General divagation in A Mare and Her Dog

Huh.
I did that thing. And I plan on going on, before you ask, because the point of doing this is keeping an incremental effort for a year. Hell, I am not even writing this blog entry for the sole follower of it, but for my future self and any future spelunkers that may descend into the depths of the internet archives and say "Hey, let's read this crud and see how many neurones die!". This is a warning, Possible Future Reader.
Because this thing, well, has problems, quite a few. Let's tackle them one by one, because self awareness is key to a lot of things.
[A] First and foremost: it's boring.
And that's okay, to a certain extent. Because I never planned this to be a terribly exciting piece of writing-- tihs is, more than adventure, Slice of Life with some bits of adventure sparkled in.
But the problem is than this is just dull at times-- hell, I just published chapter XI, the first chapter were something happens. I have plans for the future, yes, even if I don't plan in some Epic Quest of Epicness (No, Tom, I am sorry: the description is right. Her quest is a personal one, nothing else. I won't hold a grudge if you unfollow it, honestly), but I am now realizing why all travel literature is either terribly romanticised or has at least some small E.Q.o.E. at the side.
Why? Because when you take out both elements -romanticism and quest-, what you get is terribly boring most of the time, both to read and to write. What I don't know is why I didn't predict this, being a wandering artisan by trade.
Well, maybe because I have had something Applejack didn't have:
(B) Second: It has no character interaction.
One thing I cannot deny loving of the story is the intro chapter. It has a calm, pratchet-esque style of ambiance humor that goes with the mood I wanted to set in from the start. Then, as the days advanced, it sank on me:
It's nearly the only kind of humor I can do. Ambiance humor is vital to a good novel that features worldbuilding, I think, because it gives you a chance to shove your world down people's throats without them noticing. I dropped the ball in recent chapters, which is what made me realize the mistake I had made in pairing the character with a dog. No conversations. No character development. No chance to hint at the reason of the quest. Nothing. What will she do, give cryptic hints at traders? Pfffft no.
She will get some travel buddies -people who, by chance, goes in the same direction as her and wants someone to talk with-, that much I had planned from the start, but Winona has more or less a kobold-esque inteligence at most. Thinking back, I should've paired AJ with something better like, I dunno, a rock or a ball, because then I can say "Hey look she is crazy from being in such a boring world and talks to the ball!"
More or less like this:

Yeah.
Stranded Applejack. That sounds fun and even more unoriginal than my west-traveling horse(1).
[C] Third: No conflict.
Well, not in a literal sense. Night XI proved than there can be, in fact, conflict. But this lacks any longlasting conflict or nemesis(2). As a writer, I can't put enough emphasis in how important antagonists are for a plot: It allows you to
- Show what could've gone wrong with your character if Pikachu hadn't stopped him from hastening his regeneration from the gem and then fussing with Gundramon, or some crap to that effect.
- Have magnificent bastards, because magnificent bastards are so fun to write. I could have a good one, at least.
- To give a stronger feeling of the Cohesive Moral of the story. C.M.'s, I think, are a vital part of travel literature, because it hangs so much in the hero's journey -even if I mostly avoided the tropes that identify said journeys- and hence on character development. Hell, the reason of the journey is what brings it all together, what defines the character's every action, and the C.M. is at the core of the reason, hence the name I gave it. This, I feel, is the most important one.
[D] Fourth, and less important: No worldbuilding
This is something I can remedy quite easily, one that I am already correcting, and one that, lastly, bugs me to no end.
I didn't put any worldbuilding in Tharata. And, again, that's fine to a certain extent, for a good and a bad reason. The good one is that I had planned it to be a mostly boring place to give Applejack a chance to gather recourses before heading into the wilds of the Prasante-Broka region. In that sense, I achieved it. I made a place that is boring to read.
The bad reason is that I decided it to be boring for this reason:
"The borders! That's the place were culture is at its less"
Which, thinking back, is very, very stupid. The borders aren't where culture is at its less. The borders, and in fact any poor/farming area, are were culture is at its best. In the center/touristic areas, culture is recycled and processed until its just a meh. The poor areas are where culture is made. I don't say this to show how much of a countercultural rebel I am-- I say it as a fact. Just look at food, for example, and its cycle within cultures:
[Standard food costs too much]->[Poor people, who has developed wit out of need, needs to eat something that isn't shit]->[Poor people makes food that tastes well with a bit of wax and a dead fly]->[Some rich fuck sees the wax&fly thing]->[All the rich fucks eat the wax&fly thing to show how clever and revolutionary they are]->[Suddenly prices of wax rise because rich people is eating it now]->[cycle starts anew]
And this happens with everything: Language, greetings, toys, you name it. In retrospective, I should have put far more worldbuilding in Tharata.
E Fifth: It's a started journey.
Thinking back, Applejack reads a bit like a bad OC: Showing off how experienced she is, how many places she's visited, and how many languages she can, at least, understand? Trying to shove the coolness of a character is a tenant of bad characters.
And yeah, I am the first one to admit: Reading -and writing!- Applejack learn the ropes of long distance travel, and how to use the gifts she's be- Wait no spoilers. It would've been fun to read that, to cut it short.
But I decided to show her About To Reach A Big Part of the Travel, because:
- It gives me the chance of slowly hinting the reasons of her travel in obscure ways, which is fun to write.
- I really wanted to have that bar scene at the first chapter.
- Starting from the start would have given the story too much of a serious note, I think. She has been about to die many times, and will be in that situation quite often, and in some of the places she's visited her body would take decades to be found. That grim of a story telling? A big no, for this one.
And with that I am done with tihs. I wrote 1500 words, acording to Akelpad, and I should have written Night XII already. Back to the basement I go.

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1: You know what's the worst part? The idea was "Yeah, who would walk towards the sun every goddamn day? do they want to end blind or something?". Then, like three days after publication, logic hit me like a brick bag. I should have had her traveling south, so I could make bad puns about it.
2: For now, at least. I do have plans for a few of those.

Comments

[Aatxe360]

My name isn't Tom. Also...Applejack!