Chapter Nine
Last night, I finished Chapter Nine. It was a Bran chapter, where my protagonist had a lot of choices to make and perhaps not all of them are right ones. It was a lot of fun to write because it had a great balance of dialogue and action. There is just a certain fun quality of writing a gun battle with magical elements thrown into the mix.
Now it is time for a break, from the writing at least. I want to continue on but there is more research to do. I will be reading four different books, some of them written 900 years ago, to gain a better understanding of that world. When I finish this book, I want it to be as authentic and yet fresh for readers that college level medieval literature teachers could use it to contrast and compare literature for that time period to this. On the other hand, I want Neil Gaiman to read this and go, "Wow, he really did his research." Tall order, I know, but that's what I am driving for.
The word count as it stands now is:
Prologue: 3173
Chapter One: 4060
Chapter Two: 3244
Chapter Three: 3660
Chapter Four: 4144
Chapter Five: 4547
Chapter Six: 2793
Chapter Seven: 3598
Chapter Eight: 4939
Chapter Nine: 4257
These chapters will be the ones that are sent to the agent who requested a look at this book. They are being edited right now and I'll be going back over them early next week to clean them up after being plagued by red marks. Should be fun going back over them all and lending a sense of continuity to them if they don't already have it.
After I finish that and my reading, I will start writing the first Interlude. It should be short, somewhere between 1500-2500 words. The book has two of them, separating the book into thirds. The first Interlude is from the point of view of Philip Plantagenet, the Dagda King, my antagonist and the whole point for the book existing. It will be one of those chapters that turns the entire book on its head, I hope, and I can't wait to write it.
Hope all of your writing and reading is going well!
Now it is time for a break, from the writing at least. I want to continue on but there is more research to do. I will be reading four different books, some of them written 900 years ago, to gain a better understanding of that world. When I finish this book, I want it to be as authentic and yet fresh for readers that college level medieval literature teachers could use it to contrast and compare literature for that time period to this. On the other hand, I want Neil Gaiman to read this and go, "Wow, he really did his research." Tall order, I know, but that's what I am driving for.
The word count as it stands now is:
Prologue: 3173
Chapter One: 4060
Chapter Two: 3244
Chapter Three: 3660
Chapter Four: 4144
Chapter Five: 4547
Chapter Six: 2793
Chapter Seven: 3598
Chapter Eight: 4939
Chapter Nine: 4257
These chapters will be the ones that are sent to the agent who requested a look at this book. They are being edited right now and I'll be going back over them early next week to clean them up after being plagued by red marks. Should be fun going back over them all and lending a sense of continuity to them if they don't already have it.
After I finish that and my reading, I will start writing the first Interlude. It should be short, somewhere between 1500-2500 words. The book has two of them, separating the book into thirds. The first Interlude is from the point of view of Philip Plantagenet, the Dagda King, my antagonist and the whole point for the book existing. It will be one of those chapters that turns the entire book on its head, I hope, and I can't wait to write it.
Hope all of your writing and reading is going well!
Labels: The Dagda King
posted by Shawn C. Speakman | 12:23 PM
10 Comments:
I'm impressed Shawn, as always. You are a true inspiration (don't roll your eyes either).
As soon as I am finished with all of my required reading and writing, I am hoping to read some of your stuff, first thing. I've been wanting to for a while, but school dictates...
BTW, thanks for the butt-chewing the other night. It was very much needed and I have found hope in more things than one that you said.
Good luck with your research! Don't strain your eyes too bad. ;)
Seri: I'm not rolling my eyes. I truly do hope to be an inspiration for people. Once I realized that Terry and these other writers I look up to are just normal people struggling with writing as would, I knew I could do it. I hope by having this website and going through the entire process it unravels a lot of the misconceptions and mysteries surrounding writing a book and the publishing industry, giving people the very real belief, "I can do this."
It's going to be a long time before I finish this. You'll be long finished with your thesis by then. Besides, I have one more edit to take the Prologue through, so it is best to wait anyway.
As for the butt-chewing, you are welcome. We all need one every once in a while... Take care!
Hey Shawn,
Hope the writing is goins swimmingly for you. or perhaps I should say the researching.
Just wanted to ask you a question, and throw up post to get some discussion going since the actions been a little slow.
I'm still furiously editing Key to Zinoa. I feel like I am taking it forward in leaps in bounds. I go through every chapter twice with inkpen in hand and then make the requisite changings on the comp. Its a little tricky at times to make sure i'm making things better and not just different, but I manage.
So here is the problem. I am reading through this and finding that my writing is simply dialogue poor. The quality of the dailogue is good enough, there are just too damn many paragraphs where i go on and on about what they talked about, instead of having them talk about it! I am making numerous edits that ease the flow and create depth in the story, but saddly, to my frustration--of course there is a blinding silver lining to this--the main edit I am seeing is my handwriting in the margin saying "dialogue it out" meaning, don't tell me they discussed this, or felt this.
Thoughts?
And also one great, underappreciated aspect of multiple edits is humor. Of course its not that difficult to add humor in on the first draft, but we all know that some of the funniest situations in life is where you and your friends are cutting up, building upon the situation in incraments. This is hard to replicate when setting down to write, but the process comes together nicely when you do multiple edits, and see where to tease and pull at an idea much like you would in real life.
Alright, Happy working
Sean
Sean,
As always, I'm not Shawn, but I thought I'd jump in anyways.
Recounting dialogue (telling us what was said) is a big no-no, in my books. It's the very essence of the rule "Show, don't tell". If a piece of dialogue is important enough to relay to the reader through the narrative, then it's important enough to work out through actual dialogue.
Dialogue is, generally, the most interesting and natural way to convey knowledge to a reader, and also makes a novel easier to read in the process.
Someone who does a terrific job using Dialogue to move along his story is Joe Abercrombie. It constantly impresses me how much of his story takes place simply through dialogue. Definitely an example to look up to.
David Anthony Durham, on the other hand, summarizes a lot of his dialogue and that brings down, in my opinion, an otherwise terrific novel.
Hope that helps,
~Aidan
Mightier than the Sword
PS. Your excerpt's on its way, I promise!
Sean: I'll try to keep this short.
When Patrick Rothfuss came over to my place last year and went over what he had read of Fell Hammer, the only thing he had to say about it was what you describe: too much expository storytelling, not enough storytelling through dialogue.
And he was right. I went back to look at it and I had huge blocks of text that could easily be broken down into dialogue that drove the story forward better for the reader and gave life to my characters.
In The Dagda King, I took Pat's advice to heart. If you look at the Prologue, there are few large paragraphs compared to Fell Hammer's Prologue and much of the story is told through the dialogue of Richard and the cait sith as opposed to me hammering the reader over the head with blocks of text.
The days of The Sword of Shannara and Eye of the World are long gone, at least for the moment. We have to adapt as writers to have a chance in this market. I highly recommend Greg Keyes' current series to read someone who does dialogue to the betterment of the story. I think he could have a bit more expository writing in there -- it's just one thing he and I disagree one as writers -- but no one does dialogue to push a story forward than him. No one.
I am curious, Shawn, as to what you are reading for your research. And how are you finding your information?
(I love that kind of stuff. Guess it is the History Major/Geek in me)
Azhev: There is a finite amount of historical account for the time period I am looking at, so it is pretty easy to find it.
When I was in college, I took several medieval literature courses. One professor, who had a PhD from Columbia, really enjoyed what he did and I went along for the ride in a few of his classes. From him, I had that ancient world opened up to me; since then, I've been on my own hunting down sources that appeal to what I am attempting to do.
I just finished Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval from Robert de Boron. He wrote in the 1180's or so, if memory serves, and he is the man responsible for giving the Grail its name and naming the Round Table.
Next up are several Arthurian Romances written by de Troyes. I've read them before but I need a re-read. de Troyes is the first man to mention a 'graal', but it is how he wrote his knights that I am most interested in.
Then I will read The Mabinogian. It is where I will draw most of my Celtic mythology from, twisting it to my own needs.
After that will be Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a seminal piece of literature and since I have the Green Knight in my story I need to revisit him.
I want to read the Vulgate Cycle, that deals a lot with Lancelot and the Grail, but it is out of print and hard to find.
I could probably re-read Mallory again, but I've read it so many times I don't think I should -- it'd be a waste of time.
So yeah, lots of reading. When I am done with The Mabinogian... that's when I'll begin writing again.
Azhev: As a side note to my previous post, I've already done most of my reading about the history of the Isles and about the Vatican.
I have to take a very brief foray away from the Celtic stuff and read about Henry II and his son Richard the Lionheart. Although both don't have anything to do with the story in a direct way, one of their ancestors, Philip Plantagenet, does. I'd like to have the most information possible to play with.
You may want to ask Aidan what he's read, as he is writing similar stuff that I am.
I just found this blog yesterday (via Pat Rothfuss' site). Thanks for all the interesting material about writing and publishing.
I can relate to Sean's problems. I only recently re-started writing and at first had a lot of trouble with dialogue. I'd end up with huge paragraphs of narrative that must be horrible to follow as a reader. Now that I've re-started (yep, that too) work on my trilogy I notice dialogue is easily flowing, dominating the story's flow. So it's mostly a matter of habit and also learning to know your characters and cultures better.
Though I couldn't imagine taking a pause (I tend to do research as I write if needed, though I have a decent grounding in medieval history and my world Kemenfae was fully formed years ago which must be an advantage) in my writing, last time I did that it took me five years to start again. So I will try to write this draft in one go.
Caranorn: Welcome to my website. Nice to see you here and I'm sure the others are too.
Dialogue is easily the hardest thing to write, which is odd when you think about it. Most of us spend our entire day speaking in some manner -- on the phone, in front of friends, at restaurants and work. It should come very natural to us. Terry Brooks is fond of saying to write the dialogue as you hear it and then go back after the book is done and removing any words that aren't necessary. Not sure if I agree with that entirely but it is certainly a way of doing it.
I am really chomping at the bit to get back to writing. In fact, I outlined two chapters last night because I needed to, despite reading most of the day and getting a lot accomplished. I am finishing up the third book of four I have to read and when that is done I will begin writing that first Interlude. Very excited about it.
Then at night, I will go to my local restaurant/bar, order a glass of wine, and begin rewriting the edits I am receiving back from my editing fiend (yes, fiend haha). I plan on having those chapters ready for the agent by the end of the week.
I did get a flattering email from a long time fan of The Signed Page. He loved the Prologue. So that pleases me and pushes me forward. That's one of the reason I believe putting one's work out there is important; it is invaluable no matter the feedback one gets.
Again, welcome to my site. Hope you stay around so we can hear your progress on your book!
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