January | 2016 | Meredith Mansfield, Author

Archive for January, 2016

Timelines

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Learning, sequels, series, writing on January 31, 2016| 3 Comments »

The bigger–and longer–a story gets the more it needs a timeline to help the author keep things straight. At least, I certainly need a timeline.

In WAR OF MAGIC, the fourth book in the DUAL MAGICS series, I’m currently writing in Year 9 of the story.

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I started this timeline way back with the first book. It helps me keep track of how old each of the characters is–especially the characters who get less focus in the story. It also helps me figure out how long ago a particular event happened from the characters’ perspective. Don’t want to say something happened five years ago when it was only three. Some reader somewhere will call you on that.

As I work towards the climax of WAR OF MAGIC–and the series–I’ve started to realize I’m going to need another timeline for just the few months leading up to the big battle. The exact time of year–specifically how early or late it is in the summer–is going to matter. And work in how long it takes to get between certain places on foot or on horseback, which will also matter.

This is not something I need right now, while I’m writing the first draft. I wouldn’t go back and change things to fit the timeline right now anyway. In the second or third draft, chapters or scenes can easily be moved around to where they need to be, possibly with just a little revision. That’s when I’m going to need to lay out this detailed timeline.

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Every First Draft Is Different

Posted in writing, tagged critiques, e-publishing, events, fantasy, first drafts, paranormal romance, sequels, series, writing on January 27, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Every first draft presents different challenges. And takes its own time.

One memorable first draft (BLOOD WILL TELL) came flowing out in about six weeks. That was quite a roller-coaster ride and I haven’t had another story do that since.

My current first draft for WAR OF MAGIC is way past the six-week range. But it is proceeding at its own pace. And one of the things I’ve had to learn is that I can’t hurry that.

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(Yes, by the way, that is a new version of the cover I’ve been playing with. I think I like this one, though it still needs a couple of tweaks.)

The important thing is that the first draft is proceeding. And this week I passed the 80,000 word mark. Which is probably somewhere between three-quarters and four-fifths complete. So, while I’m not going to finish this draft by the end of this month, the end is coming in sight.

Don’t forget the ongoing CIR Mid-Winter Sale.

or the

CIR Fantasy Winter Escape Giveaway, still going on.

Enter the rafflecopter giveaway here.

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CIR Mid-Winter Sale

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, events, fantasy, writing on January 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Starts today.

Check it out here.

Be sure to click through to find more books (including the first three books of the DUAL MAGIC series) at already low prices. Click “MORE CIR BOOKS” at the top of the sale page or “Second Page” at the bottom.

You’ll find some great reads there.

And don’t forget the CIR Fantasy Winter Escape Giveaway, still going on.

Enter the rafflecopter giveaway here.

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Clean Indie Reads Fantasy Giveaway

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, events, fantasy, writing on January 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Sixteen authors have gotten together to give away a kindle fire and sixteen books to fill it with. THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, DUAL MAGICS BOOK 1 is one of them. You don’t want to miss this.

You can enter the Rafflecopter giveaway right now.

There’ll be a Facebook event with a chance to get to know some of the authors and their books on February 5th and 6th, too.

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Merging “Becoming Lioness” and WAR OF MAGIC

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, revisions, sequels, series, short stories, writing on January 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I’ve reached the point in WAR OF MAGIC,

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where the plot line intersects with my already-published short story, “Becoming Lioness”.

You’d think that’d make this section easier, because I’ve sort of already written it. And in some ways, it will. But it’s also going to be . . . interesting to manage, because there are some noticeable differences between the two, as I’ve blogged about once before. I realized there’d be an issue back then, but now that I’m up to the actual writing of that part, the problems are a little clearer.

Some things are just minor points that changed between the time “Becoming Lioness” was published three years ago. Mostly small things, some of which I can fix with minor adjustments to “Becoming Lioness”.

The birth order of three siblings has changed in the interim, for example. That’s not a huge deal. I can just leave the second brother out altogether. That’ll mean deleting all of one or two sentences.

One thing that’s changed won’t be quite so minor: how a character whose ability to use her magic was blocked, gains the use of her magic after all. That’s not necessarily insurmountable, but it’s sure going to be interesting to deal with.

I’m already planning a revised version of “Becoming Lioness” to deal with some of this, but I’ll eventually want to put together a boxed set of the DUAL MAGICS series. And if I include the couple of tie-in short stories already published, plus a couple that I haven’t pulled together yet–well, that’ll put the two versions side by side.

And that’s an issue for all of the short stories. Because the main thing I have to change to make the short stories work at all is to reduce the number of characters. The cast appropriate–and necessary–for a four-book series of epic fantasy novels is simply unmanageable in a short story.

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Prologues

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, sequels, series, world building, writing on January 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I’ve never (yet) written a prologue that I’ve kept in the final story. I don’t tend to like them much. But there’s a first time for everything, they say.

No, WAR OF MAGIC doesn’t have a prologue (exactly), though it will have an epilogue.

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But BECOME, the next epic fantasy I’m planning to write, will have one. Or maybe more than one.

I’ve been getting some feedback from my critique partners on the parts I’ve got written while I keep working on the first draft of WAR OF MAGIC–setting myself up to work on BECOME while that first draft rests before I start the revisions.

The first–very short–prologue that I’m almost sure I’ll have is the only one I haven’t written some version of. That one will basically be just a prophecy and the fact that it’s been carefully hidden. That prophecy–once discovered–will be the reason the antagonist does some of what he does. And the prologue will help set up something that will take a little while to develop as the story is currently working out.

That one might be so short it might not even need to be labeled a prologue.

I have another prologue written that helps set up the background for this story, but at least one critique partner had some issues with it that might cause me to scrap that one, though.

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Rolling Outlines

Posted in writing on January 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »

I’m a discovery writer. (I think I’ve mentioned that before.) I don’t–normally–outline. It just doesn’t work that well for me. I either immediately ignore the outline and write something that bears only a passing resemblance to what I outlined, or I spend way too much of my writing time updating the outline to what I’m writing now.

However, for much of WAR OF MAGIC, I’ve been using a kind of rolling outline that’s worked fairly well for me.

WarOfMagic5

Not that I still haven’t diverged a bit, but it’s usually been more on the order of changing the order of chapters or splitting what I thought was one chapter into two.

At no point has that outline extended more than six or seven chapters ahead of what I was currently writing. Right now, it’s only four chapters.

This has been such a difficult first draft–for a number of reasons. I think this is helping. Too soon to tell whether it will become a regular part of my writing.

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Killing Characters

Posted in writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, sequels, series, writing on January 6, 2016| 4 Comments »

I’m still in the trenches on the first draft of WAR OF MAGIC, Book 4 (and last) of the DUAL MAGICS series.

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And there’s no way I can honestly get out of this story without killing off a few characters. In fact, I’m coming up on having to kill off the first one in this book. May be why my progress on this chapter has been so slow.

I haven’t killed a character in this series since the first book, when I killed one off in the first chapter. (One nobody, including me, had had a chance to get too attached to.) I’ve wounded a few, sometimes pretty badly. Even permanently. But I haven’t killed off another one since.

But this book is called WAR OF MAGIC. And some of them are going to have to pay the ultimate price. That’s making this draft more difficult than the earlier books.

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The Holidays Are Over

Posted in Real Life, writing, tagged e-publishing, fantasy, first drafts, Multiple Projects, Real Life, sequels, series, writing on January 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Well, not quite. There’s still a lot of Christmas stuff to put back up, though the big stuff is taken care of. And one more family celebration.

But tomorrow I have to go back to work after two weeks off and that’s been messing with my mind today. Funny how, just as I start to sleep in, it’s time to set the alarm again. That, and they’re promising a week of unpleasant weather, to boot. Couldn’t have happened this week when I didn’t have to go anywhere but grocery shopping once.

Add to that I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 last night, which turned out to be more involved than I expected. It was one of the too-many things I’d had on my list to take care of while I was off so I figured I’d take care of it. I was prepared for the change to cause problems with some of my non-Microsoft applications. Never expected it to mess with Microsoft Office, though. That took a little time–and considerable angst–to work out. Oddly, so far all of the non-Microsoft products appear to be unaffected. Not that I’ve tried them all.

Nevertheless, I have managed to get some writing on WAR OF MAGIC done anyway.

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I’m really going to try to have this draft finished by the end of the month. No promises, though.

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