... into the unknown

After too many days of banging my head and two crashes resulting in lost work, the first section of Chapter 18 is finished. It picks up right where 17 left off, with James and Jyre, because (you should know this by now) I find cliffhangers to be a rather dull and cheap tactic. Chapt 17 sort of ended in one, so I decided the first thing I needed to do was continue that, rather than force the reader to spend several hours with another character before finally getting it. I don't know how anyone else feels about it, but I begin to resent some characters when an author chooses to switch to what they're up to at the very moment when the one we had been following for the last chapter has become extremely interesting.

Chapter 18 has the dubious honor of mirroring events that were cut from the original COT, only to end up (probably) being read far more than COT actually was. I am talking about the excerpt that was included in Thumper's Guide to the Strange and Unusual. I edited it out of the original because I felt that it contained too many direct and obvious references to the work of H.P.Lovecraft, a nod to the Cthulhu statue seen in the original mission, The Lost City. (The authors for James and Jyre were both fans.) I felt it appropriate to include in the rewrite because of its probably infamy as part of the guide, the fact that I've now read some Lovecraft and actually know what it's all about, and because it was one of the few parts of James and Jyre's adventure where something actually happens. Of course, don't expect it to go anything like it does as seen in the strange and unusual guide.

The Ultima Underworld references, on the other hand, I did without.

... can I write something new, now?

After two heavily edited sections, one totally new one, and two new segues, I think this last back of revisions is actually done. This one was a bit unusual... before all of the revisions were to bring the older chapters up to date with the facts, and quality of the later chapters. In this case it was to outright change the way something happened, and introduce some totally new ideas that (while they don't come out of left field, it's still an organic progression) I decided I wanted to introduce earlier in the story.

I'm really tired.

Oh yeah, and with these revisions, the story actually broke 400,000 words. Scary.

... more revisions, meh

I haven't been able to get much work done this week, and I don't think that's going to change, due to some family affairs. I intend to take a hiatus from civilization after this, which should let me entrench myself in some thiefy atmosphere and a writing mood. I hope.

As I mentioned in the last post, the side effect of outlining the final chapters has been more revisions. Again, it has to do with Sheam (go figure?) but this time it's because I need to change a small aspect about what happens at the end of Chapter 16, which was shoehorned from the start, seemed forced during the revision, and in retrospect while planning the next chapters, simply doesn't work. On the other hand I am taking this opportunity to do more work on the chapter in general, as benefited from a new understanding of where the story is going, as only finally writing it down in an orderly fashion can generate. It won't be a huge change or an addition, just a bit of a smoother transition into new territory we need to get into, and a chance to visit with a character who was mentioned and described in great detail, but I realised was impossible to meet without having him make an appearance sometime before chapter 18. He's much more pertinent to COT2, but I've decided that making a big deal about something (or someone) only to never hear about it again is probably a bad idea - especially if it's just a setup for something in COT2.

Also, and embarrassingly, I've finally corrected all the times where I mistakenly called Othello "Oberon". I can see how that would be confusing.

... going back to go forward

As I was deciding what to put into the final chapters today I wound up adding two new sections to previous chapters. I hadn't wanted to do more revision, but I found that there were some things that needed to be in (not events, but character development type scenes) which I did not want to put into the final chapters - they needed to be dealt with much earlier in the story. The end result was a new rather long Sheam section in Chapter 12, and a new segue before chapter 14. Sometimes you need to go back in order to go forward.

Blah blah blah.

... concerning finishing

While the actual writing of the end of the story is still many weeks away, I am trying to outline the concluding chapters, which means that I have a pretty good idea of how the story is going to end (one would only hope, right?). The pole about multiple endings is drawing to a close, with most people interested in separate, personal endings for the six characters, though not necessarily symmetrical endings. Of course, the plan is to not actually tell anyone what the plan is for the ending.

I started up a new poll, concerning what is to come. Since COT2 is what inspired the rewrite to begin with, it seems logical to assume that COT2 is in the cards. Of course, as long as I am not getting paid for this, nothing is set in stone - but it's still worth thinking about. Basically, it comes down to this. Even if I never write a COT2, the "lives" of the characters and the world they live in will go on after the final chapter of COT is set in stone. The plot for COT2 has been decided for years, and though it's changed dramatically because of the rewrite (as was the point of the rewrite to do so) in essence it's there. The one thing I haven't decided yet is how heavy-handed to be with that thought. Personally I can't stand it when the last thing an author does (this goes for scriptwriters too) is tack on a cliffhanger to let everyone know that Part 2 is on the way. That's worse than simply not ending it at all. Horrible. So don't worry - I am not going to do that. So I am avoiding the two extremes of a non-ending / tacked-on-cliffhanger versus the complete-closure / everyone-dies / the-epilogue-tells-us-how-each-character-lives-the-rest-of-their-lives thing. Where the ending will fall in the middle of that is yet to be seen, and something that blog-readers are invited to comment on.

... need non-taffers

I'd like to finally get some feedback on the story from people who have never even heard of Thief. Optimally though, I'd like for them to not know me, either. Chances are if you're reading this, you either know me or know Thief, but maybe you know someone who knows neither, but they love to read fantasy and don't mind doing it at the computer. Anyone?

... segue to segues

One thing I didn't do while doing the revision was completing all the segues, the inter-chapter mini-sections which tell things from the point of view of a mini-character observing a minor character (there are some exceptions, where segues are told from sub-principal characters!) in order to flesh out plot elements which would otherwise be completely hidden from the reader (since we're tied to the observations of the principals).

They're not easy, because they have to...

• Be told in around 300 - 1000 words.
• Involve a snippet of story that isn't involved in the plot-flow around it.
• Deal with and rely on characters the reader may never have met (and will never).
• Still need to fit in with the framework and tone of the chapters around it.
• Actually provide some relivant information.

So even though they're short, writing the segues was just as hard as writing chapters. Crazy!

... the breakdown

Want some pie? 'Course you do!



The numbers are all 'words' (according to MSWord2007) and the pie chart shows what percentage of the story is told from which character's point of view (excluding the segues) with the bar chart showing the chapter lengths. The only surprising thing is that Lytha, Jyre, and Ghost are all so evenly divided.

Chapter length looks slightly top-heavy, with the earlier chapters tending to be longer and the later ones tending to be shorter. Again, I think this can be attributed to the 'world building' done early in the story that isn't as abundant later. As you can also see, a good number of the segues (red bars, shown as ... in the chapter list) haven't been written yet.

... revisions complete

I met a goal. I decided I wanted to finish the revisions before the new years, and I did it. That's always nice. With the read-through of Chapter 17, the revisions are complete. Naturally Chapter 17 wasn't to see much work, because it was the chapter which inspired most of the revisions in the first place! Still, several spots were tweaked, a few clarifications added, and for some reason I forgot how to spell one character's name. Oops.

385,575 words. 964 pages at 400 wpp.

Trivia for fans of the original - At the moment, Nightfall is at around Chapter 22. James and Jyre are at around Chapter 17. (Merely a coincidence!) Sheam, Lytha, and Ghost are all, of course, far beyond where the old story ended. Why are they so far out of sync? Because in the original events were paced unnaturally to allow the characters to conviniently meet where we wanted them to.

Before I begin writing Chapter 18, (or outlining it - I always do that before I write a chapter) I'm going to see what segues I want to add (bits of story told between chapters from the point if view of very minor characters who are seeing things that I want the player to know, such as what mid-level characters are up to - I intend to do one between each chapter, but I am not forcing them, instead waiting for inspiration before writing the very short segments) and then will be sending the whole thing out to my critics. Nailbiting as it is, I will be attempting to find non Thief fans to read the story and get their opinions on it as well. I have a few suspects, but if anyone can make any suggestions or can help me find some unbiased bookworms with no knowledge of Thief, now's the time for it.

With the revisions over I will certainly be updating the blog much less, but I won't just vanish.

... only one left

Remarkably, there's very little to say about Chapter 16. There was very little editing to do, and thank goodness - I wrote it along with 15 and 16 just a few months ago. The 'revision' of it is done, and now there's just one chapter left to go.

Then... you know what that means.

... epic

Chapter 15 is epic.

It's also the only chapter that's one single section. There's no switching back and forth between points of view. It covers events that spanned about a half-dozen chapters in the original, though in the original it was all only given a bit at a time as the point of view switched around.

... Ghost plays an FM

After 12 and 13 went so smoothly, it was a little jarring to have to go back into revisions mode for Chapter 14. It wasn't because I suddenly devolved (well, maybe I did) or had plot points to change, but because I made a bad decision while writing it.

When I first wrote it, I decided that COT needed to get back to its roots, so I wanted a character to go on an actual mission, and do the things that we taffers do on missions, and see the things we see, and have the same basic kind of experience. At the time, I figured I had pulled it off nicely. Stacking crates. Stealing loot. Twacking guards. Listening to servants babble. Reading diaries. Getting confused by samey level design. It had it all. Looking back at it, I found it a convoluted mess of asides, in-jokes, fourth-wall snickering, and outright nonsensical rubbish that gummed up a perfectly good humorous suspense sequence. I wasn't happy about it, since I thought that some of the things I had put in were clever, but I realised that they would only be clever to Thief players, and so the deal was off. I removed everything from the section that was unneeded, which basically amounted to everything which acknowledged the fact that Ghost was playing a game of Thief. I could keep a copy of the unedited scene on archive somewhere as a curious outtake, but I seriously think that all of the gamey stuff detracted from the storytelling. Close to 600 words were removed in all - the section itself around 4 ,000 words total.

14 marks a complete break from the original COT. Not a bit of it is based on the original story, because it deals with events in The City during the time when James, Jyre, and Nightfall are all away, and with Ghost and Lytha now a full day after their adventure in the original had already concluded. (None of it is borrowed COT2 material either.)

... more of a proofread

What used to be the second half of Chapter 12 and is now Chapter 13 has been revised, though now it's more of a proofread than a revision. Even though I wrote these chapters several months ago, I think I am still too "close" to them to seriously revise the contents like I've done for the past eleven chapters. Either that, or they're just fine and don't need many changes.

Like the new 12, the new 13 works very well in its divided state. The only problem was that many of the Lytha sections were designed with breaks in between, so that a 'boring' part would be simply left out (rather than narrated through) by switching to a different character and then coming back to Lytha later. Well, it seems that all of these switches were to either James, Jyre, or Sheam, which means that now chapter 13 is dominated through the middle by a very long stay with Lytha. As suggested above, the breaks were supplanted by bits of narration to connect one section to the next.

... easygoing from here?

Unexpectedly, I completed my revision of Chapter 11 and, in record time, finished Chapter 12 as well.

Chapter 11 was also very hard to work on, but for a new reason. It is the farthest COT has traveled from the Thief Universe thus far (and yet in one important way swings back around and becomes far closer to the Thief Games than COT ever dares elsewhere!) The rather longish chapter could have been even longer, had I included everything I wanted to, but so much is presented so fast, and all of it so new and so strange, that I had to hold back on several things.

Chapter 12 used to be the longest chapter in the story (twice as long as any other) and I now experimented with cutting it in two. The reason why I didn't divide it before was because splitting it down the middle produced something that I felt didn't provide a complete episode. I've discussed this before in the blog at length. However, electing a different method, I feel that the division was extremely successful. Rather than just finding the mid-point and inserting a new chapter title, I divided it by character. Everything for Sheam, James, and Jyre went into chapter 12. Everything from Nightfall, Ghost, and Lytha went into Chapter 13. I haven't read through the organized 13 yet, but I found it remarkable how much more entertaining 12 read when it focused only on three characters rather than jumping around between six. It's also a welcome break from 11, which was mysterious, slow moving, dramatic, and tense. 12 is fast paced, clever, familiar, and slightly humorous.

I believe that 12 also marks another resume after a break from writing, as the quality of the work is much, much higher than 11 and everything before it.

I'm going to tackle 13 now - I am feeling much better, and would really like to stick to my goal of finishing the revisions before New Years Day. Two days left!

... 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.

... his name is Nightfall

There was no sense in putting it off - now all of the section headings for Nightfall are properly labeled as Nightfall and not Daneel, as per popular vote. Find and replace!

... 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?

... on the importance of being fry

I just finished some additional work to chapters 7 & 8 (mostly 8) that crept up on me during the past day or so. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean my mind stops COTing! There were a few places which I felt were still a little shabby and I didn't do as well on them as I could have because I wanted to get 8 done before things got seriously Christmasy. Most of it is little touches, such as Brother Ivan spreading incense over the work site, or tweaks to the conversation Jyre hears at The Blood's hideout, but there were two bigger changes that reflect new ideas for Chapter 9 and beyond.

As I mentioned before, I have been thinking about both making COT more 'accessable' (a dirty word sometimes) to non-Thief fans and un-gaming certain aspects of The Thief universe. One difficulty is that the story lacks a Fry. A Fry, as I have decided, is what you call the outsider that is put into the story mostly for the purpose of exposition. The Fry doesn't know what anything is or what is going on, so other characters have to explain things to them, or they have to observe and figure out things on their own that everyone else would take for granted. Sometimes it works well (like Fry in Futurama) and sometimes it's tedious and alienating (like making Neo not know what EMP is in The Matrix).

I did a little tinkering with it today, focusing on the fire arrows. First I found all cases where they are mentioned and renamed them to fire-arrows. Yep, a dash. A small distinction, but I think it's important to idenfity them as a thing and not as an adjective followed by a thing. Ghost is the only one in COT (so far) that uses or sees fire-arrows, and he's the farthest thing from a Fry (at this point in the story anyway ... later on he very much becomes one!) So the problem was, how do I have Ghost explain to the reader something that he would completely take for granted? I added this paragraph to the start of his first section, before he enters The Bonehoard.

I checked my gear one more time before going in. I always took more than I would need, not because I was afraid of running out, but because I wouldn’t use what I had if I was afraid of running out, and might do something stupid instead. I had a set of fire-arrows, which I had already carefully inspected to make sure that the explosive crystal tied to the end of each arrow-shaft wasn’t chipped or cracked, or had any other flaw that would cause it to blow up while in my quiver. I didn’t have many, not because they were rare or expensive – in fact I grew them myself in a few fire pits I tended in my basement – but because if I packed them in too tightly the sharp edges would rub against one another and sooner or later the whole set would become just one big fireball. On the other hand the bombs and mines were more predictable and more expensive, and tended to be used as more of a defensive last-resort. They were the most fun when combined with big flasks of oil, which I had, to really make sure that whatever was chasing me would regret it.

So I had him explain something he takes for granted by making him consider something he would not take for granted - them exploding. I think it works. What do you think? What else in the story needs a Fry to explain?

... 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.

... the urge to add more

Chapter 8 was very easy to expand to a full chapter's length, and I didn't even really need to add any new plot points, just expand and extrapolate what was already there. The biggest changes were to Nightfall's sections, each of which were almost entirely rewritten. One small bit was cut off from where it sat, moved earlier, and expanded. I am surprised that so much in these sections as well as in chapter 7 were left so mediocre, even after the last revision. It's possible that when I was writing and revising it the subject matter simply left me so uninspired that I didn't want to bother trying to fix it. I feel that with the division and repurposing of these sections into a new chapter 8 with the theme of "serious distractions" (that's the new title) the events are given breathing room to be fleshed out and given true purpose.

Sheam saw the greatest amount of expansion, with several completely new scenes written that filled in some gaps that were left up to assumption before, or simply forgotten. The goal of the work was to 'give' the chapter to Sheam and Nightfall, just like 7 was given to Jyre. Though Ghost and Lytha see important events take place here, it is Sheam and Nightfall that provide the structure for the chapter. The strangest thing I did was the incorporation of the end-chapter segue into the body of the chapter. It was unique in that it was a flashback told from Nightfall's perspective, so it naturally lent itself to being part of a chapter proper, but was awkward because it dealt with events from a long time before the start of the story. I worked it in, and it works... I think so, anyway.