... first major edits in a while

A big goof was pointed out in Chapter 11. It seems a rather important plot element was just... forgotten. Rather important, not very important, which is probably why everyone else missed it, and why I was able to fix it in less than a page of work. At any rate, almost half the story is online now, but I don't think there's many people who have read very far past book 1. I think they're all waiting for the printed versions... I hope.

Other updates... The formatter has been busy. I was sent another WIP of cover 2, which looks amazing. I've seen some concept designs for cover 3, which also looks promising. News when there's news!

How do you like the new design?

... 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.

... revised disembodiment

The ends now, and this should be no surprise, return to chapter 1, for a small cleanup and tweak to Nightfall's opening section, thanks to input from none other than Jyre herself (her author, anyway). A weakness in the presentation was pointed out, one that effects the entire plot, and so the situation was rectified with the deletion of two paragraphs and the addition of two totally different ones. For those who have read it, the changes are centered at the very end of that section.

Moving along...

... 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!

... passing the torch

Nearly half an entire chapter.

That's now much longer COT-R is now that the 3rd draft is finished; around 8K words. That doesn't even take into account all of the stuff I deleted, either. If the new content is taken in addition to the deleted stuff (rather than in place of) the total comes around 30K words, which is longer than the longest chapter by just a bit. So basically, I deleted a whole chapter worth of stuff during this revision only to add back in a chapter and a half! (Or a really really long chapter!)

I'm pretty satisfied. The story seems much more solid, now. Plot holes were filled in and smoothed over. A great deal that was left unexplained has now been made much more clear. Conflicting and contradicting things have been straightened out. I think this will be the last revision. All that's left now is proofreading.

Unless, of course, one of my critics discovers a new plot hole I totally missed. It's still possible. I hadn't realized before that there would be so many.

Oh, and the current page count? 1,113

... and we have a 3rd draft

Well, not quite. I still need to go through and create a version clean of all editing marks and grayed out deleted text. As expected I very nearly flew through Book 6, though some large edits were still necessary. All in all it was extremely beneficial to do the entire revision in under two weeks. With this speed everything was very fesh in my mind as I read through it, so that the smallest plot hole (I hope!) was able to be spotted. I feel, finally, that the story is finished. All that remains now is the final proofreading and grammarical fixes... unless of course one of my critics or editors spots a new plotty error!

... by virtue of deletion

Book 5 was smooth sailing until I got to chapters 19 and 20, and that's when the major surgery resumed. There weren't alot of scenes that required heavy revision, just a few that needed a few paragraphs outright deleted (when this can be done without changing the scene, it's probably a good idea to do so!) and a few new scenes added to fill in some plot-pot-holes. I still have my list of things to fix, though at the moment it's void of plotholes. I already know that book 6 is going to need one semi-major change, though I don't know yet how I am going to do it!

... stop looking for patterns

Of course as soon as I notice the pattern from books 2 & 3, book 4 doesn't follow it.

What was expected, though, was the dramatic reduction in surgery needed during the revision. I'm keeping a little "todo" log of things I need to keep my eye on while reading and revising. There's only one major plot-hole left to fill, a list of three topics I need to check for consistancy throughout the rest of the story, and six topics which I need to better explain, add more information on, or provide a reference to somewhere. I expect smooth sailing, except for that plot hole... which may be tricky to fill.

... surgery continues

I'm half done with the revision (just finished Book 3) and the major surgery continues. The frequency of the needed changes are growing less frequent, but their severity has not. Book 3 has some big story chapters, and a great deal of contradictions and confusing facts were sorted out, and at least one gaping plot hole filled in. I also noticed a funny pattern in the way both Books 2 and 3 play out. Both begin with a great deal of intense action, which calms a bit in the 3rd chapter before a fairly tranquil forth chapter that mostly serves to built up to the first chapter of the next book. I wonder if it continues throughout the next two books.

... book 2 done, moving along

With the exception of Chapter 5 (which saw huge rewrites) most of Book 2 only needed tweaking. Most of the problems where in the form of characters knowing more than they should or less than they should, and was correctable in just a few lines. It comes from having written this in so many revision passes that did not always include a thorough read-through like I am doing now. I'd go to one section and do a change, but would forget that several other sections later on needed to be changed to reflect the alteration. It also came in the form of descriptions. Often a more lengthy, detailed description of something was inserted during a revision, and during this revision I'd notice a shorter, less clear description of the same thing later on. The older, second description is then removed.

... 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.

... final changes

The changes in the 3rd draft's revision are not sweeping by any means, but they are important. It's not only a chance to make sure that events (and locations) in the early chapters are in continuity with the final ones, but is another chance to correct some mistakes in the storytelling which I can either chalk up to lack of foresight, or laziness! It's the type of thing that can only be done with the entire story written, the sprinkling of details and tiny events which serve to tie the entire work together.

At any rate, I just finished with Book 1, though I may return to it before the 3rd draft is done. I except that it's Book 1 that required the most attention, but I will go through the entire story with the same care nonetheless.

... a third draft, work resumes

Yesterday I received the completed second draft of COT-R, along with a generous helping of additional materials. My editor provided some in depth analysis of problem areas to help me fix them (they almost always deal with inconsistencies of location descriptions) as well as a guide to writing Hammerite lingo. I haven't jumped head-first into work on the third draft yet, though I did take a crack at rewriting (again, for the eighth time) the passage which acts as an introduction to the story, Thoughts Concerning the Delegates...

Though usually only my critics get to see this stuff, I thought it'd be nice to do a comparison between the 2nd draft version and the 3rd draft version. But first, the bit that came before any of the eight revisions: Foreword, by an anonymous Keeper. In the original this section was written by a Keeper, Daelus was of course named Daneel, and much time is spent summarizing Thief: The Dark Project. Now, here's the 2nd draft version...

Their numbers are as unknown as their intentions and origins. Even the title ‘Delegate’ is based on cryptic passages in old tomes. It is suspected that many pivotal events within The City for the past one hundred years could be linked to them, and that some important historical figures were actually Delegates themselves. Nothing is conclusive. There can be no conspiracy when the agents, by their very nature, do not conspire.

Five months prior to this day, and twenty nine days after the passing of The Trickster (see any and all annals concerning ‘The Dark Project’ for further information on this and related events), a suspected Delegate arrived in The City. The nature of his arrival within our borders was not uncommon; hence this event was not recorded, only researched in retrospect.

His name, Daelus Thresh, was discovered after months of delving through ancient texts. It had been written that he was a man possessing a shattered past welded back together by force of consciousness, with scars of great power and conflicting magical energies still burning at the torn edges of his psyche. His every action mirrored the duality of his nature, a subconscious schism which divided one path into two, yet with the conscious illusion of being one. He believed that his use of alternate identities was of his own free will; it was however a fact of his existence which ran deeper than he could fathom, an aspect of himself which he was unable to escape.

Like all Delegates, he came from another place; a place hidden from us. He was not the first of them, and not the last; but held an important distinction amongst them, for he would bring with him a shard of this other place into our own land, and from this shard his journey upon branching, twisting paths would begin. It was both arrogance and naiveté that allowed this Delegate to do what no reasonable practitioner of bizarre arts would dare to in all but the greatest of privacies. He conducted a ceremony which caused a structure to spring forth from the mountainside to the north of The City.

It was written that the Delegates, as their first rule, were not to make contact with one another. By this act, in all likelihood, soon every Delegate in The City would become abundantly aware of him, just as we were made aware. How this has affected their plans remains to be seen, but it is an important sign: secrecy is becoming a lower priority in comparison to other goals.

Now the tower stands as if it always had, and the people of The City seem to have accepted it as such; a startlingly appropriate metaphor for the man himself who, in this short time, has dug himself deeply into our society.

Though it's not stated, and Keepers are not in COT-R, it's still written with the idea that it's being spoken (or written) by a Keeper doing a report. Some have suggested that this entire passage ought to be dropped, as a story like this doesn't really seem suited to such a dry expositional opening. Well, it hasn't been dropped, but it's been rewritten in such a way that I think suits the story much better.

I had been obsessed with them since the moment I came to this land. Some unsubstantiated notion hidden deep within my clouded and damaged memories propelled me to pursue them, study them, and know them. In time I gave in completely to this desire, discarding all semblance of a life in the pursuit of this coveted knowledge.

They called themselves Delegates. In spite of my amassed discoveries, their numbers remained hidden as did their true intentions and origins. Though they all were perfectly unique, they held one important aspect in common. Their every action mirrored the duality of their nature, a subconscious schism between obedience and rebellion which divided one path into two, yet with the conscious illusion of being one. They believed that this was of their own free will; it was however a fact of their existence which ran deeper than they each could fathom, an aspect of themselves which they were all unable to escape.

Within that context they seemed to operate under two principal rules: achieve great power, and make no contact with one another. I found that many pivotal events within the past century could be linked to them, and some historical figures were actually Delegates themselves. Though they excelled at the fist rule, it seemed at the second they were less successful.

Five months prior to this day a Delegate arrived in The City. I did not notice it at the time, for the daily comings and goings of people through the sprawling, nameless metropolis were countless. There was however something specific which drew my attention to him, as well as the attention possibly of all other Delegates.

It was both arrogance and naiveté that allowed this man to do what no reasonable practitioner of bizarre arts would dare to do in all but the greatest of privacies. He conducted a ceremony which caused a structure, in all likelihood a shard of the Delegate’s own land, to spring forth from the mountainside to the north of The City. While it was possible that in some lands a deed such as this could be considered commonplace, in the world of The City it bespoke powerful and dangerous sorcery.

I soon discovered his name, Daelus Thresh, and that somehow I remembered him. I knew him, though I could not understand how. What relic of my shattered past did he represent? Could I weld the memory back together through sheer will of consciousness alone? That recollection, that spark of self awareness was what propelled me to focus all of my energy on mending the torn, burnt edges of my psyche. My obsession grew tenfold. My resolve became absolute. I would know.

Regardless of my own personal investment, what this departure from discretion meant for their plans remained to be seen. It was an important sign: secrecy is becoming a lower priority to them in comparison to other goals.

Though the rewrite of this was inspired by the passage at the very end of the story where I decided, finally, who this section is spoken by, the key term here is in the second-to-last paragraph. Personal Investment. A dusty exposition by an unknown scholar was no way to introduce the book. A passionate recounting of an obsession suits it much better.

Several bits of this which had been devoted to Daelus are now no longer pertaining to him. The first, dealing with the duality of nature, I felt was more appropriately applied to ALL of the Delegates. I also decided to go ahead and actually explain what the hell this is getting at – the idea that the Delegates are both compulsively loyal to their masters and must rebel against them. The other bit is the part about the torn burnt psyche, which now more appropriately pertain to the speaker himself.

Finally, I nixed the reference to Thief: The Dark Project because I felt that it was simply irrelevant to the speaker and would only confuse readers who aren’t familiar with the games. Fans of Thief will get an idea of where all of this takes place in the timeline later on.

... architectural revisions

Word from my editor indicates that a third pass is well in progress, and things have gotten far tougher. By that I mean she's gotten far tougher on me, and is giving the story a good smack-around to whip it into shape. Oddly enough, two sections were so badly written that she wrote paragraphs explaining the problems, and both had to do with architecture. Simply put, the descriptions of both Nightfall's tower and The Lady's villa are confusing, and the content of the story inconsistent with what's described. To my defense, all of this was written before architecture school, and based heavily on the original story. Of course none of that is an excuse, and I look forward to extensive revisions of both problems once the manuscript is back in my hands.

... 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.

... 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.

... 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.

... 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.)