Prelude to Revision: Characters - The Hollow of the Crown

Working on the plotlines, my first job has been to compile a useful list of the major characters in Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland. One of the issues that came up quickly is a structural issue for the whole of Three Katherines of Allingdale, and makes me think I'll do well to keep the thirty-year gap unfilled if I possibly can. It's the question of what the major political players are doing in it.

( Narrative uselessness and structural uses of good royals in an aristo-sceptical fantasy. )

Revision Donkey: Thirty Times a Lady

Donkey posts are going to do for various forms of donkeywork what wordcount posts did for first drafting, i.e. maintain a sense of progress on my part during a long slogging phase, whilst offering a tag by which readers can easily filter out unwanted wibbling if it all gets too much.

Today I wrote my summary-from-memory of one of the main character plotlines, namely Kate's thirty-year arc from the end of Katy Elflocks onwards. Encouragingly, it hangs together better - with respect to this drama of the final winter - than I expected. Maybe I won't need to cut out quite as many false starts and errant shoots from it as I feared.

I still have those top-level considerations to get back to, but I need to let Tolkien & Co. go on stewing for a bit longer. Meanwhile, on with the reviews of what's actually there, and research into things I don't really know enough about and kind of skimped on for the sake of getting the story out while it was hot, and worldbuilding consistency/inconsistency dumps, and other such stuff that I'm going to have to do whatever other decisions I make.

I would so love to have reached actual rewriting territory by Christmas!