Monday, May 28, 2007

Progress Update 15

One of my favorite development techniques is freewriting. Writing down thoughts to add to and put together puzzles seem to lead to new ideas. Plus it's one of my remaining few things to do on long commutes.

So now I am revising my plot. Again.

This time, though, there's actually integration between my previous two disjunct ideas. There's even more backstory and intrigue. And I'd like to finish hashing out the entire plotline this time around. As time goes on I keep finding oversights and mistakes in previous chs, but since I already released them on ff, it's unfair to modify them, even if they're just little details here and there that no one would probably care about, like the location of the Fanelian shrine, Van's description of plants, etc. But if I had thought of these details earlier, the chs would have been richer, more character-driven, and I'd be able to insert hints in layering complexity instead of mishmashing scraps together from the first 5 chs.

Well, I learned.

Another of my problems to solve is characters. There are 20 I'm re-employing and ~40 I'm making up for DS. Although, maybe it isn't really such a problem. Esca had a long list. LOTR is another prime example. I could make it work, if every one is distinct in his place and personality.

The third of the long list is Escaflowne battle scenes. I love sword scenes with and without mecha. I love love LOVE Escaflowne in dragon form. And so I keep having to create better and better plotline so I can have Van in battle, because many ideas are just so awkward that this contrivance would be against my vow to make DS realistic, not to mention it would make the story plain awful.

We'll see.

Fight from ep26.
/swoon

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

DS to do

1. revisit Atlantis legends and Plato
2. music lyrics for ideas
3. country profiles
4. character profiles
5. double-check dialogue, addresses/honorifics
6. re-establish plot structure into linearity (the most dreaded of all)
7. draw hierarchy chart for structure (esp. B, F, T, and D)
8. double-check story timeline/time progression
9. do "applied characterization" exercises for DS
10. decide on "destinations" for characters
11. reorganize notes and details

Bedtime arrives so soon: I really need to find a solution for DS. When I was writing (back in far away November!), I typically wrote in 4 hour blocks. And I edit too much to make handwriting at all possible (not to mention I think the last time I wrote in longhand was in high school for the English AP exam).

Bah. Humbug.


Picture of Atlantis (as described by Plato) on Wiki: