Followup to my Earlier Post

This past Friday I blogged about recent progress on "A Far Sun." Since then I've met with a couple of my story consultants (my wife and her oldest daughter, the scientist), and they have helped me work through some sticking points. To wit:

1. I will write in some pages (30 or 40) about the two characters who will be making their appearances in act III. The audience will be in on the surprise/secret, just not my heroes.
2. I have also figured out why the two others left the Facility (in the beginning of the story) and did not ensure they had a way to get back in. Something to do with not having any power ...
   
3. I have some pretty good inklings why Adam is so critical to the sun-skin people (this was Lina's intuition/premonition when she first finds them). Jane will figure out how to beat the disease; Adam is the key. And it's only Adam, as well.
4. Adam will get to save the world, and not just by donating some of his genetic material, either. In the end at the big climax, he will be the one who shuts down the Chamber and keeps the reactor from going into melt-down.
5. However, in the process of reactivating the Chamber the big bad guy (the Head Librarian, in case you wondered) gets his comeuppance. He gets zapped into another universe, but can you guess where?
6. Someone else will sacrifice himself/herself to save the others. No, it's not any of my three heroes or Jane's love interest, either. At least, I don't believe it will be him.
   

My biomedical researcher stepdaughter (she really is a scientist!) has been über helpful. Her PhD researcher husband also had some comments, too. Let's just say I have sources to help make all the biological stuff Jane gets to do in act III, make sense.

And perhaps most importantly I have some reasoning to explain the observed effects of the disease that's killing most of the newborn babies in this new world. When I explained how my invented disease (so far it's a virus) was affecting people, my stepdaughter immediately had some really good explanations for why it might work the way it does. Why some live and some die. Of course for Jane to figure out what it's doing will take some experimentation, and with only people being affected by the disease it will be quite difficult to test her theories. She'll just have to make a few educated guesses and hope she gets it right. Because people's lives are at stake.

Fun stuff!

Web site traffic trivia

Just for grins I added up the numbers showing the browser versions visiting my site. Exclusive of the various search bots, etc., here is the breakdown.

• IE 6.0 - 2535 hits or 45.4%
• Firefox - 2434 hits or 43.5%
• IE 7.0 - 622 hits or 11.1%

I'm tempted to say "wow" but I suppose these numbers are not atypical. I am a technologist and probably most of the people visiting my site fit the same demographic. We're much more likely to use Firefox than Internet Exploder. I suppose I am surprised by the IE 6.0 vs IE 7.0 numbers. I'd have thought more people would have upgraded, since Micro$oft is so intent upon distributing IE 7.0. I didn't think you could subscribe to automatic Windows update and not get it.

Personally I don't like IE 7.0. It lacks in the usability department. That says it all, for me. Firefox isn't perfect, version 2.x uses too much memory, but having various add-ins and skins, etc., makes it so much more usable and friendly. No wonder the numbers say what they do.

March's numbers are much different. I think I had an audience of visitors with a markedly different demographic that have since departed. I know I did since in March I was posting to LiveJournal and now I've stopped. Here they are:

• IE 7.0 - 4575 or 40.6%
• IE 6.0 - 4153 or 36.8%
• Firefox - 2555 or 22.6%

This is just mildly interesting.

Progress on "A Far Sun"

It looks like it was the end of February when I last mentioned where I was with my current writing project "A Far Sun." Back then I was about 86,000 words and working hard on getting to the end of act II.

Now I'm somewhere past 105,000 words and I haven't begun act III, yet. Act II is complete, and the crisis right at the end (of act II) is pretty good. So, what happened? Surely I didn't have 20,000 words left when I really thought I was almost there?

Well, in the process of trying to craft act III I was given a really good suggestion (thanks to teh Spork) that has forced me to go back and "slightly" alter things in the very beginning. I'm still not completely satisfied with how I've set things up, but suffice it to say I have written in a couple of (what were previously very minor) characters who will have significant roles to play in act III. My dilemma is how (or whether) to weave them into the greater story (you know, the 400 pages between the first couple scenes and act III).

Perhaps the audience should be in on what's happening. Maybe they should know what my heroes will discover when they get to the Library (yeah, the second half of act II is all about Adam and Jane--my heroes--traveling to this place called "the Library"). I'd like to keep it a surprise, except for the jarring disconnect I have at the moment.

What's this all about, you ask? I'm damned confused, you say? When a writer introduces a couple of characters in the beginning of the story you might reasonably think they have some role to play. Actually, you know they do, or the writer wouldn't be telling you about them. But in my story you aren't hearing about them at all until many pages later (in act III). I'd really like to link them in along the way so the readers aren't going "so that's why they're there!"

So, I'm deliberating and working through this (small) partial rewrite. If I write their actions into the story, which I can certainly do (because I've already sketched out their backstory), then the audience will certainly know what's going to happen. Somewhat. Maybe it enhances interest in the conflict I've set up, particularly if I make the "big bad guy" pretty ... er, big and bad. If so, then I've got about 30-50 pages to write and weave in. Not altogether bad, and it causes act III to be a little longer (because I want to keep the lengths of the acts balanced).

I don't know exactly how long this rewrite will take. My illustrator said the current semester/term was ending May 9, so by implication this means she'll have some time to work on character concepts. I sent her the latest character bios and second draft of the first two acts (about 440 pages in the fixed font, 380 pages in the nice proportional font, i.e., it's rather long). Needless to say I am all atwitter to see her ideas, and I am already priming myself for her ideas to completely not match mine. And that's fine with me.

Stay tuned.