Novel

I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, but I wanted to share.

I just finished my first draft of my 100,000 word novel (a la Truly Bad Writing style–it needs a lot of work) and I'm SO excited. :D I was hoping you guys could share the happy.

Also, maybe we could talk about this? Like, is anyone working on a novel? Have an idea for one?

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My Nanowrimo is called Jillee's Country and it was just a mix of truley bad writing and some novel type scenes of 50,006 (or 8)words.

There where alot of layers with my novel and I have done a round of 10 workshops as part of these layers. Jillee had a lot to share with me about life and peace. So I applied this into the workshops I called Conversations Into Healing. I am going to do one more workshop i will call Patterns of Peace that will be a blend of the other workshops but instead of being 10x 1:30 hours it will be a one day workshop of 4hours.

The workshops are a complete surprise. I knew a while ago that it was something I wanted to do, but I had no idea it would all become clear after a Nanowrimo! hehehe…

Now I have the task of going back over everything, dividing out the ranting and raving and jibber jabber. keeping the story parts and then filling in the gaps. I am feeling good about doing this, about making time to do this.

100,000 words is very impressive Italy. a nice size for a novel.

Jillee's Country is about a journey and a sharing of soul. Its Jillee teaching us about 'Country' and what that means for us humans. In one world she is a disabled girl that clearly is not 'limited' by her limits. In another world she is a spirit that helps her friends understand the world they share together both inside themselves and physically.

Love to hear more about your novel Italy :) and anyone elses too! This is a great thread idea!

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This is SUCH good news! Well done!! Really an incredible achievement.

I've moved this thread to the Craft Room, Katie. I was wondering where 'best' - and I think here as it would be great to have a discussion on the 'novel' as a genre, and especially to talk about our personal experiences of writing novels, even if we haven't finished one yet, or have only thought about it.

With you and Kelsey talking about novels it's very exciting for the rest of us (both still in your teens - my God that's amazing).. could help us get ready for November…

After my short story manuscript is finished (it's mostly done, just a story to edit and then the collection to be put together and given another go over), I think my next project is to finish the novella I wrote here (you can find it if you dig deep in the moderator writing board, it's called Serendip, posted in numerous chapters). It needs a ton of work, and may end up a novel.

I also have about 90% of a novel written las NaNoWriMo - but that happened in the midst of my short story writing, and so I've put it on the back burner for now.

What I'd really like to do is get stuck into a totally new project, but I sense this won't come until at the very least I have my short story collection off my plate. And, perhaps Serendip will feel like 'fun' when I come to it.

I've just finished Rose Tremain's Sacred Country, which I found spectacular. It's the story of Mary, who becomes Martin. However, it's not a straight narrative of that story- there are characters in first person, and several in third, so you go from one point of view to another, close in, and further out. I thought it worked very very well. (And I have read similar attempts that just frustrated me, as I wanted to stick with 'one person', not here).

I've just finished short story written in 3 points of view (all first person). And, Serendip is written in several points of view, all first person. I had thought to put it all in third person as it wasn't working so well.. but…

I'm thinking that perhaps embarking on a novel structured in this way could at least feel easier than a straight narrative (not sure the correct term), in a consistent point of view…

soo. that's where I am on this Novel business! Be great to hear more from you and others.

Thanks for bringing this subject up!

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I can tell this is a place I want to be because people actually like my thread ideas. :)

Azyh, I think maybe because I'm not familiar with the NaNoWriMo project (I have heard of it but never participated or really looked into it) I am kind of confused about your post. You did workshops that separated the layers from your work? You hosted workshops based on the layers? I'm sorry! I think going back through a work and doing the editing of it is one of the best parts of the writing process. I'm sure you will have a fun time sorting through the jibber jabber. If you need an objective reader at some point later in the game, feel free to look me up. I enjoy editing. And your story sounds very peaceful. So the plot of the story is Jillee's process of helping her friends?

Sandra, thank you. I figured if anyone could appreciate my accomplishment, you guys here would. And thank you for moving my thread–I hesitated in trying to figure out where to post it as well. I was certainly hoping to start a novel-writing thread, so I hope this continues. I was intending it to be less about me and more about what others have to say about novel writing–it's my favorite thing to talk about. I can't wait to hear more from Kelsey; she sounds like an exceptional young lady. Does everyone here do the NaNoWriMo? I think that you are doing a short story collection is very cool. I don't see many of those. Have you read the collection called Olive Kitteridge? It is by Elizabeth Strout, and is doing very well as far as short story collections go. I wish to extend the same offer I made earlier, which is if you need another set of eyes to read over your work, I'm more than willing to do so, for any of the works that you mentioned. What is Serendip about? And what about last year's NaNoWriMo? And I can say that finishing one project usually opens up the mind for the next. I have many ideas in my mind write now, and it's taking all my willpower to remain focused so I can edit. I'm a little confused on how you were talking about Rose Tremain's Sacred Country–I can't tell if you wrote it or if you read it, but in either case, congratulations! Are they posted here? How long are your short stories? 

Let's see…my story doesn't have a title. I know, every self-respecting person names their stories before they write it (so it seems) but I just haven't come across something I like yet. For now I just call it Elanya's Story, when talking about it. Elanya being the main character of course. I was propositioned by some friends a few years back to write a story based off of a manga they were making. That story never really came to fruition, but I kept playing with the world, and playing with the characters and eventually this novel came to be. It's a fantasy story that I've spent WAY too much time on coming up with races and history and all that kind of stuff–going to need an encyclopedia when all this is done. Elanya is a girl who is involved in an accident at sea; she washes up on a foreign shore and finds herself naked, sick, tired, hungry, and desperately lonely. When she finally finds civilization, she quickly learns that these folk are exactly fond of her kind of people. The only reason why she makes it out is because a very powerful person steps in to save her. This savior takes her home, cleans her up, takes care of her…but Elanya finds herself getting dragged into things, strange things, by this woman. One thing leads to another, and she has to lead an army to protect the people that would rather see her dead than helping them.

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sorry for any confusion italy!

When i wrote the 50,000 words in November there where layers in the writing that went from a fantasy story to a self help guide.

I began the workshop as a way of extending the self help guide from the writing.
I learned so much from the journey of Jillee's story and when I applied this to my own life, sharing the workshop with my community seemed to be a natural step forward in understanding the layers.

I am glad for your enthusiasm about editing and going back over the story. This certainly helps me to find my own excitement about finishing Jillee's 'fantasy' story/layer.

I think the plot is Jillee's process of helping not only her friends but the readers of her story too.

I am in love with you characters name Elanya! and the conflict around her pulls me in. i want to know more.
My daughter and her friends do their own manga too and i love these amazing worlds. these are the stories that make fabulous games for role players and computer programmers :) even animie! How do you see your novel? do you see it as a manga still?

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I love the sound of your story, Italy ( which do you prefer, italy or Katie, or??), and yes, what a great name, Elanya. I know, every self-respecting person names their stories before they write it hah hah, well I'm not self respecting then! I usually find it very difficult to title stories, and 99% of them were titled after they were written.

You should read some of Leigh-Anne's work, I think you'd like it! (she's a moderator here, and she posted some of her NaNoWriMo pieces in our NaNoWriMo room) eg.. this one from 'Day 11'.

Because so many of us were doing NaNoWriMo and so many achieved the 50 k (Leigh-Anne in ten days…), the NaNo people did a little interview with me, it's here.
Last year was the first time we did it.  I also wrote a blog about the experience, called The End of November.

It's a very kind of you to offer to read work and help edit!  If someone wants to do this on DD, with a piece posted publicly, that is, and seeing your suggestions, that would be fun to see.

We ( on DD that is) do sometimes offer more 'in depth' critique of work posted here on DD (but only if the author specifically asks for this.) I've had so many excellent suggestions on work I've posted - extremely helpful for me in my editing process. I'm always up for 'critique' type comments.

Sacred Country is a book I've just finished reading, by one of my favourite authors, Rose Tremain. The kind of writing that makes me think I should leave writing to those who know how to do it! And, no, I haven't read Olive Kitteridge - I think I read about it somewhere, so thanks for the heads up. I'll look out for it!

Serendip is about a young naive woman who goes backpacking to Sri Lanka in the 'Black July' of 1983. She gets involved in all sorts of adventures, including ruby dealing. The story also touches on what is happening to the Tamil and Sri Lankans in the war. One chapter of this novella was published by Word Riot. The first chapter you can read here on DD if you like. It's 2 years old, and like most work here, completely unedited first draft.

My Nano novel, well, it is a similar theme actually, set in Canada. Young woman arrives from England and stays with her brother in a kind of 'hippie' household that includes brother's lefty wife and wife's lefty mother and wife's best friend and her boyfriend, half native american, wannabe actor. My character gets into all sorts of trouble. Has affair with the wannabe actor, causes havoc in the household. Moves out… and her haphazard adventures through other people's lives continues.She starts off naive and bright eyed, does she end up that way? noo…!

What did you find most difficult about writing your novel?

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About my writing process (giving my, hmm, how do you guys say now, shilling for the thought, eeh, or whatever!?!):

I started to write around 5th grade. Poetry it was. Bad kind. Sentimental.

When I was 18 I bought myself a typewriter and started a novel. 4 chapters later I stopped, ran out of gas I guess. And later on in life I kept writing poetry and starting novels (4 other times and failed to finnish them all).
About six years ago I wrote couple of novellas in genre erotique and send them to a publisher who went pretty enthusiatic about them. Many years later… this autum, my book is in print as we speak. Not to brag about this acheivement, nor want I become famous in this. May people never know. Yeah, I'm published, but it bring me no joy or pride.

Around four years ago I was unempoyed and start to dream to write a book again, this time it was in fantasy genre. I was planning to do a serie of books actually and my caracter is called Keili. I just had to write down the first line in my third book (as I planned it to be). It was about this princess (yeah, right) who was raised among wolves and had a magical black battle horse. Her wolf sister is called Horna (the deepest hole in hell).
After I wrote the first line in my third book (so that I wouldn't forget it for the year to come) the story took me. I couldn't stop, I was trapped inside my thrid book. I was writing like a maniac day and night for 2 weeks and then my mom came to visit and it broke my flow. But after 2 weeks break I was there again, lived of air and coffee, writing writing day and night. I didn't know what was going to happen in my book and I was curious so I had to write on. After another 2 weeks my book was finnished. I had indeed finnished my first novel ever.
I have send this manuscript to couple of publishers here in Sweden, but it didn't manage over the threshold.
I then published it as an e-book but it is still buried in the mists of Internet.
I think that I need my 1 000 000 words under my belt first, to realize what works and what not.

Then last November, Gabriele came up with this crazy NaNo thing and I signed in. Well, I am a working woman and I got so much to do last November that I thought I would die. I managed to write 50' in 3 weekends and just a little during weeks.
My NaNo novel was not about fantasy, what I find easy to produce. No it was about this young girl Lizzie who gets herself kidnapped in Carebbean and she ends up in the worst whorehouse in Mexico. Beaten and broken, chained in her bed. Well the first scene in my novel was pretty awful. Lizzie sees her best friend get killed by the owners who hammer a spike in her brain while a customer is enjoying her spasms. Lizzie tries to escape through the latrinehole. She can't, the hole is stopped of a newborn baby corps full of maggots.

Well… I was in hell with this book and I managed to almost make myself puke. An acheivement in itself. But I got some wonderfull healing from it. This was the ultimate dive in fear, both with deadline ticking and story unfolding in its entire ugliness.

This time I will not go there… I say to myself. I plan to write about this lady.

So, maybe some day, I can say “Hey, I'm an author. Who are you?”

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Azyh, thank you for the clarification. I think it is incredible that your character taught you so much that you were able to share it with others! I understand what you mean now. What did you learn? I certainly hope you finish it. I would enjoy reading it! Awe, thank you for the name love. I am very particular about my names, with it being fantasy and all–it's one of my favorite things to do, to be honest. And you'll know more–when it gets published. :) I see my novel as set in a complex world of its own. In fact, I plan on basing nearly all of what I write in this world, because there are just so many places to go with it. And no, I do not see it as a manga still. The story grew up fast. I will say that it does influence me, however–I always want to see what I'm describing in manga form.

Sandra, I prefer Italy online. Thank you for asking–that is very considerate. Thank you for the compliment on the name as well. And thank you for saying that you don't title your things either. It seems like all my writing friends title their works before they even have characters thought up. Here I am with a finished work and I still don't know what to call it. 

I will check out Leigh-Anne's work, and wow! In TEN days? It took me all summer to write double that. Jeeze. Do you enjoy blogging as a medium? 

Again, I seem to be a little confused with wording. With the editing thing that you were suggesting, you think it would be good for me to work with someone who wants to have a piece edited, and we post both the work and my suggestions so that people can see how I give comments? I have a hard time reading work without editing, so I suppose I will need to wait until someone asks. When it comes to my writing, I hope people tear it to shreds. 

I plan to be writing one short story a month and will be submitting it to literary magazines with the hope of being published. Do you think I could post short stories here? How long should a piece be? My short stories never go beyond ten pages, but that seems like a lot to put on a forum. Still, I would like feedback if at all possible.

Okay, it's good to know that I was right about the Sacred Country being a book to read. I always wonder how the author's minds work to produce such rich work. Is it pure talent? Pure work? A combination? Do they look at their work as we look at ours? That kind of thing. 

Serendip actually sounds really interesting. I would enjoy reading it; I'll look up that link as soon as I'm done posting this. You're planning on working with it more when your short story collection is complete, yes? A side comment–you reminded me of this story I wrote in like fifth grade for an assignment. We had to cut pictures out of magazines and write a story to go with them. The story itself was awful but I remember that there were wolf pups that were using a large ruby as a chew toy, and the main character learned that there was some jewel thief in the area. Or something…

That Nano novel sounds like it has a lot of drama! Could definitely be interesting. 

With Elanya's Story, the hardest thing for me was doing what I suppose you do here–just write. I used to have obsessive compulsive disorder (which I forced myself to be rid of) but I still have some of the tendencies. This is evident a lot in my writing in the sense that I will write something and then edit and edit and edit and I NEVER go further in the story because what I wrote wasn't perfect. Well, I finally decided enough was enough and that I would finish this novel this summer (which I have, obviously, which is like my biggest accomplishment ever) and that the only way I could do that was to not edit, not even read over what I wrote the day before. Just write, tell the story, and then you can go back and edit. That was VERY hard for me to stick by. What abut you? What's the hardest for you?

Nono, thank you for the run-down of your writing history. It was genuinely interesting to me. I wrote short stories in 4th and 5th grade. One was a story that I told to my little sister to get her to clean her room–something about a mess monster. I also wrote an alternate version of Hansel and Greatle, but the two I really worked on were based off of this animal book I had. It talked about animals that lived in the different regions and my main characters were kids who went to these areas and saw all the animals. The best part was my concept of time and how two nine-year-olds were allowed to go gallivanting through the rainforest and the rocky mountains. Alone. Yeah…

And in 9th grade I tried poetry. Also very bad and well…just very bad. I also tried writing a few novel-length fanfiction in high school, but those, like yours, never got past the first few chapters? Do you still have the first few chapters of your first novel? How is your poetry now? What were your failed novels about? It's too bad that being published didn't make you happy. Was it that they were erotica? Or why don't you like the stories?

Isn't it strange how fantasy has this way of drawing a person in and forcing them to finish the story? I think that it sounds great. Are you willing to share that novel or is that not something to be proud of either.

One million words? What is special about one million words, besides it being a lot? But yeah, learning what works and what doesn't IS acquired by a lot of reading and a lot of writing–of course you know that. I'm…reaffiming. How are you keeping track of all those words? The one million, I mean.

Wow. That is a…really intense novel, the one you wrote for last year's NaNo. I wrote a short story about gang rape in high school that was similar to what you wrote…it was/is my biggest fear, and I can agree that diving into fear is a wonderful experience. You are very brave. You know you've written something well when you generate the emotions in yourself that you want to generate in your reader.

I certainly hope for you that some day you will be able to introduce yourself as an author. :)

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Italy -:-)  Do you enjoy blogging as a medium?
I used to.. but these days I find it takes away from my 'writing'. Blogging is really easy for me, not a challenge. Mostly these days for my blog I just post up videos etc that I like.

Again, I seem to be a little confused with wording. With the editing thing that you were suggesting, you think it would be good for me to work with someone who wants to have a piece edited, and we post both the work and my suggestions so that people can see how I give comments? I have a hard time reading work without editing, so I suppose I will need to wait until someone asks. When it comes to my writing, I hope people tear it to shreds.

Yes I think that is what I was saying! Some of my pieces I've 'worked' on a bit, online, i.e posting a change or an edit to the thread that had the first draft, so people can see the change, and give me feedback if it worked better or not. So this is the kind of thing that could happen - but again, I'd only do it if someone specifically says “yes” to this, as as a rule we follow the On Commenting guidelines and focus about 'what works' in the writing.

I think the On Commenting thread has some suggestions on how to 'word' editing suggestions – for example, by asking questions. So, if you think a character in a piece needs to be fleshed out a bit, instead of just saying ” I think the character needs to be fleshed out”, you could ask questions that are pertinent to the specific scene/story: “I'd love to know more about X. Is she a jealous type? What does she look like?” etc. Questions help the writer find what is needed – they help the writer dig deeper themselves rather than simply following someone suggestion.

Another way to indicate where you feel 'more' is needed is to simply say where your attention was most engaged, and where you found yourself coming out of the story.

For me the best editors actually say very little about a work they are editing, rather they winkle what is needed out of the writer by very subtle hints and questions… and yes, there are times that I need someone to say “You don't need this, scrap it!” especially when I'm hanging onto one of my 'darlings' and don't want to let it go.  But again, this is a different kind of feedback than we do here, unless someone asks for it.

If you develop a connection with a writer here - or feel there is a connection - i.e. a space of trust - , especially if you have done a fair bit of DD commenting and sharing of your work here, then you can always ask that person if they'd like more indepth commenting / feedback on their work, if there is something you feel drawn to doing this with.

Do you think I could post short stories here? How long should a piece be? My short stories never go beyond ten pages, but that seems like a lot to put on a forum. Still, I would like feedback if at all possible.

I have posted short stories here, but I agree with you, that is a lot to post on a forum. You will more likely get feedback on work if you post it in short chunks, waiting until it's been read or at least commented on once or twice before posting the next.

And, generally the responses to assignments get more attention than 'other' work. I suggest you try a few of the assignments first, and then post some of your other work.

This is evident a lot in my writing in the sense that I will write something and then edit and edit and edit and I NEVER go further in the story because what I wrote wasn't perfect.

Great that you managed to overcome this and finish your novel.

All of the assignments ask for 'undedited' work. Even spelling mistakes I prefer to be left as is.. if you can't stop yourself from editing, turn off your screen, or put a cloth over it.. or if you are writing in pen, well.. harder maybe, especially if you are transcribing afterwards. But, see if you can, it's one of the most important aspects of Freefall, not to edit as you write.

What abut you? What's the hardest for you?

To just write and not get diverted….

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What did you learn? I certainly hope you finish it.

Italy i learned that scars are best skin deep so they can fade in the sun.
I learned about loving support and living a life that is loving and supportive.
I learned that the world within is the place to go to make change happen.
Jillee has meant too much to me to just let her fade. Her story is bigger then me and belongs to the universe.


I recently dug up an old fantasy trilogy i was writing when i was a teen and I looking back over all the maps and names and details has been amazing.
I love character names. I had a real science about creating new names and now they just seem to roll off my fingers without thought.
Your complex world sounds so exciting Italy… i so see it as a roleplayers dream! (do you know about DnD and roleplaying worlds?)

I had a question i wanted to ask you Italy

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Azyh, I have many friends who play DnD (though I never have) but I have played many other role playing games. I think they're loads of fun with the right people. I also typically only like video games that are RPs.

As for your question, I DEFINITELY let my characters do what they want. Elanya started out as a totally different character, but as I wrote more, I saw that it really wasn't who she was (mostly because she forced me into seeing it). She really taught me to put down the whip and let the person act naturally. I think my work turned out for the best that way, and the other characters took on a life of their own as well. I hope to apply what I learned here to other stories that I write.

What about you?

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I think this is another part of my resistance to write… allowing characters to have free will, beyond my ability to foresee into the story.

I recently read the Twilight series and I have a feeling the characters in these books where 'kept safe'. And I wonder what the experience of them would be like if they where allowed that 'free' will to simply be.

I want my characters to have free will, and yet I fear this too.

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I DEFINITELY let my characters do what they want.

such a great reminder, italy! I think that was what I found so problematical in my Nanowrimo novel - I had a very 'clear' idea of what was going to happen, all the time. And so I felt kind of sluggish and uninspired a lot of the time. When I managed not to 'direct traffic' in a scene, it felt so much more alive and interesting to write.

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wanted to ask a question about research

when is a good time to research a novel? before after? during? at all?

is research part of the editing process? or is research a different stand alone action to completing novels?

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Azyh, writers I know of always do their research before and littlebit during. If you remember that we should write of what we know then we need to get the info before we start. This is my feeling and experience.

I once wrote a thing that based on a thing I thought I knew. The entire thing was then spoiled when I got to know that I wasn't telling the truth. Therefore, for me it would be time consuming to fix things afterwards.

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I think it varies a lot, depending on the writer, on the project.
For me, with the kind of stories I write, and the way I write, I tend to do it afterwards – and sometimes during. So if there are factual details I want to explore that 'come up' as I write, I'll sometimes go and investigate. But this is dangerous, can lead me off onto something that takes me away from the freefalling. And, sometimes, I'm led to things I hadn't thought of that work really well. Because I have such a bad memory I usually put in details that I've researched afterwards.

I'm thinking of my Serendip story, the novella (I'm applying for a grant to turn it into a novel). It was mostly pure freefall from start to finish. I checked on the 'net for a boys sri lankan name, that kind of thing. BUT, I did start doing some research on the political situation as I got to the torture scene. And when I edited that scene into a story I did some more and added details.

Nono's point about writing something she thought she knew is a good one. If I thought I'd write a story about a subject I didn't really have an understanding of, I'd find it difficult. I'm good at entering character's emotional states - no need to research that! - but, say, if someone was an archaeologist or something, I'd probably do some research as I was writing or beforehand, unless the character was very minor in which case I might just flesh them out with factual details I found afterwards.

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Robert Heinlein once mentioned that writing a good short story for him was twice as hard as writing a novel, and writing a well-wrought short-short was 8 times as hard. How about you all? What is your experience of writing short stories versus novels?

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it's a good question, Kundan - I think we might have discussed it elsewhere, I'm not sure. but yes, put it on a new thread in this board maybe.

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thank you Sandra & Nono :) it all makes perfect sense to me now :)

i think i just needed to give myself permission to research about stuff i don't know and it's good to get a sense that this can happen anytime really.

freefall style would be more my thing too, at least at the start… and knowing i can stop and research or just highlight for later research is just as easy.

Nono about the piece when you found out what you thought was right ended up being wrong, therefor not usable… is it really that important to be factually correct in a piece? maybe the character simply didn't know better at the time?

do pieces have to be factually correct to be good stories?

i have to really question the factual correctness of most of our history books… isn't always the 'winner' that writes the history?

Kundan, not sure why your question fits in this thread? it is really off topic here.. maybe you would get a response in a thread that talks about the craft of short stories… my understanding is that this thread is about the craft of novels.

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this factually correct thing.. I think what Nono was saying, correct me if I'm wrong, nono.. is not so much doing 'freefall'' which I feel if truly done is always 'true' one way or another, but more a thing of 'trying' to write something – something or someone which we actually don't really know anything about, so a kind of 'doing writing'. It is possible of course to write people/ experiences we are not / have not experienced, but if we 'do' it - in a way that isn't from inside out, it is contrived and doesn't work. This is hard to explain. It's 'thinking' writing - not backed up by knowledge or research or heart. You will never ever fall into this, Azyh so if it makes no sense what I'm saying, don't worry!

Factually correct – well that depends. If one is writing about a historical situation and wanting it to be historical, then to make big mistakes about certain things eg the date of a war, or the language a tribe uses etc then this will undermine the reader's belief in your work. Those sorts of facts are important and can be 'fixed' after writing. I think what needs to be as accurate as we can are 'known' facts - unless we are deliberately going against the grain. I guess this is it - is it deliberate or not. I could decide WW2 actually happened in 56 B.C. (hmm that would be interesting), but if I just got the date wrong by mistake, that wouldn't be a good thing for a reader.

In terms of history, absolutely we don't know what happened. So perhaps 'history' books say one thing, but it's just a matter of perception, sure there is no reason to follow what the history books say. Again, I feel it's about motivation – are you making a 'mistake' simply because you don't know something, cant' remember or because you are looking at something from another angle, deliberately?

So I agree with you Azyh - it's not about following what 'history' says. When I talk about factual correctness I more mean things like, say, having a character be an IT expert but because you as writer know nothing about IT ('you' as in general you, not you, Azyh!) you have this character say things like “HTLM is what must be used to code web pages” when it's HTML not HTLM and anyway these days as a code is dying out - unless, that is, you want to make this person a bit of an idiot of course….

make sense?

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Yes Sandra, it has nothing to do with the freefall process. I made a story that built on a fact how a machine worked. It then showed that it didn't work that way at all. My charcter was an idiot or living in a different planet. That is really what I mean about gathering the facts and getting aquitant with the subject before I write about it. When I then write I can use freefall and feel secure that I get the facts right.

If the reader dismisses me just because I don not seem to know what I'm talking about, no good for me. It annoying if the writing falls on that basis. If I provide facts I better get them right or show that I do it deliberately.