the ramble dump
Saturday, November 18, 2006
A Foreword In Hindsight
When you begin a story, you don't really know in which direction it's going to go. Well, I don't. And it can take a while for things to start to come together and for ideas to solidify, and sometimes I'm left changing something over and over and over because every single time there is something I'm not satisfied with. Every time I'll say, 'This is it! This is the absolute final version!', more recently prefixed with the word 'hopefully' with as much emphasis through italics, bolding, underlining or capitalising as I feel my desperation warrants, but then a week or a month later I'll want to go back and change it.
This has been a chronic issue with one story in particular. But then, that's what I get for deciding that I want a story revolving around a character called Master Beef. Why have I been so intent on writing a story about Master Beef? It's been causing me to tear my hair out at various points for the last three years, and with each revision there's been something that I'm just not happy with; something not quite right with how I've written it.
I think...I may be mad. How it's even got to this stage, I do not know.
But now I can honestly say things are finally starting to come together. As I have discussed at intolerable length before, the various components of The Aberration have come from all over the place, but now everything feels relevant, coherent and properly part of the whole, although it has taken a long time for it to be this way.
It is still a story about Master Beef. It has always been a story about Master Beef, and it always will be. There are still one or two characters shamelessly based on people I know that I just thought it would be cool to include. There are also still gratuitous references to a certain video game. There are still these ideas from all over the place, but everything finally feels as though it's starting to properly come together, and although I most definitely do not have it all completely figured out yet (where would be the fun in that?), I think I'm ready to present this story more or less as I want it to be.
I'm not going to lie and say that I won't go back and make some more changes if I see the need to, but whereas with previous revisions there have been feelings of, 'Gngh. It's not great, but it'll do,' thus leading to further revisions later on, this time...I'm just about happy with it. So go read it again!
And here's Chapter 6. It's odd that for so long I've been striving to get Beef just right, basing it on some perception of the character that never was in any previous version of him. But I think I've finally nailed it.
This has been a chronic issue with one story in particular. But then, that's what I get for deciding that I want a story revolving around a character called Master Beef. Why have I been so intent on writing a story about Master Beef? It's been causing me to tear my hair out at various points for the last three years, and with each revision there's been something that I'm just not happy with; something not quite right with how I've written it.
I think...I may be mad. How it's even got to this stage, I do not know.
But now I can honestly say things are finally starting to come together. As I have discussed at intolerable length before, the various components of The Aberration have come from all over the place, but now everything feels relevant, coherent and properly part of the whole, although it has taken a long time for it to be this way.
It is still a story about Master Beef. It has always been a story about Master Beef, and it always will be. There are still one or two characters shamelessly based on people I know that I just thought it would be cool to include. There are also still gratuitous references to a certain video game. There are still these ideas from all over the place, but everything finally feels as though it's starting to properly come together, and although I most definitely do not have it all completely figured out yet (where would be the fun in that?), I think I'm ready to present this story more or less as I want it to be.
I'm not going to lie and say that I won't go back and make some more changes if I see the need to, but whereas with previous revisions there have been feelings of, 'Gngh. It's not great, but it'll do,' thus leading to further revisions later on, this time...I'm just about happy with it. So go read it again!
And here's Chapter 6. It's odd that for so long I've been striving to get Beef just right, basing it on some perception of the character that never was in any previous version of him. But I think I've finally nailed it.
Labels: halo, i am the ramblemaster, the aberration, videogames
