*crawl* *crawl* *crawl*
*flop*
I made it.
If you've been wondering where I've been, I've been fighting chapter twenty-three. I think I won, but casualties were high on both sides. I must have cut out a thousand words in the last two weeks.
One thing Warlock has taught me is that writing dialog for people smarter than me is HARD! I know where I want my characters to go, but I can't just make them go there, because they aren't that dumb. I can't give them a single reason and have that be enough. No, it's more like building (and rebuilding) a rat maze. I have to make sure all the other directions they could go end up as dead-ends. And I have to make sure I covered ALL the directions.
I'm exhausted!
Well okay... I posted later than I promised. But it's a longer chapter, so you're getting that extra time returned to you in words.
This is the last plot twist, and we're coming up on the ending soon, for which I am very grateful. I intended this to be a short story with which to get my feet wet. So much for that... :\
The dialog for this chapter was also harder. I always have trouble writing dialog for smart people. In my mind, Sophia and Esterhazy should have met each other in the room, taken stock of each other without a word spoken, and then start talking concessions right away. Because if they're such great negotiators, they wouldn't even have to speak would they? Like martial arts masters, they would have evaluated their opponent's skill, formulated and discarded all plans of attack, and finally agreed upon a result without ever having to actually fight.
But that makes for a pretty boring story, so I had to think of how to write dialog so that they were saying one thing, meaning another, thinking a third, faking a fourth, etc. What a mess!
I hope to get some time (and momentum) to finish the story in the next two weeks so I can go back to REAL writing. :)
Unsurprisingly, this week has been way too busy to write, but I hope to get a new chapter up on Monday the 7th. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you guys or Warlock. :)
A little history: I've written stuff for ages, but generally I post it on my own website and let it molder. Shaddoth suggested I try posting here. So I tossed up an old story stub and promised to finish it.
It's been really funny, since he was fanatical about seeing what scores I'd got. :) Then after I'd suggested a couple times that he actually post something he'd written, he did, and you can tell how well that went! He's in 3rd place for top series as I write this.
At any rate, I've actually learned some things from helping to edit his stuff (I'm his second editor; I bitch about word usage after someone else has fixed his terrible spelling. Sorry, Shaddoth *grin*).
One: Action action action. His story clips along merrily based on the action. I knew I needed more action in my stories but Sword Saint has really brought that lesson home.
Two: Profiles and blogs are a great way to cross the uncomfortable chasm between Writar(d) and Reader. I like getting emails back, but then I realized that there was no non-formal way for me to talk to you. Oh wait, yes there is! It's right here, and that's why I'm posting this entry! Hi there!
After some discussion with others, I've changed the genre for this story from Fan Fiction to Fantasy. Since I tend to abuse the Last Exile universe for my own amusement, this is far less of a true Fan Fiction story than readers might expect, and I hope the tag change reflects that.