Fiction and Fanfiction: Updates

[nebroadwe]

Sound the trumpets! At long last, I've had a novella-length original idea (at least, it's not novel-length but the plot problem seems like it will take more than a short story's worth of verbiage to resolve) that I can shoehorn into my untitled Collect-the-Coupons-Novel's universe (allowing me to make use of some already completed research into history and linguistics and giving me a more focused set of further research goals). It comes complete with title ("Never Gazed the Moon Upon the Water"), main character (the euphoniously named Dionisa Andolça de Aguilar) and front end. The difficulty, of course, is that I haven't quite figured out the back end (also an issue with the Collect-the-Coupons-Novel). But the characters are taking their initial entrances and exits briskly enough, so I'm hopeful. Hence the meter:

215 / 10,000 (2.1%)

I'm going to put it aside for a day or so and let it ferment while I finish "The Weight of the Paper," which I really really really want to have posted for my first anniversary as a fanficcer next week. Especially now that I've finally figured out what Falman and Sheska have to say to each other in the middle section ...

      "But you see, Mr. Falman, right after his morning briefing Lieutenant Colonel Hughes himself gave me this assignment. He said it was a matter of the utmost importance and ... and that I should regard it in that light."

      "In what light?"

      "In light of its importance."

      "Ms. Sheska -- "

      "He was very emphatic."

      "Ms. Sheska, what exactly did the Lieutenant Colonel tell you?"

      "He said ... I should come back with my shield or on it."

      "I'm sure that's merely a figure of speech."

      "It's from Plutarch. But it's not just what he said -- it's how he said it."

      "How did he -- ?"

      "He was holding my pay envelope. In his right hand. And -- and tapping it against his left palm. Rather like a riding crop."

      "I see."

I frequently begin with draft material that looks like this -- line after line of untagged dialogue with very occasional indications of character movement or important non-verbal cues. The trick then is filling in the spaces with descriptions of the setting and the action, dialogue tags that help convey tone, and musings, symbols, figures of speech and other rhetorical tricks that communicate mood and theme. Excelsior!