Hey everyone, how’s the week been? Did you have a good Halloween? 🙂
Last week was mainly spent on editing the book. I finished editing a third chapter and sent it to its author. Then the first chapter came back to me, so I spent the weekend working on that (just finished those edits yesterday).
Once that was finished, I found myself with some unexpected extra time. After reading some of The Wealthy Renter (which I picked up over the weekend – very excited to read it!), I turned my attention back to the Make Your Way story. I’ve been wanting to go over the character’s dialogue for over a month now, but haven’t had the time (or energy to be editing more in the middle of book edits). Going over the dialogue actually led me to a bit more worldbuilding for City of the Dead – I got stuck wondering what someone would say rather than “thank goodness.” “Thank goodness” didn’t sound right to me, coming from someone living in that particular world. What immediately came to mind was “thank the gods,” but I hadn’t actually thought about whether or not people living in the City worship gods. But they do keep altars for the dead, so I settled on “thank the ancestors” as what would probably be said in that case.
I did the initial edits to the story using the Game Book Authoring Tool (GBAT) file, but in the end decided to randomize all the sections and just start working off of a rich text format document instead (which is easier to search through). I went through all 73 sections looking at dialogue; I’m not sure how well I succeeded in differentiating the characters….but there are some definite subtle differences in how they speak. One character uses really long words and no contractions (assuming I got rid of them all properly) because she’s a lady who is extremely bookish/studious. Another character uses more formal words, but they’re tempered with contractions because she is exhausted (and has more real world experience than her studious twin). The minor soldier characters don’t use big words (again, assuming I successfully caught all of their dialogue). The only character’s speech that hasn’t been changed is the avatar/player character. I made that character purposely vague because they are the “you” in typical choose your own adventure-style books. For that reason, I wasn’t really planning on giving them a specific style of speech, especially since the player has the choice between playing a smarter character or a stronger character (and I was not going to give different versions of dialogue depending on that choice! The story would have ballooned to double the length it is now!!)
Depending on how the rest of the week goes with the book edits, I’m hoping to go over the Make Your Way story a few more times (or at least once more really in depth); after that, I’d really like to submit it! Wish me luck!!! 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 