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Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

The WIP Queue

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on February 13, 2011| 4 Comments »

First an update: Yesterday I finished the current draft of DREAMER’S ROSE. In the process, I managed to cut it from over 400 pages (approximately 100,000 words) to just over 300 pages and 75,000 words. It will still need at least one more pass before it’s ready for readers. It’s still not living up to its potential. There are problems I know I need to fix first, things I need to bring out more. And one whole section near the end where I practically lose the main character altogether. Well, she didn’t used to be the main character and that section makes sense from the other character’s point of view. But Rose has to be doing something useful during the climax. I’m going to have to give that some more thought.

Now, the WIP Queue:

Every once in a while, as I’m finishing up a couple of projects, I still get a little worried that there won’t be enough left to work on. What if I run out of ideas?  Not to worry.  A quick check at the WIP (work-in-process) queue allays those fears.

Leaving aside sequels, for the moment:

  • DREAMER’S ROSE: When a demigod succeeds in becoming a god only to find that nothing has prepared him for the challenges he now faces and the results of his own failures, it takes an outcast girl with the ability to enter dreams–even his–to help him make things right.
  • SEVEN STARS: When a young woman unintentionally unleashes the berserker curse in her blood, she is exiled from her home and everything she loves forever, unless she can find a way to control the berserker fury and, if possible, a cure for the curse.
  • THE SHAMAN’S CURSE rewrite: When a boy (or possibly a girl, in the rewrite) fails to save his friend from a flash flood and earns the hatred of the friend’s father, he can only put an end to the vendetta against him by learning to accept and use his own innate magic.
  • THE BARD’S GIFT: A young woman living on the frontier of a new world must learn to cope with an ancient gift amid the challenges of wresting a new home from dragons and malevolent neighbors.

And that, as I said is leaving aside (that I know of):

  • Two sequels for BLOOD WILL TELL
  • Two sequels for MAGE STORM
  • And one sequel for THE SHAMAN’S CURSE

And that’s just what I have fairly well-formed ideas for. No need to worry.

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Re-Imagining a Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on February 9, 2011| 2 Comments »

This topic arises as I finally begin to make headway on the new version of SEVEN STARS.  I wouldn’t say I’m on a first-draft-in-six-weeks pace (which can be quite a wild ride anyway), but I am definitely making strong and consistent progress.

I’ve been somewhat resistant to writing this story. Not because I don’t like it, but because the first version of it fought me to a standstill at 50,000 words and refused to go any farther.

I set it aside and began tinkering with the plot to try to get my interest back up. But even though I liked the new plot line much better, I couldn’t flog myself into getting back into the story. Until I completely reimagined it.

In this case, I played with the gender of the main characters. Actually, I flipped them. The formerly male character is now female and the formerly female character is now male, which basically forced me to look at the entire story with completely new eyes. It’s too soon (chapter four) to tell whether this is going to work all the way through to the end, but either way it’s going to have been an interesting exercise and a useful way of getting back into a story I had some resistance to.

You can’t just change the genders of the characters and then go ahead and write the same story. Some other things will have to change. Even if your characters still have the same personalities and the same goals as before. The way other characters respond to them and their expectations of them will probably change. Even if they have the same goals, the way they go about trying to achieve them, at least for the first try/fail cycle, will probably change. The way they respond to challenges may change–and the skill set they bring to the problem.

Of course, since I write fantasy, I have the advantage of being able to adjust the world I set these characters in, too. But, in some ways, it’s more interesting to play with them in the original world, created for a character of the opposite gender, and see how it changes their responses.

Look at s couple of examples in the genre:

In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Eowyn had essentially the same desires as her brother Eomer, and every bit as much courage, but she was constrained by her gender role.

In GRACELING, Katsa is faced with contradictory expectations. On the one hand, her uncle the king tries to treat her like any other lady of the court and marry her off to his advantage. All the while, he’s using her Graced talents to make her his strong arm and assassin.

Both characters who at some point have to break out of their assigned roles. I think that makes them more interesting. And I think it will make SEVEN STARS much more fun to play with, now.

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Back to the Beginning

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on December 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Off and on, I have been trying to decide what to do with my first novel, THE SHAMAN’S CURSE.  For starters, it needs a rewrite. It rambles too much and it got over-edited to death.  However, I still really like the characters and the story.  Plus, it’s a very rich world that I developed for that series.

One of the problems is that I think THE SHAMAN’S CURSE itself probably should be young adult. Several first readers asked if it was YA from the beginning. The main character and many of the problems he faces fit YA very well, but, if it was going to be a four-book series, then the main character would quickly get too old to be the hero of a YA novel.  What to do?

Yesterday, inspiration struck.  As usual, at the most unlikely time.  When I rewrite THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, I’ll do it with an eye towards making it YA. 

I’ll have to ditch, at least for now, the middle two books. THE IGNORED PROPHECY is written and the plot for TROUBLED COUNSELS is laid out.  That’s okay. I learned a lot from writing–and rewriting (several times)–THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  That effort will never be wasted. Someday, inspiration may strike and I’ll revive it.

For now, however, I will plan to move on to what would have been the fourth book, still untitled. However, I will focus on two younger characters instead of the main character of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE. He’ll still be there, but his kid sister will take more of the role of main character, thus keeping it firmly in the YA camp.

Ha!  No telling how long it will take me to work back around to this project, but at least now I know what I want to do.

I love it when a plan comes together.

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Young Adult Fiction . . .

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on July 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

. . . may be habit forming.

I’m beginning to make good progress on MAGE STORM (about 5000 words since Saturday).  And, as I’m writing a first draft, ideas are flowing again, some of them for MAGE STORM, some for the abandoned SEVEN STARS.  With the new ideas, it’s starting to look like SEVEN STARS might turn out to by young adult, too.  Or maybe what one publisher calls “new adult”, as in those people who’ve outgrown young adult, but haven’t quite started in on the regular adult fiction, yet.  (There’s not really a set of shelves for that in the book stores, yet.)  It all depends on the age of my protagonist when I start the story.  I could swing it either way.

The original version of SEVEN STARS was a long way from young adult, but I like these ideas better.  My protagonist won’t have to be quite so hardened.  That’ll make him a little more accessible, hopefully.

Oddly, I find myself reassessing some of my other works to see if they could work as young adult.  THE SHAMAN’S CURSE definitely could, as written.  It starts with the protagonist at fifteen.  Of course, he’s about twenty-three at the end, but he does face a number of young adult issues along the way.  The difficulty there is that it’s the first of a series.  When THE IGNORED PROPHECY starts, the protagonist is twenty-three.  At the end of the last book, he should be about thirty and have six kids, which doesn’t quite feel young adult to me anymore.

BLOOD WILL TELL probably comfortably fits into that “new adult” classification, with a protagonist who’s twenty-five.  It wouldn’t work if she were much younger.

DREAMER’S ROSE would have to change significantly if I wanted to reframe it as young adult, I think.  There’s definitely a subplot I would want to leave out.  And at least one scene–no two–that would have to change markedly, if not be deleted.  And I’m not sure I can do without one of those scenes.

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Ideas

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on June 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s an odd thing.  Or maybe it’s not.  But I get my best writing ideas when I’m writing.  Not just ideas for the story I’m working on, although that happens, too.  Ideas for other stories or brand new stories come easier and faster when I’m writing.

I don’t mean precisely when I’m sitting at the keyboard.  When I’m writing something new, more ideas come to me all the time.  It doesn’t happen that way when I’m primarily working on revisions.  Something about writing new scenes and chapters and stories sort of greases the skids.  My subconscious gets on track and starts pumping ideas out at me whenever my brain is more or less idle–in the shower, walking the dogs, pulling weeds.

That can get frustrating.  I’ve had ideas take over and force me to write them out before I could get back to what I thought I was supposed to be working on.  Most of the time, though, I can just open the appropriate file, jot down a few notes, and then get back on track.

This was brought home to me this last week as I started working on a new novel, MAGE STORM.  I had been working on revisions and waiting for new inspiration to come to me for the abandoned novel SEVEN STARS.  Nothing much came.  I started work on MAGE STORM and suddenly I’m seeing what I need to do with SEVEN STARS.  The ideas are coming, now. 

SEVEN STARS will have to wait, though.  I’m on chapter 3 and starting to really get into MAGE STORM.

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Openings

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on June 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

What is it with me and openings lately?  I had DREAMER’S ROSE starting with the main character sitting and waiting for something to happen.  It did happen, very shortly, but that’s still not a very exciting opening.  Not exactly riveting.  I’ve fixed that one.  At least now he’s preparing for something to happen.

Then what do I do?  I turn around and start MAGE STORM with the main character being bored.  Once again, something starts happening right away.  But, really, I have to come up with a better start than boredom.

MAGE STORM is based on a short story, which will basically be the first chapter.  But I wanted to make the opening more relevant to the YA audience.  I fell back on what I felt while doing similar tasks at that age.  That’s how it happened.  I really need to come up with something a tad more interesting, though, I think. 

Oh well, that’s what first drafts are for.  Make a note and move on.

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YA Fiction

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on June 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

First an update:  I just finished the revision/rewrite of THE IGNORED PROPHECY!  And . . . drumroll . . . it came in at 99,000 words.  So I don’t have to get that big pair of scissors out after all.  I’m still going to want to go back and tune a few things up a bit, but it’s just about ready for readers.

I started this revision when I set my then work in process, SEVEN STARS aside.  Supposedly, I’ve been waiting for new inspiration and I’ve had some.  But, lately, the inspiration that’s been coming to me has been for a different story.  So, it looks like my next novel-length project will be MAGE STORM, not SEVEN STARS.  A first attempt at the one-sentence pitch for MAGE STORM:

Magic is supposedly dead in Rell’s world, but when he finds himself ‘gifted’ with magic he doesn’t know how to control, he’s ostracized from his family and runs away to find someone who can help him learn to use his magic safely.

MAGE STORM is actually based on one of my short stories.  And this one is going to be something of a departure for me because I see this story as a young adult fantasy.  THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY are both written to be acceptable reading for young adults, but they are not specifically aimed at that target audience.  This will be.  That means, among other things, that I’m really going to have to pay attention to my pacing.  YA has to move faster than adult fiction.  That should be a useful exercise for me whatever happens.

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Brainstorming

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on June 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

My last post was about my frustration with a particular story.  The beginning had just come to me and I liked it, but then I couldn’t figure out where it was going.  Mostly, I knew where I didn’t want the story to go.  Too many of the first ideas that came to me were cliche and I knew it.

Well, as sometimes happens, just writing about it here jump started my brain into coming up with a few more ideas.  I also, as I said I would do in the last blog, printed out what I had (about 1,000 words and a bunch of questions) and showed it to a friend, asking for input.  Sometimes, you just need to bounce ideas around a little to let them get some momentum.

My friend tells me that the start is good, intriguing.  That’s nice.  She also came back with her own ideas.  Now, this friend is creative (in a different medium), but she’s not necessarily the best person to brainstorm with.  She tends to get invested in her ideas and try to persuade you to do things her way.  But she can still be a big help, you just have to go about it a little differently.

In this case, some of her ideas went in exactly the direction I’d already decided I didn’t want to go, so I just nodded and kept going.  Some were a little too . . . fairy tale, although there still might be the germ of a plot point there.   It just has to be twisted around so it’s not the same.  Some were good.  Some combined in potentially interesting ways with the new ideas I’d been coming up with.  And some were thought provoking. 

I’ve since rejected some of my ideas.  For example, I’d thought of setting this in Chimeria (see Worlds), but I’ve decided I really don’t want to try writing another short story in a world I know too much about right now.  But I’m also rejecting her idea of a setting and creating something different just for this story.

The plot and the story are starting to come together in my head.  This one could be a lot of fun.

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Frustration

Posted in writing, tagged , , on June 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The frustration in this case is with a short story that just won’t cooperate and tell me where it wants to go. 

A week and a half ago, more or less, this opening for what could be a really good short story popped into my head.  At least I’m certain it’s very different and original.  I wrote it down, of course.  (Well, I typed it into my computer.  Same thing.)  I’m a pantser.  I’m willing to take things on faith to a certain extent and just plunge in writing.  Usually, my best ideas come when I’m writing. 

I’ve gotten a couple more scenes written, but I can’t seem to get past the beginning so far.  I haven’t had any ideas that aren’t cliche and it’s driving me nuts.

Later on today I’m going to try to get someone else involved in tossing a few ideas around and see if that can get the brain cells charged.  If not, I’ll just have to file this away for the time being and hope that something surfaces from the depths of my subconscious eventually.

Oh well, the original question that led to that opening occurred to me about fifteen years ago.  I just hope it doesn’t take that long for the rest of the story to materialize.

Meanwhile, chapter revisions on DREAMER’S ROSE and then back to the rewrite of THE IGNORED PROPHECY.  It would be really nice to have a new story to work on during the revisions.  I’m getting itchy for something new.

UPDATE :  Well, you see, that’s one of the values of a blog.  I wrote the post above and then went out to do a little work in the yard (also a prime time for getting writing ideas).  What do you know?  I was cutting the bishop’s cap vine along the side of the house and some new ideas came to me.  It’s not there, yet, by a long way.  But it’s that much closer.

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More World Building

Posted in writing, tagged , , , on May 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Holiday weekend and time got away from me, so I’m putting up some more world building material from the world of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY. 

You’ll find a description of the Fasallon under Worlds.  They’re the ones in this world who live in a system that can’t long endure.  Enjoy.

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