What is it about lists? People love blog posts of lists. I am writing this at the last minute, to be honest, since I've been distracted this week by starting big revisions on Part IV and squeeing over artwork for Part I. Unlike the big revisions I did for Part III, blogging about these revisions will take some careful consideration. I'll get to them eventually.
In the meantime, three things about Disciple that are annoying me right now:
1. The Caer voice is infectious
Did build a fantasy world of many tongues, despite that I've little skill for such myself. 'Twas a question on how to display them, early on. In time, did settle on that each group of foreigners has their voice, their accent, and do use it whichever tongue 'tis they're speaking. Thus, need not do more than mention a shift in language and leave off anything my narrator can't ken.
Well enough, save the Caer voice... 'tis infections. Sticky in my mind.
'Tis especially troublesome in Part V, as I've broken from my first-person narrator and did bring in a Caer for POV. Full half the tale did go to her and 'tis well settled in my mind, now, that 'tis a proper way to speak. Needs must shake it ere it creeps into Part IV's revisions -- did fight it all last night, in writing Alice's dialogue.
Treacherous thing. Do catch myself thinking in Caer, while musing on revisions...
2. The other voice I developed keeps falling out of the story
At the other end, I needed a separate voice for my other major group of foreigners. Whereas the Caer voice came easy, the Arceal one put up a fight. I've had to go back and revise it a couple times now. Part of the problem is that it keeps dropping out of the story. I tried to introduce it in Part III, but the scene has gotten butchered down to less and less dialogue. There was going to be a fair chunk in Part IV, but now I'm going to cut most of that, too. We won't be hearing from them until well into Part VI, at this rate.
3. Keeping it close to the bone
I recently read Name of the Wind. I enjoyed it, and I was intrigued by how Rothfuss used the jumps back to the "present-day" to remind me that he's promised me an awesome story. Because I could tell pretty quickly that this book was going to only be set-up for later volumes. There wasn't going to be any significant progress toward the character's main goal.
95% of that fat book was noodling around. Fun and well written noodling.
I doubt anyone's going to accuse me of noodling around or wandering away from the main goal in Disciple. I could probably get away with some. While I was writing the first chunk of Part V, I was starting to feel just how close to the bone I was writing -- there was nothing extra in that chunk, no secondary storylines to pad it out a all. I kept thinking we could talk about Gregor's crush a bit more, but my gut kept shooting it down.
It kept saying that the whole chunk was a noodle, I shouldn't have broken away from my narrator -- but the reader needs to know what happened in this part.
Lean and mean, my stories. Perhaps skeletal, though. How much meandering do you like in a story?
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