Category Archives: Charters

Author’s Log 2203.19

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Back in the words, and loving it. Currently working through scenes I identified in my structural audit that needed adjustment.
What does that mean?

Well in some cases when reviewing the structure of the story I could see that a key scene’s intensity needed to be raised. Think of a scale, if it was only a 3 it might need to be a 5 or a 6 in the context of where the story was.

Other scenes that just aren’t needed or are wrong for the story need to be re-written or removed.

While it took me longer than I wanted (or expected) to go through the structural editing the value now is very clear. Each day I pick off a scene and rewrite it to make the changes.

It’s so tempting to adjust other parts of the scenes as I read through, such as sentence structure or grammar, but I know at this point that getting the storyline to be complete is the key to getting this book published.

Key Work of late:

  • Editing scenes
  • Researching dyes, chalk, home cloth making in times gone by
  • Adding more world building content to my encyclopedia of my world

Author’s Log 0803.19

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I had quite a major breakthrough this week which has seen me get back to actually laying more words on paper (figuratively speaking).

The positioning and placement of the key parts of the bad guy, my antagonist, in the story had been halting my progress on Book 1, and the whole editing process had become a grind for solutions to a problem I believed I had.

Lying in bed one evening it dawned on me that my original work on this was ok, and in fact matched some key masterworks and their stories in how they addressed this very issue. It was the best sleep I’ve had in a while that night and in the morning I woke lighter as if a great weight had been removed from my shoulders.

Words are back being written and I am working through the key scenes that needed ‘beefing up’ (I wonder what a vegan version of that phrase would be?) and starting to bring some of the layers of my world into the novel.

I hadn’t realised how much time had passed since I was truly writing words and I recognise now that even if I am researching and editing a book, I also need to be laying down words for another story at the same time to keep my writing hand in. So now I will make sure I am first drafting the rest of Book 2 if I get stuck resolving conceptual issues again.

Key Work of late:

  • writing words. yes real words back into scenes to improve them
  • heaps of research reading around disabilities in medieval and similar periods
  • research into some old crafts from early years
  • a little bit of world building for the map of Book 2 & 3 which isn’t included in my current map.

Author’s Log 2402.19

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Major advances in settling key issues around my protagonist and her story line have been made in the previous weeks, as part of edit 2. This was significant but slow moving.

It has taken me a lot more time to get my head around resolving key issues in fiction, verse my non-fiction. I have been enjoying learning every week on how best to attack the issues, and instead of writing, editing, writing, editing and never getting pleased with the work, taking time to understand what it is that’s wrong with a certain scene or arc is making it much easier to resolve.

I bounce between Robert Mckee’s Story, John Truby’s Anatomy of a story and Shaun Coyne’s Story Grid as my tools of choice in resolving the story elements. Time will tell if it has worked.

Key work of late:

  • outlining missing scenes required for antagonists story
  • researching elements relating to antagonists story lines
  • adding depth to key placements in world affecting book 1 and 2
  • editing scene chronology and placement