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thanate(Don't mind me, I'm just brainstorming.)
Finished chapterizing & resorting the first Greatwood book for beta reading on Saturday afternoon (Goal #2, for those keeping track.) I continue to be bad at actually re-writing things, but I think I've either self-justified or re-fiddled all the problems I see, and will await what people who are not actually resident in my head think of things before fussing further. Also, having finished (pending a last skim through to make sure I didn't do anything terribly stupid while breaking out chapters) the compulsion to blather about it has mostly passed off.
So then we come to this NaNo thing, for which I'm planning on doing book 4 of the same set. (Or rather, book 1 is stand alone, and followed by a trilogy, which could reasonably be followed by at least one more standalone, but I'm ignoring that bit at present.) So, book 2 is about 3/4 done (missing some middle) and needs more plot because I did a little too much haring off after cool stuff and not enough adding plotlines to the very simple over-arc. I want to try re-ordering timelines and method of telling to see how much of this turns out ok in a different format. (It's also the only book that's not structured as a journey, which doesn't help.) But, much as I'd love to start tinkering now, book 3 from last year's NaNo sorted out a lot of what needed to happen in book 2 for narrative continuity, and I think book 4 will be the same way. So!
(So I shall overuse "so" as a transition a lot... I blame Kelly Arford.)
Books 1 & 3, and much of 2 take place in a deliberately pseudo-European and near eastern (Byzantine) fantasy landscape. In the great before-time this was connected all Pangaea-like to the rest of the world, but the middle of the continent got destroyed in a war amongst mages & gods, leaving a northern continent and a southern continent which aren't aware of each other's continued existence. The southern continent starts off with a huge equatorial rainforest, very loosely based off of SE Asia (because I wanted solitary great apes) but with at least one culture doing prehistoric amazonian soil amendments. I also want some plains and desert, seafaring canoe type people, and at least rumors of islands uninhabited by anything but birds off the coastline. Presumably the equatorial jungle is at the north end of the continent (or it would be close enough to the other continent that they would probably have noticed each other by now... unless of course there's something lingeringly wrong with that bit of sea) but that's most of what I've got.
This means a great deal of mulling over cultures I know comparatively little about (good references for pre-industry SE Asia & related, either pictoral/video or cultural, would be lovely if you can think of any!) and trying to decide how much what I'm trying to do is based on fantasy distortions of reality (hence giving myself permission to make stuff up & mix&match wholesale) and how much I want to stick with playing off of actual cultures and just tweaking them to fit my universe. Should all this ever make it to a decently-sized readership, someone's bound to be offended either way (at least judging by what one reads on the internet) and on the whole I will be content if I feel like I have believable characters & societies in a mix of culture & phenotype. But I also don't want to end up tap dancing on all the wrong stereotypes-- unless it's in a recognize & subvert kind of way. Contemplations ensue, and I still have my draft from book 2 to re-read.
Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.
Finished chapterizing & resorting the first Greatwood book for beta reading on Saturday afternoon (Goal #2, for those keeping track.) I continue to be bad at actually re-writing things, but I think I've either self-justified or re-fiddled all the problems I see, and will await what people who are not actually resident in my head think of things before fussing further. Also, having finished (pending a last skim through to make sure I didn't do anything terribly stupid while breaking out chapters) the compulsion to blather about it has mostly passed off.
So then we come to this NaNo thing, for which I'm planning on doing book 4 of the same set. (Or rather, book 1 is stand alone, and followed by a trilogy, which could reasonably be followed by at least one more standalone, but I'm ignoring that bit at present.) So, book 2 is about 3/4 done (missing some middle) and needs more plot because I did a little too much haring off after cool stuff and not enough adding plotlines to the very simple over-arc. I want to try re-ordering timelines and method of telling to see how much of this turns out ok in a different format. (It's also the only book that's not structured as a journey, which doesn't help.) But, much as I'd love to start tinkering now, book 3 from last year's NaNo sorted out a lot of what needed to happen in book 2 for narrative continuity, and I think book 4 will be the same way. So!
(So I shall overuse "so" as a transition a lot... I blame Kelly Arford.)
Books 1 & 3, and much of 2 take place in a deliberately pseudo-European and near eastern (Byzantine) fantasy landscape. In the great before-time this was connected all Pangaea-like to the rest of the world, but the middle of the continent got destroyed in a war amongst mages & gods, leaving a northern continent and a southern continent which aren't aware of each other's continued existence. The southern continent starts off with a huge equatorial rainforest, very loosely based off of SE Asia (because I wanted solitary great apes) but with at least one culture doing prehistoric amazonian soil amendments. I also want some plains and desert, seafaring canoe type people, and at least rumors of islands uninhabited by anything but birds off the coastline. Presumably the equatorial jungle is at the north end of the continent (or it would be close enough to the other continent that they would probably have noticed each other by now... unless of course there's something lingeringly wrong with that bit of sea) but that's most of what I've got.
This means a great deal of mulling over cultures I know comparatively little about (good references for pre-industry SE Asia & related, either pictoral/video or cultural, would be lovely if you can think of any!) and trying to decide how much what I'm trying to do is based on fantasy distortions of reality (hence giving myself permission to make stuff up & mix&match wholesale) and how much I want to stick with playing off of actual cultures and just tweaking them to fit my universe. Should all this ever make it to a decently-sized readership, someone's bound to be offended either way (at least judging by what one reads on the internet) and on the whole I will be content if I feel like I have believable characters & societies in a mix of culture & phenotype. But I also don't want to end up tap dancing on all the wrong stereotypes-- unless it's in a recognize & subvert kind of way. Contemplations ensue, and I still have my draft from book 2 to re-read.
Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.