Sat in on a class about web accessibility. Learned a couple of things I can still improve here, mostly in relation to links. Hearing about different ways people use assistive technology (e.g., they may ask for all links on a page to be read to them as a list, so the link text should include some context, should not be duplicated, and should be easily repeatable for people using voice commands) will help a lot with decision making going forward.
We’re now inside Big City, where Hero is sent on an errand while Heroine spends time with several awesome women.
I’ve concluded my problem isn’t that I dislike or am bored by Hero. He’s fine! It’s just that everybody else is so damn awesome, he doesn’t rise above everyone else in my esteem the way The Romance Novel Partner® typically does. I may have to be okay with this because I’m certainly not diminishing anyone else for his benefit.
Some of these characters will be future main characters, but even the incidental ones who appear for one scene would be cool to spend more time with. I’d been thinking about the “bonus stories” in terms of what Hero gets up to when left to his own devices and Heroine’s minor-loose-ends wrap-up, but I could easily do one-offs for everybody who isn’t an overt asshole. I can think of 12 such characters up to this point. So that’s a fun (in theory) project. Finish the 3-4 “big” bonus stories for this book and then supplement with random in-world adventures so subscribers can have something thematically appropriate on a monthly basis, and then the “had an urge to write about space vampires/a fashionably evil purse/a tourist-eating hermitage” stories can be on a different tier for subscribers enthused about variety? Eh, long way off, we’ll see when we get there.
Cut some worldbuilding that isn’t relevant to this story and was in the way. I’m not absolutely opposed to pinches of worldbuilding that serve no purpose other than depth of flavor, but when it impairs the flow of a scene and bogs down pacing, it’s doing more harm than good. In early drafts, we throw things at the wall to see what sticks. Some inevitably drop off, but enough stick. Not a tragedy.
I’ve already put a note at the top of my editor/early reader/proofreader checklists to keep an eye on names. I’ve stumbled across more than one artifact that squeaked through find-and-replace during the umpteen name changes, and I’m afraid, because I still associate defunct names with characters, I’m swanning past other occurrences without a second glance. I need fresher eyes to help me not embarrass myself.
The history behind the overarching plot went “ding!” (to borrow last week’s slow cooker metaphor). I won’t get into it much in this book, which mostly unlocks the overarching plot, but it’s a relief to know so I can plant seeds and figure out which information to reveal in each subsequent book. Which details complement the existing plot, and which can shape the plot into something better? Into another slow cooker that goes.
Took out a part where Hero basically implied Heroine didn’t know where she was going in a city she lived in for 20 years.[efn_note]She’s already a fugitive, so there’s no logical reason she wouldn’t gut him and leave his body in the street![/efn_note] He can question whether she’ll abscond with the loot. He can question whether she’ll be safe in a hostile place without someone watching her back. But he dumped his fate, the fate of a kingdom, and, by extension, the fate of all the kingdoms into her capable hands, so what he’s not going to do is question her judgment. I put it there in the first place to bridge a conversation gap, not with the intent of making him an asshole, and yet I created a flawless “oh no you fucking didn’t” moment. *buffs nails* Why yes, I have always been this gifted.
Heroine said “I survived [thing], remember?” when I couldn’t recall her ever actually mentioning [thing] to Hero, so I had to scan back to check. She did very lightly allude to it, but I found a spot after that where she could tell him (and readers) what happened to a more memorable degree. More super-rough words for Future Me, but at least the logic hole is filled.
Spent way too much time trying to make Heroine’s thinking about her history with another character interesting and relevant. The solution was to cut it! This one sentence can be moved elsewhere, this general concept can be addressed when she’s face to face with him a few scenes later, but that entire page of thinking was unnecessary in that location. Some of the words on the page are there only to help me figure things out, and once they’ve served that purpose, they can go. Whatever I learned from them will manifest in other ways elsewhere. It would be groovy to recognize them as a learning exercise before wasting time trying to make them something else, but if wishes were horses and so forth.
My most prophetic character now says something like “If you meet a fire-breathing giant and live, the reason is that it wants you to live.” This relates to actual fire-breathing giants encountered earlier, as well as to Heroine at the moment of utterance, as she is leaning hard on the neck of Prophetic Character’s twin, AS WELL AS to various formidable enemies who consider Heroine and Hero too useful to kill immediately. This sort of depth is extremely satisfying to me. Note that it did not develop during the original writing nor during the first revision but needed this long to… Actually, I don’t have a good depth metaphor. Kinda calls for roots, but the end of the process requires coming up. Something something harvesting carrots blah blah INSIGHT!
I’ve had a ban on puns and wordplay in this book because this is a secondary fantasy world, they’re not really speaking English, and I know puns, rhymes, meter, etc. don’t fare well in translation (nor “translation”).[efn_note]For example, I watched a movie for Spanish language-learning supplementation. (Please note: I cannot recommend the following cinematic production for any other purpose, except perhaps to indulge a fetish for sharks with tits and ass.) The title in English is Shark Side of the Moon, which is obviously a play on “dark side of the moon.” All those words exist in Spanish! But in Spanish, “oscuro” (dark) and “tiburón” (shark) don’t differ by only the initial phoneme as they do in English, so “heh I see what you did there” upon seeing the arrangement of words becomes “why are you serving me word salad.” When things that have been translated seem weirdly flat or flat-out weird, it’s often because some of the wit in the source language can’t be 1:1 replicated in the target language. When someone makes cultural assumptions (e.g., “[insert culture here] has no sense of humor”) based on translated material, they’re looking through a pinhole-size lens and mistaking the tip of their own nose for the whole world.[/efn_note] But I’ve reached a point where a “killer/kill her” misunderstanding would be incredibly useful. It’s something that would have to be told to the POV character because it’s not her misunderstanding, so I could, theoretically, conlang a word/phrase that would create the confusion. Possibly using Heroine’s name in place of the “her”? Oh, it would be fantastic if her name sounds a lot like the suffix for “one who does things” in Hero’s native tongue. *an hour of scribbling later* Okay, that’s sorted. Just have to find somewhere after Hero’s confession and before coming face-to-face with Heroine’s personal antagonist to stick it.
At some point, I’ll have to stop adding, but as of now, all of this falls under the umbrella of my pre-round notes to explain/expand elements that remained in a moldable state. This is the last round of revision in which there will be no resistance to changes large enough to affect anything outside the paragraphs in which they occur. The form will be set, and the work will then be refining surface detail with finer tools.
Fuel an author!