Explicating Elle

Project 30 Challenge day 9

See the intro post

Progress report

I had meant to get to writing earlier in the evening, since I finished my walk right around 8pm, but I got distracted and ended up not getting to it until 9:45, which means another late night for me. But I wrote about 500 words, crossing the 3k mark and setting up the first obstacle for Roselia to overcome as she tries to work out what happened while she was unconscious. Lots of things happened, but there’s only so much she can access at the moment, and some of the things are outside of anything she might think of. It will be interesting to see how she solves this first problem.

Factoid

Because the foil character is from another universe (I think) then I am going to run into the age-old story issue of language. He will not speak the same language, so how do I get them able to communicate? There are a couple of options, and I’m not sure which direction it’ll take yet, but there’s the “magic” option that is often used to bypass this issue entirely, like Doctor Who’s translation matrix or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’s Babel Fish. The deity and the Great Tree could facilitate this if I wanted to do that.

The other route is to make learning the language part of the story, like in Project Hail Mary or the movie Arrival (and the short story it was based on). Going this way would add a considerable amount of time to the story, as it does take a lot of time and effort to learn a language enough to communicate. I have experienced the frustration of being unable to speak as fluently in a second language as I can in a first, so it could add another layer of conflict.

I’m not sure if there is going to be any kind of ticking timer in the story, and I don’t know how long in story things will take place, but whatever I do I want to make it interesting to read. If that means using the shortcut to communication, that is what I’ll have to do. But for right now, I still have a good chunk of writing to do before it even becomes an issue.

Inspiration – Music

(That should tell you how eclectic my music taste is)

P.S. I have come to realize that with how slow I’m writing, I’m definitely not going to finish in the 90 days I had hoped (see the initial post). I think I’m okay with that. Right now I’m aiming for 90,000 words, which would be about 300 pages, and since I am currently at 3,149, that means I have 88,651 left, and if I manage 250 a day (which I’ve been hitting most of the time) then it will take me nearly a year to finish. Which… is not ideal, to say the least. BUT I’m not going to worry about it, I’m just going to keep moving forward and I’ll finish when I finish.

Thoughts to share? I have a contact page now!

#project challenge