A pause for research
Sat 2004-12-25 19:51:12 (in context)
- 50,011 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 14.25 hrs. revised
Spent an hour running down my list of accuracy/consistency concerns and looking up stuff. I have a whole bunch of Firefox tabs open now. Did you know...
- ...that it's the "Sea-Tac" International Airport but it's the town of SeaTac? Check the hyphens. *sigh* Consistency is all I ask!
- ...That the bar "Flowers" in the Seattle U. District has the same street number as the house in which I lived during my college years (and in which I'm locating my main characters)?
- ...that it's bloody impossible to find a straight transcript of a commercial airline's flight attendants' "safety features" speech? I'm reduced to looking up as many different versions of the "airplane humor" email forward as I can find, and inferring the original from the overlap.
- ...that a typical United Airlines flight from Seattle to Denver utilizes a Boeing 757-200? I have no idea what Frontier use, because Frontier won't tell you until, presumably, after you've entered credit card information.
- ...that a Boeing 757-200's Vne (never exceed) speed is expressed, not in knots, but in a maximum percentage of the speed of sound?
- ...that 2001 was a truly, truly sad year for pop hits?
- ...that, because I know you just can't get enough of this stuff, the tooth of extinct Carcharocles megalodon (freakin' huge prehistoric shark dino thing) was three to four inches long?
Spent another hour doodling out a timeline. Some of the best novel-plotting advice I have ever run across can be found here. Yes, that's a link to Teresa Neilsen Hayden's Making Light blog; specifically, to commentary posted by Jo Walton to an open thread. Some of the best literary conversations you've ever read go on there. Anyway, the point is, go there, read what Jo has to say about finding plot, and then page down for more goodness about writing novels and avoiding scammy publish-on-demand outfits.
If you do, you eventually get to my real point, which is, timelines. Scott Lynch says, "Don't forget that the characters off-stage should be taking action simultaneously with the characters currently on the page." Damn good advice, that. Secondary characters are not just loafing around backstage waiting for their cues. They're pursuing engineering degrees and helping mom to raise a passel of younger siblings and teaching this year's youngsters the laws of the sea and terrorizing the Puget Sound.
Not all at once, of course. Timelines! Time is what keeps events from happening simultaneously and getting all muddled up thereby.
Revelation of the evening: I have no idea what the main character's mother is doing in this timeline. She exists mainly as a menacing motivation factor in the main character's flashback allowance. I guess maybe she is waiting for her cue.
Damn. I have a lot less novel written than I thought I had.