The Distant [Update 5] Book Two & Fourth Draft

Book Two - Wilders

Earlier this month I started the first draft of the second book of the trilogy, Wilders.  I was tired of editing The Distant and wanted to get moving on the ideas for the next book while they were still fresh.  This is a good thing for me, because as I write I always come up with new stuff that I didn't think of while outlining, and I figure out ways to work it in (or just do it even if it doesn't quite fit and revise earlier material later on to make it fit).

Such is the case with Wilders.  I've got about 20K words so far, which is roughly 1K words a day (my target).  It's coming along great and there are a number of things in The Distant that I now need to revise given the content I've written so far, as well as some new material I'm going to insert to make later events more impactful.  Seems like a strange way of writing, but hopefully I can get the majority of the Wilders first draft done before I finalize The Distant.

I'm just not the kind of writer that can plan every detail out before writing a single word, so I don't foresee an epic series in my future.  I can't imagine how some of those guys like Robert Jordan or George R.R. Martin do it... epic, multi-book series are a lot of work.  So give GRRM a break on how slow he's been with his books lately.

Fourth Draft - The Distant

I read through The Distant before doing any work on the fourth draft.  There were a few places where I got bored and realized some trimming was needed.  I've done a little more rearranging and condensing of chapters to alleviate that, cutting the boring parts and focusing only on content that is important.  I'm currently reading the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove (the original version, which is awesome, by the way) and I love the pace of the books, the way he just focuses on important plot points and never gets too long-winded with the exposition.  So it's inspired me to streamline my writing and never let the reader get bored.

Because of that, I've cut another 10K words, and am down to 176K.  Hopefully I can finish under 170K.  The book is split into two parts, so it's essentially two 80K-90K books, which feels about the right size to me.  I'm switching back and forth between the fourth draft of The Distant and writing Wilders, which helps because then I don't get too bored doing the same thing all the time.  As long as I work on something each day, I feel like I'm progressing.

The Trilogy - The Hope of Memory

I think I mentioned before that I had a working trilogy title of Of Houlves and Humans.  I never liked this title and have been racking my brain for a new one.  Finally one came to me during a walk, after I had started Wilders.  It's going to be called The Hope of Memory.  This is the final title.

Also, have been working on possible cover art... here is something that will be part of the cover for The Distant.  What is it?  Well, you'll just have to read and find out when the book is released.

The Distant [Update 4] Third Draft Complete

It's been a month since the last update on my next book, The Distant.  I finished the third draft a week ago, which came in at around 184K words.  I know I can cut a bit more from that doing another line edit, which I'll do before all is said and done.  Trying to keep it in the 170K-180K range, even lower if possible.

I'm not going to start on the fourth draft just yet.  I plan on reading the novel as it currently is, take some notes, and then step away from it for a while.  I usually need a break when I work on stuff like this, because sometimes I'll get tired of a piece of work if I spend too much time on it.  That way I can come to it "fresh" after a break of at least a month or so.

Volume Two

The next book in the trilogy will be called Wilders.  I've been outlining the other two books, and there are still a few additional details I need to work into The Distant.  But with the outlines nearly solid now, I plan to start on the first draft of Wilders any day now.  It will be good to write for a while instead of editing.

Covers

I've been playing with potential covers for the books... still haven't decided whether I'm going to ask someone else to create the art, or do it myself.  The only thing I don't like about actual cover art (i.e. a scene from the book) is that it may mess with how you imagine the content with the book itself.  Especially if the art is bad (like The Wheel of Time).

So if I do them myself, I'll do it without an actual scene, but instead will do something simple, but catchy... probably involving symbols of some kind.  There are some in the books that would be good for the covers.  I have an idea of what I want for my versions, and did some mockups a while ago.  Time will tell whether I use them or not.  But it's fun to play around with them and see what I can do.

The Distant [Update 3] Expanding to a Trilogy

As I've been working on the third draft of my next book, The Distant, I've been thinking more about the setting I had created, and the fact that the ending would leave some things unresolved.  This was intentional on my part, since in reality most things don't have a fairytale ending or everything wrapped up nice and neat with a bow on top, and I wanted to leave it open-ended (yet satisfying) in case I wanted to do a sequel of sorts.  The more I thought of it, the more I realized I wanted to tell the rest of that story.  So I've decided I will expand this into a trilogy.

I've had ideas regarding this for many years now, but I could not figure out how to connect the dots between the different parts of the story that I want to tell.  During the last month I figured it out, and created outlines for the other two books in the trilogy.  Right now I'm calling the trilogy Of Houlves and Humans, though that might change.

Planning for a Series

What this means for The Distant - which will be Book 1, obviously, and keep the same title - is that I have to make sure the book makes sense within the rest of the work.  There are little things here and there, details that will make sense later, that I have to flesh out.  I'm doing some of that now in the third draft, going back over a few things and firming up the backstory and legends within the book, but I'll need to do more on the fourth draft.

Very little of the main story is changing from what I'd originally envisioned, all of the plot points are the same, I just need to do more edits to prepare for the later books.  One thing that bothers me about some series in movies or books, is when the author decides to continue things later and details aren't consistent, or a later book/movie contradicts an earlier one.

Avoiding Inconsistencies

A good example is with the original Star Wars.  Lucas had a series in mind from the start, but he could only make one movie, and if it bombed, he'd have no chance of telling the next story.  So he created a good resolution, but still made it open-ended.  He took it a step further with the prequels vs. the original trilogy, which have a totally different feel and style to them (like the way Jedi fight).

Now, he's managed to explain most of those discrepancies, inconsistencies and plot holes cleverly (e.g. Luke only had Yoda to train him, so there's no way he'd learn how to fight like the Jedi in the days of the Republic - though in reality it was due to the fact that they were shot 30 years apart and he couldn't have imagined, or wasn't able to stage, fight scenes like that back then).  There are tons like that in Star Wars (just Google it), as well as numerous dialogue and backstory inconsistencies.  But I want to avoid all that.

Sometimes it can't be helped, particularly in film.  You might not be able to do the next part of the story for a number of years.  But in fiction writing, you can keep the same feel and style twenty years later.  A book is still words on a page.  Your imagination might change, and your writing skills may have improved, but as long as you stick to the "style of the world" you're writing in and pay attention to how you write, it can read as if it's all from the same session of writing.  That's my goal.

Draft Update

So, currently I'm at page 250 of 348 in the third draft.  Should hopefully be finished by next month.  I had to rewrite some sections and wrote a new one, and currently the word count stands at 194K.  I want to keep it under 200K for sure, and perhaps try to trim it down to 180K before all is said and done.

We'll see... part of the reason I like self-publishing my work is that I don't have to modify the work to meet some criteria like publishing or contract requirements.  It will be as long as it needs to be to tell the story - but I'm still well aware that longer does not mean better, so my intent is to make it concise, without sacrificing the story or trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.

The Distant [Update 2] Remembering & AutoHotkey

I'm still chugging along on the third draft of The Distant, my next novel.  I'm on page 124 out of a current 323 (these are MS Word pages, single spaced).  So close to 40% complete after two months of editing.

Last month I discussed a bit of the work's history and how it had changed over each draft.  Revising the third draft has been challenging as I'm going through it with a fine-tooth comb, essentially doing a line edit and really paying attention to a lot of little things that I had never paid attention to before.

Things to Remember

Because this was initially written many years ago and has gone through a few iterations, and because it's a bit longer than previous works, details about characters or places tend to easily get confused or overlooked.  Especially if you're the only one doing the editing (I have not decided yet whether to have someone else do an edit later).  What I've been doing here that I have not done before, is maintain a separate text file that notes all the things I have to remember.

This file helps now, but it will be even more helpful during the next draft, because then I'll have a comprehensive list of everything I need to pay attention to and make sure are consistent and accurate.  Examples include what characters look like, what injuries they have, their mannerisms, etc.

There are prose-specific things I need to pay attention to as well, like the fact that Clearmen (people from Orland's Clear, one of the cities in the novel) don't use contractions in speech, aside from possessive contractions (like it's, John's, etc).  I'm deliberately doing this to give their speech an "Old World" and measured quality.  Though it's debatable whether English-speaking people in previous centuries used contractions less in their speech compared to those of today - and there's an interesting post on StackExchange about it, that I recommend checking out - though it's debatable, that's not the point.  I'm merely trying to distinguish the speech of two different people and this serves the purpose well-enough.  But it's something I have to really pay attention to, as it affects the cadence of the prose.

AutoHotkey

Which brings me to the other half of this update.  I have some other text files on various topics that I find it useful to refer to at any time while writing.  But it's a pain to open everything and arrange them just so on the screen.  I have a widescreen monitor and use 1600x900 resolution, so I have plenty of room, but hate having to manually set everything up.

Then I thought, surely there's some application I can use to create macros for Windows tasks and automate this?  Not having a need for this before, I had no idea what was best to use.  In the end I settled on AutoHotkey, which is free and does pretty much everything - you just have to learn how to create the scripts that automate commands.  With robust documentation and a very active forum, and lots of examples all over the internet, it's easy to learn and troubleshoot.

Automating My Setup

This program is pretty awesome.  It took me a little bit of reading, but eventually I created a script that upon pressing a key combination, will immediately open and resize each of my ancillary text files, as well as my main third draft Word document, then place them in specific places on the desktop.  In the end it takes just a few seconds to run and here's what the layout looks like:

In addition to my main Word document, I have files for:

   Things to Remember
   Event Timeline
   Book of Orland (a holy text that I need to further expand and reference)
   Houlf Pidgin (words in the houlf "language")
   Loose Ends (anything I may eventually need to resolve/clarify)

It's so much easier to start working on the novel with this setup.  And then when I'm done, I have a second key combination that immediately closes everything.

AutoHotkey Scripts

The nice thing about AutoHotkey is that though you can only have one script running, you can put multiple macros in that script.  So in my TheDistant script, as mentioned earlier, I have a macro for opening/placement of all files, and a macro for closing everything.

You can just place the script as a shortcut on your desktop.  When you're ready to use it, double-click it like anything else and it will start running in the background (an icon will show up in the notification area of your taskbar).  Then you can use the key combinations for your macros whenever.

At first I wasn't sure how to figure out the exact position and size of each window on the desktop so that I could use it in the script code.  Then I discovered a handy tool called Window Spy that comes with the AutoHotkey installation.  This tool tells you all the relevant stats for any active window. 

From this you can see in the Active Window Position all the info I need.  Plug those numbers into a WinMove command in AutoHotkey and blammo!  Everything in it's proper place.  For each file I used a Run, Sleep and WinMove command list.  Sleep is needed because if the file isn't actually open when it gets to WinMove, the WinMove has nothing to run on and is essentially skipped (it took me about 15 minutes of troubleshooting and forum searching to figure this out).  So don't forget the Sleep command!

Here's my opening script:

This is a great tool if you need to automate repetitive tasks on your computer.  The scripts can be daunting at first, but if you are familiar with any kind of programming language it will only take minutes to figure it out.   You can essentially do anything with this application that you can do with a mouse and keyboard.  I can already think of some other things I can use this for... why I never thought to look for something like this earlier is beyond me.

The Distant [Update 1] Third Draft

If you've glanced at this site, you might know that I have previously released two eBooks, Bonebearer and Practicing.  If you've actually followed this site and explored it a little bit, you might know that I'm currently working on another novel, called The Distant.  I figured I might post some updates on the progress of this work every once in a while to maybe generate some interest and share some writing observations.

First Draft

The first draft of this novel was written between 2003 and 2009.  It grew out of a short story called "Born of the Forest, Dying With You," which I included in my short story anthology Practicing.  Once I got an idea of how to expand the story, I did a fairly detailed outline and wrote many pages of notes and some backstory.  Then I started writing.

Writing for me is a strange process.  Sometimes I get really involved and churn out a lot in a short time.  Other times I have to struggle to meet a target or to get things going, and in those cases I usually take breaks.  In the case of this novel, I ended up taking some long breaks due to a variety of reasons.  Suffice to say, it was written in chunks, and I veered quite a bit from the original outline.

I've read about how some writers have detailed outlines and adhere strictly to that, keeping tight rein on the characters and never letting the plot stray.  I have a lot of trouble doing that, mainly because I can't help but come up with better ideas as I'm actually writing and I can't help but incorporate them in.  Sometimes the characters tell me what to do, so I start taking the plot in a different direction, go back and fix earlier things on occasion, and usually end up in a way that doesn't mesh with how I started.  I then have to again rework earlier parts to make it all fit together, or cut things entirely.

Second Draft

That is what happened with this novel.  I went where the Muse took me and damn the outline.  Once I finally read through the complete first draft, I realized it needed a lot of work.  I let it simmer for almost two years before revising to a second draft in 2011.  I cut a huge section in the middle that was weak and really pointless in the grand scheme of things, 55K words total (out of the first draft's 231K), and intercut the narrative between past and present scenes (the first draft was chronological).

This new draft works much better in my opinion, as it gets to the meat of the story quicker and backstory is related in smaller chapters as needed.  In the original version the first half of the novel is backstory and setup, and when you get to the major turning point, it seems awkward and almost like an entirely different novel.  So mixing the two highlights both aspects of the work, without boring the reader with a clunky first half.

Third Draft

Last month, I started working on the third draft.  I'm trying to average around 2K words edited per day, though I usually don't meet that.  Some sections need little editing, but others need to be revamped or rewritten to reflect its new place in the novel, and that takes longer.  For instance, by starting the second draft in what was originally the middle of the first draft, I now have to introduce characters and explain concepts there, when in the first draft that had already occurred.  I have to do a little jumping back and forth while editing to keep everything consistent.

Overall, this is hardly the best way to write a novel, but it's the route I took for this one.  It's a learning experience, and something like this can only help improve my writing and editing skills.  I'm expanding some sections and will probably end up with a final word count of around 200K.  And there will definitely be a fourth draft, I can guarantee that.