{"id":6046,"date":"2011-09-29T20:11:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T01:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=6046"},"modified":"2011-09-29T20:11:42","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T01:11:42","slug":"on-making-merlin-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6046","title":{"rendered":"On Making Merlin Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, I wrote an outline for a Merlin<\/i> novel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I sent it off to the editor handling the Merlin<\/i> novels at Random House Childrens UK, and about six weeks later it came back with a very nice rejection letter<\/a>. The editor liked the story, but they weren’t publishing original Merlin<\/i> novels, just novelizations of the BBC Series.<\/p>\n

While I mused at times on how to de-Merlin<\/i>-ify the story, I never sat down to actually do it. Even a year ago<\/a>, when I thought about doing it, I didn’t.<\/p>\n

Last week, I dug out the USB drive where I had the outline saved, and I printed off a fresh copy.<\/p>\n

I finally read it on the train this morning. I pulled out a red pen, began crossing out names on the first page and writing in new names, crossed out a sentence, then crossed out another, and then…<\/p>\n

I stopped.<\/p>\n

I’d realized two things.<\/p>\n

The first, and the less critical of the two, was that I need to reacquaint myself with the source material I was riffing on for the story. It will prove useful. And there’s one other piece of material I need to refamiliarize myself with that was not important two years ago but is now, considering how I intended to reassign the characters.<\/p>\n

The second, and the more important, was that the outline was written for a specific television series, and some of the scenes only work because<\/i> it’s the television characters in the scene. Indeed, the whole point<\/i> of the first scene in the outline was to correspond to the pre-credits teaser, and while it provides an entrance into the story it doesn’t have a pay-off of its own. Tangential to this, I saw that some scenes really only existed to give all the Merlin<\/i> regulars something to do.<\/p>\n

So here’s the plan.<\/p>\n

Re-card the story. Strip the outline back down to concept, new characters, and general plot developments, then build it back out. Then, use the outline for NaNo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tonight, then, I’m taking the outline back to index cards. Should be fun. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, I wrote an outline for a Merlin novel. I sent it off to the editor handling the Merlin novels at Random House Childrens UK, and about six weeks later it came back with a very nice rejection letter. The editor liked the story, but they weren’t publishing original Merlin novels, just novelizationsContinue reading “On Making Merlin Plans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[230,27,4102],"class_list":["post-6046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-king-arthur","tag-merlin","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}