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2014/07/29 06:08:23
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A novel by Ailaros - Give it a read! - Chapter 73 complete]
“Please tell me you have something!” Melchoir yelled over the sporadic crack of gunfire as he entered the command post, a shallow pit etched into the hillside, makeshift awning draped hastily overhead. He rushed past the antenna tower, and up to a pair of radios lying on the ground. He was met with pensive glances from their operators. “Anything,” Melchoir pleaded.
“I’m still standing by with the fleet, sir,” one of them replied. “I’ve been transferred twice. Hopefully I’ll talk to the right person this time, but for now they put me on hold, again.”
“On hold?” Melchoir snapped with irritation. “On hold! We finally get through, and this is how they treat us, is it? You get them on the line, whatever it takes.” He turned to the other soldier. “You, what about second company? Tell me you got them.”
“Still not responding, sir. I have no idea.”
Melchoir frowned. He needed to hear better news than this. “Keep trying,” he ordered, whirling around and leaving the shabby defense work behind, stepping over dirt and fallen leaves beneath the cold, steel-gray sky. He glanced at his soldiers dug in along the hillside, eyes running along trench lines as they bent from view. His ears filled with the sound of simmering gunfire – more than usual, but not a real attack yet. It would be coming soon, though.
This was the fourth consecutive day, and what little remained of his shard of the Foleran Army was pinned down everywhere at once. They were well-positioned, but the sheer scale of the enemy assault strained even his ability to hold his ground. Six major defensive actions and a counterattack, each a brilliant success. Each slowly draining him of manpower. It was only a matter of time now...
The superior of Boroughcourt smiled, almost bashfully, butterflies dancing in his stomach. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, grinning again, despite himself. The anticipation was almost unbearable.
But why should it be? These weren’t strangers, they were his own people. That must have been it, actually. He wasn’t just returning to his old job; he was coming back home. He was reuniting with loved ones, restoring his former life. Rejoining his family.
He reached down and grabbed his tie, bringing it up to dab a bead of perspiration from his forehead. It was nice to finally be back in his own clothing again. He looked neat in his pressed shirt and fitted slacks, exactly as he had before. The only difference was that his tie was now pink, a symbol of his faith.
Gilbert leaned out slightly, looking through the gap in the curtains. The stage out in front of him was bathed in light, supporting a single microphone on its stand. He could hear the burble of people sitting in their seats in the darkness beyond. They were anticipating this nearly as much as he was.
To think that it had been nearly six months to the day since he had been in this very auditorium. Since he had fled for his life against a wall of anger and despair. They had all been so different, and so had he. The memories seemed so alien, as if they belonged to someone else. Another person’s life from another time.
“Well,” he muttered softly. One of the two gathered behind him gave a thumbs-up. He turned quickly, one step, then another. Light burst into his eyes as he walked onto the stage.
That was it, there was no mistaking it now. She had been in this exact same place two days ago.
The forest was littered with the debris of war, most of it from the fighting which ended months ago. Old trenches, corroded bullet casings, tangled stretches of rusting barbed wire. Now abandoned, eerily quiet as nature slowly healed from its man-made wounds. The violence and the terror of those moments now silent.
She had seen many of these places, and all of them looked somewhat similar, but she knew for certain that she had been in this specific place before. That washed-out blockhouse, crumbled on the corner with the pine sapling sticking out, the way the trench had to swerve around the rocky outcrop. She was here, in this place. Again.
Claire’s shoulders slumped, it was almost unbearable.
She began to walk towards the abandoned defensive line, leaning heavily on a long stick, limping slightly. Choking back her disappointment with herself.
She had been out in the forest alone for days now. It had been her and Quentin at the beginning, but after a single tortured night camping in the bitter cold, she’d had enough. The warnings couldn’t have been real, the Defense Service wouldn’t really shoot her if she surrendered.
That morning, they had made it to a camp. As they approached, she called out for help, which drew the attention of the soldiers. Instead of replying with words, they had replied with gunfire. No warning, just bullets.
They killed Quentin. He was shot in the leg, and then again in the other. He begged her to flee, to run while she still could, but she couldn’t leave him behind like that, not as he lay there bleeding. Not until a burst of autogun fire hit him in the head.
She ran then, not knowing where. Just away.
Thankfully, no one had chased her, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. She was all alone, with no food and no way to defend herself, and the cold...
Well here we are, week 14. I ended it at 230,432 for a total of 16,885. A somewhat anemic finish, but there you go.
Anyways, I've actually got the next chapter already written (not counted in the above total, this post is just late), which means once I edit it and put it up early tomorrow, then that will be it. The last chapter.
All I have left to write is the epilogue. Once last bit of narration, and I'll be done.
Summon! They had tried to summon her! The sheer, brazen gall! One didn’t force a governor to go places. No, people came to her and they groveled for the chance to bask in her presence. That’s how it worked. Jaines Harcourt would not be broken by a few sternly worded messages, no matter what that meddling imperial bureaucrat tried to say. An inquiry, he’d called it, but she knew better. She knew a witch-hunt when she smelled one.
He had questions? Then he could come down here and ask them himself.
She stewed with indignation as she sat, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. Watching as he came forward, alone, making his way slowly through the darkness. The whole room was dimly lit. Only a few of the lights still worked – not even the governor was able to get her hands on a spare light bulb.
Whatever, it was always too bright in here anyways. It set a better mood now.
The Emperor’s servant made his way out of the gallery and walked towards the U-shaped table, suddenly catching the scant illumination as he made his way towards her. Clerical uniform made of ermine, slashed with cloth-of-lapis along the chest and sleeves. The heavy gold chain around his neck, the sign of his office. He even wore a sword at his belt, as if he had ever removed it from its scabbard, much less used it in anger. It was all pointless, ghastly, vulgar, ostentatious nonsense. The mere pretense of power, as if nothing more than a few bits of shiny would make even the tiniest difference to her.
Though the man himself clearly needed all the display he could get. Without it, Jaines could have mistaken him for a carpet salesman.
They were still behind him. Chasing. Flashlights flickered through the tangled branches, the forest dancing wildly in the shifting light.
Melchoir grimaced as he lurched forward, dragging his wounded foot. Forcing down the urge to scream in pain as he stumbled up the shallow slope, his satchel snagging on dead underbrush. He yanked on the strap, twigs snapping in the frozen night air as he forced his way through.
He could see the floodlights up ahead. He was almost there. He just might make it.
He groped his way forward in the darkness, wind whipping at his face, freezing him through his uniform. Icy beads of sweat trickling down under his collar. He finally staggered up to the top of the hill, leaning on a tree for support. He could still hear their voices behind him.
The forest began to thin out slightly, the light ahead growing brighter. He staggered to a run as the bushes cleared around him.
Then suddenly, he was there: a wide, circular patch of concrete, fifty yards across, ringed with four giant spotlights. Blowing snow billowed fiercely around him, shimmering in the brilliant light. Tiny ice crystals raced across the frozen landing pad.
His long retreat had led him to this place, first with a company of men, then with just a squad. Now alone. These were the coordinates he’d sent to the fleet. This is where they would send reinforcements. This was his only hope.
Pretty epic stuff, and everything was nicely constructed to build on what had gone before. I have to say, not one of these characters ended up where I thought they would at the start.
Great stuff, well worth thgew read, and congratulations on completing such a large project so fast.
2014/08/01 18:49:27
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A full-length novel - COMPLETE!!!]
I'm going to do an afterword real quick to explain what I was thinking while writing this, but I'm curious, where did you think it was going to go
At the start, I wasn't sure to be honest. I figured there would be some kind of second rebel force rising to fight the Folerans, but at no point before Melchoir fleeing at the station did I expect the Guard to essentially end up as the rebels they were trying to defeat at the start. It was nicely cyclic in that sense. Some of the characters had arcs that were somewhat self-fulfilling. Damien looked to be on the path to an ultimate destruction from the start of his madness. Claire was almost bound to become a 'casualty' (in spirit if not in body) of the war in that she really managed to avoid taking a side, and ultimately didn't want to change anything. She became caught up in the games and plots of others, and inevitably was brought down by it. I also liked her nicely ambiguous ending.
But Gilbert, I think, was the real surprise. While, as you have said several times, his role as a character doesn't change through the story, I would never have expected him to end up a) a Chaos Worshipper and b) in a real position of power given his start as a general underling to others, in the shadow of Melchoir and then Jaines in a way.
With Jaines, I think it was obvious the path she would take, but the extent of that path was not something I saw coming. The fact her and Melchoir swap roles by the end of it was rather nice, occupying a position of power but not control. I found myself wondering if Jaines would actually make a more successful job of rule than Melchoir, or whether she is doomed to the same fate.
On that note, I must admit that, getting into the last chapters, I almost found too many questions unanswered. What fate would Geomides see? Would Jaines and Gilbert come into conflict with the war-vs-love idea (or Khorne vs Slaneesh)? Would Claire and Lucas be reunited? What would become of Melchoir? Thinking of it more, though, I figured that didn't matter. While I look forward to seeing what comes next if and when you write anything else, I think the results of the paths each character took did conclude themselves really; it sounds somewhat cliched to say it, but the 'journey' they took with their various rises and falls was ultimately complete, even if the circumstances were not.
Again, good stuff.
2014/08/01 22:36:48
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A full-length novel - COMPLETE!!!]
Hello, everyone, so I just wanted to do a post after it's done to tell a quick story about the making of this work, and to do some deconstruction of the material itself.
So, to begin...
---
THE NUMBERS
---
The rough draft of The Geomides Affair took me 100 days to write, and came to a conclusion with 236,734 words and 1,302,577 characters. In current format, it's 549 pages long.
There were several frustrations on time, thanks to the real world - drop-ins from relations, a few trips to the emergency room, the fact that I was taking care of a (at the beginning) 10-month-old baby girl, and for goodness sake, that damned move.
I can, however, mollify myself somewhat when I consider my original expectations. When I started, I said I wanted to write 125k words in about 7 weeks, and I ended with ~237k words in 14, so roughly the pace I was hoping for, just over a longer period of time. Likewise, I wanted to write a chapter a day, and using my guideline of 2,500 words (or more) per chapter, I similarly roughly stuck to that.
However, you will notice that the book wound up being twice as long as I thought, and taking twice as long to write. That's a hell of a lot of scope creep. So what happened?
Well...
---
THE WRITING
---
Before I started writing, I spent almost a week doing pre-writing. Coming up with plot points, characters, etc. I even drew a crude map. I was pretty flexible going into it (which is to say I had no idea what I was doing), but did have a few things that I knew I wanted to have in it.
The first was that this story was going to be a successor to my Hand of the King battle report series. The purpose of this book would be to set up everything for my next. To act as a narrative bridge, if you will. This means that the story needed to include Melchoir (or a slightly rebooted version of him, at least). The last series ended with him becoming the governor, but I would need some way for him to be fighting in a tabletop narration in the future... the most obvious solution for which is that he somehow loses the position. The spiciest way of doing that would be with him getting deposed.
The second thing I wanted, because yes, I'm a hack, was to embed a political or ideological message in the piece. Not crazy Rand or Heinlein over the top nonsense, preferably.
The idea struck me that I could make it roughly contemporary - a socialist dystopian wasteland. You know, like much of Europe.
As such, the core of the story would revolve around Melchoir, the person in charge trying but failing to do the right thing, and around a second character who would depose him, and in a horrible, at least vaguely left-wing way. Thus the character of Jaines was born - young, educated, female, from a wealthy background. The exact kind of person who would show up or even organize a 99% rally.
The story was set to revolve around these two, with a few ancillary characters thrown in, but I was afraid that there wouldn't be quite enough THERE there. It would be another novella, at best, and I wanted to do something more serious with my second novel now that I'd managed the hurdle of just writing something long in the first place.
To back this up, then, I decided to throw in a set-piece romance novel short story, and to have another work at the beginning that was more about the struggle of Jaines to rise to a position where she could actually threaten Melchoir.
And this is where the magic extra doubling of my work came from.
Originally, the point was to have a short story of Gilbert vs. Jaines, and then that story would resolve, and Gilbert would cease to exist as a character about a third of the way through. His only job was delivering Jaines to Bellemonde. Likewise, the romance novel was supposed to wrap up about 2/3ds of the way through, and then those characters would be just done. After roughly the halfway point, the book was intended to just be about Jaines and Melchoir.
But clearly that didn't happen. Once I started getting settled into an "epic" pace, my outlook on the work began to change rapidly. Plot elements that were supposed to just happen became plot elements that I had specific characters do, and sometimes they needed a chapter to get into position to do them. I also found it much more difficult to let characters go, mostly because they were just so darn useful.
The two most obvious examples of this are Gilbert (who, after he delivers Jaines I decided to keep around somehow, eventually settling on the new religious cult thing (that was going to happen anyways) as a perfect fit with his personality), and Lucas, who wasn't actually intended to be a recurring character AT ALL, except for maybe one more chapter near the end. The reason this book begins with a prologue, rather than a Lucas chapter is because I didn't want to be stuck with a chapter-named character I had no intention of supporting.
---
THE STRUCTURE
---
I came in to writing this novel with more or less one skill - plotting. Plot is my natural talent, I will easily admit. This book is roughly Dune levels of complex, if not possibly moreso. It might come as a surprise that at nearly no point did I have to change any of the plot points as the story took on a momentum of its own. Nearly everything you read was planned from the very beginning.
However, that's where my writing skill more or less ended. I've been able to do decent enough dialogue, I suppose, but I've never been all that interested in setting, and my characters have always been shallow and one-dimensional. They've only ever existed for the purpose of fulfilling what needs to happen in the plot. And I feel like I grew a lot over the course of this writing, especially about the character thing, but I'll get to that in a moment.
Because back to plot, well, and structure in general. One of the things I knew I wanted to try to do is make a serious attempt at a literary device known as Chiasmus. That is that the story sort of takes place like layers of an onion - a bunch of things happen, and then they happen again in reverse.
I didn't do quite as nice of a job as I wanted with this, but still, there's quite a bit. To look at the explicit examples, if you take the middle chapter (37) as the fulcrum point, and start counting forwards and backwards from there, you see...
-1/+1: Melchoir attends a meeting where he loses Gilbert as an ally / Melchoir attends a meeting after which he loses Rochefield as an ally.
-2b/+2: Lucas goes to the train station to take a train to Cupercourt to be with Claire, but is stopped / Damien goes to the train station to take his army to Cupercourt by train, hopefully to be with Claire, and nothing will stop him.
-2a/+3: As the result of a completed mission, two rebels get put in a small, dark space. Some of the rebels decide to join with Jaines / Jaines decides to put two rebels in a small, dark space for the purpose of completing a mission.
-3/+4: Gilbert comes up with a plan regarding a friend turning enemy, deciding to take it personally if it fails / Gilbert failed, and it got personal. He has a change of plans regarding an enemy turning friend.
-5/+5: Jaines is disappointed in her subordinates, and has a secret plan to take rebels off a train / Damien is disappointed in his subordinates, and has a secret plan to take rebels with a train.
-8/+9: Lucas meets with Rochefield in the basement where he gets involved in a plan to kill the Foleran Damien / Lucas meets with Jaines in the basement where he gets involved in a plan to kill the Foleran Melchoir.
-9/+12: Insurgent chaos in Boroughcourt. Gilbert talks to someone at a cafe, but is forced to flee the scene / Insurgent chaos in Boroughcourt. Jaines talks to someone at a cafe, but is forced to flee the scene.
-11/+12: Damien speaks to Rochefield, demanding the latter's help, eventually turning to threats. The magistrate becomes an implacable enemy / Jaines speaks to Rochefield, demanding the latter's help, eventually turning to threats. The magistrate becomes and implacable enemy.
-13/+15: Melchoir leads his forces against insurgents, killing several of them, including some personally, though not according to plan / Melchoir leads his forces against rebels, killing several of them, including some personally, according to plan.
-12a/+16: Jaines barely manages to escape the Foleran attack / Claire barely manages to escape the Foleran attack.
-14/+17: Jaines and her group of protesters make a scene in Bellemonde / Jaines and her group of protesters make a scene in Bellemonde.
-26/+21: In a scene of water, Lucas runs away from Claire to save himself / In a scene of fire, Lucas runs towards Rochefield to save Claire.
-18/+26: A hedonistic party gets out of control, bringing the authorities / Gilbert brings the governor to a hedonistic party that's gotten out of control.
-21/+23: Melchoir presides over a Council meeting that gets out of control. Troops rush into the chamber / Melchoir presides over a Council meeting that gets out of control. Troops rush throughout the chamber.
-31/+32: Melchoir holds a meeting of the Council where things begin to break apart / Jaines holds a meeting of the Advisory Board where things begin to break apart.
-32/+38: Gilbert holds a meeting in an auditorium where he is booed off stage / Gilbert holds a meeting in the same auditorium where he is cheered on stage.
-34/+36: Claire is upset, and then has a powerful experience / Jaines is upset, and then has a powerful experience.
-35/+39: Jaines is in a desperate situation, struggling to survive / Claire is in a desperate situation, struggling to survive.
-36/+40: Melchoir meets with Egiustacious about the rule of Geomides and the interdict after a catastrophe has happened / Jaines meets with Egiustacious about the rule of Geomides and the interdict before a catastrophe occurs.
Prologue/Epilogue: Lucas is running away from enemy soldiers in the hills north of Cupercourt, considering his past, uncertain about his future / Melchoir is running away from enemy soldiers in the hills north of Cupercourt, considering his past, uncertain about his future.
Anyways, this is just some of the more explicit pairing. There's an awful lot more embedded in there.
For example, the book begins with Melchoir fighting a splintered rebel group hiding in the hills, and ends with Melchoir fighting AS a splintered rebel group hiding in the hills. Gilbert starts the book as the Superior of Boroughcourt, loses his job, and then ends as Superior of Boroughcourt. Lucas starts the book with nothing but a backpack full of supplies roaming the forests, comes to live in the more civilized world of the capital, and then ends with nothing but a backpack full of supplies in the same forest. There's actually a fair bit of this, if you're looking for it, really paying attention to the details.
Anyways, there is also a lot of non-chiasmatic repetition as well. For example, everyone but Gilbert has a chapter which is basically a conversation with Rochefield. Every character except for Damien and Rochefield have a chapter where they are fleeing for their lives. Melchoir has his scene in the church mirrored by his scene in the garden. Once again, there's a lot more of this kind of thing.
And the reason for it isn't just to be a clever writer, or doing something tricksy. The main benefit of repetition is to show contrast, either between characters or within a character over time. You see how Gilbert winds up in the same kind of situation over and over again and never learns. You see how Melchoir has certain beliefs, and when they're challenged, which ones actually stick around.
And you learn a lot between characters this way. If you look at the flee-for-their-lives scenes, for example. When Jaines flees from the Granary Massacre, it's everyone for themselves, she has no problems at all about simply driving over people in her way. After the fact, she is quick to go back on the offensive. You compare that to Melchoir, who runs to the train station after Jaines takes over, but in a way that displays a type of personal bravery and mindfulness, and he also tries to regain the initiative. Meanwhile, Gilbert at the Boroughcourt train station is just pathetic, as usual, and Claire's escape from Cupercourt shows her characteristic drive mixed with naivete (wearing high heels to a blockade run?)
The conversations with Rochefield are also really good at showing this, especially the beautiful chapter where the brash, impulsive Jaines tries to impose her delusions on the magistrate and is so soundly, permanently rebuffed.
But all this repetition is good for something else as well, it highlights the things that DON'T repeat.
For example, follow the path of Claire and Lucas. They meet up and have sex, then they meed up and almost have sex, then they almost meet up (at the train station), then they're almost in the same city at the same time, then they're in the same giant stretch of wilderness, possibly not within a hundred miles of each other.
Their relationship doesn't repeat, it has a trajectory.
Likewise for Melchoir's slow loss of control, and Jaines' ascension to power and descent into madness. The food situation also moves in a direction, as does the size of first the rebel, and then the Foleran army.
As such, without even saying what's going on, there are several things which are implied.
That and, of course, a few little repeating easter eggs, like how Damien doesn't know how to open or close a door, and Gilbert's unending difficulty with sitting in chairs.
---
CHARACTER
---
So, as mentioned, character has been one of my biggest weaknesses, and probably the thing I improved on the most, and you can actually sort of see it over the course of the novel in two ways.
The first is that the characters, for the first two-thirds of the book (or longer), are all pretty flat and unchanging. I always like the "discover the character" way of doing things, rather than the "know the character, then watch him change" sort of deal, so that's what a part of it was.
But another part was by being extremely careful with my sense of perspective.
For example, at the beginning of the story, the rebels are the bad guys. Nobody, not even Jaines likes them. And you know Lucas is a rebel captain, but nothing else. Therefore, Lucas must be a bad guy, and with only two chapters from his point of view in the entire first third of the book, there's no chance for him to defend himself as a good guy. Then, later, you have plenty from his viewpoint, so finally get a chance to bond with the character, which makes you think better of him. Melchoir sort of has this same problem.
Meanwhile, you look at Jaines' mental health issues. She's at least OCD the entire book. It's portrayed in this kind of cute quirk sort of way in the beginning ("many hoes"), and it's portrayed in a much more crazy way towards the end (shooting rats in the basement), but it's the same thing through the entire book, it's just that you learn more about it, and the change in perspective of the narration changes the perspective of the reader towards the characters. Gilbert's chronic enablement is another example of this.
Also, and this one's subtle, but another thing I changed slowly was with language. In the beginning, it's all Melchoir horribly butchering the names of everything to make him look like the foreign bad guy, but as the book goes on, this begins to stop - not because he's learned any of the names, but because the names are just stealthily not used. He says "the capital" instead of "Belmo" to refer to Bellemonde, for example. There's even a touching moment towards the end where he uses the word "Geomidians" rather than "locals".
Likewise, in the beginning the fact that everyone calls Melchoir Malcolm is sort of a sign of the confusion caused by foreign rule, but as the other language barrier stuff fades away, this one thing stays persistent. By the end, it makes the bad guys look even more like bad guys - why haven't they learned his name yet already? - and it's even pointed out consciously by Egiustacious in the last Jaines chapter. She's the one who's wrong about this.
Meanwhile, the other Geomidians who are good guys secretly stop using the incorrect "Fauleighra" just like Melchoir secretly stops using incorrect local names. They get referred to by slightly less derogatory terms like "the soldiers" and "whitecoats". You'll notice that when Claire and Melchoir finally meet, Claire refers to him as "the governor" which eludes the necessity for her to call him "Malcolm".
But I did eventually manage to make some characters a bit more dynamic than others towards the end. Lucas and Claire and Melchoir may not have changed much, but Jaines and especially Damien actually do, which is sort of a first for me.
Also, I'd like to note that I did a much better job this time having a much wider, more inclusive version of secondary characters. Ethan Roscenne is not a main character by any stretch of the imagination, but he actually impacts the story, rather than just floats around in the background. The same could be said about Marshals Gannon and Archon, and Lucas' friend Paul. It's a pretty small thing, but I'm actually kind of proud of that one. Nearly as much as that I've been able to juggle 7 main characters in a single work.
Also, before diving in, I'd note that there was one last thing I knew going into writing, and that was that this story was going to be a tragedy, and not just a drama with a sad ending. I mean it in the specific way wherein everything bad that happens to the characters more or less happens because it's their own fault: they do it to themselves.
For example, literally every problem that Damien has is one he brings on himself. He is constantly, endlessly overreaching in his quest for security. His bullying of Claire is, more than her connection to Lucas the reason she refuses him. His threatening of Rochefield is what turns both of them against him, the result of which was the battle of Cupercourt. Once again, he could have just stormed the place and captured Claire, but his paranoia made him go with a siege instead, which is what puts her out of his grasp. Even his death is, in a way, his fault. He's the one who attacks Lucas face to face, even though he didn't have to, and it was in a hospital that he created thanks to his bombardment, and fell into a fire pit that was a result of his artillery shells and the results of the rest of the siege. If he would have behaved like a decent human being for even a moment, his fate could have easily been avoided.
Another perfect example of this is the siege of Cupercourt itself. The city definitely didn't need to be destroyed. In fact, it was only because...
- Claire refused Damien.
- Damien threatened Rochefield.
- Rochefield decided to trap Damien.
- Lucas agreed to set up a fake revolt to give Rochefield a chance to put his own agents in the city to sabotage it.
- Claire agreed to be bait.
- The rebel army agree to attack, even though it knew it was against its own best interests (likely something to do with Rochefield).
- Rochefield taunted Damien.
- Melchoir agreed to let Damien handle it, rather than taking care of things personally, like he usually does.
- Damien was uncertain of the rebel's intentions
- Claire successfully hid from the rebels over the course of the siege.
- Lucas didn't meet up with Claire in the first place at the train station, which would have let her know he was alive (and they might have just run away together).
Likewise, the death of Rochefield had to have many things go the way they did to end in his demise, and there were a LOT of things that could have gone wrong to prevent the revolution from occurring, but thanks to everyone's efforts, everything wound up going very badly wrong, for both themselves and for everyone else.
---
THE CAST
---
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk a bit about the characters themselves, starting with...
MELCHOIR
---
Melchoir is sort of a case of good intentions gone wrong. You know that he is a very competent character, showing personal bravery on several occasions, and is very clever, and basically all the military stuff he does is a complete success. He's also the only one who has an accurate understanding of his own faults by the end of the story.
But despite all of this, he fails anyways. The first, and most obvious problem, is that he gets way too easily sucked in to doing everything himself. It's not that he can't delegate, it's just that he also wants to make sure that he takes part directly. It's not implied as being a neurosis or being a horrible task-master, though. I feel like the reason stems from the fact that he was, until being promoted, a captain in the Foleran army. At that strange level of leadership where you both lead a large body of soldiers, but you're also still at the nitty-gritty level of things. He has the capabilities of a senior officer, but the attitude of a junior officer. That lead-from-the-front attitude will probably never break in him.
The second problem he has is the more curious one. He's the governor, but he's also not political. He has a rather simple, soldierly viewpoint on things where he assumes that his subordinates are competent, and are willing to use their initiatives to solve problems on the ground as they occur. It's not that he can't imagine the civilians around him failing to obey orders, it's that he can't imagine them failing to fight to win the proverbial war (against the collapse of their civilization, in this case).
And for how good of a strategic thinker he is (you can constantly see him plotting), he also has a curiously vague idea of what he wants politically. It doesn't seem like he has a vision for Geomides, so much as a "let's let things go along their way until it's time for me to leave" sort of a thing, which makes him particularly vulnerable to someone who IS willing to weave a narrative and run with it, like Jaines.
You also sort of get the feeling that, outside of the military circle, he's just really uncomfortable all the time, and a little overwhelmed despite himself. You also faintly pick up on the fact that he's not actually all that good with people. He respects protocol and follows the rules and respects tradition, but he just never comes across (with the exception of his scene with Lucas) as being all that personable.
Which shouldn't come as a surprise because Melchoir has two roles, and the first is that, like in the battle report series, he's the author's avatar in the world. And yeah, as a result, he's a little Mary Sue, I'll easily grant. I mean, he's the one with the cool bionics and the plasma pistol, taking a commanding role and barely making it out alive, with success, usually. But, of course, if he has my dreamed-of strengths, then he also has some version of my weaknesses as well.
Anyways, I guess one might think it's strange that an author would devote an entire book to slowly destroying the life of his avatar, but there you have it.
Of course, the second role for him is to be the only character not participating in a quarter million word bottle episode. All the other characters interact with each other and their environment, but really only Melchoir (except for the last Jaines chapter) is really connected to anything else.
Melchoir's the others' liaison with the Imperium. It's in his chapters that you see the 40k-esque background show through, from the inquisitors to the cathedral space ships to the imperial ecclesiarchy. He's sort of the scope-check for when things get too self-involved, as well as being the only interface with the super-plot (the interdiction).
He's also, of course, the proper good guy in this story, even if the sense of perspective is slanted to make him look bad in the beginning. I mean (accidentally, of course), he's the only person who wears white literally every time you see him. But it's a tragedy, so he has to lose.
ROCHEFIELD
---
Hugo Rochefield is an interesting character. Originally I needed someone to fill a role on the council, to stand at the tipping point where Melchoir loses control and where Jaines takes over.
He was originally going to be a named-chapter character, but I was concerned that the introduction chapters were running too long, and that I wouldn't have anything for him to really do early enough, so I left him out.
That wound up being a really good decision.
The reason why is because he's this person with wealth and power, but also very secretive. He's constantly scheming, but he leaves the characters guessing, not really knowing what he's up to. As such, you, the reader wind up being put in the same position because he's never the narrator. You never learn what he's thinking, and are left guessing as well.
You do get a few hints, though. The main one is that his motivation is always for his daughter, Claire. He sets up the match with Damien, because he believes that the future is Foleran, and it's why he's such a staunch supporter of Melchoir on the council. He knows which side his bread is buttered, and wants to be able to deliver as much as he can to his child. To make some sort of security in a world destroyed by calamity.
And you also see his biggest flaw as well. He is high-born, and has lived his life with wealth and power. His biggest strength is his sense of command, but the reverse is the source of his problems. He treats everyone as if he is their superior (which he likely is), but that causes him to fatally underestimate his opponents. He lets Jaines go free, for example, because he legitimately can not see her as a threat, she's that far beneath him.
I'm a little saddened by the fact that I never wound up having a voice on the Council, and I feel like it weakened the story of Jaines' revolution, not having, say, a scene where all the magistrates were gathered together in secret, slowly coming to support her. I guess it's something I'll have to live with.
CLAIRE
---
Claire is, of course, the main love interest. She's the focal point of the romance novel story, and, as the two begin to merge, she winds up being instrumental in the rest of the plot as well.
In a way, interestingly, Claire is the reader avatar of this story. Think about it, her defining feature (other than naivete) is how relatively normal she is. She has a white-collar job, and a small apartment. Other than Melchoir, she's the only one actually shown working the entire time. She's part of the vast establishment, another cog in the machine. She's worried about normal worries, and she knows things about popular culture. She's just a normal person in a world of insane, over-the-top extremes. She's just a regular woman, trying to make it through. The civilian.
Which makes all the bad stuff that happens to her that much worse. Unlike Jaines or Melchoir or even Lucas, she's not a hero, she has her limits. She is strong, but mortal, and when she suffers, she suffers the worse for it.
In all, though, she is sort of a minor character, and rather flat. I have the intention of trying to bulk her up a bit more, especially at the beginning, but there's only so much I can do. In this case, it's a character who never manages to escape the demands of plot.
LUCAS
---
As mentioned in the beginning, Lucas is a curious character given that he wasn't meant one to be at all. He was supposed to just set the scene, and disappear. I eventually added the idea that he should bump into Melchoir at some point, and the idea that he should be roaming the hills looking for Claire at the end also came early on. But still.
Lucas serves several purposes. Firstly, he is the only truly flexible character. Whenever I needed something done, I could find a reason for it to be Lucas who needed to do it, thanks to his sense of placelessness. He also rounds out the "good guys" section, forming a bridge between Melchoir's sense of ethic and heroic streak with Claire's sense of day to day and simple sense of purpose. He was also my way to interject a bit of fun and excitement into the story, especially as it veered off into pretty dark territory towards the end.
He is also, of course, the dashing male love interest, making the romance arc work correctly, rather than it just being Claire resisting Damien. Which, of course, results in an epic duel between the two of them, which, let's be honest, really had to happen (the original plot just said "Damien dies", without getting any more specific than that).
That and he serves the purpose that I originally wanted Rochefield to serve for the Council, except for the rebel army. Instead of just saying "they left" I could write a chapter showing them leaving.
In any case, the character is rather lightweight, being motivated mostly by his desire to settle down and stop being a rebel anymore (which he never achieves), and, of course, his gushing, undying love for Claire.
DAMIEN
---
So, let me tell you, Damien was a surprise, even to me.
Originally, Damien was slated to be a GOOD guy, the tragic #2 who dies in the revolution trying to save Melchoir. It was quickly merged in pre-writing with the role of the romance novel antagonist, and the rest was that.
There are several other things I was surprised about as well. For example, how surprisingly satisfying it was to write a well-written classical villain. That sort of cocky, talented, arrogant, always getting what he wants type, and, to make it worse, he actually gets what he wants, generally.
I was also surprised because he wound up being the most dynamic character as well. I mean, just look at it.
In the beginning, Damien almost really isn't a bad guy. Yes, he's scheezy and awful and you're meant to hate him, of course, but step back for a moment. He's in a position of responsibility and authority as leader of the army, and he executes this job faithfully and competently in the beginning. He's a trustworthy lieutenant whose only concern is what will happen once the war's over, and is prudently trying to set up a place for society in advance. He's shown as being personally loyal to Melchoir as well.
Really, he actually starts out as sort of a good guy... almost. It's only his blatant disrespect for women (a critical flaw in a romance novel) that holds him back. A slightly more polished veneer of gentlemanly behavior, and he could have passed by just fine.
But, of course, he has flaws. His big, endless, ultimately fatal flaw is that he is paranoid about his own security, and is willing to go to any lengths to achieve it. As a result he is CONSTANTLY over-reaching, and every time he does, he makes his security situation worse, not better. If he just had a little trust or patience, he could have survived, thrived even.
But he didn't, and he has the misfortune to have that weakness paired with a strange kind of crudeness, effective perhaps on the battlefield, but nowhere else. When he's challenged, he immediately and without hesitation rises up to show his dominance, and this is often displayed with thuggish threats of force.
But this slowly begins to change, even early on in the book. As he goes his neurotic sense of insecurity develops into this behavior pattern of preying on vulnerability in others. He is constantly barging in to places he doesn't belong, and making them feel afraid. He can read people well (note his concern about Melchoir's lack of political behavior), and he uses that to torture people more and more over time.
Also, he clearly knows how to wield power, but unlike Melchoir, has sort of an opposite, leave his hands unsullied kind of way about him. At the Granary Massacre, Melchoir plays super punch-out while Damien just sort of lurks behind him, doing nothing, for example. But eventually, out of desperation he brings himself to the point where he finally actually kills someone (ordering the little girl thrown off the cliff), and that further develops into killing Rochefield himself, which ends in a bloody spree in the hospital.
Damien goes from an intelligent person following the natural course of events and his own personality to becoming properly unhinged. As he begins to suffer from his endless mistakes like a proper tragic villain, those same flaws that caused his problems in the first place rapidly accelerate his downfall.
I'm not going to lie, I'm actually pretty proud of how this character came out, despite how awful of a person he is.
JAINES
---
As mentioned, Jaines was set up from the very beginning to be the main antagonist. The best way you can think about her is that it's like dating a wild and crazy woman. You're just so attracted to the fun and the adventure and the unbelievably magnetic force of will that just sucks you into a mindless, burning passion... but then... as many a hapless young man has learned, eventually you start to discover that the wild is just reckless, and the crazy is actual, literal crazy. The love turns quickly to fear.
And as mentioned, this is the core of the Jaines character. She's nuts. In the beginning you see her OCD as a cute character trait, a bit of weird on a funky kind of girl. But then "more hoes" becomes "alphebetizing rebels" becomes "shooting rats in basement" becomes "letting hundreds get slaughtered because she won't change her attack plan because it has symmetry", and at every step, the laughter becomes a little more nervous.
And there's something else, too. It was mentioned explicitly in the beginning, but it sort of gets lost behind the specifics, and that is Jaines' motivation. Read carefully - why does she start the revolution in the first place? Because she's bored.
And you see this struggle with the hedonic treadmill through the entire story. She gets a rush from stealing explosives, but it fades. She gets a rush from taking a bunch of drugs and throwing parties, but it becomes unsatisfying. She burns through a long stream of sexual partners and political allies, but nobody ever manages to stick around. She takes over, and once she does, there's sort of this "well, now what?" moment. She winds up in the dark, cutting herself in a desperate bid to keep the ennui at bay, and when there's the first possible chance to keep up the fight, to go on to the next step, she eagerly takes it, kidnapping the envoy.
And there's an important distinction made between Gilbert's not-so-secret worship of slaanesh, and Jaines' eventual conversion to khorne. She's bored, and her previous experiences aren't satiating her anymore, but instead of doubling down with more and more intensity, she moves on in a more khorne-like direction. She channels herself into the pursuit of perfection, with art, and then with martial combat, and eventually with the simple shedding of blood.
Jaines is also, in a way, my ability to vent the anger of my generation as well. She's sort of lots of things about millenials all rolled into one. She comes from a nice background, and is well-educated, but has no way of putting that to use. There are no jobs available to her and she's very poor. Her starting scene with her walking around at night along the brick-paved streets picking apples off neighbor's trees was literally me at one point in my relatively recent life.
And that bridges into her final role, the one for which she was designed in the first place. Her whole motif is about how she slowly gains power, but in an unsustainable way. She burns nearly every bridge she crosses, and is only in it for whatever warped sense of ideology she happens to have at the moment. She just wants to win, not to rule, and it all comes crashing down on her in the end.
Of course, she's also the political antagonist as well, taking on several blatantly anti-conservative (with a lower case "c") stances on things. She's actively irreligious, for example (well, except for at the end), she believes firmly in the german fuhrerprinzip idea - that government exists because the best and brightest will figure everything out, and you need to sit down and do whatever they say.
Indeed, her entire movement is a thinly-veiled recounting of how the Nazis came to power in the first place. A combination of socialism, nationalism, anti-democratic principles, and a vibrant will to engage in violence. Her troops even wear khaki uniforms with red armbands.
In any case, part of the reason she exists is to demonstrate how intelligent Liberal and socialist points of view can easily lead to the justification of a totalitarian state. Which, when combined with the rest of who she is and what she does, basically paints a dystopian picture of what would have happened if the 99%ers had somehow managed to overthrow the government.
In a way, she's sort of my generation's Mary Sue... of evil...
GILBERT
---
Ah, Gilbert! The best for last.
So, in case you failed to notice over the course of the book, Gilbert is actually the bad guy. Moreover, surprise, he was the bad guy the entire time.
And you may be asking "what are you talking about? Clearly Jaines and Damien were way worse than Gilbert!" but they're actually not. It's part of what makes Gilbert's character SO good - he's insidious about it.
Gilbert exists as the ultimate enabler. Like Melchoir, he believes that people exist to do good, and can't believe people could act in bad faith, but he has absolutely none of Melchoir's sense of personal responsibility. Instead he never once even remotely demonstrates the faintest idea that consequences have actions, and that when things happen, it's people's fault, their own and/or others.
What winds up happening is that he becomes a walking pity party, and not only does he suck the characters in, but he sucks you, the reader into it as well. You are made to feel sympathetic that so many bad things are happening to this poor man who just wants what's best for everyone - a world of mutual respect and tolerance. He is, in fact, a drama queen, and like real drama queens, pulls you into his endless, self-centered white-knight fantasy sucking vortex of doom.
And in case the illusion isn't shattered yet, let's look at what Gilbert actually did. His real actions.
- He was put in charge of Boroughcourt and was ordered to keep down the rebellion, but he chose not to, instead fleeing in the face of danger, and refusing to crack down on the situation because he wanted to respect everyone's valid opinions, and didn't want to hurt everyone's feelings. He was the good guy here, and it was that mean Melchoir who refused to support him and tell him to be disrespectful that was the problem.
... except it wasn't. He just failed to do his job, and as a result, there was a revolution.
- He was told to stamp out the rebellion, and he successfully arrested Jaines, but not only didn't he prosecute her but he BROUGHT HER TO BELLEMONDE. Melchoir needed to understand Jaines' point of view, and he couldn't bring himself to be hard on someone just for having a set of ideas about something. This was too much for him, he needed to get the two together in the same place so that they could work it out between themselves and come to an agreement.
Except he enabled the revolution again by not only releasing, but personally smuggling the lead terrorist into the capital city.
- He continued to fail to keep Boroughcourt in order, which required the intervention of the Foleran army. Martial law seriously inflames the public, which leads to the creation of the Agricultural Liberation Army, and the beginning of civil war. He also further enables their ideals as well, leading them to spin off in their own separate way and form their own identity.
- He tells the Superior Council that they should feel bad that they're not listened to, and not respected enough. He more or less is the prime cause for the cities turning on Melchoir and then, after Jaines screws things up, the natural result of the cities then revolting against Jaines, leaving the entire planet ungovernable.
- He enables Lucas by telling him that Claire is alive and in Cupercourt, and then enables Damien by telling him that Lucas is still alive but that he should channel his aggression elsewhere.
- He gets sucked into a religious cult (because he, we both just want to help people), which enables him to enable others better.
The end result of which, of course, is that the entire planet gets overrun with slaaneshi demons, assuming the inquisition doesn't kill everybody first.
- And then in the end, the crowning piece to his whole character, he gives his sermon. A message that you can control nothing in your life, so don't even try. Bad things happen to you, and you should feel like a victim, but also like you can't do anything about it. You should just trust that other people will handle your life for you while you lay around all day and take drugs. To get you started, here's some free heroin.
It's so easy to see all the other bad guys, and all the actions people take that ruin everything, and only pay attention to that. But when you step back, literally everything that goes wrong in this story is at least in part enabled by Gilbert behind the scenes. He's the one who is always there, suckign everyone else into his drama, making everyone feel pity, and enabling their worst possible character traits.
Setting them up to make actions that will ultimately hurt them and everyone else. In short, it's basically his fault that this story is a tragedy. Everyone else has their part to play in making sure that this is true, but everyone also relies on him to make sure it stays that way.
And what makes it that much worse. The cherry on top of the sundae of horrible, awful, scheezy chapter after chapter of ruining everything... is that he wins. Jaines and Damien fall and are about to be destroyed, respectively. Gilbert, meanwhile, is the only person happy at the end. The only person who gets exactly what he wants. Fawning accolades by mindless supporters.
He is so disgusting. I can't even remember how many times I wrote something in one of his chapters and then thought "no, I'm REALLY going to hell for this one".
And it's so perfect, because he's otherwise such a nice guy. Beautifully insidious.
He's also, I'd note, my only overt reference to ogre battle. His entire character started as nothing more than the name (Gilbert, in reference to the character), with his line "Why must you rebel against the Empire? I understand why you hate them, but I must do what's best for my people."
Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this one simple idea would take a turn for the so massively fethed up.
---
SO NOW WHAT?
---
Well, now that I'm done, there are a few things I want to clean up. I've re-read the first few chapters and am apalled by how awful they are. I definitely grew a lot as an author over the course of this, especially, actually, by the sex scene in the beginning. It was through that that I gained a much greater appreciation for how to slowly describe things in detail (and the fact that there were a few "experience" chapters with neither plot NOR dialogue is a direct outgrowth of that).
Anyways, I'm going to clean up the first few chapters, at least. Flesh them out until I can get at least 2,500 words out of them (which I'm surprised I didn't follow strictly in the beginning. Maybe I had a different rule, or was just more lax?)
There are a few other things I want to do as well, like sort of give more of a reason why Lucas is attracted to claire, and explain better the situation with the imperium (flesh out the backstory a little more), and at least mention why Melchoir had such a time stamping out Jaines after the Granary.
And I want to completely re-write the bathtub scene with Melchoir and Rochefield. It's cute and clever and endears you to Melchoir somewhat, but it's too much of a break with his character-as-presented, in this book at least. It makes him look a little too much like Jaines, I think.
Anyways, once that's done, I'm going to take a bit of a break. Then I'll return to give it it's second edit with fresh eyes.
Once that's done, I'll pay to have it professionally copy edited, maybe tweak it a little more, and then put it up for sale. You too may be able to buy a more refined, better-edited, better-formatted, eBook version that will support a local dakka author soon, perhaps as quickly as by the end of this year. Maybe.
Anyways, I'd like to thank everyone who followed along, especially those people who posted. It can get kind of lonely when a week and 20,000 words go by without even knowing if anyone is even there, reading it.
thenoobbomb wrote:I'll have to do some cathing up!
Where'd you get to?
Paradigm wrote:Claire was almost bound to become a 'casualty' (in spirit if not in body) of the war in that she really managed to avoid taking a side, and ultimately didn't want to change anything. She became caught up in the games and plots of others, and inevitably was brought down by it. I also liked her nicely ambiguous ending.
That's an interesting way of thinking about it. She does several things that contribute to her own ruin, but it's interesting that you note that she's sort of a victim of events by means of not doing much to actively try to control them.
I suppose that makes sense with the reader avatar idea, because the reader is sort of stuck powerless to change things as well.
I hate to say it, but some of the reason bad things happen to her is because it's convenient - she's already in cupercourt for example, so might as well use her to show how bad the city's become, for example. Also part of it was kind of as a way to show this sort of hidden strength that Lucas keeps mentioning. It wouldn't make sense if she wasn't shown being able to power through some of the worst stuff in the story.
And yeah... I briefly considered on more than one occasion killing her on-screen, and even once as a romeo and juliet ending where he finds her just at the moment she's dying, and they get to have one tender moment before the end...
... but even I'M not that cruel, and I had a young woman with mental health issues cutting herself onstage believing that the experience made her a living god. In the end, even I had to leave the ending ambiguous on that one. If you really believe in true love, you'll come to the conclusion that, despite the odds, they do finally meet in the end. You could even imagine that with Lucas' particular skill-set they might have some way of avoiding the approaching holocaust.
There's that glimmer of hope, no matter how unlikely. I had to allow for that much, at least.
Paradigm wrote:But Gilbert... in a real position of power given his start as a general underling to others, in the shadow of Melchoir and then Jaines in a way.
That's also an interesting way to read it. I was kind of under the impression that he ends exactly where he starts: as the mayor of Boroughcourt. I suppose it is different in a way, though, and not just because he wasn't booed off stage the second time. In the end, he sort of has the Boroughcourt he always wished he had in the first place. Sort of a bizzare, cult-like heaven on earth filled with mutual respect and positive reinforcement.
Paradigm wrote:The fact her and Melchoir swap roles by the end of it was rather nice, occupying a position of power but not control. I found myself wondering if Jaines would actually make a more successful job of rule than Melchoir, or whether she is doomed to the same fate.
"Power without control", that's a PERFECT way of saying it.
And yeah, they had to sort of switch roles.
As for Jaines... I'm surprised (and pleased) that there was any ambiguity about her ability to handle things once she gained power. I was afraid that when Rochefield says "You are a fad, Jaines Harcourt, and have nothing to offer anyone but angry words and empty hope. If by some unfortunate series of events you are given real power, you will be ruined and take this whole planet with you." that I was laying it on a little thick.
Though it's interesting, I think one of the things that thinned down an awful lot of stuff I thought would be too over the top is context. So, in the case of this quote, he directly tells you what will happen, but it could easily be read as merely his opinion, or a threat that he's making, rather than an accurate prediction of future events.
Likewise, in some of the absolute crazy political stuff, I tried to couch it in other stuff that sounds more reasonable. When you pick it out of that context, and see it as an abstract idea in its own right, you can identify what's going wrong, but in a huge pile of wrong, it doesn't stand out that much. For example, when Gilbert, in the end says "When we trust the government, when we believe it will work... When we have blind, uncompromising, radical trust in those who can solve our problems for us. Only then can we receive their blessing", you look at that on its own and it's like... wait, you're crazy at best, and enabling the Nazis at worst. But in the context of "Once we trust in God. Once we pray for wisdom for our political leaders, knowing the Almighty will bless those in power." it becomes, if not more correct, then more reasonable. Of course if you believed in God, and believed that he poured out his blessings on the faithful then of course he would do his best to help the state be successful. It's God's sanctioned realm on earth, to trust in God is to trust in the state. It's actually a real argument that was used by (among others) Paul Althaus to justify the rise of Nazism. God has anointed the german volk as sacred, the volk has selected Hitler to be its leader, God blesses Hitler as he blesses the volk, political dissent is an affront to God. Simple as that.
But, right, what Gilbert is saying is that putting your blind, obedient faith in God has a necessary consequence that one puts their blind, obedient faith in JAINES, and you start to see just how dangerous of an idea this is.
Paradigm wrote:On that note, I must admit that, getting into the last chapters, I almost found too many questions unanswered. What fate would Geomides see? Would Jaines and Gilbert come into conflict with the war-vs-love idea (or Khorne vs Slaneesh)? Would Claire and Lucas be reunited? What would become of Melchoir? Thinking of it more, though, I figured that didn't matter. While I look forward to seeing what comes next if and when you write anything else, I think the results of the paths each character took did conclude themselves really; it sounds somewhat cliched to say it, but the 'journey' they took with their various rises and falls was ultimately complete, even if the circumstances were not.
Once again, a nice way of saying it.
This effect you're seeing was also actually done on purpose, and it's because of Dune. I've read that book more than any other, and one of the things I like best about it is, as you put it, the story of the different actors comes to an end, but the situation remains deeply unresolved. And I love that about Dune, so much. I've read the first book over and over, but I have absolutely no interest now in reading any of the sequels because that sense of ambiguity and filling in my own blanks with my own ideas would be so completely ruined.
And so I tried to have that same thing here, sort of. Melchoir is probably the best example of this. You could say that he's the good guy, and that he symbolically ascends to heaven at the end. But you could also say that he was responsible and failed in his entire purpose, and so he's been taken to his final judgement. In either case, right, the story of Melchoir is done vis a vis Geomides. He's left the planet. There's nothing more for him to contribute to that story... while at the same time things are left unresolved.
And the setting itself is that way. Geomides is left in a state of complete chaos. No food, civil war everywhere, demonic cults. Geomides, as an idea, as a setting, is done. The only last bit of ambiguity is its fate. Of course, that's an important ambiguity, but in a way, it shouldn't be resolved on stage. There should be room for creativity. It's one of those things where I don't think I can write as well as the reader's imagination of what happens, and if I sort of "mopped up" everything, it would wind up being a rather dry exercise in plot.
Of course, there's not to say there couldn't be a sequel, but it would be a very different kind of book. About the inquisition cleansing the planet, or some space marine bolter porn, or something, but it wouldn't be a simple continuation of this story, now that it's complete. There's nowhere crazier for Jaines to go. There's no more tension I could build up with Gilbert, or any of the other characters for that matter. They really are a spent force by the end of this book. The ambiguous ending isn't just sequel bait.
Alright, I've heavily edited the prologue. There's almost 500 more words in it than there were before, and it reads a lot more smoothly now.
I'll be editing the next two chapters after that, and then doing my half-rewrite of chapter 31, and then I'll be done for the moment.
I have this sneaking suspicion that I might be getting rather close to 250,000 words by the time the full edit is done. I suppose if I add as few as 160 words to each remaining chapter, then I'd wind up hitting it. Of course, not every chapter needs that, but 160 isn't a lot, and there are some chapters that definitely need more than that...
Well, it's been awhile, and I wanted to give you guys an update.
After finishing the rough draft I took a couple of weeks off, and then went back in and made a few revisions that I knew I wanted to make. Such as explaining a little better why Lucas likes Claire, and why Melchoir was in such deep gak in the beginning. And finally picking a single way of spelling Marshal Gannon's name.
I also, as mentioned, did a bit of re-writing at the beginning, mostly to flesh stuff out. I've learned that it definitely took a few chapters before I really found my feet on this one.
Anyways, after that I moved to California. Across the forboding Great Divide Basin, the stunning salt flats of Bonneville and the insane traffic of the Sierras. All in a U-haul with three cats in the cab with me.
Anyways, after taking a bit of time to get settled here, I am now editing again, proper. Several more coats of polish were applied to the first few chapters, which started the worst but need to be the best. I'm now up to the granary massacre.
Some of the chapters have been refreshingly straightforward, just a few little corrections, but otherwise it's more like I'm just reading them.
Some of them, though, have needed some tough work done on them.
Thankfully, all that pre-writing means there's no major flaws in the work (plot holes, pointless characters, etc.), and the dialogue runs fairly smoothly, and the like. The real thing I'm editing for is something that I couldn't really plan out in advance: style.
Much of my editing has been painfully cutting detail in order to make it run more smoothly, and some of the dialogue has been cleaned up a bit, and the narrative focused in a bit (there were too many places I was speaking in poetry where I needed to use prose, especially at the beginning).
But easily my biggest problem has been cadence issues. That is, its "speakability", the way that word stress falls through the sentence. It's a little bit esoteric, but if I show you a few examples, I'm sure you'll get it right away.
For example, I just spent all day on and off trying to fix the first couple of paragraphs of the scene where Lucas and the rebels make their escape to Cupercourt. Honestly, most of my work has been with the opening paragraphs, which can sometimes take hours of work.
Anyways, here are two (of many) things I changed in this chapter.
Original:
"Pretty clever, eh?" General Milliers jibed, seeing the stunned faces of the newcomers, "Don't think you're the first this sight has surprised."
And it was replaced with:
"Pretty clever, eh?" General Milliers jibed, seeing the stunned faces of the newcomers, "Don't think you're the first this little view has surprised."
So, it's a pretty subtle change, and a rather easy one (most of my cadence problems are fixed pretty quickly - spotting them is usually rather intuitive), but if you read the last part, you can feel how the revision is better. It's because of cadence.
If you plot out the stressed syllables (*) and unstressed syllables(-) of the second part in quotation marks, you get:
Original:
***-***--*
New
***-***-**-*
And it might not seem like much, but it makes all the difference. The first part of both of them starts with a nice ***- pattern repeated twice, but then the original has a two-unstressed-next-to-each-other almost haiatus-like gap.
The fix solves that issue. Now, each unstressed syllable is always separated by stressed ones, and furthermore, the pattern has this nice taper effect of ***-**-*.
As I said, most of these are pretty easy: flipping word order, getting rid of the word "the" (I've hacked out dozens by now) when it's not necessary.
But some of them, though, are hard.
Some of them are cadence nightmares, and they were created that way in the first place because I was so focused on setting a scene in a certain way, and including certain bits of detail, and having things in a certain order, and making sure not to duplicate word use.
Sometimes, this creates very serious cadence issues, like in the beginning of this Lucas chapter that can take all day to untangle. To fix the error without causing a bunch of new ones that I avoided in the first place.
So, if we look at the introduction to the chapter, it started out as:
Lucas breathed in deeply as the canopy of leaves far above shimmered and sighed in the breeze. Sunlight sparkled down through a brilliant kaleidoscope of green, the shifting verdant glow dancing in the treetops. A domed mosaic of stained glass tiles filtering the light above.
But it was the fragrant odor filling him up inside which drew his attention. It would pass by subtly, even unnoticed to most, but someone so fully intimate with this place knew it without a second thought. A week ago, the forest was filled with the smells of moss and leaves, of life and growing things. But it had changed now, literally overnight. The trees were no longer sending sap out into the leaves, but were now starting to pull back, conserving their resources, beginning the long slow crawl towards dormancy. The air was no longer filled with water and green, but now wafted the scent of bark and drying grass. The visceral mulch replacing with a delicate fragrance, more subtle and complex, with hints of spice.
There were other signs for those who were looking, as well. The air was still hot, but there was less sopping heaviness. There was a breeze now, blowing in from the east, and when Lucas laid down at night on his hard bed roll, the faint clicking sound of katydids gently called down from the treetops.
There was no question about it. It was now late summer in the wooded hills of Cupercourt.
And it ended up as:
Lucas breathed in deeply. Far above, the canopy sighed in the breeze. Sunlight sparkled down a brilliant kaleidoscope of green, the shifting verdant glow dancing through the treetops. A domed mosaic of stained glass leaves shimmering down light from above.
It was the fragrant odor drifting through the forest air that captured his attention, though. It would pass by subtly, even unnoticed to most, but he was intimate with this place. He could sense it instantly.
A week ago, the forest filled with smells of moss and leaves, of life and growing things, but it was different now, changed literally overnight. The trees were no longer sending sap out to the leaves, but were starting to pull back, beginning their long, slow crawl towards dormancy. The air was no longer filled with water and green, but wafted the scent of bark and drying grass. The visceral mulch replaced with a delicate fragrance, more subtle and complex.
There were other signs as well, for those who were looking. The air was still hot, but there was less sopping heaviness. There was a breeze now, blowing in from the east, and when Lucas laid down at night, the faint clicking sound of katydids gently called down from the treetops.
There was no question about it. It was now late summer in the wooded hills of Cupercourt.
Once again, the edit just reads better, and it's because of cadence.
The particular offender in this case is "But it was the fragrant odor filling him up inside which drew his attention." When you plot that out, it becomes:
----*-*-**-***-*--*-
Which is practically random. A bunch of unstressed, followed by an acceleration to more stressed, but then breaking the pattern, and then some more unstressed, and then a random stressed toward the end. It jerks around unevenly.
Now, replace that with the sentence "It was the fragrant odor drifting through the forest air that captured his attention, though", and it plots:
---*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-,-
which has this nice on-off-on-off pattern, and is even nearly symmetrical.
Of course, I'm not actually breaking down my entire work into plots like this. As mentioned, it's all rather intuitive. You sort of just know when cadence is rhythmic just like how you can hear when two instruments are out of tune with each other.
But "tuning" the work can be hard when I also don't want to hack out a bunch of detail, or when I want to say something very specific. Especially if I don't want to accidentally duplicate or make a giant run-on sentence or something.
Anyways, this kind of thing is thankfully receding somewhat as the piece goes on. I definitely became a better writer over the course of this work. Hopefully the editing will go even faster and I can have even more chapters that I can just sort of read and be done with it.
I'll let you guys know when I get it finished and sent off to a copy editor.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/09/18 21:11:16
Alright, so, another quick update. After a month and a half of editing, I've now got a completed manuscript.
Now that I've gotten a "final" draft, the work is going off to a copy editor, once I can find one. I don't know how long they'll sit on it doing their editing thing, but hopefully it will be measured more in weeks than in months once I get everything lined up (and who knows how long that will wind up being).
Once that's done, I'll make the recommended changes, format the document, throw together some cover art, and that will be that. Just be warned that once the book gets published, I'm going to change this thread. I'll leave up the first few chapters in their as-published form, but then the rest of it is going to be taken down. So, you know, unless you want to chip in a few bucks later, do your reading now.
As for the document itself, I'm actually rather proud of it. A few medium-sized things got fixed (some sort of half-rewriting on a few chapters, etc.), and a few things, especially the beginning, got fleshed out a little bit more. Over all, it's a lot more solid work.
Also, interestingly enough, it was the first time I read this book. You know, as a single entity, rather than nitty gritty chapter-by chapter writing. I've got to say I'm rather happy with it, and think I've created something that resonates with me, at least. I can only hope it sort of takes off and effects other people as well.
Interestingly enough, as a curious side note, my rough draft wound up being 236,734 words for 549 pages. My edited draft comes in at 232,265 words for 562 pages. That's the loss of 4,500 words - a chapter and a half - while also adding two more chapters of by-page length. I can't quite explain that, other than to think perhaps I did some formatting different or that I replaced some blocks of text with dialogue.
Anyways, I just thought I'd give you guys an update. I might do another one when I get the piece back from the copy editor, or I might just do it when the book goes on sale. Fingers crossed!
Maximus Bitch wrote:I found it a little too convoluted, as evidenced by your lengthy commentaries.
Well, my two goalposts for this novel were Dune and Game of Thrones. Hence excessive intrigue.
I guess the idea is to create something that's interesting enough on the surface level to enjoy reading if you don't want to write a master's dissertation on it, but to also provide that kind of depth for the people who go looking for it. The only proper problem is if things start getting confusing, which is something I'd definitely need to fix. Was there anything like that to your reading?
Maximus Bitch wrote:It reads a lot like a graphic novel. In fact I actually visualised the characters and I saw speech bubbles pop up when I read the dialogue. haha.
Similar to the HH novels, since most of the authors have a comic background.
Interesting that you say that, because I don't. For me, things more played through my head like a movie that I was sort of reverse-engineering into a book.
I suppose there are going to be certain stylistic things that are in common, though, as graphic novels tend to be more action-oriented (what with not having to describe with words scenes they can show in pictures), and that's the case for me as well. You probably noticed a lot of these kinds of cascading short sentences. Sentences like these ones. Now.
Maximus Bitch wrote:I think it is better to finish the entire story and then wait for feedback, which allows you to get the big picture.
Of course, few will read through the entire story. But adjusting your story mid way is not ideal.
Well, this was more of a publicity stunt than a collaborative effort. The whole story was planned out in advance, and I don't THINK anything changed part way through, so much as I fleshed things out that didn't seem obvious enough.
On the plus side, though, I do have someone properly reading it all through. Yes, I've hired an editor. I had to take out a loan to afford one, but I want to play in the big leagues now, which means I need to do things like invest money in getting the copy straightened out. What's interesting about the particular one I chose is that about half of the stuff he's published himself as an author have been poetry. He understands language used for effect enough not to just take all those coma splices and convert them into a drab series of independent clauses.
Also, he gave me a free sample of his editing before I hired him, which wound up being huge, as it narrowed the field quickly when I asked my other candidates to do the same. Some couldn't be bothered to do fifteen minutes of free work to possibly nail down a contract worth thousands, and some were just really bad at editing (especially, as mentioned, changing style stuff), and some just didn't catch as many mistakes as the person I went with. And let me tell you, nothing sells your services as an editor like red ink.
The person is about a quarter of the way through the book as of this writing. The deadline is for january 15th, but he thinks he'll probably be done before that, given how smoothly things are already working out.
Meanwhile, I've been starting to work on the next phase of this process. That means cover art, and doing some research into amazon, as well as some market research for how I should go about selling it. Especially determining a price.
The first part has been relatively easy. I've been throwing together a bunch of rough-draft ideas for ways in which I could go about making cover art. The best I've come up with so far is this:
What do you think?
For the second part, well, that's going to be tricky. Depending on my price point I'm going to have to sell somewhere between 2000 and 3500 copies in order to both repay my loan for this editor, and make enough on top to hire an editor for the next book without taking on debt.
I guess I can do an informal survey now, how much do you think a kindle e-book version of this should go for? $2.99? $4.99? More? I'm kind of stuck on the dilemma of not making it too cheap ("It must not be very good if it costs that much. Not worth my time, most like"), and too expensive ("It must be pretty good to go for that price, but I don't know if I'm willing to bet that much on an unknown quantity").
Regarding the cover, I think you could perhaps add some interest and tie in more to the actual story. Right now there are trees. Trees do not immediately shout sci-fi, nor epic, nor ruin, survivors, danger, or 'themselves'. I am no expert, but find below a little experiment with your image. Maybe it's not at all what you're after, I won't be insulted . Either way don't use it as there's possibly some sort of copyright on those faces.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/12/09 13:47:27
2014/12/02 20:14:06
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A full-length novel - COMPLETE!]
Oddly enough, though, what I was going for with this particular attempt was to relate the image to the content at the expense of the genre. Sort of the idea that mankind has been scrubbed out and everything's been returned to nature. Has been reset, so to speak. The setting is one of freedom and challenge, and what results is sort of a thought experiment about what the characters decide to do about it.
If anything it emphasizes the "doing it to themselves" nature of the material by providing a clean, modern face to what they could have chosen to do.
Another thing I'm trying to do, I suppose, is to try and target a kind of reader, rather than advertise the kind of book, which might be a mistake.
The problem I'm having is that I am, in a way, trying to avoid making it come across as just another sci-fi dime novel. Something I'd naturally assume was filled with nothing but cliches and stilted dialogue. Even if my work doesn't seriously transcend this, I wouldn't want to put people off from it immediately.
Put another way, just as I've written a book that I'd actually read, I'm searching for a cover that I'd actually pick up off the shelf. Something to distinguish itself from covers like...
None of which, to judge the books by their cover, I have any interest in reading.
I guess I'm just looking for something that doesn't scream dollar table at the grocery store or library basement clearance sale...
So I finished reading your novel last Friday. I actually started when you first posted this thread but was put off by one of the early sex scenes. When I saw you finished I decided to give it another go last week and I'm glad I did.
First of all I'd like to say major kudos for finishing a novel. I know writing is hard work. I think the story works and has some great potential. My main points of critique would be firstly that characters are sometimes developed by saying what they are like rather than their words and deeds showing how they are. Secondly there seems to be a fair amount of mocking going on, e.g. the Geomidians considering 20-hour weeks to be near slavery. This is funny, but, sometimes, for me, clashed with the general intent of the story because it made the plot hard to swallow (as in: "no way they'd buy that"). Also, the end. When I was 10 pages from finishing I thought "I wonder how all this will resolve in 10 pages" and when I finished I was like "Wait, wut? What happens to the main character?" who in my mind was Lucas. Afterwards I read your afterword and found out Melchoir was the main guy. This still doesn't really click for me, but I guess the story itself is kind of the main character, something bigger than the individuals anyway. Not saying you must change the end, but it's just how I experienced it.
The best thing about the novel, I think, is that it has lots of drive. Not just pace, but the sense of an idea behind the story that wants to be revealed. I don't actually know you at all obviously, apart from some internet posts, but it seems to me that this drive reflects you as a person.
Next I just wanted to reflect on some of the stuff you said in your afterword, from my random reader's perspective. Some is an echo of what I say above. Maybe some of it sounds harsh, I dunno, it's just my gut reaction to the afterword. At no point reading the story did I actually think 'this is rubbish', so take that as my exoneration-clause .
“As such, the core of the story would revolve around Melchoir”
To me Lucas was the main protagonist. Melchoir (how does one pronounce this anyway?) always seemed more in the background, reacting rather than acting.
“and around a second character who would depose him”
I have trouble considering Jaines the main antagonist too, as she’s so over the top silly.
“Lucas, who wasn't actually intended to be a recurring character AT ALL”
He is the one I could best relate to.
“One of the things I knew I wanted to try to do is make a serious attempt at a literary device known as Chiasmus.”
I didn’t notice it was that (nor would I want to have noticed), but the plot did feel like there was a clear idea behind it and did seem to fold nicely back onto itself.
“everyone but Gilbert has a chapter which is basically a conversation with Rochefield.”
That does help tie stuff together.
“You see how Melchoir has certain beliefs, and when they're challenged, which ones actually stick around.”
I think this could be more worked out, as goes for the whole character if meant to be the main guy. Not much really seems to ‘happen’ with him.
”For example, follow the path of Claire and Lucas. They meet up and have sex, then they meed up and almost have sex”
Perhaps as a consequence of you intending these characters to be ‘extra’, it was these scenes that originally didn’t sit well with me as there was hardly any build up to it and thus felt like ‘oh let’s put a sex scene here, because sex.’
“The first is that the characters, for the first two-thirds of the book (or longer), are all pretty flat and unchanging. I always like the "discover the character" way of doing things, rather than the "know the character, then watch him change" sort of deal, so that's what a part of it was.”
I think that’s fine, but a lot of ‘discovering’ about characters was just being told about them, e.g. ‘Melchoir is not political’, more than discovering he’s not policital through his actions or thoughts or how others respond to him. This saying how it is rather than showing, or on top of it, is something I noticed frequently. Not necessarily bad, but it doesn’t help any flatness of characters I think.
“the rebels are the bad guys.”
I never felt this way, partly because I figured Lucas was the main good guy.
“Jaines' mental health issues.”
I think this could possibly be a little more subtle if she is to be the main antagonist as I found her quirks entertaining, especially early on, but they made it hard to take her serious as a character and it also hurt the credibility of the plot at times, for me.
“Lucas and Claire and Melchoir may not have changed much, but Jaines and especially Damien”
I thought it was more of a strengthening of what they were already, rather than change. Hugo might have surprised me the most as character development goes, as he starts out hard but ends vulnerable and softer.
“The same could be said about Marshals Gannon and Archon, and Lucas' friend Paul. It's a pretty small thing, but I'm actually kind of proud of that one.”
I liked Paul .
“Nearly as much as that I've been able to juggle 7 main characters in a single work.”
No mean feat, indeed.
“this story was going to be a tragedy, and not just a drama with a sad ending. I mean it in the specific way wherein everything bad that happens to the characters more or less happens because it's their own fault: they do it to themselves.”
That was clear and everyone’s constant failure did work for the story, I think.
“For example, literally every problem that Damien has is one he brings on himself. He is constantly, endlessly overreaching in his quest for security.”
Maybe a little extra could be done to make Damien more of a good guy. To me he was the crook to begin with and his desire for a secure future not very legitimate.
(Melchoir) “You know that he is a very competent character,”
Not so sure. It’s said he is competent and such, but he’s also failing all the time.
“He's also the only one who has an accurate understanding of his own faults by the end of the story.”
Well, there are the things that are said about him all the time and he does repeat them himself at the end, but there’s no real depth to it, I felt.
“He has a rather simple, soldierly viewpoint on things where he assumes that his subordinates are competent, and are willing to use their initiatives to solve problems on the ground as they occur.”
I think this could also be shown stronger and that doing so would help in building his character.
“but he just never comes across (with the exception of his scene with Lucas) as being all that personable.”
Actually the most intriguing scenes with M for me were the one-on-one chats where people who disliked him as governor actually got to like him as a person.
”He's also, of course, the proper good guy in this story, even if the sense of perspective is slanted to make him look bad in the beginning. I mean (accidentally, of course), he's the only person who wears white literally every time you see him. But it's a tragedy, so he has to lose.”
He felt more neutral than good (or bad) to me I guess. I also don’t see him lose as he seems to come out quite well, both compared to everyone else and compared to what you’d expect from the Imperium. That inquisitor man is real nice to him.
“Hugo Rochefield is an interesting character.”
Yes.
(Claire) “She has a white-collar job, and a small apartment.”
Yes, but royal-like background which isn’t all that normal.
(Lucas) “In any case, the character is rather lightweight, being motivated mostly by his desire to settle down and stop being a rebel anymore (which he never achieves), and, of course, his gushing, undying love for Claire.”
I think there’s more potential for him though. Possibly due to how he was the main character for me and easiest to relate to.
(Damien) “how surprisingly satisfying it was to write a well-written classical villain. That sort of cocky, talented, arrogant, always getting what he wants type, and, to make it worse, he actually gets what he wants, generally.”
Possibly even better if he is more clearly slated as a ‘good’ guy in the beginning with a very legitimate reason to do as he does?
“In the beginning, Damien almost really isn't a bad guy. Yes, he's scheezy and awful and you're meant to hate him, of course, but step back for a moment.”
Or, make the reader step back?
“Jaines was set up from the very beginning to be the main antagonist.”
Were we supposed to notice from the start?
“She's nuts. In the beginning you see her OCD as a cute character trait, a bit of weird on a funky kind of girl. But then "more hoes" becomes "alphebetizing rebels" becomes "shooting rats in basement" becomes "letting hundreds get slaughtered because she won't change her attack plan because it has symmetry", and at every step, the laughter becomes a little more nervous.”
This does work nicely, not sure about the rats though.
“why does she start the revolution in the first place? Because she's bored.”
Perhaps a main antagonist would come across stronger with a somewhat deeper motivation? I dunno.
“Jaines is also, in a way, my ability to vent the anger of my generation as well. She's sort of lots of things about millenials all rolled into one. She comes from a nice background, and is well-educated, but has no way of putting that to use. There are no jobs available to her and she's very poor.”
But, in what is supposed to be a post-apocalypse world, isn’t mostly everyone?
“it all comes crashing down on her in the end.”
Does it really? She seems to come out on top all the time. I guess she won’t quite survive taking the envoy, but she seems to keep on ‘winning’ throughout the story even though she’s clearly insane.
“Indeed, her entire movement is a thinly-veiled recounting of how the Nazis came to power in the first place.”
Though in a sillier fashion. Like outrage at 20 hour workweeks. I regularly wasn’t sure if there was intentional satire or not.
“Gilbert is actually the bad guy.” […] “It's part of what makes Gilbert's character SO good - he's insidious about it.”
As in he’s consciously trying to be evil? I’d have put him down for accidental evil, an idiot being used.
“You are made to feel sympathetic that so many bad things are happening to this poor man who just wants what's best for everyone”
Maybe him being an idiot is too thickly laid on? Especially as it’s always him saying he wants the best for everyone rather than the reader interpreting his actions as such. I thought he was meant to mock bureaucracy in general. You know, people in offices doing stuff with no ties to reality, in a paper world.
“in the end, the crowning piece to his whole character, he gives his sermon.”
This was too long for me I think, or something. It was my least favourite bit in the novel if I had to pick.
“is that he wins. Jaines and Damien fall and are about to be destroyed, respectively. Gilbert, meanwhile, is the only person happy at the end. The only person who gets exactly what he wants.”
Yes, though I kinda felt like it would be very temporary the moment he got his job back.
“Fawning accolades by mindless supporters.”
I didn’t really get why he was suddenly popular?
“There are a few other things I want to do as well, like sort of give more of a reason why Lucas is attracted to claire, and explain better the situation with the imperium (flesh out the backstory a little more), and at least mention why Melchoir had such a time stamping out Jaines after the Granary.”
Sounds good.
“And I want to completely re-write the bathtub scene with Melchoir and Rochefield. It's cute and clever and endears you to Melchoir somewhat, but it's too much of a break with his character-as-presented, in this book at least. It makes him look a little too much like Jaines, I think.”
I actually liked that scene, gave M some character.
So there's that, for what it's worth . Thanks for the read.
Oh, and about the cover: I agree about not doing anything like the three examples you posted. They're really uninspired. I do still think the cover could represent the story better, including the 'flap text' (keep the last bit though, "they are faced ... themselves" is great).
2014/12/08 04:58:33
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A full-length novel - COMPLETE!]
Sgt. Oddball wrote:firstly that characters are sometimes developed by saying what they are like rather than their words and deeds showing how they are.
Firstly and most poignantly. Character was my weakest suit coming into this project, and was easily the most... ambitious part. For reference, the last novel I wrote had only 1 main character (who wasn't terribly likable), one supporting character, and only two other characters that even had names, but were mostly ancillary to the story. Of course, ambition is not a synonym for success.
As you say, showing rather than telling is the true skill here, and I think in some ways I did it rather well, but it is, I'll agree, weakest in the place where I was weakest - character. The kind of expositioney parts to the chapters were particularly tough. In a way, it's an effect of the complexity of the plot where it always seemed I needed a "last time since you saw this character..." part.
I did make an attempt of showing, though, and I think there is a fair bit of it in here. For example, you are told that Melchoir likes to handle things personally on several occasions, but then you also have the scene where he defends himself at the granary, and the scene where he saves the transformer, and the scene where he's digging a ditch, and where he escapes from the train station, and where he leads his troops personally in battle at the end. That's a case of both telling and showing, not just telling.
What I'd really like to know if there were things that came across ONLY as telling and never showing. I could certainly tell less if it's distracting, but it's a much more serious error if it's never shown as well.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Secondly there seems to be a fair amount of mocking going on, e.g. the Geomidians considering 20-hour weeks to be near slavery. This is funny, but, sometimes, for me, clashed with the general intent of the story because it made the plot hard to swallow (as in: "no way they'd buy that")
Well, it's a broad-spectrum attempt at being critical. Some parts are absurd, while other parts are parodies, while other parts are just a little mean-spirited.
And there were a few parts that were designed to be a little funny, like the prayer at the first council meeting, for example. I guess the only real problem is where it's detracting, and why.
You specifically mention the original grievances behind Jaines and one of my friends also noted that I don't do a good job of making people believe in the revolution at the beginning.
... but that's sort of the point. Protests and riots in privileged, developed countries is almost entirely pointless and fatuous. The reader not seeing why people make such a big fuss about something should bring to mind the exact same reaction that people have about it in the real world. The way I feel about Jaines' revolution is much the same way I feel about the recent rioting in Ferguson, MO in the United States.
If your reaction is "Why should I care?" then that is, in a way, as telling of the kind of person you are as if you look at the revolution and think "Go Jaines!" And if you take the stance that both you and I seem to, then it only adds to the sense of tragedy. Things could have worked out, but greedy political ideology ruined everything.
Sgt. Oddball wrote: Also, the end. When I was 10 pages from finishing I thought "I wonder how all this will resolve in 10 pages" and when I finished I was like "Wait, wut?
Love it or hate it, that part is definitely sticking. In fact, I'd much rather it be annoying than ambivalent in this case.
This is one of the few things that I've straight-up copied from Dune. I've read that book like a half-dozen times now, which blows every other book I've read out of the water. The thing I like absolutely best about it, though, is the ending.
In that book, all of the characters wind up at their natural conclusion of the story. Paul reaches the height of power, the old emperor ceases to be a player, Jessica completes her fall into obscurity, and several characters are dead. There doesn't actually NEED to be any story beyond that point - things that have happened over the course of the book have run their course. If there's anything more happening, it would have to be in a new book. Continuing in the same one would just be rambling after the fact.
But, of course, Dune opens itself up to a sequel very easily because even though the characters have run their course the overarching plot / changes in the setting could really be said to be just beginning. The same is true with this book as well.
The last little piece to this as well is a personal one. Though I love Dune and have read it a bunch, I've never read any of those sequels. The beauty of the first book is that it could continue on in so many different ways, the imagination runs wild. I don't actually WANT to know how the story goes on because, by this point, any one possible set out outcomes couldn't be as good as all of the ones in my mind put together.
And it's sort of the same way here. The book would be degraded, I think, if Claire and Lucas were to meet onstage. It would make plain something that's better left as a mystery. The fate of the planet itself is best left unrevealed as well for the same reason. Let the reader read into it what they will.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Not just pace, but the sense of an idea behind the story that wants to be revealed. I don't actually know you at all obviously, apart from some internet posts, but it seems to me that this drive reflects you as a person.
Yeah, in a way this is one way of telling the story of my time living in Champaign, IL.
If you end the story with a sense of sad, empty bitterness draped over a deep sense of frustration and wasted potential, then you'll know how I felt when I got in the moving van to leave that cursed place.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:To me Lucas was the main protagonist.
He is the one I could best relate to.
This is a genuine shock to me. Especially as Lucas is rather tangential to the main story (the revolution), only interacting with it in the minor role involving the rebel capture of Cupercourt.
I guess I should take it as a compliment that something that's relatively meaningless to me could be meaningful to others. And, I suppose, that the book is open enough to interpretation to be able to see it as primarily about any of the characters, rather than just the ones intended.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:”For example, follow the path of Claire and Lucas. They meet up and have sex, then they meed up and almost have sex”
Perhaps as a consequence of you intending these characters to be ‘extra’, it was these scenes that originally didn’t sit well with me as there was hardly any build up to it and thus felt like ‘oh let’s put a sex scene here, because sex.’
(Claire) “She has a white-collar job, and a small apartment.”
Yes, but royal-like background which isn’t all that normal.
Your skepticism isn't wholly unjustified either. The main reason I included the romance novel arc in the first place was to force me to have at least one female character, and to increase the appeal of female readers (you wouldn't believe how many romance novels my wife has downloaded on her kindle).
But, of course, there is a bit of wonkiness. Usually (but not exclusively) the romance leads don't have sex for the first time until the middle of the book, or even towards the end. The problem that I had, though, is that it wouldn't fit the rest of the novel for those two characters to have everything else working out and coming together while in every other respect everything else was falling apart.
In a way, this sort of forced me to start in the middle of the romance story, with the characters already together as a couple of sorts. You're right that it's a bit risky leading with the sex scene rather than having half a book to become invested in the characters first. In a way, though, I don't feel like I have much of a choice.
And so I tried to make it the best I could, given its position. To show Claire as conflicted and naive instead of slutty or stupid. To show her as having a relationship that she wants to keep, but is already rather fragile, setting it up for its decay rather than its blossoming. It's a romance novel in a tragedy, after all, not the other way around.
I don't know how convinced I am about it either, but, well, there it is, I guess. I don't know how much can be changed.
As for Claire in general, yeah, she came from a nice background, but otherwise, I'd still say she's rather relatable, and most of her chapters, before Cupercourt, at least, being relatively mundane to anchor down the craziness.
On a related note, she's also the counter to Jaines. As you say, everyone did poorly as a result of the apocalypse, and you have two examples of characters that had a long way to fall. Claire's responsible use of social connections and diligent work ethic caused her to make a life for herself that in some way resembled the old. Unlike Jaines, who just went crazy due to her wasted potential and decided to start a riot about it. Claire is sort of the normal and conservative. The proverbial straight man to Jaines. Well, and to the rest of the story.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Melchoir (how does one pronounce this anyway?) always seemed more in the background, reacting rather than acting.
“You see how Melchoir has certain beliefs, and when they're challenged, which ones actually stick around.”
I think this could be more worked out, as goes for the whole character if meant to be the main guy. Not much really seems to ‘happen’ with him.
“You know that he is a very competent character,”
Not so sure. It’s said he is competent and such, but he’s also failing all the time.
“He's also the only one who has an accurate understanding of his own faults by the end of the story.”
Well, there are the things that are said about him all the time and he does repeat them himself at the end, but there’s no real depth to it, I felt.
“He has a rather simple, soldierly viewpoint on things where he assumes that his subordinates are competent, and are willing to use their initiatives to solve problems on the ground as they occur.”
I think this could also be shown stronger and that doing so would help in building his character.
Mel-choir. Mel like the name, choir as in the group of people who sing.
I guess I may have overemphasized in the afterword Melchoir being the main character. He was in the pre-writing phase, but, as you saw, rather quickly became diluted into being roughly equal with the others as the course of the actual writing progressed. In the finished product, he is, rather, less of a main protagonist. He's still the author's avatar, though, and still the mary sue.
The tricky thing with Melchoir is that he's the only character who doesn't want anything to change. Everybody else is trying to play the system to their advantage. As you say, this puts Melchoir on the other side of the fence from the entire rest of the cast. He's the one reacting, rather than acting. In a way, I think this does a good job emphasizing how much of an alien he is to everything. Which, I suppose is a subtle way of showing him as being different in a way that is otherwise explained several times. It's kind of hard to show someone not scheming.
I think it's funny that you say that he's always failing though, as the opposite is the case. In the end, he is a failure because he fails in the one overarching way that really matters, but look at everything else in detail. He stops the council from splitting up along geographical or occupational lines. He stops Jaines from blowing up all the world's food. He is able to get the armaments program started to ease the interdict, despite everyone else's objections. He saves the project from being fatally set back by personally stopping the transformer from exploding, and were it not for Jaines, he would have succeeded in meeting quota. He also is able to finally defeat the rebel army, and retake Cupercourt, and he won every engagement that he had to turn his power fist on for. Were it not for the horrible bungling of his impromptu officer corps, was leading an otherwise successful strategic withdraw into the forest.
What's strange about Melchoir is that he wins every battle but, in the end, loses the war. It's interesting that the one failure overshadows all the other success.
I don't really know how I could show Melchoir as more of a straightforward or soldierly person, though. I feel like almost everything he does in this book sticks with that character type. Perhaps it was more of an issue of the character clicking less, than it was with something lacking in his description? I hope?
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Maybe a little extra could be done to make Damien more of a good guy. To me he was the crook to begin with and his desire for a secure future not very legitimate.
Well, the problem with making him a straight good guy in the beginning means he runs the same risks that you say you have with Jaines. If the character is too likable in the beginning, how convincing of a bad guy will he be in the end?
In any case, it's once again a contrast with Jaines. There needed to be at least one proper, conventional villain, and I didn't want it to be her. Because...
Sgt. Oddball wrote:I have trouble considering Jaines the main antagonist too, as she’s so over the top silly.
“Jaines' mental health issues.”
I think this could possibly be a little more subtle if she is to be the main antagonist as I found her quirks entertaining, especially early on, but they made it hard to take her serious as a character and it also hurt the credibility of the plot at times, for me.
“Jaines was set up from the very beginning to be the main antagonist.”
Were we supposed to notice from the start?
“She's nuts. In the beginning you see her OCD as a cute character trait, a bit of weird on a funky kind of girl. But then "more hoes" becomes "alphebetizing rebels" becomes "shooting rats in basement" becomes "letting hundreds get slaughtered because she won't change her attack plan because it has symmetry", and at every step, the laughter becomes a little more nervous.”
This does work nicely, not sure about the rats though.
“it all comes crashing down on her in the end.”
Does it really? She seems to come out on top all the time. I guess she won’t quite survive taking the envoy, but she seems to keep on ‘winning’ throughout the story even though she’s clearly insane.
So, Jaines was the trickiest character to balance for me. Originally, as mentioned, she was going to be the main antagonist, but, like Melchoir, she sort of gets softened as the other characters got bulked up more.
The important part with her, though, is that she's NOT supposed to be the classical villain. You aren't meant to hate her. If anything, you're supposed to be on her side at the beginning, which is some of the reason behind the silliness. She's the youthful energy you cheer for, not the power-mad Damien, or the apparently-aloof Melchoir. The end shouldn't be obvious from the beginning in this case. The two sides should come across as roughly equal in the reader's favor (or with a slight bent against the Folerans).
So no, she's supposed to develop as an antagonist over the course of the book, rather than start out as one, like Damien.
The apex of this character, though, is that, like the best-written parts of the other characters, she drags you into her world. Part of what makes her so crazy is her insane sense of positivism. Melchoir leaves temporarily to lead the assault on Cupercourt, and in her mind it becomes him fleeing the capital, afraid of her and her army, the city ripe for conquest. And, of course, it sort of isn't, and her version of reality is questioned to her face. Her reaction, of course, is to steamroll over it, declaring her position again by the power of assertion. You see it again with her final chapter with the imperial envoy. You're sort of left to question if she genuinely believes that everything is fine, if she thinks that things will be fine if only she believes in it, or if she understands things are falling apart, and she's just lying about it.
And the funny thing is that, at least in this case, it worked. Just like how you thought that Melchoir failed at everything, so you've ended with the impression that she was a winner and came out ahead when, in fact, she failed at everything the entire book, except for the one thing that really mattered. She just pretends like every loss is a win. In a way, you've gotten kind of sucked up in her delusion, which was exactly the point.
Apart from the silliness, though, what else comes across as particularly incredible about the character?
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Gilbert
Well, the thing is that he's not stupid. He's not just some hopeless flunky, even if that's sort of how he winds up in the end. What his tale is is one of compassion gone deeply awry. About a desire to help married to dangerous ideas about religion and governance, rather than to a sound ethical code. About enabling, rather than supporting. I guess if you think this all comes across as stupidity, then welcome to conservative politics, I suppose.
For me, Gilbert's final chapter is the apogee of the book. It's sort of the manifesto of everything that has gone wrong in the entire story. The spiritual soul to the complete tragic failure.
And yeah, it's implied that things will go very, VERY badly for Gilbert once the story continues on. He'll probably get ripped apart by a pink tentacle monster or get burned to death by the inquisition, or bombarded from orbit. In a way, the fact that he thinks he's won makes his ultimate demise just the sweeter.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:“And I want to completely re-write the bathtub scene with Melchoir and Rochefield. It's cute and clever and endears you to Melchoir somewhat, but it's too much of a break with his character-as-presented, in this book at least. It makes him look a little too much like Jaines, I think.”
I actually liked that scene, gave M some character.
And I decided to keep it, actually. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was the second time around. The one chapter that did get seriously rewritten was the chapter where Claire is pining for Lucas before her phone call with her father. That half of the chapter got completely cut in favor of a scene with her in her office. It gives more reaction to the granary massacre, and shows her in her professional duties a bit before the mid-point of the book.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Oh, and about the cover: I agree about not doing anything like the three examples you posted. They're really uninspired. I do still think the cover could represent the story better, including the 'flap text' (keep the last bit though, "they are faced ... themselves" is great).
I've gotten mixed reviews. Like you, someone else has noted that it has nothing to do with the story, while my editor really liked it for being clean and unconventional, and showing an example of what Geomides looks like on the cover.
I'll still be working on it for the next few weeks until the edit comes back in. I'll post a few other cover designs as I work on them if I can be bothered.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:Thanks for the read.
I should be the one thanking you. I've written in mass volume over the past years, but, in the end, it doesn't really matter outside of how it affects other people. This book would be literally worthless if no one read it. The fact that you not only read it, but also thought about it for a moment completely validates what I've done.
Now I just need to get several thousand more people to do the same. It will help once it goes on sale, I'm sure.
"What I'd really like to know if there were things that came across ONLY as telling and never showing."
No, it's telling on top of showing. Almost as if you're worried whether or not the message gets across.
"This is one of the few things that I've straight-up copied from Dune."
Dune is actually one of my childhood favorites. I should read that again. I went into the sequels as well but I wouldn't advise anyone to do so, they're tough reads. I guess my gripe with your ending is that the choice to sort of round off Melchoir but not Lucas seemed random. I was sure M and L would meet again after they sort of became best friends forever digging the ditch. Jaines' fate seems clear enough, so does Gilbert's, Damien is dead. Claire has sort of trailed off. It's just Lucas who still seemed to be up to stuff and then it just stopped. Though I guess this kind of reaction is precisely what you'd want .
"This is a genuine shock to me. Especially as Lucas is rather tangential to the main story (the revolution), only interacting with it in the minor role involving the rebel capture of Cupercourt."
I guess it has to do with him being the guy in the prologue, the guy with the love interest (who tends to be the main character in most stories I guess) and, as you said, that you keep using him for stuff out of convenience. He's also the guy in thé epic duel in the story. It may also be that the 'unwilling hero' character appeals to me. Has one simple object, doesn't want to be involved in anything else, yet gets tangled up.
"The main reason I included the romance novel arc in the first place was to force me to have at least one female character, and to increase the appeal of female readers"
Something I neglected to say in my previous post: the women in the story are basically introduced by their breasts. This didn't sit too well with me and not sure if it would appeal to female readers, but then what do I know .
"Mel-choir. Mel like the name, choir as in the group of people who sing."
Yeah I thought it must be. Basically what he says in the story anyway. Is this name based on something existing? My brain makes it Melchior all the time.
"I think it's funny that you say that he's always failing though, as the opposite is the case."
I guess he does alright in the actual actions he takes, but all the time I see him failing as governor. He believes things will get better, but to the reader it's quite clear they're not. Nothing he does actually gains him support. Part of tragedy I guess .
"Perhaps it was more of an issue of the character clicking less, than it was with something lacking in his description? I hope?"
I really don't know. Maybe Melchoir is someone so clear in your mind as he's been a character in your reports and sort of an avatar that he would automatically be much more alive to you as author than to me as reader. Or maybe that there's a bit much of 'it wasn't supposed to be this way' naivety from him, almost Gilbert-like. However, I may also just have overstated things a bit. I do like the character M.
(Damien)
"Well, the problem with making him a straight good guy in the beginning means he runs the same risks that you say you have with Jaines. If the character is too likable in the beginning, how convincing of a bad guy will he be in the end?"
With Jaines it's not so much "she seems nice, how could she be the bad person", but rather "she is so clearly insane, why does anyone follow her" I don't have an issue with Damien being unlikeable from the beginning, I just found it interesting that he was slated to be a good guy. His possibly legit desire around the lines of "look, I helped fix this place up, now gimme something in return here" still works, but the "he's an a**hole" side is definitely stronger. Which is fine by me.
(Jaines) "Apart from the silliness, though, what else comes across as particularly incredible about the character?"
Not so much the character, which is nice, but that she manages to remain leader of the revolution despite, as you said, her constant failures (which means she keeps winning despite them) and clear insanity. This slight absurdness is generally a good thing though, I think.
(cover) "my editor really liked it for being clean and unconventional, and showing an example of what Geomides looks like on the cover."
There's definitely stuff to be said for your cover. I guess it's no so much the concept as the execution of the cover. Just trees as the cover will probably work. The actual image is however so... mundane... the top bit is nice with how the light falls, but the bottom is very... grey... In a way it makes me think of those old books that are no longer in copyright and are sold as on-demand reprints with some random cover art of a flower or some such. And then there's the text that says ruin, desolation, lost world, and there's this tranquil picture of a forest behind it.
I'll stop rambling now. Basically I think that with some polishing, which you're undoubtedly now doing with your editor, it'll be great. After all, a story that doesn't make the reader go "Wait, wut? But I thought..." several times is probably not very interesting .
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"What I'd really like to know if there were things that came across ONLY as telling and never showing."
No, it's telling on top of showing. Almost as if you're worried whether or not the message gets across.
Ah, okay. I suppose I could prune it back a bit. Are there any particularly egregious ones that you found distracting?
I do know that I have to keep a few of them in, though, like where Jaines and Gilbert trash talk Melchoir, as its important to their respective characters that they think that. Probably some in the beginning as well - the curse of exposition.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:I guess my gripe with your ending is that the choice to sort of round off Melchoir but not Lucas seemed random.
Well part of it is a reason you'd probably think worse than random: I needed to write something in there that gave Melchoir an out so that he could be used in a future narrative, while Lucas was a spent force. Even in the best case scenario where everybody survives and Lucas and Claire manage to meet up and make it back to Cupercourt, well, then they'd settle down into a life together. Their role as an adventuresome force of action is already spent, even, if I'm honest, before the end of the book. Whereas Melchoir is probably going to wind up in, at least, a future battle report series of mine, so I had to find some way for him to escape.
I suppose the one "good" reason would be that Melchoir is the only one who stood any reasonable chance of escaping Geomides. Lucas was a relative nobody - some civilian who might die of starvation, or any other horrible civilian fate. Melchoir, on the other hand, is a person with connections and comes from a position of power. In the worst case scenario, you know that he at least would have been afforded a trial before being killed by the inquisition. In the end, I don't know how much less ambiguous Melchoir's fate is than Lucas'.
Though it is kind of interesting, to me at least, that I put the last chapter in as an epilogue, as it sort of implies that it's not "really" part of the story. That it's a proposed ending if you don't want Melchoir's last chapter to be him bravely fighting his hopeless cause to the bitter end, to be laid face down in a ditch out in the wilderness.
The epilogue does change a bunch, actually. Without it, everyone's fate is left in equal doubt, while the epilogue sort of swoops in and basically says "they all die in the end, I hope you're happy".
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"This is a genuine shock to me. Especially as Lucas is rather tangential to the main story (the revolution), only interacting with it in the minor role involving the rebel capture of Cupercourt."
I guess it has to do with him being the guy in the prologue, the guy with the love interest (who tends to be the main character in most stories I guess) and, as you said, that you keep using him for stuff out of convenience. He's also the guy in thé epic duel in the story. It may also be that the 'unwilling hero' character appeals to me. Has one simple object, doesn't want to be involved in anything else, yet gets tangled up.
You're right of course, which is also a surprise to me. Once again, I think it's due to unintentionality.
For example, in the case of Damien, I was 2/3rds convinced over the course of the writing that he was going to survive until the end. At first, perhaps, as the lurking threat, also trying to hunt down Claire in the wilderness, adding the suspense of if he'd find her first, or if he'd find Lucas. As the writing progressed, it became more clear to me that there had to be some catharsis, especially as his actions took a turn from the brutish to the outright criminal. Even then, there could have been an ending where he was captured by Jaines awaiting judicial torture and murder - the idea of the reader's imagination outstripping anything made explicit as far as gruesomeness was concerned.
Eventually, though, I settled on killing him. The only question was how. It couldn't be Melchoir, because it wouldn't make sense (why the two didn't fight to the death in the office), and it couldn't be Gilbert, who had sworn off violence, or Claire who, by the mid-point in the book wouldn't have been in a position where they could meet. It couldn't be Rochefield who, by that point, it was figured out needed to be killed by Damien as part of Melchoir's fall. That just left Lucas and Jaines, and I didn't want to pollute Jaines' revolution story just as it was reaching its climax with something unrelated.
As such, Lucas sort of got stuck with doing the deed by default. Much of the rest of what he does was arrived at by similar means. It is more than interesting to me that I sort of accidentally made a hero, now that you pointed it out.
It's also very interesting that you say that, like Claire, one of his defining features is that he just wants to get on with his life and not get wrapped up in the main event. For some reason I hadn't even considered that a point of commonality between the two.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"The main reason I included the romance novel arc in the first place was to force me to have at least one female character, and to increase the appeal of female readers"
Something I neglected to say in my previous post: the women in the story are basically introduced by their breasts. This didn't sit too well with me and not sure if it would appeal to female readers, but then what do I know .
Well, it's strange. As uncouth and awful as it appears, I was actually just copying romance novels.
My guess is that as much as a few screaming feminists don't want women to be judged by their bodies, deep down, most women judge themselves by their bodies. I guess the most obvious way of this is with boobs.
I can't claim to truly understand it either. It's more of a case of if other people are doing it and raking in cash, well... there must be something going on there. If there are still any women left on dakka, it would be nice to get their point of view on it.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"Mel-choir. Mel like the name, choir as in the group of people who sing."
Yeah I thought it must be. Basically what he says in the story anyway. Is this name based on something existing? My brain makes it Melchior all the time.
It's a relic. Secretly, this book is the sequel to my 6th edition battle reports, and I don't want to change the name. Even though "Melchior" is a real name, and "Melchoir" rather isn't.
As for why Melchoir in the first place, his name was pilfered from the name of the guy who wrote the tune "St. Theodulf", most commonly sung to the hymn "All Glory, Laud, and Honor". Yes, I really am that much of a nerd.
Of course, it got filtered through a dyslexic brain, the letters got switched and that's been that way ever since. My only defense is that in the world of SF/fantasy, people come up with all sorts of crazy names and variations on them all the time. So there.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"I think it's funny that you say that he's always failing though, as the opposite is the case."
I guess he does alright in the actual actions he takes, but all the time I see him failing as governor. He believes things will get better, but to the reader it's quite clear they're not. Nothing he does actually gains him support. Part of tragedy I guess .
And the weird part is that this is the kind of job he wants, but only in some fictional, idealized way. It's part of the kind of alienation of Melchoir that he is, in fact, rather poorly suited to the job of being governor. It's part of the tragedy that, even then, he was still the best qualified...
Sgt. Oddball wrote:"Perhaps it was more of an issue of the character clicking less, than it was with something lacking in his description? I hope?"
I really don't know. Maybe Melchoir is someone so clear in your mind as he's been a character in your reports and sort of an avatar that he would automatically be much more alive to you as author than to me as reader.
Certainly. Part of it too, though, is the Melchoir is the most complicated character. In a way, Lucas is the archetypical rogue character, and Jaines is the typical wild and crazy girl, and Damien is certainly a classical villain. Melchoir, though, doesn't fit neatly into an archetype. He's an ineffective leader, but you wouldn't call him a Richard III or a King John or a King Lear kind of character. Likewise, he's personally brave, but his modesty and circumstances prevent him from being a heroic Henry V or a Richard I. He's down to earth and vaguely conservative (with a small "c"), but he loses folksome charm in the face of a sort of contrived neuroticism.
Perhaps if you don't have the clearest idea of what his angle is, it's because neither do I. Everything Melchoir does makes sense in my mind, but not as the result of something that can be neatly categorized into tropes.
Actually, wait. I CAN provide an example. If you've got netflix, go and watch the Ralph Feinnes version of Coriolanus. Melchoir is sort of like the titular character who, come to think of it, meets not too dissimilar of a fate.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:(Damien)
"Well, the problem with making him a straight good guy in the beginning means he runs the same risks that you say you have with Jaines. If the character is too likable in the beginning, how convincing of a bad guy will he be in the end?"
With Jaines it's not so much "she seems nice, how could she be the bad person", but rather "she is so clearly insane, why does anyone follow her" I don't have an issue with Damien being unlikeable from the beginning, I just found it interesting that he was slated to be a good guy. His possibly legit desire around the lines of "look, I helped fix this place up, now gimme something in return here" still works, but the "he's an a**hole" side is definitely stronger. Which is fine by me.
Ah. This is another example of pre-writing not surviving contact with writing. By the time it came to the first chapter, I already wanted him to be a villain. The fact that he is not, in fact, that bad of a guy in the beginning is something better left to critical commentary than made explicit in the story. You're never supposed to feel outright sympathy for him as a reader.
Sgt. Oddball wrote:In a way it makes me think of those old books that are no longer in copyright and are sold as on-demand reprints with some random cover art of a flower or some such.
Hmm, that's a bit difficult to un-see. I don't think it's THAT bad, though.
I think a part of what's going on is that the books I'm copying my ideas from are more big bestsellers that tend to have much more simplistic cover art than the indie stuff that I'm actually writing. For example, Tom Clancy's work at the moment on Amazon is just sort of his name, the title, and a single, simple graphic. I'm not Tom Clancy, of course, but I still wear a suit to a job interview, even if I have no intention of wearing one to the job. Just as one dresses for the job one wants, I'm likewise trying to copy the kind of sales I want.
Ailaros wrote: Are there any particularly egregious ones that you found distracting?
No, not individual ones I think. If there's something annoying I'm sure your editor will pick up on it. I think it might just be that thing where as a reader you pick up on a writer's typical ways of saying things and some stick in your mind. I tried to find some examples for M. They were supposed to be in order but I think I messed up:
Even Melchoir's active imagination had failed to cope with the scale of this place.
Melchoir didn't consider himself a particularly religious person.
Like himself, his staff was largely populated by a certain battlefield practicality. A certain make-do attitude that came from surviving the worst kinds of hell without proper supplies, or without proper orders.
It seemed reasonable, of course, and he was never good at this kind of silly power plays based on an askance glance or a hurt feeling.
He had spent so much time pouring through ledgers and overseeing projects in person that he had somehow failed to win any local allies outside of the Council.
He thought of himself as someone with a certain practical flexibility, who took things into consideration and decided on what seemed best at the time.
“You were always the political one, Damien,” Melchoir finally spoke in a neutral tone of voice, “I never had the talent for all this”
He didn't really think of himself as being dependable, because it came so automatically to him.
Now all of these individually are fine. I guess there's just lots that especially M. thinks about himself. Though, I guess when you're doing several 'main' characters there's no real time to really develop all of them anyway. A nicer way to relate how M. prefers military to politics, I thought, was this:
"It was certainly proving more frustrating than his military command. You could order a platoon to take a bridge, but not a whole planet to just do things right. Everything here was a bargain or a negotiation. Power was traded like currency, and nobody would make a trade unless it benefited them personally. Nevermind the right thing to do, what was in it for them?"
I may also just be seeing ghosts. There's no way to read anything 'for the first time' again so no way to kind of check what made me notice what I did. Maybe when I re-read the story I'll disagree with myself entirely. If you do rewrite some stuff then please don't do so because you think you should, but only if yóu (and possibly the editor ) think it's better.
Ailaros wrote: If there are still any women left on dakka
There are no women on the internet, don't you know?
Ailaros wrote: My only defense is that in the world of SF/fantasy, people come up with all sorts of crazy names and variations on them all the time.
Weird name is good. Especially in the beginning Melchoir 'dying inside' for the butchering of his name as a running gag thing is quite good. I was just wondering about the background.
Ailaros wrote: Tom Clancy's work at the moment on Amazon is just sort of his name, the title, and a single, simple graphic
I don't actually like that Clancy cover. But the thing with him and others, of course, is that all he needs is his name in big print. The Dune cover is classier and something you could do, though it has the same "Buy me I'm Herbert" thing even bigger than the title.
You could give the trees-image something of a mood:
Or copy Dune, ish:
Or do other stuff.
... I better get back to my actual work .
2014/12/10 04:04:51
Subject: The Geomides Affair [A full-length novel - COMPLETE!]
Wow, you're a lot better at this than I am. Are you a proper designer, or something?
Also, especially when it comes to the cover art...
If you do rewrite some stuff then please don't do so because you think you should, but only if yóu (and possibly the editor ) think it's better.
The thing is, I've already written this book up to the level of where I'd want to read it. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother going forward from here.
In a way, once I handed it over to an editor, I took the step from writing something for me to writing something for others. The me-focus part is over, now it's time to focus on everybody else. Making editorial changes that will broaden its appeal, for example, or make it more readable for the readers. The same is true of the cover art. In a way, it sort of doesn't matter if I like it, as really the point is to snag other people's attention.
The problem is, of course, I'm not everybody else, I'm just me. Hence the need for others' feedback or, in the case of cover art, input.
Taking a look at what you threw together, I of course like it. I (and my wife) especially like the last one. It definitely looks like a real cover to a real book being published right now.
I guess my concern with it is a throwback into the general problem I'm having with the cover. Because what I really want to do is to avoid pushing people away, I think I'm going to wind up with something that looks rather generic as a consequence of being inoffensive. So, for that matter, look a lot of bestsellers these days. I do agree that having just a name and a title is crappy, and having the name bigger than the title is strictly wrong, but it still leaves me with the same problem, even if I don't fall into either of those traps.
As you said, my best effort so far does sort of look like a public domain redo with a stock photo, and that's bad. I think the best one of your series, though, suffers from the problem of being generic from the other side. That cover looks so much like what else is being actually published right now... that it sort of doesn't stand out in my mind from everything else being published right now. The name and title on the book could really be anything.
What I think I need is something like what you've been putting up - something that looks credible, mainstream, and sellable - but yet has something about it that would identify it if it were thrown into a big pile of books. Something that identifies it at 150 feet away, or in a 150x100px thumbnail.
I wish I weren't so rubbish at this. I've done graphic design over the years, mostly for websites, and despite my interest in the field, my actual execution on design is always so crappy. My skills really don't match my ambition, here.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/12/10 06:32:25
All right, this is it - the final update before this book goes on sale!
My editor, trapped in the snowy confines of the mountains of Montana and with nothing better to do, finished editing my book early. I got the manuscript and associated goodies shortly before the new year.
After taking a week off to finish the construction phase of a big terrain piece I've been working on while waiting for the edit, I got to work. After a couple of weeks, I can now report that I'm just over 1/3rd of the way through.
It's kind of interesting because this time I went to the end, and am editing it back to front, to try and clear out any residual flow and pacing biases that might remain. Otherwise, this last round is rather unremarkable. Basically skimming over a chapter and reading the editor's notes and fixing the problems, and then turning edit view off and just reading the chapter again. I'll pick up a few things here and there to change, and occasionally my editor has, in the name of grammar, reworded things a little strangely that I've got to fix (and not just revert). Otherwise, I'm just accepting the changes without even reading them. If it sounds right, then all the better that it actually IS right.
Anyways, I'm still going to be working on it for a little while, and then I've got to format it for Kindle Services. That and I need to actually get cover art I like lined up, but that's it. Then it gets published.
My tentative release date is going to be february 15th. If I make it, this saga of writing will wrap up at about the 10-month mark.
The funny thing is that I haven't actually been writing since I got done with this at the end of July. That means that by the end of February, I'll have gone seven months without writing, and can actually sort of see the appeal again, especially after all these months of editing. I guess this is how real writers are able to keep it up, going from book to book.
Anyways, I just wanted to check in. A couple more weeks and you, too, can own a copy!
---
Oh, and to sneak a couple of comments in before the end:
There are actually two references to Ogre Battle here. Gilbert I-just-want-whats-best-for-my-people Allard, and Warren deLune, who is named after this guy:
Just as Warren Moon is a leader of a small, disaffected group of people who interviews the main character before deciding to join in, starting the rebellion, so he plays the same role here in this story. Warren invariably, though unintentionally, becomes evil in the game, just as how he does in the book.
I also noted something else in my final edit. Go through and read the chapters where Gilbert interacts with other main characters. It's unsurprising, given that he's an enabler, but those chapters wind up being exposés on the characters he's interacting with. The chapter near the middle with him and Claire is Claire at her Clairiest, for example. Other than perhaps the assassination scene, the one with Lucas and Gilbert shows him at his most wholesome, and, of course, Gilbert and Damien winds up with the latter finally coming to grips with who he is, and what he should have been doing all along, and the chapter with Melchoir shows his discomfort with politics and military mindset and demands that people just do their jobs to make things better. Even the chapter with Jaines shows her craziness and feelings of being trapped while trying to manipulate herself out of her situation and ending right where she started. I only wish I had a chapter with him and Rochefield but I guess its absence, in a way, is also fitting.
Anyways, I just noticed that neat little tidbit.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/01/19 05:50:17
Okay, I lied. THIS is going to be the last post before the book goes on sale.
So, I'm finally done editing! For real!
The whole process was rather surprising. I'm surprised by how long this took, over +50% of the time it took to write it in the first place. I'm also surprised at how hard it was. I had some burnout during writing, but editing was a whole extra level of gruelling.
I have learned quite a bit in the process, though. Probably the biggest take-away I have from it is this: before I started, I thought the point of editing was to more-exactly match the words I used to the idea in my mind. Now, I understand the point of editing to be making it so that the words I use conjure in the mind of the reader the same image I have in my mind. The editing isn't what makes my writing project better, it's what turns a writing project into something other people can relate to, and thus purchase.
The last round (the one I did after getting it professionally edited) taught me a lot of other things as well, but the biggest enlightenment, writing-wise, was that I finally discovered the evil spirit that has been haunting my work this entire time: sequencing errors.
It took me almost the entire of my final round to systematically understand this problem (requiring me to do an extra, brief round just to look for this problem), but it's the source of so much of what's bothered me about this work.
Let's start with a couple of examples.
Here is the beginning of the prologue as written in the rough draft+edit round 1:
Spoiler:
His breathing came fast and ragged. Desperately, he forced himself through the underbrush, a thousand claws raking his face and chest as twigs and leaves snapped and scattered around him. He gasped in pain as he struggled to keep up the pace. The pain on his skin and his burning lungs and muscles were a nuisance. His probably-broken ankle, on the other hand...
Dirt gave way under his boots as he climbed a shallow slope, the height letting him catch glimpses of white uniforms plowing through the forest after him. A hollow pop exploded in the bark of a tall maple tree in front of him followed by the snapping crack of the gunshot. He had to keep going, or they meant to murder him. Well, murder was probably the wrong word. They only meant to make him pay for what he'd done.
“I can't keep going!” came a frantic shout from behind and to his left. “I can't!” it repeated before another snap-crack of gunfire threw a shot into the trunk of a tree, and the second shot missed, firing up into the canopy with a strange, wet braa-AAAAP-ppp as the laser weapon cauterized a hundred leaves on its way up through the branches.
“You just keep going!” he shouted back, but he was beyond caring now. It was every man for himself, and the fate of himself was still far from certain. His ankle smashed pain through his body as he ran limping between a pair of giant pines. The grey and heavy sky weighed down on the needles above. It was getting darker. If there was any favor in the universe, it would get foggy again soon. If there was any justice, it wouldn't.
“Lucas!” the other man shouted again, “Don't you dare leave me! I can't keep going!” By now, his voice wasn't the only one. The harsh, chattering, alien voices of the soldiers behind were coming forward, trailed by those who spoke them and their guns. “Halt!” commanded one of them, the voice echoing between wooden pillars all around them, getting lost in the soggy air. “Lucas!” came another. “Lucas, please!”
The pines gave way along with the angle of the ground, and suddenly he was charging downhill, straight into a thicket. He was strong, but he hit the branches at low speed. The shrubs engulfed him and then grabbed fast. He reached his arm out desperately – clawing, pushing, shoving, bending, snapping. With a harsh kick, he managed to shove away a tangling branch, almost collapsing in searing anguish as his other foot gave way to the pain.
His heart pounded in his head. His lungs followed. He was completely trapped. He had to get out.
With one final, frantic thrash, Lucas emerged bloody from the hedge. The world gave way beneath him and in a moment he was sliding uncontrollably down the rocky hillside. Wet pine needles sprayed up with the dirt around him, crashing onto saplings and rolling down after him. After crashing leg-first into an upturned root he managed to slow himself to a stop. A trickling flood of forest debris joined him and tumbled lightly all the way into the creek below, the faint splashing sounding distant against the shouting behind him.
They'd caught up to Nathan. That's what the shouting meant. It wouldn't be long now for him, and, if they had their way, it wouldn't be long for Lucas either.
More shouting. Then a gunshot. Then another.
And here is the final product:
Spoiler:
His breath came fast and ragged. Eyes searching, desperate to find a way out. An endless maze of trees and broken wilderness closing in around him.
Dirt and pebbles tumbled down into the ravine as he struggled up the slope, grasping at the roots of trees to pull him to the top. He scrambled to his feet, turning to look behind him, catching glimpses of white uniforms between the trees below. The soldiers were still chasing him, still shouting, still charging through the forest. He had to keep running, or they meant to murder him.
Well, murder was probably the wrong word. They only meant to make him pay for what he'd done.
A gunshot cracked through the air, the red oak next to him bursting out a puff of bark and splinters. Another shot missed with a strange wet braa-AAAAP-ppp as the laser weapon ripped through the canopy. He turned and ran, forcing his way through the tangled underbrush. Twigs and leaves snapped and scattered, gouging at his face.
Suddenly, the angle of the ground gave way. He gasped, falling forward, sliding straight into a thicket. The shrubs engulfed him as he hit the wall of branches, trapping him completely. He reached his arm out desperately – clawing, pushing, shoving. Thrashing frantically against the twisting bark. Kicking away a web of sticks and leaves.
With a final shout, he burst from the hedge. He careened, bloody, down the rocky hillside. Dirt and pine needles sprayed up as he fell, chasing after him in a cloud of dust and flying stones. He crashed leg first into an upturned root, hand catching against a sapling, slipping from his grasp as he fell. With all his strength he clawed at the soil, reaching out for something to grab onto.
He caught the base of a tree, jerking to a sudden stop. The trickling flood of forest debris joined him, rushing all the way down to the creek below, the faint splashing heard over the shouting behind him.
“I can't keep going!” a frantic voice yelled. “I can't!”
“You can make it!” he shouted back, but he was beyond caring now. It was every man for himself, and his own fate was far from certain.
“Lucas!” the other man shouted again. “Don't you dare leave me! I can't keep going!”
“Halt! Stop right there!” one of the soldiers barked in his harsh foreign accent.
“Lucas! Lucas, help!” the voice echoed through the treetops.
They'd caught up to Nathan, he thought as he gasped for breath, looking for where to run next. It wouldn't be long before they caught him, either.
More shouting broke out. The sounds of a struggle. Then a gunshot. Then another. Silence.
He swallowed hard.
So, what's a sequencing error? In short, it's when I have two ideas that are split apart by a different idea wedged in between them. In a more complex form, it's when I have an idea spread out over several paragraphs with lots in between them. Sort of like a checkerboard.
So, look at the first draft of the prologue, and map out the concepts. You get.
A.) Lucas is running through the forest.
B.) Lucas is injured
C.) Lucas is being chased by Folerans.
D.) The Folerans are shooting at him.
E.) The Folerans have a reason to catch him.
F.) Nathan is behind him.
D.) The Folerans are shooting at him.
F.) Nathan is behind him.
B.) Lucas is injured
A.) Lucas is running through the forest.
E.) The Folerans have a reason to catch him.
F.) Nathan is behind him.
C.) Lucas is being chased by Folerans.
A.) Lucas is running through the forest.
F.) Nathan is behind him.
D.) The Folerans are shooting at him.
Now look at the sequence of events in the final draft:
A.) Lucas is running through the forest.
B.) Lucas is being chased by Folerans.
C.) The Folerans have a reason to catch him.
D.) The Folerans are shooting at him.
A.) Lucas is running through the forest.
E.) Nathan is behind him.
F.) The Folerans catch Nathan.
So, there's a lot that's been fixed about that sequence. In the original, things keep going back and forth between the different ideas. The reader is sort of forced to remember everything that's happening all at once, rather than allowing the sequence to guide them smoothly from one topic to another. Without it, the book reads more slowly, and is more difficult to follow, and results in me getting kind of bored much faster.
And by pooling like concepts next to each other, it allows me to have stronger transitions between ideas. In the revised text, you have the nice, smooth transition of "he's running" to "he's being chased" to "he's being chased by people who want to kill him" to "those people are shooting at him right now". A nice, logical flow, rather than having to transition cold between concepts.
One of the results of that is a lot of weight shedding. If I don't need to keep re-introducing ideas, or repeating myself to make sure you're still remembering what's going on, and don't have to have bulky transitions between ideas, it means I could cut a lot of structural text.
A LOT of structural text, in fact. At its height, this book was roughly 237,250 words long. My final draft, as it stands, is 210,753. That's a loss of about 26,500 words. That's 11%. That's nearly TEN WHOLE CHAPTERS of text that's been cut.
But the weird thing is, not all that much of it was detail. It was just structural bloat. The book is a lot leaner and more efficient. It also reads much faster. So much so, that in some places I had to add new detail back in to make the pace a little more relaxed.
The only place where detail was just straight lost was in those big blocks of exposition, especially at the beginnings of the middle chapters. A lot of it was interesting, but not strictly relevant, so it got cut to get to the action or the dialogue faster. I only hope I didn't cut too much.
I did manage, at least, to keep the more descriptive passages more at-length. This book isn't JUST about action and dialogue. There is interaction with the setting as well.
Also, now that I've re-read the book so many times, and especially since I've done a final skimming over the first page of every chapter (which gives me a better sense of overall pace), there have been another pile of things I've realized about this book. I'm sure some of you saw this immediately, but, well, I guess it's nice to know that the book can still surprise its author.
Such as. In Damien’s last chapter, he starts with a paranoid monologue. Put another way, he finally makes it to the point where Jaines starts.
Damien is also an interesting example of that kind of detail creep I was talking about in the afterword. You know he’s a bad guy from the beginning, but the chapters are all in a setting where you don't really see how he'd a bad guy. It all happens off stage. You know that he preys on vulnerability in general, but it’s not until about mid-way through the book that you start getting to see how the proverbial sausage is made.
It’s a case of going from him being bad to HOW he’s being bad, specifically. Just in time, of course, for him to snap and become truly psychotic.
Claire’s story isn't actually a romance. It’s actually a coming-of-age story. She starts out as the naïve girl trying to meet everyone else’s expectations, goes through a long period of transition, and in the end comes out as a grown woman who can make serious choices about herself. She even has that moment where her mentor dies (her father), cutting her free to be her own person. Sort of like the reason Obi-Wan dies, except it happens at the end of the book, rather than towards the middle.
More than once, I had the temptation to remove a Melchoir chapter completely, especially the tub scene and the one where he saves the transformer. I now know that the reason why is, in effect, because those whole chapters were sequencing errors. The two chapters on either side flow naturally into each other, but have this sort of foreign object placed in the middle.
The end effect is that Melchoir’s chapters don’t really fit in with the main action, which, despite it being an error, is indicative of Melchoir himself. Just like how his middle chapters have nothing to do with the rebels or the insurgency, so Melchoir himself isn't really doing anything to work with those issues.
Just as how Melchoir’s chapters distract from the main action, so it shows how Melchoir is, himself, distracted from the main action – a necessary component of his downfall. If you wonder why there’s a chapter with him taking a bath instead of hunting down Jaines, then… well… yeah, how come he’s not hunting down Jaines? He’s got to get his priorities straight… which is sort of the point of Melchoir’s character in the first place.
You can also see the revealing effect with Melchoir as well as Damien. In the middle, you see Melchoir taking a bath, not dealing with the insurgents. Presumably he’s still keeping himself clean later on, but those scenes are all laid out where you see him focusing on what he’s supposed to be focusing on. Perhaps he WAS trying to hunt down Jaines, you just didn't see it before, while the later chapters allow him to shine more.
It’s also funny that Melchoir constantly complains that the Council doesn't really do anything, and because of the way the scenes are cut, that’s exactly what it looks like. With one exception, the Council doesn't actually do a single thing… except for depose Melchoir at the end.
It’s interesting too that Lucas’ story is really about redemption, and that he is pinning all of his hopes of said redemption on Claire. As a result, he never achieves that redemption, because he never finds Claire. Even moreso, though, because of his devotion to this plan, he is actually preventing his own redemption.
I mean, Lucas transforms from a rebel into a citizen halfway through the book. He COULD have decided to settle down in Bellemonde. Get a job and a house while he waited for Claire, or, in time, have let her go and tried to find someone else to share his life with.
But it’s because of Claire that he puts aside his redemption, relying on those rebel skills over and over again in his search. Another example of the characters doing it to themselves.
And there’s a weird little irony in there as well. Lucas spends his time behaving like a rebel, though wishing he weren’t. There is exactly one time in the book where he succeeds in not behaving like a rebel – when he fails to assassinate Melchoir.
Because he failed to do this, it ensured that the battle for Cupercourt would continue on, rather than ending abruptly and giving Claire a chance to stay in the city where Lucas could find her. It also ensured that Melchoir would lead an assault, which is what drove Claire to flee.
The one time he doesn't act like a rebel is the one time where if he did, he would actually have gotten Claire, while the rest of the time he behaved like a rebel, it didn't get him anything. If he had been consistent either way, he would likely have gotten her, but instead he chose to be a nice guy that one time, and that brief moment of redemption damns him for the rest of the book.
Anyways, what's next? It's going to get partially-proofread, and formatted, which won't be more than a week. I buy an ISBN, and slap a cover on it, and that's it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/03/06 01:10:21
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. After three hundred and twenty two days, this book is now officially finished. You can buy yourself a copy of this book by clicking here!
Thank you so much for those few of you who have followed this crazy adventure. If I can figure out how to set it up, I'll try and get a promo code for dakka users.
Now it's just cleaning up this thread (the first few chapters have been updated in their final form, and the rest are going to have the first few paragraphs of the gold copy slapped in there), and figuring out how to convince people to get a copy...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/03/06 01:15:01
. Either way don't use it as there's possibly some sort of copyright on those faces.
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