Still Once More
Silence appears to reign here often.
It takes a lot of effort to string words together in a meaningful manner, and that is especially evident when those words number in the thousands. It is a challenge worth pursuing, however, and one that I think is rewarding from the very onset. Being there as the story unravels, as conversations unfurl, as tension unnerves, it is an experience that is as remarkable as it is difficult to describe. For me, writing is much like reading. It is a journey of discovery.
That is basically my long winded way of saying: the journey continues.
By the Baltic Sea
Not so long ago, I flew to Poland. I spent a week by the sea with friends. Twice a few of us went to watch the sun rise. On the first day, clouds had gathered in the east obstructing our view. On the second day, there was no cloud in sight.
Editing
It goes without saying that the version of the prologue posted right now (and the chapters that will be following suit) is still a draft. It's the sixth or seventh draft, but a draft nonetheless. It is just at a point where I am happy to share it, gain feedback, and continue with the story.
There will come a time for revisions, and edits, and rewrites, and tweaks. I will disclose any such updates here in the web log (except maybe small grammatical/spelling corrections, and other such small details). If anything changes plot wise (which I'm hoping it won't as that part is outlined down to the epilogue, though who knows what will happen once it's written) I will disclose that here too, in case anyone is actually following the story along, and the plot is not lining up.
Here's to crafting a coherent story!
Words and Time
I was a little surprised that I finished the prologue yesterday. I was beginning to think it would never get done. An earlier draft of the prologue reached almost 8,000 words. There were two additional scenes following the current ending. One named character ended up being cut. He is still there, in the background, but I suppose he wasn't absolutely essential to what the story needed to convey, so in the background he remained.
The word count ended up at 5,551, which is still a lot of words for a prologue. I'm happy with the way it turned out, but it took a little too long to write. Moving forward, I will attempt to finish one chapter per month. This might not happen with Chapter 1, but I hope I will eventually get it down to such a time frame, maybe even faster, further down the line.
In the mean time, here's a word cloud of the prologue, courtesy of wordle.net. Thought it was interesting.
Edited on 2020-12-23: wordle.net doesn't seem to exist anymore, but edwordle.net looks like a suitable alternative.
A Silence and Beginning
Here it is, at long last: The Prologue
I wanted to post the prologue to my novel before posting any other web log entries. I might have mentioned that, however, in case anyone looked in here and found the place seemingly abandoned for almost two months.
I will endeavor to avoid such long silences in the future, but then, I hope subsequent chapters of this novel will not take so long to write, or I'll be writing this thing for the next 10 years.
Stonehenge
I visited Stonehenge the other day. As one might expect, it's an enormous tourist attraction. There were hundreds of people there even in the middle of the week, an hour from closing. I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to see Stonehenge anytime soon, but I was nearby, in the city of Bath for two days, and Stonehenge was just an hour away. How could I pass up the opportunity?
I was somewhat worried, however. I expected the ruins to be fenced off. I expected the view to be akin to looking through bars into a prison cell. The way they'd described tourists being discouraged from getting close to the stones, I expected the fence to be topped with a swirl of barbed wire. I was happy the stories had been exaggerated. Stonehenge was only cordoned off, the rope being no higher than a foot off the ground. The view was completely unobstructed. The stones were impressive, to say the least, and I couldn't help but wonder about the people who'd raised them. Even in the car upon approach, with Stonehenge looming in the distance, I was filled with a sense of awe.
Seeing Stonehenge up close in that field of grass, accompanied only by the wind and the birds perched atop the stones, I realized that these were the living, breathing ruins that still remembered who they were, that I longed to see. I walked back to the car glad that the area had been cordoned off. All of that wonder, the grandeur and mystery of Stonehenge, would have been lost had hundreds of people been standing around snapping photos between the ancient stones. It is a place I highly recommend visiting.
On Prologues and Editing
If there's a rule that limits the length of a prologue, I'm going to break it. The damn thing is over 6,000 words long. That's roughly 24 pages. With the way I edit, it's only going to get longer. On the bright side, since this is my own web site, I'm allowed to break the rules. I don't have to adhere to any expectations except my own, which might not be such a good thing after all, now that I think about it. A little structure would probably do me well.
I like Wikipedia's definition of a prologue. It is an "[...] opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one." This describes my prologue precisely, so I'm on the right track, at least. There is some sense of norm to what I'm doing. Wikipedia doesn't mention a word count.
I'm in the process of editing, or rewriting, the prologue at the moment. I combine the two, usually, post first draft. I start a new document, use the latest draft as a reference, and begin anew. I do this until nothing remains in the text that bothers me. It isn't a very technical approach, but it is one that has worked for me so far. I'm going to hold back on announcing any dates for the prologue for now, but the prospect of putting this first piece online has me very much excited!
Back to writing.
Castles and Inspiration
I've been visiting some of the castles around Sheffield over the last few weeks. I've even bought into the English Heritage membership program. They have about 400 sites all around England that members can visit free of charge. The list boasts not only castles, but stone circles (Stonehenge included, though sadly it's far away from Sheffield), monasteries, priories, oratories, monoliths, abbeys, burial chambers, and more, some that are even remnants of the Roman Empire. It's quite an impressive list. There's also a place called King Arthur's Round Table, which is a henge that is believed to have been King Arthur's jousting arena. Being a big enthusiast of all things related to the legend of King Arthur, the prospect of visiting such a place is outright tantalizing.
Pictured above is Conisbrough Castle, which dates back to the 12th century. The castles I've visited so far have been small, at least compared to what I imagine when I hear the word castle. There's usually one surviving keep, where the duke or earl lived, and the king came to visit, and battlements in various states or disrepair. There is some inspiration that comes when visiting ruins like this, but I do find myself wishing the renovations had slightly less of a modern touch. A one thousand year old castle loses some of its character when it's furnished with plastic furniture, a fake fire place, and is awash in concrete. It becomes somewhat of a lifeless husk. I know it can't be helped, and in some cases the concrete is necessary to preserve the remains, but I long to one day walk inside a ruin that still breathes, and remembers what it once was.
Somehow, despite writing fiction set in similar time periods, I've yet to write a story set in a castle. The castles in my stories are always distant, and mentioned only in passing, and the adventures take place everywhere but, but I'm sure I will circle around to them eventually. There are kings in some of these lands whose stories are waiting to be told, and you can't tell a story of a king, without telling the story of a castle. At least, once I do get around to these castles, I'll have plenty of first hand impressions to draw upon. I'll try to hold back on the plastic furniture.
Hail in May
I once wrote a story with a friend of mine in high school. Our English teacher asked us to pair up and write a myth (reminiscent of old Greek mythology) surrounding the origin of a natural phenomenon. My friend and I chose hail. We created our protagonist, a young man aptly named Hail, who had been the half-human son of one of the gods from our pantheon. The young man was stoned to death for some perceived transgression in the city he'd called home, which incurred the vengeful wrath of his celestial father. The god stoned the city with chunks of ice the size of people's heads (for dramatic effect, of course), killing most of the city's unsuspecting inhabitants in a most brutal and bloody (and descriptive) fashion. Thus, hail as we know it today came to be. I remember as we were reading off the story in front of the class, our teacher chuckled and remarked, "Ah, there it is!" when we got to describing the macabre massacre, as if he'd been expecting it from us.
We've had rather cold weather here in Sheffield since I arrived about two weeks ago. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were in the middle of fall, rather than the middle of spring. It's been getting colder by the day, finally culminating yesterday with hail. Quite a bit of hail, actually. It wasn't the size of people's heads, but it reminded me of that story I wrote with a friend so long ago in high school. I wish I'd kept a copy.