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igenlodeWell, the good news for the year is that my second beta-reader (the first having presumably abandoned the project altogether) has been reading the laboured chapters on the salvage of the Requin and apparently thinks they are *wonderful*: "Really exciting, and a nice blend of detailed technical knowledge and ‘human interest’. Please don’t keep me in suspense... I need to know what happens next."
Which was certainly not the reaction I'd been expecting after rereading them myself! (And of course the "I need to know what happens next" is what every writer dreams of hearing...)
So apparently people actually are interested in the minutiæ of how you can be shipwrecked off the south of Norway, spend a long time trying to sail east against an easterly gale, and end up struggling to steam west against a south-westerly. Or at least the way I managed to tell it ;-p
I have now almost finished editing this section (chapters 13 to 20 -- only Chapter 20 left to proof-read now), which forms a sort of natural Part III, after Raoul's adventures up to Stavanger and Christine's 'adventures' locked up with Erik. After that it becomes more the story of the escape of the d'Artois expedition, and I feel that probably continues until they get back to France and/or the whole of the reunion with Philippe. Ch20 also turns out to be located almost exactly halfway through the manuscript, which suggests that the whole thing will clock in at around 140,000 words -- bearing in mind that I still have *both* versions of Ch1 in the document, inflating the overall length by an extra 3,000 duplicated words.
The other thing that getting these chapters typed up has established is that, in this specific set of notebooks, eight pages of manuscript (which I have been using as a rule of thumb minimum for gauging chapter length when writing) does in fact equate to around 2500–2600 words. Which gives me a decent idea of how long the Hertha chapters are.
One last-minute change during editing was my discovery that the feature "Le Taureau" which appears on the map to be a convenient named rock/reef in the bay at Trestraou (like the ones Hornblower encounters as landmarks/hazards in the "Hotspur") turns out to be a sizeable island in its own right, and one with a large and obvious fort built on it.
http://www.finisterebrittany.com/discover-chateau-du-taureau
Which *really* doesn't accord with my description of Raoul and Christine sailing round it in a small fishing boat -- they could scarcely have failed to notice a prison island! So the chapter had to be hastily altered to use the "Roc'h Stur" instead, which does seem to be an actual rocher (even if Google is confused by the fact that it also appears to be a popular name for local holiday apartments...)
Hertha has finally reached "Don Juan", which means that I'm now back in my comfort zone of transcribing canon events from an alternate perspective. What I had *not* expected was that, in a situation where everyone else is disparaging the Phantom's music, Hertha turns out to be the one person who actually considers that there might be something in it from a modernistic point of view.
(Well, there has to be some balance for the fact that she basically regards the Phantom with absolutely zero sympathy the whole way through; she has no reason at all to feel sorry for him in the slightest, so there's a risk of the story coming out as a deliberate exercise in 'bashing'. She needs to feel a slight stab of empathy at the moment when Christine unmasks him, too.)
We are actually very nearly at the end of this, depending on how far this chapter (Ch12, I think? [Edit: no, I think it's actually Ch13, since we have an intervening 'at home' chapter containing the art exhibition, following the graveyard chapter]) turns out to run. Hertha doesn't witness any of the Final Lair, so once Raoul disappears off into the depths of the Opera Populaire it will just be the one chapter of 'aftermath' -- which was sort of the whole point of the original story concept, and will be quite hard to handle now that the narrative and character have acquired all these extra accretions :-(
Plus a possible cameo chapter to establish the fate of the baby...
Given that I have twelve pages of this notebook (the final one of the set of three) left, I'm afraid I can be pretty sure that I will *not* be fitting another one and a half chapters plus epilogue into it. The story is probably going to overrun annoyingly by a few pages, an unforeseen consequence of the fact that the *first* volume contains the end of Arctic Raoul plus all seven thousand words of The Writing on the Wall ;-p
Another spur-of-the-moment unsolicited rewrite -- this time of text that was being held up to ridicule rather than asking for help :-(
(Only I just can't do the present-tense-description thing. It sounds all wrong to me in narrative, and more like an announcer giving a commentary on the Grand National in real time...)
"Rainey was quite simply stunning. Every so often a woman comes along who really does look like all those faked-up magazine photos, and that was her. I dare say a lot of effort had gone into that look, but from my perspective it came across as pretty much natural: cheekbones, lips, and vital statistics all added up to the most unquestionably attractive female I'd ever had the pleasure to observe. I had to suppress a certain stab of envy."
Which was certainly not the reaction I'd been expecting after rereading them myself! (And of course the "I need to know what happens next" is what every writer dreams of hearing...)
So apparently people actually are interested in the minutiæ of how you can be shipwrecked off the south of Norway, spend a long time trying to sail east against an easterly gale, and end up struggling to steam west against a south-westerly. Or at least the way I managed to tell it ;-p
I have now almost finished editing this section (chapters 13 to 20 -- only Chapter 20 left to proof-read now), which forms a sort of natural Part III, after Raoul's adventures up to Stavanger and Christine's 'adventures' locked up with Erik. After that it becomes more the story of the escape of the d'Artois expedition, and I feel that probably continues until they get back to France and/or the whole of the reunion with Philippe. Ch20 also turns out to be located almost exactly halfway through the manuscript, which suggests that the whole thing will clock in at around 140,000 words -- bearing in mind that I still have *both* versions of Ch1 in the document, inflating the overall length by an extra 3,000 duplicated words.
The other thing that getting these chapters typed up has established is that, in this specific set of notebooks, eight pages of manuscript (which I have been using as a rule of thumb minimum for gauging chapter length when writing) does in fact equate to around 2500–2600 words. Which gives me a decent idea of how long the Hertha chapters are.
One last-minute change during editing was my discovery that the feature "Le Taureau" which appears on the map to be a convenient named rock/reef in the bay at Trestraou (like the ones Hornblower encounters as landmarks/hazards in the "Hotspur") turns out to be a sizeable island in its own right, and one with a large and obvious fort built on it.
http://www.finisterebrittany.com/discover-chateau-du-taureau
Which *really* doesn't accord with my description of Raoul and Christine sailing round it in a small fishing boat -- they could scarcely have failed to notice a prison island! So the chapter had to be hastily altered to use the "Roc'h Stur" instead, which does seem to be an actual rocher (even if Google is confused by the fact that it also appears to be a popular name for local holiday apartments...)
Hertha has finally reached "Don Juan", which means that I'm now back in my comfort zone of transcribing canon events from an alternate perspective. What I had *not* expected was that, in a situation where everyone else is disparaging the Phantom's music, Hertha turns out to be the one person who actually considers that there might be something in it from a modernistic point of view.
(Well, there has to be some balance for the fact that she basically regards the Phantom with absolutely zero sympathy the whole way through; she has no reason at all to feel sorry for him in the slightest, so there's a risk of the story coming out as a deliberate exercise in 'bashing'. She needs to feel a slight stab of empathy at the moment when Christine unmasks him, too.)
We are actually very nearly at the end of this, depending on how far this chapter (Ch12, I think? [Edit: no, I think it's actually Ch13, since we have an intervening 'at home' chapter containing the art exhibition, following the graveyard chapter]) turns out to run. Hertha doesn't witness any of the Final Lair, so once Raoul disappears off into the depths of the Opera Populaire it will just be the one chapter of 'aftermath' -- which was sort of the whole point of the original story concept, and will be quite hard to handle now that the narrative and character have acquired all these extra accretions :-(
Plus a possible cameo chapter to establish the fate of the baby...
Given that I have twelve pages of this notebook (the final one of the set of three) left, I'm afraid I can be pretty sure that I will *not* be fitting another one and a half chapters plus epilogue into it. The story is probably going to overrun annoyingly by a few pages, an unforeseen consequence of the fact that the *first* volume contains the end of Arctic Raoul plus all seven thousand words of The Writing on the Wall ;-p
Another spur-of-the-moment unsolicited rewrite -- this time of text that was being held up to ridicule rather than asking for help :-(
(Only I just can't do the present-tense-description thing. It sounds all wrong to me in narrative, and more like an announcer giving a commentary on the Grand National in real time...)
Rainey has one of those perfectly symmetrical faces with large blue eyes and a perfectly straight nose, along with full lips, gleaming, straight teeth, and contoured cheekbones. Her body—just from an unbiased, non-lesbian perspective—is the unrealistic model of perfection every woman dreams about, from her exquisitely shaped breasts to her tiny waist to her long legs.
"Rainey was quite simply stunning. Every so often a woman comes along who really does look like all those faked-up magazine photos, and that was her. I dare say a lot of effort had gone into that look, but from my perspective it came across as pretty much natural: cheekbones, lips, and vital statistics all added up to the most unquestionably attractive female I'd ever had the pleasure to observe. I had to suppress a certain stab of envy."
