Thesis Diary #16
Update 16: 21-27 Sept. 2020
This week was a little lazier than I intended… very sad that I would allow myself to let not1 but 3 different writing sessions go by… sigh. In my defense I needed to get some painting work done, and I’m a FULL week behind on that.
All grousing about skipping out on writing sessions put aside, I still made goal.
Word Count
This was week 6 until my week 16 deadline. We hit some awesome numbers, despite the fact that I only wrote on two days this week.
I knocked out 6680 words this week! 4020 of them were done on Thursday alone. I woke up and sat down and despite having three other jobs to do (clean the basement, write a three page background for a character, and do discussion posts in my class)… I started and completed the entirety of chapter 23.
The second milestone was the book broke 100,000 thousand words on Monday before I even got to my 4K day.
Current stats on the book sit at 23 chapters, 104,220 words.
Chapter 22
Was the finish up of the Rune chapter. This is the turning point for the character where he puts his needs to the backburner to take care of one of his people instead. We end with the marines leaving Bartertown to head toward the oasis that is ruled by imperial criminals.
Chapter 23
We return to Nemo. Nemo has the smallest number of chapters in the novel, as he’s the storyline that travels between all of the other story lines. At this point he was with Keegan and Slater, being forced to fight a war for the mantis.
A mystery character who made a cameo chapters earlier reappears and gives Nemo advice on how to make his escape from the mantis. But things go… wrong. Though the stranger insists that everything is actually going right, and that this moment HAS to happen.
I’m not trying to be deliberately obtuse; I just don’t want to spoil things too much. IN this case I will open the hood and give you a small behind the scenes.
Behind the scenes:
During both my undergrad and early master’s classes I had to do different assignments crafting my outline. (I normally outline in pen and ink and in notebooks and drawings, but I had to make a word file outline). During the course of writing these outlines I came up with tons of interesting ideas, and explored different outcomes.
I knew that Nemo would try to open a planar gate inside of an area with unstable magic and that it would go awry. The original idea was that he would uncontrollably teleport around for a time, jumping hundreds of miles into random dangers. Thus, he would end up arriving to help or speak to the other pov characters.
It was sort of a Quantum Leap joke. But originally, I only intended it to be about distance, not time. But then I really started to think about how having Nemo jumping through time might have ripples. The idea took on a life of its own. The mysterious stranger in the cave, is an older Nemo, making sure he still tries to open the gate. But there is even more to it than that…
But that would really be spoiling things.
Week Seven:
So, what does this week look like?
3rd week of classes. I already got the first half of the first final in and done. Received feedback but haven’t received the grade as of yet. I will say that the feedback this term is far more in depth and I see a TON of areas for revision.
I am really itching to go back and fix things now while they are fresh in my mind… but that way lies madness. I totally need to finish the damn rough draft and then go back and get my revisions all figured out. Some of the mistakes are just mind boggling. I have weird things I do that are totally based on which POV I’m in.
For example, when I write Rune chapters I tell everything and don’t show enough. But when I write a Slater chapter, I put a whole bunch of showing (in long glorious prose) in the middle of fight scenes. So, its action action action, glorious descriptive paragraphs, action, dialogue that’s too lush for a fight scene, action… etc. Sigh.
On the good side I have a lot of ideas for how I want to revise.
Coming Plans:
Trying for 3-4 sessions this week… see what I can do. Chap 24 is a Keegan chapter and is introducing a whole new area of my world. Might be a long chapter with a lot of drawn out world building and lush characterization. If I make it through that the next chapter is a Caitlyn chapter. Previously she stopped to do a little archeology with her students. This will lead to some adventure and danger as she opens up an ancient temple and delves beneath the streets of a dead city. (Though not quite dead enough).
School work is relatively light this week…
And I’m about to start a new game online. A friend is going to be trying his hand at Shadowrun. Don’t know how fun the game will be and it will be on a sporadic schedule. But I was planning on doing posts for it, like a character journal.
I’m playing a bioengineered human who escaped his previous life and currently is a street doctor/ combat medic. I’ll try and get his background story posted sometime this week.
