Writing

Progression

I’ve had a couple revelations this week in building the world. Obviously the world is not just going to be built for this book, but is meant to be done as a prelude to a much bigger and more ambitious project I have planned in the future. I don’t plan to even publish this book. I want to get this book 95% there, maybe 98%, then move on to work on the bigger project.

I have a tough time finishing projects, likely because I generate too many ideas and keep trying to start on new ones as they come in. I’ve taken a much healthier strategy of writing them down and leaving them for looking through. Once they are written down and articulated properly, I will always remember the idea for the future.

One of the revelations I’ve had this week is on the nature of the language the characters use in this story. In building a new culture, which is essential for any new successful book in my eyes, there has to be clear inspiration: borrowing and altering words and phrases from existing dialects. This currently is going to have to be done in the editing process, and I may just build an LLM model with a decent amount of context detailing the English dialects I want to use. This isn’t actually that hard. I would like to run a couple simulations taking major pieces of dialogue from the book and generating different types of dialogue, to see which ones have quality and make sense.

I’m really excited about using some of the northern Canadian dialects—eh, bloody, bud, stuff like that. I’d also like to mix in some Scottish or Irish in there, but I haven’t decided yet. There’s also a list of slang specifically related to the state of the world, mainly centering around cold and warmth, ice and snow type things. Some of the things that really stand out in new stories is the language. I do really like Maze Runner slang: Slim it, Shuck face, Shank, Slinthead, Crank. Some interesting words with some potential for this context: Nip, Slip, Fog, Crack, Thaw, Melt, Slide, Skim, Sheen, Glisten, slush, chill, drip, frost, numb, shiv, bite.

An example of how some of these words can be added in the dialect: Out in the slip: away from the established townships, the lower levels of the glacier, where ice melts easily. Slide, like sliding into oblivion: a good name for a powerful drug. Need more insults. I’ll keep thinking about it.

A while back, before starting on John Halliday, I came up with some cool Cloak Ideas, similar to cowboy hats in the west: Crowned Cloak, Broad, Crested, Veiled, Rolled, Ridged. The Cloak is going to be really important out in the ice. Not only is it waterproof, but also anti-slip, so falling will arrest your slide. Also, I like the cloak vibe.

There’s many little things like that I need to get documented and organized better. I want a couple notebooks for key areas to think about for the next couple of years: mainly language, clothes, occupations, tools, and how they relate to each of the different cultures within the ice. Because so much of this new book is going to be exploratory—adventure in some sense—there has to be a wow factor as the reader goes through, something even I as the author can think back to and be like, dang, that’s pretty cool, I wish I lived there.

I will probably do another week of ideas, then go full organization mode and try to get everything fully documented and organized. That will include commentary on what needs changed on each of the scenes I’ve written so far: things that need added, things that don’t really work, dialogue that needs adjusted, action that needs to be added in; what the theme of each scene is going for; deleting any “and thens” in the story.

Anyway, enough procrastinating. Here is the Halliday scene heading back to Fairview. I am skipping the talk inside the Marshalls office, because that has further implications for the final reveal. There is going to be a couple of small details I don’t know what they will be yet. Here is definitely revealed the killer is a Sadist. This is a short scene, cause he gets shot closer to the mining outfit than Fairview.

Chapter 7:

The wind bit into Halliday’s torn cloak on his way back to Fairview. His cloak was in ribbons—cuts from the broken bottles in the barfight, further ripped and shredded from the grappling. The cold no longer crept in; it poured. Deep inside the glacier the tunnels swallowed every scrap of light; only the beam of his sled lit the blue expanse in front of him. He hunched lower, rammed the throttle peg, and pushed the sled faster. With the cold coming in like this, he would be cold no matter what speed he went; might as well be fast.

He thought back to the events at the mining outfit. Quite a rowdy bunch of knuckle-draggers, he thought; a good thing none of them banded together to take him out—just the trouble-hunters he had to deal with individually. The information from the Marshall had been concerning, to say the least. Sure, it was clear he wasn’t a suspect, but what about the cut-out eyeballs that had been stuck back into the sockets and frozen, and the knife driven down the throat? He had seen torture methods like this from some of the more savage tribes in lower Quebec, but for the tribes, torture was done to get information.

In this case, what information could a young scout possibly give? This kid knew nothing more than any other miner in the area. From what the Marshall said, he wasn’t high up in the outfit, and there wasn’t much information a killer could use anyway. But what would explain the gutted eyes, the tongue cut out savagely, the twisted screaming face full of pain—finally ended when the killer put a bullet through the front of his head, blowing out the back of the skull?

Maybe no questions were ever asked, and the man was killed because he was in the way of something. His tongue gone so screams stayed wordless, eyes cut out so there was no sight—only pure pain—until the bullet finally ended the suffering. He would be nearing the site now, this exact glacier vein, the scout’s patrol line, the only throat of ice between outfit and Fairview—a throat Halliday had now entered, a throat missing its dedicated scout. He was a fool; the killer hadn’t come for the scout. He had come for the tall stranger who came into town asking hard questions. He had come for John.

John came to the realization just as a cold dread shot through his system. The dark cave seemed to close in around him. As he turned his head to look back where he came from, a shot rang out. The sled veered left violently, and John felt himself falling from the sled, sliding on his shredded cloak at impossible speed along the trail, then falling, falling, falling, into the black, until he could feel no more.