Having fixed my printer (after 10 days in the shop they gave it back to me with the problem "verified" so I could then go and get the new part and install it myself ...) I have printed out the first eighteen chapters of Far Arena. The total words to date are just shy of 180 000. We need to cut, quite drastically, to bring it down below 150 000 total, because there's missing information needs adding throughout. We need to sort out the progress of the politics. Reetion politics is complex, neat and alien, and it deserves to be foregrounded; it's just difficult to dramatize a political process that is collective and impersonal. Putting human faces on it works dramatically but undermines the idea; it's economical to have the same people show up again and again, but the Reetion process might not necessarily have that so. The roles are the same, the people differ. How to anchor. And there are a number of dropped threads, with the kaleidoscopic points of view (aside from Erien, there are eleven other points of view, maybe 12), characters seen once and not again; they need a mention later, to close their stories.
posted by Anonymous at 20:00   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments