{"id":306,"date":"2008-12-01T02:12:39","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T09:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=306"},"modified":"2008-12-01T02:13:34","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T09:13:34","slug":"section-one-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/section-one-complete\/","title":{"rendered":"Section one complete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes!\u00a0 I finished section 1 of my novel Hero in Exile<\/em> today (the rough draft, at least).\u00a0 The main character, Tristen, just had everything he thought he knew pulled right out from under him, and now he’s on his way “home” to a world he knows nothing about.\u00a0 New characters, new problems, change of scenery, and fresh new cultures and peoples to explore.\u00a0 One potential love interest down, another one about to come out of nowhere.\u00a0 Space barbarians and pirates threaten, and down on his mother’s homeworld, a religiously motivated genocide is about to begin.\u00a0 How incredibly exciting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The really cool thing was that I read over all the stuff I’ve written in the past month that was really frustrating me.\u00a0 All of the edgy stuff that I was afraid I wasn’t pulling off right, and all of the twisted romantic climaxes that I was sure I’d done wrong.\u00a0 I resisted the urge to revise them, and when I was through reading them, I realized that there’s really something there.\u00a0 I could make this work.\u00a0 I might not be able to do it by the rewrite, but there is something compelling in there.<\/p>\n

I’m also very happy with the overall structure of this section.\u00a0 It has a clear start, middle, and end, and all the major elements are clearly connected.\u00a0 Themes and events weave in and out of each other and affect the characters’ choices.\u00a0 It all leads up to a gloriously twisted climax that fulfills the promises of the structure while leaving the reader unfulfilled and wanting to read on.<\/p>\n

At least, that’s how I see it now.\u00a0 Maybe I’m too close to the story to be a fair judge of its overall structure.\u00a0 In fact, I almost certainly am.\u00a0 Even if it hasn’t taken this structure on the page, however, it has<\/em> taken structure in my mind.\u00a0 That is something.<\/p>\n

When I started writing this novel, I only had a vague idea where I wanted to go.\u00a0 In fact, in the freewrite plot overview that I spat out back in Jordan, half of the events in this section didn’t happen, and the rest happened out of order.\u00a0 Prewriting was helpful, but ultimately the story took shape in my mind as I wrote it out.\u00a0 That everything eventually ended up tying back to the previous elements (at least in my mind) is very, very encouraging.<\/p>\n

So, in short, I can say that this vacation was very much a success.\u00a0 I got through some of the most difficult parts in my novel, got over some severe obstacles holding me back, pushed BOTH of the wordcount meters deep into the red, rebuilt my enthusiasm of the story, and finished at exactly the spot where I wanted to end.\u00a0 I’m finally starting to get things right.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes!\u00a0 I finished section 1 of my novel Hero in Exile today (the rough draft, at least).\u00a0 The main character, Tristen, just had everything he thought he knew pulled right out from under him, and now he’s on his way “home” to a world he knows nothing about.\u00a0 New characters, new problems, change of scenery,… Continue reading Section one complete<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[34,42,599,63],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","tag-college-life","tag-frustrations","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-triumphs","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}