Saturday, November 13, 2010

Editing - The NaNo No-No

I wrote a whopping 400 words this morning before I took Belle over to my parents' for her exercise.  While I was there, I read some of Michael Moorcock's half of the new Planet Stories book but mostly I did some obsessing.  I decided that once I hit 50k, I'm going to break the cardinal rule of NaNowriMo and go back and re-write the entire moon sequence.  I'm doing it for the following reasons:
  • The existing moon sequence is my least favorite piece, from the monster to the way the magicians handle it
  • I reasoned that a dead world should include at least one exploration of ancient ruins.
  • I enjoyed splitting the group up in Nal Sakaar so much that I want to do the same thing on the moon.  In doing this I hope to accomplish two things:
    • Show what bad-asses the assembled magicians are right off the bat in handling their respective menaces
    • Establish relationships between the magicians.  Right now they aren't talking much.
  • As it stands now, there are no clues to point them where to go after leaving the moon.  I figure I'll slip some tantalizing hints of a swamp world circling a small purple star and let things roll from there.
I hate to backtrack but I figure it will be less work in the long run if I fix the moon sequence now.  Otherwise, the changes will ripple through the space-time continuum and I'll have a lot more things to fix in later chapters.

Points I'm hoping to get across in Wandering the Web of Worlds is that magicians are the fantasy equivalent of nerds and geeks.  I don't think they should be able to relate well to non-magicians since they're studying magic most of the time.  We'll see if the point comes across like I want it to in the later drafts.

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