AQATSA Update and Sneak Peek!
Apr. 21st, 2011 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inveraritySo, for those of you who follow my LJ for the book reviews, I'm reading too many books at once right now, so it'll be a while before I finish them. But reviews of The Wise Man's Fear and other books, fiction and non-fiction, are coming.
In the meantime, you can just ignore everything below the cut if you don't care about my fanfic.
I'm at 205K words and Chapter 33, but there's still this big section in the middle that I'm going to have to go back and rewrite, and probably cut a whole chapter. I still don't have an ETA for completion. Right now I am aiming for coming in under 300K words. :o Hopefully way under that. But the rough outline in my head says there are five or six major plot points (call them "minor acts") yet to be written, each of which pretty much needs a chapter all by itself, and usually I wind up needing about a chapter to stitch each one together, so call it 10-12 chapters, and given the way I always end up overwriting so that what I thought would be one chapter turns out to be several... Holy crap, 50 chapters is not inconceivable. I'd be more comfortable if I can wrap it up in 40 chapters, but I think that's a very optimistic estimate. So, AQATSA will be... 40-50 chapters? Let's see how accurate that estimate is.
I do not have a sample chapter for you, but I do have a lovely illustration of a scene from AQATSA:
Click for larger version
This was done by *MioneBookworm. (This was an artist recommended to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anyareine. Thanks, Anya!)
There has been some discussion about how "accurate" some of the other art has been. As I've said before, I just don't have the ability to describe in such precise detail the characters I picture in my head that an artist can draw them exactly the way I picture them. (I once pissed off an artist friend of mine -- she was very, very good, and now does high-level professional advertising work -- by trying to be too specific about what I wanted some character illustrations to look like while not being very good at explaining what I wanted. She ended up refusing to draw any more pictures for me, and I've always felt bad about that. :() For that reason, I try not to get too wrapped up in whether or not an illustration is a perfect representation.
Likewise, I'm sure most of you have pictures in your head of what my characters look like. And the pictures you have in your head are almost certainly not the same as the pictures in my head. Therefore, no illustration matches any pictures in anyone's head but the artist's.
That said, I gave very detailed instructions for this picture, in terms of who the characters were, what the situation was, what the characters were feeling and wearing, etc. At the same time, I left much to the artist's interpretation. And the results are gorgeous.
In the meantime, you can just ignore everything below the cut if you don't care about my fanfic.
I'm at 205K words and Chapter 33, but there's still this big section in the middle that I'm going to have to go back and rewrite, and probably cut a whole chapter. I still don't have an ETA for completion. Right now I am aiming for coming in under 300K words. :o Hopefully way under that. But the rough outline in my head says there are five or six major plot points (call them "minor acts") yet to be written, each of which pretty much needs a chapter all by itself, and usually I wind up needing about a chapter to stitch each one together, so call it 10-12 chapters, and given the way I always end up overwriting so that what I thought would be one chapter turns out to be several... Holy crap, 50 chapters is not inconceivable. I'd be more comfortable if I can wrap it up in 40 chapters, but I think that's a very optimistic estimate. So, AQATSA will be... 40-50 chapters? Let's see how accurate that estimate is.
I do not have a sample chapter for you, but I do have a lovely illustration of a scene from AQATSA:
Click for larger version
This was done by *MioneBookworm. (This was an artist recommended to me by
anyareine. Thanks, Anya!)There has been some discussion about how "accurate" some of the other art has been. As I've said before, I just don't have the ability to describe in such precise detail the characters I picture in my head that an artist can draw them exactly the way I picture them. (I once pissed off an artist friend of mine -- she was very, very good, and now does high-level professional advertising work -- by trying to be too specific about what I wanted some character illustrations to look like while not being very good at explaining what I wanted. She ended up refusing to draw any more pictures for me, and I've always felt bad about that. :() For that reason, I try not to get too wrapped up in whether or not an illustration is a perfect representation.
Likewise, I'm sure most of you have pictures in your head of what my characters look like. And the pictures you have in your head are almost certainly not the same as the pictures in my head. Therefore, no illustration matches any pictures in anyone's head but the artist's.
That said, I gave very detailed instructions for this picture, in terms of who the characters were, what the situation was, what the characters were feeling and wearing, etc. At the same time, I left much to the artist's interpretation. And the results are gorgeous.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
A guess on the picture
Date: 2011-04-22 01:09 am (UTC)-Jblakew
PS - Are we going to see more of Innocence? She was great!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:04 am (UTC)In addition...40-50 chapters, and that's after you cut out ~1/3 of your planned material? Just how long was your original outline?
-TealTerror
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:10 am (UTC)No, see, originally, the cut material was going to be one or two chapters, except I quickly realized it would be way more than that. Also, maybe I am overestimating how many chapters I have left to write. Or maybe not.
An outline would be nice. Too bad outlines don't work that well for me (except in rough stages).
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 02:36 am (UTC)Yeah, spending only 1-2 chapters on an entirely new location would probably be a fairly bad idea anyway.
I personally prefer keeping outlines vague actually. Too much changes in the process of writing for a detailed outline to work well in most circumstances.
-TealTerror
Rashes
Date: 2011-04-22 05:43 am (UTC)~DarkSov
no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-22 11:24 pm (UTC)I recently stumbled across the Alexander Quick series, devoured it all over the course of a few days, and found my way here, where to my joy I see that book 4 is in the works. Just wanted to say hi, as I expect I may peek into these comment sections again.
Also, I may have pumped the fist slightly when DR confirmed my gaydar as accurate. Then I remembered Max was dead and felt sad for Martin. Then I realized I was feeling sad for a fictional character and got confused.
Best of luck with TSA.