Fic progress
24 January 2020 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeFinished Plot Point Sixteen, after spending ages trying to research whether the elderly and probably highly conservative Comte de Chagny was likely to have worn "a neatly-trimmed imperial" before his death circa 1873 (apparently they are named after Napoleon III). In the end I had the brainwave of simply ascribing the facial hairstyle in question to one of Raoul's two handy brothers-in-law who can be as fashionable and/or progressive as they like since we have hitherto heard nothing about them :-p
I picked the Baron de Voscelles, since we know that Raoul's sister Simone de Voscelles is a Baronne and can thus deduce his existence! I don't even know Valentine's married surname (unless I should suddenly need it before the end of the story...)
It's going to be a pretty odd sort of a chapter, though. It starts off with a thousand words or so of Erik's death that are more or less left over from the previous chapter, because I wanted a bigger break between the discovery of the treasure and the return back inside, and because that chapter had already run to 4,500 words. Then they immediately bring up the subject of the money again, and once Raoul has satisfactorily squashed that we have another five hundred words or so on the setting fire process, more unvoiced money issues in the shape of Raoul's thoughts about compensation, then angsting about Kulla and Madame Valerius which segues into Christine going all happy and flirtatious at the end of the chapter -- a chapter which started a scant three thousand words earlier with them consciously agreeing to kill Erik. It spends more time worrying about his ill-gotten gains than about his tragic sufferings and the state of his soul :-P
Partly that's an effect of using Raoul's viewpoint; he really cannot be expected to regret Erik's end very much, as from his point of view it's either a blessed release for all concerned or (if he is feeling vindictive) rather less than their enemy deserved. Partly, I'm afraid, it's an effect of the author really not feeling all that sorry for the poor monster who only persecutes and terrifies people because he loves Christine so much (awww...) And partly, I suspect, it's a result of the hoard's having been implied to be a larger sum than I had originally envisaged, and hence raising obvious problems... I still have an uncomfortable feeling that that may have been a mistake, but having got this far it's one that will be very hard to undo now.
I think the death scene itself is good, and should wring tears from Erik-lovers. And everything that came after it seemed a natural enough progression, one idea from the next (even if the connections were pretty hard work to wring out as I went!) It's just that, looking back, the overall emphasis of the chapter feels a little unbalanced.
If the worst comes to the worst I suppose I can always re-split the scenes and run the beginning of this chapter as an extended end to the previous one, then combine the remainder of this one with the as-yet-unwritten Plot Point Seventeen, or epilogue. I have very little idea how long that is likely to be; it might be very short, but as I found myself with all sorts of ideas (although not sure in what order they should be arranged) when I started thinking about it, it may yet end up at full chapter length. The most likely is that it's going to be another 2-3,000 word section, I think. However, an epilogue can decently be short.
I ought to be feeling rather more excited, given that I'm actually talking about the very last chapter here which implies that years of labour ought to be finished within a month or so at most... I just wish I was happier with it. Also, I've been thinking more and more about the possibility of submitting the completed work to an agent for publication, and feeling more and more hopeless about any prospect of result. And if I do, then I shan't be able to publish it on FFnet after all... but then POTO activity on there seems to have gone right down, too. It's all LittleLongHairedOutlaw and her Irish tuberculosis/Time Traveller's Wife AU and not a lot of other updates or reviews. If I do upload it there, it will be "Blue Remembered Hills" all over again; years of work pre-publication and then practically no response.
(Ouch; somebody has updated a story from 2001 entitled Mon Couer S'Ouvre À Ta Voix, and apparently in twenty years she has failed to fix the glaring typo in the title... despite the fact that someone reviewed to point it out back in 2007.)
I picked the Baron de Voscelles, since we know that Raoul's sister Simone de Voscelles is a Baronne and can thus deduce his existence! I don't even know Valentine's married surname (unless I should suddenly need it before the end of the story...)
It's going to be a pretty odd sort of a chapter, though. It starts off with a thousand words or so of Erik's death that are more or less left over from the previous chapter, because I wanted a bigger break between the discovery of the treasure and the return back inside, and because that chapter had already run to 4,500 words. Then they immediately bring up the subject of the money again, and once Raoul has satisfactorily squashed that we have another five hundred words or so on the setting fire process, more unvoiced money issues in the shape of Raoul's thoughts about compensation, then angsting about Kulla and Madame Valerius which segues into Christine going all happy and flirtatious at the end of the chapter -- a chapter which started a scant three thousand words earlier with them consciously agreeing to kill Erik. It spends more time worrying about his ill-gotten gains than about his tragic sufferings and the state of his soul :-P
Partly that's an effect of using Raoul's viewpoint; he really cannot be expected to regret Erik's end very much, as from his point of view it's either a blessed release for all concerned or (if he is feeling vindictive) rather less than their enemy deserved. Partly, I'm afraid, it's an effect of the author really not feeling all that sorry for the poor monster who only persecutes and terrifies people because he loves Christine so much (awww...) And partly, I suspect, it's a result of the hoard's having been implied to be a larger sum than I had originally envisaged, and hence raising obvious problems... I still have an uncomfortable feeling that that may have been a mistake, but having got this far it's one that will be very hard to undo now.
I think the death scene itself is good, and should wring tears from Erik-lovers. And everything that came after it seemed a natural enough progression, one idea from the next (even if the connections were pretty hard work to wring out as I went!) It's just that, looking back, the overall emphasis of the chapter feels a little unbalanced.
If the worst comes to the worst I suppose I can always re-split the scenes and run the beginning of this chapter as an extended end to the previous one, then combine the remainder of this one with the as-yet-unwritten Plot Point Seventeen, or epilogue. I have very little idea how long that is likely to be; it might be very short, but as I found myself with all sorts of ideas (although not sure in what order they should be arranged) when I started thinking about it, it may yet end up at full chapter length. The most likely is that it's going to be another 2-3,000 word section, I think. However, an epilogue can decently be short.
I ought to be feeling rather more excited, given that I'm actually talking about the very last chapter here which implies that years of labour ought to be finished within a month or so at most... I just wish I was happier with it. Also, I've been thinking more and more about the possibility of submitting the completed work to an agent for publication, and feeling more and more hopeless about any prospect of result. And if I do, then I shan't be able to publish it on FFnet after all... but then POTO activity on there seems to have gone right down, too. It's all LittleLongHairedOutlaw and her Irish tuberculosis/Time Traveller's Wife AU and not a lot of other updates or reviews. If I do upload it there, it will be "Blue Remembered Hills" all over again; years of work pre-publication and then practically no response.
(Ouch; somebody has updated a story from 2001 entitled Mon Couer S'Ouvre À Ta Voix, and apparently in twenty years she has failed to fix the glaring typo in the title... despite the fact that someone reviewed to point it out back in 2007.)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-24 12:34 pm (UTC)In other words, the author being sensible. :P
It would be cool if you actually got it published.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-25 08:52 am (UTC)Though as I said, I don't think there's a lot of chance of that. It might take a lot of time to find out, though; I gather a typical agent enquiry takes about three months before you can expect any answer. Possibly no-hopers get faster rejection.
But I think it probably is too much fan-fiction, and spends too much self-indulgent time feeding the 'feels' of readers who are assumed to be more interested in their existing emotions about the book and characters than it does in establishing a new plot that will attract people who don't know them. Those one-sentence allusions to Raoul's sisters, for example: someone who knows Leroux inside out will go 'ah yes, a nod to the original', someone who doesn't is more likely to wonder why these characters are being mentioned and not fleshed out properly.
I can't imagine Raoul has ever killed anyone before, or even witnessed a death (although thanks to Erik, he has met a lot of dead bodies in this story). I don't think it's something you brush away that easily :-(