It’s been almost a full quarter since my last update. Some of these weeks have been productive for the sort of writing I mean when I just say “writing,” and some were productive for the technical writing classes I’ve been taking, and a small handful weren’t very productive at all. But before even more time slips by, I should take a moment to compare my progress to my goals.
As you may recall, I tend to divide my Shine Cycle development time between “plotting” (outlining, assigning point-of-view to characters, and eventually the actual writing), “worldbuilding” (using questions created by Patricia Wrede I found years ago, a “Deep Cultural Fractalling System” and “Race Fractalling System” I found on Holy Worlds, and—mistakenly, but the classification has stuck and keeps progress moving faster—creating loglines and doing “snowflake outlining”), and “characters” (creating character histories, biographies, and descriptions, the results of which produced the most recent character profile last week). Despite the heavy classwork load, other demands on my time, and my general procrastinative tendencies, I managed to make pretty-good progress in each:
- In “plotting,” I got The Dragon Returns outlined to the “sequence” level and made all point-of-view assignments for it (though they are still definitely “someone in such-and-such a post in such-and-such country,” not a name or personality yet).
- In “worldbuilding,” I answered three Wrede questions that I had postponed when I went through the questions systematically several years ago, wrote loglines for three planned novels, and did the second “snowflake” step (expanding the logline to a paragraph) for two planned novels.
- In “characters,” I wrote four character histories and three character biographies.
Let’s see how this compared to my goals (which were nominally for one month, not three):
- Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Some weeks yes, some weeks no … so no, not regular. Just a comparatively large amount some weeks, so it all added up to relatively-substantial.
- Finish POV assignments for The Dragon Returns, create a logline for it, and get at least a quarter of the way through outlining it by sequence.
Done; in fact, I’m finished with outlining it by sequence.
- Answer at least four of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
I managed three.
- Complete the second step of “snowflake outlining” for Sunshine Civil War and Stone of Power.
Done. And two additional loglines.
- Write at least one character history.
Four, and three biographies.
- Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”
As usual, nothing: all my prose, except one personal letter, went to classwork.
On the whole, I’m fairly satisfied with those results.
Here’s my goals for the next month or so (before classes start again). God willing, I’d like to:
- Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
- Create concepts and super-sequence outlines for, and assign POV for, six of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
- Answer at least five of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
- Write loglines for at least three of the planned stories that don’t have them yet.
- Do “snowflake step 2” for four planned novels.
- Write at least five character histories and at least five character biographies.
- Finish the Alliance précis I’ve been postponing for a couple of years now
- Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
- Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”
As always, we’ll see how reality matches up to those goals.
Shine Cycle Online 