… But if I had and it had been to get a shift on with Night in the Sidhe I’d be doing well so far. Admittedly tidying up the current draft last night actually cut it down by several thousand words. I’ve move note and fragments of story without a home in the current structure off into a separate file. Other fragments have now been slotted in to what looks to be the final form. The inner story, which take the form of a first person narrative by a character being interviewed by the police, is almost written. The outer story of the investigation surrounding the character being interviewed is a lot less complete. I know its shape but I need to finalise where it breaks up the inner narrative.
With this first draft heading towards completion I’m hitting the point where I need to do supporting research and fact checking. I used to do this when I developed the plot for a story but somehow that always took the life out of the exercise and the story didn’t end up being finished. So I’ve been switching things around and skipping any none essential research or anything that will need more than a quick flick through a book or a bit of a Google. After the first draft I come back, read it all and figure out what I need to research. So the second draft is not only a first polish and a fill in the gaps exercise but also a factually more accurate work.
Last night was positive for NitS in other ways too. I caught the end of a piece on the BBC local news about an exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery. It wasn’t the exhibition that really caught my interest but a new collection they have of pictures of Liverpool’s Chinese community in the 1940s. After looking at their web site I spotted the Bert Hardy credit and a bit more searching on Google and at Getty Images found a variety of pictures from Liverpool during the 40s and 50s that will help me refine the mood and the imagery in the upcoming editing process.
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