Wednesday, December 24, 2008

... an easy cut

Today I finally decided to remove the mysterious unmanned ship from the story of Daneel's arrival at The City. I had made a deal with myself that if I could not figure out what that was all about by the time I got to the final act of the story, I would change it. Well, I changed my mind - I am still in the middle of the revision and am not yet ready to write the final act, and I removed it completely. It was surprisingly easy, which is a good sign that it needed to be removed. I only had to edit the first prologue bit by the Keeper, and one paragraph of Nightfall's inner contemplation later (around Chapter 3 it seems). Rewrites were not even required; I simply removed the sentences that mentioned it and patched up the ones around it to make it flow correctly without them. Done. That's it. The following paragraph is no more and the events it describes no longer happen.


We discovered that this man, appearing as an aristocrat, was the sole occupant aboard the vessel. News of this aristocratic sailor and his unlikely feat of operating a ship of considerable size without a crew to aid him propagated through the seaside pubs and watering holes until it had passed from mouth to ear several times, soon to be disregarded as nonsense by any who considered themselves to be of discerning intellect. This vessel remains to this day, docked at a private location to which it was moved shortly after its owner’s arrival. Inspection of this vessel has revealed it to be nothing aside from completely ordinary.


Too bad. I kinda liked some of the phrasing in that.

I had already sent out the revised Chapters 7 and 8 to my critics, but I'm feeling the need to go back over them both one more time and make sure things are best. This is a point in the story that sort-of fell through the cracks when it was first (re)written, as I had just started Architecture school at around the end of Chapter 6, and would not find my stride again with writing until around Chapter 9 (which was then 8). So if memory serves all of the old 7 was sort-of tossed together when I could over the course of a year and a half. It's no wonder it's shoddier than most.

1 comment:

ehcmier said...

I'm wondering if the section is eventually going to be cannibalized and omitted entirely. Other than casting intriguing mystery upon Nightfall, it only serves to mention the Keeper. Fans bring quite a lot of knowledge to "get" the Keeper stuff, but non-fans wouldn't know much at all who this observer is, or what a Keeper keeps. As the opening bit, it needs to either really count for something, besides all the mystery, or step aside, or be absorbed, methinks.