Topic: A bit of something I wrote...

[Cran]

Here is the beginning of a rather long novel - I did the first draft on an old Adler manual typewriter, and the third draft (~650 pages) on an old Adler electronic typewriter. I'm just starting to do the fourth draft on an old computer... it's a fantasy story ... but with bits of natural history and other science thrown in (very occasionally) - would you like to use it as something to critique? Or bounce ideas? 

by Cran
Darkflame and the Dragonstar

Prologue

The jagged peaks of the crater mountains were black beneath a deepening orange sky, and the fires of the gatherers grew bright. Tella smiled as she stoked her own watchfire. ?Tonight, they will come?, she thought, ?tonight, they will want a truetale?.
Overhead, always overhead, the bloated gas giant was a diminishing crescent of reflected sunlight, but as the blinding glare retreated Zeus revealed its own fires in countless electric flashes dancing among the eternally churning storms. The clouds glowed in rainbow hues, lit from deep within the massive planet where a roiling fluid core failed yet to achieve starbirth.
Out of a bright flash of light from beyond the horizon a new star climbed quickly into the orange brown haze of the satellite?s atmosphere. Another launch, perhaps the last. The fading star crossed the sky, then seemed to slowly retreat before it passed behind Zeus? crackling halo.  Seated comfortably and facing her watchfire, Tella sipped the wildweed brew and waited.
Once, uncounted lifetimes ago, they stood on warm earth and peered through clear skies and marvelled at the stars. But that was another place, a place called Home. Here, within the protected crater on Refuge, the stars were hidden but even more desperately sought.
Tella smiled at the gatherers as they arrived and settled down around her watchfire, their small offerings and gifts were set into a pile and accepted with a nod. Tella stared at the flames, feeling the weight of her flesh fall away as the wildweed freed her talent, and she knew the truetale she would recite.
?I shall speak of a place beyond our thoughts?, she began. ?I shall speak of Ele, a land divided into nations, in a world I shall call Ea. Understand, as I speak of these places, that Ea is not as we believe Home once was. Ea has no moon, but often her night sky is lit by Uriga, the red star which marks the passing and birth of Ages. Ea turns once in thirty two hours, and her year - her Cycle of Seasons - is complete in three hundred and eighty of her days. Remember these things.
?The nations of Ele include people much like us, and many who are quite different. I shall speak of lords and kings and emperors, of mages and gods, of elves and monsters. They are words from myth and legend but accurate enough for our tale. I may, from time to time, use words from their own tongues without explanation and perhaps even without knowing I have done so.
?It will be a tale long in the telling, for I shall speak of the dawn of the Age of Blood....?


What do you think?

[piersdad]

cool
 you can have a structure the will add somethng to interest a large audience a bit of fantasy science and bit of myth? perhaps a dangerous adventure.

its handy to have an old computor for writing as MS word has the annoyong habit of correcting mistakes

it apears the story teller is relating adventures of old which will alow you free range of anything.
it took me a second reading of the prolouge to realise it was set on a moon of saturn

so perhaps put a bit of realisim here so that the reader is instantly projected to a remote but familiar place.

[The nations of Ele include people much like us, and many who are quite different. I shall speak of lords and kings and emperors, of mages and gods, of elves and monsters. They are words from myth and legend but accurate enough for our tale. I may, from time to time, use words from their own tongues without explanation and perhaps even without knowing I have done so.
?It will be a tale long in the telling, for I shall speak of the dawn of the Age of Blood....?

perhaps this part should be at the beginning then the descrition of the area and the people/gatherers

[Cran]

I like your forum, piersdad ... it's more relaxed.

Actually, Refuge is a domed habitat on moon around a jupiter-like planet (hence Zeus as a working name) in another system... sort of familiar yet strange... so Refuge has just a touch of Titan about it... but nowhere near as cold! The storyteller and the gatherers have grown up on Refuge, they are simple folk - less valued by the artisans and engineers and bookworms who get the vacant places on the starships - the planet hunters who have been looking for new 'Earths' to colonise; the older ones may have been born in transit ... Earth is unknown to them, except as an oral history or legend ... over time it became known to the pilgrims and the refugees as 'the home planet' ... then 'Home'...

'Ele' is a large island (or small continent) in the southern hemisphere of one such planet, and 'truetale' is a kind of psionic talent that can transcend space-time; but no one knows any of that yet! (damn! I've just given away half of the plot!) - the history of how the gatherers came to Refuge, and the fate that awaits them, gets pieced together in interludes between the actual story, which is about... well, I shouldn't give any more away, just yet - it's about all the stuff she mentioned... 

So, the prologue has to end with the first line of the storyteller's story...

PS - that was freaky! I just pressed the preview button to recheck my work...and the whole layout just changed   it's better

[piersdad]

yes piers38 (my son)and i were on his computor reviewing all the site and he was advising me of what to look for and how to improve it.
one thing he noticed is that the barely used cellos heading is getting a lot of traffic so i will be posting things there a lot more and this will  keep ppl coming back to this area.

we are trying to find out why you cant log in as a member  have you replied to an auto email yet and did you give a correct email address just some thing that may have gone wrong that hapens with some sites

[Cran]

It worked improving the look, I mean... there's a lot more space for the text

All cool now; getting the little stats thing and everything; you'll have to start a thread about what all the little thingies mean... like 'karma'  all I know is the saying 'my karma ran over my dogma' 

I'll have a bit of a scratch through some of my other writings when I've finished moving and unpacking - a lot of it might not be much chop ... articles and letters for newspapers, etc; or reports I've done for uni - though some have some interesting things turn up in the researching, etc - for instance I found out where a lot of the Great Artesian Basin water ends up... and it's not included in the official water loss estimates ... problem is, I can only provide a guesstimate of the added loss, confirmation would require some field testing... but it might be a topic for a discussion thread

Got a few short stories - sort of autobiographical... but I would have to tone them down a lot... to about a PG rating at least

Or some song lyrics that would probably work as poetry

Anyway... back to the prologue piece; did it make any more sense after the explanation? More importantly, did it make you want to read more... find out about the story, and the Dawn of the Age of Blood? 

[piersdad]

yes once i re read the prolouge it was a bit clearer but a illustration on the cover would set the scene and all the prolouge would be a lot clearer.
add a bit of realisim with a blow up plastic dome and an air recycling unit.( room for a bit of drama with risk management of the enviroment)
if the atmoshpere of the planet is for instance methane then the recycling unit could extract O2 from the methane and produce carbon blocks for the fires.

[Cran]

  I'd like to say that "hey! you've been reading my notes!", but I haven't actually written any down.
But yes, good ideas, thanks piersdad ... and exactly what I need!

The whole storyteller part of the novel was really just an afterthought, as a way to introduce the main story... but in between the second and third drafts, it started to take on a life of its own...

Friends who have read the third draft suggest I pull the storyteller bit out and build it up as a separate story... but, I can't!   To find out why... I have to write the sequel! 

[piersdad]

now wheres the ' thats a good idea ' smiley when i need it
once i get a story idea i let it fester during idle moments and the scenes rerun all day .
the ones i remember at the end of the day are always the best as they are the ones that the reader will also remember.
a clasic example is the dr zeus books 'the cat in the hat'
the writer used to spend days on just one page re writing till it was perfect.
this would be the sort of thing to do for the first few paragraphs so the the causual? 'targeted 'reader will get hooked instantly


the karma thing is for a points and reward on the site and as we get bigger you read and press a plus or minus to vote on wether yu like or dont like what you read
a bit like the ranking system
just found out as i tried to give you 2 kamas that you can only give one per hour

[Cran]

the karma thing is for a points and reward on the site and as we get bigger you read and press a plus or minus to vote on wether yu like or dont like what you read
a bit like the ranking system

Yeah. I just clicked on the applaud button on yours about tools (just to see what would happen) - cool! >ha! I finally found a spot to use that smilie!<
Postet at: August 17, 2005, 04:29:42 AM

once i get a story idea i let it fester during idle moments and the scenes rerun all day .
the ones i remember at the end of the day are always the best as they are the ones that the reader will also remember.
a clasic example is the dr zeus books 'the cat in the hat'
the writer used to spend days on just one page re writing till it was perfect.
this would be the sort of thing to do for the first few paragraphs so the the causual  'targeted 'reader will get hooked instantly

I've been letting some ideas and scenes for the sequel 'The Caverns of Fire' fester for about 5 years now...
I think what I need to do is learn how to set up a website, and start putting my writings and other ideas 'out there' - this might generate enough feedback to spur me into completing the transfer and redraft of the first novel onto my computer, and encourage me to get on with the rest of it! In the meantime, since I've discovered forums like yours and UT, I'll make some use of them... with your permission and encouragement, of course
I will start scouring my photographs (most of which are either prints or on the other computer - reminds me, I'd better burn some copies of those before I go...) and see if there is anything good enough to show you...I don't aim for 'perfect' - I learned that it's not a vaccuum that nature abhors - it's perfection; it's the little flaws that give something 'character'... that's why most computer generated images don't quite get that 'life-like' quality... cats, on the other hand, really do abhor a vaccuum! 

[dbackfan]

Great title.  Your prolog's imagery certainly sets the mood for a story.  Like Piersdad, I had to read it twice to begin to see the setting and agree that visual art would complement it nicely.  Your own plot summary would draw readers, I think.  I can see it in the book jacket or on the back of the book.   

[Cran]

thanks, dbackfan...
Yes, the story needs artwork (though in theory, good writing shouldn't need pictures)... but my art lies in other directions... I once had the idle thought that by marrying into a family of fine artists, something might happen... but 'twas not to be.
Ah well, perhaps another artist might be inspired if I post some more of the story...?

[piersdad]

you can do all sorts of things with photo shop etc i once put one of the grand children on mars next to the pathfinder and the caption read
 don't let the camera see you
a bit of lateral thinking and perhaps a good sun set picture with added bits from some glass house scene and a living room scene.
start a folder of potential pictures that might fit your story and imagine a mosaic if different parts of the pictures.
i could imagine a background of a sunset with 2 moons added and a glass house in the distance as well as one nearby with some ppl sitting around a fire in the glass house

[Cran]

Need to be a bit careful there... unless all of the images are 'originals' (ie, self-owned), or clearly in the public domain, you can run the risk of copyright infringement... especially if you post the result on the net under your name; even more so if you try to make money from the result ... pics of grandkiddies on Mars (or the 'golden arches' on the Moon) are parodies and are therefore protected under the 'fair dealing' or 'fair treatment' clause of copyright acts around the world, but if you then wanted to use that pic for a book cover of humourous stories (for example) you would have to get permission in writing from the originator of the Mars pic (whether its NASA or ESA or whoever owns the copyright), and you may have to buy the right to use it. 

[piersdad]

thats right  its probably better to find your own pics
ie you would be able to get a high res pic of a desert sunset and the colors could be redone to make it more a planetry scene .
ie change the blue/ red to green / amber etc
might have a go at it one day

[Cran]

Sometimes you don't even have to do that... 
Years ago, when I felt I needed some practice with a 35mm SLR camera, I loaded a fresh colour film and 'burned' the first few frames (this is recommended to ensure that your first 'serious' frame has not been compromised by outside light) ... now, when you 'burn' frames, you just click the shutter a few times; no aiming, no focus or light adjustments ...
and then I'd go around wherever I was and play photographer (I did this even when people were paying me to take pictures ... I'd just play photographer)   
... but when I see the processed results  ... sometimes, a 'burned' frame may have the most interesting picture on the whole roll!  And what was meant to be a discard has become photographic art    
One of my 'burned' frames is an unfocussed image of the very tip of one finger against a dark but bluish background ... and it looks for all the world like a probe image of a limb of Titan or Venus or some other heavily clouded planet... 
I'll have a look, and I will see if I can scan it and post it on the gallery (... that might mean first having to find and reload the scanner software ...  )