Writing update

[regshoe]

Having done some last bits of editing following beta feedback, I now have a more or less complete draft of my Flight of the Heron/Kidnapped crossover longfic! It's about 117,000 words long, which is comfortably more than five times longer than the next longest thing I've ever written, and has taken just over a year to get to this point. I am slightly amazed—I can write longfic now! Writing it has been quite an experience, but on the whole I am pleased with it. :)

I absolutely could not have got this far without the help of luzula and sanguinity, who are lovely and amazing beta readers and cheerleaders. ♥

The next stage is more editing and polishing—I'm planning one more complete read-through and edit, and this evening have been preparing for that by going through my (long and not terribly well organised) notes document to pick out things I still want to address. I also want to polish the vocabulary and punctuation to match D. K. Broster's (the fic being in third person, I'm vaguely aiming at a style similar to hers rather than RLS's)—I've written a simple R script to compare the words used by two texts, and it's pretty interesting seeing which words I use that Broster doesn't and vice versa!

Another challenge I now face is the sad lack of a title. The only thing I can think of so far is 'we can make love not war Jacobite risings (and live at peace with our hearts)', which would amuse me but is perhaps not really suitable. (I'm sure Erasure would have said 'Jacobite risings' if they'd known their song was going to feature so memorably in NTS Kidnapped). I'm a little bit sad, because IME fics that don't have a title by this stage of their composition usually never get a good one—OTOH I can do my final read-through with the goal in mind of finding a line to quote as the title, which may turn up something in all those thousands of words...

It's not going to be ready for posting entirely before Yuletide, but I might manage to get it done by the really busy phase of the exchange. I hope so—I want to get properly into Yuletide this year, and relax by writing lots of short and silly treats!...

Comments

[luzula]

Congratulations and welcome to longfic writing! \o/ Are you going to post it serially, or all at once?

I've written a simple R script to compare the words used by two texts, and it's pretty interesting seeing which words I use that Broster doesn't and vice versa!
Oooh, do report on this.

[regshoe]

Thank you <3 I think I'll post it all at once.

Oooh, do report on this.

I originally wrote the script for a planned meta post comparing the vocabularies of Flight of the Heron and Kidnapped, and at some point I'll get round to analysing that comparison and writing it up...

In the meantime, if you're interested here are some details!

Broster uses much more than I do: ye, staff, shieling, retorted, hut, heron, darling, royal, major, tent, lake, breast, boy, aye, uniform, tartan, prisoners, dirk, August, replied, moreover, evidence, boat, prisoner, mere, chief, horse, gods, coast, Highlander, camp, soul, pray, despatch, assure, shot, observed, yourself, lady, fort, wounded, nearly, dead, charge, desire, Pretender's, unless, force, body, farther, post, nearer, departure, cut, seem, fast, slope, plaid, rebel, quickly, till, cattle, answered, order, Englishman, clan, shut, blood, slipped, son, guard, officers, mountains, English, possibly, ride, quarters, impossible, mountain, whole, willingly, withdraw, witness, vow, uttered, urged, meanwhile, liberty, dared, realise, realised

I use much more than Broster: dinner, estate, you've, ay, understood, you're, anxious, wise, Highlands, plans, we've, leaned, street, won't, wood, political, amongst, loyalty, familiar, garden, simply, live, danger, Jacobite, clouds, quiet, friend, placed, nodded, closer, journey, steady, I've, bye, carriage, footsteps, can't, carefully, loyal, walking, weather, ought, friends, careful, questions, work, plan, rising, Jacobite, lived, movements, grew, strength, Whig, things, beneath, people, pleasant, haven't, they're, wouldn't

I'm quite pleased, because nothing on that second list strikes me as obviously inappropriate or anachronistic. But I do clearly need to be careful about contractions, and I haven't quite got Broster's knack for choosing alternatives to 'said'. I seem to be more explicit than Broster about politics, while the first list includes a lot of military-setting vocabulary that's less relevant to my story. The opposite status of 'Highlands' and 'Highlander' is interesting. And I can't believe I never mentioned the heron—will have to remedy that one...

[luzula]

Interesting! Yes, as you say, nothing in your list seems anachronistic (why is 'Jacobite' on it twice, though?). Hmm, 'retorted' sounds like one of those words I might forget to use...

Would it be possible for you to run one of my longfics in your program and compare it to FotH, and give me the output? You could do 'If Fate Should Reverse Our Positions, for preference. Not necessary if it's a lot of work, of course!

[regshoe]

why is 'Jacobite' on it twice, though?

Whoops—because I made a typo while editing the list; one of them should be 'Jacobites'!

Yes, certainly! I'll run it and send you the results. :)

[phantomtomato]

Congratulations!! It was fun to follow along part of this writing journey when you hosted Write Every Day in May, and I’m so happy for you to have reached the point of a complete draft! That’s such a fulfilling feeling. <3 Good luck with titling and edits!

[regshoe]

Aww, thank you <3

[sanguinity]

Hurrah! I'm so excited for you! And for us!

I understand R has a stylometrics package, so you could really go to town in attempting to counterfeit imitate Broster's style! (Although that also sounds like the kind of thing that could eat a lot of time on the way to pubishing...)

Re titles, if it helps at all, my usual method is to have a little think about the themes and problems of the story, then do a dedicated read through for anything that 1) is a striking little turn of phrase, that which could be the title of something (if not actually this!) or 2) is thematically relevant to the big problems/themes/issues of the story, even if the phrasing isn't so great. I also add to the list any quotes or idioms, not necessarily seen in the text, that seem thematically/topically relevant. Then once I have my big monster list of possibilities, most of which are clearly not feasible titles, I start workshopping, trying to recombine or mutate items on the list into something decent. For me the trick is not to be too critical in the list-building stage -- don't get too hung up on whether a phrase could be a perfect title, just focus on being open to possibility and building a nice rich list to workshop from.

[regshoe]

Thank you :D

I have actually done a bit of messing about with R Stylo before, although I don't at all understand how it works in the details—a future project, perhaps...

And thank you for the advice! That is certainly a lot more effort than I usually put into coming up with a title, so I will probably get somewhere if I try it—I'll see how it goes.

[sovay]

Having done some last bits of editing following beta feedback, I now have a more or less complete draft of my Flight of the Heron/Kidnapped crossover longfic!

Congratulations! 117,000 words is indeed long.

[regshoe]

Thank you :D

[adore]

Woohoo! That's amazing!

[regshoe]

:D Thank you!

[scintilla10]

That is many words, wow! Congrats!

[regshoe]

Thank you :D