save it or change it. The second novel in the series that is very, very embryonic in my head is going to be about this, at least a little.


Oddly, this isn't even a concern in the current YA novel I'm poking through (Kiln and Kith) nor has it been in any YA story I've done. (The eventual 'dogs of war' trilogy will, however, be about saving the world, among other things.) Some of that is because I refuse to make parents useless in the stories. If the world was at stake, they'd be saving it. Or at least instrumental in how the characters do it. I should probably get back to writing but it is always neat to see a giant trope and realize how often you've refused to use it, often without even knowing it.


* The first novel in the Ghoulish Series does claim one town can be used to destroy the world, but this is actually a giant red herring. Unfortunately, the person who made it didn't tell the people on his own side that, so they keep trying to get ahold of the power they think is hidden in the town, rather than another family just wasting power and resources to protect nothing. This will probably be more explicit in the second draft but was intended as a fun inversion.

I have, technically, been writing

Working out plot stuff for Ghoulish Happenings in my head  for draft two, and trying to think if I need to make some major changes to the structure or not. I'm leaning toward yes, figuring out the ramifications of that and building it in as subplot in my head.

As a break from that, I started a new story today. Mostly because I don't want to just write the magician series stories; I need a bit of a breather from that world. So I started with a boy named Jonas, and what happens to him and his dad when a boy named Qirjin moves in down the hall with his mother. It's going to be a kind-of fairy tale about lives falling apart and coming together and how monsters are always monsters. I think.

I wrote three paragraphs for it, and realized that the last two of those actually were for a story I haven't added words to in over a year. I threw them into that file, tried to shove my brain back into gear for New. Wrote a few hundred more words. Watched the first three episodes of Gilligan's Island as research. (Really.) Read up on said show, lost myself in a small maze of internets. Surfaced. Added more words.

Surfaced to find I've written, rewritten and (semi)polished 1100 words over 9 hours. On the flip side, I have backstories of three of the four major characters in my he2ad, stuff on their personalities and how some may be broken and remade over the course of the story. I have no real plot yet. I don't even know how long this is going to be. It is also not in first person present tense. Which is a nice break from that as well, I think


How it starts....

I can’t forget the first time we met. No. Let’s start with a secret: I still try to forget him. Even after everything, maybe because of nothing. I don’t know. I used to know things, before I met him, his family, and everything that came from that. I don’t anymore. The world used to be solid and it isn’t anymore. I’m writing this down because I can’t trust myself anymore. There’s this joke, right: “Aren’t you ever ashamed at being such a jerk?” And then it goes: “Why should I be? I put a lot of work into being me.” All that work fell apart when we I met him.