I'd meant to stick this up yesterday but was just feeling down about everything, which is part of my decision to take a holiday. Everybody has their point at which fatigue and stress simply sits too heavy (I'm keeping Tade Thompson's twitter thread on this bookmarked from now on). I feel ridiculous but there we go. That said, that's post-fact rationalising.
What I'd actually meant to do was let the story sit and percolate for a couple of weeks so I could make the decisions that would make the writing go smoother while I worked on something else. Project Transformation would end up taking the same amount of time because there'd be less wading through treacle, and the redraft would be a lot smoother, and I'd get work done on the other ideas that deserve it.
Now it's Thur - it's Friday m - it's Friday afternoon and, well, not a whole lot. I've written a new line in Gumshoe Paladin and taken a little time to be very specific with myself about what I'm doing. I've had a half-idea for a Heroic Fantasy-esque tale in a which a priestess, her bodyguard, and a bunch of mercs and thieves quest for the cure to a plague. Workable, but lacking in awesomeness. I've had another idea for a story, this one non-fantasy, about a bloke who persuades his black mate to come join him playing rugby at a club down sorta where London becomes Kent (i.e. where I play my rugby). It's a fun idea and one that'd be super relevant but, while it's my best idea for making it big, it's not the one I feel most about and not the one I'd do best. I know damn well that racism happens in the game but very little of it, or at least that I understand, within my hearing.
I've done a bit of worldbuilding and talking things over with a friend about some of the choices I need to make to solidify this too. I haven't got much resolution out of it but, with the help of a few days' thinking and article by Seth Dickinson about The Traitor Baru Cormorant I'm starting to get an idea of the things I need to resolve.
1) What type of story is this?
Yeah, that's a real big one to leave flapping around. The nature of fantasy is that just calling a book a fantasy - even a High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy or Urban Fantasy - still leaves a certain amount of ground unmarked. I never really addressed this with Project Transformation and have, as a result, piled concept after concept onto it. At some point this needs to stop and a few base concepts need to be established, with everything else either kowtowing to their demands or getting the hell off of base.
2) What's the time usage?
Does this story span years, told in short sharp bursts of things happening with development left off screen? Or it is one continuous chain of events, everything chronicled? I'd assumed the latter and feel those are easier stories to write but the former opens up a lot of doors, such as...
3) When does it start?
Does it start when Sooley becomes a healer in the Sovereignity's Mission? When his mentor disappears? When the new guy arrives confirming Sooley's in charge, giving him a split loyalty? Is it some moment in the rebellion? I probably don't need to know this right away but it help gives me a few things towards getting the ending right.
4) What happens in the denouement? Is this a series?
I am at roughly halfway. I do have an idea for an ending, but it's a fairly similar scene to the climatic middle part, and I don't know how I feel about that. I have a rough three book arc if I want to use it, but I'm not a 100% sure about that. I have one interesting infiltration path but that would require some revision and again, I'm not sure how I feel about it. We're kind of back to the "what concepts am I using" thing here but the specificness helps.
5) Who's the central cast?
I think I've mentioned something about this in the past but I've got a lot of characters and I can't make them all cool. I've got to pick three-four peeps who are going to carry this book, and then work out how all the others show them off.
I'm probably going to have to add more, or distill these down, or something. I'll settle that when I'm back on holiday from the book. But this is where my mind is roughly at in terms of what I've got keep pondering while I'm on holiday.
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