Still so wrong.
On Monday, 6/24/2019, The Gray God reached its Narrative Complete Milestone. A more detailed version of what this means to me, see the tail end of Adapting the Screenplay. Short version: The beginning of the story connects to the end of the story. If you attach electrodes to both ends of the manuscript, current flows, but there are whiffs of acrid smoke, dangerous hotspots, and a disturbing buzz.
The 50,000 words written during NaNoWriMo 2018 have 26,000 siblings, more of which have a fighting chance of making it into the final product, as none of them are flagrant cheating.
And there was much rejoicing.
Forward Unto Draft
There’s still work to do before I’m ready to inflict the manuscript on my intrepid first readers. During NaNoWriMo, and this Spring’s Camp NaNoWriMo, I bounced up and down the storyline, adding full scenes when inspired and inserting placeholders where I knew something about what needed to happen and had no clear idea how to write it. This process didn’t result major plot holes. As far as I know. Minor inconsistencies abound.
As of this writing, I’ve identified the following issues and tasks to tackle before I can claim a first draft.
- Extend Research – Focus on mycology and hot springs of the Olympic Peninsula. Field trip!
- Consistency of Names – Various locations, roles, and concepts may need capitalization.
- Consistency of Geography – The details of the map and floorplans evolved over time. Relocating and rebalancing of the setting descriptions is required.
- Consistency of Props – Significant props need staging. Guns on mantlepieces, as it were.
- Consistency of Voice – The Gray God, like Raether’s Enzyme, is written in third person limited. In Raether, the narrator reflects the vocabulary and worldview of the scene’s POV character, heroes and villains alike. I tried this with the kids in The Gray God. It works in some cases but falls short in too many others. A general rewrite in a more articulate adult voice will make for a better story.
- Edit for Quality – Much of the text got hammered out quickly, and it shows.
- Edit for Length – When you’re NaNoWriMo-ing and you’re on a tear, you let the scene stretch out so you can claim word count. Those scenes need to be cut down to size.
- Edit for Flow and Momentum – Writing scenes out of order runs the risk that Scene 42 does not flow smoothly into Scene 43. Similarly, having been written as a discrete unit, a scene may end without enticing the reader with the all-important question: “What happens next?”
- Fix known issues – To keep my writing momentum up, I add minor problems that occur to me to a ToDo list. Before I ask anyone else to read and make notes, I owe it to them to fix all the things I know are wrong.
- Consult AI – Give my trusty algorithmic and machine learning associates a crack at spotting spelling, grammar, and higher-level writing issues. This will be sadly painful. See below.
This will keep me busy.
Scrivener Revisited
NaNoWriMo was also a test run for using Scrivener as my main writing tool. I’m still liking it. Its binder view is a serviceable outliner and great for navigating around the text. The project statistics report word counts at the chapter level, allowing you to recognize when a chapter is getting over-stuffed relative to its peers. The corkboard, index cards, and metadata features haven’t made their way into my writing process. Gathering notes, research links, scene fragments and reference images into Scrivener has proven ever-so-marginally useful compared to maintaining a companion OneNote notebook.
The big test is still to come. Readers and editors are not likely to have Scrivener. None of my friendly proofing and analyzing tools plug into Scrivener. The collaborative phases of manuscript development require exporting my Scrivener project to a Word or text file. There’s no automated way to bring the edits back into the project. It’s a one-way ticket to Editsville.
Still…
Narrative Complete is an important milestone. It feels good to have reached it. I’m one step closer to sharing a new story with you. Please stand by.