#why write a fictional narrative for nanowrimo when you can just write a novel about your sundry fluids and functions

[nanowrimo]

5 Essential Tips for Mastering Scene Writing in Your Novel

There's many parts involved when writing a scene. Knowing how these different pieces work together may help you move forward in your novel. NaNo Participant Amy de la Force offers some tips on brushing up your scene writing knowledge. Scenes are the building blocks of a novel, the stages where characters spring to life, conflicts brew and emotions run high. Mastering the art of scene writing is crucial for any aspiring writer, especially in the lead-up to NaNoWriMo. But what is a scene, and how do you effectively craft one? 

What is a Scene? 

A scene is a short period of time — in a set place — that moves the story forward with dramatic conflict that reveals character, generally through dialogue or action. Think of writing a scene as a mini-story with a beginning, middle and end, all contributing to the narrative. 

Why Scene Writing is Your Secret Weapon in Storytelling

Well-crafted scenes enhance your story to develop characters, advance the plot, and engage readers through tension and emotion. Whether you're writing a novel, short story or even non-fiction, scenes weave the threads of your story together.

Tip #1: Scenes vs. Sequels

According to university lecturer Dwight Swain in Techniques of the Selling Writer, narrative time can be broken down into not just scenes, but sequels. 

Scene

The 3 parts of a scene are:

Goal: The protagonist or point-of-view (POV) character’s objective at the start of the scene.

Conflict: For dramatic conflict, this is an equally strong combination of the character’s ‘want + obstacle’ to their goal. 

Disaster: When the obstacle wins, it forces the character’s hand to act, ratcheting up tension. 

Sequel 

Similarly, Swain’s sequels have 3 parts:

Reaction: This is the POV character’s emotional follow-up to the previous scene’s disaster. 

Dilemma: If the dramatic conflict is strong enough, each possible next step seems worse than anything the character has faced.  

Decision: The scene’s goal may still apply, but the choice of action to meet it will be difficult. 

Tip #2: Questions to Ask Yourself Before Writing a Scene

In Story Genius, story coach and ex–literary agent Lisa Cron lists 4 questions to guide you in scene writing:

What does my POV character go into the scene believing?

Why do they believe it?

What is my character’s goal in the scene?

What does my character expect will happen in this scene?

Tip #3: Writing Opening and Closing Scenes

Now that we know more about scene structure and character considerations, it’s time to open with a bang, or more to the point, a hook. Forget warming up and write a scene in the middle of the action or a conversation. Don’t forget to set the place and time with a vivid description or a little world-building. To end the scene, go for something that resolves the current tension, or a cliffhanger to make your scene or chapter ‘unputdownable’. 

Tip #4: Mastering Tension and Pacing 

A benefit to Swain’s scenes and sequels is that introspective sequels tend to balance the pace by slowing it, building tension. This pacing variation, which you can help by alternating dialogue with action or sentence lengths, offers readers the mental quiet space to rest and digest any action-packed scenes. 

Tip #5: Scene Writing for Emotional Impact

For writing a scene, the top tips from master editor Sol Stein in Stein on Writing are:

Fiction evokes emotion, so make a list of the emotion(s) you want readers to feel in your scenes and work to that list.

For editing, cut scenes that don’t serve a purpose (ideally, several purposes), or make you feel bored. If you are, your reader is too. 

Conclusion

From understanding the anatomy of a scene to writing your own, these tips will help elevate your scenes from good to unforgettable, so you can resonate with readers.

Amy de la Force is a YA and adult speculative fiction writer, alumna of Curtis Brown Creative's selective novel-writing program and Society of Authors member. The novel she’s querying longlisted for Voyage YA’s Spring First Chapters Contest in 2021. An Aussie expat, Amy lives in London. Check her out on Twitter, Bluesky, and on her website! Her books can be found on Amazon. Photo by cottonbro studio

[consolecadet]

This is mostly notes for myself, but feel free to read if you want a far too detailed dissection of which of my organ systems are working

TLDR it’s mostly good news

Back: Still not good, per se, but I’ve gone from being able to sit for half an hour w/o pain to being able to sit for much longer. Not sure how much longer -- it may not be indefinitely, but I haven’t hit my limit often lately, which is great. Now that my cold is mostly gone, my core isn’t exhausted from protecting me from my incessant coughing, and that seems to have helped a lot.

Lungs: My cold is mostly gone, but not completely gone...I am still too asthmatic/cough-y to do aerobic exercise without feeling like I’m going to mcfucking die, which sucks, but I know I’ll probably be back to normal lung-misery levels within the month, so I’m not too worried.

Knees: Still fucked, but much less fucked since I changed how I get into my car. If I bothered to ice them regularly I might be able to swing a full, speedy recovery, but I don’t really have the executive function for that rn. I’m sticking to doing some knee PT and might start doing KT tape again soon, and I think once I can get back on the bike my legs will get strong enough that this becomes a non-issue or close to it

Mouth: I ate a single blueberry yesterday and the skin got slurped right into my cracked tooth, so clearly I have to be paying more attention than I was before. I am dreading whatever my dentist decides he needs to do to said cracked tooth. I did learn yesterday that my family’s dental insurance has caps for each individual person on the plan, rather than a collective cap for all of us, so even though my parents have both maxed out theirs, mine is still fine because the only dental work I’ve had done so far this year is cleanings. So it’ll suck physically and psychologically, but not financially. Least I can ask for.

Sleep: Meh. I’m like 95% off Ambien and Ativan, and now that I can lie on either side, I can. . .kind of sleep? If I bring the humidifier down and actually remember to fill it I’ll probably be fine.

Upper GI: I’m so fucked. I’m 5 days into tapering from famotidine 20mg to famotidine 10mg, and the heartburn is real. And almost everything I really like putting in my face is, uh, acidic or gives me problems. Tomato products? Coffee? Seltzer with lime juice in it? Like all fruit ever? Onions and garlic? Ugh. I think I’ll adjust to the 10mg dosage, but I was planning on starting the taper off that a week from today and I am Afraid. I’m still so pissed about all of this, because I really did not need to be on a long-term antacid in the first place, and I was suspicious about it from day 1. I should, no pun intended, have listened to my gut, but I trusted this doctor more than I should have. Will be doing more research about future prescriptions.

Lower GI: She’s............alive. She’s unpredictable. She’s flighty. She doesn’t seem to care if I eat dairy or not, which is a blessing. But she wants all my time, and any fool knows that the inability to tolerate a moment of inattention from one’s partner is a classic red flag for codependency. I need my space!

Urinary tract: I literally feel like G-d themself heard my desperate prayer to not have a UTI or whatever and decided to take miraculous pity on me and reach in there and pluck the problem right out of my sad little bladder. I cannot articulate how relieved I am.

Fatigue and executive function: Slightly better. I attribute this pretty much entirely to other things being slightly better.

Thyroid: I have...suspicions. Again.

Brain: ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

In conclusion, I feel Less Bad, and I’m very excited about that because I feel like I can see endpoints for some things where before I saw intractable, unpredictable misery. However, I do not by any means feel Good.

[dycefic]

Hello, I recently read some of your work and I really really like your writing style! I’ve loved everything I’ve read so far and if it is not a burden to you and you are okay with doing so, I was hoping you could answer a few questions?

I was wondering if you had any formal writing education? Any advice for writing? Also wondered what kinds of books and authors you read, if you read?

I am sorry for all the questions, and if they’ve been asked before (I tried to find any answers you may have given to these or ones similar and I’m sorry if I missed them but direct me if need be).

I am also a writer and I’m always very curious about writers I look up to/ really like- most of them just happen to not be among the living so I do t really get to ask them any questions. Thank you for your time! It’s a pleasure to be able to read your writing!!

Thank you!

I am blushing extensively, thank you for all your kind words!

As for writing, I have had no formal education in it. I tried - and might not have dropped out of university if I'd succeeded - but creative writing required higher general scores than I got in school. I've read a lot of books on writing... like, a LOT... and always taken an interest in plot structure. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who walked out of House Of Flying Daggers (I saw it in theatres, I'm that old) rhapsodizing about the way they visually represented traditional storytelling metaphors (ie 'a rain of spears').

I will note that while it seems that absolutely everyone recommends Stephen King's 'On Writing', I've never read it because a) I found the little bit I read wordy and self-indulgent, and b) the very mention of that man's name enrages me because my partner once got into a serious hyperfixation and we didn't have a single conversation in which King's name was not mentioned for OVER A YEAR. This is not King's fault, but the name still fills me with intense fury.

Books on writing I would recommend:

K. M. Weiland's 'Structuring Your Novel': I like her 'voice', and her chosen examples, and pacing longer stories is one of the things I have the most trouble with.

J. Michael Straczynski's 'Complete Book Of Scriptwriting': It's an old book now, but it's still one of the best I've ever read, and my long-standing favourite. There's a ton of fascinating history about the evolution of screenwriting, and a lot of very pithy advice that applies just as well to novels and short fiction as it does to movies and television.

Chris Baty's 'No Plot? No Problem!': I haven't reread this in quite a while, but I remember it as being really helpful as well as fun to read. I also recommend NaNoWriMo in general. I've been participating since 2002 - this year will be my twentieth anniversary of NaNo - and my writing has improved enormously in that time. Writing is like everything else, insofar as the more you practice, the better you get. I've hit 50K every year since the beginning, so even if I never got a novel I wanted to finish, polish, and put out there (and a couple of them are promising), that's still 950,000 words I've written.

Also? Fanfiction. Fanfiction is a GREAT way to practice the craft. Because the characters and universe are pre-built, you can focus on the writing itself, on things like examining nuances of character, identifying and using tropes, and building a compelling story. Between NaNo and fanfiction, over the last 24 years, I have written over 2,000,000 words, and you can't do ANYTHING two million times without getting better at it.

As for who I like to read, I can't recommend Diane Duane, Tamora Pierce, and Georgette Heyer too highly. Not only do they write good stories, they were/are very, very technically skilled. Reading their work is an education in itself. I also recommend consuming narratives from other cultures - I learned a lot about different narrative conventions from things like reading translated novels, myths, and fairy tales, reading manga, and watching Chinese and Korean movies and dramas. It really gives you a different perspective on the mechanics of storytelling, and shows you how many 'default' or 'obvious' plot tropes are actually really culturally specific. (I have consumed every re-telling, re-imagining, or re-translation of Journey To The West, including the old tv show AND the Hallmark movie. I really recommend this, as it is FASCINATING how many ways different people interpret the same story. The Korean 'Korean Odyssey' and Netflix's 'New Adventures Of Monkey' are my favourites)

Bonus reading: When Books Went To War, by Molly Guptil Manning. It's not about writing, but it's about why stories are important, the lifeline a novelist can throw to someone experiencing the darkest of times, and what I believe may have been publishing's finest hour. I cry every time I read it, and it makes me proud to count myself a writer. If you ever wonder why you're slogging away so hard at learning so fickle and difficult a craft, this book will remind you.

“The therapeutic effect of reading was not a new concept to the librarians running the VBC (Victory Book Campaign). In the editorial Warren published on the eve of commencing her tenure as director, she discussed how books could soothe pain, diminish boredom or loneliness, and take the mind on a vacation far from where the body was stationed. Whatever a man's need—a temporary escape, a comforting memory of home, balm for a broken spirit, or an infusion of courage—the librarians running the VBC were dedicated to ensuring that each man found a book to meet it.” ― Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II

[janiedean]

I get what you mean about interacting differently with general adult fiction and ya, but I can’t agree that ya is “less than” or that meta about ya stories is worthless

... guys honestly can... y’all... stop putting words in my mouth? who said ya is LESS THAN ADULT LITERATURE? who said meta about ya is worthless? I said that:

ya is DIFFERENT from adult lit BECAUSE IT’S NOT AIMED AT ADULTS and fyi I think writing books for kids/children/teens is a lot harder than writing adult books because you have to think extra hard about the message you’re conveying and how you’re conveying and so on, WRITING good lit for minors (let’s just call it like that) especially the kind that can also be enjoyed by other age groups is hard and I NEVER SAID IT’S LESS THAN ADULT FICTION, I SAID THAT PERSONALLY I NEVER RELATED TO IT BUT I’M GLAD IF KIDS RELATE TO BOOKS CATERED TO THEM THAT ARE GOOD FOR THEM - percy jackson wouldn’t be good for me because it’s not my thing, it was most likely good for tons of teenagers/pre-teens who read it and felt represented in it and had fun with reimagined greek myths and I personally wish rick riordan a nice long fruitful career because I know that PJ books are actually very good for that target and offer kids a lot of representation and are well-thought/planned for that age range and I’m not saying that adults can’t enjoy them, but I would find it quite useless if someone decided to ancient greek literature assuming it’s the same thing as percy jackson, like is that too hard to grasp that if I say it’s DIFFERENT and that it’s not my thing but IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE I’m not automatically saying it’s less than adult fiction? it has to be good for kids, then if it’s good for adults too GOOD but the point is that the moment it’s good for kids it doesn’t have to be for anyone else because THEY are the target and adults who assume they are the target for ya fiction are missing the mark;

‘meta about ya stories is worthless’ WHEN did I say that? when? META ABOUT YA STORIES IN GENERAL is not worthless and believe me I’d absolutely read meta about thg concerning... hmmmm.... let’s see, when I watched the first hunger games movie I was like ‘sorry but is district 12 basically the poor appalachian miners or what why isn’t anyone discussing that’, now I WENT ON WIKIPEDIA TO CHECK AND GUESS WHAT

eeeh, wow, did I guess wrong? obviously not, except that I have never once read meta about this one topic, because believe me if I knew thg was about that I’d have probably watched the movies or read it back when it was out because I’m actually interested in commentary on that topic, except that each single piece of meta I see about thg is about the love triangle and so on, which excuse me but seems to me like most people discoursing on thg ignore the elephant in the house ie that there is a lot of classism/social commentary that gets ignored because it would mean discussing that issue irl and from what I gather coal miners in west virginia aren’t a hot american left topic right now, so like... I would appreciate reading meta about ya that actually deals with important topics addressing those topics and not how the love triangle is or isn’t revolutionary for the standards of love triangles, for one;

second: I said that meta about ya stuff WHERE SAID YA STUFF IS TAKEN AS THE STANDARD ADULT FICTION HAS TO MEASURE AGAINST IS USELESS because if I, tumblr user janiedean, write a book that I want adult people to read, I don’t write it thinking ‘how would a teenager take this’, I write it thinking about how would an adult take it, so if someone told me ‘in your book you gave one of the two main characters a shitty mother and you didn’t explain why she’s a shitty mother so you’re a misogynist’ (actual thing that I did in the nanowrimo novel I’ll hopefully finish soon) I’ll answer you that ‘you should grasp why his mother is a shitty mother from the circumstances they grew up in which should be enough to make you do 2+2 and since it’s from the pov of a guy whose mother was shitty to him he’s not exactly thinking about the reasons why she’d fail him because eventually to him she still was a shit mother, and if it was for teenagers at some point I’d have explained it, in an adult book I Do Not because THERE IS NO NEED FOR THAT, and if someone judged me faulty because I didn’t put two paragraphs of backstory to explain why his mom is shitty I’d say they were judging me unfairly because for that context I already gave you all the narrative elements you need to understand it and I don’t have to adhere to specific archetypes that make it easier to understand a negative character’s background when it’s that kind of figure, which means that you can’t judge grrm's writing the way you would judge rick riordan’s because they don’t write for the same audience and it’s unfair to both of them.

never, NEVER I said that I think YA is lesser or YA meta is worthless.

never.

I just said IT’S NOT THE BEGINNING AND END OF LITERATURE AND LITERATURE ANALYSIS and such a position is detrimental to both ya literature that gets held to crazy standards and adult literature that is assumed to cater to an audience it doesn’t cater to.

now can you all please for the love of whichever deity you worship or don’t stop putting words into my mouth and stop thinking that if I, a random person on the internet who at fourteen related harder to the main pov kid in the body than to any other character she had related to until then because that was the kind of stuff that made me feel seen and not ya lit but who never ever once presumed that ya lit couldn’t be good for people who felt seen because of it and actually spent her teenage years pretending to not dislike it as much as possible because I didn’t think telling my irl friends that I thought hp was not that great was going to accomplish anything except making me look like na ass, expresses one single opinion on the topic that doesn’t even include the words ‘ya sucks’ or ‘people who read ya have no taste’ IN GENERAL, then she means your tastes suck?

because that’s the message I’m getting and this discourse is honestly becoming tiring as hell and I’m done with explaining myself fifteen times over when it feels like you are all feeling personally called into it when I was discussing a specific category of people which, if you get my point, you don’t belong to.

thank you.

[philcon-programming]

Philcon Programming: Craft of Writing & Business of Writing panels and workshops

PHILCON IS ONE WEEK AWAY!  Philcon.org   Nov 08 - 10, 2019 Cherry Hill, New Jersey Our listing on Sched.com will be live soon, but in the meantime, here’s an overview of the weekend.

And here are the items aimed specifically at those looking to improve their writing, and those who are looking to get published or who are already published and looking to up their book-creating and book-selling game: Friday, 6pm Intro to NaNoWriMo & Flash Fiction Challenge National Novel Writing Month is an annual event designed to push both original fiction and fanfic writers past their doubts and all the way to a goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. Learn how to tackle the dreaded writer's block and try your hand at some wacky writing prompts to get your imagination going! [Presented by Katrina S. Forest] Friday, 7pm Genre Publications in 2019 How has the nature of SF&F magazines evolved to survive in the era of the internet? Friday, 8pm Will My Publisher Expect Me To Go On Tour? We talk a lot about ways to sell your first novel, but what happens after your novel sells? A discussion of debut author questions, issues, opportunities, and challenges.  Friday, 10pm Workshop: Plot Planning with StoryForge and Tarot Cards ~ 90 min How do you go from story idea to outline? What motivates your characters? Who are their antagonists? Discover how to use StoryForge cards and classic Tarot layouts to build a bridge from vague concept to finished narrative. [Presented by D.L. Carter] * Saturday, 10am Games as Character Builders Writers often think of games as distractions, but they can also be a great source of inspiration. We'll explore how we can use creative games (both board and video) to help springboard ideas and flesh out new characters. [Presented by Katrina S. Forest] Saturday, 10am Workshop: Performing a Reading You may write the best dialogue, descriptions, or sentences ever to see print, but the art of presenting your work orally presents a different set of challenges. Let's go over what they are, and how to overcome them. [Presented by Gordon Linzner] Saturday, 11am How To NOT Sell Your Book Common (and not-so-common) mistakes to avoid while approaching publishers. Saturday, Noon Ask a Small Publisher What do you want to know about getting into the world of publishing? Here’s a chance to ask the pros what they suggest. Saturday, Noon I Want To Do Better How to write non-European fantasy settings without resorting to stereotypes and offensive tropes. Saturday, 1pm How to Establish Your Own Imprint How to legally establish your imprint, obtain ISBNs, what distribution options are available, what you need to know about formatting for the digital age, and how to design (or find a designer for) a good logo. Saturday, 3pm Building Your Own Anthology What goes into the creation of an anthology? Is it better to have a broad topic for it or a narrow one? How do you solicit works? And who can you get to publish it? Saturday, 3pm Adapting Novels Into Screenplays Is there still room for the subplots? Does the pacing need to change? Should certain characters be given a smaller- or larger- part? How do you discern which elements can easily be portrayed in visuals, and how do you handle the ones which can't? Saturday, 4pm Borrowing From Literary Fiction There's been a spate of genre-blending novels and films lately; think Annihilation Station Eleven, and The Magicians. These stories borrow elements of literary fiction and mix them with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. What benefits arise from blending them together? What are the complications? And what can writers learn from these works to better their own style? [Presented by the Phoenixville Writer's Group] Saturday, 5pm Building Your Readership with Libraries The ebook landscape is in flux and there’s no better time to get your self-published books into libraries and in front of millions of readers. Learn how to make your ebooks available to libraries via Overdrive- and how to make your print books orderable as well. Explore different lending models as well as how to connect personally with your local librarians to further your visibility. [Presented by Dena Heilik of the Philadelphia Free Library] Saturday, 5pm Workshop: Writing Knockout Fight Scenes! How do you write a fight scene that feels immersive to your reader, rather than just a recounting of its choreography? [Presented by Christopher D. Ochs] Saturday, 7pm What Kind of Editor Do I Need? Yes, there's more than one kind! There are developmental editors, line editors, copy editors, proofreaders... We'll explain the difference between them, how to tell which you want, and where to find reliable ones. Saturday, 7pm Workshop: Getting Real About Fantasy Writing ~ 2 Hours Bring your stories! This workshop will focus on writers reading from their work, and getting feedback about what elements are strong and how others might be improved. [Presented by Charles Barouch and Ann Stolinsky] Saturday, 10pm Meet the Editors! Magazine and small press editors discuss what goes into creating their publications, from the economics of staying viable in the electronic age to getting appropriate submissions. * Sunday, 10am Self-Publishing for [Error - No Longer Exists] You've selected your self-publishing venue, submitted your work, but then the platform shuts down or changes their rules in a significant way. What are your options? Sunday, 10am Workshop: How To Give an Interview Once you've reached a certain level of success as a writer, editor or expert in a field, you ought to be prepared for journalist interviews. After all, the better you can present yourself and your work, the more likely you are to receive future publicity! [Presented by Randee Dawn] Sunday, 11am Your Story Doesn't Start Until Page Eleven? ...and that's a problem. How does a writer recognize when a narrative needs major surgery? Sunday, 11am Non-fiction Books that Fiction Writers Should Read Panelists discuss books they find important, and why. Sunday, Noon Rituals for Conjuring Novel Titles Is an actual summoning circle required to find the perfect name for your book, or are there other methods you can use? Sunday, 1pm The Art of the Pitch Whether it’s a novel or a TV show, how you present your product will make or break a potential publisher’s interest. What are the do’s and the do-not’s for different media types? When is less “more?” How do you decide what needs to be removed versus what should remain? Sunday, 1pm Book Layout and Design for Beginners [Presented by Danielle Ackley-McPhail] Sunday, 1pm Elements of Cover Design [Presented by Christopher D. Ochs] # Stay tuned for updates about our other content tracks for the weekend!

[ahiddenpath]

Seven Years of Writing Fanfics

I’m being a little premature- I’ll celebrate seven years of writing as ahiddenpath in September- but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’ve learned.  Please read on if you want to hear about the writing habits I wish I had when I started in 2012, and about the habits I wish I didn’t have back then!

I’ll also be talking about my writing plans in general.  Check it out below the cut!

1.)  Make a story bible.

A story bible is a reference document for your story.  Before you post a new fic, I strongly suggest creating one.  For digimon specifically, this means making some choices before you begin:

Which version of the character names will you use?  Do you intend to remain consistent with this choice?  For example, I’ve seen a lot of writers use Japanese character names and English digimon names.  Will you use official honorifics?  Custom honorifics?  Will you use terminology from one translation of the show, or a mashup?

Make these choices upfront, create reference charts, and remain consistent.  

After that, you can also keep references for topics such as characterization details (if you say that Bob’s favorite drink is coffee in one chapter and tea twenty chapters later, be prepared for a flood of comments pointing out the inconsistency), setting details, and anything that you don’t want to forget.  Spending half an hour hunting down a silly detail instead of writing is a huge bummer.

Growing Up with You is my worst offender of ‘problems a story bible would have fixed.’  It’s got... every issue you can imagine, lol!  For example, pairing Hikari with Gatomon (instead of Tailmon), using ‘digitama’ and ‘digimental’ interchangeably in the 02 arc, using the English terms for evolution stages while using Japanese names for other things, confusing Bakemon and Bakumon, it’s a mess.  It’s so bad that a complete, painstaking edit is the only thing that can fix it...  Which is enough to make me weep, given that the story is over 400K words long.

Organize yourself before you start.  Here’s a link to some printable Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 references.

2.)  Avoid Longfics.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating.  NEVER PUBLISH A NEW STORY WITHOUT HAVING AN ENDING IN SIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

I’m not saying you can’t write huge, epic tales.  God knows I’m unlikely to stop doing that.  But, if I could go back in time, I would separate Growing Up with You into four fics.  It would be something like this:

Growing Up with You I: Childhood

Growing Up with You II:  Digimon Adventure

Growing Up with You III:  Liminal Space

Growing Up with You IV:  Digimon Adventure 02

I’m sure some arcs would be longer than others, but this way, I’d have four stories that are roughly 100K words long.  

A lot of folks just... don’t want to read a 400K story.  It’s intimidating, man!  Although it varies by genre, the average word count for a fiction novel aimed at adults is 80K words.  That 400K fic is like FIVE NOVELS, DUDE!!!!  That’s a commitment for readers!

Shorter stories are more reader friendly, but there’s also a huge benefit to you, the writer.  Separating your longfic into multiple stories allows you more opportunities to write towards an ending.  Breaking your story into digestible chunks decreases the writing paralysis that comes with being nowhere near the ending.  It also cuts back on meandering chapters that don’t carry the narrative closer to that ending.  Furthermore, thinking of the story in arcs before you start writing forces you to plan more...  Something I never did in 2012!!!!

Best of all, once you reach the end of an arc, you can take a break before launching the next one.  It’s hard on a writer to continue endlessly producing without a break.  It’s hard on a reader to hit the final available chapter in a fic and wonder if it will ever update again.  But if you complete an arc and take a break to plan and write a few buffer chapters, the tension and impatience is gone for your audience, and you get to breathe.  It’s a win-win!

3.)  Avoid long chapters.

Back in 2012, I often posted chapters that were 10K words and longer!  Here are some benefits to posting shorter updates more frequently:

-Shorter wait times between updates.

Let’s say your planned chapter is 15K words long.  I could update my story once in the span of a month, or I could break the chapter into three parts and update three times in a month!  This keeps readers happy and interested in your work.

Over time, you’ll develop the ability to create sub arcs/movements, finding spots to break them up into separate updates.  This also creates natural moments for cliffhangers, tension, and mini resolutions.  It’s a great way to insert more moods and movement into your narrative.    

-More exposure for your story.

Every time you update your fanfic, it gets pushed to the top of the update list on fanfiction.net or AO3.  The more you update it, the more hits your story will receive, thanks to all the extra time it will spend on the first page of newly-updated fics.

-Easier editing.

I do my best editing when I’m working with 5K words or fewer at a time.  Personally, I can only focus on close editing for about 90 minutes before I start missing mistakes and forgetting details.  I could edit a 10K word update in two sittings, but then it’s possible to forget about details and moods from the previous editing session!  So, unless your story bible is really hardcore, your editing process could benefit from shorter updates.

-More feedback/support

I have a few amazing readers who leave some form of feedback/appreciation for me whenever I post a new chapter.  A supported writer is a happy, productive writer!  More updates means more chances for feedback and support from your readers, which in turn can fuel and direct your writing!  Again, everyone wins!  (Thanks, guys, I love you!).

4.)  Publish your story on both fanfiction.net and AO3.

Why reach one audience when you could potentially reach two?  There are plenty of readers who only use one platform or the other.

At this point, it would be ridiculously difficult to post my 70+ chapter fanfics to AO3...  Do yourself a favor and post to both from the start!

5.)  Remember: writing and editing are two separate processes.

Guys guys guys guys guys.  Lemme be real here.

I used to painstakingly write a first draft, check for spelling/grammar errors on my word processor, and then post it.

Here’s what my process looks like now: word vomit a first draft, do an edit in my word processor, print the edited draft, make edits on paper, transfer edits to word processor, print new draft, make edits on paper, transfer edits to word processor, final read through, post

If my new method looks more time intensive...  In a way, it is, but in a way, it isn’t?  I bang out that first rough draft without a care in the world, where I used to agonize over every word.  Agonizing is not fun.  Word vomiting can produce some, ah, discouraging results, but it feels like creative play.  It’s fun, it’s flexible, it’s fast...  And you can fix it later through the magic of editing.  And if you’re having fun, you’ll keep writing.  If you’re agonizing, you’ll find yourself making excuses to avoid writing.

Plus, my current method produces tighter, more deliberate prose, while maintaining the freedom and energy of word vomiting...  And avoiding the angst and doubt.  This is my best defense against writing paralysis and my greatest weapon in the battle of producing words.

My method can’t be right for everyone, but I do encourage you to try it out, especially if your writing hasn’t been joyful lately.

6.)  Don’t run too many fics at one time.

I encourage writers to have one longer fic open and one shorter fic, preferably of different tones/settings/main characters.  This gives you a way to keep writing when you’re sick of one project without bogging you down.

You will likely have some readers who love everything you do (god bless), but many people have particular genre, character, and setting preferences.  If you have three fics open, then readers of any one story have to wait much longer for the next update while you alternate updating each fic.

And more importantly, having a ton of open stories just...  It feels heavy, guys.  It’s a weight, a pressure.  Trust me.  Forgive me, fanfic gods, for I have sinned.

7.)  Maintain a buffer

Okay, so my Nanowrimo project for 2018 was to write 50,000 words for After August, my current open fic.  By the end of the month, I had a roughly 80% complete first draft of the entire fic.  

Guys!  Guys!  It’s so cool to know exactly where the story is going, from start to finish.  My editing is so deliberate on this piece!  I can spot repetition and inconsistencies, since the draft is printed and sitting in front of me in a binder.  I can tweak emphasis and maintain more balance between character appearances.  It’s a whole new ballpark for me, someone who always wrote one update at a time and posted it upon completion (or worse, wrote ahead and lost the material when I changed my mind about the plot before reaching that future point).

Plus, even if my life gets extra busy or hard, I can still maintain my updating schedule.  I can print out a chapter, take it to work, and do hard edits during my lunch break (I realize that makes me antisocial, but have you ever endured coworkers telling you all of their problems while you try to eat a sandwich in peace?  The editing is much more fun.  I am antisocial, is what I’m saying.  Born into it, baby).

Regular updates are a big part of maintaining steady readership, so having a buffer both increases the quality of your work (since you know where the story is going for sure) and ensures that more people read it.  Awww yisssss.

Okay, well, my concentration is gone now, so that’s the end of my advice!  If I think of anything else, maybe I’ll add it?  

I do want to touch base with my writing plans, though.  Currently, of course, my goal is to complete After August.  If I can post one chapter per week, it will be compete in early March, but I’m going to aim for completing the story in May, to allow for any issues that might come up (for example, Kingdom Hearts III is coming out soon!).

After that, I want to complete Seeking Resonance...  Although I have no idea how long that will take?  I just know that the heavy atmosphere was really starting to weigh on me.

After that... Well, do you remember that survey I made a while back?  It looks like my next project should probably be completing Four Years.  

I might simultaneously work on one of these two stories and Tales of REM, or maybe I’ll alternate between SR and FY for a while?  To be honest, though, I would really like to wrap up SR as soon as I can.

Either way, completion is the name of the game this year.  Please look forward to it!  Let me know if you have any ideas for future fics, or if you have a favorite from my list of potential future projects!

[kyndaris]

The National November Writing Month

It’s that time of the year again. November. Though I’m typing this entry a couple weeks ahead, I thought it best to turn my thoughts once again to my writing. And what better way to put emphasis on it by contributing to the internet-based creative writing project that is joining fifty thousand or so words into a cohesive narrative. NaNoWriMo is a challenging task. One that many would-be writers have taken up, whether to push themselves into adding more to their word count or as the impetus to actually start putting ideas into something much more tangible. In my time trawling the internet, I have known many a fan fiction writer and actual authors using the opportunity that is NaNoWriMo to do more.

Meanwhile, I’m often dithered each time November rolls around. Though I would like to help carry the torch and lightly nudge myself beyond the limits I’ve placed myself, I have often found myself without the time or patience to participate. Ever since I started on this writing project, I have managed to eke out a mere half hour to an hour, each day, to add to my story. I have since built it into my busy routine and my day would not be complete without a little writing on the side. Additionally, I found it best to give myself a minimum word count. Two hundred usually satisfies the itch but as I’ve neared the end, there have been moments when I have written five to six hundred words in these brief sessions when my muse decides that a scene must be fully painted and expressed before moving on.

As a person that works full-time, however, time is a fleeting commodity. There are many things that take it away, including my myriad hobbies. I say ‘myriad’ but I really don’t have all that many. One look at this personal blog of mine and it’s clear that I’m fairly boring. 

For all those readers out there, you might have realised that gaming is a major component of what makes up this ‘Writing Corner.’ What many don’t often know, is that I generally only write up my impressions of the video games I’ve played after the credits have rolled. The completionist within me is not satisfied until I have greyed out as many of the trivial side quests as possible and the story ends. This habit of mine can prove to be quite compelling and over the years, I have learned that there is no shame in putting down the controller even though I haven’t seen every nook and cranny, or obtained every single trophy.

Then there’s the Netflix shows. I’ve been meaning to keep up to date with regards to popular culture. Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and many others all deserve select portions of my time. How else will I be able to communicate with the rest of humanity if I know not where several memes have generated? What do these hashtags mean? Why is everyone talking about a character called Barb? 

With that out of the way, there’s also my key addiction: reading. While writing has its moments, I often like to delve into the worlds that others have created. Either for inspiration or to simply indulge, falling in love with the characters and wanting to know more about someone else’s fictional universe.

Some might call it escapism. I like to think of it as just stepping into the shoes of someone else and seeing the world through different eyes. Perhaps that’s why video games and novels have such a draw. It’s fascinating to experience all these different emotions from the safety of a warm armchair.

But back to the question at hand. Will I take part in NaNoWriMo? The answer is not as simple as I would like it to be. Hopefully by the time this post is published, I will have finished Divided We Fall. If not, at the very least, I’ll be nearly finished and I can move on to the new adventures with new characters. And should that be the case, NaNoWriMo might be the perfect vehicle for me to start building up a new world.

Besides, there’s little chance I’ll be able to grow a moustache.

[scifiwithswords]

34 things i adore about the novel i wrote for nanowrimo when i was 16

for context, i’m currently 23. 

i learned that national novel writing month existed when i was in 8th grade, decided to try it for the first time in 9th. i needed a novel premise that was so self-indulgent that i knew i’d be able to keep my attention on it for 30 days and 50,000 words. the premise i picked can best be described as “jumanji, but with fanfiction.” basically, it’s about teens waking up in their favorite fictional universes and using them as the best playgrounds ever. 

...for a year. the first book, written when i was 14, was about my self-insert Hazel and her best friend Drew getting ripped away from their tragically boring ordinary lives, being dropped in the Doctor Who universe, joining Torchwood, falling in love, and then being catastrophically separated and having to cope with figuring out new universes without each other’s aid. They go on solo adventures, grow as people, and then find their way back to each other. 

Fast forward about eleven months. I’d enjoyed the nanowrimo experience and didn’t feel like i was done with Hazel and Drew. but a story with just them, i felt, would get boring fast. so i added in two new ‘travelers’, auby and daniel, who were originally going to be a beta couple because i was 15 and hadn’t figured out that i was gay and could write gay characters yet. the second book has more self-indulgent fandom shenanigans, but there’s an increasing tension throughout it related to why this whole being-flung-between-universes is happening to them, and whether or not some higher power is responsible. this all culminates in hazel and drew having a climactic argument, daniel leaving the apartment they share on the naruto universe to give them some space and getting stabbed and dying, and then the three remaining travelers being taken to a blank white dimension where they are offered a choice: the lives they’re living now, or almost-perfect ones in the normal world. all three of them choose to continue on as travelers. (this is the book where the relationships get really deliciously complicated--Drew and Hazel are constantly disagreeing over whether there’s a deity responsible for what’s happening to them, Auby is paired with Hazel on her first universe ever and her reaction is massively different than Hazel’s was--her only goal, at the beginning, is to go home. she hurts people on purpose in service of this goal, which Hazel is angry about for a long, long time after.)

That still wasn’t enough. there were still loose ends that i hadn’t sealed, the possibility of a story in the snippets of everyone’s old life that Evelyn (the ‘deity’) in book 2, had appeared in. so there was one more book, written my junior year of high school, to resolve it all. Evelyn turned out to be a traveler who had died. Her partner, Tobias, created his own world to work on getting her back. he brought back Daniel instead, by mistake, and then eventually succeeds. We learn, in the middle of the book, that Evelyn wasn’t the real reason all of this was happening: the true puppet master was her sister Rennie, who had been writing a story where terrible things happened to the people who had wronged her over the years. auby, when she got a little older, had abandoned Rennie as a friend.  Daniel had never become her friend. Drew and Hazel had said some stupid shit to her online. But when Rennie feels the story getting really out of control (when Tobias takes things into his own hands to rescue Evelyn), she decides to try writing herself into it. And into the story she goes. At the end Evelyn is able to leverage her in-universe powers to give the travelers (who call themselves wanderers now, thanks to Tobias) another, less cruel choice: be wanderers with control over their own destinies and destinations, or stay on a nearly-utopian world she’s created for them. Drew and Hazel go, everyone else stays, Evelyn fades away. 

I hadn’t reread these books in many many years. I reread the 8th grade one last summer, looking for clues about what i was like in 9th grade (i’d thrown out all my journals from when i was younger years before, a decision that i bitterly regret.). i decided to reread wanderers (aka book 3) on a whim, and found that it depended so heavily on book 2 that i had to reread the latter half of that as well. 

my major reaction is that the premise, the plot, the relationships, everything--it’s all so quintissentially teenage, in a way that i genuinely didn’t understand it was at the time. the prospect of being pulled from one universe to another, with no control over where you’ll go and no knowledge of when it will happen, was always an allegory for the lack of control you have as a teenager, living under rules and expectations that you had no say in choosing. the fact that being thrown around between fictional universes goes from something the characters love, to something they question, to something they resent. the ways that they grow and change within and between the books, and the way those changes reflect changes that most people go through between fourteen and sixteen. 

so, without firther ado, the list, compiled during my 2018 Wanderers reread: 

1.       Hazel being like “I was braver back then”

2.       Drew being like “we used to like testing our limits, now we were afraid of what we might be capable of”

3.       The complicated relationship between Auby and Hazel and why they dislike each other. Hazel being like “Drew and I worked well with Daniel because he was independent and unique, but Auby was clingy and needed to lean on people. I didn’t like being anyone’s people.”

4.       The general sense of them having no control over the course their lives are taking, and coping with it by leaning hard into their relationships. It’s so teenage and at 16 when I was writing this I didn’t even realize that.

5.       The pacing in Wanderers! The Rennie stuff at the beginning! The stories of everyone hanging out independently or in little groups before they’re all brought to the same location by Tobias’s success! The way we leave off Tobias and Daniel’s story, after their relationship and quest have been explored a little, and immediately when we come back to it, the rest of the kiddos are involved.

6.       The characters unique preferences and thought patterns that resolve themselves so well in first person, why tf did I stop writing this way?

7.       The sweetness and gentleness between Hazel and Drew; how much they love each other. Hazel letting Drew hug her for longer because she’s concerned about how wiped out he looks, the two of them laughing together the first morning in the Forest, Hazel’s (kinda irrational kinda founded) jealousy of Auby

8.       Auby’s very confusing feelings about Daniel, who doesn’t remember the life they could have had together and isn’t the same person as he was when they would have started it.

9.       “It wasn’t fair, and I know life isn’t fair, but this thing was the reason my life wasn’t fair”

10.   The downsides of the AU. Drew felt like the alternate him was a bad person. Hazel didn’t love Drew as strongly. Auby getting almost everything she wants but still pining for the only thing she has now. And being unable to mourn this Daniel, g-d.

11.   “On the nights when I was just getting to bed after not sleeping for a few days, before Daniel, was the only time that I ever allowed myself to think about Evelyn actually being back.”

12.   I haven’t done character work this intense since uh. Since this.

13.   Rennie feeling like a bystander to her own (magical) story. The whole concept of there being a place where her characters are that she can’t describe because she can’t make herself see it. Her seizing back control in the end.

14.   Rennie didn’t realize she was being cruel, she thought she was coping

15.   Fuck did I pour myself into Auby and Rennie’s relationship. As both of them at the same time somehow.

16.   TOO BAD THE LOCKDOWN HAD A PURPOSE also really good pacing. When did I get so bad at pacing

17.   The fucking metaphors. Tobias turning his mind into a ‘drill’ instead of a ‘net’ when he’s mentally linked with Evelyn

18.   “Her voice was like bells, like wind chimes, like laughter. It was larger than life, and there was no problem with that.”

19.   G-d Tobias’s last conversation with the ‘real’ Evelyn

20.   “I hate you, you know,” Rennie said mildly, as though she was informing me that my shoe was untied.

21.   I grasped at threads, responded to what I could understand with the words that I could find. “Rennie, you know that I would never-“ -- “Yeah, Auby, I do,” she said. “Because I wrote you that way. You’re not actually Auby Harris. You’re my Auby Harris.”

22.   The concept of Tobias and Evelyn flying too close to the sun together, and Evelyn paying for it materially, and Tobias paying for it in heartbreak. The sense that they really love each other.

23.   Auby blaming herself for the things Rennie did because Rennie was betrayed by (a different) Auby

24.   Rennie makes room for Auby on the couch and Auby goes to sit on a different couch

25.   That good good serial narrative shit! Hazel’s main internal struggle in the second book being reconciling what had happened in the first book! The ending of the second book hanging like a specter over all of them for the entirety of the third book!

26.   This was the end of the line. This was our happily ever after. But the stories had never left off with the character in his happily ever after jumpy and frustrated, almost craving the intensity of the harsh journey behind him? […] we had always thought of our lives as us against the world, and now there was just…us.

27.   Tobias’s profound sense of loss after Evelyn dies, then him finding a piece of nature that he believes carries her essence, about which he thinks “Calm, and yet bold, breathtakingly beautiful. Yes, Evelyn was here.”

28.   EVERYONE BUT RENNIE HAS BEEN LIVING THIS LIFE SINCE THEY WERE 14 SO ONLY RENNIE KNOWS HOW TO DRIVE

29.   PAGES LONG argument between Hazel and Rennie about whether Marvel or DC makes better comics, interrupted by other happenings on the universe, involving all the major relationships between the characters, they eventually put it to a group vote because everyone else is getting annoyed, it turns out to be a tie because there are only six of them left and everybody loses because Evelyn is dead. Just the way the realization of the results of the vote cuts all of the tension.

30.   Everyone gradually transitioning from calling themselves Travelers to calling themselves Wanderers, and Auby not finding out that’s what they call themselves now until page 120/123

31.   Hazel letting Drew choose whether to stay or keep wandering at the end. Drew’s justification: I need her. She needs it. The fact that that’s softened by his restlessness in utopia like fifteen pages before.

32.   Hazel forgiving Auby, in their last ever conversation, for something that she had done ninety fucking thousand words ago.

33.   Daniel being sure that even though he’ll be okay, Rennie and Tobias will never be over Evelyn’s death. The fact that he starts talking and starts a little memorial service for her—Daniel, who tried his best not to need people, who usually barely speaks.

34.   The fact that the last line is (Hazel asking Drew) “Where do you want to start?”

[satyrdaymornings]

I rarely post anything on this hellsite but I wrote an essay a while a back about why I write urban fantasy

This is not a critique of Tom’s essays but maybe an elaboration on what it means for a Fantasy to be True and it to explore the genre I tend to write and create. Urban Fantasy. I will be exploring my relationship with writing urban fantasy, the realness of characters, the places and the reasons why I choose to write in this genre.

Tom's books were a panacea for me as a young awkward autistic child. I started reading them in around sixth grade. I started with Heartlight, read The Ancient One then The Merlin Effect. By the time I started reading the Lost Years I was also invested in the Legend of Zelda series and even worldbuilding my own fictional world at fourteen and fifteen. It was the late 90s and early Oughts. The use of the internet to share stories and worlds was not available to me at such ready hands as my students have. I was pulled into these stories, lost in Finacyra and in Avalon. I wanted to be part of these worlds. I wanted to escape the bullies, the violent anxiety and chronic suicidal ideation and ride on the wings of Trouble the hawk and befriend Merlin. It was also the first moment I started to unfurl the first feelings of gender dysphoria. It was through the eyes of Merlin and then Tamwyn when I felt stirrings how I wanted to be them. Not join them but to be a boy on a big epic adventure. Sure girls can go on them, but it seems like the male characters had the better ones. At least in my fourteen year old head. But it was also when I started to notice other things too. I couldn't quite relate to the main characters as much as I wanted. I wasn’t like Kate from Barron’s early books and while I liked Merlin, his struggles were not mine. Yes there echoes, I see them now. How Merlin was disconnected by his father was a sympathy I had, as I was disconnected from my own. Barron’s stories were an adventure, an escape-and one that influenced me tremendously. Yet, they did not resonate in me deeply. While the characters were indeed real, none of them shared my problems, and I shared-really, none of theirs.

In 2001, I joined high school with some battlescars. I escaped Catholic school, wounded but determined to try again. I was in public school, my mother hoped here I would find friends and escape the violence of bullying. I did find the former but I did not escape the later. I was still reading Barron, but I also moved to David Clement-Davies for anthropomorphic fiction, I found Orson Scott-Card (before I knew how goddamn nuts he was) I also started discovered around the same time as Barron, Stephen Lawhead who’s rather preachy but deeply complex historical fantasy became a huge influence. I would even go so far as to say, that Lawhead was a huge reason why I am a practicing Druid and a member of a Druid church. It was also when I got my hands on my Terri Winding’s Bordertown and her anthologies. Suddenly I found characters whose eyes I could see through. Homelessness, drug use and addiction, running away, mental illness. These were all things I could wrap my hands on and go yes, that's what I deal with granted no in the same way as the folks in Bordertown can. It was my first taste of Urban Fantasy and I was hooked.

In Barron’s essay he talks about the realness of place. He draws massive influence from his experiences in Pasfic Northwest, Japan, and of course the Rockies. You can see that clearly in the Great Tree of Avalon. The protagonist Tamwyn explores Stoneroot and I can almost see him Stonewood looking just like Great Divide. However, I don’t live with the massive gaze of ancient mountains. Stoneroot, and Waterroot, and Woodroot, are far away to me. I can’t grasp them. But, I got Bordertown. It feels much closer. I could smell both asphalt of Bordertown, hear the police sirens and see both homeless men and elves alike. That seems more real to me. Because I know I’ve been to Bordertown.

I started working on Styx Water in 2013 as my Nanowrimo. It ballooned into this expansive massive story with struggle, love, sex, death, policial intrigue. It was here I crafted the lessons that I was taught from Barron and the myriad of other authors. Fantasy Must Be True-which I agree, yet there is another axis to this. Fantasy Must Be Real. What I mean is that there is a level of grounding I think that is needed at least for my genre. The grounding I found in Bordertown-and it's sister Neverwhere. Was at it's heart-what drove me to write in that genre. Because while I loved high fantasy and the exciting places I did travel. Sometimes I just needed to stay home rather than run from my problems.

Grounding is what gave my character’s substance. Hermes and Calix problems and stories while also fantastic were also rooted in a space that the reader has been in. Hermes’s struggle with mental illness is a road that many have been on. Indigo’s story of being non-binary is one we have heard before, often in different verses but one that is rarely told. While these are all my characters, I am not the only one that is doing neurodiverse and gender variant protagonists. There has been a dearth of stories in YA that have been taking advantage of the characters and stories that are more rooted in the reality of readers. We’re seeing more queer and disabled heroes and I am all here for it. Fantastic stories and grand adventures and powerful lessons were now available for people like me.

The meaning and messages of fantasy are to be true. Barron stated for a reader to be invested and to be deep within the narrative, the meaning must feel true. His messages are flavors of spiritual enlightenment, deep love for nature, and the triumph of light over dark. Powerful soup for a lonely and starve teen. Message of recovery from trauma, finding self-love, accepting loss and grief and the building the skill of asking for help. Themes that are dotted in my own fiction. Hermes' grand adventure of using the power of the River Styx and saving the world, is balanced with his need to take his medication, going to therapy, fighting with his sister and repairing his relationship with his step-dad. There is a sense of gravity urban fantasy has that high (or low for that matter) doesn’t have in my option. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is a crime noir with wizards than the elf kids slumming in Bordertown. It's gravity of relationships and real world problems are often eclipsed by the metaphysical and paranormal ones. Who cares about making rent when the Queen of Summer is after your butt? The flow of Big Problems (like saving the world and supernatural events) and Small Problems (Finishing homework, dealing with a new baby, finalizing a divorce) are a careful balance of realness and adventure. Big Problems show grand truths like ‘love can heal’ and ‘friendship is powerful’. Small Problems show smaller more intimate truths, “Compromise to succeed,” “It's okay to be mad,” and “you can be yourself.” Big Problems can certainly showcase those truths, but Small Problems do it in a more concentrated way. Loneliness on a small scale, small lense, feels more real. We can sit with the protagonist in his lonely moments. We can have this intimate space with them.

And perhaps that is why I write urban fantasy. The intimate Small Problems makes my writing True. It's easier to blend the slice-of-life Small Problems with the Big Problems of a massive epic in a place that we all know. The Small Problems make the story Real, in a way that larger massive narratives lack. I want to know the Small Problems. Does Merlin ever feel uncomfortable in his body while he goes through puberty? Tamwyn has to work with a splitting headache? Has Kate ever been in detention? Do any of the characters struggle with finding the difference between love and sexual lust, a common problem for many teens? Small Problems are not distractions, they are extra bits of garlic or chili flake in a dish. Knowing our grand heroes also have real human problems makes them grounded and tangible.

This is not a novel concept, many great authors have blended real issues that teens face with the hypercosmic problems of a greater narrative. Rick Riordan and Neil Schusterman both do a fantastic job in writing teenagers. Liba Bray and Nancy Farmer give us flesh out rounded characters with both Big and Small problems. I love writing the Small Problems. I love spending quality intimate time with my characters. I like over hearing lunchroom rumors and crude humor. I love the secret confessions made in the still mornings of a weekend. The passing of a bowl of weed or a bottle of beer behind the backs of the adults. I also love the intimate moments of my growns too. Kalliope (Hermes’ mom) paging through old photos of years gone by. Conversations spoke in Greek to her mother in law. Finishing a deadline and celebrating with wine. Love making on a warm Saturday morning. Those moments are sharp tang or the gush of sweet in a bite that makes the meal more rich and more enjoyable. And writing those moments adds a sense of Real to the big narrative of saving the world.

Barron’s statement about what makes fantasy True is the same as what makes fantasy Real. Readers need to believe in the places and feel the wholeness of the characters and the messages in the story, but also the characters need to feel the realness of the reader. They are not absent from the story. Readers should be more than passive voyeurs. They should be on their quest too and their problems, as Small as they are, should not less but the same as the Big ones and just as True and Real.

Kramer.

[goblinfruit]

End of the year writing reflection 2017

I’m trying out this thing where I gather all of my thoughts about my writing and growth as a writer-person from the past year into one place. This is a long post, fyi. Here goes:

I had two workshop classes this year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and a writing conference during the summer. At the end of all this, right now as I calm down after finals, I feel like I have more self-doubt than I had at the beginning of this year, but I also feel like I’m more okay with that self-doubt. I can live with it more easily now. I might change my mind tomorrow, in a week, in a few months, but this feels like a real change and not a mood.

Before I always had this background noise of “you have to be good. You have to be the best. You have to be amazing. You’re not right now, so you have to work and get there sooner rather than later. You can’t miss any opportunity because it might be the only one.”

Maybe this thought is true in some respect. Maybe I shouldn’t let my guard down. But I wrote some stinkers in my fiction studio in the spring. I felt like my prose was okay but the stories were scattered and too much lived in my head and not on the page. The story I presented to my workshop group in my summer writing conference still deeply embarrasses me. I had written it a year ago, and it was a short story that was trying hard to be a modern folktale, as if the genre made up for the fact that nothing in the story was grounded. No concrete characters, setting, the plot was a thin moral. I love the concept or trope or whatever-it-is of reincarnation in stories but I put it into that Terrible story so now I have this weird heartburn whenever reincarnation comes up in shows or books. I had to re-watch the entire first season of 90s Sailor Moon to lessen it with overexposure (sure, that was totally the only reason I did that). To be fair to myself, I thought that workshop group in particular was a stinker. They made me doubt if I wanted to be a writer or befriend any writers because writers seemed to be, on the whole, a species of pretentious assholes trying to show-off or belittle anyone who makes the mistake of breathing in the same air as them. I’ve gotten over that doubt, partly.

At the end of the summer I just… let go. I tried to stop thinking about possible, future publication while writing every story. I stopped looking up story contests and submission deadlines. In the fall semester fiction studio, I still got righteously angry at some stories and commentary in my workshop because getting righteously angry over minor social interactions is my thing. But way back at the beginning of this year I also started a job as a writing center consultant. I leaned into that training, I started treating workshop pieces as if they were brought to me by some courageous student just trying to do well in their classes.

This was so freeing. It didn’t feel like much, in my mind I thought of it like briefly giving up, a hiatus. I knew that I would try to summon up all of my ambitious feelings again but I needed a break from myself. I needed to shelve the perfectionist within me and go on a mental pilgrimage to just ...think about storytelling as a concept and not specifically about ME and my DREAMS. The fall semester helped. I had to take a required algebra class on top of classes that needed a lot of mental energy. I tried to do NaNoWriMo but got too caught up in everything else. I was too busy to care or feel devastated that I didn’t draft a long manuscript.

I wrote around three short stories for my classes, and all of them were about haunting in some way. Still can’t tell if this is from my mood or if this is my new(-ish) interest. Two of them were throw away stories that were one or two scenes that I’ll either never touch again or will have to completely rework. But one of them, the longest and first of the three, is the ghost garden story, which I’m excited about. This was the first story I felt like I made progress with in the revision assignment for class. I see so much potential in it, I want to explore that world. I want to make it hopeful, bittersweet, and pretty, dammit. I don’t know if this will be a serious project or something I use to make myself a better writer. Technically, the start of this school year is my fourth year as an undergrad, but I have a double major in Brit Lit and in Creative Writing, so I’m going to be here for another year trying to fulfill all of these dumb requirements. Maybe this has also contributed to my change in mood—I’m more relaxed about this now. I have a new project and a new school year ahead of me, and I can settle in and stay put for a while. I’m not going anywhere in a hurry and that’s okay.

Tl;dr: This year I learned to chill out, a little, and this helped me grow as a writer, a little.  

Some related but miscellaneous thoughts:

On writer friends: This was true in high school and I guess it’s true in college, too. At least for me, I always feel settled into a school during the last or later years I’m there. I have been at this university for three and now almost four years and just this last semester I finally feel like I’m making friends. Some of them are writers. There are writers around me who are not condescending or pretentious! I’ve found them! Just now, this year. This actually came about, partly, from the summer writing conference. I didn’t make any friends there, but the two other people from my school who were nominated to go are awesome and the summer conference gave me a reason to talk to them. They also complain about the conference, I’m not paranoid or a debby-downer. So thank you, writing conference, for killing my confidence and showing me the friends that were near me all along. No, I kid. Kind of.

On prose versus story: Moving forward, I’m going to try to write cohesive stories. Everything grounded—solid characters, solid settings, solid conflict. I’m still the kind of writer that puts logistics last on my priorities list, but I think I lumped in “development” in with logistics before and that’s not good. I’ve had this goal for a while, but the Terrible summer workshop story has made me even more determined. If this means writing extremely short, simple stories as exercise, so be it! I think that I’ve helped myself by figuring out why my stories haven’t been very grounded so far. I took the creative writing lesson of “your reader is smart, don’t tell us everything, show” too much to heart. My studies in just the last semester helped me realize this and brainstorm ways to work past this.

I had to read several books for a current writers class and I had to read a fiction by an established “master” writer for my senior level fiction studio, and then reflect and write essays about how these works ticked. I ended up writing three to four essays railing against the teaching that makes us hold back on exposition. Each of these writers used exposition effectively in their unique narration style. I think this is the key—I think that I’ve been afraid of using exposition because I’m a fantasy writer. I think that I should be afraid of clumsy, clunky exposition, instead. Showing, not telling, is great but my reliance on this, and not using much exposition, has left my workshop readers confused and slightly angry for each story, so I need to learn moderation.

Books: one of the books I read for the learn-by-reading reflection assignments was Margaret Atwood’s collection of short stories, Good Bones, Simple Murders. I didn’t read all of them because of time, but the many I did read were amazing. Most of the stories are concise, at about two pages long, and are brilliantly written. Beautiful, poetic, evocative, righteous, hilarious. There were also little pen-drawing illustrations by the author which were also amazing and complemented the stories so well. One of the main features in the stories is this close, personal narrative voice. The person is either first or second, or a mix of both, and usually reads like a letter, a diary entry, or a piece that addresses the reader directly. One or two were fake magazine ads. You kind of have to have a bit of exposition when your narrator is so direct, but this was coupled with a vivid voice and poetic language, so it totally worked. My next writing exercise idea is to write a flash fiction that mimics this style.

More books and stuff: I took a Chaucer class, which was fantastic. The Canterbury Tales are great and made me think more deeply about framing devices than I ever have before. The Canterbury Tales also were way more interesting once I had read more of Chaucer’s work first and got a sense of his meta and satirical style. If anyone wants to read The Canterbury Tales, I’d recommend some critical edition or something with a lot of academic notes if you can afford it, because there is so much in academic studies and even in the allusions and themes Chaucer himself uses. It’s a great thing to dig into.

I also took an Arthurian lit class in the spring and this did not make me want to read more Arthurian literature. Instead, I want to read more by Marie de France. We read her lai “Lanval,” and I remembered reading “Bisclavret” (a great werewolf story to check out if you haven’t read it) from Medieval Celtic Lit.

Also, reading her short stories made me want to start reading Margaret Atwood’s work. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale but that’s it for novels. This last weekend, I binge watched the Netflix series Alias Grace. It felt very Gothic to me, and had a lot about haunting, and since I’ve been obsessed with haunting as a theme, I should probably read the book. Idk what it is about haunting that’s caught me lately. Probably it’s a quick, easy way to evoke the feeling of the uncanny in a story. I mean, what’s more familiar-made-unfamiliar than a haunted house? Liminal spaces, man. They’re the best.  

That’s it for this reflection. If you’re a reader and/or follower who has made it this far, kudos to you! No, seriously. I wrote this mostly for myself and I have no idea if any of these thoughts are of interest to anyone else. But I feel like writing is so much an individual, lonely thing that I like to share my thoughts or be as direct with people as I can be, when I’m allowed. This isn’t always a good thing, but despite the crushing embarrassment I feel sometimes, I prefer to be optimistic and put myself out there (sometimes) rather than have no chance to be heard at all.

[nanowrimo]

Music Playlists as Story Inspiration

Do you use music to inspire your writing? Have you ever thought about trying different genres to see whether that affects your story? Today, writer A.S. Axeman shares how exploring YouTube videos helped inspire their novel:

For NaNoWriMo 2021, I chose synthwave and ambient genres as my writing music. While most of us write to music, some of us may have a rough time writing with singing in the background. I’m also an 80s kid so when I think of action or hard science fiction, synth music is in my head. 

The fantasy and space opera movies of the 80s were voiced by a massive orchestras and produced great music to write to. Growing up I used to listen to the Blade Runner soundtrack and all John Carpenter music just as much as the John Williams scores. As I have aged, most of the time I write with big movie scores playing in the background due to the sheer volume of them available. This year, though, I ignored the sweeping epic scores and shifted solely to synthwave. YouTube is full of synthwave and its sub genres chillwave, darkwave, horrorwave, and retrowave. Springboarding off those, I also added ambient videos with great visuals to my general play list.

The first few days were easy writing, but around 10k words I was really stretching my imagination. I was stalling with my initial idea and I had to give my characters a kick in the pants. I was flipping through synthwave tiles to find just the right one when I saw a silhouetted traveler looking at the expansive skyline of a futuristic city. I though “put Axe and his crew right where that guy is standing”. Suddenly I different problem set for my amnesia-plagued team to deal with.

I typed a few paragraphs then looked at the image again for another dose of inspiration. 700 words later and halfway through that video, I was hunting for another video that seemed like it could connect. I found it among the hundred or so titles of just one content creator.

When I paid attention to the screen images for each synthwave or ambient video, I began stitching together a very different narrative than my intended course. Instead of Axe, Mac, and Quartermas dealing with gritty rough problems, they were on a trippy, cosmic journey.

Music lights up my brain (probably yours too) and images can be worth hundreds to thousands of words. Why not use them as your force multiplier? Think of the time you’ve slogged your way through a dull but awesome looking movie. I’ve sat through many boring but visually stunning and beautiful sounding movies. Choosing instrumental music videos with majestic animations as your writing companion can push you and your words in different directions that you weren’t prepared to go but might actually like better.

A.S Axeman is the pseudonym of a professional rabbit-holer and over thinker who enjoys general woodworking, guitar foot pedals, holiday baking, dark beers, and being retired from the Air Force.

Photo by Don Daskalo on Unsplash  

[scifrey]

Get To Know The Writer

 Get to Know the Writer Tag

Rules (always post the rules): answer the questions given to you, write ten questions of your own, tag ten people.

@rosecorcoranwritessaid anyone who wants to do it can, and it looked interesting.

1.) Where did the title(s) of your latest project(s) come from?

 The titles for The Accidental Turn Series were sort of decided by a committee of my agent, my editor, my publisher and me. I’m rubbish at naming books, so through a series of emails a list of about a hundred throw-them-out-there titles were whittled down (mostly by Googling them and seeing if any other book had that title already) to a few themes. From there we narrowed down and named the first book (The Untold Tale, where I had been calling it That Feminist Meta Thingy), and then the other two books dominoed into place after that (The Forgotten Tale, and The Silenced Tale.)

These titles are because in book #1, the fantasy is being told from a side character who in fantasy-novel tropes is often overlooked. In book #2, other fantasy stories start vanishing, forgotten by the readers, and in book #3,someone is trying to silence the writer of these fantasy books forever.

 City By Night, one of my novellas, is also being reissued next month. Its original title was The Dark Side f the Glass, which was both an allusion to Alice Through The Looking Glass, as it’s about a woman who falls into a TV instead of through a mirror, and a tip of the head to the song of the same title from the soundtrack of one of the television shows the novella satirizes, Forever Knight. However, my agent thought the reference was too obscure, and after another big round of back-and-forth, it was decided to name the novella after the fake-TV show I made up for the story.

 The titles of the to books in The Skylark’s Saga (#1 The Skylark’s Song, and #2, The Skylark’s Sacrifice) are because I do love alliteration when I can get away with it! These are the only titles of the recent projects that I decided on my own and the rest of my team liked! Score!

2.) Do you have any rhyme or reason behind your character names?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For the Accidental Turn Series fantasy books, I stole a lot of street names or snipped letters out of traditionally “European” names, like Kintyre, Forsyth, and Bevel to make them look suitably fantasy-esque on the page. But when the characters come to the “real world” I made a point of surrounding them with characters who had distinctly non-white, no-European names like Ahbni, Ichiro, and Juan just to really emphasize how much more diverse the “real world” is over traditional fantasy. 

In Triptych, every friend who helped me with edits got a character named after them. And in The Skylark’s Saga I got a bit silly - the Sealies all have surnames inspired by pagan gods, the Saskwayins are colors, and the Klonn are plants.

3.) What is your writing routine, if any?

When possible, I like to write at night, in silence, and with only my desk lamp on.  I try to keep my desk area very tidy, too, with only notes about the project I’m immediately working on written on my whiteboard wall. I need the only mess to be what’s in my head.

I’m more of a pantser who has, by virtue of writing series, been forced to learn how to plan. But even then, my planning is pretty rudimentary. I often do this in a notebook on transit (I tend to come up with ideas when I’m in liminal spaces), and run that by my editor. If she approves the vague outline, then I often write whatever scene is foremost in my mind - whichever has really grabbed my imagination, and allows me to figure out who my characters are, what the voice is, who the narrators are.

From there I often write chapter one, and then usually skip straight to the climax of the book and write that. This way I know where I’m aiming before I properly knock the arrow. Even if the target eventually shifts, I still have a sense of its shape and location.

From there I tend to skip all over the narrative and write whatever arrests me or I have in the front of my mind. Once that’s done, I go back to the start and begin the process of filling in the gaps. If I get another idea, I’m always happy to jump ahead and do that.

Using Scrivener has made this process a thousand times easier than when I had to scroll-scroll-scroll through Word.

When I don’t have to go to my dayjob, I try to write about 4000 words per day. When I do, I am for 500-1669, which keeps me limber for NaNoWriMo.

4.) Where is the weirdest place you’ve ever written?

I actually wracked my brains on this one, and I was going t say something like “a 400 year old house on the top of a mountain in Japan” or “in the shadow of the Great Pyramids in Giza”, but honestly, the real answer is on my BlackBerry while high off my face on morphine in the emergency room. Apparently I wrote a GREAT short story, which I emailed to all my friends, and emailed them. Without telling anyone that I was in hospital with Organ Death ™. And without remembering at all that I’d done it.

5.) Do you prefer to write by hand or type?

Typing, hands down. I type way faster than I handwrite, and I get frustrated that my pen can’t keep up with my brain. If I get an idea when I’m away from the computer, I usually only jot down enough to remember the scene/idea/mood/exchange without writing it out. I despise having to do the work twice, and that’s what transcribing from paper to computer feels like.

6.) Ideally, where would you like to see your writing take you in five years?

I’d like to break this barrier there seems between me and the Big 5. My agent and I have been working at it, but there seems to be some strange gap. Lots of editors at the Big 5 like my work, but no one seems to want to sign it. I get compliments on my voice, on my word crafting, but no contracts. It’s so frustrating to be so close to the possibility of working with a team with more resources than I have so far. 

7.) Which character is most fun to write and why?

Now that Triptych is complete and being serialized on Wattpad, any opportunity to revisit Kalp is a delight. I love looking at the world through his eyes. Olly, from The Maddening Science was a lot of fun too, again because of the way I have to shove aside my own assumptions about how and why the world works and see it through the lens of his own intelligence and lived experience. And Bevel will never not be a hoot, because there’s something just so great about getting to be that crass, and to come up with dirty jokes that fit in a fantasy world.

8.) What advice would you give writers just starting out?

Read widely outside of the genre you want to write in. If you want to write fiction, read non-fic, pop sci, and academic papers. Read the news. Read blogs. Read things that are in your wheelhouse, but then randomly grab something from the library that looks cool. You never know where the next idea will come from. Let your imagination wander.

9.) Do you have any “writing heros”? (This could be published writers or non.)

Anyone giving it a go! It’ hard, and it’s disheartening when people don’t love something you’ve put so much work and heart into. It’’s easy to give up on. Don’t.

Otherwise, I love Dianne Wynne Jones’ blatant subversion of stereotypes and tropes, which has really informed my writing, an Jane Austen’s ability to create such diverse, thoughtful, and complex characters.

I also super appreciate fanfic writers, cause they do it out of sheer love, and work for years to hone their craft. Among my faves are @bendingsignpost @sheafrotherdon, and @madlori.

10.) Tell me about your work-in-progress.

 Oh lord, is this a can of worms you really want to open?

 The Silenced Tale & The Accidental Collection  - books #3 and #4 of The Accidental Turn Series  are done. They just need to be line-edited and then the editor can lock the manuscript and it’s out of my hands and into the typesetter/designer’s. (And then of course I need to ramp up to marketing machine.)

 Book #3 is the conclusion of a trilogy of books about a secondary character in  fantasy epic who becomes self-aware and slips the pages of his book.

 The Skylark’s Saga - The two books are written, but one of the relationships is changing dramatically and I need to go in and shift that. I have no idea how much writing/rewriting this is going to entail. However, I do know that I want to get it done by the end of the year. As soon as the manuscript for The Silenced Tale is locked, I’ll be moving onto this.

 This duology is a steampunk-adventure-romance book about a girl vigilante and her ornery rocketpack who gets trapped behind enemy lines after being shot down in a dogfight.

 The Austen Hollywood AU  - I’ve written the first book of the series, and my agent is shopping it now. It’s possible that it may only get signed as a one-book deal, but ideally I’ve developed it as a six-book series (one for each of Austen’s). At some point I’d like to write the first three chapters of the remaining five books, to demonstrate what the voice and tone of each is gong to be like. (Possibly for NaNoWriMo this year??)

 These books are modern adaptations of Austen’s work, but they will all intertwine as characters from different aspects of the entertainment industry cross paths, work together,  and as they do in the originals, find love and contentment.

 The Maddening Science  - at some point I’d like to develop my short story of the same name into a full-length novel, but it would take a lot of research on my part, and a lot of buy-in on a publisher’s. I’m not quite ready to tackle this one yet, though I have pitches and synopsizes and the like written.

Henrietta - This idea is relatively new idea, born from watching a documentary and then reading the non-fic biography that inspired it (see, reading outside your genre helps!), but I think I’d really like to take a swing a writing a historical romance based on the life of a certain historical mistress, something like The Other Boleyn Girl. It would take a massive amount of research as well, but I think would be really interesting and engaging. The woman’s life was fascinating.

The Neridis - I wrote this book about four years ago and it’s been trunked. I’d like to pull it back out and give it a spit-polish and a steam-up, then self publish it sometime next year under my erotica pseudonym. It’s a time-travel lesbian romance story that can easily be punched up into erotica.

And of course, there are three other books that are sort of hovering in the back of my mind, but I’m not ready to write them, or even really a pitch for them yet. The vampire one might be a screenplay instead, I’m not sure.

 Oh, and I am looking to place a script, too - I wrote it under spec for a company that later decided not to shift from distribution into development any more, so I’m not sure what do with 228 pages of cute lesbian comic-book creators falling love over lattes and superheroes. I keep thinking that it would make a great webcomic/graphic novel, but I have no idea how to find an artist willing to commit to like a 500-page graphic novel, and more importantly, find the money to pay them.

I tag whomever wants to jump in. No pressure.

[chickenscratchingdotcom]

Turning an outline from a list of plot points into a scaffolding that you can use to build a story

by Hugh Sullivan

chickenscratching.com

chickenscratchingdotcom.tumblr.com

Note: this is an article I wrote last year for NaNoWriMo, with the intent of publishing it then. For some reason it never got published, so I figured I’d start out some very pre-NaNo posts with this now.

I could write an entire article on the various ways of coming up with an outline... but it’s been done. A lot. Which is what I found when I started preparing for my first attempt at completing a full novel for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short).

There are dozens of methods for coming up with an outline, maybe as many as there are writers. Some methods get reused a lot. Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method is great for expounding something into a pulp-style 4 act format, and I used my own personal take on the concept to do the outline for my first NaNoWriMo story. Snyder’s ‘save the cat’ or Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ beat sheet is good for adventure stories. A sprawling list of clues, red herrings, and possible deductions to be made in different situations can be used for a mystery story. A list of obstacles and how to overcome them can be a barebones outline for everything from a children’s story to a romance novel to a sprawling science fiction epic.

The first year that I did NaNoWriMo, I thought an outline would be enough. But a week before November started, I looked at my outline and realized that I still didn’t know how to make it go from an outline into a story.

So here’s what I did, and I hope this will help you too.

Step 1) Map out your foundation

The very first novel I ever wrote for NaNoWriMo (or at all, for that matter) was written in a very episodic format, made to be published serially in short audio format, and then as a whole novel afterward. The main story had four acts, each act had four chapters, each chapter could be divided up into four 10-ish minute long podcasts. (Should I choose to make four books in this series, then I suppose the structure will be completely fractal at that point) This made it easy for me to separate out each episode to do this step. However, not every outline is going to be as clearly delineated. You may have to go through every point in your outline, or you may be able to find small logical groupings of events.

Then you start listing out what each section actually does for the story.

In general, the early parts will involve setting up the characters, world, and plot. Later chapters will illustrate more about the characters, move the plot along, and show how the characters change and grow.

For example, here is a basic example of a chapter outline from my first NaNoWriMo novel. My original outline had a basic overview of each chapter, and four separate points divided up into what would happen in each ~10 minute podcast.

 Chapter 1) Jacobs washes up in Crown Bay, setting the story in motion

•        Jacobs washes up on shore in Crown Bay. Jim Leatherby uses a magical item and finds him.

•        Jacobs gets drunk, screams at a statue commemorating the massacre ten years prior, then gets cornered by guards and subsequently rescued by Jim Leatherby.

•        Jim brings Jacobs somewhere quiet to get sober, and then recognizes him.

•        Cut to the governor’s office in the city. The governor confides in his right-hand man, Commodore Briggs, that he’s near breaking down. He lost his wife during the massacre ten years ago, he can’t afford to lose his daughter. Briggs brings him the good news that Captain Jacobs has been spotted, and he takes a group of soldiers to find him.

 Once the outline of this chapter was done, I went through and wrote down all of the functions that this chapter served in the novel.

 Functions of Chapter 1

•        Hook the reader into the lead character and world.

•        Introduce the reader to the two protagonists.

•        Introduce the idea of magical items in this world.

•        Show that Jim has a very simple life, and that the magic item he possesses can lead him to find adventure outside of that life.

•        Show that Jacobs is in fact the captain of a pirate ship, not just a sailor who fell overboard.

•        Show that Jacobs is well known enough that the governor would be looking for him, and leave the reader with enough questions as to why to keep them reading further.

•        Show that this town has a history, and link that history to why Jim is an orphan and Jacobs left to became a pirate.

 Most of these functions will seem simple and obvious to the writer of the outline. Even so, it’s good to actually list them out so that you know what your foundation is supporting. Now that we’ve mapped out what the outline currently supports, we move on to the next step.

  Step 2) Figure out where to place your support beams

Every story has basic needs that need to be fulfilled. A story needs a beginning, a middle, an end, and action or conflict to move itself along while keeping the reader engaged.

The basic outline of my novel was a very simple four act structure, similar to the potboiler pulp stories of Lester Dent and Michael Moorcock. In the first act, the world, characters, and the adventure were introduced. In the second, the characters found themselves embroiled in that adventure. The peak of the growing adventure hits between the second and third act, where the characters have to choose whether to blunder on or give up. And by the end of the third act, they have found themselves in so deep that there is no longer a choice. They have to see their way to the end. (Those who have looked into popular story and act structures may recognize this as somewhat similar to the current Hollywood 3-act structure, and both styles are compatible with most popular beat sheet formats as well.)

That meant that for my story, the basic needs for each act were simple. I needed to hook the audience at the beginning with an interesting world and characters. I needed to keep building the story in such a way that it kept people tuning in for the next chapter or episode.

But every plot point creates a set of needs as well. Let’s say that in your story, part of your plot entails a group of people traveling into a dangerous area.

So now you add to your list of story needs:

•        Show the reader that the area is dangerous

•        Show whether the characters know it’s dangerous.

 There are also some more subtle needs that you may not think of right away, but once you get into the habit of looking for them, you’ll find them fairly easily. Some of them may not have to be in any one particular place in the story, they may simply need to be inserted somewhere before the point where they are used in the story. Think of this is kind of a reverse Chekov’s gun. If a gun is needed at the end of the story, then make a note to show that the gun exists in the universe.

For example, when I realized that a minor character was going to be killed off at the end of the story, I decided that his past life before the story needed to at least be hinted at, if not expounded on so that when he died he could pass on some sage advice and maybe make some of the sappier readers get a little bit misty-eyed. (Not that I would know ANYTHING about that. Men don’t cry. Not even when a house-elf breaks his promise and sacrifices himself to save someone else’s life. Nope.) So that was added to the general list, as a note of something that needed to be worked in where it could be.

Some obvious things to put on the list of overarching story needs are things like:

•        Get the audience to know the characters well enough to understand their motivations and capabilities. (There’s nothing better than a villain whose motivations you understand... but can’t condone.)

•        Display the basic traits of the important characters and settings. (Even if your protagonist is going to be a boring everyman character for the audience to project themselves onto, the rest of the cast has to be three dimensional and interesting.)

•        Find some way to fill in any important backstory that’s relevant to the current plot. (Sometimes this may end in a simple flashback or prologue. But if you just keep it in mind while writing, you can often find a spot to weave it into the narrative much more naturally.)

•        Give the reader a question. (Who killed the butler?)

•        Answer the reader’s question. (It was the maid in the drawing room with the candlestick.)

Now that you have your foundation and you’ve set up support beams on it, it’s time to make sure that the beams can actually support your story.

Step 3) Build your crossbraces

Now that you have a list of what each chapter accomplishes, and what each chapter and the story overall needs, you can start going through and finding the holes in your outline and plugging them. Sometimes this is as simple a step as leaving yourself a note to mention something important in a character’s backstory. Other times it may require adding in a few extra plot points that you hadn’t thought of in the original outline. Something that you may have been able to do on the fly when writing, but now you don’t have to.

Keep in mind that even if you miss something in the planning phase, this method can help while writing as well. If you reach a block, don’t try to figure out how to get around it. Try to figure out what the story needs to continue. Does it need an outside force to make something happen? Or do the characters need to find their own way? This can be a wonderful spot to allow a person to step forward, do something to show growth and character, and help move the story along.

At one point in my novel outline, I needed a way for a character to escape after being tied up. So I made a point to mention in earlier chapters that he hid several coins in hidden pockets in a leather bracelet, and he was quite adept at sleight of hand, repeatedly making the coins appear and disappear. So when the time came, it wasn’t a shock to the reader when he produced a coin and used it to saw away at the rope. A simple bit of characterization early on saved me from a plot hole at the end of the novel, and simultaneously helped illustrate the character better for the audience.

Step 4) Start building

Now that your outline has filled in, you’ve got more than just a list of plot points. You’ve got a guide that you can use to write your story. A solid, but not inflexible scaffolding to build on.

For an example on how to use the guide in practice, let’s break down the plot point that I mentioned above. In this case, we’ll say that the characters are going to go into this dangerous area, and they will be made aware of the danger.

In the original outline, it would have simply said, “The protagonist, his sidekick, and the guide go into the Blasphort Desert.” Now, you have a bit more set up to write the scene when it happens.

 “Hmm,” the guide said, poking the ground with the toe of his boot. “Not good.”

“What is it?” the protagonist asked.

“Wyrling tracks. Their territory is close. Probably near the canyon, for access to water.”

The protagonist shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We have to get through. And if we stray too far from the river...”

“Only one way to deal with wyrlings,” the guide said.

The sidekick piped up, “At least there’s something. How do you deal with a wyrling?”

“Run faster,” the guide replied.

The protagonist looked at the guide curiously. “I didn’t think you could outrun a wyrling.”

The guide shook his head. “Can’t. But outrun someone else, and...”

“Oh,” the sidekick said.

The protagonist put his hand on the sidekick’s shoulder. “Doesn’t matter.”

 Now when the scene is written, both the audience and the characters know they’re walking into danger, and some other needs outside of the scene have been fulfilled. For one, the audience now knows a bit more about the personality of the three characters and the danger that they’ll be facing. The guide is simple and straightforward, the hero determined but sensible, the sidekick a little more worried about the situation than the hero, and wyrlings are some sort of dangerous creature, but will stop to feed.

From my own experience, I’ve found that there isn’t a clever pun or turn of phrase that I’ve come up with that makes me feel half as clever a writer as when I write a short passage that manages to fulfill a half dozen story needs. And when facing the normal amounts of self-doubt that one faces while writing a novel, those moments where we as writers feel clever should be cherished.

   About the author

Hugh Sullivan has been a long time dabbler in writing, music, and tabletop and video game design. After a ten year hiatus from creative work, the voice in his head finally convinced him that not having a creative outlet was going to eventually drive him crazy, so he went back to school to do a minor in video game design, worked on designing a tabletop role playing game, started participating in NaNoWriMo, and composing soundtracks to accompany podcasts of his writing.

Ironically, doing all four at once may be a clearer sign of madness than following the advice of a voice in one’s head. Follow his work at his website, chickenscratching.com, or his slightly more active tumblr account, chickenscratchingdotcom.tumblr.com.

[valuecifer]

So my erstwhile friend of too-long-to-count Mr. Feel (aka @thefeelofavideogame ) doesn’t want to be known as a “RWBY Guy”, this makes sense, RWBY is a very frustrating goddamn show, in so many damn ways. I'm doing him a favor of listing a bunch of problems with RWBY that he can just reblog for his followers since he doesn't wanna deal with that shit.

Now, SOME CONTEXT: I've watched all of RWBY Seasons Volumes 1-3, I've seen maybe like, two episodes of RWBY Season 4. I know it had been improving but recently took yet -another- nosedive, and have written massive, massive amounts of words on the subject of RWBY's incompetence, so I'm probably going to regurgitate a lot of points here that I've already ranted about to my friends in private to keep the word count from being too apocalyptically long.

I'm also going to be directly comparing RWBY to what it -wants- to be: a shonen-style anime romp, instead of any sort of high literature, just in case people think I'm some pretentious ass and not, y'know, a total nerd myself.

This list is not comprehensive, but is probably a good list of major production/storytelling faults. I'd need to do a whole series on this to talk about all the things wrong with RWBY, but a few major points of discontent, in no particular order:

1. Terrible, Terrible Pacing

Pacing makes or breaks a show for a ton of people, and RWBY's pacing, for a show, is ridiculously awful. I'm gonna be rolling a lot of my issues into this large point, because RWBY has a problem with both set-up AND follow-through on points it tries to present. It does a lot of things wrong with this, in that it tries to blow past a lot of setup just to get to 'the good part', which is the kind of mistake you say fanfiction writers and NaNoWriMo novels make. You have to establish things if you want people to get emotionally invested! You can't just force these four people together into a team, say 'okay, they're a team now', and then not elaborate on how they actually feel about each other at any point! Does anyone know what Team RWBY thinks about each other? Not really, because you get a laundry list of traits, get them referenced once, and then they assume for you to fill in the blanks. It's sloppy and lazy.

Sloppy and lazy describe a lot of the other plot points RWBY puts forward. The show continually tries to introduce a cool new thing without even beginning to resolve the thing they'd already attempted to put forward. This gets really frustrating in the way they put forward the climaxes of the various seasons, because do you want to know how many times the members of the MAIN TEAM are relevant in a given finale?

0. 0 times. Twice they get pre-empted by a Cool New Thing, and the third time is supposed to be the Time They Lose And Everything Goes Wrong, Oh No, except you don't CARE because they've accomplished NOTHING! They're a vehicle for action scenes, nothing more. It's not even a problem of runtime, because the Volume 4 episodes are now the length of your usual anime episode! They just don't know how to effectively use their time.

Part of the problem with this, is...

2. Massive, massive cast bloat

Mr. Feel didn't get far enough in for this to matter, but RWBY has a -huge- issue with introducing new characters for the sake of having new characters. To wit You have basically two teams full of main characters, which is four characters apiece. The cast does eventually slim down, only to add about three more characters for each one they trim off the list. And, as of this writing the cast is all over the fictional world, splitting the focus indefinitely to a point where the narrative is impossible to follow. A bunch of characters are superfluous, such as Neptune, -possibly- Sun, and basically Everyone They Introduce during the Tournament Arc. It gets to the point where they introduce new characters and can't develop the ones they already have, with some... notable exceptions. Nearly all the main characters are about as flat as cardboard when it comes to personality, with viewers expected to fill in the blanks, only to never get any reward for inferring these character traits, because, again, RoosterTeeth is terrible at follow-through on their series.

But I've been talking like the foundations aren't rotten, when they are, due to the fact that-

3. They ignore the basic ideas around what makes shonen fighting good

Okay, so, an unrelated friend once made this metaphor about how Shonen Fights should work, and I've been using it ever since, it's how I tackle so many fights, and why I tend to dislike a lot of the fighting around RWBY.

The best Shonen fights are like puzzles. What I mean by that is that, at any given point, you know what your heroes have access to, and how each part works, and the excitement comes from not only learning what tools the heroes' opponents have at their disposal, but also figuring out how exactly the heroes' tools will come into play. Now, you may be thinking "Shonen break the rules with sudden power-ups all the time", and I posit that, no, they really don't. So long as something is alluded to being in the Hero's toolbox, they can use it, even if this means it's, in narrative context, a 'new' power. The most iconic example I can think of, of that rule playing out, is Goku going Super Saiyan on Namek. It's alluded to a bunch of times that the only thing Freiza is scared shitless of is a Super Saiyan. Vegeta tells Goku he doesn't stand a chance unless he's a Super Saiyan. From that point on, the idea of 'becoming a Super Saiyan' is a tool that's added to Goku's 'toolbox', that he eventually uses against Freiza.

RWBY doesn't play by these rules. Everyone has a boatload of powers at their disposal - Aura, Dust, Semblances, and trick weapons - but none of them feel really well explained or well-distinguished. Dust can be combined in a bunch of different ways! Okay, how? Why do crystals and powdered dust both exist? What causes Semblances to exist or not? How -exactly- does Aura even -work-? Not only that, but then they introduce new powers, like Ruby's 'Silver Eyes', and then refuse to elaborate on them, treating them as exercises for the viewer.

Not only that, but the fights just. Don't feel 'dynamic', there doesn't ever feel like there's a change or a moment where things shake up. To make a videogame-based example, a lot of bosses tend to have 'Phases' in it. These phases are well-defined, because they involve changing the way the players and the boss have to move. RWBY doesn't do that. All the interesting different stuff is just different 'strings' of combos, like in fighting games, which feel downright uninspired when you have to many different ways you can approach fights. Nope, just a varied combo string.

But all that could probably be forgiven if they just...

4. STOP PANDERING FOR GOD'S SAKE

Look, I get it. Everyone hates pandering unless they're the one being pandered to. That's how it's always been, that's how it's likely always going to be. But there's a level of -advanced- pandering that goes on in RWBY that is absolutely cringe-worthy on every level.

There's throwaway characters based off of company in-jokes, the 'combat' technique names are named after fandom's ship names, the inclusion of a character just so a prominent member of their staff could voice a character whose existence is downright superfluous. Making a character more important than they seemed because fan reaction was popular. It goes as far as like.

Okay. I would be perhaps be the last person to talk about queerbaiting, as a straight white dude, and given certain fandoms' overuse of the term, it's been relatively diluted recently, but RWBY's actions of pandering can be straight up queerbaiting, because, as it turns out, people wanted a narrative focused on girl heroes, and what they got was every plot beat being soaked up by dudes as each of the main team is effectively damselled in their own way. And yet they still try to spin it as the 'girls' story'. It's honestly kind of disgusting, and a topic for another post, but the real thing that probably makes me the most mad is...

5. Nobody at Rooster Teeth knows what they're doing with the show, and never have

Don't get me wrong. Monty Oum is an inspiration to me as someone who primarily works in creative space, trying to make creative things. Monty Oum was a creative force that will be sorely missed in this world. But Monty made one singular, huge fuckup which has kneecapped RWBY even worse than the show could ever do to itself.

There's no story bible.

For those of you who don't understand what that is, it's exactly what it says it is. If you don't know what something does, you refer to the story bible. If you don't understand what the plot's beats are supposed to be, you refer to the story bible. Over, and over, and over. Having a singular document to refer to is vital in a whole bunch of different areas. Game Design Docs, Story Bibles, Production Diaries/Bibles, they're all more or less the same concept over different areas.

From what we know of the behind the scenes, there was a lot of stuff Monty had in mind that he just. Didn't tell -anyone- else working on the show. He couldn't have known he would have died so young, but that's exactly why bibles exist. They're there as contingencies, you make them so that, in case you aren't there to work on something that's so completely -you-, people can follow what you had in mind. So many things got dropped, shifted, moved around with Monty's death that the show spent all of Volume 3 trying to recuperate, while gradually trying to salvage the show, but it's clear they didn't know what to do with a lot of pieces, and are just hoping that people are forgetting about them.

This is, quite honestly, inexcusable even for a 'semi-professional' work. You can't keep ideas to yourself. You have to share them, workshop them, write them -down-. That's the only way anyone's ever going to know what you're going with, and a lack of a story bible is as much at fault for why RWBY is so frustrating.

I wanted to like the show, I really, truly, honestly did, but it's made me so mad at every turn that I can't even enjoy when it -tries- to improve, because I know it'll continue to disappoint.

Don't watch RWBY.

[smartworkingpackage]

Stuck in the Middle: Conquering Writer’s Block

The nightmare begins something like this:

The Writer is in her groove, typing or scribbling away. The words are flowing beautifully, then, suddenly… nothing. The Writer has hit a wall. All momentum vanishes. She can’t focus. She can’t think. The frustration boils over, and the words are abandoned.

Pretty scary, huh?

Every writer has moments like this, especially during National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a NaNoWriMo. Maybe you’re stumped about what comes next, unsure of how to move forward. Or perhaps your motivation is gone and you can’t make yourself move forward.

Writer’s block is a common complaint. And although some experts, including Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of NaNoWriMo, say it isn’t real, that it’s just an excuse we give ourselves once the going gets tough, it sure feels real when you’re in the middle of it. And it can be demoralizing. But there are ways out.

Problem 1: Not sure how to proceed

In our Writer’s nightmare, the woods ahead are dark and scary. There are are many paths forward, but it’s impossible to tell which ones lead to “happily ever after” and which ones lead to fetid bogs of bubbling quicksand and Rodents of Unusual Size. It’s easier to make no choice at all than to make the wrong one, so the Writer freezes in place. Not good.

So how do you decide which way to go? Look at the writing and planning you’ve already done. If you don’t know where the story is going at all, it may be time to step back and do some big-picture plotting. If you know where you need to go but not how to get there, open a new note and try these techniques:

Skip ahead. There’s no rule that says you have to write chapters in order. If you’re stuck on one scene but have ideas for a later one, write that instead. You can always fill in the gaps later.

Think backward. Imagine your story at the next milestone, then walk it back one step at a time. What needs to happen, logically, to get your characters to that point?

Change your perspective. Write from another character’s point of view, or leave the main narrative and try a flashback.

Give yourself a prompt. Take one element from what you’ve written so far (like a person, or a room, or the town where your story takes place). Write about that in as much detail as you can. Maybe you can use this material later, maybe not. But it gets you thinking about the story in new ways. Or better yet, join a NaNoWriMo word sprint to get those words flowing.

Problem 2: Lack of motivation

Back in nightmare-land, our Writer is in real peril. It’s not that she’s having problems with the story, it’s that she can’t seem to stay in the writing chair. Life is stressful enough, and the pressures of writing aren’t making things easier.

Before you go over the edge, ask yourself why you’re not motivated:

Do you have story fatigue? If you like the piece you’re working on but you’re tired of thinking about it, set it aside for a little while and write something else, like a blog post or some flash fiction.

When you come back, think about the story as a whole instead of the little details. Remember that great idea you had at the very beginning? The one that got you started in the first place? Go back there, play with the idea, and get excited about your story all over again.

Are you physically exhausted? Brains are energy hogs, and they need downtime. Set your story aside and go for a walk, or get a good night’s sleep. A fresh mind is a productive mind.

No time to write? Our Writer knows all about this one. She’s juggling work, family, and a dozen hobbies, and every time an email or tweet shows up, the phone chirps and she just has to look. Sound familiar? You can’t write if you’re distracted. Luckily, there are many ways to build focus and discipline as a writer. Here are five.

Do you think your writing is bad? This is almost guaranteed to come up at some point during NaNoWriMo. When you’re focused on speed and raw word count, some of what you write will not measure up to your own standards of quality. And that’s okay! Give your “inner editor” a vacation. You can edit, revise, and improve your writing all you want… after you finish your rough draft. But you can’t fix it if you never write it.

Are you not feeling creative? Feeling like you’re not creative enough to keep (or even begin) writing is a common struggle.

Grant Faulkner says that by participating in NaNoWriMo, by realizing that you are a writer and that you are a creator, you are much more likely to be creative in your everyday life. So next time you’re not feeling creative, remind yourself that you’re a writer because you write.

However it manifests for you, writer’s block is a common and perfectly natural experience. The important thing is not to let those nightmare moments turn into days, weeks, or worse. We hope these suggestions will help you get back on track when the going gets rough.

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[ultralifehackerguru-blog]

New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/how-i-wrote-two-full-length-novels-in-18-months/

How I Wrote Two Full-Length Novels in 18 Months

My debut novel, The Biographies of Ordinary People: Volume 1: 1989–2000, releases on May 23, 2017. The sequel, which covers the years 2004–2016, is scheduled to release in the first half of 2018.

I wrote the first chapter of Vol. 1 during the last week of July 2015. I wrote the last chapter of Vol. 2 during the last week of December 2016. Two full-length novels—roughly 90,000 words each—drafted over eighteen months, plus I was revising Vol. 1 while I was drafting Vol. 2.

If you’ve dreamed of writing your own novel(s) but haven’t yet written anything besides the first two chapters—and trust me, I’ve been there—you’re probably wondering how I got it all done, in addition to my everyday workload and all of the other stuff that goes into a life.

Some of it has to do with experience. I was able to write The Biographies of Ordinary People in part because I had already written hundreds of blog posts, online articles, and short fiction.

But a lot of it came down to structure and planning.

Building a Structure

The NaNoWriMo model, as much as I love it, doesn’t work for me. I already write roughly 50,000 words every month as a freelancer, and doubling that level of output isn’t an option.

So, when I started outlining and planning The Biographies of Ordinary People, I gave it a structure that I knew I could both:

Write in addition to my current workload.

Sustain over time.

I decided to keep the chapters short. Around 1,200–2,000 words each, or the length of a freelance article. Some authors like to end their daily work mid-sentence so they can jump right in the next day; I’ve been practicing David Allen’s Getting Things Done for ten years and open loops just run circles in my brain. I wouldn’t be able to stop mid-sentence. I wouldn’t even be able to stop mid-chapter. So I made sure I could complete a chapter draft in a single evening.

(Plus, I was already very familiar with writing to that 1,200–2,000-word length. I knew how the rhythms should go, and I knew how to keep people reading.)

I also decided to give myself a chapter limit: each volume would be divided into two parts, and each part would be 35 chapters long. (The first volume of The Biographies of Ordinary People begins on Rosemary Gruber’s 35th birthday; the second volume ends on her daughter Meredith Gruber’s 35th birthday.) I outlined the main event of each chapter, to ensure both books had the right amount of rising and falling action and to ensure that I never sat down to a chapter not knowing what to write next.

Lastly, I decided to write two chapters per week. This gave the project both a workload and a duration. Writing 140 chapters would take 70 weeks to complete, although I gave myself one week off after every 35 chapters, during which I would edit and reshape my outline for the next 35 chapters. That meant my time-to-completion was closer to 74 weeks.

It helped that I’d written a novel before. That novel was called The Red Book of Cordia, it was about a group of quirky characters who join together to fight an evil empire (I had just finished playing Final Fantasy VI), and I wrote it when I was in high school. It took me two years to finish. It wasn’t a good novel, but the fact that I’d completed it meant that I knew how to sustain a large creative project over years—and could probably do it again.

Having the Background

I should mention, at this point, why I used the word “probably.” It’s been 17 years since I graduated from high school, and since then I’ve tried to write half-a-dozen novels, including a few chapters of The Biographies of Ordinary People that didn’t go anywhere.

I failed every time. So why would this time be different?

You know how they say writers should write short stories before they write novels, and a lot of writers ignore that because they only read novels and aren’t interested in shorter pieces?

I started freelance writing in 2012.

Between 2012 and 2015 I wrote a lot of short pieces.

Some of them were articles for Wing World or Popular Science. Some of them were first-person blog posts for The Write Life or The Billfold. But I also wrote fiction—Dispatch From a Mars Widow for Yearbook Office, From the Diaries of Minerva McGonagall for SparkLife, How Gilmore Girls Do Money for The Billfold.

I was learning about character and voice and structure, I was putting in my 10,000 hours, I was leveling up—whatever you want to call it, I was doing it. I was writing all the time, and both my work and my processes were improving.

(I was also reading a lot of books, but I’ve always read a lot of books. Just throwing that in because reading is one of a writer’s most important skills.)

So when I decided to finally start writing The Biographies of Ordinary People, after wanting—and trying—to write it for years, I felt ready. I had both the skills and the practice to succeed. I had three years of experience in outlining ideas, writing compelling narratives, and hitting my deadlines. I’d been paid for my short fiction, and people had told me me how much it resonated with them.

In other words: I consistently wrote 14 articles a week for five freelance clients. I could add two more chapters.

Finding My Readers

My career as a freelance writer and editor has taught me two things:

I like immediate gratification from readers.

I like getting paid for my work.

I wanted the same experience with The Biographies of Ordinary People. I had built a readership through my freelance career, and I knew that many of those readers were interested in my fiction, so I set up a Patreon project that would allow people to read and respond to draft chapters of The Biographies of Ordinary People as I wrote them, in exchange for a small monthly pledge.

This worked beautifully. I had my group of readers, I had financial support, and—most importantly—I had an early test of the novel’s viability. Were my readers enjoying it? Did they want to know what happened next? Were they sympathizing with the characters and responding emotionally?

(I was even able to make some course corrections based on reader response, which helped improve the novels.)

Knowing that I already had reader interest, and that people were willing to pay for this story, also gave me the advantage when I began exploring different paths to publication. I ended up going the self-pub route, for reasons I outline in detail here, which meant that I could publish both novels within a year—and also meant that by the time we got to Vol. 2, readers would get a book that took place in the immediately-recent past.

At this point I’m guessing some of you are ready to start planning your own novels and the rest of you are skeptically wondering if my book is any good. (It’s too structured! It’s self-published! It should have gone through years of revisions!) Here’s a five-star review from Foreword Clarion Reviews:

(It’s a good thing I’ve got that second volume almost ready to go, so I can keep building on the momentum of the first one.)

So write your books, whether you write them like mine or whether you choose a completely different tactic to get from the first word to the 90,000th. But keep in mind that, at least in this case, building a structure and setting up a sustainable workload helped me finish my project. That, and writing a lot of short pieces first.

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