Sunday, 14 August 2011

On The Trail

So...Since April, there have been quite significant developments of the story, something I'm very, very happy about!
Over the past few months, I've been slaving over some timelines that put the 'historical' and 'fictional' things together, thus creating one for every month July 1866 to December 1866, which I did so I had everything together in one place, instead of all the added more fictional things on loads of sheets of paper and then the timelines of what actually happened somewhere else. It also put things into some type of order, which is coming in very handy now!
As well as this, I finally got around to writing up two 'summaries' of the December 6th battle and the Fetterman fight, something I had been dreading for quite a while as there are so many interpretations and suggestions, especially of the latter, but that's all sorted now! I then handwrote the more fictional things around the edge, having not added in them when I was typing it up...
I'm also developing up the completely fictional things, like Willow's purpose of being there and his scenes throughout. This had turned out to be one of the hardest things as when doing the Historical and Fictional timelines, as they have been named, I found that I had quite a few gaps throughout that would make the whole thing seem all over the place and it wouldn't flow as well as I'd like. That's coming on though as Willow's background has really been boosted up and he's got a few things now that will fill him, and the scenes at the fort, out.
There are still a bit of this fleshing out to do though, which is what will hopefully come when I'm planning the scenes and then writing them, so I know what to put where and how.
Which is what I'm doing now! After almost a year and a half of deciding to write this story and doing quite a few plans of scenes that didn't come to anything, I finally think that I am writing the final plan of the individual scenes that will develop into the actual story! And it's turning out to be very fun and quite exciting too! I feel like I am now very close to actually starting to write it! I even have a writing pad ready to write in the handwritten parts (and another folder for the plan!)! ;)
And so far, I am very, very happy with the whole thing! Almost there to writing after over a year.

Thursday, 21 April 2011

Advancing

So, it's been a long time since the Fetterman fight anniversary, which was the last time I was around here.......
Well, the story is a lot closer to finally being written. I realised around December that the character dynamics and lengthy profiles and so on and forth was taken much too long and the story was going to take ages to finally be started so I cut off doing a lot of that and decided to bring everything together (after finishing the timelines of course and highlighting all the parts I wanted from them!) and make a compilation of all the fictional events that are/might appear in the story and sort them into different months, July through to January, which is still ongoing.
Meanwhile that is happening, some more events and character developments are taking place and I'm trying to summarise the character dynamics in a more note form this time. However, doing the compilation of the fictional events has helped the story speed up more and at long, long last, the orders on the day of the Fetterman fight have been sorted out (after quite a few discussions over them - and other things and events too!) and they are a lot more simple than they have been before. As well as that, the characters are really taking shape now and Carrington and Fetterman finally have a full relationship now, as well as a lot of the other characters. And I have to say, I'm really happy with it!
After the compilation of fictional events have been finished, they will all come together with the historical more 'factual' events and another set of timelines will (maybe!) come about that will help write a plan of each scene and so on for actually writing it, which I'm really looking forward too.
That has been the main thing happening in relation to the story since December. Amongst it, there has also been a fair few drawings, pieces of writing, annotating photos of the battlefield which got more confusing that I'd imagined (and looking it up on Google Earth too!) and other little things! :)