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I finished the first draft last week, and I've spent the last five days editing.
It's slim. 44,000 words. There isn't a lot of hanky panky in the prose, but there is a good bit of funny. I did the plotting in October, started writing on Thanksgiving, finished the first draft in mid-March. *whew*
I guess I'm excited to start on a new project. For this last one, I wanted to keep the focus on two characters. I'm going to try tackle five characters and education in the next book. I'm still in a little bit of shock.
Birth, Growth, and Death. I had a philosophy prof once who said that a good book concerns birth, growth, and death, and writers fail because they don't understand growth. Figuring out how five people grow together is going to be some tough business, but that's what's next.
[This message has been edited by Tanglier (edited March 24, 2005).]
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Congrats on finishing your draft. The editing phase often turns out to be the most difficult...
Regarding 'Birth, Growth, and Death', there is truth in that. I'm going to ignore Birth and just mention Growth and Death.
In nearly every story, a character must / should go through a change of some sort. This, I believe, is the growth your professor mentioned. Usually, it involves throwing up obstacles in their path, having them fail, and then realize that they need to change something about themselves to overcome and win the day. They have to learn... grow.
There can be many changes / obstacles a character faces throughout the course of a story, but a character who doesn't change, who fails to recognize the need for change, and fails to learn anything at all, usually gets shafted at the end of the story, or often Death. To paraphrase Survivor, "if the guy is an idiot, he deserves to die."
Shafting a character at the end can be a valid story, but it's likely that most people like their heroes to win -- even if winning means Death by self-sacrifice.
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I agree 100%. stories in which a lot happens but the characters are exactly the same at the end as when they started are flat and static and leave me saying "so what?"
Posts: 1750 | Registered: Oct 2004
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