Post Your Progress

[ladyavatar]

Oh, and while I'm on here, have a rough draft of Royal Palace servant gossip from my next chapter (the context is this trio of ladies is cleaning up Katara a bit after her transport from Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation). Note that Len is an OC servant in her early twenties who plays an important role throughout Katara's imprisonment.

“Len’s had a crush on the Fire Lord for ages,” one of the younger girls whispers. She’s rewarded by a slap across the face with a towel.

“Will you quit spreading that stupid rumor?” Len huffs. She wrings the towel in her hands like she’d probably like to wring the girl’s neck.

“Then you wouldn’t call him Ozai and sound all dreamy about it,” a second girl teases. She ducks to avoid the stinging smack of Len’s towel. “He’s got a proper title, you know.”

“If there were a waiting list to be one of his concubines, you’d strangle everyone else just to be first in line,” the first girl says.

Len rolls her eyes. “If he were fucking around with anyone, I’d know.” She combs through a particularly rough tangle in my hair with enough skill that I barely notice the tug. “I’m practically his babysitter.”

[chromeknickers]

Gah, Kim, My heart is already breaking. Too soon! Too soon! :/

As for my progress...

The Descent: rough copy complete! \o/
ZM drabbles: 4 out of 31 written *coughs*
The Fifth Column (chapter 15): 1,000 words -__-

Excerpt from FC:

"Maybe we should turn back."

"Turn back?" Katara's voice was high, demanding. "I will not turn back! I will not give up so easily. What do you have to look forward to here? To live? Is that it? To simply live - is that enough for you? It certainly isn't good enough for me. They won't take my freedom or my honour. Are you going to continue letting them take yours?"

I have a lot to do this week...

[ladyavatar]

Dec 2, 2012 12:52:40 GMT -6 @boogum said:

Guys, this conversation is probably better in Plot Help. This thread is for posting your progress. ^_~

^Good point! Could you please move our posts to the appropriate location so they don't get deleted and we can continue the conversation?

Speaking of which:

Undying Fire: 10%
Zutara Month: Only 12 left to write.
Confluence: 55%

^I still have no idea how you manage to balance all of these various stories. Quite impressive.

Here is a sneak preview of Confluence:

^AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH that sneak preview sounds super interesting!!! XD

The Descent: rough copy complete! \o/
ZM drabbles: 4 out of 31 written *coughs*
The Fifth Column (chapter 15): 1,000 words -__-

^Again, NO idea how you guys balance more than one story at a time. My brain would be torn so many ways that nothing would get done at all.

[ladyavatar]

Dec 2, 2012 13:14:15 GMT -6 @boogum said:

UF is getting dusty . . .

^No, undust this most marvelous of stories (pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase). D:

All I've been doing is working on a one-shot. Nothing too interesting.

[kathrynlacey]

I've been working a little more on my first chapters, and I've been working on flashbacks for referencing. I've decided that not all chapters will be from only one character's point of view. Maybe Philip Pullman has inspired me in this light because many of his chapters are from varying viewpoints, and it enables me, as the writer, to grant more information to the reader in a more interesting way. =D

[ladyavatar]

Dec 4, 2012 0:35:56 GMT -6 kathrynlacey said:

I've decided that not all chapters will be from only one character's point of view.

Oooooh, very nice! Honestly, even though my main fic is written from only one POV, I've since somewhat questioned that decision. On one side, there's more mystery because you don't exactly know what's going on with characters outside that POV. On the other side, you miss opportunities for beautiful exploration of scenes from various perspectives. That's why I've resorted to writing companion one-shots for my fic. XD Writing the story from multiple points of view to begin with is, I think, a good idea - especially for your particular story.

[kathrynlacey]

There are certain challenges to doing it both ways. If you only do it from one character, you need to find a way to get information across in a way that's believable for the character to know such information. If you do it from many viewpoints, you have to be able to get into the heads of each individual character which is a lot different than writing them from an outsider's perspective. I think writing companion one-shots is a great way to enable yourself to do both! I don't know that I could ever do a one-shot. I have trouble getting something across in just a super short story. I've always had troubles with it, even in high school. I can write a little poem, but if the teacher was like, "Write a short story!" I was like, "Okay! :: starts writing... just doesn't stop... suddenly has a novella instead of a short story... dies ::"

Anyway, I sort of lied when I said I had the first draft of my first chapter for "The Curse of Fire" done... I realized it was way too short, and I could place stuff from what would have been the second chapter into the first to make it better. I went from about six hundred words to one thousand six hundred, but I'm not even done. hahah

I'm listening to Within Temptation to get me in the mood. I like all kinds of music, but yesterday, my boyfriend was like, "Listen to 'The Howling.' It seems like it could kind of fit your story." (He listens to music to inspire what he writes all the time, so it's an interesting exercise for me to do it, too.) I realized it fits pretty well with where I want the story to go later, but it wasn't quite what I needed for the beginning until I clicked to listen to other songs, and I realized that all the songs I clicked fit the story in some way. They just... have the perfect kind of dark, gritty feel while still being kind of elegant because their front-woman has amazing pipes, and I'm pretty sure she was probably classically trained.

Anyway, I have maybe... half of my first chapter, but it's hard for me to judge because... I've never written a story that I intended to finish before, soooo I could be more than halfway done with this chapter... maybe less than half... How do you guys judge this sort of thing?

[mrspettyfer]

I think writing companion one-shots is a great way to enable yourself to do both!

That's my preference. I prefer one POV, but I love getting bonus scenes from another POV.

I don't mind multiple points of view only when it's used NOT for romantic reasons. I get annoyed being in Katara's head, gushing over Zuko, and then turn around in Zuko's head, hearing him gush over Katara. Then I'm like.."Okay, cool. They both like eachother. There goes the mystery."

Idk, I just feel like it sets up readers to become biased. If, for example, we readers know Zuko loves Katara, we forget that Katara might not know. People tend to expect the characters to know everything we do. I think when you limit the story to one point of view, you eliminate that bias. I just like going through the story with the narrator. If Zuko loves Katara, I want to know the moment he tells her. Not to hear it in his head first. There's just something more exciting to me when I experience things at the same time as the narrator.

Now I don't mind the POV changing to show, for example, something happening in different places. Like the final battle in ATLA. How we see Aang's POV, Zuko's, and Sokka's. That I don't mind. I also prefer if views change for it to be third person. I almost never read stories with multiple first person views. Personal preference.

As for progress..bah I haven't gotten to start the new chapter for the rise of one. At least I know what I want to happen lol. School just keeps getting in the way, damn it.

[ladyavatar]

Dec 4, 2012 20:56:16 GMT -6 mrspettyfer said:

I don't mind multiple points of view only when it's used NOT for romantic reasons. I get annoyed being in Katara's head, gushing over Zuko, and then turn around in Zuko's head, hearing him gush over Katara. Then I'm like.."Okay, cool. They both like eachother. There goes the mystery."

^This is exactly why I'm writing my fic the way I am (despite tons of complaints like "rah rah rah SHOW US ZUKO'S POV!!!") and why my favorite stories are written this same way. You want to keep the mystery or what fun is it at all?

[chromeknickers]

I tend to write chaptered stories where one chapter is from A's PoV and the next chapter is from B's. I do switch it up sometimes, but the scenes have to be entirely different (i.e. no two PoVs for the same scene). The Descent, for example, is primarily from Katara's PoV, but there are two or three brief Zuko PoV scenes sprinkled throughout because they seemed necessary to me. *shrugs*

And now for my progress:

FC, chapter 15: first scene written, as well as a fight scene.
ZM drabbles: 23 left to write. *sigh*