[00:00:00]

Welcome to the In All Jest podcast.

I'm Darryl, your host, and each week I take you on a hero's journey.

I leave my safe, normal world and face many obstacles on my quest to publish not just one but six epic fantasy novels. .

I hope you'll come along for the ride.

You can find out more information at kingdarryl.com/podcast.

Hi there. This is episode 19, and as it turns out, it's being recorded on February the 19th, 2021. It's been two weeks when I laughed and cried while I wrote and not because of my own stupidity.

Since Last Time

[00:00:50]

Since last time I recorded an in-between episode, go me. I'm actually getting it done. As I promised I would, which was chapters seven and eight from A Fool's Errand or book one. That episode is episode 17, which you can find in the podcast episodes. All right. In the last two weeks, I have written 23,502 words, which is about eight or nine thousand less than the fortnight before. My current total is 166,187, according to Scrivener, which sits at 83% of the story. Assuming 200,000 words is my end word count. If you like to do the maths, then the net difference is 21,898. So not 23,502. And that's because of course I keep taking stuff out, putting words in, there's a fair bit of culling in this bit.

There was a number of chapters and scenes that had been hanging around from before, which I got rid of. The biggest problem I have is that to meet the February 28th deadline, which is only nine days away and that's less than nine days of actual writing, I would need to do around 4,400 words a day. So you can see that that's blowing out, past most probability. I do have time this weekend in theory, to smash out some words, but if I  do 4,400 both days, that's, nearly 9,000 words, which is about the maximum I get done on a weekend unless I really go nuts. So pray for me, folks that I actually get to sit down and just go bang straight off and not have to do lots of poking around and research and fixing things.

Where is the story at? I have been completing what I call the middle build. I like that term from Sean Coyne's , story grid, also known as act two. It's the main journey section of the story. It's sort of 50% of the story. So the way it's broken up Act one roughly 25%, act two 50%, act three.  25%. So I'm now heading towards the climax and resolution that happens in act three and bringing the book to a close.

I pretty much have the ending already written, because I did that originally, although there is going to be change to what happens in it.  Some of the things that I did originally wouldn't stack up now I have a lot more ways I can bring that ending out and make it even better. So I'm looking forward to getting to that point when I get there.

And what is different to book one? Was that because I cut the book when I did book one, I didn't have an ending anymore, that was enough of a climax resolution and it was really just, Oh, I'm stopping at this place and now I need to write it. So the whole time I was editing book one, I was uncertain about the ending.

Whereas I'm a lot more certain about the ending I have in place at the moment. We'll see if I'm a certain when I get there, but I'm not there yet. One of the most enjoyable and yet saddest set of scenes I've written about happened this fortnight and it relates to something known as the Fool's Cart, C A R T.

It was mentioned a little bit in book one, but only slightly more of it comes out in Fool Me Twice. And during one of the chapters, I actually shed a couple of tears while I was writing it. That was new or unique to me. I haven't actually experienced such direct emotion while I was in the midst of writing.

But this particular chapter really got to me and the follow-up chapter as well. And a couple of preview people that,  look at my work, both experienced similar things in one or the other of these combined chapters. Another set of scenes I had myself laughing out loud and a lot. I was able to pull off a flip of something in the way that it should or could have played out.

If I let it run its course about how exactly, how things were going to happen. It would have been much more of what you would expect and the way I got to resolve it was different. And the interactions between a couple of characters were I really enjoyed. I felt they were crackers and I just made a lot of fun and it was a real kick to write.

A number of the characters in the series have been facing and resolving, to different degrees, a lot of obstacles to their goals.  There's been a lot of heat turned up on them across the whole of the continent.  Almost felt like I've been deliberately poking them and antagonizing them and trying to get them at their worst and then forced them to be at their best or to fail.

And, you know, that's kind of fun. I'm deliberately and actively doing it while I'm writing, not in the editing sequences. And as I've said in the last couple of episodes I've recorded, I'm really hoping that's going to give me the ability to,  be better about the way I approach the editing cycle. I have hit some difficulties bringing certain plot points to a close.

Yeah. Now that I'm getting towards the ending of the book, I suppose what I mean, is that I'm having to think more about the sequences and options, before I write particular scenes.  I don't have the freedom to just write them and let them bubble out. The, the need to be across the impact on this, in the timeline, doesn't match up.

How will I get all those things lined up? And I'm having to refer back to the timeline a lot to see where everyone's at and make sure the idea that I want to put in there is now going to play out in the light outlining that I did.  Now that I've got all of these other pieces lined up,  I'm just having to adjust that.

And so in some days when I'm writing, I could spend an hour or so, just getting clear about those elements. It does mean that I've also thought a lot about how I will outline for book three. And I am looking to do a bit more learning and practice a more detailed form of outlining. That will help me resolve a lot of these issues before I sit down to write the story itself, which will be another progression.

I can see how that'll allow me to power through without the same number of blocks. I know I can write in really good chunks if I didn't have to think too much about what's going on. So I will be looking at that. Now's not the time to do it. With so much of this book written and a deadline that I want to meet.

So I'm just going to keep going the way I am.  Reflecting on the, the issues I'm talking about, they are really small in comparison to A Fool's Errand. In book one, I was learning so much having to think so much at each stage of what I was doing. So it took a lot longer. What's happening here is I might be half an hour, an hour where I'm having to think through things, but I'm not getting stuck to the point that I can't write, or I don't know what to do next.

And I am actually excited about getting the manuscript finished and moving into the next phase. The next phase for me will be using the story grid template and mapping out the whole book. I'm going to combine a couple of things as I do that. I'm going to do some minor Wiki updates, particularly around,  new characters and settings that are in there so that I get them in at this stage because they will help all of my editorial team, as well as my self in reflection on the book, but I'll do the story grid and then I'll get into,  resolving the issues I bring up and just starting editing, scenes and chapters as I go.  Having a new process with more outlining and a simpler path to completing and getting it published well, helped me get to my long-term objective, which is at least one novel a year.

If not, 1.25 or 1.5. And clearly that means I'll just be speeding up the pace,  without the ability to just stop doing everything else. There's only so many hours in a day, so the more efficient I can be around all my other activities will be very helpful. What comes next? Well, I'm playing catch up as the numbers at the beginning of the episode said to finish the novel, I got to do a lot of writing.

If I do finish it before I record the next episode, though, I think you all need to buy me chocolate bars and I'm going to hold you to, that would be very important because I'll have done some craziness if, I actually get there. I do believe, I think the story is going to run over 200,000 words. So I can't really see it making it by then.

So you're not really up for too much, but I will keep writing exactly the way I'm doing five days a week, as many words as I can heading towards the end of this manuscript. , in other exciting news, we have an interactive map coming for you, the readers and listeners. I'm not going to say too much about it, but I've had my team working on it.

And once we've ironed out the final bugs and got the design implemented,  we'll be loading the data. And I'm really excited to share that with everyone. I haven't seen anything done, like the way we're doing it. It's pretty neat. My team has been excellent at it.  Bringing the idea up and helping put it in place.

And when I share it, I hope you'll find it really cool as well. Well, for now that's about it. I've got to go and finish this draft, hang around for one bite at a time.

One Bite at a Time

Chapter Nine  (Audio Only). [ 00:11:13 ]

Outro