Notebook 2

Today marks the end of my second notebook (10/2006-07/2007). It's scary that almost none of it is entered in my Google notebook, but it's good that I've filled it with a lot of self-dialogue and ideas for DS.

One of the ideas today was to make Hitomi's transport from Earth to Gaea at the end of ch1 more significant in the overall plot. Gem had requested me to make Hitomi go through a depression, and while I think of Hitomi as too splunky to get real depression, a great spin-off possibility is to have her go through self-doubt in the midst of great expectations. Hitomi is the type to emerge stronger emotionally from adversity, and this experience would become her pivotal point in DS.

I was reminded of Nase in Hikaru no Go, at the end of the go pro examinations, when she said "Because I can play like today, I can't quit go." (That's sort of how I feel about my life now, too :P)


I cannot remember where I got this image. Probably from Lizzard. It's interesting to see the other Knights of Caeli:

Names

Random names, might be used for characters, might be used for locations:

Besnik - Sulare - Taussler - Stenin - Heriz - Jonam - Vosnik - Osarnum - Zare - Elat - Guerdia - Zossler - Tare - Kulot - Phi - Palome - Olam - Emon - Krisnet - Mossi - Basile - Digge - Malek - Nolan - Torron - Nauntig - Ala'Ramutad - Nafarem - Hamorfa - Guern - Vort - Epautib - Kalev - Vonui

1. Some are pretty crappy, I know. I don't want to use any normal names, because it's Gaea.

2. Would using names like Ala'Ramutad for a distant country be too politically incorrect?

3. I think of the names in Japanese pronounciation (eg. Balgus = Barugesu), so names like Zare is two syllables instead of one. But then the pretension that carries with a phonetic explanation at the end of a ch is probably more serious than reading it wrong.

4. Votes for names? Other ideas?

Van's Allure 2

For some reason (I am a strange cookie in many other ways, too), I don't prefer to work on the entirety of my story alone, then surprise everybody. I like to muse on something for a while, bounce ideas off a buddy, come back and do more revisions, then post. Adding a perspective has only worked out in my experience for the better.

Chocolatelova's been busy and it seems bad to bother her with my story when she doesn't have time to do her own, but perhaps I'll try catching her online D: My principal conflict is still ill-formed and so blah. blah blah blah.


Well, on to the non-whiny part of the post.

As I have mentioned before, Van's greatest attraction is the juxtaposition of his seriousness and his boyish self. To me, the boyish self is actually his natural self--selfish and a little spoiled, but with eagerness and full emotions--the self that comes out in front of Folken when they were young, in front of his mother, in front of Balgus, in front of Hitomi. The seriousness is his attempt to be a man, to be a king.

At the end of Esca, we are frustrated not only because V+H never really gets together, but also because we are left with a glimpse of an emerging Van, close on a path to balance between his two halves.

(I always thought of Van as the main character, actually.)

So one of the items I am exploring for DS is completion of this duality. A lot of fanfics on ff portray Van despising his burdensome responsibilities, but I don't think Van ever thought about it as a choice. He was born to be a king. His public and private lives are so enmeshed in him that they have instead become two intertwining parts of his personality. Duty is his life. But he is also just a man.

(I hope I will be able to do it. I really like writing Van.)

(Sometimes I feel like I write better essays than prose ; ; I write very pretentiously, I suppose.)


I forgot from where I grabbed this . It looks like a scan or a rough filter, but still a perfect Van.

Sources

Hello, hello!

My thoughts today jumped from the emerging central political conflict to the Tyrrhenia legacy. It had been in my mind for quite a while, bubbling and fermenting, but today's development was glorious.

We shall have our own version of Elysian Fields: "down the dank moldering paths and past the Ocean's streams they went, and past the White Rock and the Sun's Western Gates, and past the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields where pale liliaceous asphodel and poplars grew." It will be a place to press into climax; a place for rest, cleansing, and comtemplation; and a place for graceful lamentation.

I am in debt to past books. LOTR, Chinese martial arts novels, the classics, Jane Austen--these all form the knowledge I draw from. No idea is ever original. Everything is simply an arrangement of a story we all already know.


Oh, I did write something this past week, so let's have it. I think I might have posted the previous version of this section, in Leal's POV. Van's is working out much better, and today you get a whole paragraph!

Leal had insisted that a wise king used the illusion of power as well as the practice of authority, though to Van's mind there was no real need. Even in the most remote countryside, his people have no trouble recognizing the crest on his sword and his mailed, trailing entourage. Leal and the rest overlook the importance inherent in the common shirt. His rule over Fanelia only benefited from his royal informalities: loyalty that could never be commanded by a "Sire" or even a "King Fanel", only only by a "Van-sama".

And now that I've written--my previous fears are unfounded, thank god. Nothing is ever so important in life as to keep going forward.


The asphodel:

Progress Update 16

I'm further into planning. Still building up the central conflict (it would be boring pretty quickly if it was just a V+H love story). The characters are expanding nicely, especially the supporting roles to bring the conflict into the forefront. It's so frustrating not to slip by any particulars here, since it's so exciting and complicated at the same time, and I wish somebody would hold my hand. Adhering to the pretense of literary fiction is pretty hard--though looking back through my notes history, the results are worth every furious head scratch in cluelessness.

I'm also in the beginnings of delineating countries with their culture, fashion, key players, agendas, etc in anticipation of the upcoming Palas meeting. My lack of dialogue in DS is really because I suck at it. Hopefully with preparation, I will be able to create real drama.

And with all these steps, another side of me feels like there's never an end to planning, so I should just go ahead and try out the next chs. 7 months of planning have already gone by with no prose. Perhaps I'm delaying the act of writing because I'm again afraid of not being as good as before, again afraid of disappointment, again afraid of writing.

Or maybe this doubt is just a game I play with myself. There's no reason to lose sight of my original goal--to make fanfiction into literary fiction. Readers pick DS out of many, many other stories they could have curled up with for the night, and I must remember not to flag. I have to remember my goals and the readers, and still settle for prose, characterization, story, meaning, and sense of completion above the rest.

Very Own Van

On a side note:
Now you can have your very own Van.

Hero

A big conflict for me is simplicity vs. details. There are, of course, elegant solutions to satisfy both--so perhaps I should try harder, but my brain capability is often limited, as my brother would readily tell you.

It's obvious (the simplicity conflict, not my IQ) from ff reader comments on DS. I would leave little details, but from readers' confusion, I am making too many assumptions. But then, it's so patronizing to spell out everything. I could blame the readers--but I am the author, the one who designed the plot and the particular way of words, so everything is really my own fault.

As I plan more and more of DS's plot (which should have been done a year ago when I first wrote ch1), the conflict between simplicity and details becomes clearer. I want to make the story conclusion satisfying. This would be most readily achieved with a Traditional Hero. In a way, in Esca the characters most impacted by the events were Van and Folken. Hitomi's journey wasn't nearly as complete as theirs, with their conflicts, falling away, dilemmas, eagerness, and redemption. Traditional Heroes provide a clear moral compass, completion of story, and emotional identification by readers.

But the way to use them require planning and skill. It could easily become a device and a resentment. Not using them, on the other hand, could also easily make DS into the Modern Literary Work with No Heros, Just a Lot of Suffering and Is Hella Boring category.

sigh.

Most likely I will go the Hero route with modifications. Elegant solutions, where are you?

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

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:

Hiatus

A note that's long overdue:
Ch6 will be out at the end of June.

Sorry ._, New job, long commute, and GRE prep are all eating into my spare time. I haven't stopped thinking about scenes, but any possible time to write and refine will have to come early June.

Soon, soon!