The Shift: Complete!

Well, the first DRAFT is complete.

CHECK IT.

"That's some pretty binder cover!" You say.

"Yeah, thanks," I reply. "I did it myself. It took like an hour."

"An hour?!" you exclaim. "Why on earth would you do that?"

I hug the binder full of 100 pages of manuscript, and shrug.

"Well, the story took me two years."

To the edits I go!

Nominated for Best Beta

I wrote a blog at my other blog, which I will link to here instead of reposting entirely.

I've been nominated as "Best Beta", which I am BEYOND ecstatic about! Please do go vote. I love you all.

http://pentothepaper18.blogspot.com/2011/05/nominated-for-best-beta.html

Mary Sues...

After recommending the Mary Sue Litmus Test to that girl I blogged about last night, I figured I'd take it for Lin, with whom the words "Mary Sue" had never crossed my mind. The test is long, and I scored a 28 on it - which is borderline Mary Sue. "Suish tendencies" it says.

Now, I'm not going to freak out about it because that would be so dumb, but it's given me a good idea of how I could perhaps counter this, things that I hadn't considered for my first draft.

I decided last night I kind of want to print it all out at Kinko's or somewhere and edit this one by hand. It's less than 70 pages right now (that will change soon) and I believe it would be reasonably inexpensive to do this. Yay!

Beta requests, and still a little stuck

So tonight I'm up late researching and outlining an essay I really must write for tomorrow, and I get an email from someone.

She wanted me to edit her story, but included very few details about the actual story itself, so I emailed back and asked for more information. She returned with this rather long email (with an excerpt of the story) that was, quite frankly, a disaster. The story (apparently movie-verse) was a wreck, not even close to resembling something that might be a twisted version of canon, the main character was a blatant Mary Sue, and the facts were all jumbled. It was clear that this author (who shall remain nameless) had no idea what she was doing. It was her first story - so I could not expect anything different.

And so I responded, giving her a lot of advice and trying to steer her in the general direction of "the light". I encouraged her to read the books, watch the movies some more, do some research and really dig her hands into the fandom. I gave her a bunch of good stories to read and I sent her on her merry way.

I don't know why, but I am suddenly, about twelve hours later, deeply involved in helping this girl take her first steps into the fandom. I really want her to succeed. She's obviously on the right path, having sought the aid of a beta before she even began to write her first story (beyond a chapter or so) and she's got some raw talent. I could see it in her writing. She just needs guidance and help from a more seasoned veteran of the site. One such as me, I suppose, and I am more than willing to give it to her. I don't know why I am so attached to her already. I think it is because she reminds me so much of me when I first began to write stories.

I want her to succeed and write, I want her to reply to me in a few months' time having begun writing something truly wonderful. I have absolutely no right to tell her what she can and cannot write, but I can encourage her to write something which she will remain proud of.

I am proud of my own story, which still hovers around chapter 12. It is the last crucial chapter I must write, and there are a few scenes which I still haven't figured out what they need to be yet. I know it will pretty much end with the Battle of Five Armies, and I know that it will make use of several shorter scenes about Legolas' general idiocy, but I need this chapter to be a bit more optimistic about his behavior than the last few. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, or, rather, story. At least before it gets bad again.

What I want for this is to be something I am proud of, just like I want the new author to be proud of what she writes.

Well, I am going to finish my outline and then I am going to go to bed so I can wake up early and write a lot. Of my essay, unfortunately, not my story. I will get to the story later this week when my fingers are not so preoccupied with classwork. Luckily, it is the last week of classes, so hey. Plenty of time during the summer to write, yes?

I just had to get this off of my chest. Plus I haven't updated this yet this week and I felt obligated.

Chapter 13 vs Chapter 1

I've just done a little skipping ahead, and have written the last chapter of The Shift and the first chapter of The Battle. I have had it planned this way since the beginning of this project, and so ages ago (last July?), I scripted the confrontation scene (primarily the dialogue) between Lin and Legolas. It's a crucial scene, and it is important for the reader to witness both points of view.

I hope they are different enough, and as there should be quite a gap between posting the two chapters, I hope readers don't get bored or anything. Tomorrow I think I will share it with someone and see their reaction.

Although it might be clear in my head, here are two excerpts from the chapter, just so y'all know what I am talking about!

From Chapter 13 of The Shift:

“What are you doing?” I asked, knowing that a confrontation was coming. There had been several of them over the years, but I had to be clear to him that this was the last warning I would give. I did not think I had anything else left in me to fight for him after this.

From Chapter 1 of The Battle:

“What are you doing?” she asked, and I could hear the weariness in her voice. It was the same question she had asked over and over, thousands if not millions of times throughout my lifetime.

I am so happy with the way that this scene came out! It was exactly how I wanted it to be, and while it's not the exact vision of what I had in the beginning (some three odd years ago) they never turn out to be exactly what I first envisioned.

I finished chapter 11 (I think? It's kind of short. We shall see) and I don't yet know how to tackle chapter 12, so that is why I wrote chapter 13 tonight. That said, it is now 1am and I am le tired! More tomorrow, I suppose?

April Challenges, an Update

I have posted TWO of April's five challenge fics up right now! Here are the links!

The Right Words

A Letter to Arwen, Love, the Fellowship

AND, Ally and I have been writing a completely ridiculously (hilarious) collab story together under our joint account, Shrewspeare. It is called The Remedial Fanfiction Academy, and hopefully it will be a beautiful thing when all is said and done! Here is the linky to that!

The Remedial Fanfiction Academy

Do hop over, review, and love on the stories.

I have found myself at a bit of a standstill with chapter 11, BUT, I have found a great deal of inspiration for the beginnings of the next story, which I should start soon. The only problem is, I have to finish this one first!

Recovering

Hoo boy, wow. Last night, I typed up the rest of chapter 9 and all of chapter 10, as well as a one-shot for the April challenge thing that Ally and I are doing, AND I rewrote something which I definitely want to include somewhere in the story, but was originally the prologue for my first draft. 6514 words went down last night. (I finally passed out around 2am.) Who knew typing things was so exhausting?

I think it had something to do with the editing I was doing simultaneously. Of course, the first draft of anything is never the best, so I was rearranging, rewriting, and striking things while I was typing... It requires a lot of brain power, I guess.

A goal of mine for this story is to write chapters that are somewhere around 5 pages long (around 2500 words). I've been going through a brief spat of writing much shorter chapters the last few years (Never Realizing and Upon Earth's Opening averaged 1100 and 1300 words per chapter, respectively).

I feel like 5 pages is a solid chapter, without been too short or too long. Siobhan would disagree with me, as she will throw chapters at me that are roughly the same length as some one shots I've done. (15-20 pages). When the time comes to edit her monster of a story (soon? Hopefully soon?) I will need to really buckle down and devote hours to it.

Chapter 10 is 9 pages long. I have no idea how it happened, it all just fell out of me over the last three weeks. It's 3700 words long right now, before Siobhan even gets to attack it with any of her various and sundry revisions, and so I am thinking of breaking it into two. There is a good mid-point to the chapter, in any case.

That is enough for tonight's update, I think. I have come to a little bit of a stump in the next chapter (11? 12?) and I'm not entirely sure how to get over it yet. We shall see...