Tzalaran's favorite hangout, hence it is the name of my blog on the web. Here i'll talk about the writing of "Scales of the Assassin", working title of the start of Tzalaran's saga, and give background information on the world Tzal lives in.

Monday, December 10, 2012

My love of Scrivener for Windows

Normally i don't gush about software, as i find most of it adequate for its purposes, but with this app i'm not even touching the surface of it yet and i'm finding it left open on my workstation at all times.  i need to take some time to watch the tutorials so that i can use the app to its fullest potential, but just playing around with it in my world-building project it is going to make such a more effective way of making the encyclopedia it just staggers me.

i've had a 3 ring binder for about 12 years that contains all the notes and such i've already made.  much of them are now obsolete, but i always find gems of things i'd never thought about and there are rough notes of storylines and populations in these areas.  with the binder area of scrivener, i can set up folders with large headings, and then have subfolders that go into detail.  i should also be able to add images and maps once they are scanned in and completed in the case of my digital ones.

anyway, for any writer, whatever the type, look into this program because it is worth every penny.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

progress update 1 - SotF

i'm about 250 words away from 50,000.  i'm almost through the 3rd act (attack) having five and a half scenes to finish in it.  i'll need to rework the second and third quarters during my rewrite, but i really like the last few scenes that i did.

As i think i've mentioned before on this blog, i got Scrivener for Windows and have been using it for this project.  One of the things that i'm most interested in using it for is an encyclopedia of the world that i can do with it.  i'm doing some basic brainstorming on how i can best organize it.  Most useful right now would be an encyclopedia for the city of Karat-Si'Zan, and to a lesser extent Tillia (particularly Tolzar, which i might end up writing a Trilogy about the murder of the king and the subsequent struggle for power that ensues among the 4 wardens underneath the king because the surviving heir is in Karat-Si'Zan when the revolution takes place).  Anyway, an encyclopedia would make it much easier for other people to play their fantasy RPG of choice in the world, and i think that would be pretty cool.

Looking forward to finishing up the drafting phase of this novel and getting into the revising stage.  i'm planning on splitting my time at that point between revising this novel (half my time) and rewriting SotA (half my time).  There will be quite a few changes to SotA, but certain scenes will come over verbatim.  i'll expand on the end explorations in the pit, and add a layer of battling in the hollows with thugs that are threatening his boss.  that will lead to him finding out that the #2 house in K-S is behind the problems in the hollows and sets out to take them down in the third book.

i'm getting flashes of scenes from those books, and it should be fun working towards getting the whole story out.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Day 29 & 30

well, i made it to half my goal, and not quite enough to "win" at Nano.  got to 45,258.

i did much better than a few years ago when i tried Nano, and above everything it got me to the point where i just put words to the page.  I'm getting a solid skeleton, and will have to flesh it out a bunch to where i can take it somewhere (the entire prologue is going to be redone, but i think that i need the non-first person perspective to introduce the character and world).

Dialog is going to be another aspect i have to rework.  just need to make sure that all the other characters sound like them, and not Tzal.

Hoping to keep making progress like i did the last two weeks, but have a bunch more world building to do in order to make the next section flow like the first quarter did.  also need to plot out the flashback sequence i skipped.