... ghosting Sheam

I recently did some work on Chapter 2 which might fall into the "minor surgery" category. It all started when I was sent some feedback on the section in chapter 2 when Ghost and Sheam first meet. My reader (who is a CoSaS team member) felt that Ghost didn't seem quite himself. I read over it, tried to justify the reader's concerns, and felt that that-was-that. But it nagged at me, so I asked another reader, (one of the original COT authors) to take a look at that scene and see if it felt right to her. She responded saying that it did not seem right, and that Sheam didn't seem to be really acting in character, and gave specific examples of sentences and paragraphs that seemed off, and why they seemed off. At this point I was growing quite concerned, so I asked a third reader (someone who I hadn't known prior to COT's release and who has never heard of Thief) what she thought... and she liked the scene. She didn't want me to change it.

But by then I had made up my mind. I realized how important the scene was, and that it wasn't really doing the job I needed for it to do. So I dug in, deleting large portions of it and rewriting them. In the end, it was very easy to separate Sheam and Ghost from the existing text and completely rework the scene so that they were much more themselves. Once that draft was done, I showed it to my two critics. They felt it was much better! However the reader who liked it before was unhappy. She felt that it lacked what had made her enjoy the scene in the first place. So I slept on it.

The next day I tackled it again. With a few tweaks and edits, some additions and deletions, I sent it to all three of my helpful readers. I was finally happy with it, myself. The two critics though that the additional tweaks made it much better, and the original supporter now liked it again. Who says you can't please everyone? :P

Of course the work didn't end there. I had to edit three other sections to bring them up to date with the changes to that one (like I said, it was an important scene) which I think, all in all, improved those sections too. So, it was a win, win, win!

For those who already have read Chapter 2, the section in question is "Customer Service". I hope you'll take a peek at it to see what I've done with it.

... sometimes you just redo

There's a list of things I planned to correct during this revision, but in Chapter 5 I stumbled upon some problems I had not expected. Correcting those problems required more work than all of the previous revisions to the previous four chapters, and included many new edits to the previous four chapters.

It was another case of me attempting to be vague with the reader, but falling into the trap of being vague with myself too. Even if some things are kept hidden or unclear, they should not be hidden or unclear to the author himself. Undoing the damage this caused resulted in the complete rewrite (not just deleting a few lines and adding a few) of two sections in chapter 5, the creation of a totally new one in chapter 4, heavy changes to a few others in both 5 and 4, and a dozen of small changes to sections going as far back as chapter 3. In the end some stuff I liked had to be thrown out, and the new stuff is not necessarily more entertaining, but now it all actually makes sense and has a logical flow of events.

What more can I say? Simply that Ghost gets a bit more backstory now than he did before.

... beginning of the end

The majority of Chapter 21 is now written, with just a few more scenes to go, best left to a time when I am not grossly underslept.

To my surprise a very big scene with Lytha turned out to not only be something I am quite happy with, but an excellent continuation of her character arc beyond what, in Book 4, could have been the end of her story. (Not to mention a big plot thread introduced early in the story finally coming to a head.) It's essentially the 'big moment' of Chapter 21 that leads directly into 22. Did I mention that I am writing out of order now?

James is proving difficult, but in a good way. He's a unique challenge, due to his character's sytle of having a much more dense internal monologue than any of the others. This is needed since he's facing the pure unknown, and the reader will probably appreciate having an expert analyst along to figure things out with them.

Jyre is mostly an observer this time, which had given me a chance to flesh out some of the minor characters I really wanted to get some quality time with. Unexplectedly, I stumbled upon a very natural way of progressing the plot with her in a direction that I had recently given up on because I, well, couldn't find a natural way of doing it.

Ghost is really enjoying being away from Lytha. By that I mean he hates being away from her, but I am enjoying writing him being away from her. After four chapters of them being joined at the hip, it's refreshing to write a Ghost scene that doesn't have its tone colored by Lytha's dramatic hues.

I was afraid that with all of the high-level stuff going on with the other five principals, Sheam's stuff would be a boring drag in comparison. After writing some of it, I think it makes a refreshing intermission from all of the Goddesses and Alien Beings and Serious Spirital Contemplation, and gives the reader something they can relate to on a much more down to earth level.

... poised, ready to spring

Whew. Chapter 20 is done. Alliances and Betrayals. Book 5 is done. Book 5 is also the longest book, at over 100,000 words. None of the chapters in it are overly long, but it has some very long segues, most over 2000 words.

What can I say? As I already mentioned, the goal of 20 was to get everything poised on the verge of the climax. For every character that means something a little different. For Nightfall, it means facing the consequences of a choice he made. For Jyre, it means her journey coming full circle. For Ghost and Lytha it means facing the aftermath and side effects of their turmoil. For Sheam, it means pushing ahead in site of a worst case scenario. For James, it means realising that one can become hopelessly out of one's league.

As my critics may note, Chapter 20 is extremely rough. When doing revisions, I usually have the luxury of many months of additional experience in order to boost my writing ability and refine a chapter based on a better understanding of what's coming ahead. Well, Book 5 will get the last part, but there isn't going to be much going on to boost my writing ability in the next 90,000 words of Book 6. For the last book, a revision will be even harder, and I will have to rely more and more on the input of my critics.

I have two confirmed yeses for cover artists, and one strong possibility, with a few others who I plan to ask if one of the three artists I have either can't do two covers or can't do even one. I'd like to have fewer artists rather than more, so that the styles won't be too far all over the place (the three I have all possess very, very different styles). I've also started thinking about proofreaders. It would be perfect to have six, and assign each to two books. How could I find six proofreaders who don't mind not being paid, though?

In case anyone is still keeping track, this point in the rewrite very, very loosely lines up with around Chapter 23 in the original.

... a chapter after all

Chapter 19 congealed into a chapter far better than I had hoped, eventually coming together under the title Hosts and Hospitality, which applies to all four plot threads present. It is mostly driven by Sheam and Ghost who have semi-self contained and extremely important adventures which begin and end within the chapter, and are told bit by bit as we switch back and forth between them, with an occasional visit to James and Nightfall, who are both continuing the paths they began at the start of Book 5. Only Jyre is absent from Chapter 19, with part of Ghost's adventure being told from Lytha's point of view, who is with him the entire time. James meets a character often talked about but so far unseen, and helps me make up for all of those cute Ultima Underworld references I had cut from the story. Nightfall on the other hand gives a brief nod to nostalgia with a small touch which hearkens back to the original, in a story that increasingly resembles the original less and less. Sheam meets a collection of minor characters which I suspect many readers did not think they would see again, especially not all within the same chapter. As for Ghost, we may just learn his most closely guarded secret.

Additionally, I solved a problem I was having with James, being that a lack of a personal conflict for the character weakened his integrity as a principal. I have developed that inner conflict, and have evolved his adventure to take full advantage of it. This separates his path even farther from the other principals, which is what was needed, giving him his own set of goals, needs, fears, and possibilities of failure.

Amusingly, sometimes I like to check on the fraction of the entire story each principal represents. I discovered that Jyre, Lytha, Ghost, and Sheam all sit at around 17/16% of the total (in that order from high to low), with Nightfall having a much larger chunk and James a much smaller chuck - but if you average out Nightfall and James, both come to 16.5% ... I wonder how I managed to balance it out so evenly.

... a new chapter

I just finished Chapter 18. Sometimes when finishing a chapter I am as surprised as the readers about how it turns out, but this one was fairly by the numbers, given that I've had months to tinker with the outline of it without actually writing anything. So, I had the entire thing pretty much mapped out point by point without much deviation. Some, but not much. The only surprise is that I actually finished it! Some parts turned out great, other parts I will need to whack steadily with the revision hammer for months to come, but hey, it's a first draft, and even the good parts will be revised.

The title of the chapter is Guests in Alien Realms, which is taken directly from the original, but it's as far from the original as anything I've written so far. It puts Jyre, James, Ghost, Lytha, and Nightfall all in unlikely situations that they were not at all prepaired for, even though they were certain that they knew exactly what to expect. (Ghost is in it, but only told from Lytha's point of view.) It includes a scrap I had actually written nearly a year ago, inserted nearly verbatum into a scene I had long imagined but finally was able to completely illustrate.

Finally, I've included the name change I had been planning for Nightfall for a long, long time now. He's still called Nightfall, but his real name is now completely fictitious, rather than being a distortion of my own name. I am not going to say it here, yet. I'd rather my critics judge it in context. (On the other hand, it doesn't matter what they think, since I am not going to be changing my mind about this topic!)

... recaps and infodumps

The chapter 10 revision is done. I think this chapter was the hardest to revise so far - in fact I even had dreams about it last night. 10 represents several turning points in the story. Ghost and Lytha are now finished with their original COT adventures and are now venturing into new territory. James finally appears in the flesh, as the sixth principal, with more than half of the chapter told from his point of view (though this is arguably superfluous, as the whole thing could have just as easily been done from Daneel's point of view!). Most importantly though, this is where we take a look at where we are, and where things are going.

Before the revision, much of this chapter was an infodump. I tend not to like those, but that's in the case of the author narrating a pile of information directly to the reader. In this case, it's one character explaining to another everything he knows about what's going on. After the revision, it's now an infodump intertwined with a recap. When I first wrote it I was afraid of recapping, thinking the reader would be bored by having things explained to them that they already knew. Now, I realised that it had to be done, both for in-character reasons (the explainer would tell his audience things that the reader already knew - they wouldn't skip over them!) and for storytelling reasons. The infodumps had to be grounded, completely interconnected, with what is already known. Simply putting the information out there and letting the reader maybe, maybe, figure out how it is related to everything they already know isn't good enough. It's actually pretty unsatisfying. I don't want to name any examples in the blog, that's a little too spoiler after all, but I can give a crude illustration.

The reader knows about C, E, and F. The way the original was written, A, B, D, and G were explained. So, now the reader technically should know what's going on, if they can assemble it all in their heads. After the rewrite, it is explained as A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Yes, it's longer, but I think it's actually a much easier read, because it's not full of holes.

I'm tired, and have gotten a little sick.

... they would call it episodic

Chapter 9 is the biggest example of inconsistencies of style which resulted from the huge writing gaps that occur ed from around 2005 - 2007, during which Chapters 6 - 9 were written. I was maturing as a writer, and was seriously feeling the stress of being cut off from something creative that I really wanted to work on. When I eventually did write Chapter 9, over the course of months, I redefined alot about Lytha which would then inform the revision I did after 9 was finished. Many of her scenes in Chapters 2 and 4 were written and rewritten after 9 was finished, such as her investigation of Thalia's chest and her infiltration of the astrologer's tower. Her torture scenes were also very nearly rewritten, expanding both on The Inquisitor's methods and how she reacted to it all. Essentially, Chapter 9 is the one that created Lytha.

For the others, it did not go so well. Nightfall's tone was also very different in this chapter, but rather than be an improvement I decided to scale him back to how he had been written all along, and during this revision I attempted to scale him back even more. At first he seemed to swerve in Lytha's direction, with his inner thoughts becoming very poetic, and then he swerved in the opposite direction, with over-written phrases and an overabundance of vocabulary that would have made him very tedious to read. Ghost became mostly wisecracks and humorous asides and little substance. His sections were riddled with commentary that often went off on wild tangents from what was going on, leaving him feeling detached from the action and the importance of where he was and what he was doing. I removed most of it in the revision just now, and in one case completely deleted an entire section of his and rewrote it from scratch - making it very different. It seemed that I knew what I wanted to do before, but it was too difficult to write in the amount of free time and energy I had during school, so rather than actually make any of it happen I made jokes about it and took shotcuts, thinking myself clever and ironic. Well, the new version is neither clever nor ironic, and is instead (I think) exciting and satisfying. It was good that I had done such a cheap shot when I wrote this last year - it allowed me to totally throw it out and do something good without quirks or gimmicks. When Ghost is funny, it's because of how he reacts to horrible situations, not because he's sitting in the theater as part of the cast to MST3K being all deconstructivist... or is that simply obnoxious?

... 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.

... introducing everyone's favorite

Chapter 2's revision is done. I didn't have as much feedback on this one, so most of the changes were at my own discretion. Ghost seems to be winning our little poll, and I don't blame anyone for thinking so, so naturally working on his introductory chapter was a pleasure. Both Chapters 1 and 2 were split into two, making 3 and 4, and while the division of Chapter 1 into 1 and 3 works well, I think 2 and 4 probably less so. Ghost's introduction is robust, maybe even the best out of all of them (maybe!) but Sheam and Lytha's seem a little lacking in comparison. I have no plans to change this; it's just a casual observation. The copy has been sent out to the critics, and I am interested in hearing their thoughts on the topic.

... 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.