Oh my god! I got a cover!

Iiiinteresting. I just found out that for grammatical reasons, Tosacy has different words for rain that is falling right now, and for rain that has fallen.

Today, I wrote down all the Kivailo letters I could think of (I'm not sure I had a real list yet - definitely not a current one!) - there are 33 letters, plus a sign I "transscribe" as an apostrophe (really it means there's a glottal stop), a sign for "end of word" and one for "end of sentence". 33 letters - and many of them mean very similar sounds that even I have a hard time pronouncing right. AND while writing down the letters I realized there should be another sound I haven't used yet. It's getting really difficult to come up with ways to transscribe those sounds into our alphabet.
Talking about which, today I was writing in my notebook, and starting a word with a "w" - and the first letter that popped into my mind was the Kivailo letter! So the writing practise is helping... or not, depending on how you look at it! Language chaos, letter chaos... I've got a very chaotic brain!
Another realisation this week - I've always thought of Tosacy (and newer Kivailo dialects) as a slow language, with many pauses...  Now, while writing in Kivailo letters, I discovered how to work around the lack of punctuation (like I said, only "end of word" and "end of sentence"). Instead of commas and such, I just leave a longer space between words - just where there would be a pause in a spoken Tosacy sentence! So it all fits together again. I love things like that!

I just got the reason to start editing one of my stories in the mail. I won a voucher to print a book at the American Book Center. And editing the 'Rik en Rak' children's story before November would mean I could write the sequal come Nanowrimo... Even if I can't finish editing before November, as long as I can finish it before March, I could give the book to my Nephew for his birthday.

Getting distracted by yet more secondary characters' backstories. "Tell Me, Sister" started as one such story, Jolymella from "Masks" suddenly declaring she needed to tell me her story, and it would just take a few days (well, maybe that would be true if I could just find the time to write).

And now Fox and Raven. Yay! I loved those two girls from the moment they appeared in "Masks", quite unplanned. They're friendly without asking questions, which was just what my main character needed, they're funny, a little cheeky, cheerfully unconcerned about the fact that they were at an illegal demonstration and were going to get arrested... and stubbornly refusing to tell me their real names.
For years, I thought they were just good friends.Then, while I was working on the second draft of "Masks" (not that the first one ever got finished), they suddenly said, "oh, and by the way, we're actually a couple." Fun - in the made-up country "Masks" (as well as "Tell Me, Sister" (of course) and "Goblins") is set in, homosexuality is still pretty much taboo.

Well, and yesterday while at work, the two suddenly popped up again and announced they were ready to tell me a little more about themselves. I pretty much know what they look like now (before, I only knew their hair colours/styles), and learning more about their personalities, families, jobs/studies... it was funny to discover what they are scared of - Raven doesn't give a damn about anyone finding out she's gay, while Fox is terrified of it. On the other hand, Fox has no problem at all with going to illegal demonstrations, while Raven worries it'll ruin her job chances... Now if only they would tell me their real names - after all, they weren't calling themselves Fox and Raven yet when they met (OK, Fox was calling herself Fox sometimes).

And they insist they want to be part of "Goblins" as well. Which... well, "Goblins" is already the story of two very different people, who only meet once, briefly. So if I could find a way to let either of them have a brief but meaningful meeting with either Julius or Annabell (who finally has a name, yay! No more referring to her as "the granddaughter")...

I'd like to have them in "Goblins" - they're more fun/easier to write than Annabell's or (especially) Julius's story (Julius is such a jerk), and I'll need something fun to write for NaNo - I found out today that unlike the last two years (three years, really, because three years ago I was at school), I'll be working through November - which is a good thing, but leaves less time/energy to write.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

I have got an issue with a story I am working on.

A group of outlaws drawn into a general muster under a flag of truce are looking for a way to dissolve their brigandness by the end of the war.

They co-opt my main character, who is a hero of the camp by having one of their members challenge him to an archery contest.

They know he is on the outs with his own village, and they know he will be given land and rights in their culture after the war because of his heroics.

They invite him to a feast and somehow put the squeeze on him in the middle of it and ask him directly if they could work together and both come out of the war absolved of their past misdeeds.

I have the hero sitting around a fire with them feasting, and somehow I need to get him into a tent where he confronts both factions within the band of outlaws. Any ideas on this? Thoughts point to a bottle of brandy or something similar.

I like it.  Sharing booze has that nice aura of danger about it, yet has the intimate closeness of brotherly camaraderie.  I really can't think of any better way, unless there is a macho tournament being conducted in the tent (i.e. gambling and/or arm wrestling).

Doing a battle scene now. Got a lot of battles going on, think across 3 different stories.
Battle in a steppe hall, battle in a subterranian swamp, battle for an anchient hill fort.
I'm feeling the need to do some hard plot writing soon.

I feel like all the color drained out of the part I am writing right now. There's just gray mud everywhere. It will get better I think, I will have to work it up and make it more interesting.

I didn't do a Halloween story this year, which is something I have been doing for the last 3 years. I'm going to definitely do 2 to 3 hard Lovecraft-type stories next year. These make me feel like I achieved something.

There's a real good ring to this current story though, all the canvas and stage props seem in place. It's different, more barbaric and real seeming than a lot of the stuff I have read before. Don't know if its right but it kind of feels right, like the gritty edges of Tanith Lee's earlier stuff, but without the extremes in behavior that are almost theatrical, like what Martin writes a lot. No duels over sausages, wolves biting off fingers, or witty dwarfs. It has kind of an Ivanhoe ring to it, without all the unnecessary stuff Disney stuck in King Arthur and The Black Cauldron. How the first 50 pages of Feist's first book felt before Thomas found his armor and Pug fell off the world into Kellerwan.

I'm going to have magic in the battle. It will be the first real taste of it in the first 50 pages of the story. I will have to check out how this feels, see if I waited too long to insert these types of elements. I have certain formations, usually spear hedges fight with a magician in the middle. The story goes pretty far into fantasy next so I guess there's no helping it. In no time the hero will be climbing a magic tower and retrieving a magic sword- pretty average fantasy stuff.

I guess it's about to get real stabbity-stabbity for awhile. Probably by Christmas I will be jonesing for simple horror and suspense.

Last edited by SecretSquirrel (2011-11-04 01:08:36)

Magpie wrote:

*dusts off thread*


2. I want to write in as many different places as possible. So today I biked over to the castle in Linz and spent some time writing on top of the wall there - I discovered a really nice spot there when Libra was in Linz last summer, and it's taken me until now to actually go there to write.

Ohhhh... that is a LOVELY place to write!!! I'm sooo jealous!!

I was thinking of changing one of the weapons a secondary character has for another. He is an old style "Lan" type character who is associated with big armor and a weapon. I did have him armed with something like an oversized bec de cobrin war pick before. I called it a "snake axe" I think.

But I realized that since he is mainly fighting on foot in between pikemen while in heavy armor, he should have something that sheers through enemy pikes and shields. Initially I was thinking a big axe- a classic character type weapon I think going back to Shanara and Lord of the Rings. I however then became aware of the Dacian falx, and I am thinking of arming him with one of these and a pair of short swords, and a bow on his horse.

I'm pretty sure I completed at least two of the battles I had planned. One I am a couple chapters past, getting to the part in Evot's story where they try to chase down the bandit traitors and have a mounted bow duel in a grassy area. I had a really strong character that came out and did a lot more than I thought she would- Gunde's daughter. She went straight Galadriel for a few lines, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see a character jump out and do its own thing, something G R R M has talked about but I had not recalled experiencing before.

I was working on the second battle in a steppe hall and got through it to where they are back on a war barge and Palen is talking to her father about what is going on. I may have to twist it a little here, make her see beyond her current curse at what they are trying to accomplish. It goes a lot to showing that her magic is kind of a key that can break through a lot of things, and this becomes a huge epic problem later on in the story as has been hinted at.   

The third battle takes place in an underground swamp, and is another Evot story set about six years in the future. I have talked with a couple people well read in fantasy literature about this and they have not given me a lot of ideas to go on. It is a pretty unusual and novel idea, so they may be blanked. There is a caravan travelling on a curvy road that is narrow. As they travel, they are attacked by 'natives' who have installed wooden mat rafts under the swamp water that rise to the surface when ropes are pulled so they can run out from small islands and attack across them.

One feature of the battle has that they have drugged or got a group of animals like big reptiles or hippos to go to sleep near the road and they trigger something to awaken them on cue so they rise out and rampage and cause chaos on the road. What should this animal look like? I have already featured a snake-skinned lion-like creature with an acoustic dome on its forehead for hunting in caves.

Last edited by SecretSquirrel (2012-08-15 17:55:10)