Write Every Day Day 4

[cornerofmadness]

Never thought of it that way but it's a great way of looking at it.

So how it is going? Day three was all about editing for me. I got my original short in shape enough for the beta reader to look at it.


If I've missed you on the tally let me know.


Day three- china_shop, shadaras, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, luzula, goddess47, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, cmk418, nafs, yasaman, brithistorian, trobadora, ysilme,


Day One - cornerofmadness, china_shop, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, goddess47, trobadora, shadaras, cmk418, nafs, sanguinity, yasaman, ysilme, carenejeans, luzula

Day Two cornerofmadness, china_shop, goddess47, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, cmk418, trobadora, ysilme, carenejeans, sanguinity, yasaman, shadaras, luzula, sylvanwitch, brithistorian, carenejeans

Comments

[cornerofmadness]

Excellent word count. Yeah sometimes you just have to write it all out before they'll move on. And then keep or cut later

[brithistorian]

Exactly. And since I tend to write stories with large casts, everyone has a things going on all the time, but some characters' plots just affect themselves, plus maybe one or two others, and some characters' plots affect practically everybody, so it can be a balancing act sometimes.

[cornerofmadness]

I feel ya. Many of many fandoms (and my original stuff too) has tons of characters. Sometimes I send them off on side quests to par it down

[brithistorian]

Sometimes I send them off on side quests to par it down

I do things like that too. Spy fiction is helpful like that—there are all kinds of reasons why an agent would be incommunicado and so it would be possible to have them totally disappear for a few chapters.

Thinking about this, I just realized that the two Madame Park's Academy books have totally opposite structures: Volume 1 starts with the eighth (of eight) students arriving at the academy, and then the rest of the world is gradually added in, while volume 2 starts with the rest of the world known[^1] but only two students at the academy, with more students being added as the story progresses.

[^1] Large parts of the rest of the world, at any rate—probably even more is unknown, even to Madame Jisoo. Yoojung is the first of the students to really recognize the power of information, though the others are gradually figuring it out.

[cornerofmadness]

that is interesting about the opposite story structures

[brithistorian]

And it's something that I totally didn't plan — it just happened. Similarly, when I was about 2/3 of the way through writing volume 1, I noticed that every time the protagonist went through a major life change, it was marked by her eating French onion soup. Not something I had planned up to that point; it just happened. After I noticed that, then I started being conscious of French onion soup.

After having that experience, it gave me more insight into an experience that one of my friends had when we were in high school. My high school was on a university campus, and while I was there the students in AP English got to go to a conference that the university hosted on the writings of Eudora Welty. After coming back from the conference, my friend told me about an incident where a scholar had just finished delivering a paper on the phallic symbolism in one of Welty's stories and then opened the floor to questions. The first question was "Do you thing that Ms Welty intended for this symbolism to be present in the story?", whereupon Eudora Welty, who was in the audience, stood up, snapped "She most certainly did not!", and abruptly sat back down. Having done it myself, I can now see how an author could put symbolism in a story without intending to.

[cornerofmadness]

hahaha you know I wish I had heard this story when I was in all my lit classes in HS and college because that was always my argument that maybe the author didn't intend whatever symbolism you're going for (because man sometimes they were digging deep for it) This is perfect.

I am tickled by your french onion soup issue. I've had things like that happen a time or two