Rounding Things Up
30/08/09 20:34 Filed in: Writing
I am still proceeding very slowly in writing the
courtroom scenes for my new Phillip Gold novel,
The Silent Goodbye. Lots of research, lots
of consideration and reflection, lots of care in the
selection of each word and phrase. So slow going.
I have also decided that it is time for me to start addressing some of the inconsistencies that have sprung up in my Gold collection. Okay, okay, that's a grandiose way of saying: my memory stinks and I'm not going to get away with changing characters names (eye colours, hair colours, height, weights, vocal patterns, etc.) in mid-novel any more. I honestly write a character's name, then forget it two pages later.
It's really quite sad.
So, just as I am in the process of preparing a Harry Potter concordance, so I have decided I need to create a Phillip Gold concordance to ensure that characters and locations are consistent from book to book, page to page. It should also help me create signature descriptions for each recurring character, recognisable behaviour patterns, even pet words and phrases. I have always been impressed with how J.K. Rowling was able to create, very quickly, speech patterns that allowed me to recognise characters immediately from what they say: Dolores Umbridge's "Hem Hem" and Ron Weasley's "Are you mental?" to name but two.
I started the process on Saturday and spent four hours working on it. It was then that I realised both that I have written a lot of fiction involving Phillip Gold and also that I have created a pretty impressive collection of people and places that populate his world.
Here is a list of the Phillip Gold fiction I've written to date:
A Fleck of Gold, a full-length novel;
All That Glisters, a full-length novel;
The Gold Figure, the first chapter of a novel;
The Prequel, the first 60 pages of a so-far untitled novel;
"The Rare Book", a short story;
"Violet and Gold", a short story; and
The Silent Goodbye, a three-quarters complete novel.
That's a lot of writing. And it also represents a great number of characters and settings, both ones that are specific to a particular work and ones that recur throughout the collection.
My job now is to identify those characters and settings that do or might recur, locate every section of each story in which I have provided useful details about them, and copy those details into a encyclopedic entry. Once that's done (and, including today's three hours, I'm up to seven full hours of work on this task), I will review and revise each collection of entries so as to create a useful summary of each person or place.
I will also have to make some decisions between conflicting descriptions of a particular person or place. For example, Stacey McLean's eyes have been described as blue, green and hazel in different stories. I'm going to have to decide what colour they are, then go back and correct the descriptions throughout the various novels and stories.
The process also gives me a chance to flesh out the back stories for some of the major characters, especially Phillip Gold himself. This will allow me to ensure that his reactions to current situations are true and appropriate according to his life history. It will also, I trust, make him a more interesting, well-rounded character.
Of course, it will be a lot of work. But I'm finding it interesting. And kind of fun to think I've written enough about Gold and his world that this is necessary and possible.
The final product should also help me remember the names of characters from page to page as I continue to write The Silent Goodbye.
I have also decided that it is time for me to start addressing some of the inconsistencies that have sprung up in my Gold collection. Okay, okay, that's a grandiose way of saying: my memory stinks and I'm not going to get away with changing characters names (eye colours, hair colours, height, weights, vocal patterns, etc.) in mid-novel any more. I honestly write a character's name, then forget it two pages later.
It's really quite sad.
So, just as I am in the process of preparing a Harry Potter concordance, so I have decided I need to create a Phillip Gold concordance to ensure that characters and locations are consistent from book to book, page to page. It should also help me create signature descriptions for each recurring character, recognisable behaviour patterns, even pet words and phrases. I have always been impressed with how J.K. Rowling was able to create, very quickly, speech patterns that allowed me to recognise characters immediately from what they say: Dolores Umbridge's "Hem Hem" and Ron Weasley's "Are you mental?" to name but two.
I started the process on Saturday and spent four hours working on it. It was then that I realised both that I have written a lot of fiction involving Phillip Gold and also that I have created a pretty impressive collection of people and places that populate his world.
Here is a list of the Phillip Gold fiction I've written to date:
A Fleck of Gold, a full-length novel;
All That Glisters, a full-length novel;
The Gold Figure, the first chapter of a novel;
The Prequel, the first 60 pages of a so-far untitled novel;
"The Rare Book", a short story;
"Violet and Gold", a short story; and
The Silent Goodbye, a three-quarters complete novel.
That's a lot of writing. And it also represents a great number of characters and settings, both ones that are specific to a particular work and ones that recur throughout the collection.
My job now is to identify those characters and settings that do or might recur, locate every section of each story in which I have provided useful details about them, and copy those details into a encyclopedic entry. Once that's done (and, including today's three hours, I'm up to seven full hours of work on this task), I will review and revise each collection of entries so as to create a useful summary of each person or place.
I will also have to make some decisions between conflicting descriptions of a particular person or place. For example, Stacey McLean's eyes have been described as blue, green and hazel in different stories. I'm going to have to decide what colour they are, then go back and correct the descriptions throughout the various novels and stories.
The process also gives me a chance to flesh out the back stories for some of the major characters, especially Phillip Gold himself. This will allow me to ensure that his reactions to current situations are true and appropriate according to his life history. It will also, I trust, make him a more interesting, well-rounded character.
Of course, it will be a lot of work. But I'm finding it interesting. And kind of fun to think I've written enough about Gold and his world that this is necessary and possible.
The final product should also help me remember the names of characters from page to page as I continue to write The Silent Goodbye.