1,200 words today. Still falling short overall. Especially since I'm going to go back, particularly savaging the scene right after the tumble on the steps of the propylea. The camera guy is getting fleshed out and gets a proper speaking role.
I'm still worried about pacing. More than that; worried about setup. I've talked about the contract with the reader before. The first chapters are the place where this is ratified. And detailed. You read the first chapters of a novel, especially one by a new writer, with a lot of meta-questions; is this going to be serious? Is this going to be bloody? Will I like the protagonist? Is the language comfortable to read? Is the writer any good?"
First person POV has an advantage (if that is the word) in that it only takes a few lines for the reader to find out if they want to be around this person for the length of a book. The narrative voice is just that present. Many a book I've put down because I didn't want that person's voice in my ear for five hours.
In any case, because of the nature of some of the material I have to be rather careful to put in clues to the reader about what it will actually be like. Even when that interferes with developing the story proper. Specific example; in the prologue she mentions Atlantis. That gives me a fairly small number of pages before I have to tell the reader if Atlantis is going to be real within the world of the story.
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Oh yeah. While I was still wrestling with the outline I took a day off to make a Mass Effect pastiche. See, there's this organization called "Cerberus" that figures in all three games. For no reason at all, I thought of putting "Cerebus" in its place. That being the barbarian aardvark created by independent comic book creator Dave Sim.
I marked it clearly as one-shot, done, finis, too silly an idea to be worth developing, and put it up on fanfic.net. It already has two story alerts on it. (Truth be told, those worlds don't mesh well. Lord Julius would quickly take over the Council, of course. But other than that? Well...I would very much like to see the fight between The Roach and Mass Effect 3's Kai Leng...)
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More and more I seem to be running into "second question" problems. What I mean is, there are questions that a lot of people have. Assume you've already found that answer, though, and you have a follow-up. That's the hard part. It is hard to search for on the web, whether within a store or more generally.
Here's today's big example. There's a lot of software around now to emulate classic guitar amps, and of course a variety of effects boxes. So...has anyone made software that does similar sonic tricks to emulate a brass mute? That is, to do for the sound of a trumpet into a microphone what there is software to do for a guitar on a mic or direct box? Yamaha happens to make a so-called "Silent Brass" system which sticks a microphone into a practice mute. Which is cool enough, but then they add modeling software to make it sound (in headphones) like a trumpet without a mute at all.
But there's no easy way to search for this idea. The results pages for a mute emulator are swamped with hits for guitar emulators and, of course, Yamaha's Silent Brass. There seems to be no way of telling search engines, "I know that one already."
Really, the only thing to do is search for a trumpet and/or DAW forum, then start asking questions. And be prepared for yet another round of people telling you about the stuff you already know. Of course.
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