Haven't been updating, have been writing
May. 10th, 2012 11:53 amProject: Age of Sail Arthurian Angsty Romance Novel
Deadline: Labor Day-ish (see below)
New words written: something like 3K since last I checked, but a chunk may be useless
Present total word count: 36506
Mean things: delayed reunion
Fun things: gambling for marzipan
Stimulants: coffee when I remember to drink it
Finished fleshing out the Return of Lazarus scene, if I can call it that; wrote two of the four letters for the epistolary interlude that will precede our boys' next meeting.
It is remarkably hard to write a letter in a character’s voice when that character’s education stopped at age 12 and was only a village school to begin with.
He’s learned to speak like a gentleman, but I seriously doubt he knows how to use a semicolon.
I refuse to introduce deliberate errors into his writing — again, he speaks correctly, if plainly (this is not a man who makes much use of the subjunctive, for instance), and screwing things up with comma splices would only distract the reader. I leave that to authors who wish to produce a comic effect with their characters — Georgette Heyer did some wonderful things with awkwardly-punctuated, randomly-capitalized letters from ditzy characters, for instance — and eschew it here.
Sadly, it seems to have the effect of making him sound more distant than he’s actually feeling as he writes.
I hope the viscount will be able to interpret it.
Also tried to write a chunk of a scene slightly ahead of where I am, with the lieutenant putting to sea once more (serving with his good friend the captain), and musing on their separation from their companions, because a friend was looking for stuff involving those two characters (so she'd be able to stop thinking about their voices and concentrate on a different thing she was writing), but I am not at all sure it came out right.
Next up after the epistolary interlude is a four-person dinner scene, which I roughed out AGES ago when![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eternaleponine and I were entertaining ourselves via text message. There's a fair amount about class differences encoded by clothing that sneaks in there, including the gap between those who had their portraits painted as children and those who'd never have dreamt of such a thing. I have also had the double-entendre dick joke that reveals the viscount's and the lieutenant's relationship to the other two planned for MONTHS. Dick jokes: your guide to quality literature. Shakespeare's full of them! Not to mention my possibly favorite passage in O'Brian, about the shining brass cannons on the Indiaman. "They do it voluntary-like: pooja, pooja, they say. They say their prayers to it, poor devils, because it reminds them of -- I hardly like to say what it reminds them of."
As usual, find myself poking the internet a great deal to feed the writing -- coaching roads and inns again (hello, A29!), and the garrison at Fort George on Guernsey, which led me to discover a small beach that the soldiers had been permitted to use, which is at the base of a cliff below the fort, and the fact that it's currently inaccessible because the path collapsed. THAT finally sparked a thing I could use in the viscount's letter, now that he's back with his regiment.
Also feeling very proud of myself because I managed to slip in a very casual biblical reference in my lieutenant's letter. I have to remind myself that religion was likely a far more present factor in these characters' lives than it ever was in my own. My English teachers were always pointing out that 19th-century writers would have been very familiar with the Bible and it would have greatly influenced their language, much more than any other literary source. And this biblical reference -- about a rain of frogs -- was also a little, sneaky bit of humour, because while the lieutenant SEEMS stern and serious, he's got a quiet talent for snark that often passes unnoticed. The rain of frogs was a thing he suggested as serious enough to make his mother late in producing a dinner.
This is definitely the Dreaded Middle of the Book, btw. And I suspect I've already written all the detailed sex scenes required -- there is a place where another one could go, but I don't think it would advance character or relationship development to show it in play-by-play detail, and I'd be better served to give it a descriptive gloss and focus on intimate conversation instead. So I'll just keep plugging through, trying to keep the story going, and not have it stall before I hit the build to the final arc.
Maybe I'll even send in a man with a gun.
Unlikely, but you never know.
ETA: Oh right. About that Labor Day deadline. A friend of mine has a project car she's been working on, irregularly, for possibly a year now. She thinks she'll have it rolling by July and streetworthy by Labor Day. I told her about the novel and how I thought I might be about halfway through, and maybe I could finish by then as well. She said, "Race you?" I said sure.
Deadline: Labor Day-ish (see below)
New words written: something like 3K since last I checked, but a chunk may be useless
Present total word count: 36506
Mean things: delayed reunion
Fun things: gambling for marzipan
Stimulants: coffee when I remember to drink it
Finished fleshing out the Return of Lazarus scene, if I can call it that; wrote two of the four letters for the epistolary interlude that will precede our boys' next meeting.
It is remarkably hard to write a letter in a character’s voice when that character’s education stopped at age 12 and was only a village school to begin with.
He’s learned to speak like a gentleman, but I seriously doubt he knows how to use a semicolon.
I refuse to introduce deliberate errors into his writing — again, he speaks correctly, if plainly (this is not a man who makes much use of the subjunctive, for instance), and screwing things up with comma splices would only distract the reader. I leave that to authors who wish to produce a comic effect with their characters — Georgette Heyer did some wonderful things with awkwardly-punctuated, randomly-capitalized letters from ditzy characters, for instance — and eschew it here.
Sadly, it seems to have the effect of making him sound more distant than he’s actually feeling as he writes.
I hope the viscount will be able to interpret it.
Also tried to write a chunk of a scene slightly ahead of where I am, with the lieutenant putting to sea once more (serving with his good friend the captain), and musing on their separation from their companions, because a friend was looking for stuff involving those two characters (so she'd be able to stop thinking about their voices and concentrate on a different thing she was writing), but I am not at all sure it came out right.
Next up after the epistolary interlude is a four-person dinner scene, which I roughed out AGES ago when
eternaleponine and I were entertaining ourselves via text message. There's a fair amount about class differences encoded by clothing that sneaks in there, including the gap between those who had their portraits painted as children and those who'd never have dreamt of such a thing. I have also had the double-entendre dick joke that reveals the viscount's and the lieutenant's relationship to the other two planned for MONTHS. Dick jokes: your guide to quality literature. Shakespeare's full of them! Not to mention my possibly favorite passage in O'Brian, about the shining brass cannons on the Indiaman. "They do it voluntary-like: pooja, pooja, they say. They say their prayers to it, poor devils, because it reminds them of -- I hardly like to say what it reminds them of."As usual, find myself poking the internet a great deal to feed the writing -- coaching roads and inns again (hello, A29!), and the garrison at Fort George on Guernsey, which led me to discover a small beach that the soldiers had been permitted to use, which is at the base of a cliff below the fort, and the fact that it's currently inaccessible because the path collapsed. THAT finally sparked a thing I could use in the viscount's letter, now that he's back with his regiment.
Also feeling very proud of myself because I managed to slip in a very casual biblical reference in my lieutenant's letter. I have to remind myself that religion was likely a far more present factor in these characters' lives than it ever was in my own. My English teachers were always pointing out that 19th-century writers would have been very familiar with the Bible and it would have greatly influenced their language, much more than any other literary source. And this biblical reference -- about a rain of frogs -- was also a little, sneaky bit of humour, because while the lieutenant SEEMS stern and serious, he's got a quiet talent for snark that often passes unnoticed. The rain of frogs was a thing he suggested as serious enough to make his mother late in producing a dinner.
This is definitely the Dreaded Middle of the Book, btw. And I suspect I've already written all the detailed sex scenes required -- there is a place where another one could go, but I don't think it would advance character or relationship development to show it in play-by-play detail, and I'd be better served to give it a descriptive gloss and focus on intimate conversation instead. So I'll just keep plugging through, trying to keep the story going, and not have it stall before I hit the build to the final arc.
Maybe I'll even send in a man with a gun.
Unlikely, but you never know.
ETA: Oh right. About that Labor Day deadline. A friend of mine has a project car she's been working on, irregularly, for possibly a year now. She thinks she'll have it rolling by July and streetworthy by Labor Day. I told her about the novel and how I thought I might be about halfway through, and maybe I could finish by then as well. She said, "Race you?" I said sure.
