I accidentally has the day 25 commentary mixed in with the novel files, putting a little more than 600 words into my total. Oops! Still, 55,291 is a lot for me to have written during November, and it exceeds the NaNoWriMo goal.

chris@MercuriusJr:~/Writing/Dream Clover/Days$ wc -w *.txt
3006 01.txt
1902 03am.txt
2576 03pm.txt
1619 04am.txt
1321 05am.txt
2404 05pm.txt
2336 06.txt
1123 07am.txt
1228 07pm.txt
1602 09am.txt
2109 09pm.txt
1505 10am.txt
1307 10pm.txt
1033 11am.txt
1331 11pm.txt
1985 12.txt
1216 13am.txt
2515 13pm.txt
3088 14.txt
3113 17.txt
1031 18am.txt
931 18pm.txt
1026 19am.txt
1748 19pm.txt
1242 20am.txt
1727 20pm.txt
779 21am.txt
2262 21pm.txt
1401 25am.txt
1446 25pm.txt
755 26am.txt
2624 28.txt
55291 total

Where to from here? I have some ideas for the final arc of the story, but first I should look back on what I’ve learned during November.

Starting in October, I came up with the basic idea for characters and story in about two hours. I’m certain I had all seven main characters defined at least a little by this point. The basic plot had been developed, although it would rapidly transform, staying true to its roots, but growing off of that, and reshaping itself into something stronger.

The plot really solidified during the snowflaking stage, and I also came to learn more about the characters at this time. Originally, Pinole was going to be strongly portrayed as the story’s villain, up until it’s revealed that Bernard was responsible for the poisoning of the yellow jewel, not Clover and Shamrock. This ended up played down in the written story, though. I also wanted more screen time for Alfalfa and how he viewed changes Bernard went through, from a snarky attendant to someone who would take revenge on the Alsike family for using the Medic family.

I didn’t finish the snowflaking, but I figured I was ready when November came around. I had three arcs planned out. Arc one would be based on dreams and the introduction and learning of magic with Clover and Shamrock. This didn’t work out as planned, however, as the dreams focused on dreams rather than learning magic. The second arc is what I’d really snowflaked, and I was able to get about a good two weeks of writing out of it. However, the use of magic all but went away. A later draft of the story would best address this by having magic learned in arc one dreams and used in arc two events. Finally, the third arc was a one-sentence concept, really. Something along the lines of, “Arle spends time on Earth.”

With a general idea as to what to do, arc one was written with nothing to hold it together. With a fairly thorough snowflaking, arc two was nicely filled out. With no idea what to do, arc three is ambiguous. I’m working together possible ideas, but there’s really no direction, no ending. It’s coming out as an “after-story”, and I do want to explore a bit with Bernard and Alfalfa, but because I put so little focus on the two in the story, it anything Alfalfa goes through will feel exaggerated. Of course, there’s always the second draft to increase Alfalfa’s role within the second arc.

Another thing which helped was the writing I did in October. Not a part of the NaNoWriMo writing, I worked out the history to “Dream Clover” in that month. What happened to the ruling family before the Alsike family took place in the palace? How did the jewels end up spread out across the different planets? Why were two jewels placed on Earth, and how did they come to be in Samuel’s possession? When there’s talk of Alfalfa’s great-great-great grandfather, I’ve traced Alfalfa’s family tree all the way back to the man.

The man’s name was Arvense, by the way. Arvense Lucerne. He was slave to one Hayden, and Hayden attendant to Willden Seamróg. Arvense and Hayden held a relationship much like that of Alfalfa and Bernard, but Hayden and Willden also held a relationship unlike any seen between the Medics and the Alsikes.

As for how Bernard treats Alfalfa, this is not a typical relationship between an attendant and his slave, nor was that of Hayden and Arvense. The friendship Bernard and Alfalfa share shows Bernard’s good side, no matter his attitude, and the way he tries to get the Alsike family to admit all their wrongs makes Bernard the hero of the story in his own right. At least, this is what I’ve aimed for with this character. I do feel this should be expanded upon in a later draft, and I could probably include more indication that the relationship between Bernard and Alfalfa is a forbidden one, where the attendant treats the slave as being on an equal level to himself.

What have I learned? Having the story planned out, plot, events, scenes, makes it crazy easy to write. Writer’s block is not being able to write the next words, sentences, paragraphs. Essentially, not knowing where the scene will go, or not knowing which scene should be next, and not being able to put it in any directiontion to move the story along. If the whole story is plotted out, there probably isn’t much room for writer’s block. Sure, there might be difficulty in getting a character from point A to point C when you realize there’s no way for point B to be plausible, but write it down as best you can. Later drafts can refine this.

Next for “Dream Clover” is to finish the final arc. I’m going to just go with the flow and see where it gets me. A second drafts for me would probably be to clean up little bits and pieces here, and make sure everything is readable. With a cleaned-up second draft, the next step would be to pull the story together. Link arc one and arc two together by magic learned in arc one and used in arc two. This could add whole new scenes and chapters which would need to go through the “second draft cleaning”, but I’d still put the initial clean-up before this. The reason for this is to take a little break from writing to see how clean-up goes.

Once the links between arcs one and two are in place, I think linking arc two and arc three will be a matter of linking charcters and history. While arc one focuses on two characters, arc two introduces more characters, and arc three does something with those characters now that their main story is over. It’ll be revealed that after Bernard’s event with the rainbow jewels, that his mind isn’t all together (already mentioned) and that Alfalfa’s been caring for him. Even though Bernard’s family–including Ceciliate–has been demoted to slave class, and Alfalfa’s family has been promoted to attendant class, Alfalfa continues to watch over and care for Bernard, his one and only master. It’s expected for Alfalfa and Ceciliate to spend a lot of time together during the time between the two arcs, as he cares so dilligently for her younger brother. Get the two to spend time on Earth together at some point (the planned idea is for Bernard to end up on Earth, with Alfalfa having to find him; he can ask Ceciliate to come along as his slave, using that as an excuse to the royal family to allow her to travel with him to Earth, when really he knows she’ll want to find her brother as well) would allow Alfalfa and Ceciliate to be equals to one another during their search. There’s a lot of relationship potential for other characters as well.

That’s the character part. The history portion would come in the form of questions asked in arc two and answers for them in arc three. They needn’t even be introduced as questions in the second arc. An example is the blue jewel on Earth. If each jewel was hidden on a respective planet, then why is the blue jewel on the green planet? And who hid the jewels? What happened to the exiled family? It should be similar to finding the giant mirror in the green room with a cut out piece the same size as Shamrock’s mirror. (And just where did Samuel get that mirror from in the first place?)

Over 1,250 words written. I’ve gone over my morning goal! Wait, there are no more goals, are there? Perhaps there should be, although word counts for commentaries are meaningless.

I’m going to break from this writing for a while, though, as I’m way behind on so many things after a month of writing, and the time spent snowflaking the month before that.

The concept behind the green jewel is that Samuel has both the blue and green jewels, and he gives the green jewel to Sarah every night while they dream. Because Sarah has the green jewel in her dream, she remembers her dream when she wakes up (although the dreams didn’t stay with her the first few mornings). However, because she does not have the jewel with her by day, the daytime events do not carry over as memories in her dreams. She remembers her dreams when awake, but she does not remember being awake when dreaming. Samuel remembers both at all times.

In a planned arc-transition scene, the jewels have started to regain their power. Here is the original concept I wrote, originally planned for arc two:

Sarah stops by Samuel’s house to borrow white-out. Samuel’s father says “He’s up in his room,” but when Sarah goes upstairs, she finds the door open and Samuel not there.

Inside Samuel’s room, Sarah looks around a little. She hadn’t been in Samuel’s room since the night she visited him when he was ill. She looked at a container of marbles, and found two familiar stones: one green and one blue. Sarah lifted the green one in-between her fingers, a feeling of nostalgia coming over her from her childhood, and a dreamlike haze filled her mind as she recalled the same jewel from her vivid dreams.

As Samuel pushes the door fully open, Sarah spins around toward him, dropping the green jewel into her pocket. She explains why she’s in his room, and Samuel says he knows. He went to get something downstairs, and his father saw him and let him know she was there on Samuel’s way up the stairs.

Samuel tosses a thing of white-out to Sarah, then she hurries home, saying she as a lot of work to do, so she cannot stay.

That night, when Sarah enters her dream, something is different. She has memories of her waking life. Suddenly she feels as if a second person has merged with her, and that person is herself. She realizes that when she was awake she could remember what happened in her dreams, but not the other way around. Now that she has the green jewel, she remembers her waking life even as she dreams. And she now knows that it truly is Samuel playing the role of Shamrock, not just an illusion of her dreams.

I actually forgot to write a chapter with this, and remembered it over 800 words into the PM chapter today. I could have rewritten Sarah’s reaction to seeing Arle as one of surprise, realizing that her dreams really did happen, but I didn’t want to throw out this transition portion. Rather than try juggling things, I’ll simply move forward. It’ll be understood, by this commentary, that Sarah has learned about the dreams being “real”, and Samuel knows she knows.

If I hit a roadblock later this week, I can write that chapter, but for now I’ll leave it out. Because I wrote the above quoted piece before November, it does not qualify as a portion of my NaNoWriMo word count. That’s all right, though, because…

NaNoWriMo Goals

I finished this morning at 50,975 words. Back in October, I wondered if this word count could be reached. The truth is, if I didn’t skip out on writing Monday, I would have had it then. The further truth is that if writing conditions were a little better for me last week, I would have hit it by Friday, and I could always have reached it Friday night or Saturday. For me, that’s very “wow”.

There’s mention of Dreamers, people with a white light shining down on them, going into nightmares and turning them into pleasant dreams. Imagery of “Touched By an Angel” may come to mind. It’s not intended to be religious on any way, but could be interpreted in such a way by a sleeping person whose dream is visited by a Dreamer.

In the morning, 1,228 words. Evening, 1,885 words. Total for the day is 3,113 words. Quite nice.

Actually, considering how tired I was, and how I stopped at various points to decide on what should happen next, it’s understandable for the word could to not exceed 1,250. It’s not that the characters were failing to direct the story. I simply needed certain things to happen and other things to not happen, and I needed the cooperation of the characters to fit into the mold. What happens with Arle in this chapter in necessary for the next plot point.

Since I hadn’t finished the chapter, I decided to merge AM and PM writing into a single chapter.

During lunch today, I wasn’t even thinking about how things will go for the third arc. I have a rough idea, but nothing I can pull any significant bit of story from. I’d handle it when I reached that point, so I wasn’t thinking about it one bit while walking around outside, and enjoying the warmth of the sun. Then, it hit me. The perfect idea.

I’ll still try to stretch out arc two as much as I can. I don’t want to spend more than a week on arc three if I don’t have to, as arc two stands as the story-based arc, and arc three is “simply” the character-based arc. I can do that because this is only the first draft of the story. There’s plenty of room to grow the characters in all arcs in later draft, as well as pull story together in the first arc, and add to it in the third arc.

The best part of the realization for the third arc is it can still incorporate the loose idea I had in the first place, and it actually builds well on top of it.

Following 1,123 words with 1,875 words makes for a nice 3,088 words for the day.

I’ll admit to a few minor rewrites in the PM chapter. I had no where else to go with it and still had time to write, so I fixed up a few scenes to better reflect my original plan (such as having Meliliot appear and collapse out in the snow, rather than inside the cave.

The plant life and sunlight at the end of the cave was very much made up as I typed. Not a single word of it was thought up prior to being typed out. I did struggle to figure out how to fit the violet jewel into the chapter.

The month is almost half over. I need to see how much I can stretch out this arc, as after a week, it’s more than halfway completed. There is room for stretching in there.

“The confrontation continued until Bernard and Alfalfa appeared. Bernard handed the yellow jewel to Crimson.”

This line says it all. I wanted to write a lot in here, with magic being used, but I ran out of time. For the PM session, I filled in more material before this, writing up the confrontation, although it could be make longer; I lacked time due to having less writing time on the commute home today. I also added in a necessary moment where Bernard makes on attempt to keep the jewel for himself.

This extra writing session increased the word count by 806 words, totalling it at 1985. Quite low, and I wanted more added into the confrontation. It’s not ready to end when it does.

This chapter was mostly just making it al up as I went along. I know where I want the story to go. I’m struggling to get it there. I’m fearing that the difficulty in getting it there will make getting to the next two areas nearly impossible for the characters.

NaNoWriMo Goals

With 1,331 written in the afternoon, that brings the day’s total to 2,364, which is 136 under the daily goal. However, the overall total is 26,402 words (more than 50% of the way there!), with my own personal “weekday-oriented goal” at 17,500 words, and the NaNoWriMo averaged daily goal at 18,334 words. I think having a 8,068 to 8,902 word lead over those two scales is rather nice. Better not slack off…