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Fanfiction progress
An Unfair Advantagewas far more successful on fanfiction.net than I'd expected (for some reason my one-shots always seem to do better than my longer stories; maybe people find them more accessible for casual browsing?), with 119 visitors and ten reviews in two days. And people actually seemed to find it funny (unlike my previous attempts at 'humour', which were more a matter of ironic situations).
I still don't think it's as good as my other one-shots, but for a story that features their beloved Phantom being bested by a minor character it seems to have gone down amazingly well in the fandom. Admittedly the summary and opening scene are deliberately misleading in terms of E/C cliché, but the high number of appreciative reviews suggests that people genuinely were enjoying it (as well as actually bothering to click on it in the first place, which tends not to happen for updates to my multi-chapter fanfic!)
I've completed one chapter of Nautical Raoul for the Swedish story, roughly corresponding to the first sentence of plot point seven, although since all the material covering the next few weeks is basically an extraneous patch job to cover up the geographical error in the original plot, I'm not going to be able to tick much of it off for a long time...
I did hope that writing Raoul would be less laborious than writing ad nauseam about Christine and Erik's situation, but I'm not sure it is -- I've just got to the stage in the book at which everything feels like a long haul. I've very nearly finished the actual (foolscap) ledger I've been writing in, which probably doesn't have enough pages left in it now to complete this second chapter, and shall soon be able to start on a new A5 (and much, much lighter) notebook :-) The only disadvantage of that is that you don't have easy access to earlier plot points when writing.
I realised rather reluctantly that I'd managed to write myself into a situation where I was going to need to create a name and persona for each of the individual shipwreck survivors; if they're going to be shut up together for the next month, Raoul can't just go on thinking about them as 'the crew' as a mass. And I decided I really couldn't cut numbers down to fewer than ten, given that I want them to have two boats to deliver to d'Artois, and I'd already written a description of them rowing into the gale with two sick men on board and Raoul steering: that requires a minimum of four rowers to be credible making seven men in the boat. I managed to reduce the total cast requirement by saying that there were only four in the other boat and one of them had died; quite apart from the awkwardness of having to come up with eight new characters in the space of a chapter or so, I need the death toll on the Requin to be fairly high. Realistically the total crew numbers probably wouldn't have been all that large; exploration ships seem to have carried pretty small crews compared to warships (no need to man guns or allow for wastage in combat), and even if we hypothesise that as a naval ship co-opted for a rescue expedition she would have carried a larger number of men, I wonder if it would have been much above fifty.
I need Erik to have been responsible for a large number of deaths in order for him to look (a) dangerous (in the absence of his canon actions to blow up the Opera House) and (b) at least minimally competent, given that under the new plot-hole patch he now fails actually to sink the ship...
So far I've got I think nine of them named. In inimitable Lindsey Davis style:
Hmm, that actually makes eight; I need to invent another couple as and when they do something to draw themselves individually to Raoul's attention. I was thinking that maybe I ought to put a foreigner in; a Swiss or Italian or Guernseyman...
I still don't think it's as good as my other one-shots, but for a story that features their beloved Phantom being bested by a minor character it seems to have gone down amazingly well in the fandom. Admittedly the summary and opening scene are deliberately misleading in terms of E/C cliché, but the high number of appreciative reviews suggests that people genuinely were enjoying it (as well as actually bothering to click on it in the first place, which tends not to happen for updates to my multi-chapter fanfic!)
I've completed one chapter of Nautical Raoul for the Swedish story, roughly corresponding to the first sentence of plot point seven, although since all the material covering the next few weeks is basically an extraneous patch job to cover up the geographical error in the original plot, I'm not going to be able to tick much of it off for a long time...
I did hope that writing Raoul would be less laborious than writing ad nauseam about Christine and Erik's situation, but I'm not sure it is -- I've just got to the stage in the book at which everything feels like a long haul. I've very nearly finished the actual (foolscap) ledger I've been writing in, which probably doesn't have enough pages left in it now to complete this second chapter, and shall soon be able to start on a new A5 (and much, much lighter) notebook :-) The only disadvantage of that is that you don't have easy access to earlier plot points when writing.
I realised rather reluctantly that I'd managed to write myself into a situation where I was going to need to create a name and persona for each of the individual shipwreck survivors; if they're going to be shut up together for the next month, Raoul can't just go on thinking about them as 'the crew' as a mass. And I decided I really couldn't cut numbers down to fewer than ten, given that I want them to have two boats to deliver to d'Artois, and I'd already written a description of them rowing into the gale with two sick men on board and Raoul steering: that requires a minimum of four rowers to be credible making seven men in the boat. I managed to reduce the total cast requirement by saying that there were only four in the other boat and one of them had died; quite apart from the awkwardness of having to come up with eight new characters in the space of a chapter or so, I need the death toll on the Requin to be fairly high. Realistically the total crew numbers probably wouldn't have been all that large; exploration ships seem to have carried pretty small crews compared to warships (no need to man guns or allow for wastage in combat), and even if we hypothesise that as a naval ship co-opted for a rescue expedition she would have carried a larger number of men, I wonder if it would have been much above fifty.
I need Erik to have been responsible for a large number of deaths in order for him to look (a) dangerous (in the absence of his canon actions to blow up the Opera House) and (b) at least minimally competent, given that under the new plot-hole patch he now fails actually to sink the ship...
So far I've got I think nine of them named. In inimitable Lindsey Davis style:
- de Chagny, Raoul -- our protagonist, a young lieutenant
- Lancard, Valéry -- a slightly older lieutenant, disliked by Raoul
- Lagarde -- an injured mechanic who will help patch up the engines
- Durocq -- an experienced sailor with a reputation as a trouble-maker. Genuinely superstitious.
- Perret -- a big fair-haired Norman. Useful muscle and loyal but not all that bright with it.
- Sancierre -- a young man of about Raoul's age with a bad case of blisters
- Peythieu and Gavrillac -- an interchangeable pair of Auvergnats
Hmm, that actually makes eight; I need to invent another couple as and when they do something to draw themselves individually to Raoul's attention. I was thinking that maybe I ought to put a foreigner in; a Swiss or Italian or Guernseyman...
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(Really it would be better to do the research/fact-checking first..)