After examining some of my older writing entries, I've noticed a pretty dramatic stylistic shift from those early days. In the beginning, I had a much stiffer and formal writing style, especially when it came to dialogue. I think I was trying to mimic that archetypal pseudo Olde English dialect common to a lot of fantasy novels but the more I think about it, the more I realize I don't really care for that too much. Whose to say that that dialogue style is really necessary in a fantasy setting? Sure, the level of technology may be approximately the same as the real world Middle Ages or Victorian Era (I haven't really decided on this) but there's absolutely no reason to suggest dialects would be the same.
As a result, my recent entries into the story have had a decidedly more casual style with somewhat more contemporary dialogue. I feel like this is less exhausting to write and read, although I realize there are some that might disagree. I guess I'm just tired of the tropes inherent to fantasy dialogue. I was a big fan of it when I was younger but I think I'd rather have characters who speak more or less like modern humans while living in a decidedly stranger world. I'm not a master of language by any means, so eliminating that barrier allows me to write more believable and impassioned dialogue when it matters.
I'm curious what course of action I should take now. I could start systematically rewriting all of my old entries, but I wonder how much of a waste of time that might be. Should I instead concentrate more on adding as much content to the story as possible or maybe I should even alternate between rewriting older entries and adding new content? The only thing that concerns me about rewriting old entries now is the possibility of getting burned out and losing interest in the story altogether. I'm a little tired of the story's old setting. That's a big part of why updates become so sparse for such a long time. I'm not sure revisiting that is going to do me any favors in the motivation department.
Then again, it's certainly possible I'm tired of the setting because I wrote myself into a corner--and that's a pretty good reason to go back and rewrite. I wonder if it might be wiser to compile all the entries into one document before I start this process though, so I can get an idea of what I'm doing while I'm rewriting. I've attempted on a couple of occasions to summarize this story but it's been very difficult for me to do so. I need to paint in broader strokes in general. Big things should happen and characters should generally be more notable and memorable. I can add shades of subtlety later on!
I think once I go back to the very beginning, I can really add some polish to those early scenes because I have a much better idea of where the story is going--even if to this day I'm still not sure where things are going to end up. I think this is a process I should repeat a few times until I end up with a massive document that is reasonably coherent. At that point, I'll edit it ruthlessly until I have something I can call polished. I'll do research to make sure things make sense and hopefully I can bribe some others in to reading it and providing feedback. I know one person who'd love to give it a read once it's done, but I've got a year and a half until he'd be available.
I feel like I've been maintaining this blog for an extremely long time now. If I look back to older entries it's really interesting to see the kinds of things I was doing at the time and how I was presenting myself. I can only wonder how things will have changed in a a year and half. The cynical side of me suggests I won't still be updating it, but I honestly think it's a decent possibility that I will be. I've written so much already and I'm not really showing any signs of stopping. Maybe I'll make 1000 entries--and maybe by that point I'll have completed a draft for Terakiel's story. I'm already sick of calling it that. I should come up with a name, even if it's a temporary one.
No comments:
Post a Comment