The First Post

I've decided to keep a story journal, tracking the progress of my novel, Out of Tadara. I've done this before, but never with a great deal of regularity. Now, my hope is that keeping a record of what I've done and when will push me to write more than I do.

The story, a fantasy novel I've been tinkering with for something like two years (in its current incarnation; including previous drafts, it's been more like five years), tracks a group of people on their journey through new and wondrous lands fraught with magic and magical creatures, as well as fantastic perils, and ultimately, an ancient evil that threatens to destroy their very world. Yes, I know; it's frighteningly original. Don't be intimidated.

Out of Tadara follows, mainly, a young amnesiac who awoke on a river island in the middle of a vast, untamed continent. This is Tadara. (I don't much like the name, but nothing better has so far come to mind.) Four years later (present day) the boy is running along the southern shore of his island (well, I say "island", but really, it's the land formed when a river splits, runs for several miles, then converges again) when he finds a gravely injured girl, unconscious and washed up on shore. The girl, he will find out, is the last survivor of a party of travelers making their way across the ocean; they came too close to the forbidden continent and were attacked. The title, "Out of Tadara", refers to the boy's undertaking, wherein he tries, at the behest of gods or demons or his own insanity (don't misunderstand: he doesn't know who's talking to him. I do), to take the girl home. On the way, wackiness ensues. (I'd like to further detail the story, but for it to make much sense, it would entail a full-story synopsis, which I don't really feel like getting into.)

That's the main storyline (the "ELKN" storyline, named for the first initial of the four main characters, Ethan (the boy), Laran (the girl), Kara, and Nalyn, two natives they meet along the way); a secondary storyline (the "SEY" storyline, for Scamper, Errti, and Yui) follows a young boy, Scamper, as he tries to ensure that his friend, Errti, an unhatched dragon, won't be born into the life of servitude under which dragons currently suffer. Yui, a dragon rider, will be convinced to help.

Honestly, these are two vastly different stories which share only the world in which they take place; it's been suggested to me that I split them into two separate novels, and develop them thusly. I'd like to do that, and can see it working, but right now, I want to see if I can't make it work as one novel, albeit one really long novel. If I include every storyline I wanted (7 and counting, I think), I can't imagine the whole thing would be any shorter than 300,000 words, but realistically speaking, that won't happen. As it is, I'm cutting characters and storylines left and right, and it sucks. (One character, Caladora, had been around for two years when I gave her the axe.) But you do what you must, right?

Well. I could stay here and talk about the story for ages, but recently, I've found I spend more time talking about the story than I spend actually writing it. I'm hoping this blog will help remedy that.

My deadline for the first draft is Dec. 31st, 2007.

Wish me luck.

-- Cris