On Being An Architect: Floorplans

Well, I thought I should finally bite the bullet and finish mapping out Rosentia Island. I have the basic overview done. I know the climate. I know what the name of the two big piers are (Shipperman's and Fisherman's Pier - inventive, I know). I know where the manor house sits. Now it's just a point of actually sitting down and sorting out the manor plan and BOY is it enough to do my head in.

It's surprisingly painstaking to set up a proper map. This manor has about 80 rooms in it. The above stairs sections was fairly easy after checking out a number of Victorian floorplans for Great Houses but the below-stairs section is ... well, there's a lot of rooms and a lot of needs and everytime I think I've got it down I've got to re-draw it.

I've also found photo-representatives of each of the rooms (which took me some time) and a brief description / name so that I can keep my facts straight later on. And all of this for something that only takes place in the first half of the novel (though if it turns into a series, there'll be at least one whole novel based on this and I can re-use the basic designs if not the room descriptions).

It's turned into about 10 pages and counting and I'm already tired of it. On the plus side, the floorplan and some of the stranger rooms have really pointed out plot possibilities so it's not all hard work and no play.

So, how far have you gone to set things out for your novel? And have any of you built 3D models (by the way, Sims 2 is really good for laying out normal houses or regular mansions)?

Glorious Breaks & Sea-Faring Links

Well, I took a month off all things to do with writing. Critique Circle, this blog, editing, and everything in between. I brushed up on my oral storytelling skills through some rousing games of World of Darkness and now I'm back with a vengeance. I've got my story chapters all printed out and I'm going over them with a lead pencil.

First chapter required quite a lot of editing. Dozens of word changes per paragraph. *sigh* Next chapter has only a few dribs and drabs here and there. That first chapter is SUCH a pain but I guess that's what I get for writing in a three-year-old's perspective, especially when so much needs to be established in those few pages. You try portraying a non-medieval fantasyland through the eyes of a traumatised three-year-old in a servant's bedroom in the basement of a manor.... Oh well, it's certainly flexing my creative muscle. I have no excuse to info dump the answers, after all.

Of course, I have the distinct feeling that it's difficult to establish a non-European/non-medieval fantasyland no matter what your protagonist is. I mean, not unless you've writing a Japanese samurai-style fantasyland. Regrettably pants and frock coats and clock towers haven't put the point across well enough. I might need to underline kettle-drums, rapiers, and canons.... Sure, my fantasyland isn't really Napoleanic but it is, at the very least, closer to the 1700s than it is to the 1100s so it would still be a definite step up.

I wonder how many other authors find it difficult to help the reader realize that this isn't a medieval 'verse.

Oh, and also, a neat link for those tired of hard biscuit and weavils: http://lesleyannemcleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/necessary-articles-for-seafaring.html

Shadows Left Behind: Returned From The Dead

I found it after all! It's sitting in Critique Circle under the name SLB. Hallelujah! I've still even got access to it. Be still my beating heart... Waving of many tiny flags... All is right with the world.

This is me and my old story:


If you want to see more glorious pictures such as these, take a look here.

Funeral eulogy for Shadows Left Behind

I thought for a brief moment that Critique Circle might still have held copies of the first dozen chapters of Shadows Left Behind. A novel I have followed through a dozen very different incarnations since I was about 14 years old. The last copy was on a hard drive that crashed and I haven't found it on any of my old CDs so far. I was desperately hoping they might have had it somewhere ... but no. All they could get me were a few Meh chapters of Aelven Blood.

How I miss my Shadows Left Behind ... how I yearn for you ... the perpetually incomplete novel ... any of your previous incarnations would fill me with joy ... any of them.

To make it worse, I once printed it off in hard copy but never bound it. I then decided to just turf it because I could always print it again.

*sigh*