Making progress again—at last!
Chapter 14 has hit 10,000 words.
The scene I wrote about in my last post (a month and a half ago!), about Iku and her family, was pure hell, and I eventually had to scrap everything I'd done of it—over a thousand words—and start over. From there, it got squeezed out a few sentences at a time, which was about all I could stand to do. But now, at last, it's finished. I'll probably have to do some revisions, since that sort of writing tends to come out fairly disjointed, but that can wait.
For now, I can get on with scenes I actually want to write…!
SM4200 constantly makes me have to go researching unexpected topics. Last chapter, I had to study up about BACnet, all for the sake of two or three sentences when the Senshi were breaking into 'M' Division. (BACnet is real, if you didn't know.) A few chapters ago, I had to read up on airplane pilot licensing systems. While today…I spent an hour or so reading up about firearms, again for the sake of a couple of sentences, so that I could talk about Captain Hiiro's pistol and (hopefully) sound like I know what I'm talking about. (Personally, I've never even seen a genuine pistol. Gun ownership is fairly restricted in NZ.)
God knows what I'll have to learn about next! Sometimes, writing can be fun.
posted by Angus @ 12:17 am
3 comments
3 Comments:
I admire the fact that you want to make sure that your writing is as best as possible!
Your describing what a pistol looks like can make readers who, themselves, how never seen a pistol be able to visualize what it looks like and help with the story.
:)
It's not so much describing what a pistol looks like, as talking about calibers, magazines, clips, etc, without making an idiot of myself! ^_^
For example, I can't just give Captain Hiiro an existing model of handgun, because this is 2200 years in the future. So instead I decide that he carries a 10.6mm Saurin Special (Indian manufacture). The caliber of 10.6mm gets chosen to sound a little different, and maybe to suggest that it's a standardisation of a rule-of-thumb caliber developed during the dark ages before the rise of Third Tokyo.
And so forth. Really, the "research" is to pick reasonable values, and hopefully to make sure that I have my terminology right, so that genuine gun enthusiasts won't point at me and laugh...!
"...I have my terminology right, so that genuine gun enthusiasts won't point at me and laugh...!"
LOL, good point!
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