... 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?

... 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.

... electricity in a fantasy world

I just realised that there was still alot about the The City which I take for granted and readers who have never heard of the games won't be expecting, or realise. For example - I am not sure where or if I ever actually make it clear that The City has electricity. I need to find somewhere I can slide that in. Is there anything else like that? What am I forgetting? Post ideas to the comments!

Edit: I added one word to Jyre's introduction segment, where I describe the city's lights as electrical. I think that will be enough. I'm still interested in thoughts on the matter, especially issues that may be assumptions on the part of fantasy readers who are not familiar with Thief.

... the most revised chapter

The latest revision of chapter 1 is finished. I will probably clean up the editing marks and send both versions (the clean one and the one with all my editing marks) to my critics. Hopefully they will feel like the feedback they have given me was worth it. I am consistently astonished at how much work there still is to do on chapter 1. It's been edited and revised twice as often and thoroughly than any other chapter, and I am still finding things that need fixing. There's several reasons for this. First of all, of all the chapters in the rewrite, 1 is the closest to the original. That alone is cause for concern and the need for a great deal of editing. Secondly, when it was first written I had very little understanding of what the rewrite was going to be like, so alot of the details were hazy and underdeveloped. Finally, it contains a scene that was very difficult to write in the first place, so it comes as no surprise to anyone that I would need to revisit it every few years and apply my improvements to it. I was tempted to just skip it this time, unsure that I could do anything more for it, but Dusty insisted. As it turns out, there was still a great deal I could do.

I've been doing more than just a revision though. I'm creating a database in four categories - characters, factions, places, and things. There's 48 entries so far. Amusingly, only seven of those entries are things from the original games. (The City, Hightowne, Shalebridge, Keeper Scribe, Ramirez, Constantine, Hammerites) This is the lexicon which I mentioned previously - or will become it once it's more complete and I understand better how I want to organize it. Finally, I am creating a document with bits that fall into three categories - Unanswered Questions, being mysterious elements introduced into the story that still haven't been resolved as of chapter 15. Unconveyed Information, being facts about the story or characters I'd like to keep in mind even if they are never revealed in the story itself. The third category is a bit of a spoiler. Tales of The Lady, being a collection of all information about The Lady actually presented in the story.

The night is still young, so I expect to get to work on Chapter 2 after I send out revised 1 to the critics.

... writing badly, well

Jyre's letters are always fun. As Dusty pointed out to me previously, a young orphaned girl in a medieval inspired fantasy universe shouldn't be able to read or write. Well, it kind of debacles the whole story to change that, since it all started with the idea of Jyre pestering Nightfall with her letters. (Yes, I just used debacle as a verb.) This morning along with a little more explanation for why she can write, I did another revision of her first letter. I expect all of her others to get similar makeovers to this one.

I did something I had always resisted doing, and that was drastically changing the ‘tone’ of the letter by removing a lot of things which I saw as “chatty” habits or “sloppy” ways of making writing “bad”. The worst one was the use of ellipses everywhere. With… and… and... over and over, which is a very chatty thing to do, but I don’t think any child who is getting the hang of writing would ever do it. The next thing I did was remove all of the ‘yoda-speak,’ which is the way so many phrases were written backwards. Again, I don’t think any barely literate person would ever actually do that. Next, I removed most of the commas and apostrophes and indulged in the liberal use of the word “and”. I removed any ‘big’ words or complex phrases and tried to tell everything as simplistically as possible. I removed "I feel" or "I felt". I kept the verb tenses simple and often incorrect. I wanted to make it all one paragraph, as Jyre would likely not understand paragraph breaks, but that gets monotonous to read, so I just reduced the number. I put in two glaring mistakes… “a orphan” and “The Ladys House” … but I suspect even those will bug people. The challenge is to create something that looks like Jyre would actually write, but without frustrating the reader. That’s why she still has good spelling – though appropriate, I think that would do more harm to the reader’s experience than good.

... smoothing out the scars

This morning I opened up the 10-08-08 version of the document (versions are named after the day I was working on them) and edited out all of the gray text (deleted content) changed the red text to the proper character colors (new text written after the first draft) and removed the commentary asides. A week ago (or longer) Chris (a.k.a. The Watcher on TTLG - I didn't know that until yesterday) emailed me asking if he could see a copy of the rewrite. He had read he original back when it was new(ish) and was going to re-read it, but then saw the webpage I had made dedicated to the rewrite. So, now he's getting more than he bargained for. (I look forward to your feedback, Chris!) I just emailed him version 11-20-08. :)

The next thing I will do might make all the people waiting for chapter 16 sad. I am going to go back to the beginning and do a thorough re-read myself, editing where I need to. The problem with working on this very long story over so many years with so many long breaks from it (to work myself numb at school) is that I forget half of what I wrote. I need a refresher, and one of those jtr7 style lexicons wouldn't hurt either. No Jason, I am not asking you to make one. I'll do it. ;)

Once I get to chapter 9 the heavy editing will set in, since everything past that is 1st draft material. So, while I am doing this, I will be using all of the feedback I started to get from the handful of people who started to read the story recently. I'll need to get back in touch with them. And who knows... I might get some new ideas for the final chapters based on something I forgot I wrote back in chapter 3.