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The dreaded chapter 3 re-write

Right now, I’m staring down the barrel of a chapter 3 re-write. The second half of the chapter is generally pretty good, just needs polishing and copy editing. The first half, however, has major plausibility issues. Well, not major, but they’re annoying enough that they won’t work. It’s not so bad it can’t be fixed, and once I do it’s going to be a whole lot better. I just haven’t got the foggiest idea on how to go about dealing with it. Part of the issue is that the circumstances of the scene have been in place for such a long time, I’m having a hard time visualizing a different, better situation.

The more I think about it, the stupider it seems that I can’t just tweak it. As much as I want to rubber-duck* this, and have a solution, I’m still struggling to come up with one. Perhaps the solution is to try a few different things and see where they eventually lead me. I mean, I’m really only talking about twenty-five hundred words. So, with that in mind, I’m going to start by changing the situation to be impossibly difficult for the protagonist (and writer), then revise until it works. With any luck, I will have fixed the problem.

* For an explanation of rubber-ducking see my about page

 

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Fantasy book research #1

I have notes everywhere. Some are on note cards, some scribbled in completely unreadable handwriting in one of a dozen or so spiral notebooks, plus two three-ringed binders. Not to mention the fancy journal, drawing pad, and odd bits of sticky notes and what not scattered about. Of course, I also have piles of digital notes which are about as organized. Today, I decided to flip through some of my digital notes and came across this little gem:

A trade-ship (Here based upon the east India men) averages 4-5 knots in favorable wind, providing 120 miles/day. (http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/asiaShips.html) OR formula of hull speed = 1.34 * SQRT(waterline length)(http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/12911/middle-age-transportation-by-river-questions) Rowing is likely to make no more than 3-4 mph. Barges of goods are pulled along the shoreline by use of oxen, and transport of persons or important goods will be done by ‘narrow boats’ which are rowed by 10-20 oarsmen, depending upon the size of the boat.

There was a lot of other stuff along with it, but this little excerpt points out something that is a rather large part of my writing process. Research. Now, I don’t even bother trying to research to the point where I might speak intelligently on the topic, though in most hobbies that’s where I go. However, I do try to get to the point where I can develop details that are, if nothing else, consistent with reality, or at very least can nose past a BS test. Sometimes I totally miss the mark, but I do try.

I think one of the most difficult thing about researching for a book is that when you’re looking into a topic, most of the stuff you might find on the internet is specific to ‘not-pretend’ applications, meaning that you get a lot of ‘it depends’ sorts of answers, which are less than helpful. Sometimes, I really just want information that would give me the bounds on reality. So, in the example above, which took a bit of searching, I could reasonably claim a 300 mile trip might take between 2.5 and 5 days. Now I have something that at least scrapes the realm of plausibility.

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Problems with my main character

As I work through the first few chapters of my current story yet again, one of the main issues I’m trying to address is a weak protagonist. For the last re-write of these chapters I intentionally focused on him having a lack of confidence. I thought this would be a good way to show the character grow as he regained that trait and took charge of his particular situation. Turns out this wasn’t a good idea. The entire story was written so that a protagonist without confidence simply isn’t believable. Damn. Now what?

Another aspect of this character is that he has been born with a special gift of magic. It’s a gift he doesn’t trust, and if anyone knew of it, he’d be ostracized. Not only that, it’s a gift he’d never been taught to fully exploit. There are some other twists to it, but this is the gist. By the end of the story, he will have learned the trick of commanding the better part of his real power, and use it to win the day. At first glance, it’s a pretty subtle bit of character development, but when I look back at what he goes through, it’s not really subtle. In fact, it’s the key change he undergoes through the story. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense that I should focus on his magic as the dynamic element, especially since most of the story revolves around his learning of magic. The next step is to go through each chapter and re-write to make him confident, perhaps to a fault, and instead focus on magic as the key aspect of character development. With luck, this change will make the story more interesting, believable and engaging. If not, well, I’ll just revise again.