#taoki

This is @stories-by-rie‘s Kora from her story TAOKI :D I hope you like it, Rie!

@writingonesdreams and I were talking about planning and pantsing a while back and I offered to show some of my messy notebook pages. So here it comes!

That's my notebook, containing a printed manuscript of my third draft that I wrote all the beta comments and planned edits in, and the actual notebook.

So after I wrote the first 4k of taoki in one go, I had a vague understanding of what I wanted to write about and hence this is the very first page. Kora was called Kore back then and Simon was called Connor. Kora's motivation changed immensely. But this is what I started with.

Later, I went much much deeper into my main characters' personalities, so everyone got such a fancy™️ page. They are actually still very much accurate and everytime I don't know what they should do or how they should act, I can look at this and then the decision becomes quite obvious.

So as I was half into the draft I started to go deeper into the plot. There were a lot of open questions and this is the "plan" I made. But this actually developed through the whole writing process. A lot of it is crossed out and the plot as it's described on the picture actually doesn't happen like that anymore ^^ it changed a lot on later drafts!

There is a map for orientation purposes. There are many places in taoki and the characters travel a lot so... Yeah! It's a little outdated by now too though.

The majority of it is handwritten chapters. This is a scene much later in the draft that I really loved but that was severely edited because it didn't make sense later. And yes, it's also the only page that looks tidy.

I also procrastinate. That quote is from New Girl, I have no clue why I wrote it down there.

So, this is an editing picture. I outline my novels with the story triangle by Gustav Freytag, so I wrote the chapters down where they belong to make sure the story has got structure. I also wrote down places and days on the bottom to make sure everything adds up (for example characters split up and plot happens at two different places). I blackened the chapters and actions because that's already too spoilery at this point ^^

character intro | Asteria Pachelbel | The Assassination of Keiko Ito

character intro | Kora | The Assassination of Keiko Ito

known as: Kora, the young assassin

info: 22 years old, orphan, lives alone in the mountains of Bergen, works as an assassin, she's always wearing her combat gear if possible

magic level: 3a (fair blue)

personality: introverted, intelligent, adaptive, arrogant, strong principles

her role: As the assassin hired to kill the most powerful magician, Kora is the protagonist of this story. She teams up with Simon, makes a deal with him, and is constantly confronted with his idiocity, and obstacles along the way. It's not like she actually wants to kill, it's more that she's got no choice.

// snippet from chapter 4

I got tagged by @thewalkingnerdx thank you very much! Here’s the last (spoiler-free) line that I wrote:

It had been a completely different kind of pity. One that whispered, I know what you feel. I have been there. But there is nothing I can do, I am sorry.

I got tagged by @writingonesdreams thanks!

Here a line I just added to taoki. I struggled with that scene for a long time, transitioning from dialogue to description, so adding this bit really improved it a lot and makes it sound more natural I think.

As Simon had reached Kora again she looked far off into the distance and barely noticed him as he reached her. He waved in front of her face which made her flinch in surprise – a reaction that made him giggle. Shooting him an angry look, she pulled her scarf all over her nose.

  “So what did she say?”, she asked, her words a little drawled. It’s been long days.