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This Week is for Learning

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’ll be over at IndieReCon most of today, trying to learn about this marketing thing that I still haven’t figured out. Pop on over. It’s free.

Meanwhile, I’m working on my query pitch over at the workshop preceding WriteOnCon’s Luck of the Irish Pitch Fest.

And Saturday, I’ll be taking a class on how to make a chain mail bracelet. Just in case, you know, I ever write a character who makes chain mail.

English: ChainMaille Dragon's Back Bracelet or...

English: ChainMaille Dragon’s Back Bracelet or Roundmaille Weave Made from non-tarnish silver Artistic Wire Jump Rings from Beadalon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All while still working on the revisions of THE BARD’S GIFT (so it will be ready for that pitch fest up above) and trying to keep up with my critiques.

My head may explode.

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Where Do Stories Come From?

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2013| 4 Comments »

Well, the truth is, they come from all over, all the time. Some examples:

THE BARD’S GIFT:

I belong to a couple of online writers’ forums. On one of them, Hatrack River Writers Workshop, members will occasionally post challenges. You don’t win anything when you win a challenge, other than bragging rights. The real point is the feedback, because one of the rules is always that all the entrants have to comment on each others’ work or be disqualified. Sometimes, these challenges center around a prompt. It’s fascinating to see how many different stories can be created from the same prompt. The problem for me is usually the relatively small word count allowed.

Well, one of these prompts was “Slave to the flame” and a story came to me about a little dragon that was the first to figure out how to breathe fire. I wrote it as a fable. It also ended badly, partly because of the prompt, but also partly because I didn’t have enough room to develop it further. When the challenge was over, I had no idea what to do with that story. Eventually, I wrote another story around it (also called “The Bard’s Gift”), about the girl who was telling this fable and why.

And then I started wondering other things about this girl. How did she come to be in that position? Why did she have this gift for telling stories? Where were they? This led to a lot of research and eventually an 80,000-word alternate history that includes dragons (but not the same ones in the original story), Norse gods, and thunderbirds. The short story “The Bard’s Gift” is now Chapter 35 of the novel, THE BARD’S GIFT.

MAGE STORM:

There’s a similar story to MAGE STORM. It also started as a response to a challenge on Hatrack, this time the prompt was the title of a Writer’s of the Future winning story “Cinders of the Great War”. That gave me an idea about the aftermath of a war in which all the mages had destroyed each other.  That short story, “Infected With Magic” (I had to change the title because Writers of the Future has to be anonymous) got an Honorable Mention in Writers of the Future.

I still have never found what I consider a satisfying ending to that story, though. It always felt like the beginning of something bigger. And so it was, a middle grade adventure fantasy MAGE STORM. I mean to get back to my latest revision to this story again soon and get it back out there.

UNTITLED:

But not all ideas come from writing prompts. Some come from news stories or photographs that send my imagination flying. One particular idea that isn’t quite ripe yet, came from me just wondering.

At the time, I’d recently read one too many stories in which the female protagonist did very little but wait around for some guy to take the lead and help her. I have an allergically strong reaction to those stories–as in pitch the book across the room strong. I’m okay with a female main character needing some help once, maybe twice. After that, she’d better either figure out how to keep herself out of trouble or how to deal with it herself.

So, as I was driving around running perfectly normal errands, I started wondering to myself: under what conditions would it be all right for a female protagonist to need some help? What if that character was dropped into a strange world (like Dorothy landing in Oz) and really has no way to know what’s dangerous and what’s not? What if, in this world, things that we tend to think of as sort of fuzzy, cute, and nice (unicorns, pixies, etc.) are really the most dangerous. And some things we think of as evil, the ones you’d want to avoid, are really the only ones that might help you? Okay, in that situation, Dorothy might need a little help to gether started.  Look for this story maybe this time next year.

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Adding Back

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The first part of my revisions for this next phase of Pitch Wars was all about deleting. My mentor made me realize that there was too much foundation in those first few chapters–too much space dedicated to letting the reader know how things worked. The reader needs enough of that to make sense of the story, but not quite as much as I had put in. I may be fascinated by world building, but that doesn’t mean it will engage the reader.

So, the first thing I did was to delete approximately 10,000 words. Ouch.

As I went through, there were small places where I could add a little more. Mostly, these were places where I could do a better job of showing a character’s emotions, for which I remain indebted to The Emotion Thesaurus. That adds up gradually, because showing generally takes more words than just saying that a character is sad or angry, etc.

Now, though, I’ve come to the first place where I’m adding back serious word count. It’s a place near the middle of the manuscript where I can do a lot more showing–as in scenes, not just paragraphs–about how this character begins to move from one state to the next. It’s an important point for this character and I think it not only can support, but that it needs the extra foundation.

I’m really happy with this.

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Pitches Are Evil

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2013| 6 Comments »

You think trying to sum up a whole novel in 250 words for a query is hard? Try a 35-word pitch. They’re evil, I tell you.

This is what I’ve got so far:

Casora was raised as a warrior. Tiaran can barely swing a sword, but he knows palace intrigue. To win the war and make a place for themselves, they’ll both have to stretch beyond their limits.

I have to get this and the first 250 words ready for the alternate round of Pitch Wars by Sunday.

The first 250 words have changed, too. Sometimes, you just need someone to slap you on the side of the head. After getting the revision notes from my mentor and taking a couple of days to digest them, I realized that there was too much world-building in the first few chapters. Not that the world-building was bad, just misplaced. It got in the way of letting the story really get rolling. Just because I love world-building doesn’t mean it’ll draw a reader in. Well, sometimes . . .

Anyway, here’s the new first 250 words:

Casora restrained the impulse to get up and pace across the floor of the command tent. She couldn’t show emotion, not even frustration, in front of her troops, but the continued silence from home was troubling. She reached up to rub the little scar above her right eyebrow.

She glanced up at the mountains visible through the open tent flap. The snow crept lower every day and so did her hopes of a recall order to let the troop over-winter at home. Casora dreaded the prospect of a winter stuck in camp with a troop made up entirely of homesick teenagers and every one of them carrying the potential of the berserker curse. She’d better start planning a lot of training exercises.

“Riders coming!” The shout came from the lookout to the east, toward home. After a pause, the lookout added, “Two of them.”

Only two riders? She’d sent three out.

Casora walked to the front of the tent and cursed under her breath. They were her scouts all right, but whatever orders they brought had better be end-of-the-world urgent. There was no other excuse for abusing the horses like that. Then she realized that Varana’s braid was redder than it should be–blood red. Casora took off running. So did others from all parts of the camp. Varana fell off the winded mare just as Casora reached her.

“Report,” she said, but more quietly than her usual command voice.

“Stumbled into a scouting party just inside the pass. Ambushed.”

And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few days–and will be for the next couple, too.

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Back to Revision Land

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2013| 2 Comments »

Well, it was nice while it lasted, but it looks like I’m leaving the first draft behind for a while and heading back into revision land.

I think I mentioned here before that I’m a first alternate in Pitch Wars with FIRE AND EARTH. I got the revision notes back from my mentor on Friday and I’ve been digesting them for the last day or so. Some of them I completely agree with, but one in particular has taken me awhile to come around to. She says I started the story in the wrong place–by about eight chapters. Yikes. And then use some of the saved words to further develop the characters, side characters, and their goals and conflicts, as well as more showing of emotions.

But, you know, she has a point and what she identifies as the inciting incident may be a better choice than what I thought was the inciting incident. Now, I don’t know yet if I’m going to be able to delete all of that. There are some things in there I really do believe the reader needs to know to understand what’s driving the characters. But I’ve already identified–and cut–quite a lot that isn’t really necessary. I might be able to work in some of the rest later in the story.

I’ve got a lot of work to do on this. And I have to try to do as much as possible by the 20th, because where the story really starts will determine what the first 250 words are. Duh! (Also, you know, it’s just good form to have a completed ms for things like this just in case an agent makes a request.) Plus I need to write a 35-word pitch. I have about four possibilities right now and frankly, they all suck. This is not the part of writing I’m good at. I really like the description by a critique partner (thank you MattLeo) that trying to boil the story down to 35 words is necessarily like trying to decide which blind man had hold of the most interesting part of the elephant.

Plus, the reader critiques of THE BARD’S GIFT are starting to come in much earlier than I expected. (I was planning on the end of the month.) I think that’s good. It takes longer to read a story to critique it and I only sent it out on (I think) the 30th of December. I’m taking that to mean that the story kept them reading.

Back to work with a vengeance.

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A Look Back

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

Well, it’s that time of the year. Time to look back and see what was–or wasn’t–accomplished in the last year and declare goals for next year. I’ll do the first in this post and blog about next years goals in my next post, which will actually be next year.

The full post of my goals for 2012 is here.

Teen and Young Adult Fiction

   Writing goals:

  1. BLOOD WILL TELL was e-published during 2012. It’s original cover wasn’t very good, which I’m sure affected sales. It has a new and much better cover now.
  2. I did query MAGE STORM during 2012, but I currently have it torn apart for revisions with the help of a very thorough critique partner. I expect to give it another go in 2013. I believe in this story. Plus, I have at least three potential sequels for it that I’d like to write.
  3. SEVEN STARS, which is now titled FIRE AND EARTH, has also been queried. It got chosen as first alternate in Pitch Wars this month and I’m waiting for the feedback from my mentor so I can make revisions and see what happens.
  4. MAGIC’S FOOL will never get beyond first draft, I’m sorry to say. I learned in this year’s WriteOnCon that the age of my protagonist is poison. Too old for middle grade and not old enough for young adult. I can’t make him any younger, so I’ll give the story a rewrite as young adult, including material that was planned for the sequel (MAGIC’S APPRENTICE), possibly in 2013.
  5. Keep writing. This was an unqualified success. I finished three drafts of THE BARD’S GIFT, which is now ready for readers in a few days.

As for the personal goals, well, let’s just say I did better with my writing.

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Back to Work

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 26, 2012| 2 Comments »

Due to Christmas baking, sappy Christmas movies that I wouldn’t miss for the world, and, well, Christmas, I haven’t gotten much writing done in almost a week. Okay. Vacation over. It’s time to get back to work.

I still have to finish revisions to my short story that won an Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future a little over a year ago. It’ll need a new title, too, since I mean to give it another chance. This time, I hope to bring it to a much stronger action.

I also have to wrap up a few revisions to the start of MAGE STORM. THE BARD’S GIFT is ready for readers next week and I haven’t heard back yet from my Pitch Wars mentor (I’m first alternate) on FIRE AND EARTH.

That’ll clear the decks for me to start a new story in the new year. It’s looking like it just might be the weird Oz story, since that’s the one my subconscious keeps throwing up ideas for.

And, as incentive for me to get my act together, here’s what I found in my inbox this morning from Amazon:

E-mail from Amazon

E-mail from Amazon

 

That’s my latest story, “Becoming Lioness”, right at the top. *Happy dance.*

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NaNoWriMo

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo for short or sometimes just NaNo. Thousands of people commit to write 50,000 words in a month or an average of 1667 words a day. They virtually disappear from any other writing communities for the duration. November is a very slow month on most writers’ forums.

I have never done NaNoWriM0–and no, I’m not doing it this year either. I don’t feel I need to. I proved to myself a few years ago that I can, in fact, write a novel in that space of time if the story is ripe and ready to be written. BLOOD WILL TELL was actually the first novel that was like that for me. It’s a heady feeling when a story comes together that way and writing it feels like opening a spigot and just letting it flow out onto the page (or the screen). But the truth is not all novels flow like that. And, even when they do, when a story is ready to just pour out, you have to write it while it’s hot or risk losing it (been there, done that, too). Somehow, those times when the story is just ripe for the picking never seem to happen in November for me.

In any case, I’m pretty firmly stuck in revisionville this November. I’m working on the second drafts of both BLOOD IS THICKER (about 90% done) and THE BARD’S GIFT (about 33% done). I also have three short stories that need revisions–“Becoming Lioness”, “The Seeker”, and one I can’t tell you the title of because, if I ever get back to it and find a better ending, it may be my next Writers of the Future entry. That one could use some polish but what it really needs is a good ending that doesn’t feel like it just sort of fades off into the sunset.

I expect to go back to writing a first draft at the beginning of next year. I’ve got a few stories brewing in the back of my head to choose from. Will it be the story I already have outlined (and I never do outlines)? Or the shiny new idea that twists all kinds of fantasy staples around and sets them on their heads? Or the fairy-tale retelling? I’ll have to wait and see what’s calling to me when I get there.

So, to all my writer friends out there who are doing NaNo: good luck. And I look forward to hearing from you and reading some of your novels on the other side.

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Bright Shiny New Ideas

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

On Friday, while I was out running errands, a bright, shiny, new idea hit me between the eyes.  Don’t you love it when that happens? My mind happily followed this idea down its rabbit trails and provided me with a good slice of world building before I even got home. (I jotted notes down on the back of my grocery list.)

It’s a bit of a departure for me, but that’s okay. It’s good to stretch outside the comfort zone now and again.

The temptation, always, is to act like a magpie and follow the bright, shiny, new idea wherever it leads because, well, new ideas are sexy. But I’m not going to do that–at least not yet.

I’m in the middle of revisions for the next couple of months, one way or the other. I’m not ready to start a new first draft. A new idea needs time to grow and accumulate a few other ideas as it rolls around in my head. Time to develop more fully.

Very fortunately, there’s a new challenge up on Hatrack River that this story idea fits pretty well. That allowed me to take the edge off the need to go after the new idea to the exclusion of all else by writing a quick flash based on it. It’s not–not by a long road–the whole idea, but it let me put a little first-draft love into it without telling the whole story.

I think this is a young adult story, although it could be done as middle grade. That’s one of the things that letting the idea brew a little will help me decide.

So now the question is which of two possible stories I’ll be starting. I think I know what I’ll be working on for most of next year either way.

In other news, I happened on a photograph that completely revised my idea for the new cover of BLOOD WILL TELL. I’m working on a totally new concept with a couple of options for how to get there. Maybe I’ll have enough of it together to show by my next blog post.

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Reflections on Voice

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on September 26, 2012| 4 Comments »

Voice in writing is very hard to describe, except to point to examples that illustrate it. It’s also something that develops over time–one of the reasons that many of us have to write a few unpublishable things before we reach that magical level. Sometimes, it’s the thing that allows you to recognize the work of one author over another.

But voice is more than just authorial voice. There’s also the voice of a story (a fable should sound different than an adventure story) and the voices of characters.

There’s no doubt that voice is important, especially in young adult stories, but it’s not more important than the story. In my opinion, nothing is. And the voice has to match the story.

A story told in first person is almost always going to have a stronger voice than one told in third person. In fact, in my opinion, it should, since in essence it purports to be the character telling the story. Done right, it should sound like that character. I’ve seen several novels that used first person without making it sound substantially different than a narrator’s voice.

In contrast, a story told in third person is mainly going to be in a narrator’s voice (and probably a lot closer to the author’s voice). Even in third person, though, the closer the story is to the point-of-view character, the stronger the voice.

But, that doesn’t mean that in order to have stronger voice, every story should be told in first person or even close limited third person. That depends on the demands of the story.

For example, stories that have two (or more) point of view characters can be difficult to pull off in first person. First, it’s confusing to read if both characters are written in first person. Who “I” is changes from chapter to chapter or even from scene to scene. Second, two first-person point of view characters probably ought to sound different from each other–which is probably pretty difficult to pull off. I say that, because I haven’t yet seen an example that really did pull it off.

I’ve written a couple of short stories in first person.–one because the subject just seemed to demand that closeness to the character and the other because I just started hearing the story in first person in my head and decided not to fight it. I haven’t–yet–written a whole novel in first person. I probably will some day, when a story tells me that’s what it needs.

In the meantime, I think of all the great stories I would have missed if I’d demanded that everything I read had the kind of voice found in a first-person narrative.

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