Hello and welcome to the second bi-weekly update of my life. Long story short? My wrist hurts and I read the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve started the early worldbuilding for two more nations on Enterin in order to round out the continent more. And work on the novel is progressing slowly but surely.
Physical condition
I’ve got a few physical problems to attend to. The first is an impacted tooth that’s been around since my second year of college, around 2017. It started to become irritated again and I discovered that it may be the cause of my sinus problems for the past few years. So this tooth’s gotta go. Thanks to covid, that won’t be until mid November so we’ll call it a birthday present. In the meantime I just have to be vigilant with brushing and flossing and keep an eye out for any sort of infection. The good news is that this was already something my dentist and I have talked about in the past, so this isn’t much of a surprise for us, we were always planning on doing this after I got my wisdom teeth out.
The other problem I have right now involves the downside to working on your computer all day. My right wrist has been aching recently and I’m fairly certain it’s from all the typing and clicking that it has to do. It isn’t enough to cripple my progress but it sure is a warning sign that I should probably slow down and find more time away from the computer. Usually, that wouldn’t be a problem at all, I’d love to get away from work for a bit to make sure my body doesn’t break down. Right now there aren’t many alternatives besides cautious walks around the neighborhood, avoiding any contact with other human beings, but the weather isn’t going to let me keep this up for long, folks are predicting an early and cold winter up here. I already take weekends off, but I’m going to try and find other ways to work away from my keyboard and mouse, probably going to physically write down my thoughts in a notebook and then transcribe them from there. On top of that, I’ll probably take an extended break in one of these coming weeks just to keep myself healthy. In the meantime, I’m going to keep track of my screen time and take more regular breaks away from it. We’ll see what works, and I’ll keep an eye on myself going forward.
Lord of The Rings is Pretty Good
Bad news aside, let’s talk about Tolkien. It’s been a long time since I first read Fellowship in late middle school, 2011 to 2012ish, for the most part I’ve forgotten what actually happens in the book. Now that I’ve got more time than I know what to do with, I decided to go back to the classic story that dictates pretty much every fantasy world since then. Especially after working on a BA for Dark Souls, which was directly inspired after Hidetaka Miyazaki read Tolkien’s work even when he couldn’t grasp all of the high english language. Not to mention how ingrained Tolkien’s lore is in the DNA of most medieval fantasy settings, for better or worse.
I came into reading it specifically to see how the book is literally constructed in order to get a feel for the more practical side of being an author, what do you actually put on the page? Tolkien spares no detail and is more than willing to take a detour into exposition in order to tell you about the land of Arnor, a kingdom that once existed but has been out of the picture for thousands of years. And yet, in modern times we’re always told not to do this, don’t just move into exposition land just so you can show off your intricate lore to the world. But I think I now realize why Tolkien gets away with it. All of the exposition in the first half of this book is either through dialogue or poetry. The only time I can remember the narrator directly telling the reader about the world is during the prologue where it sets up the history of the Shire, which is explained in the meta-narrative as written by Bilbo.
Every bit of lore Tolkien slowly feeds you comes primarily from Gandalf, Bilbo, or Strider and it’s rarely ever done in a standard conversation, there’s always something larger just behind it. Bilbo’s stories contribute to the sharp contrast between the old mystical world and the modern darker world, Frodo’s always comparing the failures in his journey to the idolized version of the Hobbit within his own mind. Gandalf always has the greatest level of mystery to him, he’s this fun crazy wizard who comes and goes when he wants to for the first quarter of the book before he disappears off the face of the Earth where he can no longer provide any guidance to the four hobbits. I actually quite like how the exposition mentor disappears very early on in this part of the story, it sets up the later scene in Moria where everyone is forced to realize that they have to go on without Gandalf. But what they don’t realize at the time is that they’ve made most of the journey without him so far. Then we finally have Strider, also known as Aragorn, who is first presented as this shadowy figure who could possibly be a spy, but we quickly learn he’s just a depressed fellow who spends his days in the woods recounting stories of humanity’s failure. Every time he speaks exposition, it reveals something about himself as a character, everyone questions how he can know all these things if he’s just some ranger from nowhere. The twist being that he isn’t some ranger from nowhere. Finally with all of these moments there is always a hesitation, something gets held back from the audience for one reason or another and it leaves the reader with questions.
The best example of this comes in a pleasant twist when Strider mentions the story of Gil-Galad and it turns out Sam of all people knew this story already, thanks to Bilbo’s work as a translator. And as they’re talking about this, we have Weathertop acting as a backdrop, the site of an ancient battle during the Witch King’s rise to power. I love this moment because throughout these chapters, Sam is always doubting Strider. In the film we see his suspicions clear up around the point where they’re near Weathertop, but here in the book he is fed up with almost everything Strider ever does. For the majority of their time together, Sam thinks Strider is some sort of agent of Sauron in disguise, until they start talking about the stories the two of them know. Strider knows them because he grew up in Rivendell, while Sam knows them because Bilbo translated the stories he brought back from Rivendell. So when Strider and Sam realize they have this connection we have these great moments of character that also inform the reader of the finer details in the world. This works many times better than a flat description of the fall of Arnor, because in the end this exposition doesn’t matter to the reader until they want to go back and try to fill in all of the pieces of the deeper puzzle.
Lucid Updates
As part of my effort to fill out the rest of the map of Enterin I’ve begun outlining the basic ideas for the next two nations on the continent. One based on the southeastern shores of Enterin and the other based on the northwest to center north region. Usually, when I create a new nation I start with a high concept idea before I work my way down into the details of religion, economy, and interaction with their neighbors. This process finishes with one large country that’s then divided up into three or more subcultures, along with a rough outline of their governing structure, and a myth or two from their religion. This eventually gets fleshed out as I set stories in and around them, which is why the Twin Realms, Greyden, and the southern Corlans have the most detail surrounding them. The two new additions to the history are the United Duchies of Theresa and a mongol inspired nomadic culture that I haven’t made a name for yet. Information about these two new nations will be put out later in a different blog post.
Work on Lucid itself still continues even if it’s slow going. I try to write 2000 words a day, but lately I’ve had to cut back on this due to stress and wrist problems. I’m still reworking the early plot to make it more interesting than what I initially planned, but I still like all of the changes I’ve made so far. The next challenge is going to be updating the characters themselves so that they are better suited to the new plot. This is mostly done through writing individual scenes between two characters. The good news is that in the outline, everyone’s actively contributing to the plot, no one feels vestigial anymore, which was always the greater problem for me.
The next goal for the month is to move past the outlining phase and just write out this draft as much as I can without hurting myself. I’m still on track to start sharing early drafts to people interested in providing feedback. Other than that, I’m also going to keep developing the two new nations for further blog posts. I’ll do one more blog post before then on the 18th of October as a check in and then I’ll hopefully have something to show for it by November!
Good luck with school university friends!
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