Fic progress
10 May 2022 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeChapter 24 of Arctic Raoul typed up, in one long session (though as yet unproofread or edited); I have struggled repeatedly to find a suitable title, having gone through A Fellow-Foreigner (too close to the references to fellow-travellers in the first paragraphs), Starved and Semi-Conscious (a quote from the chapter itself, but not an element I want to emphasise to that degree), and Lost in Translation (too reminiscent of the Bill Murray film), and am currently on A Slip in Translation, which sums up the main twist sufficiently well without giving anything away. (It is implied in the text, and I hope apparent, that Lancard makes a mistake in his Norwegian comprehension and jumps to the conclusion that the starving wanderer in this remote place is by default a Frenchman...)
Since it ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger I found myself reading on into the next chapter, which is always a good sign. And that one, which is essentially some very overdue R/C fluff, is actually good, I think :-)
It did occur to me a month or so ago that I might be able to kill two birds with one stone -- the book being too long for publication, and the lovers' reconciliation and 'happy ending' falling in the middle of the plot instead of as a romantic climax -- by doing a "Barrayar"/"Shards of Honour", splitting the story at this point, and presenting it as a novel and its sequel, since the ending would then occur at about 90,000 words, which is reasonable. But that would then result in a very short 'sequel', since I only have one notebook out of three remaining (about 40,000 words). And Christine falling asleep on Raoul's shoulder (in a conscious echo of d'Artois doing the same in Ch23) is not really much of an ending anyway.
Since it ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger I found myself reading on into the next chapter, which is always a good sign. And that one, which is essentially some very overdue R/C fluff, is actually good, I think :-)
It did occur to me a month or so ago that I might be able to kill two birds with one stone -- the book being too long for publication, and the lovers' reconciliation and 'happy ending' falling in the middle of the plot instead of as a romantic climax -- by doing a "Barrayar"/"Shards of Honour", splitting the story at this point, and presenting it as a novel and its sequel, since the ending would then occur at about 90,000 words, which is reasonable. But that would then result in a very short 'sequel', since I only have one notebook out of three remaining (about 40,000 words). And Christine falling asleep on Raoul's shoulder (in a conscious echo of d'Artois doing the same in Ch23) is not really much of an ending anyway.