400 replies to this topic

[Arthmail]

Gabriele, on 28 January 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

Fortunately, there are no souls of dead sorcerers that inhabit the living around, or at least I hope so (*glares at the pointy eared critter that just appeared on the windowsill - you go under the bed where the other plotbunnies are*). But yes, I'm aware of the problem of reasonably believable logistics, and they're giving me a headache right now - I've to get a small army from Stirling to Dingwall (the real names of the places) as fast as possible, without giving them trucks. . But that's something I have to deal with in my Roman novel even more because there it's real history and the entire Varus battle, to name just one, hangs on figuring out marching speeds in normal terrain versus muddy, rood-covered forest pathes. Plus, even a Fantasy world needs to have some interior logic as you rightly say, and I find it more difficult to keep that stuff straight if I don't have real landmarks to go by,

Instead of dealing with real landmarks, and even a true number of days, you could talk about life on the march. Devote most of a chapter to talking about the everyday camp life, perhaps the women that follow the camp, dogs, the concerns for food supplies, the feeding of horses if there are any. Do random, one time POVs of different characters throughout the march - the cook, a smith, a common soldier. If you focus the narrative completely inward, on the marching men, then you can whitewash the actual travel and lenght of time and all of that.

So many ways to do it. I know, now i've gone back on what i said earlier, but not really. Just write the chapter now, have a rough idea of the distance and locations along the way, and then worry about tightening it up on the next draft.

[Gabriele]

I have a lot of inside the armies stuff in A Land Unconquered (the Roman novel) but I need to get a grip on the overall logistics of a three-and-a-half day defilee battle. How long was the Roman marching column, how long does it take to build a fortified marching camp (like they did  the first night), how well can the communciation between several Germanic tribes reasonalbly have been; could Arminius, Roman trained officer that he was, have set up relays?  It's that sort of fun I need to keep in mind even when I write scenes from inside the Roman army. Plus, we do have part of the battlefield by now (the famous Kalkriese site) but not the whole thing by far.

The Fantasy problem is along the same lines. The leader of the besiegers wants to starve the castle garrison into submission before a relief force from Stirling can reach him and put his troop between the hammer and the anvil. So I got a few days of siege where the lord of the castle still thinks the Nordmen will lose patience and sail or march off, then realises the buggers don't move, someone has to sneak out of the castle to reach the Royal Court, then a relief force has to be organised and set up to march. And I don't want either the Nordman leader nor the Royal Marshal look stupid (like totally miscalculating time and distance). The one thing the Nordman miscalculates is the Royal fleet which is in Edinburgh at the time and too far away. But he doesn't know the Royal Marshal can call in a favour with the Tyskan Trade League who has some war galleys as well that are statiioned in Inverness and thus much closer.

Of course I can do some handwaving, but not too much; it must at least sound reasonable. I can go to and forth between a scene inside the castle, a scene in the Nordmen camp, a scene or several at court, in the marching army .... sure that will cover a bit and I'm not going to mention exact miles and such, but the whole damn thing is still giving me a headache. Well, I'm used to those headaches by now. One shouldn't write Military Historical Fiction and Epic Fantasy With Battles if one doesn't want to deal with those headaches.

[Aximand]

Well, I started work on my short story today. It is the first non-school writing I have done in a while, and it feels good to get this project started. I was only able to get a little over 500 words on the page, which was short of my goal, but I think that will improve as I get into a rhythm. So far I have discovered that I am not as good at names as I would like, but faces/places/plots are much easier for me.

I also think I need to get better about "just getting it on the page", I tend to edit or change things as I am writing which consumes a fair amount of my time. Is anybody else like this?

Edited by Aximand, 30 January 2012 - 02:37 AM.

[Roose Bolton's Pet Leech]

Aximand, on 30 January 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

I also think I need to get better about "just getting it on the page", I tend to edit or change things as I am writing which consumes a fair amount of my time. Is anybody else like this?

Oh yes. To a painful degree. I've since fixed it by banning edits until I've finished the initial draft, but suppressing the temptation to scream "this writing's crap!" isn't easy.

[Roose Bolton's Pet Leech]

19k and four chapters into second draft.

[Eloisa]

Thanks, guys.  Feeling better about everything now, and I worked on my "stuck" chapter over the weekend, which was good.

Aximand, on 30 January 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

I also think I need to get better about "just getting it on the page", I tend to edit or change things as I am writing which consumes a fair amount of my time. Is anybody else like this?

I split editing into two rough types: line/paragraph and plot.  Structural changes could be slanted towards either, depending on the motivation (lose lots of word count versus fix a major conundrum).

Never, ever line edit while writing a first draft.  "Draft" means you're going to fix it later, by definition.  The thing that gets to me is when I realise, as I'm writing a scene, that either the plot just doesn't work or I've set it up the right events completely wrong.

If it's going in totally the wrong direction and you feel it's unsalvageable, chuck it on a didn't-work pile and start again.  Don't discard/delete it, in case you end up deciding that your original direction was better than you thought.  If you're writing the right events the wrong way - for instance if you decide towards the end of a scene that two pages ago you wrote XYZ when you should have written OPQ and that's the only problem with the chapter/section/scene - write a note in the margin if you're hand-drafting, or add a comment box if you're using a word processor, along the lines of "OPQ happened, not XYZ: change assumptions".  Then go back to the place where you wrote XYZ and add a second note there: "Change this to OPQ".  Don't write the switch there and then - the note is so you can fix it in the next draft.

For example, I'm having a similar issue in the current chapter I'm writing: not as bad.  The margin is full of notes such as " * More ominous scenery" or " * Less clarity" (of a character's thoughts: he's far too aware of the trap that is about to close around him - I know what's happening, he mustn't) as well as things like " * Rework description".  But I'm carrying on as if I've done this, e.g. making the character from now on more unaware of what's happening.

Basically - push on, but if you're going to tweak things, make lots of notes.  Notes are not banned.

Edited by Eloisa, 30 January 2012 - 07:18 AM.

[Mikael]

I just love this thread, please keep posting everybody and good luck

[Ebenstone]

Aximand, on 30 January 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

Well, I started work on my short story today. It is the first non-school writing I have done in a while, and it feels good to get this project started. I was only able to get a little over 500 words on the page, which was short of my goal, but I think that will improve as I get into a rhythm. So far I have discovered that I am not as good at names as I would like, but faces/places/plots are much easier for me.

I also think I need to get better about "just getting it on the page", I tend to edit or change things as I am writing which consumes a fair amount of my time. Is anybody else like this?

I tend to use the first draft as a "vomit draft" that I'll clean up later. That being said, ST is being "edited" on the fly. It's definitely harder to write.

[Myrddin]

Gabriele, on 29 January 2012 - 10:28 AM, said:

I have a lot of inside the armies stuff in A Land Unconquered (the Roman novel) but I need to get a grip on the overall logistics of a three-and-a-half day defilee battle. How long was the Roman marching column, how long does it take to build a fortified marching camp (like they did  the first night), how well can the communciation between several Germanic tribes reasonalbly have been; could Arminius, Roman trained officer that he was, have set up relays?  It's that sort of fun I need to keep in mind even when I write scenes from inside the Roman army. Plus, we do have part of the battlefield by now (the famous Kalkriese site) but not the whole thing by far.

I remembered this question when I glanced at my bookshelf this morning and saw The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy. I have several books on Romans and how the lived ad fought, but this one seems to answer all my military questions that come up when writing.

And the answer about how long does it take to build a marching camp? 2-3 hours. The section pointed out that this did not slow down their distance covered everyday, since it allowed for the baggage train to catch up.

Edited by Myrddin, 01 February 2012 - 06:45 AM.

[Gabriele]

Heh; I thought I had enough books about the Romans with the 65 I got (partly in German) but this one looks like a cool addition. There's a German researcher, Markus Junkelmann, who does a lot of living like a Roman legionary stuff with his students; he wrote some interesting books about the daily life of soldiers as well.

And that's the reason the assumpitions I have to make about the Varus battle because the sources are either a) incomplete, b )  very biased or c) totally confusing, and most of them  written long after the event, need to make sense. Someone's prone to have read those books. Just well I like research, and the Romans  - and Germans - are interesting subjects.

So yes, we know building a fortified camp will take 2-3 hours, but where the heck was the train in case of Varus? In the middle or at the end, take your pick. The sources have both.

Edited by Gabriele, 01 February 2012 - 12:25 PM.

[Myrddin]

Gabriele, on 01 February 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

And that's the reason the assumpitions I have to make about the Varus battle because the sources are either a) incomplete, b )  very biased or c) totally confusing, and most of them  written long after the event, need to make sense. Someone's prone to have read those books. Just well I like research, and the Romans  - and Germans - are interesting subjects.

That's the challenge when writing historical fiction. Sometimes you just have to make a call which one works best for you story. No matter what you choose, someone is going to stand up at a convention and ask you about the recommended technical settings on a polarity drive.

I'll have to check out the Junkelmann book to add to my own vast Roman collection. My wife is not thanking you...

[Gabriele]

Or even better, someone tells you you got it wrong because History Channel had it differently.

[Myrddin]

Gabriele, on 01 February 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

Or even better, someone tells you you got it wrong because History Channel had it differently.

I'd believe that statement, except there is no history on the history channel. Just shows about pawn shops....

[Gabriele]

There's still some 'history' here, most of it 'researched' by Gisela Graichen and presented by that horrible Guido Knopp who both know nothing about everything, or everything about nothing, or well, not really anything.  

Stirrups on Roman saddles was only the beginning.

[Jojen]

Arthmail, on 28 January 2012 - 05:19 PM, said:

Instead of dealing with real landmarks, and even a true number of days, you could talk about life on the march. Devote most of a chapter to talking about the everyday camp life, perhaps the women that follow the camp, dogs, the concerns for food supplies, the feeding of horses if there are any. Do random, one time POVs of different characters throughout the march - the cook, a smith, a common soldier. If you focus the narrative completely inward, on the marching men, then you can whitewash the actual travel and lenght of time and all of that.

So many ways to do it. I know, now i've gone back on what i said earlier, but not really. Just write the chapter now, have a rough idea of the distance and locations along the way, and then worry about tightening it up on the next draft.

Good advice. I had a similar problem years ago with a story about a soldier in Virginia during the Civil War. I got way too wrapped up in the historical details and with trying to make it as accurate and logistically correct as possible, that I totally let the facts get in the way of the story. Eventually I just gave up in frustration. I've learned a bit since then, but I haven't returned to that particular story. Maybe one day I will, but right now I'm not as interested in telling it as I once was.

[Jojen]

Myrddin, on 01 February 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

I'd believe that statement, except there is no history on the history channel. Just shows about pawn shops....

There used to be a show about ancient battles that was hosted by a father and son from the UK that I thought was pretty good. I forget what channel it was on. Might have been pre-Pawn History Channel. I don't think it was the Military Channel.

[alguien]

God its been awhile since I checked in here.  Hope everyone's projects are going well!

I'm still in the midst of my first read-through of my first draft.  Its... frustrating.

There's a lot of good parts.  Lots.  But.

There is also a ton of crap.  Crap that I'm cutting.  Crap that I'm pissed that I ever even wrote.

Stuff that... well, if I'm being honest, stuff I forced myself to churn out during NaNoWriMo.   And that's one of the problems I'm starting to have with that particular concept.  I'm starting to wonder whether blindly running toward a word count is a good thing, if there does need to be a concern for quality as you're composing.

The parts where I took my time, planned out, or re-wrote and read as I went... a lot of those sections really work.   But the blind-word-churning produced some real turds.

URRGGGH.

Edited by alguien, 02 February 2012 - 02:39 PM.

[Eloisa]

There's a balance to be found.  If, like the situation Ebenstone now finds himself in, you are fortunate enough to sell or get representation for a first book, you need to get out a draft of your second book damned quickly and it has to be good.  Learning to write well at speed is a godsend for a career writer in most genres.  (High literary fiction may allow you to bring out a book every ten years without annoying the publisher or the readers, but this is an exception.)

If you can't write well at speed, that's fine.  You're on first draft, and you're getting the hang of things.  Take your time, make it work, and in the medium to long term you'll probably see yourself speeding up.

Edited by Eloisa, 02 February 2012 - 03:26 PM.

[Ebenstone]

Alguien, Elosia...getting the words out hasn't been as hard as I thought. I finished January as my third best writing month ever. I clocked in 40,000 words. That's a pretty insane number when you consider all that I have going on. It puts me at about 50k for the book. I'm constantly tweaking the outline, so I don't know what the final word count will be.

The harder part is the editing on the fly. I usually write the whole book, make a pass then beta it then rewrite, but that model has changed for book 2. I said I'd have the book done by April, and the clock is ticking. The hardest part, for real, is putting pressure on my betas. They are great and I don't want to burden them with the same constraints that I have.

But without them, the book will just not be as good.

[Datepalm]

Started a short story incorporating stuff from the 1453 siege of Constantinople. Must...not...research more...I'm all enthused about it because I know almost exactly what the whole plot is!