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Merry Christmas to all those who observe, and a Happy Solstice (a little belated) and Happy Hannukah as well although I'm quite a bit late on that! May there be good feasting and good cheer in your immediate vicinity.

For this week's Spiritwalker Monday I have posted a small holiday gift of an excerpt from Cold Steel which will be up for one week only, but I'm going to try to keep it in one place, so here right here is the link to the page if you want to go see.
kateelliott: (Default)
As I have often said, I write long in first draft. I revise a lot, and I find that I am revising more with each book in large part because I'm getting better at it. If I don't know how to fix something, I can't fix it or in some cases can't even see that it needs fixing. If I do know and can see, then I can.

With TRAITORS' GATE I found that I knew the book and plot so well that while I did write a very long first draft and then cut a huge amount (the first draft was 350,000 words and I cut 50,000 words in revisions -- which, yes, still makes the final book about 300,000 words in length), I was able to focus on what I needed as I wrote so there were no extraneous scenes or conversations. (What did I cut, you may ask? I cut one newly-introduced secondary character by folding the things she needed to do with those of another characters, by tightening up and combining conversations, and by cutting excess verbiage, as I am the empress of excess verbiage).

Sometimes, as with COLD FIRE, I have to indulge myself, by which I mean write things that I'm pretty sure I will have to cut later just because I need to write them either to tell them to myself or because I want the emotional satisfaction of having written those bits.

I'm realizing this is true with COLD STEEL as well. There are scenes and exchange I have to tell myself, even if I have to cut them later. The risk in this course of action lies in my own emotional attachment to interactions or scenes or even characters that probably could be cut but to which I have become unreasonably attached. But if I don't do it, then I can get bogged down through the process of yearning for things I'm denying myself. And while denial works just fine with a drafting process like the one I used for TRAITORS' GATE, when all the emotional points I'm going to be hitting wrap exactly around the spine of the main plot, it does not work so well with these books. Why? Because I have constrained myself by writing in first person, and so there are scenes and exchanges--not to mention points of view--which lie outside the purview of the focus necessitated by the point of view.
kateelliott: (Default)
About 70,000 words into book 3 of Spiritwalker (Cold Steel), I am coming to see two patterns in the larger architecture of the books. One is that they involve travel and movement. The other is that the first two books both involve what I call "turn overs" -- points right about in the middle of the book where a thing turns over within the plot that then propels the book through the second half.

There is also a pattern in the writing, but this is common to all my first drafts, not just these particular books.

Opening is hard. Like sludge. I hate writing openings. They make me feel incompetent. But there always comes a point as I slog forward through things I'm pretty sure have to happen that something truly and utterly unexpected happens, and then I know the book's pulse just started.

Now, that already happened with Cold Steel and I know exactly where.

But the next thing that happens after that is I hit a point where I realize I have to either massively rewrite something in the opening or that I have to move scenes around or jigger them in a big way rather than a small way. When that happens I have to stop where I am, go back, and revise from the beginning up to where I left off. This may happen more than once during the extended process I call a first draft (although by the time I finish my first draft there are portions of the book that have gone through several draftings), but it always happens at least once.

I just hit that point today. I wrote 1850 words at Starbucks and realized I had to take a scene from earlier and move it to where I was, rewriting it to fit the new parameters. Which means something has to go where it was, something that will make where it was a deeper and better and more thematically awesome interaction, with bonus set up for something that is going to happen later.

By the way, you may assume that since I have written 70,000 words I'm almost done with the first draft, but you would be, alas, wrong. My first drafts run really really long, and then I cut as part of revising.
kateelliott: (Default)
The BSC Book Tournament continues. Cold Magic is up against Daniel Fox's excellent Jade Man's Skin in Round 3. Go vote for either book -- honestly, we need to pump up these votes numbers, because Round 4 will be tough for whichever book moves on since sf writer Jeff Somers has a major campaign going if you look at the total number of votes his novel has received in the other game of our bracket.

By the way, I really will start posting again soon.

I'm still working (slowly) on the Rory short. I've begin a sort of stream of consciousness outline for Cold Steel, which will be completely useless except insofar as it allows me to consider all the consequences and ramifications of book two as I sort out how to plunge into book three.

Let me ask a question of you all:

If you had read two volumes of a trilogy written in first person, by the same character, how startling would it be for you, as a reader, to pick up book three to find the first chapter (ETA: not the entire book) written in third person from the point of view of a different character (one you already know, I hasten to add)? Would it put you off? Intrigue you? Confuse you? Excite you?

This is not a leading question. I'm curious.
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