Jonathan Lovelace's Blog, page 2

Second-Trimester 2018 Shine Cycle Goals Check

On Saturday, I checked up on my progress so far on “miscellaneous” goals for the year. Today, a look at how I’m doing on my goals relating to the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation.

Outlining and Plotting

Objective: Have one complete and detailed outline of The Invasion.

Goal: Finish the “detailed synopsis” that is Step 9 of the “snowflake method”
Goal: Adjust the main outline and all synopses created in the “snowflake method” to all agree.

I finished the detailed synopsis, and compared it, the previous “snowflake” notes, and my outline; I’m currently slogging through the list of changes to each of those that I need to make to get them to agree. I’d say this goal is “pending,” finished in principle but not quite qualifying as “done” yet. Any day now.

Objective: Finish a presentable draft of The Invasion.

Goal: Get at least half-way through, or 50,000 words into, my new draft of The Invasion.
Stretch Goal: Finish this draft of The Invasion.


Objective: After I finish The Invasion, make significant progress on outlining The Adventure of the Royal Wedding

Stretch Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 4 for The Adventure of the Royal Wedding.

And so I haven’t even gotten to any of these yet.

Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least ten character biographies or histories
Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least fifteen characters.

No progress on these in the last four months; the “next” character history has had me stymied every time I sit down to think about it (which hasn’t been often).

Worldbuilding

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for elves.
Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for dwarves

I haven’t given these any attention; The Invasion has demanded all my attention.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like; including posts already scheduled, but not including new posts scheduled for 2019) to this blog.
Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same restrictions) to this blog every month.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same restrictions) to this blog.


Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

I think this may be the first post I’ve written since the last trimester-report, so I’m not doing well in this category.

All in all, I’m much further behind than before, but I’ve finally reached a milestone on The Invasion, which is something I’ve been aiming at all year.

I’ll round up my post-trimester goal-checking with a look at my Strategic Primer goals on Wednesday.

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Celia

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Celia – Bard, Princess of the Bardic Lands, King’s Harpist of the Empire, and great-mage. A powerful weather-mage, second only to Windstorm, and one of the King’s most trusted associates.

Of all mortal concerns, music has always been Celia’s first passion—so strongly that her peers in the Bardic Lands chose her to lead them. But her metaphysical abilities were so strong untrained that she went through training, and continued practicing, both standard applied metaphysics and the non-musical aspects of the bardic craft.

She spends about a third of each year in the Bardic Lands, teaching and administering the government; a third in the Imperial court, playing as her duties require but also teaching; and third either on tour or giving advice to mages, bards, and others who need to consult her.

A tall slender woman with straight black hair extending to her waist. She wears bardic robes, cut loose enough for her to play her harp, in bright colors, often red. She also wears small earrings and has the borders of her robes embroidered with intricate designs.

Celia’s story began when she unexpectedly found herself in the utterly unfamiliar environment of the Bardic Lands early in the second century after that world’s creation, with a vivid but fading memory of her peaceful death on Earth in the late 21st century.

Seeing herself as having been given new life, and feeling her renewed youth, she set about getting to know the people among whom she had been placed. As her passion for music, for her Christian faith, and for her now-lost family was evident to all, she quickly became a popular figure among the small society of the capital there.

However, metaphysical potential manifested strongly in her, burgeoning with such force that her friends feared an upheaval and warned her she was putting herself and them in danger. The Prince of the Bardic Lands at the time, who thought of her almost as fondly as his own daughter, assigned his own tutor to train her and help get her powers under control.

While she was by no means fully trained, because the Prince’s tutor specialized in teaching children the basics and could not do much to help her with advanced topics, she reached a point of firm stability and returned to the Prince’s court, where she began to learn more about the country, its people, and its history.

A few years after that, news reached them that many of the “free nations” of the two major continents had formed an Empire under the leadership of the Sunshine Kingdom, and that the Dragon Empire was preparing a violent response. After vigorous debate, the leaders of the Bardic Lands decided to send a delegation to the Sunshine Kingdom to offer alliance, also with the hope of recruiting bards there to join their society, and Celia was asked to join the delegation.

While in Capitol, each member of the delegation gave at least one public performance; many of these were attended by leading members of the Imperial court. The King was particularly taken by Celia’s performance, and asked her to become the King’s Harpist for the Sunshine Kingdom. After consulting her peers, and receiving her Prince’s permission, she accepted that prestigious post.

Once she had settled into Capitol society in her new role, in the time not taken up by performing and preparing for her official duties, Celia began studying at the Sunshine Kingdom’s Bardic College, and after that at the College of Mages. She raced through their standard curriculum and beyond, quickly completing all the training they offered to novices and apprentices and earning a “journeyman” rating from both institutions.

For the “journeying” requirement usually laid on new journeymen, she traveled throughout the Shine and Wild Empire, blooming with the newly-declared peace, and taught anyone who asked for a lesson. For this tour, she spent two-thirds of each year for four years out in the countryside, and a third of each year in the capital giving the performances for the court expected of her as King’s Harpist. On her final return from this trip, both the Bardic College and the College of Mages awarded her with formal recognition of Mastery.

After that, she returned the Bardic Lands, visiting the Empire for a third of each year as her duties required but spending most of the time at what she thought of as “home” among her peers, becoming ever more intimately acquainted with the countryside and people of the Bardic Lands.

The Prince of the Bardic Lands died about a decade later, and as was the country’s custom its leading citizens voted to choose his replacement. They selected Celia, and then spent several weeks persuading her to accept. Even though the vote had been strongly in her favor, and the old Prince had been preparing her to replace him for years, she was reluctant, but her peers eventually prevailed on her to accept.

After her first year as Princess of the Bardic Lands, Celia decided that she needed to get away from the heights of power every so often, and so began what became her habit from then on of spending a third of her time in her capital on official business, a third of her time in the Imperial capital on her duties there or teaching, and most of the rest touring either country’s countryside.

First-Trimester 2018 Shine Cycle Goals Check

On Saturday, I checked up on my progress so far on “miscellaneous” goals for the year. Today, a look at how I’m doing on my goals relating to the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation.

Outlining and Plotting

Objective: Have one complete and detailed outline of The Invasion.

Goal: Finish the “detailed synopsis” that is Step 9 of the “snowflake method”

I’ve made significant progress on this, if not as much as I’d hoped, and am within striking distance—it should only take a few more weeks in which I actually work on it.

I’m not even going to list my remaining “outlining and plotting” goals here, since they all have to come after I finish this one.

Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least ten character biographies or histories

I’ve written three so far.

Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least fifteen characters.

I’ve created nine so far.

Worldbuilding

Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for elves.
Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for dwarves

I haven’t gotten to either of these yet. But soon, I think.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like; including posts already scheduled, but not including new posts scheduled for 2019) to this blog.
Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same restrictions) to this blog every month.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same restrictions) to this blog.

I think I’ve written four so far, and scheduled them monthly. But I’m not quite sure.

All in all, I’m well behind where I had hoped to be by this point, but most of my goals still look possible. I should definitely finish my preparatory “prewriting” work on The Invasion long before year’s end; that what happens after that will be up in the air was obvious back when I was first trying to plan the year out.

I’ll round up my post-trimester goal-checking with a look at my Strategic Primer goals on Wednesday.

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Blanchefleur

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Blanchefleur – Lady in waiting to Rhiannon. When the King was court bard to Arthur as Taliesin he fell in love with her and she with him, but Merlin warned them that unless they postponed their love tragedy would ensue. Much later, she appeared in the Empire at the same time as the rest of the Chosen.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that the initial conception of this character was sparked in part by the character of the same names in the Arthurian poetry of Charles Williams. But my character grew rather differently.)

Blanchefleur is a tall, slender woman with long black hair. She wears the customary garb whenever and wherever she finds herself; in the court of Arthur this was modest but brightly colored gowns, while in the Empire this is formal robes, which she has had richly embroidered with intricate designs along the borders and on her shoulders.

Most people she meets think of Blanchefleur as complaisant, a pleasant and agreeable woman, willing to give selflessly of herself at need. But only a few know that she holds her strongest emotions carefully veiled around all but her closest friends, and is fiercely passionate about the causes and people she holds most dear.

She does not have any strong ability in the Power, but has just enough that she can begin to understand and contribute to discussions, and can give useful service to the powerful mage she serves. She occasionally uses a minor working to save her significant amounts of time—to remove all dust from her mistress’ chambers when she has other time-consuming duties that will fill the rest of the day, for example—but more often conserves the power available to her by not using it at all.

Blanchefleur was the daughter of an impoverished knight in Arthur’s Britain. When she was “a girl not yet grown,” her father died while on a quest, leaving her family with no hope but for King Arthur’s mercy. Her younger siblings were fostered by nobles of the court, her mother eventually remarried, and Queen Guinevere took accepted Blanchefleur as a maid and took over her education.

As she approached the age when she could reasonably marry or seek lifetime employment, but several years before she would be expected to do so, she saw Taliesin arrive at Camelot, and she was immediately taken with him. After he accepted a place in the court, Guinevere gave her leave to pursue an at-first-informal courtship with him, beginning a period of a few blissfully happy months.

Those months came to an abrupt end, however, when Merlin spoke to both Blanchefleur and Taliesin, separately, to warn them of the doom that would more quickly befall Camelot if they continued to pursue an attachment leading to matrimony. Each of them reluctantly agreed that the necessary separation, though painful, would be better than Camelot and all it stood for being overturned in fire.

Taliesin’s duties as Arthur’s court bard kept him constantly before the court, so Blanchefleur, who had become an active participant herself in the court’s public life, withdrew to Guinevere’s side, planning to remain in the queen’s service only until a suitable replacement would come and she could train her. She endured a period of two more years in the exquisite misery of seeing Taliesin’s veiled melancholy, hiding her own sorrow to set an example for the younger ladies.

A week before Taliesin was abruptly called home, Merlin spoke to her privately to give her advance warning, and also gave her leave to farewell her beloved as she would when the time came. On the day in question, she kissed him, gave him permission to love again should the chance come in his home country, and bade him farewell. After another mournful month, of a different quality of bitterness seeing Camelot without him, she entered a convent. And she was taken from the world after a decade there, finding herself in the Shine and Wild Empire at the same time and place as (almost all) the rest of the Chosen, and like most of them returned to the bloom of her youth.

Amid the tumultuous confusion, she felt more comfortable among the strange new circumstances than did many of the others (since there were obvious similarities to the world of Arthur’s court but far fewer to twentieth-century America) and found a “genteel service” position far from the capital. (She chose that location because seeing more than hints of “Taliesin” in the King’s face was disconcerting and saddening, for all that she found herself surprisingly as heartened as she had promised him she would to see him happy in love with his Queen.)

She served contentedly in that position for a decade, until her patron died, when she found another such position in a different region. When that employer died, she found another, and so on for many years.

Not long after Rhiannon—whom she had of course known as Guinevere—arrived in the Empire, Blanchefleur was again at loose ends and between positions, and happened to meet Rhiannon in a city market. Despite several decades of time (and more on Rhiannon’s part), a new world, and new identities having changed things, they recognized each other immediately and took the time to reacquaint themselves.

After an afternoon’s conversation, in which she learned how Blanchefleur had made her life in the Empire so far and her current status, Rhiannon offered her friend a place in her own small court that was developing around her, and Blanchefleur gladly accepted.

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Regina

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Regina Princess at large, journeyman mage under the tutelage of Windstorm of the Rivers Kingdom, and a senior ombudsman in the Imperial Service. She has declined to attempt the great-mage examination even though she is obviously eminently qualified.

As a mage, Regina has studied and turned her hand to many kinds of workings and problems to be solved, and carried out workings with an unusual air of authority that belies her nominal rank. However, when called on to repeat a previous feat that no longer interests her, she performs competently but unexceptionally. She lives in the Rivers Kingdom with Windstorm, under whom she seems content to study for as long as she is willing to teach her.

A slender, athletic woman of medium height with straight shoulder-length very light brown hair. She favors mage’s robes in deep reds, blues, and greens. The only jewelry she wears is a light silver circlet and a few rings. Her expression is usually a look of intense determination, but often relaxes into a serene smile.

When she unexpectedly found herself in the new environment of the Sunshine Kingdom, after getting her bearings, and taking a “cultural orientation” course the government offered, Regina went through the capital looking for ways to make herself useful. She found one short-term job, then another, in a series of these that lasted for more than five years. Eventually, she took a position with the Imperial Service as an “itinerant ombudsman” (a “perpetually-understaffed” role) and set out to wander the Empire and improve its citizens’ lives.

During her first “tour of duty” as an ombudsman, several local mages whom she encountered recognized a latent and potential talent for their Art, which she had previously been unaware of, and gave her unsolicited advice to train herself in it. When she finished that tour and returned to Capitol, she took their advice and enrolled in the College of Mages as a novice. Over the course of that decade the praise of the citizens she met led her superiors to promote her several ranks.

In the College of Mages, she developed a respectable but undistinguished career as first a novice and then an apprentice, and passed her exams to become a journeyman easily but not spectacularly a little more than a decade after she entered the College.

As a journeyman, she was strongly encouraged to “journey,” which she combined with a return to her duties as an itinerant ombudsman for the Imperial Service. On that lengthy and repeatedly-extended trip, in a variety of places throughout the Empire, she found herself confronted with citizens’ problems that an application of the Power could help, but for which there was no obviously-correct “standard” solution. In each case, she turned her mind and interest to the problem and developed a novel solution, then executed it with a flair, skill, and confidence that her instructors never saw during her years as an apprentice. With the help of her companions on the journey, she wrote reports on most of these incidents, which she submitted to the College for use by others in tackling similar problems.

After about two decades of this wandering, she stopped in the Rivers Kingdom for what was intended to be only a visit, if an extended visit, with her kinswoman Windstorm. When she heard about the constant and varied challenges posed by that kingdom’s floods, she decided to settle there permanently rather than either indulging her desire for novelty by continuing to wander or returning to Capitol to seek further advancement.

Shine Cycle 2017 Review, 2018 Goals

As the civil year draws to a close, I again pause briefly to consider how the last year has gone and how I might best address myself to the new year. In particular, I’ve been looking back to measure myself against the goals I set a year ago, and deciding what goals to set for the year to come. As usual, I will consider each of my “magna opera” in turn, starting with the Shine Cycle today, and beginning with my goals for that in 2017.

First, actually, a bit of terminology. Below, I use the word “objective” to mean a long-term, broad goal that I want to reach, but that either breaks down into several more granular but still large pieces, or can’t be broken down into tasks, rendering it difficult or impossible to measure incremental progress. I use the word “goal” to mean a long-term goal progress against which can be measured, and (unless otherwise specified, using the next term) which I thought I could accomplish in the past year or think I can accomplish this next year. I use the phrase “stretch goal” to mean a goal (as before) which I was or am doubtful I could or can accomplish in the year in question, but I still felt was worth mentioning.

2017 Goals

Back in January, I said

Unlike previous years, I am not going to simply move the “interval under consideration” in my task tracker forward. In 2017, I want to focus on one story and get it as close to a “publishable” state as I can within the year. I still intend to work on worldbuilding and character development, but instead of making incremental “plotting” improvements to each story in turn, I want to apply my thought on that to just one story all year.

And I listed the following goals, each of which I will report on in turn.

(I’m quoting my original plan, but I’ll mention any amendments I made in the “checkup” posts I made at the end of each quarter.)

Outlining

Objective: Finish a complete and detailed outline of my chosen story.

Goal: Choose the story to focus on by the end of January.

I chose The Invasion.

Goal: In my iterative outlining, outline that story by scene

Done. I had hoped to be at this point by early summer, and didn’t get there until November, but I did meet the goal before the end of the year.

Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 7 for that story.

Done. I’m currently slogging through Step 9, which is making a scene-by-scene “detailed synopsis.”

Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least fifteen character biographies or histories.

As it turned out, I wrote sixteen (one of which was arguably almost a “double”), apparently all histories rather than biographies.

Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least five characters.

I more than doubled my goal, ending up with eleven. I had almost blown through it in the first quarter, and at that time said that

even so a “stretch goal” of nine this year would still be more than reasonable.

And after the second quarter, I said

So reaching nine, as I suggested three months ago, now looks almost trivial, and fifteen looks possible.

I didn’t get that far, but far exceeded my original goal.

Worldbuilding

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “race fractalling system” for elves.

As I expected, I didn’t get anywhere near this. (And to make matters worse on that front, when I rearranged my task tracker in light of my new one-story-at-a-time approach, I put all the breaking-goals-into-tasks meta-tasks up front as well.)

Actual Prose

Goal: Get at least a quarter of the way through the first draft of the story I decide to focus on this year, or 25,000 words in, whichever comes first.
Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the first draft, or 50,000 words in the story I’m focusing on this year.

I didn’t get to the point of actual prose in my development of The Invasion. I’d estimate I’m a couple of months away.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same exclusions) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same exclusions) to this blog every month.

For this I’m not sure whether I intended to count posts that appeared this year, including those written last year and scheduled months ahead, or posts that were written this year, including those scheduled to appear next year. If the former, as I suspect, 17 qualifying posts have appeared, at least one each month. If the latter, I believe I wrote 14 posts in addition to those that were previously scheduled to appear. (For the current state of posts already scheduled for next year, see below.)

Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

Goal: In the process of transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” to “background essays,” reduce the length of (the temporary copy of) the former by at least half. It currently stands at about 1500 lines and 36,000 words.
Stretch Goal: Finish transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” into “background essays” and schedule the first post using that material to run on this blog.

I did a little on this in January, and haven’t touched it since. The line count is still “about 1500 lines,” though I reduced it by about thirty lines and about five hundred words.

To sum up, the year went far better than I thought after forward progress collapsed in the first quarter, but even so didn’t meet most of my original goals.

2018 Goals

Inspired by a comment in passing by my church’s youth pastor, I decided to not only set and announce goals, but plan out in advance how I think I can go about meeting them. To that end, I made a week-by-week plan and divided tasks among the weeks of the coming year, after (for the first time) writing down estimates of how long they will take me. I left “tasks” that are about setting up future tasks unestimated, which will throw my estimates off somewhat, but having such an estimate is better than nothing.

I’m basing my goals, below, on the assumption that I will be working on the Shine Cycle and all my other personal projects for no more than about twenty hours a week—which I will probably exceed most of the time, but when setting a “goal” rather than a “stretch goal” I prefer to have a mark that I’m fairly certain I can reach.

Outlining and Plotting

Objective: Have one complete and detailed outline of The Invasion.

Goal: Finish the “detailed synopsis” that is Step 9 of the “snowflake method”
Goal: Adjust the main outline and all synopses created in the “snowflake method” to all agree.


Objective: Finish a presentable draft of The Invasion.

Goal: Get at least half-way through, or 50,000 words into, my new draft of The Invasion.
STretch Goal: Finish this draft of The Invasion.


Objective: After I finish The Invasion, make significant progress on outlining The Adventure of the Royal Wedding

Stretch Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 4 for The Adventure of the Royal Wedding.



Character Development

I also want to keep making what progress I can on filling out my character database.

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least ten character biographies or histories
Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least fifteen characters.



Worldbuilding

As I mentioned above, last January, when I rearranged my task tracker to work on one story at a time (and, as I mentioned after the first quarter, because the “snowflake” tasks were misfiled as “worldbuilding”), I put all the “create tasks for such-and-such” tasks at the top. So I’ll still be making my way through those for a while. But by my current plan, I should get to something that I can report progress on sometime this year, so I can set goals.

However, while adapting my answers to the Wrede questions is still a side project I want to finish, it’s not slated for this year under my current plan, so I won’t list any goals related to that.

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for elves.
Goal: Complete the “race fractalling system” for dwarves



Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like; including posts already scheduled, but not including new posts scheduled for 2019) to this blog.
Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same restrictions) to this blog every month.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same restrictions) to this blog.


Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

I thought about making a goal about my practice of making nominally-monthly “writing status updates,” but now that I’m working from this tentatively week-by-week schedule, I’m not sure that’s the wisest approach to “accountability.” (I plan to check myself against these goals after four and eight months into the year, so I wouldn’t be going completely silent even if I stopped the “monthly” status reports.) Readers, do you have any thoughts?

We’ll see how the year goes; as I said, I’m trying to estimate conservatively, so, God willing, I should be able to meet most of these unless he decides to upend my life with some disruption or surprise.

Fellow writers, how did you do in 2017? And do you have any plans for the new year?

Filed under: Shine Cycle

Writing status update (#53)

It’s been over a month since my last “monthly” writing-status update, which was combined with my “goals check” at the end of the third quarter, so it’s past time to look at how well I’ve done on what I hoped at that point to get done in the next several weeks.

Here are the goals that I set back at the beginning of October:

Make consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 27 “points” in my task tracker, though I’m hoping to average more like twice that.

This was a mostly-resounding success; three of the five weeks since then were well over twice that rate, and the other two I still managed to exceed it by what now looks like a comfortable margin. The average was about 60.

Write “character histories” for at least two characters.

I wrote five.

Create a “character logline” or “motivation summary” for at least two characters.

Success, but I only exactly met this goal.

Outline at least eleven of the identified sequences of The Invasion by scene.

Done: my outline of The Invasion by scene is complete.

Now, for the next month or so, here’s what I hope to finish, God willing:

Make steady and consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 30 “points” in my task tracker and average at least 40. I’m hoping to bring the average up from its current point around 60, but on this point I’m trying to set goals I’m sure I can reach.
Write “character histories” for at least three characters
Write a (brief) “biography” for at least one character
Write a “character logline” for at least one character
In the “detailed synopsis” of The Invasion (specified by “the snowflake method” step 9), write descriptions of at least 16 scenes.
Write and publish my annual liturgical-year-end blog-post roundup in the week before the First Sunday of Advent

God alone knows whether I’ll manage to meet those in the next few weeks, but they seem like a good

Filed under: Status updates

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Reginald of Transylvania

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Reginald – Prince of Transylvania, which is a member of the Shine Council, a vassal state of the Empire, and famous among those in the Empire who know for its intelligence capabilities.

After extensive study and practice, he has learned to converse easily and “blend in” in any social situation. By nature, however, he is gruff and somewhat taciturn, and before addressing this in his training he was oblivious to many social cues and norms. As prince, he holds court at least twice a month, but outside those scheduled appearances he either keeps to himself or mingles with his people in disguise.

He is rarely seen without some disguise, and has cultivated a deliberately nondescript appearance, but some can be drawn from his most common appearances and from early images. He is an athletic man of medium height, often keeping his black hair cut very short. His bearing often betrays a military background, and he favors a general-issue uniform to civilian robes.

When he arrived in the Empire, Reginald applied to the Imperial Service, and he was assigned by lot to the staff of the middle-aged Prince of Transylvania. As a very young man just ascended to the throne, this prince had, after much calculation, broken with a century-old tradition of neutrality and backed the eventually-victorious Loyalists in Sunshine Kingdom’s civil war, then convinced several neighboring countries to form the Shine Council and join the nascent Shine and Wild Empire.

At the time of Reginald’s arrival, the Prince of Transylvania had volunteered his country to provide most of the intelligence in investigating and if necessary putting down the Wild Mushroom rebellion, but he asked for a few aides to supplement his native manpower. When Reginald arrived, the Prince liked him on sight, and insisted on including him in the committee responsible for overseeing this risky operation.

At first, Reginald was the most junior member of the committee, given menial tasks but otherwise ignored. Of the ten or so other members, however, before six months had ended, four were no longer present: one was assassinated, one was proven a traitor, one was proven incompetent, and one was, while honest and not completely incompetent, not effective enough to “pull his weight.” Reginald quietly took on most of the responsibility left behind by each of these. By the end of the war, the Prince dissolved the committee and named Reginald his Minister of Intelligence.

Over the next couple of decades, as one might expect in a country whose major industry had historically been intelligence work, he worked closely with the Prince, and the two nurtured a close friendship. When the prince died childless (under suspicious circumstances, near the end of the next war, that turned out to be unrelated) he named Reginald his heir.

In the aftermath of the war that had just ended, the Imperial government expanded its Castle Line defense systems to cover its newly-much-expanded borders; as a training exercise, and to expose malcontents, Reginald sent operatives to infiltrate the surveying and, eventually, building teams.

Over the subsequent decades, he continued to build and improve the Transylvanian “intelligence apparatus,” passing along anything of relevance and use to the Imperial authorities. For example, he provided early (though still after-the-fact, confirming a prior prediction) of Gondolor‘s defection to the Dragon Empire, and followed up with a detailed report on the structure and membership of the international alliance organization that Gondolor founded. When the borders were firmly sealed later that decade, he sent deep-cover operatives into the Dragon Empire, the last just before the symbolic “Closing of the Gates.”

When his organization was blindsided by the disruption of the trade route through the then-independent space station Greyhawk, he established a formal policy of spreading the Transylvanian intelligence “net” as widely as possible among the nations and worlds the Empire came, and would come, into contact with, instead of restricting itself to the nations of the two continents that had hitherto been their chief concern. This policy bore fruit as distant operatives passed on key information during the Arms Race and Spacetime Race, and more concretely as reports provided by his agents contributed significantly to the success of the emergency operation to relieve Oceanus.

After that war, he chose a promising young operative to groom to be his successor.

Filed under: Character Profiles

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Esmeralda

This is the next in the series of profiles of characters who will appear in the Shine Cycle, my fantasy-series-in-preparation.

Esmeralda – Captain of a nation whose ancestors once traveled between universes but had lost that technology (and much else); under her leadership they regained it and joined the Alliance. She now represents her people in the Council of Worlds.

A short, slim, and wiry woman with closely cut bluish-blonde hair. After spending several years in space in ships without reliable artificial gravity, she prefers a fitted and padded athletic costume to robes, even for formal occasions.

Esmeralda is a strong leader, who has earned the trust of her people several times over, but had it from the beginning of her career. Her instinctive grasp of astrogation (and interuniversal navigation), which carried through several different universes where the relevant mathematics was completely different and incompatible, led her to resist, and then have some difficulty, learning the mathematics and other theory behind those disciplines.

Esmeralda came from a hereditary line of leaders of her people; the roots of their government in their interuniversal travels are visible in the fact that the title of each of these rulers has been “Captain.” Her grandfather was the first in his line to live to middle age for centuries, so even though her father died fairly young she did not have to take the position before she was fully trained.

As a child, she was taught, and then continued to study on her own, in the arts of statecraft, war, and politics and such sciences as her people retained the knowledge and tools to apply. She showed something of a gift for mathematics, but was not able to spend much time on it, because her teachers assumed that she would have to take over leadership sooner rather than later and so emphasized the most urgent and practical needs for that role.

In young adulthood, at the age many of her predecessors had been forced to take full command, Esmeralda served in her grandfather’s army and government, in a variety of roles under, alongside, and above most of her grandfather’s commanders. In between assignments, she studied the mathematics and theoretical science of what they called the “Lost Arts,” piecing together knowledge from what fragmentary records of the technology of transportation between universes survived. She began to develop her own ideas of what might fit into the large gaps in their knowledge, but with her grandfather focused tightly on his own priorities and his officers all much older than she was, she kept her thoughts to herself.

On her accession to the Captaincy, however, she gave orders to form two teams of scholars. She directed the first group to investigate her hunches as to the missing ideas that could allow them to regain their lost technology, and the second to consider how their nation could and should respond if either they succeeded or someone from another world initiated contact with them.

Five years after her accession, scholars discovered a library of texts exploring “alternative mathematics” in the depths of her family’s archives. These works described and developed models that were self-consistent within each text, but that did not accurately describe the world they lived in. Esmeralda found this idea fascinating, and in as much of her time as she could spare from the affairs of state, she began studying these new discoveries alongside her researchers.

About a decade after that, her scholars made the final breakthrough that allowed them to bring the moribund interuniversal transit technology back into working order. Actually doing so, applying the experimentally-verified theory to the engineering task of recommissioning equipment that had been left to rust, took about another five years.

The first expedition, other than “test flights,” using the newly-refurbished technology was a voyage of exploration. In the “nearby” world in which the travelers found themselves, they discovered a strong but friendly nation, which was willing to let them set up an embassy, begin trade with its people, and even use that world as a staging point for further expeditions.

After hearing this report, Esmeralda joined the next delegation visiting that world. While there, she met representatives of the Alliance, and began negotiations to trade with them and their allies. About three years later, she was invited to Capitol to address the Imperial Parliament.

While in Capitol, she learned of several star systems, far above the flat world of the two continents, that remained uninhabited by any sentient beings but that were far more hospitable than her people’s current home. On her return to her people, she reminded them of their former life as interuniversal nomads, and began plans to move to a new home. They assembled a fleet, which lifted off nine years to the day after she addressed the Imperial Parliament.

After her people had settled in their new home, Esmeralda again visited Capitol, and agreed to join the Alliance and accept a seat on the Council of Worlds.

Filed under: Character Profiles

2017 Goals Third Quarter Report: Shine Cycle

Another quarter, and another month, has flown by. I began my quarterly “check” of my goals for the year with Saturday’s post, but reserved some of my goals for separate consideration, as I did after the first and second quarters. Today, a look at my goals related to the Shine Cycle, my fantasy series-in-preparation.

Monthly Goals

Before I get to the year-long objectives and goals, here are the goals I set at the end of August for the month:

Remember to write a quarterly goals check at the end of September

I remembered, but dithered on whether to write this post last week or now, and decided on “now.” So I count this as a definite “check.”

For “snowflake step 7” for The Invasion, create “character charts” for all remaining major characters.

Done.

Make consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 21 “points” in my task tracker, though I’m hoping to average more like twice that.

Done: The average has been hovering near 50 “points,” and the lowest recently was 38.

Get at least a quarter of the way into my by-scene outline (six of the 24 “sequences” or equivalent currently identified)

Done, but only just: I believe I’ve gotten through seven “sequences.”

Write at least three character histories.

Again, done, but only just: I had little difficulty with two, then the third gave me much more trouble than I’d expected.

Yearly Goals: So Far

Next, here are the goals I set for the Shine Cycle for the year. For each one, I’ll comment as to how I’m doing on it so far and how likely I think I am to accomplish it by the end of the year. (I’ll again omit the one goal that was accomplished in January.)

Outlining

Objective: Finish a complete and detailed outline of my chosen story.

Goal: In my iterative outlining, outline that story by scene

I’ve now made a good beginning on this. While I don’t think I’ll have finished the outline by the end of October, in time to attempt NaNoWriMo, I should finish this step well before the end of the year.

Goal: Follow the “snowflake method” to at least Step 7 for that story.

As mentioned above, I finished “snowflake step 7” this past month.

Character Development

Objective: Have a biography, history, description, and “character logline” or “motivation summary” for every named character.

Goal: Write at least fifteen character biographies or histories.

The three character histories I wrote this past month were my only progress on this goal this quarter, bringing me to a total of nine this year. My task tracker thinks I’ll get through ten more histories and biographies in the next three months, I’ll upgrade my expectations on this front from “possible but not likely” to “quite possible.”

Goal: Create “character loglines” or “motivation summaries” for at least five characters.

I wrote one more of these this quarter, for a total of nine. My task tracker thinks I’ll get through five more this year. So as I said three months ago, “fifteen looks possible.”

Worldbuilding

Objective: Create sufficiently-complete, sufficiently-detailed, maps of the worlds and areas with which the Shine Cycle is concerned.
Objective: Develop each race and culture that the Shine Cycle is concerned with sufficiently to portray it distinctly and excite potential readers’ interest.

As I mentioned both three and six months ago, I keep steadily adding tasks for specific details required for these objectives to my task tracker … just near the bottom of the queue, so there’s no progress to report. Unless (as I rather hope) something causes me to have to disrupt my methods, though, I expect to get to actually working on goals related to these objectives next year.

Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “race fractalling system” for elves.

I explained last quarter why I couldn’t possibly get to this goal this year; if I had settled on The Invasion as my sole “plotting” target for the year two weeks earlier, this spot in the list of goals would have been filled with something else.

On the other hand, between my “doubling up” of some of the simpler “create tasks for …” tasks and my improved productivity “velocity” of late, my task tracker’s estimate of when I’ll start this goal has shortened from January 2019 to January 2018.

Actual Prose

Goal: Get at least a quarter of the way through the first draft of the story I decide to focus on this year, or 25,000 words in, whichever comes first.
Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the first draft, or 50,000 words in the story I’m focusing on this year.

As I’ve said in previous “quarterly reports,” I consider these unlikely, but I now consider getting to the point of having The Invasion a quarter written (in its first draft of the current conception) by the end of December possible.

Blogging

Objective: Regularly post substantive Shine Cycle-related content here, as an incentive to continued progress and to attract interested future readers.

Goal: Post at least twelve Shine Cycle-related posts (not including writing status updates, year-end retrospectives, and the like) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least eighteen Shine Cycle-related posts (with the same exclusions) to this blog.
Stretch Goal: Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post (with the same exclusions) to this blog every month.

The total count of posts that have appeared so far and what I’ve already written and scheduled for the future stands at fifteen so far. So, goal accomplished, and if I can keep up on character histories eighteen seems even more within my reach. And since I already have a character profile scheduled to run next week, and material for another that just needs to be assembled, one a month is also feasible.

Objective: Create blog posts using “worldbuilding” material created using the various “systems” and question sets.

Goal: In the process of transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” to “background essays,” reduce the length of (the temporary copy of) the former by at least half. It currently stands at about 1500 lines and 36,000 words.
Stretch Goal: Finish transferring material from my answers to “the Wrede questions” into “background essays” and schedule the first post using that material to run on this blog.

I thought about this a couple of times in the last month or so, but have no more progress to report than last quarter.

Next Month

After a disastrous first quarter, I’ve definitely made up some of the ground I lost. God willing, I hope to continue to make progress in the next few weeks. Here’s what I think I may be able to accomplish in the next month:

Make consistent progress: I’ll count this as a success if each week I accomplish 27 “points” in my task tracker, though I’m hoping to average more like twice that.
Write “character histories” for at least two characters.
Create a “character logline” or “motivation summary” for at least two characters.
Outline at least eleven of the identified sequences of The Invasion by scene.

We’ll see.

Writer friends, how are your goals for the year going?

Filed under: Status updates