NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH REVIEW
Well I did it, one chapter a day for a whole month of blogging; it ended up 20 chapters, but at some point mis-labled several, unfortunately. I think it turned out okay for a minimal-editing rough draft, although I think I lost my way there at the end. The Cezar-Aniela love romance wasn't working the way I wanted and although I'd like to have something of the sort in the book and I like Aniela a lot as a character, I don't know if it would end up in a final novel.
I made some minor changes to previous chapters as I realized a few things. For example I had Rudolph Hess called "Hermann" in one of the chapters. I noted that Aniela was alone, but that she'd married a non-gypsy, which I had to explain so I put a few lines in clarifying that in her introduction. For some reason I called Aniela Anika a few times, I think I caught all that but it might have slipped by my quick editing.
What bothers me most is that I didn't manage to carry much of a feel of suspense or tension very well. The story doesn't have a horror feel except for a few points, possibly because I don't care for obvious attempts to manipulate emotion or heavy use of adjectives describing everything in the creepiest possible manner. As a result I'm not sure it was all that tense. The book is about 2/3rds done, I figure, maybe five more chapters, depending on what I think of or what odd tangent I head off on.
In any case the effort was entertaining for me and a useful exercise. I probably will fire up a novel blog and keep doing this in the new year, probably finishing off the werewolf story then starting something new. At any rate, here's the chapter list so people can read through the story easier and I can plug it into the new blog and my sidebar:
I made some minor changes to previous chapters as I realized a few things. For example I had Rudolph Hess called "Hermann" in one of the chapters. I noted that Aniela was alone, but that she'd married a non-gypsy, which I had to explain so I put a few lines in clarifying that in her introduction. For some reason I called Aniela Anika a few times, I think I caught all that but it might have slipped by my quick editing.
What bothers me most is that I didn't manage to carry much of a feel of suspense or tension very well. The story doesn't have a horror feel except for a few points, possibly because I don't care for obvious attempts to manipulate emotion or heavy use of adjectives describing everything in the creepiest possible manner. As a result I'm not sure it was all that tense. The book is about 2/3rds done, I figure, maybe five more chapters, depending on what I think of or what odd tangent I head off on.
In any case the effort was entertaining for me and a useful exercise. I probably will fire up a novel blog and keep doing this in the new year, probably finishing off the werewolf story then starting something new. At any rate, here's the chapter list so people can read through the story easier and I can plug it into the new blog and my sidebar:
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
I hope this wasn't too distracting or unwelcome from the regular blog, now we return to our regularly scheduled Word Around the Net.
posted by Christopher Taylor at 9:13 AM
1 Comments:
I enjoyed the story. It's just difficult to comment on a persons work without sounding negative, and as you were trying to do something with the November novel month thing, I just wanted to read as it went along. Good start, but you will need to do a lot of fleshing out I think in order to have what can be considered a novel. You have a great deal of good ideas, and a nice skeleton to build from. Good luck :)
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