Editing on Spell/Sword continues this week. I’ve stalled long enough, picking at the edges, making the easy fixes. Time to get in there — not with the fire and sword — but with the spade and the watering can. I will be cutting a few sections – mainly when I combine two chapters into one.  I come to raise Caesar, not to bury him. Time to make the good stuff — GOODER.

Most of my problems are with the first eight chapters. The story doesn’t really settle into a groove,

and “become good” until a third of the way through the book.  That’s, you know, kind of a problem.

The first chapters aren’t bad, per se. Just a little unfocused. I need to clarify the positive, and beat back the connective tissue. It had to be there to get me far enough into the book to know what it was about, but now it disgusts me. DISGUST.

Now that I’m getting closer to actually publishing the thing, I find myself worrying about the classical forms. Stupid, I know, for a book that heavily features wyverns. All of the great tales are a circle, the heroes return to the beginning with the Elixir and the world is made anew.  The full arc of Spell/Sword is a tragedy of course, but this first episode is tangentially heroic. Or faux-heroic?

Ha, do I even know anymore?

It’s a story about two people, two kids. Two people that are doing pretty shit-tastically on their own. They meet, become friends, and learn that together they can incrementally reduce their level of life pooch-screwing.

In classical terms: No Big Whoop.

Two characters, incomplete.  Then two characters, complete.

With no romance.  Moirails, to use the excellent term that Homestuck provided.

Blah, blah — time to get to it.