Ghost Mist Progress Report 1

Okay, so I had been working on revising my storyboard. I have never written such a detailed storyboard. I started writing it out long hand in a little book (I know you know the kind) and I only got to chapter eight before I had filled the entire book. Each chapter has an average of 38 points. So I started writing in another little book (please note that this doesn't include character sketches, location descriptions, or the mythology), and I believe I got to chapter 12 in the next little book. As far as I'm concerned, I've only finished writing the storyboard for the introduction. Twelve chapters for an introduction? Even I don't know if that's a good sign or not. It's even been taking me a considerable amount of time typing my notes into my netnote program - ARGH!

But today, I decided to take it to the hoop and write the first chapter, even though I'm not done the storyboard. So, I bet you're wondering why I'm breaking my own rules. Well, I have already written this novel before, I'm just gutting it so hard that it'll hardly be recognizable as the same thing. So, the whole old novel acts as a storyboard in many ways, so I don't exactly feel like I'm cheating, but I do wish that my storyboard was done.

I keep telling myself that it's okay, because I didn't have 'Mystic Wings' all planned out while I was writing 'Dragon's Moon' and I didn't have 'Mark of a Goddess' planned out while I was writing 'Mystic Wings', so it's okay. The story is going to be the same and the mythology is going to be the same so I just need to pull the two things together.

The thing I've been struggling with is Fillix. He's the second main character and I love him, but his story line isn't as intense as Tesai's, so I'm having a hard time accepting the comic relief aspect of this tale. But I NEED comic relief or my readers will expire from shear ... pantihose.

Regardless, I just finished writing the first chapter, and I think it went pretty well. It turned out to be about 3500 words. Now I know my usual readers spazz if it's less that 6000. However, I'll be attempting to scrape in a new audience as well as the old one, and I feel like I would be doing myself a disservice if I wrote really long chapters to begin with. I'd probably bore my new readers. I can have the fun of writing longer chapters once my readership for the story is established. Actually, I think that I'll earn a boy following for the first time ever with this story. It's not very feminine and though it has a strong romantic plot, it is more action oriented with lots of fighting and snappy dialogue. We'll see. I've got a boy reading it right now. Maybe he'll like it^^.