The Road Goes On

After ordering a new book about a week or so ago called Where A Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth by John H Monnett, it arrived last Friday and having a timeline to adjust, I got on with reading it. After the rather Carrington-centred Fetterman Massacre by Dee Brown, it was a nice balanced look at the fight and the events that led up to and succeeded it. Of course, I loved the Dee Brown version for the details about the journey of the 'Carrington Overland Circus' to Fort Phil Kearny but it didn't really dispute or question anything. Forty or so years later, Monnett's book (along with Shannon D Smith's Give Me Eighty Men I read a while back) was released and these two authors had access to a lot more information, a lot of it contradicting the statements made about Fetterman, saying he was arrogant and disobedient.
To be honest, I'm a lot happier with this new image of him in the story. Although Shannon D Smith's book turned everything on its head, the result was a better representation, I think, and now I've come to hate the arrogant and disobedient image of Fetterman. The new book I bought by David Monnett strengthened that and also helped with a lot of other details about the events that happened to the Powder River Country over the years. Therefore, the timelines that I've been writing over the past couple of weeks (ones that ended up as the 1865 timeline, the 1866 timeline from January to June and currently, the July 1866 timeline and eventually, stretching to 1867 with the Wagon Box Fight, the Hayfield Fight and the political events that came to be after the Fetterman fight) have had to be slowly adjusted - or added to - to constitute the new details.
As well as this, a sheet on the Other Characters of the story is slowly being written, with probably a lot more detail than I actually need, and a Log of Events has been created. For some reason, I decided to start this after a few months of research and development of the story, so I had to look through the diaries I've written to see what I'd done on particular days, which took a while but now, it's up to date. Also, Willow is being developed some more, with more and more being added to his Character Profile.
And luckily now, a week or so ago (maybe a bit more), my Laptop was fixed so that's back in action too!
The development goes on!

The Journey So Far

Okay, where to start, where to start...
Well.
Over the past week or so, I've been crawling through a timeline of 1865 through 1867 and listing down the events. It's turned out to be pretty detailed though that's a good thing as I hate missing things out. So far, 1865 is done and January through to mid July is also done but we've just had to take my Laptop down to a computer fix up place because it's being stupid and crashing all the time so everything's been left on it. Hopefully it'll be alright!
However, I did save some things to memory stick that I wanted to edit so I'm going to try and carry on with the July timeline which I had to separate out into its own part because that month has a heck of a lot going on in it!
Going through though, I've come across a problem as I really don't know where to start the story. On one hand, I could describe the whole journey to the fort site, with the ups and downs and mistakes and successes, with the fictional Willow being our eyes and ears for a lot of it but then this would probably take quite long and drone on a bit. I personally love the journey but to be honest, it's not too much of a kapow! starting, so to speak.
So, on the other hand, I could start with Lieutenant Templeton's part. This is a lot more sudden, with some Officers travelling to the fort and being swarmed upon by Indians along the way. It also has a good part with one of the enlisted men, SS Peters, listening to Lieutenant Daniels' talking about 'something bad' he thinks is going to happen to him. It does the next day, along with Templeton as they run into Indians out of sight of the waiting party. And when Templeton returns after Daniel's riderless horse scurrying out of the timber, he simply says: ''Daniels! My God, Indians!'' before collapsing. I imagine this might be a better starting.
However, if I was going to go along with the journey part too, I'd have to maybe put in another fictional character who Willow would later meet and relate with. If I will, his name will be Captain Lewis Burton but that's not definite yet.
Also, I've decided on a fictional Indian to tell us their side of the story and his name would be something along the lines of Smoky because I've always wanted to call somebody that. Smoky River, as a full name.
In other news, somebody suggested a programme to help with planning called YWriter that helps plan individual scenes, characters, locations, view points and so on...This will be very handy when it finally comes to writing the story!