Right now, it feels like it needs another five-six months, trying to allow realistically for distractions and time away, even if I really hammer hard to get it done--more like those earlier weeks were, instead of last week!
After I'd put together some new work, I found I could structure the thing a little better, shorten some of the tactical maneuvering, and hopefully add more interest to stretches that felt like a long, painful, muddy slog. (Well, it would be a long muddy slog, but there's other things happening too.) I'm beginning to find that some of the earlier work acts like an outline, just working out what's going to happen. Sometimes that can be axed as "material already covered". But you have to keep your continuity straight, and also make sure you still cover all that ground gracefully in the new stuff. As readers here on the forum already know, I have enough continuity errors already without adding more problems!
In more detail:
I've done quite a bit of work on three scenes. One of these scenes came from the ideas I worked out as I was posting here! This is the scene where Girdeth and her friends are having a "hot weather, white-shirt" day. I also had some serious material hanging fire, waiting to go somewhere, that I wanted to use. So I found I could combine that with the much lighter, fun stuff in a way that I think will be more effective than either one by itself--contrast, you know. (Well, hopefully.) Haven't placed it quite yet, as the hot weather itself is a bit of conflict, but other parts would work really well. Hot weather=more snowmelt from the mountains, and flooding, right??
Then I also had a chapter pop up where there's a wall cave-in, and I want to do some more reinforcement on picking up one of the little orphan boy characters, as a sort of echo of Naga's personal history.
I'd been thinking about several issues regarding the Osa, and how Naga treats *his* prisoners. I put together a scene that worked itself into two chapters where it seems the Osa are not nearly as monolithic as their priests and army in Tan have been trying to look. Whether an Osa opposition party, somewhere back there in the Empire, can do Tan any good at all, and whether the guys will believe it enough to give them a chance, is another whole question.
I also had another chapter with one of Naga's odder fits, where I thought it needed some grounding. I also had some bits with Girdeth's involvement which I'd saved, and I figured out how to combine the two so as both to ground it in the "real" world right then, and also point onward to other stange things they maylearn more about later..
As far as work yet to be done, I've got to simplify and shorten while ironing out continuity issues as I'm doing those chapter rearrangements, as well as pushing in the new stuff.
Also, there's another new bit that I still want/need to do. I mentioned here on the forum an idea about Naga talking to the senior old Sek-blood women in dark clothes. I've got an eye out on a couple of places where I could put it. It could be fairly serious, dark stuff, how the senior Sek-blood ladies aren't real enamored of getting their grandsons enlisted by the Tannese, but they'll let Naga talk them into it, eventually. Or it could be a lot lighter, almost wistful, and I'm not entirely sure of the appropriate tone. Done right, this could be dramatic and convey a lot of information (even possibly shorten what else needs to be said elsewhere!)
It never hurts!clong wrote: Would it help if we constantly harrassed you and reminded you that you need to be making progress (Kvetch is good at that, and so nice about it, too!).
)
