Well, it's taken a while and it hasn't been easy, but I managed to pick all the nits I could find. Plot holes have been closed and more important characters have been slain! I won't be writing for a week or two due to academic circumstances, but when I'm back I'll be posting short stories based on my characters. I also have a few people lined up that want to make artwork for me (in exchange for the assumed privilege of being a proofreader, apparently I'm good at selling my half-finished product) so I'm having a party! I also have several people who just want to proofread. Actual content will be posted here soon!ish! P.S. having this forum as a resource certainly has been motivational, thank you
I feel like I have an interesting story if I can make my characters feel more alive. I notice I've been making them in pairs... And my descriptions of them have been explicit. It's hard in the context of first person prose to show character traits implicitly. I plan to write a short ~1000 word story for each of my named characters. I tried setting up fact sheets but that just doesn't cut it, so I'll attempt to write a "core memory" for each of them and see how that goes. See if they'd make different decisions, and if I can give them a more leading role if I like them more than my MC. I'm only human after all. Plot, plot... If anything changes in the middle of my plot, how could I possibly justify the flow of events to be unaltered? I'm starting to view this book as more of a personal development project than an actual novel. I'm not sure if I mind that, it gives the whole thing something more dynamic. Finally I'm too shy to join a role playing session, but I'll get over that at some point.
Just a short intro to CrusherBrooks and his reason to be here. For a while now I have considered joining this forum (or similar forums). About a year and a half ago I decided to write a novel -my first- since I could not find any more in my local library in the range of genres which I enjoyed reading at the time. It took me about 4 months to finish a 106k word first draft. Writing it was the easy part; finding the plotholes and closing them is turning out to be somewhat of a grind. However I have been putting in hours consistently by having a set routine; after my MSc thesis project, in the evenings, I take 20 minutes to read any solid novel (The name of the Rose by late Umberto Eco currently), then 15 minutes to meditate and get into focus while contemplating what I'll be working on that day, followed by about 60 minutes of distraction-free editing. It's working well so far, I've fixed the largest two plot holes I could find and am currently working on the third. Once I've finished closing them up I plan to have three proofreaders give me more feedback and hopefully I can start working on smaller and smaller sections. My desire and demand is to have it finished by the end of the year, together with my MSc thesis.