writing
art
|
Thursday, June 19, 2003
I just spent the last 40 minutes or so outlining the Saga, all in pretty green pen on unlined paper, which made it all feel free and loose. This is good, considering I've felt very restricted by the whole story lately. Or more accurately, by its badness. (Goodness, I just almost used "it's" instead of "its." No more terrible fanfics for a few days, they must be effecting my brain...)I did a not quite full page writeup of the sketchiest version of the whole story, starting several months before it actually does. (Starting with Islana burning down the fleet, that is.) I split it into five basic phases, at the major turning points:
phase one: Islana's capture through her escape
phase two: Islana's return to Kalatsu through Cleran's becoming the Prophet and Kalin's reappearance
phase three: Cleran's becoming the prophet through Erra's change of heart (the last ep published)
phase four: The explanation of the Massacre through (spoiler spoiler)
phase five: (spoiler spoiler) through the end!
I did a slightly more detailed, broken down by episode (approximately) outline for ep 22 through the end, which will probably be ep 29. Which is annoying; you'd think I could stretch it to an even 30, but at this point I don't want to put in any more shitty filler material.
I was talking to Jessie earlier Noelle (offline type friend, who for reasons I fail to understand read the whole damn thing over the last few weeks) and realized that I am bored with these characters. Not entirely; Jereh, for example, continues to intrigue me. But for the most part, people are DONE with the important, interesting, exciting bits. Cleran has gone from loser to godlike; Islana has been put in line to become the next Queen. Yes, they're still important, but the exciting parts are over. On the other hand, Jereh's got a major big coming up. Kalin has some important stuff to do, though that's less exciting. There ARE more events, but none of them are as exciting as the first, say, 15 chapters; now we're in the land of plot point wrap up, where both season two AND one are pulled together(er) and the mess they created tidied up. And while it's important, it's not as much fun to write as, say, Cleran bursting into flame for no reason.
Alas.
I'm actually wondering what to do when I finish the Saga. Yes, there's a blatant setup for a third season, but I don't have enough of an idea of what to do with it, really. Which is a shame, because it's potentially WAY more interesting than seasons one and two. And I'm getting tired of the format as well. I think I'd rather write in an actual novel format, or failing in that, an actual screenplay format. This bizarre merging of the two is just that, bizarre. I'm not such a fan, really, though it's too late to do anything about it now. Except finish what I've started.
And I swear, I am GOING to finish this. I've killed off too many projects already... Consider; SMI? Bit the dust. Understandable, given that it was Sailor Moon fanfiction, which I was writing in 8th grade, and when I was still writing it a few years later, it was killing me. It was probably a hundred pages plus when I finally decided that I didn't care that people enjoyed reading it, it was actually physically painful to write, and I killed it off.
Then there was Silver. Silver was a good idea, with no form. The characters amused me, but I'm bad with a basic short story format, I can't fit a full story arch into less than a hundred pages, as it turns out. (Saga season one was 99 in Appleworks and 103 in Word; Nano2001 was 103 pages, Nano2002 was 102, I think.) After months (if not years, really) of not being able to make it work, I killed it, too.
The Lads... Sigh. Well, I don't think I'll ever close the Lads site the way I did with Silver or SMI, but it is updated only about once a year, and that's never a good sign.
But the Saga will NOT go extinct; it will not die slowly and sputter out into nothingness. If for no other reason, than I've spent too damn much time on it. I wrote the original version of Islana's story in 8th grade, and while I didn't work on it consistently from the til now, if you include season one, I've been working HARD on the damn thing since 11th grade. That's three full years devoted to it, plus whatever bits and pieced I did before then, and I'm not willing to give up now. I won't do it.
It just kills me to know how shitty the thing is. Alas.
Becky had too much free time at 9:28 PM
Monday, June 02, 2003
Hmmmm... DAW accepts unsolicited scifi/fantasy manuscripts, and looks for fresh talent.Someday, that will be relevent to my life. Yep.
Becky had too much free time at 1:12 AM
Oh, I think I forgot to mention this. So there's that. It's all stuff that's already here, though, being put somewhere it's easier to find. But there's a lot more stuff here, because this format is much nicer.
Becky had too much free time at 12:53 AM