25%
Well I've hit the first landmark in the Apotheosis Trilogy I've felt worth posting about. I have reached the quarter mark on the trilogy as a whole. Word-count subject to change, as I've assumed that book #1 is going to be a little longer than the next two. Speaking of book one, I'm a little past the 2/3 mark, and I'm hoping to get the first draft wrapped up sometime in early January.
BTW- here's a good rule of thumb. The more fragmented your POV, the more characters and settings, the more tightly you need to adhere to an explicitly linear time-line. If you have events separated by several light-years that converge and diverge as the players move about-- you better draw up a literal time-line(s). I have an Excel spreadsheet with columns for various characters so I can track when stuff happened.
![[Book Cover]](http://www.sff.net/people/saswann/graphics/covers_thumbnail/rust.jpg)
4 comments:
Excellent comments on management of complex levels of narrative, Steve. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it sure makes sense.
In fact, I have learned a lot of sensible writing advice from you.
Obviously many of your insights are from reading -- and from your own writing experience. But did you also read Writer's Digest how-to books on your way to being structurally one of the best writers practicing today in the field?
Any tips on how-to books? Do you think they're helpful to the learning writer, or just one more way to waste time to avoid writing?
And by the way, I'm very much looking forward to the trilogy. It promises to be excellent.
Well I have a whole lot of writing books sitting on my reference shelf, 12 about SF alone. I have books by John Gardner, Lawrence Block, Ben Bova, Orson Scott Card and Ursula K. LeGuin. So I'll certainly say they can be helpful, as long as you read them in the right way.
No one person's opinion on writing fiction is going to be applicable all the time, and before a beginning writer picks up any one of these books it would do that person well to develop their critical thinking skills. Because all the advice and instruction will contain contradictions, crass stupidities, and downright falsehoods.
That said, I would suggest any beginning writer, in any genre, to start their education in the craft by reading Mark Twain's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses.
Congrats on your milestone. Interesting stuff.
Right now, The Wife and I are doing some world building for an idea we've been floating . What started as two character ideas has grown to encompass most of a 80 page notebook.
Once we move to actual storybuilding I can not imagine trying to keep this all correct in my own head.
Nice blog thhanks for posting
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