I spent a lot of this afternoon doing research for draft 3 of my Author Quest submission. After thinking about it a bit, I’ve definitely decided to make the major changes my brother and I talked about the other day when he gave me feedback. I want this story to be as strong as it can be, and I honestly think what he suggested will greatly help.
Unfortunately, the rewrite is going to be rather substantial. I’m looking at changing about 3000 words right now, which is a little under half of my story. I’m also going to be introducing a different setting which I will most likely have to make up; in draft 2, the entire story takes place within the Castle of the Crystal, but now I’ll need to go outside of the castle for a scene or two. I did a lot of research looking into what Gelfling villages look like, but I had a really hard time finding anything. The couple of pictures I did find come from the Dark Crystal graphic novels (both the Creation Myths series and the Legends of the Dark Crystal manga). Nothing I found today is quite right for what I need, so it looks like I’ll be designing my own village for the story. To that end, I’m planning on playing around with a sketch book tonight to hopefully get a better idea of what I need.
Luckily, I actually did start visualizing the area I need in draft 1 (it was the chunk I completely removed in draft 2). So between that, the few pictures I did find, plus sketching, hopefully I’ll have something I can use in the next couple of days.
By the way, if anyone is interested in some reference pictures, I’ve put together a board on Pinterest. The pictures on it are mainly Skeksis and locations because that’s what I’ve needed for my submission so far. But if you’d like to see what I’ve used, feel free to check it out. 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 