ayyy progress
Aug. 29th, 2019 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2LaktzO
My bitching this morning spurred me into some kind of action and I managed somehow to do a full day of work, also read the other two Murderbot novellas, and finally finally do the little chunk of worldbuilding I really needed to do in order to rewrite the solarpunk cyborgs thing.
I only have like, 3000 words of that rewrite done, but I think the tiny bit of worldbuilding I did actually solidified all of the “it works this way because it works this way” shit that was plaguing my first draft.
I am using the write-it-all-over-again method though, there’ll be no copy-pasting. It’s cool, I only had like 60k of it written, that’s reasonable.
a comparison:
first draft:
It was cruelly, unforgivingly winter, and no lights shone out from the lodge, but the moonlight glinted off some of the windows and made it look particularly eerie. Diar had no idea what he would find; gossip, hastily sought out on his way out the door and largely provided by the message decoder who was a local and therefore quite invested in the possible-monster living in their hunting lodge, said the Heir Presumptive’s half-brother lived there with only another court exile as his guardian, though as he was now of age, it was uncertain why he still needed a guardian. The rumors said that the boy hadn’t been recalled to court when he reached his majority because he was mad, or simply some kind of abomination– [cyborg]s weren’t supposed to be able to breed with humans, and so as a crossbreed he had to be a malformed horror, or somesuch.
Diar’s education in biology was no better than standard, but at least he had some, and he knew that surely wasn’t how it worked. Anyway the child had attended his mother’s funeral at court a decade ago, and while some witnesses had called him uncanny, nobody had particularly thought him an abomination then. Surely– well, but he’d been raised in this isolation, here, the message decoder insisting that since he’d never once come to town he must be locked up, up there, and–
Diar wasn’t a particularly imaginative person, nor was he prone to flights of fancy, but by the time he reached the door of the hunting lodge, grateful for at least the meager power of his hand-light, he had half-convinced himself he was walking into a den of monsters. It was late, by now, long after social calling hours. He knocked at the door, and waited before knocking again, and then waited, his imagination growing more and more frenzied. Finally he pounded on the door, and was reduced to shouting.
“Halloo the house!” he tried. “Signal Corps! Urgent message delivery!”
Far overhead, a window flew up with a bang, and someone stuck their head out. “Quit your noise!” a rough male voice shouted.
“I need to deliver this message,” Diar said, as politely as he could manage.
“Leave it!” the man shouted.
Diar stared at him. “It’s a Category One Urgent. I have to put the message into the hand of the recipient,” he said finally, incredulous. Everyone knew that.
“I’m the recipient and I say leave it,” the man shouted. By the slur of his words, he was drunk.
Diar stared at him for another moment. “That’s not how this works,” he said. A regular route courier could leave messages, sure, but a regular route courier wouldn’t be shouting about urgency and wouldn’t be here at midnight. He pulled the packet out; he was fairly certain this was an older man anyway, and could not be the semi-mythical half-brother. “I need to verify that you’re Ena [Surname], and even if you are, I still have to put it into your hand.”
The man grumbled an audible oath of shocking vulgarity, and closed the window with a bang. Diar stood at the door a while, long enough that he had begun to wonder whether the man had decided to just leave him here.
Too old to be the mad half-brother, the man had to be the exiled courtier, Diar decided; no household staff would speak to him that way. Signal clerks weren’t on par with nobles, but they were generally held in greater esteem than servants, while they were at work anyway. Off duty, they were no higher in social caste, but there were severe penalties both civil and criminal for interfering with a signal clerk’s duties. No servant would dare so much as say a contrary word to one.
But a man exiled from court for reasons no one was quite sure of? Most likely had little to fear, as it wasn’t as though they could do much worse to him. Diar resigned himself to breaking and entering; most people never gave Signal clerks this level of hassle, but he had been trained that he was allowed to do more or less anything he needed to in order to fulfill his duty, and had on more than one occasion resorted to entering a house without permission to hand off a message. Normally, he’d go and get the civil guard to escort him– once when he was still an apprentice he’d gotten to watch them use a battering ram on a door to let him in to hand off his message, a legal summons the residents had not cared to receive– but there was no power on this earth that was getting him to walk back down that hill tonight without having delivered this gods-damned message.
—
second draft:
The building itself was hunkered into a hollow in the hillside, the front of it glittering with small windows. There had to be heating shafts up into it from the settlement below, or there would be no way anyone could stay alive. Diar stared up at it a moment, as the cold bit into him, thinking about the children who lived there– outcasts, all, clinging on to this fragile connection to the life below.
And Diar was here to deliver a message to one of them. “The rumors all say he’s some kind of abomination,” Garila had said. “Otherwise why would he be exiled here? He’d be of age now: they’d’ve let him go at least, if he was fit to be released.”
Diar’s imagination was happily filling him in on what exactly this child must be like, but the cold was also starting to creep into his collar and cuffs. He summoned his courage and went and pounded on the door.
Silence answered him, for long enough that he got over his overdramatic feeling of dread and just got irritated instead. So he pounded on the door a while longer, and stood and waited, and then pounded some more. Finally he shouted. “Halloo the house! Signal Corps! Urgent message delivery!”
Far overhead, one of the little windows banged open. “Quit your noise!” a rough male voice shouted.
“I need to deliver this message,” Diar said, not bothering to conceal his annoyance. Did they think he was up here in the bitter cold for his own amusement?
“Leave it!” the man shouted.
Diar stared up incredulously. He couldn’t really see whoever this person was; they hadn’t put their head out the window, but were just shouting down. “It’s Category One Urgent,” he said. “I have to put it directly into the hand of the recipient.”
“I’m the recipient and I say leave it,” the man shouted. By the slur of his words, he was drunk.
“That’s not how this works,” Diar said. Not only was it a violation of Signal Corps protocol, it was also a violation of the laws of hospitality that said you didn’t leave someone standing on the doorstep in the frigid night like this. He hadn’t come here expecting good manners, though. “Also I doubt you’re the recipient.” An orphan, even one who was a product of the Queen’s marriage, was not going to speak to a Signal clerk like that. This certainly was the headmaster, who was a disgraced ex-courtier no one had ever said a kind word about.
“Who’s it for, then,” the man demanded. “And at this hour!”
“It’s from the High Minister’s Office,” Diar said, “Category One Urgent, for one Ena Michana.”
That was greeted with silence. Then the window slammed shut.
Diar hadn’t expected he’d have to resort to this, but he was going to have to break in. The thing about Category One Urgent messages was that they gave the bearer the license to do anything necessary to get them into the hand of the recipient. Diar had been escorted into a house behind a battering ram wielded by the constabulary, on one occasion. He had the right to do anything he needed to do, up to and including breaking and entering, and he was going to. There was no way he was going to die of cold on this doorstep, and no way he was going to turn around and go back for help. If he had to kick in one of those windows, he was going to do it.
My bitching this morning spurred me into some kind of action and I managed somehow to do a full day of work, also read the other two Murderbot novellas, and finally finally do the little chunk of worldbuilding I really needed to do in order to rewrite the solarpunk cyborgs thing.
I only have like, 3000 words of that rewrite done, but I think the tiny bit of worldbuilding I did actually solidified all of the “it works this way because it works this way” shit that was plaguing my first draft.
I am using the write-it-all-over-again method though, there’ll be no copy-pasting. It’s cool, I only had like 60k of it written, that’s reasonable.
a comparison:
first draft:
It was cruelly, unforgivingly winter, and no lights shone out from the lodge, but the moonlight glinted off some of the windows and made it look particularly eerie. Diar had no idea what he would find; gossip, hastily sought out on his way out the door and largely provided by the message decoder who was a local and therefore quite invested in the possible-monster living in their hunting lodge, said the Heir Presumptive’s half-brother lived there with only another court exile as his guardian, though as he was now of age, it was uncertain why he still needed a guardian. The rumors said that the boy hadn’t been recalled to court when he reached his majority because he was mad, or simply some kind of abomination– [cyborg]s weren’t supposed to be able to breed with humans, and so as a crossbreed he had to be a malformed horror, or somesuch.
Diar’s education in biology was no better than standard, but at least he had some, and he knew that surely wasn’t how it worked. Anyway the child had attended his mother’s funeral at court a decade ago, and while some witnesses had called him uncanny, nobody had particularly thought him an abomination then. Surely– well, but he’d been raised in this isolation, here, the message decoder insisting that since he’d never once come to town he must be locked up, up there, and–
Diar wasn’t a particularly imaginative person, nor was he prone to flights of fancy, but by the time he reached the door of the hunting lodge, grateful for at least the meager power of his hand-light, he had half-convinced himself he was walking into a den of monsters. It was late, by now, long after social calling hours. He knocked at the door, and waited before knocking again, and then waited, his imagination growing more and more frenzied. Finally he pounded on the door, and was reduced to shouting.
“Halloo the house!” he tried. “Signal Corps! Urgent message delivery!”
Far overhead, a window flew up with a bang, and someone stuck their head out. “Quit your noise!” a rough male voice shouted.
“I need to deliver this message,” Diar said, as politely as he could manage.
“Leave it!” the man shouted.
Diar stared at him. “It’s a Category One Urgent. I have to put the message into the hand of the recipient,” he said finally, incredulous. Everyone knew that.
“I’m the recipient and I say leave it,” the man shouted. By the slur of his words, he was drunk.
Diar stared at him for another moment. “That’s not how this works,” he said. A regular route courier could leave messages, sure, but a regular route courier wouldn’t be shouting about urgency and wouldn’t be here at midnight. He pulled the packet out; he was fairly certain this was an older man anyway, and could not be the semi-mythical half-brother. “I need to verify that you’re Ena [Surname], and even if you are, I still have to put it into your hand.”
The man grumbled an audible oath of shocking vulgarity, and closed the window with a bang. Diar stood at the door a while, long enough that he had begun to wonder whether the man had decided to just leave him here.
Too old to be the mad half-brother, the man had to be the exiled courtier, Diar decided; no household staff would speak to him that way. Signal clerks weren’t on par with nobles, but they were generally held in greater esteem than servants, while they were at work anyway. Off duty, they were no higher in social caste, but there were severe penalties both civil and criminal for interfering with a signal clerk’s duties. No servant would dare so much as say a contrary word to one.
But a man exiled from court for reasons no one was quite sure of? Most likely had little to fear, as it wasn’t as though they could do much worse to him. Diar resigned himself to breaking and entering; most people never gave Signal clerks this level of hassle, but he had been trained that he was allowed to do more or less anything he needed to in order to fulfill his duty, and had on more than one occasion resorted to entering a house without permission to hand off a message. Normally, he’d go and get the civil guard to escort him– once when he was still an apprentice he’d gotten to watch them use a battering ram on a door to let him in to hand off his message, a legal summons the residents had not cared to receive– but there was no power on this earth that was getting him to walk back down that hill tonight without having delivered this gods-damned message.
—
second draft:
The building itself was hunkered into a hollow in the hillside, the front of it glittering with small windows. There had to be heating shafts up into it from the settlement below, or there would be no way anyone could stay alive. Diar stared up at it a moment, as the cold bit into him, thinking about the children who lived there– outcasts, all, clinging on to this fragile connection to the life below.
And Diar was here to deliver a message to one of them. “The rumors all say he’s some kind of abomination,” Garila had said. “Otherwise why would he be exiled here? He’d be of age now: they’d’ve let him go at least, if he was fit to be released.”
Diar’s imagination was happily filling him in on what exactly this child must be like, but the cold was also starting to creep into his collar and cuffs. He summoned his courage and went and pounded on the door.
Silence answered him, for long enough that he got over his overdramatic feeling of dread and just got irritated instead. So he pounded on the door a while longer, and stood and waited, and then pounded some more. Finally he shouted. “Halloo the house! Signal Corps! Urgent message delivery!”
Far overhead, one of the little windows banged open. “Quit your noise!” a rough male voice shouted.
“I need to deliver this message,” Diar said, not bothering to conceal his annoyance. Did they think he was up here in the bitter cold for his own amusement?
“Leave it!” the man shouted.
Diar stared up incredulously. He couldn’t really see whoever this person was; they hadn’t put their head out the window, but were just shouting down. “It’s Category One Urgent,” he said. “I have to put it directly into the hand of the recipient.”
“I’m the recipient and I say leave it,” the man shouted. By the slur of his words, he was drunk.
“That’s not how this works,” Diar said. Not only was it a violation of Signal Corps protocol, it was also a violation of the laws of hospitality that said you didn’t leave someone standing on the doorstep in the frigid night like this. He hadn’t come here expecting good manners, though. “Also I doubt you’re the recipient.” An orphan, even one who was a product of the Queen’s marriage, was not going to speak to a Signal clerk like that. This certainly was the headmaster, who was a disgraced ex-courtier no one had ever said a kind word about.
“Who’s it for, then,” the man demanded. “And at this hour!”
“It’s from the High Minister’s Office,” Diar said, “Category One Urgent, for one Ena Michana.”
That was greeted with silence. Then the window slammed shut.
Diar hadn’t expected he’d have to resort to this, but he was going to have to break in. The thing about Category One Urgent messages was that they gave the bearer the license to do anything necessary to get them into the hand of the recipient. Diar had been escorted into a house behind a battering ram wielded by the constabulary, on one occasion. He had the right to do anything he needed to do, up to and including breaking and entering, and he was going to. There was no way he was going to die of cold on this doorstep, and no way he was going to turn around and go back for help. If he had to kick in one of those windows, he was going to do it.
