#the story progresses and I attempt to not write another novel length piece

[pinkeebwui]

Tagged by @figthefruitfaeth heeheehoohoo

rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you like)

I’m still working on the same project as last time but I had to work for real job stuff over the weekend so the last line is presently like. Kinda nebulous (the section it under construction). So, for now, this:

Be careful.

Theodoros curls his palm around the words once Aster is done. It feels comfortably like a promise, though it does not entirely loosen the guilt. He squeezes Theodoros’ hand once before letting him go and rising slowly to his feet.

Tagging: @merrygentlemen @star-studded-whales @averageicewitch and whoever else might like to do this

[howtofightwrite]

Hello! I have a very particular sort of scene that I've been trying to get right for over ten years now and I can't make it work; I hope perhaps you can help.

A husband and wife duo who have Mixed Feelings about one another are trying to break out of a facility. (He was recently discovered to be a spy, she is a conscripted soldier in the facility. She was sent to escort him to execution but hesitated - I'm not sure where, in the cell, in the hall? - and - he took advantage of this hesitation? she was arrested as a traitor? - I don't know that either, yet - and they end up running through the halls together to escape)

The facility is vaguely sci-fi; think Star Wars Original Trilogy-style weapons, and there is space travel, but technology isn't... wildly advanced. Like it's not all digital and holograms and hand-wavey stuff, it's only a little more advanced than what we have available now. (Like SW OT.)

Point A is them in the cell. Point B is them on a spaceship breaking free.

I cannot get them from Point A to Point B with any kind of plausibility, or without staggering incompetence on the part of the soldiers and commanders in the facility.

They would likely be armed with only her sidearm, unless they happened to grab rifles off of further escorts sent with her?

I'm sorry this is so vague, thank you in advance for any help!

Personally, I’m of the opinion that any scene that’s been marinating in the brain for a long time (especially for years) has deeper structural/internal issues than just putting together action. Just from reading your question, I can feel the way you’ve laid this specific scenario out breaking your own suspension of disbelief. You’ve got several problems that have built up over time and, now, they’re all working against you.

Change if it’s Not Working

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got came from being forced to memorize my martial arts school’s Ten Steps to Mastery as part of my first test for black belt. I only remember the first five and I can’t guarantee they’re all in order.

Set a goal

Take action

Pay attention to detail

Practice, Practice, Practice

Change if it’s not working

Regardless of whether you’re practicing a front kick or writing a full length novel, flexibility is important. The more we try to force something to work, the less likely it will. Training flaws into your technique means they’ll be more difficult to correct later. So, don’t forget to stop and look at the larger picture if you feel yourself getting stuck.

Remember, change isn’t failure. Writing is a complex process and not every idea, plotline, character moment, or scene is going to work out when fit into a larger context. And that’s okay.

Outside emotional exhaustion and stress, my writer’s block kicks in when I’ve taken a wrong turn in the narrative or am avoiding a difficult emotional moment that my characters need to face before their story can progress. Something has made me/them uncomfortable and instead of facing it, I’m attempting to avoid the uncomfortable feeling by throwing some other distracting piece, usually action, in the way. I call these moments false notes. I usually hit them when I’m coming at the story from an external perspective (what have I seen other characters do in other stories/films?) rather than an internal one. (What would this character do?)

If something isn’t working, stop trying to make it work. Instead look for what you’re missing, and where the pieces aren’t connecting. It’s usually further back than the scene you’re working on.

My characters are always right. I’m either not listening or going about it the wrong way.

Food for thought.

Your Heroes are Reactively Active

We hear a lot from the writing community about the importance of Active Characters. These are characters who are doing things to move the plot forward. They make choices. They take action. Then, there are passive or, what I like to call, reactive characters. They are characters who react to things in their environment, whatever that is, but they’re not actively making choices. Passive characters get a bad rap in American storytelling tradition (more so than in the wider Western storytelling tradition.)

Passive characters really shine when working with characters who are in settings where they’re struggling to survive. In the real world, passivity is one of the best ways to survive abuse. Any victim of long term or systemic abuse can tell you that standing up and fighting back, especially in situations where you have no power or means to change your circumstances, makes the situation exponentially worse. You’ve got to gray rock it out, suppress, and survive.

Lastly, there are characters I like to call reactively active. These are characters who feel like they’re being active but are actually just reacting to actions taken by other characters. They appear a lot in YA Fantasy, but they’re everywhere. And, because these characters are always reacting to another character’s (usually the villain’s) actions and choices, they get an easy out when it comes to escaping narrative consequences for the things they do. It’s a deceptive sleight of hand used to maintain a character’s moral purity. These characters appear active on the surface, but, underneath, they’re passively reacting to the narrative events inflicted on them. They don’t take action. They respond to action with action.

Let’s get back to your scenario.

We have a husband and wife in some sort of heavily or, at least, decently fortified, military installation. The husband has been outed as a spy, put in whatever functions as a prison or holding cell within the complex, and scheduled to be executed. The wife is a loyal soldier who must now choose between her love for her husband and her love of duty.

This has the makings of some good drama.

The first obvious problem point is that these characters are trying to do too many things at once. They’re coming to terms with their deep feelings of betrayal, experiencing a last minute change of heart, making a snap decision to escape, and rapidly coming up with a plan to escape in the heat of the moment. If this feels unbelievable, it’s because it is and, even better, doubles for putting the characters in a reactive or passive state. The wife character isn’t acting, so much as she’s reacting last minute to the immediate, impending danger. That would be fine if she wasn’t also having to help carry the burden of coming up with The Plan.

There’s the surface level here, where the last minute change of heart is mimicking the kinds of behavior seen in countless other forms of media regarding escape scenes. However, this narrative decision happening in the heat of the moment is also allowing the character to skate over the emotional consequences of her own betrayal. She’s not choosing so much as she’s being forced to make a choice. And that is removing her agency.

If she makes the choice earlier, starts putting The Plan in place with the help of some friends/colleagues (even if it happens largely off page) then executes at the cell, she takes back her agency and retains her status as an active character.

The difference here is in the processing time. Characters can’t plausibly escape fortified lock up without a plan or, really, The Plan.

The Narrative Structure of Last Minute Rescues

The first problem in your scenario is that you have two characters, neither of which are doing the pre-planning legwork required to successfully execute The Plan. Rescues are like heists, they either take a village or require characters who are extremely meticulous and actively manipulating the village to fill in the gaps. (James Bond does Option 2 beautifully, but even he has a team behind him.) Usually, both happen to some degree. The burden is segregated out into different pieces for different characters. Normally, there’s at least three. The character locked up is trying to figure out a way to escape, but comes up short. The one on the outside who is putting together the pieces needed to execute the rescue/get away. And, sometimes, the one on the inside who is experiencing a change of heart, who, at the very last minute, turns heel and assists with the rescue (most often in the turn of misfortune where a piece fails and the rescue is at risk of being bungled.)

All of this additional weight/build up/expectation of the non-existent plan is being put on two characters and crammed into a single scene.

Think about the rescue of Princess Leia from the Death Star for a moment. How many characters are required to make that escape work?

Seven.

All of them. If a single character in the entire group is missing, the whole thing falls apart. Even Threepio is necessary, mostly because Artoo can’t talk. This off the cuff, by the seat of our pants rescue requires all seven characters and they still end up bungling it to kill their samurai master.

You need one to turn off the tractor beam so they can actually escape. (Doing the real work.)

You need one to figure out where the princess is being held, unlock the doors, and figure out where they are.

You need two to bullshit past the guards going in and one to pretend to be a prisoner.

You need one to bullshit past the guards a second time to save the one that can’t talk with the floor plan.

You need the princess to be the one to get them back out because she’s the only one with balls.

And none of it mattered because the escape was a trap all along.

While you don’t need these specific roles for everything, escaping from a heavily fortified facility is not a two man job. That’s where the feelings of implausibility and extreme incompetence are coming from. There aren’t enough characters helping to clear the way or be there as a safeguard for when things go wrong. This feeds into the next problem.

Soldiers, Spies, and Their Squads

We have another unintended scenario brewing at the same time. And that’s the exhausted retail employee going on a rampage and slaughtering their surprised colleagues. This really knifes your tension. By reacting to the immediate danger, the wife is not making an active, conscious choice with full knowledge of the consequences, and those consequences are killing people she knows, respects, is friends with, shares a camaraderie, or who are at least familiar to her. These other soldiers aren’t faceless goons. It’s a lot harder to pull the trigger on someone you know than someone you don’t, especially someone who has the same values that you do.

Soldiers aren’t characters who work alone. They have a squad. They’re part of a unit. They have a support network surrounding them that allows them to do their job to the best of their ability. Spies are the same way. They also have a support network which allows them to act to the best of their ability, even when it feels like they’re acting alone. Spies have handlers and they have assets, their job requires they build their own support networks so they have someone who can get into the places where they can’t. Those people may be witting or unwitting assets but they’re still there.

Both of these characters should have fairly extensive support networks to fall back on when in crisis. They’re in crisis. The crisis is both physical and emotional. Where are their people? Two characters who are social archetypes whose jobs and survival during wartime are reliant on building trust and skillful communication have no one willing to put their lives on the line to help them out? They only have each other? That’s staggering incompetence.

Spies aren’t assassins. They’re social animals. Soldiers aren’t lone wolves. They’re social animals. If there’s a structural failure here, it’s happening with your secondary characters.  Ignoring the importance of secondary characters is a mistake that a lot of new writers make and I can feel those early mistakes being carried forward in this scene. This is what Hemingway meant when he said, “kill your darlings.” If an idea isn’t working, if it’s holding you back, kill it. Look at the problem and your work from a new angle. One good line or one good scene, regardless of your emotional attachment to it, doesn’t outweigh the entire work.

Plans and Floor Plans

If you’re having trouble coming up with a character’s escape, step back and take a look at the facility itself. Whether it’s breaking in or breaking out, you, the author, need to have a clear visualization of the entire picture so you can find the weaknesses or fracture points.

Plans are easier to conceptualize when you know what the dangers are and what defenses have been put in place to prevent what your characters are attempting. Which parts of the fortress are better fortified than others? Where does this military expect to be attacked? What have they done to prevent it? What are the patrols? Who are the techs? How does the military support itself while fending off attempts to damage its resources? Who handles the supply lines?

The boring minutiae of your world is what makes it feel real. Action is dependent on your world building and this goes deeper than just their weapons. The social systems in place guide how your characters fight. It’s there in how they perceive their environment, and how they recognize usable tools. If you build a functional and consistent world, the action will take care of itself because violence is a natural response to environmental threats. Violence seeks to exploit established systems, to gain an advantage over them. If the violence is imagined separately from the environment, the violence won’t feel real because it’s not reactive and it’s not reacting to environmental stimuli. From there, it’s not logical.

Ask yourself, why do we use guns?

Then ask yourself, why do your characters use guns? What does it allow them to do that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise? Or, what does the gun do better than other weapons that makes it the preferred choice?

The answer for the real world and your setting might be the same, and they might be different. Both will influence how the character uses their weapon. How they use their weapon guides how they fight. If you’re lost, ask yourself questions.

For example, let’s take a last look at the prison.

Prisons are built with the expectation of keeping multiple people contained for an extended period of time, preventing them from leaving in the event of an escape, and preventing those who are sympathetic from breaking in to rescue them. What have the characters in your setting (not your protagonists) done to facilitate that goal? What safeguards have been put in place to prevent someone from leaving and entering?

In the real world, prisons are built in a way that two people can’t just walk out. There are points of entry and exit that are designed to be remotely controlled from secure locations and cannot be operated or accessed on the ground. You’d need someone (like R2-D2) who can access the remote functions to get someone past the exits that they can’t open themselves.

-Michi

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[xansmenagerie]

Hi! This is the writing archive for Xan's Menagerie - if you want to interact with me in non-writing ways, skip over to my reblogs blog.

I'm always happy to take writing prompts; I tend more to urban and low fantasy, but goodness knows what'll happen with the right impetus...

WIP info under the cut.

Mostly I tend to short one-off pieces but I am working on a novel in the background very slowly - keep an eye out for the SYJKR tag.

SYJKR

My most recent attempt at a full-length novel. It’s a magical boarding school story started because I was somewhat irked at a certain infamous writer (you can guess what the working title stands for). However, I’m also a fan of Shakespearean hijinks, and so…

Darcy Symonds is dreading going to her new boarding school; she’s not rich, she’s not white, and she sure as hell doesn’t have any family connections to play off. After all, that’s why she’s had to move to yet another boarding school!

Darcy Symonds is kinda excited to go to his new boarding school; he’ll finally get to try out the spells he’s not allowed to do in the house and maybe make some friends that he’s allowed to share his less-than-mundane life with.

But something out there has other plans, and all it takes is two envelopes to be switched to put them in motion…

I’m aiming to hit as many representation beats as I can manage and my sensitivity reader budget will allow, so we’ll see how this goes.

MotW

I play in a long-running Monster of the Week game, so I generally have at least one companion fic in progress at any given time for my own amusement. A lot of them make it on here - look out for references to Mel (a Mundane turned Crooked) and Colin (a Spellslinger disaster zone turned into an even bigger Divine disaster zone).

writing-prompt-s

My drafts folder is full of starters from the writing-prompt-s blog. Every so often I’ll take one out and shake it vigorously until a story falls out.

[carat82]

To my readers I ask a question- “What is the most important aspect you look for in a historical era heroine?”

Her wit? “Why should I be embarrassed I was fully clothed?”

Tenacious spirit? “My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”

Intelligence? “It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do...or fail to do.”

Her ability to stand up for herself? “I have as much soul as you-and full as much heart!”

Hair?

Clothes?

“Wait what?!”

“I though we were discussing aspects of the heroines endearing qualities? Her hair? Isn’t that kinda superficial?” Yes,yes it is. Yet even in our day and age despite the need for us to see strong independent women portrayed on screen, some tend to nit pick the appearance of our heroine more then anything else. People have become experts about an era they never lived in or rely solely on what they have seen in portraits of that time period or perhaps read. Let’s face it we all have done this to a certain extent. But when such things as hair styles or perhaps even some costume choices in film or TV adaptations are different from what have been taught are indictative of that era, is this a valid enough reason to insist the story is no longer worthy to watch or to discourage or disparage others from entertaining themselves with that series or movie? To some the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. To others the answer is a resounding no. The purpose of this latest blog is to broaden our horizons as to why certain choices are made in regards to the outward appearance of our heroines - at perhaps the expense of “historical accuracy”. For those who stand by their views of 💯 accurate, this is in no way meant to offend or upset you. Just a different perspective.

So without further adui let’s begin shall we?

(*note- when I use the term “many” this does not imply that there there are not those who completely diagree with my assessment. I know the examples I’m using have some or perhaps many who do not regard such as good adaptions and even have issues with the acting. Again just using these examples as a whole)

Many adaptations of the Regency era have been done on film and TV over the past 80 years. One of the first was Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier

This is regarded by many as a fine and worthy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. But let’s face it anything with Sir Olivier is perfect in my book🥰. Both these actors do a fine job portraying these classic characters. But look closer....what is she wearing?? Wait is that dress from the 1830-1840’s. Yes it is. Isn’t this is supposed to be 1813? Yes, yes it is. So what happened? Well movie studios, back in the golden age, were known to reuse costumes in an attempt to save on the bottom line. Since MGM had produced several movies set in the middle to late 1800’s up to that point and had plenty of costumes to therefore reuse, we have Elizabeth Bennet wearing a full style dress that would come into fashion years from when the book was set. However, this in no way takes away from the performance of the actors and the movie as a whole. Even the most strict historical accurate fans still watch and enjoy this film for what it is. Yet, when other adaptations of novels come along and choices in costuming and hair are made that are more “modern” and deviate somewhat from that time period, those films and shows are chided for not following the rules. Why? How is what the studios did back in the in 40’s to Pride and Prejudice different from what is done now? Why the double standard? Let’s skip forward to the 80’s and 90’s. We saw costume dramas stick very closely to the correct rules of dress and grooming. Several adaptations were delivered to our TV and movie screens that are now considered the gold standard- Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensability, Emma,etc. Majority of us still enjoy and praise these adaptations 20-30 years later. But I must admit that when I rewatch these now, there is a dated feel about them. Now don’t get me wrong, they are still wonderful but it is quite obvious that they were produced 20-30 years ago. The musical score, if it had one, was fairly basic. Nothing that really stayed with you. The costumes were fine and the hair was... OK. Again most of these things stayed the same from one adaptation to the next . What stood out in these movies and series was the acting! Regardless of what they wore or how their hair was styled, we loved these adaptations because of how the actor embraced these roles and delivered to us the audience a memorable version of a beloved character.

So as we entered the 2000’s, filmmakers, who love these stories as much as we do, decided that it was time to “update” the look and feel of a period piece. They wanted to reach a younger more modern audience that perhaps had never watched a classic period piece before. And there was nothing wrong with that! These directors wanted others to enjoy the classics as much as they did. But they were wise and realized that a fresh take was needed to entice and draw a new audience in. This could not be a costume drama that their mothers and grandmothers watched. No, they needed to appeal to a younger audience. Which is what ALL filmmakers do, regardless of the genre. It’s how the big and small screen survive. So out went the hair and wigs with the historically accurate styles. The costumes had a few more modern cuts to them but all in all stayed relatively the same. Some of the dialog had a few updates so that an audience with not much experience in 1800’s literature ( which let’s face it is majority of us) could understand. Musical scores were updated so as to play on our emotions and draw us deeper in the story. And the result- some very fine and worthy adaptations- Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Andrew Davies 2008 Sense and Sensabilty. Jim Hanlon’s 2009 Emma. Let’s just focus on one of these adaptations- 2005’s Pride and Prejudice.

Kiera Knighly delivers to us the audience a fine portrayal of Elizabeth Bennett. But notice her hair. It’s down in some scenes.

We had not seen this before in other adaptations yet here we have Lizzy approaching Netherfield with long flowing hair. Why? We as the audience need to connect with Elizabeth. Again remember- new audience, younger demographic. This tells us that she really doesn’t care what the opinions are of a certain Mr. Darcy and the Bingleys. She is being herself-walking to the house alone and not caring about the state of her tresses. Does this detract from the story and Kiera’s acting? No. It gave me the audience a new fresh way to appreciate her character. Joe Wright wasn’t trying to mimic adaptations of years past. Why should he? His Pride and Prejudice was a much needed change from that we had seen before. And guess what? It paid off. A younger audience who had never seen Pride and Prejudice came to love this movie and 15 years later this is still their go to PP. After all isn’t that what we all want? For more people to experience Jane Austen’s stories? Who says that they have to be portrayed the same way each and every time. Isn’t that kinda... boring? Predictable?

Now let’s skip ahead to 2019. If you have read my other two blogs you know where this is going. So if you don’t want to hear about my defense of Sanditon I suggest you turn back now.

Andrew Davies introduces to us a character of Jane Austen that has never been portrayed on the screen before-Charlotte Heywood.

And as such we do not know who or what her character is like. We find out that at 22 she had never left home, having grown up on a farm with 12 siblings. That alone tells us that her appearance is going to be what some call “modern” and out of place but what I call practical and normal. Her father,while respectable and gentleman, is a farmer. She more and likely had chores like anyone else. Do you really think she had the time to care if her hair is pinned up. Uhh...nope. The first scene we see her in she is shooting rabbits! This tells us she is not Elizabeth Bennet or Marianne Dashwood or Anne Elliot. And Miss Austen wasn’t trying to write her as such. She is her own person. And as such will have things that set her apart from other Austen characters. As the series progresses we come to to learn she is practical, intelligent, sweet, but naive and inexperienced. Davies also decided to make a choice that would serve as her hallmark- her shoulder length hair that she wears down most of the time. Again, filmmakers have to appeal to their current audience. And again, like Joe Wright, he was hoping to get a younger more modern audience to tune in and enjoy a period piece or perhaps a Jane Austen adaptation for the first time. Frankly, this was a clever move on his part. He needed to show throughout the series that this adventure to Sanditon is truly unlike anything she has ever experienced. Charlotte is full of youthful exuberance with those doe-like eyes that are longing to experience life outside sleepy Willingdon. But remember, that while we love her, she has a lot to learn and is truly out of her depth at first around some of the situations and people she encounters. However, despite that she is true to herself- which is also a hallmark of all Jane Austen heroines. So as such there is no reason Charlotte needs to change her hairstyle when she comes to Sanditon. She is accepted as who she is by those around her. She is our Charlotte Heywood- using her ingenuity to help with the growth of Sanditon, trying to be a good friend, and exploring her new surroundings. Her hair is the least of anyone’s worries. And as an audience we find that Charlotte’s unpinned tresses make her approachable.Unpretentious. Human. More like us. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Being historically accurate is all and well, but when that is placed above all else in a series or movie it runs the risk of being just another adaptation. And that does not draw in a new, younger, more modern audience. Regardless of whether you agree with that statement or not, that is how the entertainment business is run today. So please if any readers are on the fence to watch this series because of some more modern uses in hair and grooming I ask that you to accept why the production crew made these choices and give it a try. As us fans wait on baited breath to see if another network will pick up our beloved Sanditon and continue with a second season-just remember you may get your heroine wearing her hair up. After all, Jane Austen characters usually go through a metamorphosis of some kind due to the need to adapt, grow, and perhaps even survive. Our Charlotte may find herself more grown up and guarded after a summer spent in Sanditon and this could well show in her appearance next time we see her... or not. I guess we will have to wait and see.

[imsfire2]

Writing meme

I was tagged by @ephemera/ @incognitajones!  Thank you for tagging me!

Author Name:  On AO3, imsfire.

If you want my published original smut fic on Amazon Kindle, look for me under Imogen Claire.

Fandoms You Write For:  At present, pretty much exclusively Star Wars; about 95% Rogue One with occasional excursions into original trilogy territory.  I’ve also done one or two pieces based on the sequel trilogy and precisely one (In the holding pen, very angsty) set at the end of the prequels.

I’ve also written a single mid-length chapter fic for the film “Solo quiero caminar”, which for anyone who hasn’t seen it is a wonderful feminist heist movie and well worth checking out.

In the past, I’ve also written a bit for the MCU, for The Town, and, back in 2012 when I first got started, for a random collection of characters played by Jeremy Renner.  

Where You Post:  AO3.   In the long-ago past (i.e. 2012!) also on a members-only Renner fandom tumblr the name of which I can’t even remember, which is embarrassing!

Most Popular One-Shot:  

In hits; Leather.  Not really surprising as it’s deliciously filthy PWP.

In kudos; an exact draw between “Leather” and Tooky.  This is kind of hilarious given the contrast between them; “Leather” is full-on smut about BJs and mild bondage and “Tooky” is a sweet fluffy comedy about a cat.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: 

In both hits and kudos; By stardust and moonlight.  

Favourite Story You Wrote:  Very, very hard to choose!   Which is actually incredibly pleasing, as it means I’ve begun to be more confident of my writing and more able to see what worked about a story, rather than just focussing on what didn’t.  

Honestly, I don’t think I have a single favourite, though. I have favourites, plural, but even those shift with time. I’m very fond of my Shane AU, A rider comes to the valley, and of some of my single-character one-shots. The latter are often on the sad side (e.g. The mask, Unacceptable, The last dancer, The first time) and perhaps because of that they don’t get as much love, but they mean a lot to me.    

Story You Were Nervous to Post:  Agent. It’s untidy from a structural pov, I don’t like the way it ends, and much of the content, especially the opening chapter, is extremely dark.  It was also written in anger, as a reaction to one of the very few pieces of fic I have ever truly despised (a grossly salacious “all women want to be raped” story full of utterly creepy racist stereotypes), and I’m not entirely sure that’s such a great place to start.

How Do You Choose Your Titles:  Mostly they just kind of come to me (I know how daft that sounds, sorry!).  I’ve noticed my titles tend to be fairly short; two or three words, even sometimes just a single word, that either come direct from the story or function like a descriptive hint of the contents.  I think the only one I’ve really struggled with was for the long chapter fic In a dark time, the eye begins to see, which had the initial working title “Artist!Cassian smut”!  I spent ages going through books about creativity, looking for a quote that expressed something of the idea that an artist must be truthful to the larger world as well as their personal vision.

Do You Outline?  A bit, if it’s going to be a long story.  I’m more of a note-taker than a full-blown planner, though.  If I’ve jotted down the basic arc, key plot points, and what the set-piece scenes are, that feels about right.  Having too much pre-set structure seems to dam the flow for me.  

Complete:  On AO3, 168 works.  155 Star Wars and 13 in other fandoms.

In-Progress:  Counting only works with significant word counts, right now:

·         The city and the sea, a sequel to By stardust and moonlight.  

·         A friendly game (cricket match AU, set in the Guau-guau ‘verse)

·         The bargain of liberty (original novel, alternative C16th setting with magic and a different balance of power across the world as a result)

·         Various short one-shots.  E.g. I’ve made some small headway on a one-shot about Cassian’s relationship with Draven, on another about Jyn and Saw discussing her parents, and on one told in the form of love letters – this last has stalled because it has no plot!

·         Various attempts to re-write my longer fanfics into original stories by changing certain plot points, the main McGuffin, character names and place names, etc.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started:

Don’t ask!  I have a list of “stuff I’d like to do sometime” almost as long as my arm.

I really want to do a one-shot of Leia and Jyn relaxing at some kind of health club, swimming and pampering themselves a bit.  And another Leia and Jyn story where Leia hides in a ‘fresher on Home One to cry when things finally get too much for her and Jyn finds her there.

I’ve had an idea on the backburner for ages of a fantasy story where Cassian is trapped among the Sidhe when he has to eat their food while undercover; mysterious Blacksmith Kay and forest daughter Jyn, and their animal allies, go into The Land Under The Hill to try and rescue him.

Someday I’ll have another bash at the King Arthur/Star Wars AU.  And the LOTR AU.

But my main energy at the moment needs to stay on The city and the sea and The bargain of liberty.

Do You Accept Prompts:  Generally not. I’ve had to accept I don’t really respond well to them.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write:  The city and the sea.  I’m part way through chapter 3 in draft but I don’t want to start posting it until I’m a bit further on in the story and have really got into the swing of things.

Thank you for asking!

[rebelsofshield]

Star Wars Dooku: Jedi Lost- Review

The radio drama is as essential a part to Star Wars history as the novel, the comic, or even the movie. The early 1980’s saw the original trilogy bring Star Wars to the airwaves and today Del Rey and Lucasfilm continue that tradition with a new audio drama by Cavan Scott, Dooku: Jedi Lost, following the early days of the infamous Sith Lord. Unfortunately, while a nice experiment and an interesting new way to explore the Star Wars galaxy, Dooku: Jedi Lost proves to be a flawed and frustrating product.

(Review contains minor spoilers)

Mystery surrounds the new master of Asajj Ventress (Orlagh Cassady). Rescued from the fighting rings of Rattatak, the former Jedi Apprentice finds herself thrust into the dark and strange world of the Count of Serenno, Dooku (Euan Morton). His instruction is cruel and impersonal, and his motives are just as ethereal. However, when Dooku sends his new assassin to track down a missing member of his courtly family, Ventress begins to uncover secrets about his past with the Jedi Order and how he became the deadly man he is today.

Count Dooku has always been a bit of an enigma. Despite being the central villain to Attack of the Clones, his motivations and past are always kept at arms-length and he doesn’t even appear in the film until well over ninety minutes into its runtime. His hints of his past with the Jedi are spoken of in character asides and Christopher Lee’s performance casts a wide shadow, but the live action Dooku enters the screen with an air of mystery and confusion before quickly exiting in the opening moments of Revenge of the Sith. Since 2005 we have seen Dooku evolve into an intimidating (sleepwear rocking) villain in The Clone Wars animated series and his expansive connection to the larger Jedi Order has grown through glimpses in various novels and comics, including this year’s great Master and Apprentice. A story following Dooku’s early years as a Jedi and his eventual abandoning of the order is an intriguing subject matter and tying it to such an infamously complex point of view as Asajj Ventress seemed like an easy recipe for a standout novel.

There is a lot to like in Dooku: Jedi Lost. While it was billed as an audiobook, the finished product plays out more like a traditional audio drama. While Star Wars audiobooks have for years now featured bursts of music or sound effects to accompany the narrative, Jedi Lost takes this to a new level. Characters speak in bursts of dialogue and internal narration and the experience as a whole feels much more akin to the sort of spoken word stage play that we have seen a boom of in recent years in the podcast market. If you have listened to Marvel’s rather great Wolverine: The Long Night, you may have an idea of the sort of experience to expect.

The result is for the most part a well-produced aural experience. The voice acting is across the board fun and dramatic if occasionally on the hammy side. Cassady’s interpretation of Ventress adheres closely to the sinister, raspy whisper of Nika Futterman while creating her own identity befitting a much younger version of the character. Morton goes the opposite route and doesn’t even attempt to mimic Christopher Lee or even Corey Burton’s take on the malevolent count, and while the difference is at first jarring, Morton quickly makes the character his own and he becomes one of the stronger voice performances in the cast. Marc Thompson’s well-practiced Yoda is another standout, which proves only natural given the amount of work he has had with the character in past projects.

The general sound direction is for the most part strong as well. Jedi Lost often succeeds at creating a strong sense of atmosphere and place with a great sense for ambient noise. Hums of lightsabers, chattering crowds, and zipping speeders fill the spaces of each scene and help bring the setting of the galaxy far, far away to life. It doesn’t prove immaculate though. Some of the more action heavy scenes opt to loop sounds rather than choreographing them to Scott’s script or the character narration and the musical cues are often distracting or ill-fitting to the scene at hand. (I can’t count the number of times “Across the Stars” seemed to slip into decidedly not romantic moments in the story.) The overall presentation is still, for the most part, successful but there are enough chinks in the production of Jedi Lost that as a whole make this feel like an experiment that maybe should have been more tightly honed, especially considering that the stellar work being done in the podcast realm in similar media essentially for free.

Where Jedi Lost proves to be its most uneven, however, is in Cavan Scott’s script. Star Wars regulars will recognize Scott the most from his time writing for IDW’s rather delightful all-ages comic imprint Star Wars Adventures. While Scott has written his fair share of traditional novels in the past, his familiarity with dialogue heavy mediums such as comics make him well suited for an audio project like Jedi Lost. Unfortunately, the narrative that Scott creates for Dooku struggles in its overall structure.

The central concept of Asajj Ventress learning about Dooku’s past for a relevant mission is intriguing, but it ultimately boils down much of the “present time” action to her listening to or reading the writings of her new master. Narrative beats are frequently interrupted or paused so that a new diary entry can be found or presented and while it becomes an accepted part of the story after some time, it can’t help but feel like one of those found footage horror movies where characters have to keep explaining why they have a video camera on them.

Luckily, the actual narrative of Dooku’s upbringing proves much more successful if still flawed. The strongest portions of Scott’s script follow a younger Dooku through his early days as a Jedi initiate and later a Padawan. Scott injects Dooku and his friendship with other infamous Jedi Sifo-Dyas with a Harry Potter-like sense of youthful adventure and curiosity. Their explorations of Temple secrets and Jedi artifacts carry with them a YA flair that also brings an unexpected sense of tragedy and dramatic irony given the dark fates that will befall both of these young men in the decades to come. Scott crafts Dooku as a Jedi that is frequently distracted by emotional attachment and responsibility not only to the citizens he has sworn to protect but to a courtly family on Serenno that he reconnects to as an adolescent. How Dooku deals with his conflicting loyalties and also the mentorship he receives from atypical Jedi Lene Kostana make for some of the most intriguing character work in the story and it gives the first half of Scott’s book a sense of discovery and emotional immediacy.

However, as the narrative progresses the peaks into Dooku’s past become more scattered and episodic in nature. We are treated to only glimpses to his training under Yoda, his relationship with his first apprentice Rael Aveross (a standout in Claudia Gray’s Master and Apprentice but annoyingly one note here), and his education of Qui-Gon Jinn. Each of these could have easily filled a book of their own, but here they feel like frustratingly brief glimpses into other worthy stories.

Scott attempts to keep the relationship of Dooku and his birth family on Serenno as the emotional throughline of the narrative and for the most part this proves successful. It allows for a natural climax to Dooku’s contained arc in this aspect of the story while also providing another example of the larger Jedi Order’s failure to accommodate more renegade individuals in their ranks. However, in doing so, Scott misses one of the fundamental pieces of Dooku’s story, his actual seduction to the Dark Side. While Scott hides hints of the darkness brewing in him throughout the novel and plots his defection from the Jedi in believable detail, when exactly Dooku changed from a lost Jedi to lightning spewing Sith Lord is a beat that is glossed over almost in its entirety. Outside of the initial disappointment that we are not treated to Dooku’s Sith training or even the larger conspiracy regarding the creation of the clone army, this switch in teh character to such a malevolent place proves to be an essential plot point to the resolution of the book’s frame narrative. It may create a strong contrast showing how far the Count of Serenno has fallen, but the end result feels jarring and it can’t help but feel like the listener has simply been obscured from essential information.

The end result is a story that is often entertaining and occasionally thought provoking, but is just as frequently frustrating and stilted in its structure and execution. Dooku: Jedi Lost is an interesting project, but it feels like a product that could have used  more refinement both in its conceptualization and in execution. Star Wars fans that are looking for a listen during a long trip may want to partake in this aural journey, but others may want to wait before uncovering the secrets of this Sith.

Score: C+

[aftaabmagazine]

Conversation with Jamil Jan Kochai, author of "99 Nights in Logar"

By Farhad Azad 

[caption: The cover of Jamil Jan Kochai debut novel]

Jamil Jan Kochai's multi-layered debut novel 99 Nights in Logar opens inside Afghanistan at a time when Khaled Hosseini first book The Kite Runner was making waves in the US. While Hosseini's story depicts the urban Kabuli perspective, Kochai's narrates the rural Logari experience. The distance between Logar and Kabul maybe a short 45-minute drive, however in many ways, the two places are worlds apart.

In this rural environment, we are guided by the main character, Marwand, a 12-year-old Afghan-American from the capital of California. He is spending his summer vacation in his parent's modest village located near the Logar - Kabul roadway.

Being so young, he is collectively accepted as a local by his large extended family and the people he meets. Marwand, along with his younger male family members, leads several hairy adventures. They organize a disastrous search party to find the fierce family dog, avoid local gunmen, including a couple of young Taliban, and don burqas attempting to join a women's wedding party.

Humorous, tragic, and honest, the novel requires careful reading because the multi-layered stories are intricate and dense. The primary reader is the Afghan-American who will connect more with the native terms and phrases skillfully crafted by the author, along with particular cultural nuances.  Through the stories of the different characters— young and old, male and female —Kochai writes an authentic narrative about the people of his native Logar, one of Afghanistan's most picturesque regions— romantically beautiful on the surface and dark and complex on the inside. 

I chatted with Jamil Jan Kochai about his novel, here is our conversation.

Farhad Azad: What did your parents think about your desire to be a writer vs. the usual lawyer, doctor, or engineer?

Jamil Jan Kochai: At first, they were definitely resistant to the idea of writing as a career. Up until my third year of undergrad, my father was still trying to convince me to switch to engineering or computer science. For a time, I was able to quell their worries because I'd actually planned to go to law school. But, gradually, as I won a few writing awards at Sac State and eventually became the commencement speaker for my graduating class, both they and I realized that I was much more gifted as a writer than I ever would be as a lawyer. So, after I graduated from Sac State and entered the Masters in Creative Writing Program at UC Davis, my parents began to fully support my creative writing endeavors. They let me interview them for stories, they respected the time I needed to read and write, and they never doubted or scolded me for pursuing such a risky career path. Their faith in my abilities made me work even harder. I read and wrote like a mad man. Alhamdullilah, their support was honestly astonishing. I couldn't have written this novel without them.  

Farhad Azad: Were you familiar with Afghan writers and literature growing up?

Jamil Jan Kochai: I was very familiar with Pashtun poetry. My father was an admirer of Rahman Baba, Khushal Khattak, and Ghani Khan. He would often recite their poetry from memory. I was also familiar with some of our local folktales and our more culturally expansive epics. Laila and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, and those sorts of tales. From an early age, I was taught to appreciate the poetic arts and Afghanistan's literary lineage.

Farhad Azad: Post 9/11, how did you deal with the backlash growing up?

Jamil Jan Kochai: In many ways, I think the backlash, the alienation, and the condemnation I felt in the years after 9/11 only made me prouder to be a Muslim and an Afghan. Even as a young kid, I was very defensive of my cultural heritage and my religious beliefs. I became rebellious. I would argue with my teachers about Afghan and American history. I questioned what I was taught in high school, and by the time I got to college, I had this immense curiosity about all these differing but interconnecting lineages of imperialism and warfare. By studying the American War in Afghanistan, I learned about the civil wars, the Soviet Invasion, and the Anglo-Afghan Wars, which led me to study the broader histories of colonization and imperialism throughout the world. This all had a profound impact on my writing.

Farhad Azad: There are many stories told by the various characters in 99 Nights in Logar, how did you decide to include them in the work?

Jamil Jan Kochai: I realized that my stories themselves can encapsulate all these other stories. There was this moment when I was writing the novel itself when I hit this barrier in the road, and I didn't know what would happen next. Once I realized that we had this rich tradition of oral storytelling and all these stories within my own family, I sort of allowed the characters in the novel to tell their own stories. That's when the project really hit its stride.

Farhad Azad: Afghans have a habit of not finishing their stories which you included in your work.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It is sort of magical in that way. When I first started this project, I would interview my father. It was really important to me that I recorded some of his stories from his life, but I would try to do this chronologically, starting with his childhood. But it was difficult trying to get stories out of him. He would say, "Oh, I had a regular childhood."

I couldn't get the details I wanted. Later on, we'd be sitting somewhere. We would be drinking tea, and he would see something on TV.  It would remind him of this beautiful, incredible story from his life that he didn't mention to me in my interview. And he would tell the story and stop at some place, often times a place where it would be emotionally difficult for him to continue the story. It would be about a significant loss, and he would have to stop. It took me a while to be patient with his stories, to learn that certain stories didn’t always have pleasant resolutions, that some stories you had to piece together, a memory at a time, like a puzzle.

Farhad Azad: Telling stories is a quality that Afghans possess, including the ability to describe anything in very fine detail.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It's incredible. I remember on a trip with my aunt to Yosemite, and out of nowhere, just because of the mountains and the forest, she started to tell us the story of when she escaped out of Logar during the war, going through the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan to escape to Peshawar. She told this incredibly detailed story of carrying her little sister through the mountains and then getting lost. Then my father is eventually finding them on horseback. Then she remembers calling my father's name and the echoes coming back to her through the mountain. It was so visual, and it was so essential at the same time. It really made me appreciate it. At a storytelling level, how talented my family members are at telling stories.

Farhad Azad: For the past two decades you have traveled to Logar, but your trips to the region have shortened in length. 

Jamil Jan Kochai: When I first went to Logar, I was 6 years old, I had all these really precious magical, memories of swimming in these streams, with my cousin, these were some of my greatest memories. When I came back from Logar, I was telling everyone how really beautiful Afghanistan was.  And everyone was so surprised that my reaction to the time because the Taliban were in control. So everyone had this very grim vision of Afghanistan. I was telling everyone how much I loved it and how beautiful and incredible experience. And then I went back when I was 12, and it was again an incredible experience with some of the most precious memories that I still have is from that summer that I spent in Afghanistan those three months especially in Logar. 

Then I had the opportunity to go back in 2012, but it just seemed like progressively Logar was becoming more and more dangerous. And so when I went back in 2012, the security situation hadn't completely deteriorated, but it was a very murky situation. During the day, government forces were in control and then at night, the Taliban had control over the village. And I had to be very careful about speaking because of my accent, I had to be careful about telling people who I was and where I was from. Nonetheless, I still got to spend a decent amount of time. I was 19. I spent a great deal of time in my grandfather's orchard. I spend a great deal of time with my cousins. It was another beautiful experience.

But when I went back in 2017, by then the security situation in my village had gotten so bad that even villagers who had lived their whole lives there were afraid to go back because of the gunfights and the executions and the bombings and these things had become almost a daily occurrence.

My uncles and cousins, who had seen war and gone through warfare, they were completely afraid to enter Logar. They wouldn't allow me to spend a night in Logar. My father, brother, and cousins, and I ended up taking a very short trip through my home village. The whole village had been emptied out because one of the militias had shot a rabid dog with a machine gun. Everyone thought it was a gunfight. We entered my father's village, and it was a ghost town. We drove in, and there was this incredibly heart-wrenching experience. My father's cousin, who had grown up in Logar and my father looked afraid. But we were determined to visit the grave of my father's brother, and other family members' graves. We said our prayers, and we came out as quickly as we came.

I just remembered being incredibly saddened by the way that the security situation in Logar had developed. My father's village has been so precious to me. The security situation has deteriorated to the point where I'm not able to visit anymore and spend time anymore. Logar has fallen into tragic circumstances. It has made me want to tell the stories of Logar even more. It has made my storytelling even more urgent.

Farhad Azad: Today on social media, we see thousands of beautiful photos from all over Afghanistan, but these places, more or less, are intangible to experience.

Jamil Jan Kochai: Thinking back on these memories, these precious times I had in Logar, it really feels like that beauty I had experienced had been lost to war in this very concrete way. Looking back at these memories, I have access to this time in this land that is almost lost to me now.

Farhad Azad: Your novel you have incorporated the stories of almost every character.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That was really important to me when starting the project was that I tried to get as many differing and diverse voices as possible into the novel and into my stories because I didn't want it to just be this kid from America coming into Afghanistan and just telling everything from his point of view. I was trying to find a way how I could resist that and how I could tell as many different stories, I can capture as many different voices as possible. Once I realized that the main tool I had was of the storytelling and allowing the other characters to tell their stories. And Marwand [the main character] listens to and absorbs the world and not always talking. And so I did I went into the novel with this with a very specific goal.

Particularly Afghan women voices, which can often time in our culture can be overwhelmed by men's voices and particularly telling these voices of the story of people but particularly women living in these rural spaces. I'm trying to try to understand these stores and trying to understand their lives and try and understand the particular ways that they live, grow, and suffer.

The novel was expansive in its abilities to tell different stories and perceptions and point of views. I was really concerned that I was able to capture these different perceptions and point of views. And one thing that I did when I finished writing, I showed it to different Afghan women, who identified as Pashtun or Tajik or whatever else, because I didn't want it to be to just be a book about an Afghan American boy seeing the world. I wanted it to be about different versions of Afghanistan culminated to this one narrative, which I think is one of the biggest problems of how Afghanistan is always understood-- about one narrative about terrorism, about one narrative about oppression or one narrative about violence. It seems to me there is beauty, and beauty of the complexity of just a small village. Often times it isn't crafted.

Farhad Azad: You clearly describe the nuances of the people, down to the standards of beauty.

Jamil Jan Kochai: With so many aspects of Afghan culture, so many aspects of our society and country, we are constantly being put into these boxes.

"This is the conservative mullah who beats his wife." "This is the wine drinking musician and who is doing drugs."  "This is the oppressed women who never spoke up for herself."

It was very important to me to unpackage those boxes that our people are being put into and understand the complexity of it at the same time, maintaining a sense of realism.

Women in villages and in Logar are often times oppressed by men. And they go through severe abuse. They go through these incredibly traumatic events in their lives. It was important for me to demonstrate that. But I also wanted to show the ways that these men at the same time because of poverty, because of war, because of whatever else are living painful, traumatic lives themselves. Often times the trauma you see in villages, there are larger, more complex reasons for these things that are occurring. And it was very important for me to demonstrate and show that these are very real in Afghanistan.

Insurgents can oftentimes also be incredibly young men. Just boys on the brink of becoming men.

I was heartbroken by that, and I feel that is a side of Afghanistan, that isn't often demonstrated. There is an incredible amount of nuance to all these figures, stereotypes, and cliches that we have put on Afghanistan. That there are reasons-- historically, politically, socially -- people end up becoming the way they are.  I don't know how successful I was in the novel, but that is something I was trying to do.

Farhad Azad: Please talk about the shape shifter character Jawad who seems to match many of the political and militant personalities in Afghan history.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That character specifically came out of a story that I heard one day when I was at my uncle's house. This is in 2012. I visited my uncle in Logar, and over dinner, one of my uncle's brother-in-law's brought up this guy named Jawid who was on the run from the Taliban because he was impersonating a Taliban and had been working for the government forces. He was a spy. He was also running away from the government forces because he was spying on them too.  He was putting these two groups against each other. He became kind of a folk legend in the villages because no one could capture him. I found this character so incredibly fascinating. He became this figure of fluidity, like you said, a shape shifter, one day he is Talib and the next day he is a government soldier, the next day he is a civilian and the next day he is donning a burqa pretending to be a woman. He was a figure who disrupted the usual categorizations placed on Afghans, this "black and white" of government vs. rebels, revolution vs. order, however, you want to categorize it. By showing figures that are constantly moving back and forth, I wanted to demonstrate how it is not always so simple to be able to relegate people into one group or another. There is an incredible amount of fluidity and shapeshifting, these gray areas in war. I was trying to get Jawid to sort of embody that.

Farhad Azad: The maze is a central piece to the novel. For me, it symbolized the complex history of Afghanistan.

Jamil Jan Kochai: Definitely, the history of Afghanistan was an important part of it. When I was thinking about the maze, I was specifically thinking about the geography of my village, which has these mazes, alleyways and compounds build close to each other. I was also thinking about the stories my father told about these tunnels built underneath the compounds during bombings. The Russians had figured out what the Afghans were doing to avoid their bombs and so they began to use gas. There were tunnels in Logar filled with dead bodies. During the Soviet war, Logar was sort of turned into a ghost town. And now new buildings are being built upon these sites of these massacres.

So when I was thinking of the land itself, it seemed to me that there were so many layers of trauma, massacres, and history. And these stories that were buried right underneath the earth, locked inside of the ground. So much of these stories have been lost. The maze sort of embodies the bits and pieces of the history of Logar, but also of Afghanistan at large, that have been sort of lost to time but are still buried in the earth. Somewhere ready to be found.  

Farhad Azad:  In modern Afghan history, there have been two versions of Afghanistan: Kabul and everywhere else. Your novel touches on the dichotomy between rural vs. urban.

Jamil Jan Kochai: I wish I had given more time to Kabul. In my last two visits, I've spent most of my time in Kabul and I have come to appreciate Kabul as a city. But coming from the rural area of Logar, my family came to despise Kabul in a way. We felt that the urban people of Kabul were living in their own world, their own universe. Although our village in Logar was maybe a 40-minute drive from Kabul, it was still its own world. The people in rural Afghanistan lives are just built around the compound, the crops and local forms of government, that all the goings-on and incredible events happening in Kabul wasn't touching them in a very real way. My father told me that it wasn’t until the Communists took over and repressive measures were being laid out in the countryside, in Logar, that people felt the shift in the country.

It was fascinating to me that the perception and the stories and viewpoints that were coming out of Kabul were the ones that ended up getting the most light shown on them. We talked earlier about "The Kite Runner." I remember reading it, and it was an important novel to me, I'm not sure if I would have pursued writing without having read The Kite Runner first. But it didn't feel like my own vision of Afghanistan, my experience of Afghanistan wasn't really captured in that novel because it was centered upon Kabul and not the countryside.

And that kind of became inspiring to me in an odd way, my experience of Afghanistan, my family's experience in Afghanistan, and rural Afghanistan it hasn't had its own light and its own time to share its stories. That was one of my goals in the novel was to demonstrate life in Afghanistan and to show this very complex relationship between the urban and the rural and the how the political and economic roles of Logar and Kabul were deeply intertwined and yet encapsulated in their own worlds.

Farhad Azad: You also show the various levels of how Islam is embraced within a family.

Jamil Jan Kochai:  Practicing Islam, praying, and reading and studying the Quran was such an important part of who I am, and it was such an important part of how I understood the world. I wanted to show how people practice and struggled with faith. And ultimately my goal was to show the struggle, even the struggling with Islam is in its own way very beautiful.  

Farhad Azad: One chapter is written entirely in Pashto.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That was a story my father told verbatim to a scribe in Pashto. My father gave it to me. I gave it to my editor and told them that I want it to be part of the novel. I wanted to stay in Pashto, true to my father's voice.

Farhad Azad: Thank you for the time in speaking with me.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It was an absolute pleasure.

More From Jamil Jan Kochai

Author’s Website

Purchase Book on Amazon  

NPR Interview 

Time Review

New Yorker Review

The Guardian Review 

Kirkus Review 

Washington Post Review

[toppressrelease-blog]

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Authorization

When composing your official statement, you may run into the basic occurrence of attribution or composing a statement from a person.

Having the authorization from this person, to utilize their statement inside an official statement is critical. Neglecting to do so may bring about a claim, something that no Company might want.

In the event that you are near an individual, a verbal alright might be all that is required however we generally suggest composed consent.

Start Strong

Not exclusively should your public statement have a snappy title and sub feature, your first passage will likewise be significant.

This is the ideal area for giving data about what you are attempting to depict to the peruser. Maybe the utilization of certain insights might be utilized, as long as you don't go over the edge.

In the event that you have just composed a solid feature and sub feature, odds are you are well in progress to composing a decent official statement.

There are sure don'ts that are genuinely easy to follow.

Try not to compose a public statement that peruses like a notice. Try not to present your official statement in the event that it is loaded with syntactic mistakes and errors. Try not to present your public statement on the off chance that it is designed for criminal behavior, stock advancement (except if you are an enrolled individual from the NASD with an enlistment number), scorn towards others, or psychological oppression. No one will distribute this kind of delivery.

Don't consistently present a similar public statement again and again, or even one that is marginally changed from the first. On the off chance that your official statement was not gotten or you didn't get any enquiries, this ought to be a piece of Press release information.

End

An elegantly composed public statement with an infectious title will focus on your Company. This sort of media consideration is significant and could move a Company from platform, to the moon. Keep it basic, interestingFeature Articles, educational and direct. Keep your raw numbers precise with sources where accessible and you are well headed to progress!

[thecrushsblog]

Elements of Novel Writing

Elements of Novel Writing

By Robert Waldvogel  |   Submitted On October 07, 2019

   Elements of Novel Writing INTRODUCTION:

  A novel, often subdivided into sections, chapters, and scenes, and entailing expository, narrative, and narrative summary writing, creatively depicts a protagonist’s journey, usually fraught with obstacles and restrictions, toward a personal goal.

“All novels have similar elements,” according to Walter Mosley in his book, “This Year You Write Your Novel” (Little, Brown and Company, 2007, p. 97). “They have a beginning, middle, and end. They have characters who change, and a story that engages; they have a plot that pushes the story forward and a sound that insinuates a world.”

  THE NOVEL WITHIN:

  Sometimes intellect can be a hindrance or even a handicap. Countless people walk around, wishing they had the time and tenacity to write the novel they believe is already within them. Yet, when they actually sit down to write it, albeit it in first-draft form, they ponder numerous questions, such as, What should I write? I have an idea, but no one will like it. Let me think of what’s popular. Romances sell well, so it doesn’t take much to figure out that that’s the answer. Or is it?

If the author does not have a romance, a fantasy, a mystery, or a science fiction piece in him, they are not likely to come out of him, and, if a meek resemblance to one does, it is not likely to be accepted for publication.

  READERSHIP:

  Determination of what type of novel-or any other genre, for that matter-the author should craft, should, to a significant degree, hinge upon what he likes to read.

“Why should you write what you love to read?” poses Evan Marshall in his book, “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing” (Writers Digest Books, 1998, pp 7-8). “First, because you’ve read books in a specific genre for so long, you’re aware of the kinds of stories that have been written in it… Second, your passion as a reader will translate into your passion as a writer.”

Readership, needless to say, is integral to the publishing process.

John Cheever expressed this author-reader duality when he said, “I can’t write without readers. It’s precisely like a kiss-you can’t do it alone.”

As a reader himself, the author should determine which types of novels he enjoys reading and why, perusing the book lists to see what has sold, what has been extensively covered, which books may be similar to the one he intends to write, and then decide if he can approach the same subject or topic with a fresh approach or perspective.

Fictional genres include action/adventure, fantasy, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, suspense, western, and young adult.

  NOVEL WRITING:

  Like the writing of any genre, whether it be nonfiction, drama, or short fiction, that of the novel is not a scientific one, but instead is a creative one. Aspects, techniques, and tips, in an educational vein, can help. However, the process itself involves an evolutionary one, during which the author writes, rewrites, crosses out, rewords, adds, and deletes. The more he persists in his literary efforts, the more, over time, that his expressions will reflect his intentions.

  PLOT POSSIBILITIES:

  Although plots may only be limited to the ways the author can creatively connect and interrelate the novel’s elements, they can emerge from the following eight aspects.

  1). The created protagonist or main character.

2). His goal, sparked by the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion.

3). His motivation for achieving that goal.

4). His strengths, weaknesses, and internal and external conflicts.

5). The antagonist.

6). The supporting characters.

7). The significant, sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds that oppose the protagonist’s quest.

8). How, when, and why he triumphs over the obstacles, leading to the novel’s climax and resolution.

  STRUCTURE:

  Novels, as already mentioned, have beginnings, middles, and ends. Their approximate lengths are as follows.

Beginning: A novel’s beginning roughly covers the first quarter of the book. It is here that the author illustrates the story’s situation and circumstances, introduces the protagonist and other significant characters, details the inciting incident that sets him on his quest, explains his motivations for pursuing it, and incorporates any necessary background information.

Middle: The middle encompasses half the book’s length. It is here that the writer illustrates the primary action of the protagonist’s story line, journey, and quest, along with any subplots and twists, complications, and surprises.

End: The end occupies the final quarter of the work. All of its story lines, particularly those of the protagonist, are resolved, the plot reaches its fever pitch in the climax, and there is a short denouement or resolution, highlighting how the protagonist himself may have changed because of his journey.

The novel’s third, or last section, should be the most intense, leading to its climax. It can be considered the satisfactory conclusion or payoff or reward for the reader who has followed the book’s literary journey, constituting “the moment he has been waiting for.”

As the section unfolds and the remaining pages indicate that the novel’s resolution must be nearing, the author can use several techniques to effectively craft it. It is here where the protagonist’s options become severely limited, as his avenues and strategies become virtually exhausted and the number of others he can turn to is just as minuscule in number. This ensures that he follows the only path left to him.

His oppositions also intensify and increase in number.

Finally, his last-desperate attempt seems doomed to failure.

When the protagonist has battled his internal and external conflicts, followed the path he believes would lead to his goal, and now stands face-to-face with his greatest obstacle, the book has reached its final showdown.

“A showdown is not necessarily violent or even physical,” according to Marshall (ibid, p. 121). “(It) could be a climactic courtroom confrontation, a nerve-jangling chase sequence, a bloody fist fight, a rundown of the facts before the suspects… or a quiet talk between your lead and her husband’s mistress. It all depends on your story.”

  OUTLINES:

  Because of the length, complexity, the number of characters, their interactions with one another, the incidents and actions, and the need to strategically and progressively present a novel in literary form, the creation of an outline can greatly facilitate an author’s effort in crafting one.

“No sane person would think of setting out to construct a skyscraper or even a one-family house without a detailed set of plans,” according to Albert Zuckerman in his book, “Writing the Blockbuster Novel,” (Writers Digest Books, 1994, p. 34). “A big novel must have the literary equivalents of beams and joints strong enough to sustain it excitingly from beginning to end, and it also must contain myriad interlocking parts fully as complex as those in any building type.”

  NARRATIVE VOICE:

  “The voice that tells the story is the first thing the reader encounters,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 17). “It carries us from the first page to the last. We, the readers, must believe in this narrative voice or, at least, we must feel strongly for that voice and have a definite and consistent opinion about it.”

  PROTAGONIST:

  The protagonist is the story’s central or main character. It is the one around which the plot revolves and to whom all the action and adversity is directed. It is the person who faces the obstacles and conflicts he must overcome to reach his goal.

Ideally, a story should have a single protagonist. He may not always be admirable-for example, he can be an anti-hero; nevertheless, he must command involvement on the part of the reader, or better yet, his empathy. He is the person in the story or book with whom the reader sympathizes or for whom he roots. Protagonists should be complex and flawed. They do not, by definition, need to be likeable, but they should be relatable and believable. The reader should understand their choices.

Although the protagonist’s physical appearance may be integral to the type of character the author creates and the role he plays in the story-from the stunning, attractive blonde to the six-foot-tall, 300-pound body guard to the mild mannered milk toast–his personality, strengths, and weaknesses, more than anything, determine how he or she will pursue his or her goals and what their motivations for doing so may be. It is that journey that the reader most follows, enabling him to care about, sympathize and empathize with, and feel for.

“If you want readers… to spend their precious time on your book, then you have to (create) a character who keeps them engaged,” according to Joanna Penn in The Creative Penn Limited. “This doesn’t mean that you need a goody-goody two shoes perfect person, but you do want to write a compelling, authentic protagonist that hooks the reader so he is desperate to know what happens next in the character’s world.

“Focus on three questions: What does your character want and why? What/who stops him? How does he overcome the obstacles along the way? (And) how is he changed as a result of the journey?”

“Readers remember a wonderful book’s characters long after they forget a story’s exciting scenes or even its climax,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 99). “Those characters who do stick in our minds over years and years appear in more than one way to be extraordinary.”

“(The author) has to let us see and share the longings, hopes, carnal desires, ambitions, fears, loves, and hates that reside privately within the soul of his characters and that (much as in life) other characters may know little or nothing about,” he continues (p. 99). “The writer must view the environment of the novel (both physical and human) through the eyes and sensibilities of the character.”

Yet, as also occurs in life, no journey can bear fruit if it does not somehow change the character or his perspective.

“All novels, short stories, and plays, and most poems, are about human transformation,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “The subject of the novel is the human spirit and psyche-how the characters interact in their relationships with other souls and with the world in general.”

“As in life, your characters develop mainly because of their dealings with one another,” he further emphasizes pp 46-47). “The complex and dynamic interplay of relationships throughout the course of the novel is what makes change possible.”

  ANTAGONIST:

  The antagonist serves as the protagonist’s opponent and can often be considered the “bad guy” in the story, whose action arises from the conflict between the two. This is aptly illustrated in “The Wizard of Oz” in which the struggle between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West plays out until she triumphs over her with her death and brings her broom to the wizard.

The antagonist does not have to be a person at all, but may be an animal, an inanimate object, or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin’s story, “The Cold Equations,” is outer space.

An antagonist should also be a “round character.” Simply making him evil is not as interesting as making him or her conflicted. Pure evil is difficult to believe in fiction, since people are multi-faceted and inspired by their own situations and back stories. Therefore, putting time into describing your antagonist and showing his or her own struggles will create a richer and more complex narrative. Just as a protagonist should not only be good, an antagonist should not only be bad.

  CONFLICT, CRISIS, AND STAKES:

  The crisis, or inciting incident, is integral to the novel, because it launches its plot trajectory. It must be appropriate to the genre and important, vital, crucial, and realistic enough so that the reader will follow it to its destination.

Conflicts can be considered the collective obstacles that oppose the protagonist in his quest to achieve his goal. They encompass two types: external-that is, human, natural, geographical, and physical, and internal-or character strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, and flaws.

The stakes can be considered the consequences or what lies on the line if the goal is not successfully achieved.

  MOTIVATIONS:

  Inciting incidents spark a protagonist’s journey toward a particular goal, but what is equally important to that goal is his motivation for pursuing it.

Behavior is like a language. It makes a statement about people, provided others possess the tools to “translate” it. Part of that translation entails the understanding of what lurks behind it-that is, what fuels it. If, for example, a person works hard to earn money, his motivations can include the need to pay his bills, the need to own expensive things, the need to own expensive things to prove his worth and perhaps superiority, and/or the need to camouflage feelings of low self-esteem and -worth. Similarly, a person who sits alone at a party could be in a bad or sad mood and therefore does not feel very social on the occasion, could be inherently shy, could lack social skills, and/or be unable to trust others and hence connect with them in any meaningful way.

Motivations bare the soul, demonstrating what a character wants, desires, and dreams about.

They both fuel behavior and either give the reader a reason to find out what they are or, if revealed and understood, give him insight into how they drive him. As he follows the character’s journey, he can often glean insight into his own.

PROVERBIAL SHOW, DON’T TELL:

Fiction, needless to say, recreates reality through action, dialogue, and character interchange, requiring the proverbial “show, don’t tell” delivery method.

“What you must always remember is that the novel is more experiential than it is informational,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “Your reader might learn something, but most of what they learn is gained through what they are shown about the lives and circumstances of the characters therein.”

  PLOTS:

  Because writing principally informs, as it does in nonfiction, and entertains, as it does in fiction, readers invest their time in the process and hope to see a return on it after they have put the story or the book down. Plots engage, grip, and give the reader something to follow as they unravel. Most of all, they should sufficiently hold a reader’s attention so that he does not put the piece down until he has finished reading it.

Writing three pages about your garden, for instance, may provide a commune with nature and lend itself more to poetry than prose, but how compelling would it be, unless it is integral to the longer story?

Plots are comprised of tracks that lead from origin to destination, as experienced by the proverbial philosophy discussed in most writing classes: if the author introduces a gun on the first page of his story, it had better fire by the last page, or the writer should at least explain why it has not.

“All good writing is mystery writing,” according to Rebecca McClanahan in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively” (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999, p. 194). “And every successful story… and narrative essay is a page-turner… We may begin reading out of mild curiosity, to pass the time, but we keep reading to unravel the mystery. If there is no tension, we stop caring. When suspense dissolves, when the mystery is solved, we stop turning pages.”

“By holding back essential information, we arouse the reader’s curiosity and keep them reading,” advises Mosley (op, cit., pp 55-56). “Plot is the structure of revelation-that is to say, it is the method and timing with which you impart important details of the story so that the reader will know just enough to be engaged while still wanting to know more.”

Part of the mystery is not necessarily enabling the reader to find out what will happen. In “Titanic,” for instance, he or even the move-goer already knows. To them the mystery is following the plot and learning how the characters involved will survive and surmount the crisis, and how, if any, they will grow and develop as a result of it.

  SCENES:

  Scenes are the structured, inter-related links that enable the plot to unfold, which itself should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Like a mathematical formula, the elements should add up to a sum-the destination and resolution of the story. Plots can be considered contrivances about “interesting troubles” that the protagonist and supporting characters must experience, negotiate, surmount, extricate themselves from, and triumph over before arriving at their-and the story’s-destination.

“The scene is one of the most basic components from which every story is constructed,” according to Baechtel (op. cit. p. 71).

Events, physical actions, conversations, and interactions vividly occur so that the reader almost feels as if he is watching a movie or witnessing a live event.

A scene imitates life and convinces the reader of its occurrence. Seeing, as is said, is believing. This is the proverbial “show, don’t tell” of literature. Don’t tell me that Warren was crushed when he learned that he failed his final exam. Show me how his eyes widened into disbelief, how he tore up the paper, how he fell on to his bed, and how the tears dripped on to the pillow. The word “crushed” is then not needed. You, as an author, illustrated it and I saw it myself in my mind.

“Each scene must build on what has come before it, and provide a necessary bridge to what comes after it,” Baechtel continues (ibid, p. 123).

“A scene is an episode acted out by characters; it takes place in a particular place at a particular time,” according to McClanahan (op. cit., p. 194).

“To maintain suspense, we must alternate between scene and summary, showing and telling, and between braking and acceleration,” she concludes (p. 200).

“The setting up of a dominant, unresolved issue around which the novel’s characters have a huge stake is central to the plotting of a book as a whole,” according to Zuckerman (op. cit., p.123). “A similar technique in miniature can be vital to most individual scenes, the novel’s building blocks. In a blockbuster novel, a scene is almost always more than merely a well-written account in description and dialogue of an episode between characters.”

  SURPRISES AND TWISTS:

  Nothing keeps the reader more riveted to a novel than an unexpected revelation, surprise, turn-of-events, or twist, and these techniques equally re-energize a plot that begins to sag. For authors who ascribe to the three-part subdivision, surprises should ideally arise at the end of the first, or beginning section, and in the middle of and at the end of the second, or middle, one.

A surprise is a shocking, protagonist- and plot-changing event, which sheds new light on, but significantly opposes, his goal. It can include his discovery of something; an opposition by another character, particularly the antagonist; the revelation of new information that raises the stakes and intensifies his quest; and an event or circumstance that negatively impacts the path toward his goal.

Ideally, each of the three unexpected turns should be worse than the previous one and the last should virtually eliminate the protagonist’s chances of success.

  EMOTIONAL AND RATIONAL RESPONSES:

  As occurs in real life, characters in novels often respond both emotionally and rationally to situations. The first response occurs in the brain’s mid-section and enables the person to process the events through the spontaneous energy which is generated by them. The second takes place in the brain’s upper portion, which entails reasoning and executive functioning.

If a person is unexpectedly terminated from his place of employment, for instance, he may experience the following two reactions.

Emotional Response: Veronica was stunned. She flushed red. She was numb. Where did this come from? Oh, my God!

Rational Response: I’ll talk to my supervisor before I just accept this. I’m sure she has more information. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. And if I can’t fight this, there’s always unemployment compensation to tide me over and I have some money saved that’ll get me through this until I can find another job.

  SETTING:

  “‘Setting’ refers most obviously to place, but it is much more than this” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 79). “It is the physical, emotional, economic, cultural, even the spiritual ecologies within which our stories are constructed.”

Author Rebecca McClanahan expanded upon this in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Write More Descriptively” (op. cit.. p. 171). “Place is only one element of setting. The common phrase ‘The story takes place’ refers not only to the where of the story, but to the when. Setting grounds us, literally, in the fictional dream. And descriptions of setting provide the foothold, the physical and temporal vantage point from which to view the events of the story.”

In order to more fully understand a character, he must have a location which he interacts with and almost defines him.

“Setting affects their moods, guides, their actions, narrows their choices or widens them,” Beachtel continues (op. cit., p. 79). “It can be cast of malevolence, benevolence, or any state in between.”

“Readers… enjoy being introduced to exotic environments where, almost as tourists or students, they can observe and learn about customs, mores, rituals, modes of dress and etiquette, (and) social and business practices largely or wholly alien to those with which they are familiar,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 23).

  Elements of Novel Writing – THE FIVE FICTIONAL WRITING ELEMENTS:

  Fiction can include five writing elements:

1). Action

2). Summary

3). Dialogue

4). Feelings and Thoughts

5). Background

  ACTION:

  “Action is the mode fiction writers use simply to show what is happening at a given moment in the story,” according to Marshall (op. cit., p. 142). “In action mode, you show events in strict chronological order as they occur, you use action/result writing, and you never summarize events.”

While it may be questioned if event sequences occur chronologically, there are those that are only separated by nanoseconds, leading those experiencing them in real life to believe that several things are occurring simultaneously. A person who opens a door while his wife stands beside him and experiences an explosion, for example, may exclaim something while reclosing the door and shielding his wife, who, in a kneejerk reaction, throws her hands in front of her face and screams. The incident, taking place so quickly and perhaps beyond time, may seem as if everything occurs at once, but the person only exclaims after he opens the door and experiences the explosion. This, in turn, causes him to reclose it, and his wife only tries to protect her face after she becomes aware of it.

In order to maintain this cause-and-effect sequence, the novel writer should avoid words such as “while” and “as.” Instead, he should describe or illustrate the action in chronological order, such as, Darren opened his garage door and was met by an explosion. He immediately reclosed it and shielded his wife, who stood next to him. She threw her hands in front of her face and screamed.

If two actions do occur simultaneously, the author should use the present progressive form of the verb to illustrate this, as in “Derek waved at Sylvia, saying, ‘How have you been?'”

  DIALOGUE:

  Dialogue is the story’s engine: it propels it toward its destination. It turns paper into people. “… (It) has to help the machine that is story generate the story’s motive energy,” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 105). “(It) is not merely the words your characters utter; it is the subtle interplay of speech, gesture, expression, attitude, and even silence,” he continues (ibid, p. 120).

It serves several purposes;

1). It moves the story.

2). It conveys information-that is, relates what transpires.

3). It supports characterization-that is, how the story’s characters think, speak, believe, and perceive.

4). It can foreshadow events.

5). It can make these events more vivid when they do arrive.

6). It gives characters, and the relationships between them, life.

  FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS:

  Feelings, which should be expressed through character behavior and dialogue, can be supported with further mention, such as “The tears that flowed down Sarah’s cheeks after she learned of her husband’s affair were virtually unstoppable.”

Thoughts can provide additional understanding of a character’s mood, emotional state, and mind, such as, (to continue the above example), “It’s not just the hurt. It’s the secretive life! It’s the betrayal! It’s going through my heart like a knife.”

  BACKGROUND:

  Background information, which should be given sparingly and sporadically, provides understanding about events and people that may not be apparent or illustratable to the reader. However, it does not necessarily propel the story.

Article Sources:

Baechtel, Mark. “Shaping the Story: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Short Fiction.” New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.

Marshall, Evan. “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1998.

McClanahan, Rebecca. “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively”. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999.

Mosley, Walter. “This Year You Write your Novel.” New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Zuckerman, Albert. “Writing the Blockbuster Novel.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1994.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Robert_Waldvogel/534926

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[ancient-trees]

Current WIPs Meme

Rules: List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on: writing, art, gifsets, whatever. 

Tagged by @theticklishpear and indirectly by @brynwrites. Going with Bryn’s question format because at this point the “expected length” for all my projects is a big ol’ SHRUG EMOJI. Or just plain “long.”

Novels - I am unfortunately a huge fan of ensemble casts and multiple interlocking plotlines, so my (still unnamed) series consists of several novels in a not-necessarily-linear order that merge into one cohesive whole by the end of the thing. The story is about a world that was broken in a magical cataclysm thousands of years ago and never quite healed correctly... and now something has begun picking at the seams.

The Self-Slaying Dragon (...working title. I like the wordplay, but I don’t think it quite FITS the story the way I’d want a title to) Status: Right now I’m rebuilding it from the ground up, in the interest of giving full-on Planning a go (rather than Plantsing like my previous attempts), outlining the whole story before I dive back into prose this time. Counts: 50,195 words of an unfinished NaNoWriMo first draft, 3,927 words of an attempted restart, and a shit-ton of pages of notes. Blurb: Dragons are forces of nature: half-physical, half-spirit nexuses that anchor Magic into the world, sometimes also serving as metaphysical guardians to humankind. But when a power-hungry wizard's attempt to soul-bind the Great Storm Dragon and commandeer his magic goes horribly wrong, the Dragon is ripped loose from his anchor-point and takes off in a roiling storm of magic, raining blind fury upon the people to whom he’d been sacred protector. The wizard is left to answer for what he has done... only, somehow in the failed binding the Dragon’s consciousness has become lodged in the dying wizard’s body. And so it’s the Dragon himself, along with the wizard’s traveling companion and a young dragon-priest in training, who must figure out how to set things right... before his mindlessly-raging Dragon-self destroys his people, his people find a way to destroy the revered protector who has apparently betrayed them, or some even worse consequence occurs.

The Unbreaker’s Tale Status: Writing is on hold while I focus on Dragon, story’s being developed bit by bit in the background as I work out how the novels weave together. Counts: 22,172 words Blurb: Ever since he was a child, Perrath has had a magical talent for mending broken things - and a passion for helping people to go with it. Then one night a strange wind sweeps away all the magic in his village... including his innate gift. He’s been searching for it ever since, with a scruffy dog at his side for companionship and a probably-still-functional finding charm leading the way. While he misses his magic, he’s found that in the meantime he really enjoys a life of wandering - going wherever his finder points him, meeting new people and exploring places he’d never heard of, using his mundane skills to repair people’s things in order to get by. Until he finds himself in a sticky situation out in the uncharted wilds, and learns that promising to fix something for malevolent shadow-demons is maybe not a good idea…

Other stories in the series, which aren’t being AS actively worked on (except obliquely, as the whole thing gets built):

(still don’t have a title for this one) Status: Was written for NaNo AGES ago, before I knew it would fit into a series. Will need to be 99% scrapped and redone (this is a good thing). Counts: 50k+ words, draft unfinished Blurb: A holy fae prince and an unsuspecting message-runner wind up someplace they’re emphatically not supposed to be. Rules are broken, prophecies are mislaid, bounds are transgressed - and in the frayed wilds of the spirit realm, no rule ever gets broken without dire consequences.

(No title for this one yet either) Status: Another old NaNo draft. SLIGHTLY less of it will need to be scrapped than the previous novel. Probably. This one might be an aside for personal worldbuilding and not make it into the series proper at all. Counts: another 50k+ unfinished draft Blurb: Ages before the present-day events of the series, there lived a people who could use magic as easily as breathing. They kept the peace and ruled over the surrounding lands unchallenged for countless years, until one day the unthinkable happens: a threat arises against which all their magics are useless. A young queen must decide the best course for her people in a time when all roads seem dark.

The Hollow Road (That title might end up going to a later book, depending how events line up) Status: Vague planning stages. Some of the characters for this one actually date back further than all the other novels, but they’re getting massively overhauled from their original versions. Counts: A lot of notes and a few sketches Blurb: Thanks to a valiant sacrifice-beyond-hope made by the parents she’s never known, Aleoth supposedly harbors within her the soul of a great evil… and no one has ever let her forget it. Stifled and stigmatized by those who were supposed to be her protectors, she runs away and takes up with a band of notorious brigands. But whatever she does, she can’t escape the unnerving creature that has haunted her dreams all her life, or the disasters that seem to follow her steps. When events begin to come crashing in around her, she’ll have to figure out who and what she is and what she really stands for.

Non-writing WIPs:

Tamuran Webcomic. I do the art and some editing and write a few characters, and a friend of mine does the story-plotting and most of the writing. Status: Still on hiatus right now. Counts: Writing - 828 chat logs of various lengths, which cover about 2/3-3/4 of the first story arc. Comic - 551 pages in 16 chapters. Blurb: Nashua is a wild elf searching for his wife, children, and entire clan, who have all vanished without a trace. Kip is a shapeshifter and spoiled court lady left reeling after losing her place in the world. Hhr’skhygh is a deadly forest predator who likes hunting, exploring, and reading unabridged dictionaries... but can’t seem to escape his trouble with curses. Ranon is a young royal heir forced into exile when his brothers conspire with long-banished sorcerers to seize their father’s throne no matter the cost. Together they find themselves racing across the wilds of Tamuran on a desperate quest for aid, as strange forces close in and the consequences of the princes’ dark pact begin to engulf the land.

(Tamuran is awful to write blurbs for. Any attempt at basic plot summary ends up sounding like the most excruciatingly generic fantasy story ever created, and kinda.. misses the entire spirit of the thing.)

Costuming - Thranduil’s battle armor from The Battle of the Five Armies (I hate sewing. I like making stupid-elaborate things out of foam and whatever else I can find to work with...) Status: Progressing very slowly, since the room where I have space to work on it is getting renovated and I’ve been focusing on other things lately. Counts: I have most of the materials gathered and scattered pieces and templates made... which will get adjusted and remade ad infinitum before I’m happy with them. I have a coat prototype mocked up, and about 2/3 of the ventilating done on the godforsaken wig...

Tagging: hm. @aetherdragon, @adrastuscomic, @whitherling, @greyliliy, @titherdel, @zyrenskistudios, @locirodrawsstuff, @wigglytaf, @elfyarts, @felix-duskglass. (I know I’ve heard about some of you guys’ projects elsewhere, but if you’d like an invitation to talk more about them here, go for it.) And anybody who has WIPs they want to talk about, really - tag me, I’d love to hear about them!

[theeddiewarnerstory]

Elements of Novel Writing

Elements of Novel Writing

By Robert Waldvogel  |   Submitted On October 07, 2019

   Elements of Novel Writing INTRODUCTION:

  A novel, often subdivided into sections, chapters, and scenes, and entailing expository, narrative, and narrative summary writing, creatively depicts a protagonist’s journey, usually fraught with obstacles and restrictions, toward a personal goal.

“All novels have similar elements,” according to Walter Mosley in his book, “This Year You Write Your Novel” (Little, Brown and Company, 2007, p. 97). “They have a beginning, middle, and end. They have characters who change, and a story that engages; they have a plot that pushes the story forward and a sound that insinuates a world.”

  THE NOVEL WITHIN:

  Sometimes intellect can be a hindrance or even a handicap. Countless people walk around, wishing they had the time and tenacity to write the novel they believe is already within them. Yet, when they actually sit down to write it, albeit it in first-draft form, they ponder numerous questions, such as, What should I write? I have an idea, but no one will like it. Let me think of what’s popular. Romances sell well, so it doesn’t take much to figure out that that’s the answer. Or is it?

If the author does not have a romance, a fantasy, a mystery, or a science fiction piece in him, they are not likely to come out of him, and, if a meek resemblance to one does, it is not likely to be accepted for publication.

  READERSHIP:

  Determination of what type of novel-or any other genre, for that matter-the author should craft, should, to a significant degree, hinge upon what he likes to read.

“Why should you write what you love to read?” poses Evan Marshall in his book, “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing” (Writers Digest Books, 1998, pp 7-8). “First, because you’ve read books in a specific genre for so long, you’re aware of the kinds of stories that have been written in it… Second, your passion as a reader will translate into your passion as a writer.”

Readership, needless to say, is integral to the publishing process.

John Cheever expressed this author-reader duality when he said, “I can’t write without readers. It’s precisely like a kiss-you can’t do it alone.”

As a reader himself, the author should determine which types of novels he enjoys reading and why, perusing the book lists to see what has sold, what has been extensively covered, which books may be similar to the one he intends to write, and then decide if he can approach the same subject or topic with a fresh approach or perspective.

Fictional genres include action/adventure, fantasy, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, suspense, western, and young adult.

  NOVEL WRITING:

  Like the writing of any genre, whether it be nonfiction, drama, or short fiction, that of the novel is not a scientific one, but instead is a creative one. Aspects, techniques, and tips, in an educational vein, can help. However, the process itself involves an evolutionary one, during which the author writes, rewrites, crosses out, rewords, adds, and deletes. The more he persists in his literary efforts, the more, over time, that his expressions will reflect his intentions.

  PLOT POSSIBILITIES:

  Although plots may only be limited to the ways the author can creatively connect and interrelate the novel’s elements, they can emerge from the following eight aspects.

  1). The created protagonist or main character.

2). His goal, sparked by the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion.

3). His motivation for achieving that goal.

4). His strengths, weaknesses, and internal and external conflicts.

5). The antagonist.

6). The supporting characters.

7). The significant, sometimes seemingly insurmountable odds that oppose the protagonist’s quest.

8). How, when, and why he triumphs over the obstacles, leading to the novel’s climax and resolution.

  STRUCTURE:

  Novels, as already mentioned, have beginnings, middles, and ends. Their approximate lengths are as follows.

Beginning: A novel’s beginning roughly covers the first quarter of the book. It is here that the author illustrates the story’s situation and circumstances, introduces the protagonist and other significant characters, details the inciting incident that sets him on his quest, explains his motivations for pursuing it, and incorporates any necessary background information.

Middle: The middle encompasses half the book’s length. It is here that the writer illustrates the primary action of the protagonist’s story line, journey, and quest, along with any subplots and twists, complications, and surprises.

End: The end occupies the final quarter of the work. All of its story lines, particularly those of the protagonist, are resolved, the plot reaches its fever pitch in the climax, and there is a short denouement or resolution, highlighting how the protagonist himself may have changed because of his journey.

The novel’s third, or last section, should be the most intense, leading to its climax. It can be considered the satisfactory conclusion or payoff or reward for the reader who has followed the book’s literary journey, constituting “the moment he has been waiting for.”

As the section unfolds and the remaining pages indicate that the novel’s resolution must be nearing, the author can use several techniques to effectively craft it. It is here where the protagonist’s options become severely limited, as his avenues and strategies become virtually exhausted and the number of others he can turn to is just as minuscule in number. This ensures that he follows the only path left to him.

His oppositions also intensify and increase in number.

Finally, his last-desperate attempt seems doomed to failure.

When the protagonist has battled his internal and external conflicts, followed the path he believes would lead to his goal, and now stands face-to-face with his greatest obstacle, the book has reached its final showdown.

“A showdown is not necessarily violent or even physical,” according to Marshall (ibid, p. 121). “(It) could be a climactic courtroom confrontation, a nerve-jangling chase sequence, a bloody fist fight, a rundown of the facts before the suspects… or a quiet talk between your lead and her husband’s mistress. It all depends on your story.”

  OUTLINES:

  Because of the length, complexity, the number of characters, their interactions with one another, the incidents and actions, and the need to strategically and progressively present a novel in literary form, the creation of an outline can greatly facilitate an author’s effort in crafting one.

“No sane person would think of setting out to construct a skyscraper or even a one-family house without a detailed set of plans,” according to Albert Zuckerman in his book, “Writing the Blockbuster Novel,” (Writers Digest Books, 1994, p. 34). “A big novel must have the literary equivalents of beams and joints strong enough to sustain it excitingly from beginning to end, and it also must contain myriad interlocking parts fully as complex as those in any building type.”

  NARRATIVE VOICE:

  “The voice that tells the story is the first thing the reader encounters,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 17). “It carries us from the first page to the last. We, the readers, must believe in this narrative voice or, at least, we must feel strongly for that voice and have a definite and consistent opinion about it.”

  PROTAGONIST:

  The protagonist is the story’s central or main character. It is the one around which the plot revolves and to whom all the action and adversity is directed. It is the person who faces the obstacles and conflicts he must overcome to reach his goal.

Ideally, a story should have a single protagonist. He may not always be admirable-for example, he can be an anti-hero; nevertheless, he must command involvement on the part of the reader, or better yet, his empathy. He is the person in the story or book with whom the reader sympathizes or for whom he roots. Protagonists should be complex and flawed. They do not, by definition, need to be likeable, but they should be relatable and believable. The reader should understand their choices.

Although the protagonist’s physical appearance may be integral to the type of character the author creates and the role he plays in the story-from the stunning, attractive blonde to the six-foot-tall, 300-pound body guard to the mild mannered milk toast–his personality, strengths, and weaknesses, more than anything, determine how he or she will pursue his or her goals and what their motivations for doing so may be. It is that journey that the reader most follows, enabling him to care about, sympathize and empathize with, and feel for.

“If you want readers… to spend their precious time on your book, then you have to (create) a character who keeps them engaged,” according to Joanna Penn in The Creative Penn Limited. “This doesn’t mean that you need a goody-goody two shoes perfect person, but you do want to write a compelling, authentic protagonist that hooks the reader so he is desperate to know what happens next in the character’s world.

“Focus on three questions: What does your character want and why? What/who stops him? How does he overcome the obstacles along the way? (And) how is he changed as a result of the journey?”

“Readers remember a wonderful book’s characters long after they forget a story’s exciting scenes or even its climax,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 99). “Those characters who do stick in our minds over years and years appear in more than one way to be extraordinary.”

“(The author) has to let us see and share the longings, hopes, carnal desires, ambitions, fears, loves, and hates that reside privately within the soul of his characters and that (much as in life) other characters may know little or nothing about,” he continues (p. 99). “The writer must view the environment of the novel (both physical and human) through the eyes and sensibilities of the character.”

Yet, as also occurs in life, no journey can bear fruit if it does not somehow change the character or his perspective.

“All novels, short stories, and plays, and most poems, are about human transformation,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “The subject of the novel is the human spirit and psyche-how the characters interact in their relationships with other souls and with the world in general.”

“As in life, your characters develop mainly because of their dealings with one another,” he further emphasizes pp 46-47). “The complex and dynamic interplay of relationships throughout the course of the novel is what makes change possible.”

  ANTAGONIST:

  The antagonist serves as the protagonist’s opponent and can often be considered the “bad guy” in the story, whose action arises from the conflict between the two. This is aptly illustrated in “The Wizard of Oz” in which the struggle between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West plays out until she triumphs over her with her death and brings her broom to the wizard.

The antagonist does not have to be a person at all, but may be an animal, an inanimate object, or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin’s story, “The Cold Equations,” is outer space.

An antagonist should also be a “round character.” Simply making him evil is not as interesting as making him or her conflicted. Pure evil is difficult to believe in fiction, since people are multi-faceted and inspired by their own situations and back stories. Therefore, putting time into describing your antagonist and showing his or her own struggles will create a richer and more complex narrative. Just as a protagonist should not only be good, an antagonist should not only be bad.

  CONFLICT, CRISIS, AND STAKES:

  The crisis, or inciting incident, is integral to the novel, because it launches its plot trajectory. It must be appropriate to the genre and important, vital, crucial, and realistic enough so that the reader will follow it to its destination.

Conflicts can be considered the collective obstacles that oppose the protagonist in his quest to achieve his goal. They encompass two types: external-that is, human, natural, geographical, and physical, and internal-or character strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, and flaws.

The stakes can be considered the consequences or what lies on the line if the goal is not successfully achieved.

  MOTIVATIONS:

  Inciting incidents spark a protagonist’s journey toward a particular goal, but what is equally important to that goal is his motivation for pursuing it.

Behavior is like a language. It makes a statement about people, provided others possess the tools to “translate” it. Part of that translation entails the understanding of what lurks behind it-that is, what fuels it. If, for example, a person works hard to earn money, his motivations can include the need to pay his bills, the need to own expensive things, the need to own expensive things to prove his worth and perhaps superiority, and/or the need to camouflage feelings of low self-esteem and -worth. Similarly, a person who sits alone at a party could be in a bad or sad mood and therefore does not feel very social on the occasion, could be inherently shy, could lack social skills, and/or be unable to trust others and hence connect with them in any meaningful way.

Motivations bare the soul, demonstrating what a character wants, desires, and dreams about.

They both fuel behavior and either give the reader a reason to find out what they are or, if revealed and understood, give him insight into how they drive him. As he follows the character’s journey, he can often glean insight into his own.

PROVERBIAL SHOW, DON’T TELL:

Fiction, needless to say, recreates reality through action, dialogue, and character interchange, requiring the proverbial “show, don’t tell” delivery method.

“What you must always remember is that the novel is more experiential than it is informational,” according to Mosley (op. cit., p. 40). “Your reader might learn something, but most of what they learn is gained through what they are shown about the lives and circumstances of the characters therein.”

  PLOTS:

  Because writing principally informs, as it does in nonfiction, and entertains, as it does in fiction, readers invest their time in the process and hope to see a return on it after they have put the story or the book down. Plots engage, grip, and give the reader something to follow as they unravel. Most of all, they should sufficiently hold a reader’s attention so that he does not put the piece down until he has finished reading it.

Writing three pages about your garden, for instance, may provide a commune with nature and lend itself more to poetry than prose, but how compelling would it be, unless it is integral to the longer story?

Plots are comprised of tracks that lead from origin to destination, as experienced by the proverbial philosophy discussed in most writing classes: if the author introduces a gun on the first page of his story, it had better fire by the last page, or the writer should at least explain why it has not.

“All good writing is mystery writing,” according to Rebecca McClanahan in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively” (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999, p. 194). “And every successful story… and narrative essay is a page-turner… We may begin reading out of mild curiosity, to pass the time, but we keep reading to unravel the mystery. If there is no tension, we stop caring. When suspense dissolves, when the mystery is solved, we stop turning pages.”

“By holding back essential information, we arouse the reader’s curiosity and keep them reading,” advises Mosley (op, cit., pp 55-56). “Plot is the structure of revelation-that is to say, it is the method and timing with which you impart important details of the story so that the reader will know just enough to be engaged while still wanting to know more.”

Part of the mystery is not necessarily enabling the reader to find out what will happen. In “Titanic,” for instance, he or even the move-goer already knows. To them the mystery is following the plot and learning how the characters involved will survive and surmount the crisis, and how, if any, they will grow and develop as a result of it.

  SCENES:

  Scenes are the structured, inter-related links that enable the plot to unfold, which itself should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Like a mathematical formula, the elements should add up to a sum-the destination and resolution of the story. Plots can be considered contrivances about “interesting troubles” that the protagonist and supporting characters must experience, negotiate, surmount, extricate themselves from, and triumph over before arriving at their-and the story’s-destination.

“The scene is one of the most basic components from which every story is constructed,” according to Baechtel (op. cit. p. 71).

Events, physical actions, conversations, and interactions vividly occur so that the reader almost feels as if he is watching a movie or witnessing a live event.

A scene imitates life and convinces the reader of its occurrence. Seeing, as is said, is believing. This is the proverbial “show, don’t tell” of literature. Don’t tell me that Warren was crushed when he learned that he failed his final exam. Show me how his eyes widened into disbelief, how he tore up the paper, how he fell on to his bed, and how the tears dripped on to the pillow. The word “crushed” is then not needed. You, as an author, illustrated it and I saw it myself in my mind.

“Each scene must build on what has come before it, and provide a necessary bridge to what comes after it,” Baechtel continues (ibid, p. 123).

“A scene is an episode acted out by characters; it takes place in a particular place at a particular time,” according to McClanahan (op. cit., p. 194).

“To maintain suspense, we must alternate between scene and summary, showing and telling, and between braking and acceleration,” she concludes (p. 200).

“The setting up of a dominant, unresolved issue around which the novel’s characters have a huge stake is central to the plotting of a book as a whole,” according to Zuckerman (op. cit., p.123). “A similar technique in miniature can be vital to most individual scenes, the novel’s building blocks. In a blockbuster novel, a scene is almost always more than merely a well-written account in description and dialogue of an episode between characters.”

  SURPRISES AND TWISTS:

  Nothing keeps the reader more riveted to a novel than an unexpected revelation, surprise, turn-of-events, or twist, and these techniques equally re-energize a plot that begins to sag. For authors who ascribe to the three-part subdivision, surprises should ideally arise at the end of the first, or beginning section, and in the middle of and at the end of the second, or middle, one.

A surprise is a shocking, protagonist- and plot-changing event, which sheds new light on, but significantly opposes, his goal. It can include his discovery of something; an opposition by another character, particularly the antagonist; the revelation of new information that raises the stakes and intensifies his quest; and an event or circumstance that negatively impacts the path toward his goal.

Ideally, each of the three unexpected turns should be worse than the previous one and the last should virtually eliminate the protagonist’s chances of success.

  EMOTIONAL AND RATIONAL RESPONSES:

  As occurs in real life, characters in novels often respond both emotionally and rationally to situations. The first response occurs in the brain’s mid-section and enables the person to process the events through the spontaneous energy which is generated by them. The second takes place in the brain’s upper portion, which entails reasoning and executive functioning.

If a person is unexpectedly terminated from his place of employment, for instance, he may experience the following two reactions.

Emotional Response: Veronica was stunned. She flushed red. She was numb. Where did this come from? Oh, my God!

Rational Response: I’ll talk to my supervisor before I just accept this. I’m sure she has more information. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. And if I can’t fight this, there’s always unemployment compensation to tide me over and I have some money saved that’ll get me through this until I can find another job.

  SETTING:

  “‘Setting’ refers most obviously to place, but it is much more than this” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 79). “It is the physical, emotional, economic, cultural, even the spiritual ecologies within which our stories are constructed.”

Author Rebecca McClanahan expanded upon this in her book, “Word Painting: A Guide to Write More Descriptively” (op. cit.. p. 171). “Place is only one element of setting. The common phrase ‘The story takes place’ refers not only to the where of the story, but to the when. Setting grounds us, literally, in the fictional dream. And descriptions of setting provide the foothold, the physical and temporal vantage point from which to view the events of the story.”

In order to more fully understand a character, he must have a location which he interacts with and almost defines him.

“Setting affects their moods, guides, their actions, narrows their choices or widens them,” Beachtel continues (op. cit., p. 79). “It can be cast of malevolence, benevolence, or any state in between.”

“Readers… enjoy being introduced to exotic environments where, almost as tourists or students, they can observe and learn about customs, mores, rituals, modes of dress and etiquette, (and) social and business practices largely or wholly alien to those with which they are familiar,” advises Zuckerman (op. cit., p. 23).

    Elements of Novel Writing – THE FIVE FICTIONAL WRITING ELEMENTS:

  Fiction can include five writing elements:

1). Action

2). Summary

3). Dialogue

4). Feelings and Thoughts

5). Background

  ACTION:

  “Action is the mode fiction writers use simply to show what is happening at a given moment in the story,” according to Marshall (op. cit., p. 142). “In action mode, you show events in strict chronological order as they occur, you use action/result writing, and you never summarize events.”

While it may be questioned if event sequences occur chronologically, there are those that are only separated by nanoseconds, leading those experiencing them in real life to believe that several things are occurring simultaneously. A person who opens a door while his wife stands beside him and experiences an explosion, for example, may exclaim something while reclosing the door and shielding his wife, who, in a kneejerk reaction, throws her hands in front of her face and screams. The incident, taking place so quickly and perhaps beyond time, may seem as if everything occurs at once, but the person only exclaims after he opens the door and experiences the explosion. This, in turn, causes him to reclose it, and his wife only tries to protect her face after she becomes aware of it.

In order to maintain this cause-and-effect sequence, the novel writer should avoid words such as “while” and “as.” Instead, he should describe or illustrate the action in chronological order, such as, Darren opened his garage door and was met by an explosion. He immediately reclosed it and shielded his wife, who stood next to him. She threw her hands in front of her face and screamed.

If two actions do occur simultaneously, the author should use the present progressive form of the verb to illustrate this, as in “Derek waved at Sylvia, saying, ‘How have you been?'”

  DIALOGUE:

  Dialogue is the story’s engine: it propels it toward its destination. It turns paper into people. “… (It) has to help the machine that is story generate the story’s motive energy,” according to Baechtel (op. cit., p. 105). “(It) is not merely the words your characters utter; it is the subtle interplay of speech, gesture, expression, attitude, and even silence,” he continues (ibid, p. 120).

It serves several purposes;

1). It moves the story.

2). It conveys information-that is, relates what transpires.

3). It supports characterization-that is, how the story’s characters think, speak, believe, and perceive.

4). It can foreshadow events.

5). It can make these events more vivid when they do arrive.

6). It gives characters, and the relationships between them, life.

  FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS:

  Feelings, which should be expressed through character behavior and dialogue, can be supported with further mention, such as “The tears that flowed down Sarah’s cheeks after she learned of her husband’s affair were virtually unstoppable.”

Thoughts can provide additional understanding of a character’s mood, emotional state, and mind, such as, (to continue the above example), “It’s not just the hurt. It’s the secretive life! It’s the betrayal! It’s going through my heart like a knife.”

  BACKGROUND:

  Background information, which should be given sparingly and sporadically, provides understanding about events and people that may not be apparent or illustratable to the reader. However, it does not necessarily propel the story.

Article Sources:

Baechtel, Mark. “Shaping the Story: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Short Fiction.” New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.

Marshall, Evan. “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1998.

McClanahan, Rebecca. “Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively”. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999.

Mosley, Walter. “This Year You Write your Novel.” New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Zuckerman, Albert. “Writing the Blockbuster Novel.” Cincinnati, Ohio: Writers Digest Books, 1994.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Robert_Waldvogel/534926

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Ringworld – Final Rating

Written by Reiko

As with some other games based on science fiction novels, I think we’re going to find that Ringworld is an interesting but flawed attempt to bring the deep story of a novel into an interactive adventure game. In some ways, Ringworld is a very traditional adventure game in a style that feels familiar to players who are used to Sierra games. In other ways, it goes off in a unique direction. Let’s break that down and see how it turns out.

Puzzles and Solvability

Generally, Ringworld is very solvable, perhaps too solvable. Most of its puzzles are very straightforward once you have all the pieces. Grab a ladder and place it where you need to climb up. Collect something sharp to cut through a rope. Pick up everything that isn’t nailed down.

Is there any visible reason to need to click on every single book on the shelf just to find the one with the combination?

I only had difficulty in two places, and both for the same reason: once in the Explorer’s lab because I didn’t find the hidden book with the combination for a while, and once in the Patriarch’s closet because I didn’t find the arrow-switch for a while. Both involved hidden triggers for things that I knew immediately how to use once I triggered them.

In other words, the difficulty of the game was somewhat uneven, mostly pitched a bit too low. A few places were more difficult, but only in a way that was dependent on finding hidden items. The set-piece puzzles (as opposed to the inventory puzzles), like the shape puzzle near the end, were also pretty easy. But there were no dialogue puzzles as far as I could find, as there were very few dialogue choices: I counted less than ten for the whole game.

I think that one of the best puzzles was maybe the one about what to do for the dolphins that couldn’t pick up the stasis box, because it was dependent on worldbuilding knowledge that was available within the game. Of course, that kind of puzzle might be more difficult for someone that doesn’t tend to read all the available information the way I do. And once you know what’s needed, there’s no puzzle or difficulty involved with actually making it: you just take Quinn over to the console, and he does it automatically. So in that sense, it’s possible to find the solution by accident rather than by figuring it out, which isn’t ideal. But since I didn’t stumble over it before figuring it out, I had the intended experience and it felt satisfying.

One of the few ways you can deliberately lose.

The good news is that there were no dead ends. I only ever found three deaths, although I wasn’t exhaustive about trying stupid things. So it’s possible there were more I didn’t find, like maybe one for taking off without slaving the third flycycle at the beginning? I did try a few actions that I thought were going to give me a death scene but they didn’t, like jumping down again into the Canyon People’s temple without the rope, or trying to stun the guards at the castle. All of the deaths I did encounter were due to immediately obvious actions or failure to take action. As far as I could tell, it’s not really possible to screw anything up permanently.

Score: 5

Interface and Inventory

I’m going to start out by quoting what I said in the intro post about the interface:

“It’s all pretty standard for adventure games of this era, really. Very intuitive. Except that, with the exception of look (and move), the other actions (touch, talk, and using an inventory item) all shift back to the default move cursor after you click on something. That means that, as far as I can tell, you can’t try using multiple things on-screen in a row without going through the menu every time. And you can’t try using an inventory item in multiple places without bringing up the item again every time.

“In Sierra games, the cursor would stay on a particular mode until you shifted it with the right mouse button or clicked on a menu item. Here, the right mouse button shows you the whole menu. And the clicks aren’t as responsive as I might like. Sometimes the right-click doesn’t work right away, and sometimes I right-click and end up with the wrong menu option selected.”

If there had been more timed sequences, this could have been really aggravating. Fortunately, there were only two timed sequences where I had to make Quinn stun someone, and even those weren’t difficult. So the menu awkwardness was only mildly annoying instead, and not generally much a problem.

The close-up interfaces were generally very clear and easy to use, such as the shape puzzle at the end, or the reference computer in the lander.

End-game inventory full of useless items.

Inventory is Sierra-level standard: the items are shown as small images in a box, and each one can be examined. The items themselves are pretty interesting, but the item descriptions are generally short and mundane. A few times I went to the inventory to see if examining my items would help with solving a puzzle, but I rarely got any useful information that way, except for the initial reveal that I was carrying a weapon.

Eventually my inventory got cluttered with a handful of items I’d picked up but never had any use for. There was no way to drop an item unless the game offered a specific way to put it back where it came from, which it actually did for a few things. We moved around enough that I wouldn’t have wanted to leave something important somewhere, either.

Score: 5

Story and Setting

There’s a lot of interesting story behind this one early line.

I wish I could have given a higher score here, as clearly there’s a lot of backstory and worldbuilding behind the story that’s presented in the game. We get to see some of the interactions among three main spacefaring civilizations, with several more races having brief appearances. I saw multiple references to a vast history of galactic expansion and conquest, with the rise and fall of civilizations on a huge scale. And we also zoom in to see the effects of some of the most recent conflicts on a few characters, which is where the real story is.

There are two problems with Ringworld’s approach that make it a flawed game. One problem is the way it begins by jumping into the middle of the story with secondary characters, which seems to be assuming that the player will have read at least the original book first and know at least some of the backstory and worldbuilding before starting to play.

I had trouble figuring out what we were doing and why we should care about Iacch/Seeker and Quinn because I knew so little about Chmeee and Louis Wu. If I had played the game completely blind, instead of reading up on the backstory a bit while I was writing the intro post, I would have had very little idea what was going on. The manual does explain some things, but it doesn’t go into much detail.

This line just begs for some kind of interactive sequence.

Another problem is how large segments of the game ended up being little more than a slightly interactive movie. There’s too much plot for the length of the game, and too little agency for the player. The overall concept of collecting the stasis boxes for the Puppeteers is a good one, but there could have been far more interaction in the process of getting to them, and more exploration. Maybe pick the location on a map rather than have Seeker automatically travel to each location? There are lots of options.

Score: 6

Sound and Graphics

I often play with sound off, so I don’t have a lot to say about the sound. The main musical theme is powerfully sweeping and evocative. Individual places often have their own themes, but these were forgettable. Sound effects are brief and appropriate. In general, the sound is effective but not memorable.

A beautiful but very brief view of the underwater city of the Coastal Sea People.

I found the graphics to be detailed and often beautiful, but rather pixelated. The animation was pretty jerky, especially of characters walking. The large character portraits are nicely detailed, but those only show up once in a while, and the character sprites are pretty low-resolution. I would have preferred all dialogue use character portraits instead of just some lines. The backgrounds are well-designed and evocative of their settings. But once in a while, something would be just too pixelated or an object would hide in the background. As I mentioned, some of the difficulty was a bit artificial due to some objects or triggers not being distinct enough visually.

Score: 4

Environment and Atmosphere

The ship crawls along outside the surface of the ring.

The Ringworld itself is supposed to be this immense habitable ring-shaped area, but the game’s visuals have trouble conveying the scope of that vastness. The exception would be when the ship is crawling along above the outer layer, heading for a spaceport so the team can go to the surface using the lander. The ship is tiny on-screen, traveling quickly above large plates, and then when they find the spaceport, it becomes even tinier as it descends into the entrance in one of the plates. That moment conveyed the scale well, but in most other shots, we either see the entire ring at once from a perspective that must be very far away from it, or we’re on the surface with the team, and it doesn’t look any different from the surface of an ordinary planet.

We also have all sorts of incredible backstory, with multiple interesting spacefaring races (it just occurred to me that Ringworld’s setting would make a fantastic 4X game), but we see only two planets in addition to the Ringworld itself, plus a few distant shots of the Puppeteer planet group. The “Known Space” area is said to be 80 light years in diameter, but it feels like much less because we see so little of it in the game.

This was a genuinely creepy moment.

Probably the best atmosphere came from the cave with the Flesheaters, or even before Quinn goes in when we’re watching Seeker’s progress on the lander’s screen. It’s like a jump-scare when the creature momentarily appears on the screen. Later Quinn suddenly falls into the Flesheaters’ trap and is captured himself. I was even more startled at that.

Score: 5

Dialog and Acting

The writing in Ringworld is one of its strengths, since it really focuses more on the plot and characters than on the gameplay. It’s a spinoff story from a classic science fiction novel, so there’s a lot to work with. Larry Niven’s name is on the credits, and even if he didn’t write the story for the game himself, I think he must have been at least somewhat involved.

Quinn disapproves of Seeker’s tendency to seek danger.

The dialogue among characters often includes snappy banter. Most of the characters are well-defined and say things that are clearly in-character, although the Patriarch is little more than a caricature with a one-track mind: the Puppeteers must die. And Quinn is a hyper-competent blank slate because he’s the player’s character. Seeker doesn’t really seem alien enough, but he’s got some good banter, particularly the part where he and Quinn are arguing about who’s macho enough to fly the probe through the dangerous sunflower minefield, or who’s going to take the risk of going into the cave where there are creatures that eat humanoids.

Miranda is rightfully furious.

Miranda is greatly amusing and doesn’t get enough screen time. I would have liked to play as her, even for just part of the game. She’s competent too, but it’s more specialized, which seems more realistic. Quinn seems like one of those elite agents who can do practically anything: in this game, some things he did were shoot an assassin, fly a probe, go undercover as a slave, build dolphin prostheses from a broken probe, and recognize and use ancient alien technology. Well, he’s over 200 years old, apparently, but still. As the engineer, Miranda really should have been the one to build the dolphin prostheses, although as the PC, Quinn would have needed to ask her to do it, and maybe bring her the probe.

Scenes and objects are well-described too. I have two minor points that the game could have improved on. One, as I mentioned earlier, the descriptions of items in the inventory were quite brief. I would have appreciated a bit more detail there. Two, the plot is so dense relative to gameplay that it could have used less talking and more interaction with Quinn. In some places, this could have taken the form of more dialogue options, but in others, there should have been more actions to take rather than the characters just telling the player what they were going to do and then doing it automatically. So while the dialogue was very high quality, at some point this can hurt the overall quality of the game as a game if good dialogue isn’t paired with good interaction.

Score: 7

That adds up to a total score of 5+5+6+4+5+7 = 32/60*100 = 53. This is on the higher end of the guessing range, but I think it pretty well represents a game that had a lot of backstory and dialogue, but not as many interactions and puzzles as it could have. Is it a good adventure game? Well, for the parts of it that were an adventure game, it’s pretty decent, if a bit easy. The rest is mostly cutscenes and well-written but non-interactive dialogue.

16 people made guesses ranging from 60 to 30. Nobody guessed exactly 53, so the prize goes to both Michael and Leo Velles.

Ringworld is a wrap! Somewhere down the line we’ll get to the sequel, but before that, I’ll be coming back fairly soon with the first Journeyman Project game, which should be fun. More time travel!

CAP Distribution 100 points to Reiko

Blogger award – 100 CAPs – for blogging through this game for our enjoyment

10 points to Leo Velles

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – For guessing the final rating

10 points to Michael

Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs – For guessing the final rating

10 points to Torch

True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with Ringworld

5 points to Biscuit

Spellchecker Award – 5 CAPs – for finding the misspelling in the screenshots

5 points to Gren Drake

Cartography Award – 5 CAPs – for describing the planetary map areas of the Ringworld

5 points to Ilmari

Dyson Sphere Award – 5 CAPs – for describing engineering problems with ringworlds and Dyson spheres

2 points to ShaddamIVth

Morlock Award – 2 CAPs – for comparing Flesheaters to Morlocks

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/ringworld-final-rating/

[publichealthjurnal-blog]

Write For Us 10 WAYS WRITER’S BLOCK

This post was at first posted without any other person blog.

Ever had a by chance uncooperative identity as of now? I'm certain everybody who makes has been down that street previously. You take a gander at your workstation/PC/type maker for a long time attempting to consider the words or sentences write for us health for whatever it is you're shaping right now. Each sentence made is deleted until the moment that the minute that your eyes are exhausted looking, hair's a hazardous situation and your confirmation decreased.

Photograph by on Unsplash

Dread not, as I've experienced a practically identical thing interminable of times and I'm here to reveal my own extraordinary part 'remedies' — for nonattendance of a pervasive word — to help you in the midst of need.

On the off chance that you feel that a section of my systems might be unhelpful to you, by then have a go at altering it to your own unique needs — and in the event that you have better considerations, do tell me and I'll solidify it here similarly for others to get some expect to kick-begin their square.

The quick overview that I have is in no progressive interest.

1. Discover Music You can Write to

My recommendation is to discover music that doesn't have words in it — in various words, not tunes, but rather music. What causes me consistently are epic music, instrumental/standard music, establishment bustles shorelines or tornado.

Photograph by woo yi on Unsplash

Tunes are an imperative no-no for me as I tend to toll in and I can't get novel words to leave my head, rather I'll be combining the holds back onto the thing that I'm making. One story I framed on my Watt pad had an entire scene concentrated on a Good Charlotte's tune since I was looking at the social event on rehash. It's not by any stretch of the innovative capacity ace to have tune abstains joined into your records, yet even most exceedingly appalling in the occasion that you're making an article or non-roundabout stories. As I shape this I have the epic music playlist occurring of sight and it's truth be told exceptional if you're utilizing it to consider some epic experience story — but I utilize it similarly as monotonous sound I can't work with quietness.

2. Making Prompts

When I'm in a hang to frame for my blog, I check for making prompts on the web. There are different sorts of making prompts you can discover on the web. I rejected a site page here in light of the manner in which that you can simply Google 'influencing prompts for web journals' and thousands will to show up. I'm so extraordinarily appreciative to individuals who set aside the opportunity to make these prompts that assistance a mental obstacle.

Photograph by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I'm utilizing a course of action actuate right now as well — it has one for the entire year and a touch of the centers don't identify with me so I can't utilize it, yet I change a piece of the subjects for me to utilize. One of the centers was to form a list — and here I am. Apparently about it decidedly has any sort of impact.

You don't just need to utilize the prompts for shaping regions, as it assists with preliminary making also.

3. Make Something Else

In case you're stuck on a blog area which can't go past the principal line, desert it and basically make something unique. In the occasion that you're stuck on a story that is just the key zone, surrender it and work on something intriguing.

Photograph by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

It is certainly not something to be thankful for to leave things lacking, yet by backing off out there, you're not advancing. On the off chance that you stop that, possibly you could make something remarkable that is clearly better.

You don't comprehend what number of blog point contemplation has been left as draft in my blog page and finally I just surrendered and made something else — which I really do understand how to wrap up.

There are interminable of stories I've left lacking in my workstation as well — I'm not happy with it, yet rather continually end, I understands how to finish different stories and I don't feel exorbitantly upsetting about myself by at that point.

4. Fundamentally Keep Writing

In the occasion that you're the kind of individual who doesn't trust in betraying a story or a post, by then fundamentally continue making. Like Dory's 'Simply continue swimming' tune, I'd prepare you to 'simply continue making, basically continue framing, making, making'.

Really, you've hit a square and nothing innovative comes up, yet by proceeding, as time goes on you will achieve a point where something looks great and your creative energies will begin spilling.

You would then have the ability to return and demolish each and every one of those parts you formed endeavoring to ensure deadness of being stuck and have a spic and length story before you.

Photograph by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

5. Change of Environment

On the off chance that you generally write in a specific place, have a go at moving elsewhere to shape. Besides, I don't mean clearing and leaving your home — although that may work — what I recommended looks like on the off chance that you write in your room, by then have a go at writing in the parlor or another piece of the house. In the event that changing rooms in your home doesn't work, by then go to a bistro close-by and shape there?

From time to time the sound of individuals mumbling and espresso being made is a regular wellspring of motivation.

Photograph by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Moving spots to discover a place that enables you motivation ought to need to kick begin that square.

Besides, have a go at finding shaping packs in your area. I am aware of a maker's look at accumulate here in Pena and I'm expecting to oblige them one of nowadays. These are a get-together of contiguous authors who get together and make and after that rebuke each other's works — constructive feedback works.

This partner as you're sitting inside a region stacked up with inventive vitality and who comprehends that will help in making new contemplation.

6. Consider What to Write as You Go To Sleep

I comprehend that you have to get your brains free before resting, yet attempt this now and again when you're in a hang for what to make.

In the occasion that you're making a story, conceptualize the going with couple of parts outline similarly as it's played out like a film in your cerebrum. When you get up, you ought to be able to proceed ahead from the stuck section.

Photograph by Chris Abney on Unsplash

This is an attempted and worked procedure for me. I don't know whether it works for everybody, except rather it's obviously worked for me. I'd consider a section I'm stuck on and what may I have the ability to do to propel the plot and I'd play the entire scene in my mind as I skim off to rest.

Before you know it, the following morning I wake up new with new insights and my fingers shuddering to get on my PC and begin making.

Try that and let me know whether it works for you too.

7. Make at Different Times

I appreciate that I get the vast majority of my motivations late into the night — usually after 2 or 3 am. There are times I oversee without my rest just to complete a full part, or a full blog entry up. Possibly some extraordinary individuals have specific occasions that works for them. Possibly at a young hour toward the beginning of the day as you get up? Possibly toward the night.

Have a go at framing at various times from when you all things considered make and check whether the motivation goes through.

On the off chance that it's at odd hours like mine, utilization the terminations of the week to spend the night making. I can't do that well ordered since I have work the following day, at any rate I spend my completions of the week resting late to shape.

Photograph by methods for Carolyn V on Unsplash

I all over write in focal point of my working hours, in light of the way that the motivation kicks in just by at that point. Fundamentally make the vital strides not to get captured.

8. Disregard the Waiting Task and Do Other Things

Once in a while it gets to a point of bafflement that you can't finish your story or blog area or article and the best development is to disregard it and surpass desires with life.

Butcher that PC, go to a store, go to a shopping center, go to the shoreline, paint, draw, locate another side interest or basically rest. It's no point moving yourself on the off chance that you can't push forward.

Every so often while doing different undertakings, your dream will discover it's approach to manage you. Besides, a while later you can begin making over again.

Photograph by Cody Black on Unsplash

On occasion, driving yourself an unreasonable proportion of doesn't bolster much, so it's more astute to make a stroll back and begin once more.

9. Take the necessary steps not to Plan; Just Write

A part of the time having an arrangement of what you need to make works, yet on top of it just makes it difficult to push ahead. What I have a tendency to do when I'm clung is to simply make whatever that navigates my brain, not transforming them until the point that the minute that I'm set. On occasion when you frame without heading, you tend to look for after a substitute way from where you anticipated that would go in any case.

Photograph by Fabian Sara on Unsplash

I once lost such a broad number of portions on a story I was making and it was the most exceedingly horrendous time as I anticipated that would fix up the entire thing and it turned out for the best in light of the manner in which that the story turned out superior to the key draft with a substitute course.

On occasion, noteworthy heading gives us better motivation.

10. Try not to think about the Critics

Once in a while, thinking about savvy people smothers me and makes me feel like I ought not utilizing all methods consider framing as a longing as I'll certainly be detached to shreds and from the blue the

Click Here: Write For Us Writer's Block

[severepeachengineer-blog1]

How to write an essay analysis 1



How to write an essay analysis

How to develop and write an analytic essay

Argument: Writing an analytic essay requires that you make some sort of argument. The core of this argument is called a thesis. It is your claim, succinctly stated in a single sentence. What do budding literary critics such as yourselves argue about? You make a pervasive, persistent case that a certain thing is true about a piece of literature. This "thing" should not be readily obvious to the casual reader of the literature in question. It is what you draw out of the book or essay, how you interpret it. It is a claim that must be supported by specific evidence from the text.

In order to find something to argue:

Look for images or metaphors that the author uses consistently. What other sort of pattern can you identify in the text? How do you interpret this pattern so that your reader will understand the book, essay, poem, speech, etc. better?

What philosophical, moral, ethical, etc. ideas is the author advocating or opposing? What are the consequences of accepting the author's argument?

Explain how the work functions as a piece of rhetoric--how does the author attempt to convince his or her reader of something? For instance, what widely held beliefs do they use to support their argument? How do they appeal to emotions, logic…

Re-examine something that the text or most readers take for granted (that Thoreau’s book Walden represents his attempt to escape from society). Question this major premise and see where it takes you

Ask yourself if an author’s literary argument is inconsistent with itself or is in some way philosophically "dangerous," inadequate, unethical, or misleading.

Examine how characters are presented in a story. How do they help the main character to develop? Which characters are trustworthy? Which are not? Why are they presented this way?

What counts as evidence:

Structure: How the parts of the book or essay follow one another; how the parts are assembled to make a whole? Why does the author start where they start, end where they end? What is the logical progression of thought? How might that progression be intended to affect the reader What effect might this progression of ideas have on a generic reader or on a reader from the time period in which the work was written? Does the piece move from the general to the specific or vice versa?

If you could divide the book/essay into sections, units of meaning, what would those sections be? How are they related to each other? Note that chapters, while they form obvious sections can themselves be grouped.

Referring to the text: In writing analytic papers that address any kind of literature, it is necessary to refer to the text (the specific words on the page of the book) in order to support your argument. This means that you must quote and interpret passages that demonstrate or support your argument. Quotation is usually stronger than paraphrase. Remember also that your purpose in writing an essay is not merely to paraphrase or summarize (repeat) what the author has said, but to make an argument about how the make their point, or how they have said what they have said.

Language: includes the way an author phrases his or her sentences, the key metaphors used (it’s up to you to explain how these metaphors are used, why these metaphors are appropriate, effective, ineffective, or ambiguous). Is the way a sentence is phrased particularly revealing of the author’s meaning?

Practical Essay-writing Hints:

Please title your paper and make the title apt and enticing--I LOVE a good title. It puts me in a good mood before I start reading.

Be clear about whether you’re writing about a book, an essay (non-fiction, short prose), a story (short fiction) a poem, a novel (book-length fiction), an autobiography, a narrative (as in Captivity Narratives) etc. Walden is a book comprised of chapters. Each of these chapters could also be called an essay. Within these essays, Thoreau sometimes tells stories. The book itself is not a story, but closer to a narrative, which is non-fiction.

Always go through at least two drafts of you paper. Let your paper sit, preferably for 24 hours between drafts sometime during the process of your writing.

Eliminate first person pronoun ("I") in your final draft (it’s OK for rough drafts and may help you write).

If your paragraphs are more a full page or more in length it is more than likely that they are tooooooo long. Probably you have too many ideas "in the air" at once. Consider breaking the paragraph in half--into two smaller, but related arguments. Your reader needs a break, needs more structure in order to be able to follow your meaning.

If several of your paragraphs are exceedingly short (4-5 lines), it is likely that you are not developing your ideas thoroughly enough--that you are writing notes rather than analysis. Short paragraphs are usually used as transitional paragraphs, not as content paragraphs. (Short paragraphs can be used in the rhetorical devise of reversal where you lead your reader down a certain path (to show them one side of the argument, the one you are going to oppose) and then turn away from that argument to state the true argument of your paper.)

Remember to write directive (sometimes called "topic") sentences for your paragraphs. The first sentence of any paragraph should give your reader an idea of what the paragraph is going to say and how the paragraph will connect to the larger argument. It should have more to do with what you have to say about the materials than what the author him or herself has said.

On the most basic level, you should be able to consciously justify the presence and placement of every word in every sentence, every sentence in every paragraph, every paragraph in every essay. To repeat: in revising your papers after the first draft (which is always, inevitably to some degree confused because you are involved in the process of working your ideas out), you should be highly conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it.

[palemakerperson-blog]

How to write a good thesis for an analytical essay 1



How to write a good thesis for an analytical essay

How to develop and write an analytic essay

Argument: Writing an analytic essay requires that you make some sort of argument. The core of this argument is called a thesis. It is your claim, succinctly stated in a single sentence. What do budding literary critics such as yourselves argue about? You make a pervasive, persistent case that a certain thing is true about a piece of literature. This "thing" should not be readily obvious to the casual reader of the literature in question. It is what you draw out of the book or essay, how you interpret it. It is a claim that must be supported by specific evidence from the text.

In order to find something to argue:

Look for images or metaphors that the author uses consistently. What other sort of pattern can you identify in the text? How do you interpret this pattern so that your reader will understand the book, essay, poem, speech, etc. better?

What philosophical, moral, ethical, etc. ideas is the author advocating or opposing? What are the consequences of accepting the author's argument?

Explain how the work functions as a piece of rhetoric--how does the author attempt to convince his or her reader of something? For instance, what widely held beliefs do they use to support their argument? How do they appeal to emotions, logic…

Re-examine something that the text or most readers take for granted (that Thoreau’s book Walden represents his attempt to escape from society). Question this major premise and see where it takes you

Ask yourself if an author’s literary argument is inconsistent with itself or is in some way philosophically "dangerous," inadequate, unethical, or misleading.

Examine how characters are presented in a story. How do they help the main character to develop? Which characters are trustworthy? Which are not? Why are they presented this way?

What counts as evidence:

Structure: How the parts of the book or essay follow one another; how the parts are assembled to make a whole? Why does the author start where they start, end where they end? What is the logical progression of thought? How might that progression be intended to affect the reader What effect might this progression of ideas have on a generic reader or on a reader from the time period in which the work was written? Does the piece move from the general to the specific or vice versa?

If you could divide the book/essay into sections, units of meaning, what would those sections be? How are they related to each other? Note that chapters, while they form obvious sections can themselves be grouped.

Referring to the text: In writing analytic papers that address any kind of literature, it is necessary to refer to the text (the specific words on the page of the book) in order to support your argument. This means that you must quote and interpret passages that demonstrate or support your argument. Quotation is usually stronger than paraphrase. Remember also that your purpose in writing an essay is not merely to paraphrase or summarize (repeat) what the author has said, but to make an argument about how the make their point, or how they have said what they have said.

Language: includes the way an author phrases his or her sentences, the key metaphors used (it’s up to you to explain how these metaphors are used, why these metaphors are appropriate, effective, ineffective, or ambiguous). Is the way a sentence is phrased particularly revealing of the author’s meaning?

Practical Essay-writing Hints:

Please title your paper and make the title apt and enticing--I LOVE a good title. It puts me in a good mood before I start reading.

Be clear about whether you’re writing about a book, an essay (non-fiction, short prose), a story (short fiction) a poem, a novel (book-length fiction), an autobiography, a narrative (as in Captivity Narratives) etc. Walden is a book comprised of chapters. Each of these chapters could also be called an essay. Within these essays, Thoreau sometimes tells stories. The book itself is not a story, but closer to a narrative, which is non-fiction.

Always go through at least two drafts of you paper. Let your paper sit, preferably for 24 hours between drafts sometime during the process of your writing.

Eliminate first person pronoun ("I") in your final draft (it’s OK for rough drafts and may help you write).

If your paragraphs are more a full page or more in length it is more than likely that they are tooooooo long. Probably you have too many ideas "in the air" at once. Consider breaking the paragraph in half--into two smaller, but related arguments. Your reader needs a break, needs more structure in order to be able to follow your meaning.

If several of your paragraphs are exceedingly short (4-5 lines), it is likely that you are not developing your ideas thoroughly enough--that you are writing notes rather than analysis. Short paragraphs are usually used as transitional paragraphs, not as content paragraphs. (Short paragraphs can be used in the rhetorical devise of reversal where you lead your reader down a certain path (to show them one side of the argument, the one you are going to oppose) and then turn away from that argument to state the true argument of your paper.)

Remember to write directive (sometimes called "topic") sentences for your paragraphs. The first sentence of any paragraph should give your reader an idea of what the paragraph is going to say and how the paragraph will connect to the larger argument. It should have more to do with what you have to say about the materials than what the author him or herself has said.

On the most basic level, you should be able to consciously justify the presence and placement of every word in every sentence, every sentence in every paragraph, every paragraph in every essay. To repeat: in revising your papers after the first draft (which is always, inevitably to some degree confused because you are involved in the process of working your ideas out), you should be highly conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it.

[writer59january13]

A Nightmare In Collegeville,™ Pennsylvania circa mid 1980's

     While shuffling off to Buffalo (another name I use to call the bedroom here at 2 Highland Manor Drive), an impulsive whim found me rifling thru notebooks of very early writings from yours truly.

Back some decades (perhaps an amount of time approximately equal to the half life of element named Matthew Scott Harris), typed document unexpected spilled forth from a heavy duty three ring notebook binder.

    Upon rummaging among typed efforts of literary amateurism, these myopic eyes stopped short when espying a stapled composition about four pages long. The material in question refers to the title of this piece de la resistance.

    There appeared to be a beginning, middle and end, which degree of completion would absolve me to ponder a theme for self subscribed daily assignment, which discipline forced refinement of a verbose harried style, and not always swiftly tailored.

    Hence the brief preface now allows, enables and provides this wordsmith to segue-way into the core firmly identifying lodestone of material (making alterations to hone clarity, favorability, and integrity) before releasing completed fictional story into cyberspace.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

    A primal fear coursed through my body, and haunted every fiber of my slight (slip of a young man) corporeal essence every time I passed the burned out hulk of what used to be the discount lighting and fixture store located at 3714 Germantown Pike, Fairview Village, Pennsylvania.

    An emotion of fright gripped my psyche most prominently when I drove past the dilapidated, hollowed out scorched structure after the bewitching hour of duck. This palpable quotidian uneasiness best characterized as an eerily foreboding, ghostly sensation. Phantasmagoric phenomena purportedly populated these premises prior to the pyromaniacal torched act of a Mongolian Vandal.

    Twas at twilight nocturnal sweeps of the clock, that the heavily damaged wing of the building stirred like some dormant, huge monster.

    The charred ruins of unsold merchandise, collapsed rubble heap, crumpled corrugated roof material, and twisted (sister like) beams of steel appeared to lumber silently and stealthily along the ground analogous to sinister beast in search of prey.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

    Braggadocio got the better part of this ordinarily overly cautious young man (asper fools rush in where angels fear to tread apothegm).

    Abe Zion (my best friend since kindergarten) double dared ourselves to test our comfort zones, and apply exposure therapy under apropos weather conditions.

    Thus, when came a ferocious, dark and stormy night (nsync  with thee refrain "It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase written by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the opening sentence of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The phrase is considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose.

    Actually, we struck up this mutual pact on a recent pitch perfect, gloriously sunny spring day to prove paranormal phenomena a confabulation, where nature played trick or treat with vulnerably susceptible rudimentary precinct of individual human mind.

    We agreed on this deal (after watching an episode of Let's Make A Deal on television based on similar context). While brimming with testosterone roaring swagger, both of us sought to accomplish a twofold objective. We wanted to put to rest this unfounded rumor, that evil spirits inhabited the

abandoned , abysmal site, to test fledgling manhood by carrying out this adventure of daring-do.

    When the rush hour traffic diminished on this most tempestuous, torturous, tumultuous evening, and no on-coming vehicles could be seen approaching from within our severely restrained minimal visual range, and the last traces of fearful silhouettes from passing headlights dissolved, we parked the car (a 1970 Yolks Beetle) within a secluded area of brush.

    Each of us dressed appropriately in sturdy rainwear then walked the short distance to the forbidding, dismal, decrepit shell of a burnt offering with portable phones, and other paraphernalia in hand. Naturally, we conveniently ignored the NO TRESPASSING sign. Just a little bit of the heebie jeebies gave goosebumps as four light as a feather legs gingerly stepped over yellow plastic construction stripping cordoning and marking off perimeter of danger regard this condemned property.

    Upon approaching what used to be the doorway to the store, we found the entrance blocked. Long (and fostered) animal nests, cobwebs, and thick vegetation impeded further progress. This dense brush needed to be cleared. Both of us unclasped the scythes and created (NIKE) swishing motions in an effort to minimize upsetting the resident flora and fauna ecosystem, who rightfully owned provenance to this territory.

    Once a passage got cleared wide enough for slender framed teenage boys to slink through, the mission resumed. As told, donned cladding bolstered top of the line waterproof gear. Also lugged thru this morass comprised backpacks filled with ample food and drink. Entrance made into the inky black ominous void, whereby every sensory nerve cocked, primed in case an ill fate triggered necessity to escape.

    When suitably acclimated to the pitch black environment did attention turn toward the raging tempest (that would no way fit inside a teacup), and ferocious roar outside indicative of horrible creatures, (where the wild things lurked) evident via cacophony of sounds.

    Amidst this earsplitting maelstrom, a faint yet sharp noise (similar when people toast and clink wine glasses together) punctuated infinitesimal brief silences between the bagging and rattling din.

    Subsequently, a phantom (possibly of the Opera) flitted close to our non-visible presence like some ephemeral spirit aware of intruders.

    The hairs along my spine stood on end in tandem with chattering of my teeth, which found me to cling nervously (for dear life) the coat tails of Abe. He laughed softly, and said “come on scaredy cat”, concomitantly taunting me with mild unflattering names. Braveheart endearment tossed to him, whence the erratic waving flashlight, his signal for us to proceed.

    Abe and I walked slowly and carefully with beams of light (flickering with fluctuating diminution of battery life) pointed to the ground, whence one direction indicated the vanished specter.

    With each footstep closer to our objective (the bowel of what could easily be presumed bombed building), a hitherto undetectable source of phosphorescent shimmering now glowed dimly some length down the corridor.

    As we headed deeper into the hallway (in an attempt to lay eyes on that after glow luminous emanation) to discover visa vis the mystery of this nebulous halo, my head accidentally knocked against dangling overhead merchandise, and right foot unwittingly kicked broken cluttered electrical contrivances scattered across the floor. The reverberation of the moving objects got me spooked. As a result, I let out a shriek of surprise.

    When I next heard a maniacal cackle, I momentarily believed Abe to be playing a boyish cruel, practical joke sans emulating my voice in a sinister exaggerated tone. “Abe”, I said in a stern tenor. “Stop with that childish nonsense”!

    Before he could defend his innocence, a blood curdling squawk filled the dank air as a whole horde of hobgoblins maddeningly swooshed about our faces.

We quickly (albeit instinctively, since painful black bore down upon blinking eyelids) dove for cover in a narrow, yet long abysmal recess within the wall. The pinched width of this alcove forced us to negotiate a careful maneuver, especially as the obstacle course incorporated serpentine curves.

    Before planning a strategic approach, we each outfitted our baby soft hands with durable rubber gloves to protect the tender flesh against damp dark surfaces.

    Inch be ooze filled inch (unbeknownst why, but the refrain from inch winch spider...occurred) as we edged forward through the void of absolute zero visibility, whereby a natural poorly wrought tunnel bled caustic, drastic, elastic flux akin to a soldering iron fashioning precise jewelry. Par for the course, and typical of most generic spooky tales hid sundry vermin lodged in crevices.

    Said various and sundry critters scampered and slithered across thickly clothed arms and legs.

    Eventually, the closed area expanded into a wider corridor, and eased growing claustrophobic tendencies.

    Abe and I breathed a premature collective sigh of relief at this prospect, and exhibited less restraint by conversing in a more audible level of conversation versus a forced coda of whispering moments ago.

    This creeping complacence did not last but a couple minutes. Once again peculiar creaks captured our acute hearing. In addition noticeable vibrations shook below our feet.

    These tremor like movements (I associated, kindled, and linkedin, with earthquakes) increased in duration and intensity. Soon thereafter even more powerful shakes made standing and/or walking impossible. The entire (once complex) edifice shook violently, and forced us to take a knee way before Colin Kapernick.

    A seismic shock wracked the foundation to its mooring, and thru us violently to the ground.

    The timbers creaked and groaned as if under an unrelenting strain, and wrenched loose from their respective mortise and tenon joists.   Floor boards popped loose from heavy duty industrial nails below, while shingles flew (akin to carrion diving after fresh road kill) haphazardly overhead. A patchwork of moonlight filtered down from a clear sky, and revealed a anatomically distorted skeletal frame.   

    One need expend imagination to envision the demolished structure waving like some hideous beastial ghoul or buoy. An ethereal quality imbued the remnant relic with a haunting spectre, a person could expect to encounter at a Halloween party.

    The powerful force of each crumbling, grumbling, and lumbering surge (Knight clanging in rusty armor) from this pseudo living thing (satan incarnate) swept aside any immediate hope of escape.

    While thinking to myself about the foolishness of this decision (an exploit to boast) to test the verity of a super-natural situation, a covey of apparitions considered myself and Abe ground zero (in this macabre version of zero sum game), and immediately rendered each of us unable to utter a word.      

    Try as I did, nary a recognizable plea exited this mouth.

    Unlike anything I ever saw in this brief life of mine (suddenly cherished as more valuable than fine spun gold), these transparent, milky fiendish beings epitomized a demonic streak.

    No doubt our earlier uninvited subterfuge (interpreted by these horrible hosts as a most sinister transgression) riled the figurative (or...maybe real tail feathers) these phantasmagoric banshees sought revenge.

    Rather than meekly resign ourselves to whatever malevolent fate awaited us, we fought tooth and nail for our survival. This amounted to defensive access to an out of reach fenestration, when not parrying nor ducking from bodily harm.

    A mighty strength grew up inside us as if by magic. Despite the topsy turvy momentum of the structure, we managed to stand upright like the bipedal hominids we knew and loved. I suddenly reacquired my speech and yelled out “for Christ sake Abe run for your life”!

    I instantaneously followed suit.

    Neither of us succeed in outsmarting our nemesis. Every cubby hole and hatchway found us face to face with a leering malicious grin much more frightful than that of the Cheshire Cat.