... the first Chronicle

Some of you may remember this post from around this time last year. (Shocking that it's been that long...) In it I talked about the first 'story' of Contravention of Thieves. Those who have been reading the blog since then know that alot has changed since then, but among them has not been my interest in doing that project.

Some very enthusiastic reviews of COT have prompted me to dust off my ideas for COT2 and take a serious look at what I wanted to do with the project. Readers of this blog know that I was considering doing COT2 as a series of short stories. That idea has evolved, just a bit.

There's going to be three different phases of COT2. The first I am going to do, and am already doing. The second I will probably do. The third I might or might not do.

The first phase is the novellas. I have five of these planned, though I may not do all of them. Each will probably run around 100 to 200 pages long, and would be fairly stand alone, able to be read in any order, and without having read COT beforehand. While two of these will be rather fanficcy and delve head-first into Thief-Universe canon, three of them will be Thief-light, bearing little to no connection to the Thief games, though closely related to COT and even CoSaS. I am even considering doing with these what I decided not to do for COT - create additional versions of all five with no copyrighted Thief material in them at all, (replacing names of things, etc.) making them each stand alone, publishable novels.

The second phase will be the short stories that act as direct sequels to COT. In fact, fans of COT could probably even skip the novellas completely and just treat these as COT's sequel.

The third phase, which is still sketchy, would be a project more like COT itself. I could possibly write a short novel linking together the plots of the novellas and the short stories, laying the ground work for the probably-never-to-be-written COT3 which I nonetheless have fun thinking about.

Or none of this could happen! (Only it already has begun... I'm 50 pages into the first of the novellas now...)

... just some lose ends?

Work continues on COT Draft 5 as the first three chapters sit in public and feedback slowly trickles in. Last night I was sent a list of grammar oddities from none other than Alex, the author for the original Jyre. (She's really enjoying it!) She seems to have a knack for spotting sentences which could be structured a bit less awkwardly. More work!

I've been doing more than that, though. I mentioned previously that I was doing some additional work on later chapters, focused so far mostly on Chapter 8, and dealing with Sheam. Without giving too much away, the events in the original which were reformed into the events of Chapter 8 were truncated quite a bit, and one thing that never made it into the rewrite was any kind of information about Sheam's past, even how she was hired to work for Nightfall only several months ago. My reason? It wasn't very interesting! It wasn't important to the plot! It didn't drive the story forward! And so it never made it in, and Sheam became something of a mystery, the every-day person in the story, and yet with no past or background, whereas every other character has a great deal of past/background information given.

My inspiration to change that was twofold. On the one had, when thinking up stories I want to tell in COT2: Chronicles of Thieves (just wait, I'll change that title again...) the idea of Sheam's past came to mind. But the problem was the same - it's not very interesting. She's led a very normal, comfortable life, without much drama or strife. (Didn't know I was a poet, did you?) That, actually, furthered the argument for putting that information into COT-R.

Each character in COT-R goes through a particular kind of hell, and faces challenges greater than they've ever faced in their life. That's no less true for Sheam, and in many ways it's the most true for her. All of the other characters are used to danger and mortal peril and having to make life-or-death choices. It's normal for them. For Sheam, it's totally new. So with that realization, I knew that I had to present just how much of a contrast this is in her life. I knew I had to explain where she came from, not because it's important to the plot (it still isn't) but because it's a very important part of her character arc.

So I did it. Chapter 8 was ripe for it, not only because it was already highly Sheam-focused, but it ran rather short, and it already featured another several-pages-long flashback scene for another character. Thus, it fit. In the end, I think it adds a great deal of understanding for the challenges Sheam is facing.

I have another task though, which is more deeply rooted in something I don't want to put into COT2 than something I feel is missing from COT-R. It's a much bigger spoiler though, so I have to be a bit more vague here. It basically deals with a pivotal moment in Lytha's past which is hinted to a great deal but never enough so that the reader has enough information to understand exactly what happened. (If they figure it out, they're far, far smarter than the author!) I, again, was planning to turn this into one of the short stories for COT2, (one of the Chronicles, as it were) but it wasn't right to do so. Even though each story in COT2 will stand alone, I don't want any of them to be simply background information for COT-R and have nothing to contribute to Contravention of Thieves. There's really nothing about this bit of history that will have anything to do with anything in Contravention (still hesitant to call it COT3, I guess) so it really doesn't have any place in Chronicles, which will be subtitled as "From Correspondence to Contravention". It's quite, completely, and utterly part of Correspondence.

So now I am pondering how to work it in. It could either be a simple paragraph, or it could be an entire section. It depends on where I think it would fit best and how much it breaks up the flow and momentum of the story. As always, I will blog about it when I've done it!

... zeroing in

I hope everyone had as merry a Christmas as I did (or even more merry!)

I am continuing to develop the nature of the next project(s) and since the last post I've revised things further. At the moment I am looking at two distinct projects; COT1.5 and COT2.

(Note that the terms COT1.5 and COT2, like COT-O and COT-R, are used merely for the sake of this blog and will not appear in any official form along with the completed projects!)

COT1.5 will (maybe) be called Circle of Tales. It, like COT-R will be a collection of six books, but each book will be stand-alone and there will be no specific order (with one small exception!). Four of these books will introduce new plots and characters within the COT/CoSaS/Thief universe. One will be a prequel to COT-R and another a direct sequel.

COT2 will be called (as has long been known!) Contravention of Thieves, and will be quite like what has already been discussed.

... multiple accounts

It looks like we're in luck. Redface has offered to take care of the formatting for the finished novel, and so far his work looks excellent. After a recent poll taking at TTLG (sorry blog followers, but I needed more than the three votes I usually get over the course of four weeks) it was decided that more pages, thus higher cost, was worth it for larger text. Redface should hopefully be taking care of two of the covers as well. ~~ In fact, I've asked all three of the artists if they could focus on getting the cover images done during January, and they seem optimistic. ~~ Our editor won't be available to work again until the end of January so I'm considering asking for additional help in the mean time. Actually I already replied to someone who had offered to do so, to see how serious he is. I'd really like to have someone who's never heard of Thief to read it and critique it as a piece of fantasy literature, but I've had no luck there so far. ~~ Meanwhile I'm thinking of a few additional things I missed during the last revision, but I'm not yet ready to jump back in for more work. These additional things involve Lytha, and it occurred to me that I had no intention of addressing these items during COT2 so it's now or never. I'd like for COT2 to be as baggage-free as possible: no leftover issues from COT-R to deal with.

Speaking of COT2, I keep going back and forth on certain issues. If you've been reading the blog you know that I was strongly considering doing the whole thing as a series of short stories rather than the tremendous epic novel that COT-R became. Now I am pondering actually splitting it into three separate projects. ~~ The first would be a collection of (rather long) short stories that can be taken totally in isolation. Some would be completely stand-alone tales set in the CoSaS Universe, some would be fairly closely linked to COT-R but not to Thief itself, and some would be Thief fan-fictions in a very true sense. The six principals from COT-R would get a mention from time to time, or even a cameo, but would not be featured heavily. All of these stories would be setting up backstory for what is to come, but all would also be rather self contained. ~~ The second would be again a series of short stories, but far less self-contained and rather more chapter-like. It would be a direct continuation of COT-R and feature the six principals heavily, though many would be told from the perspective of new characters. In fact I even considered naming this project "Book 7". On the other hand there's a total of eight stories planned for this project, so it might as well be called Book 8 as well! All of these stories would address an issue left unresolved at the end of COT-R and either provide a complete conclusion, or develop that plot in preparation for the third project. ~~ The third project would be Contravention of Thieves itself, and would be an actual novel with chapters and an interwoven plot just like COR-R. It would tie things from the previous two projects together and bring everything to a conclusion. Since so much ground will already be covered in the previous two projects, COT2 can launch directly into the meat of the story and provide a very fast-paced narrative with a minimum of exposition or backstory explanation. My goal would be to make it half to one-third the length of COT-R. Sounds good to me.

... backtracking

After talking it over with some concerned people and thinking about it over the weekend, I'm backtracking from my previous post. If COT2 is going to be COT2 then it should stick with the same form throughout. So at this point (who knows how things will change) I shall continue to plan out the entire work as a series of self continued but networked short stories.

... a mixed plan

My current plan is to do COT2 in three sections.

The first section will comprise three books, and will consist of 12 to 14 short stories. I say 12 to 14 because I have 14 ideas for stories, but at least two of them are so distinctly independent from the grand plot arc of COT2, they could easily be omitted. Five of the stories happen before COT-R, and the other nine after. Of the nine after, four of them build upon events of the previous ten stories. Does my math make sense?

The second section will be a stand-alone novella featuring Ghost and Lytha in an adventure that, while being a naturally progression of their story, is not intrinsically linked to the grand plot arc of COT2. I decided to do it this way because I wanted to continue their story, but I felt that trying to integrate it with the main one would be a disservice to both. I am not sure if I want to tell it in the COT-R standard four-chapter format, or go for something different, but it will be a stand alone story about as long as one of the COT-R books.

The third section will take the plotlines introduced in the first 14 (or 12) short stories and weave them together into a two-part novella (Books 5 and 6) in order to bring COT2 to a conclusion. It will strongly resemble COT-R (and COT for that matter) in that it will be telling multiple stories simultaneously, forgoing the short-story format used in the first three books.

I feel that doing it this way allows me to focus on the small issues for the first three books, in a series of stand alone stories any of which could exist separate from COT2 (or even Thief canon). Then, I switch from crawling to walking with a much larger-scale stand alone story, and finally wrap it all up with a tale that readers of COT-R would be accustomed to that can launch directly into the meat of the plot without having to spend several chapters setting the stage. All of this also assumes that COT2 will be about the same length as COT-R, but it's flexible enough to allow anything to happen.

In a nutshell, COT-R was one book in six volumes. COT2 will actually be six books. The first three will be short story collections, followed by a novel, followed by a two-part novel. That sounds doable, and fun.

... three books, nailed down

I sat down last night and this morning to nail down the content of COT2 Book 1 (the first four stories) and ended up doing the same for 2 and 3 as well, though in much less detail. In the end I went with a more chronological arrangement (though not a strict one) where the first four stories concern events that actually happen before COT, dealing with new characters, with some cameos. They'll all be very different, some very dark, some more lighthearted, some very independent, some very fanficcy, some taking place over the course of months, some hours. The second book will be a direct continuation from the end of COT, and in the third book the various short stories will start to come together into a larger plot, with the characters and events from the first book tying in with the second.

It's possible that for books 4, 5, and 6, I may switch back to more chapter-like stories, with a continuous flow. It depends on how things go! I suspect it may be wise to wait until these twelve stories are written before planning out the next twelve. I will say one thing is certain - going with a short-story format has made things much easier to manage.

... rummage sale

Went digging through the old COT2 today, looking for more good things to salvage for the new version. I didn't find much. Really, I barely found anything.

What I have for COT2 is in a bit of a pile. It's about 200,000 words long, with no chapter structure or any sort of clear narrative. There's a couple of story arcs going on, which fade in and out as the story progresses (told strictly chronologically) over the course of several months. It generally results in a convoluted mess that has no clear purpose or direction.

I'm going to start laying down the blueprints for at least a half-dozen of the stories which will form the starting point for COT2, but now it seems I'll be doing it without the aid of the existing text.

... this time I'll actually listen

I put up a new poll concerning a genuine curiosity. Some polls I put up just because I'm curious about what people think, and don't really intend to act on the results of the popular opinion. In this case I probably will.

I intend to divide COT2 into books just like how I divided COT-R into six volumes. The COT2 books may end up being more thematically linked than the COT-R ones, or may not. We'll see how it goes. As the question in the poll states, what kind of stories do you want to see in the first book?

The first story already deals with a new character and a new plot, with only a small link to the original COT. I would like to continue doing this for the next few stories, but I know that readers can sometimes be frustrated when reading the next book in a series only to find that none of the familiar characters or stories seem to be present. So, make your opinions heard.

... contravention

Last night I dug up and dusted off the first chapter of Contravention of Thieves, (COT2), and revised it into Story 1: The Nightbringer. The revisions entailed some heavy edits to the first section, which was written shortly after the original COT was finished, a new final section, and the removal all sections written from the point of view of other characters, dealing with other plots. The goal was to create a short story told from the perspective of a single character, with a clear beginning, middle, and conclusion.

This sets the tone for what COT2 will be. Rather than a 24 chapter 900 page epic, it will be a series of short stories that eventually flesh out a bigger picture. Doing it this way allows me to focus on each idea as a separate unit, developing each plot independently of the greater whole. Though the scope of COT2 will be much more vast than COT (dealing with dozens of principals over the course of several years) the methods used to convey it make the project much easier to tackle.

Some additional stories can still be excavated from the discarded COT2, but the majority of it was made irrelevant by COT-R.

Of course, COT and COT2 are still on the backburner. I just did this as a break from the job hunt, so don't expect Story 2 to show up any time soon. :)

... working it all out

I am stil trying to work COT out of my system as I ease into other projects.

The new poll is a double one so I did a strange multiple-choice answer system, since it's asking a pair of yes or no questions.

First question - should I name each of the six books? I believe no, because I do not want to give the illusion that they are in any way stand-alone novels to be picked up and read in any order. That's why I am calling each one "Book # of 6" and not just "Book #".

Second question - should I number each section? I can see this being useful during the editing process, so that someone need merely say "section 76" rather than the chapter number and the name of the section, but as I reader I think I would find it a little obnoxious to be reminded that I am reading section 124.

Any counter-arguments?

I've narrowed down basic ideas for each cover scene, but I still need to nail down the particulars before I contact the artists. I limited the options to scenes that are actually pertinent to the volume they adorn, while still tyring to choose moments that are both pivotal to the principal character they illustrate, and does not give any big spoilers away! In some cases I should maybe discuss it with the artists to see where their particular strengths want to pull the direction of the designs. Before I do any of that though, it would be really good if I gave the artists a template to work with, so that they'll know the exact proportions of the image, where the spine will be, where certain text is going, and so forth.

I made another decision regarding COT2 that I can probably talk about. (Be advised, actual writing work on COT2 will not begin for a long time, but it's fun to think about it right now!) I completely avoided the Keepers for COT-R, partially because I felt like they were never really adequately illustrated in Thief 1 & 2 for adaptation, and partially because I felt that they were summarily ruined in Thief 3 which presented the supposed all knowing keepers of the balance as confused naive clods. For COT2 I will bring them in, but if I do so, it will be with heavy modifications to who they are and what, exactly, they do. I may even redesign them from the ground up, with only the tiny peeks we got in Thief 1 (which I still consider the definative look at The Keepers) as guidelines. This would represent a signifigant break from the norm, where I tried very hard to keep things in line with what was seen in the games (though I did do a fairly large overhaul to the pagans, I did so without directly contradicting anything!)

... dream, dream, dream

I kept dreaming of writing chapter 25, so I just got up. Make it stop! There is no chapter 25!

I sent out copies of the finished story to a few people, and am anxious to hear what they think. Only two of them are up-to-date on their reading, so I don't expect to get all of the impressions of the ending for a while yet. Now I need to try to relax and focus on other things.

Since a major point of this was to make COT2 actually possible, I will admit that I have been giving the sequel some serious thought lately. I even made a list (it's pretty long) of the things I no longer need to do in COT2 because they've been taken care of by the rewrite. I've decided that COT2 will probably be a collection of 24 short stories probably around the length of a COT chapter each. Some will be fairly stand alone, but others will link together into a longer narrative. It's not going to be the same long epic plot as COT was though, which means that if I want to stop at 8 or 16 chapters, I can. There won't be principals in COT2, but rather each story will have a set of characters who tell it, maybe sometimes just one, so the reader never know when a "chapter" will introduce a totally new main character. I am doing it this way because the story I want to tell has a very long timeframe (several years) and involves many seemingly (and actually) unrelated events in many non-local locations. Thus, trying to fit that into a novel-like framework would be disconcerting. It would lack a proper arc, and seem like just random stories and events. SO, that's exactly what I will present it as... a series of short stories.

What is not decided is when I'll do it though. If COT-R goes "live" and the community seems to love it and I get lots of orders for printed books, I'll gradually start working on COT2. If COT-R gets fairly ignored/panned, that's just my cue to start thinking about the other, totally original story ideas I've been brewing over the years.

... a trip through crazy town

Very little commenting is done in the revision of Chapter 6, because almost all of the editing is structural and not content related. On the other hand, I've always had trouble editing these parts of the story because I get into it too much while reading, and find it hard to take the time to scrutinize my sentence structure.

In a switch from the previous pairing, 6 focuses mostly on Ghost and Jyre, though the story is still told from the point of view of all five. The difference is that those two are in the most proactive situations whereas the other three are stuck in mostly reactive situations.

In a fit of nostalgia, I recall that it was the contents of this chapter which prompted the rewrite to begin with. I was plugging away at COT2 and tackling the problem of the monster in the forbidden district, when I decided I needed to do a 'flashback' to refresh the reader's memory about what exactly I was talking about. No, wait, that's not what it was - I was writing about events that were taking place at the same time (the whole chapter was a flashback) and wanted to illustrate that, at that very moment, Jyre had read the scroll and was summoning the monster, so I added in the text from COT. Well, I was miserable over the fact that the pasted text from the old COT scene was very "roughly" written compared to the surrounding content, so I decided to rewrite it. I wouldn't set about trashing COT2 in favor of the rewrite until some time later, but that's where the bug came from. Of course, the rewritten section I used back then wasn't used in the actual rewrite (though it was temporarily!), because the situation and circumstances are very very different in the current draft. Explanation: In the original, Jyre just found the scroll under some loose rocks outside the mansion after a few minutes of looking.

From the looks of the latest poll, I'll be needed to switch the chapter headings back to Nightfall, as it was in the original story.

I will be taking a break from the COT revision to work on something else soon (maybe today, maybe I will work on Chapter 7 first) - the editing of my Japan daily journal into a book, which I think would make a nice Christmas present for some people. That, and I might actually be able to sell it. Wouldn't that be cool! It would also be ironic that my first published and for-sale book turned out to be nonfiction!

... one third done with revision

It's not actually one third done, since one of the chapters in the middle if twice the length of an ordinary chapter, but we can pretend that I am one third done! I think Chapter 5 is exciting for a variety of reasons.

• It's the unofficial gateway to "act 2" where introductions are quite done with and the meat of the story is underway.
• Day to day life is over - all the principals are in some type of peril and have no way to escape it. Of course, much of this peril is the direct result of either their own actions, or the actions of one of the other principals!
• It's told from the point of view of all of them, whereas chapters 1 - 4 are divided with Nightfall and Jyre on the odd side, and Ghost and Lytha on the even one. Sheam is a bit of a nomad, appearing in 2, 3, and 4. (No James yet; as readers of the original will remember, he does not appear in the story until around the middle.)
• It's heavy with COT2 elements. Though not a single word was cut-&-pasted from the discarded documents and into this one, one of the major plot points that impact this chapter and those that follow comes fully formed from my plans for the sequel. The best part is, when it was written into COT2, it seemed tacked on and tenuous, since it was designed to patch a big hole in the original story. As part of the COT rewrite, it's the inevitable progression of events.
• The original COT did not have very many compelling side characters, but Chapter 5 marks the arrival of two of my favorites; Brother Thurm and Richen (the getaway-driver).
• For those who do like fan-ficcy elements, the principals stumble upon two Dark Project locations. I had those missions opened while writing to ensure some level of accuracy, too! (I also did this while writing the bonehoard.)

If I said anything else it would get a little too spoilerific I think. Well today is a holiday in The United States of America (Happy Thanksgiving!) so I won't get another chapter done today, but that doesn't mean that I won't start tinkering on 6.

... where am i AT anyway?

A common question from fans of the original is... at what point in the story is the rewrite? It's hard to answer that because the timeline in the rewrite has changed dramatically. Simply put...

James and Jyre are cira Chapter 17 and have just entered a "lost city".
Nightfall is cira Chapter 22, and has just entered The Lady's realm.
Lytha and Ghost past the conclusion of their story about four chapters ago, and are now deep into sequel territory, none of which was planned for COT2!.
Sheam's story is completely new. Yes, the rewrite features Sheam as one of the principals, and almost all of her story is based on COT2 plans.