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Posts Tagged ‘revisions’

Revisions (Again)

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2013| 2 Comments »

My current WIP, MAGIC AND POWER, is on temporary hold while I work through a particularly difficult spot in the revisions of my middle grade fantasy, MAGE STORM. The tricky spot is because I’m taking a section that originally had only two characters and revising it to include three characters. There are so many more possibilities for a bit of conflict between the good guys when there are three of them rather than only two. I think it will ultimately work better, but that doesn’t make it easy. Especially when I’m trying to be very careful about adding too much to the word count.

I love MAGE STORM. Always did. Here’s the pitch (which will need more work):

Like everyone else, Rell believes that magic died along with its users at the end of the Great Mage War. All that’s left are the violent, semi-sentient mage storms made up of the ashes of the magic users killed in the war. Then he’s caught in a mage storm and infected with magic he doesn’t know how to control. Rell must find someone who can help him learn to deal with this gift for his own safety and that of everyone around him. If he can’t, that fire he accidentally started in the barn will be nothing compared to what the magic will do to him. If he succeeds, Rell could begin healing the damage caused by the war and ending the mage storms forever.

I’ve already got ideas for three sequels to this one, more trouble that Rell and his friends can get into.

Of course, that’s never all I’m working on.

Don’t forget FIRE AND EARTH. (I have to find time to do some more promotion for this one.)

Fire And Earth Cover (Provisional)

As always, new chapters of FIRE AND EARTH and BLOOD WILL TELL are up on wattpad.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to do the European 4 in 1 chain mail pattern:

European 4-1

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

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The Importance of the Central Conflict

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on May 5, 2013| 2 Comments »

The central conflict is what drives a story forward. Without that, you have a vignette, maybe a very long vignette, but not a story. I learned this 0ne the hard way. I learned it with the second book I wrote after I got serious about writing. (We’re not counting that thing under the bed I wrote in college, all right?)

I wrote roughly 100,000 words and, literally as I was writing the last page, I looked up and realized that it didn’t come out to a story. I had characters and a setting and things happened, but I knew instinctively that it didn’t come out to be a story. I’m ashamed to admit how many different things I tried to fix before I realized the real problem. It didn’t have a strong central conflict that unified all those things that happened to my characters and made the final resolution feel like, well, like a resolution.

Lesson learned. I’m willing to plunge into a project, particularly a shorter project, and discover the story as I go. But I won’t start anything until I feel I have a handle on the central conflict.

I’ve mentioned before that my current project, working title MAGIC AND POWER, has surprised me more than once. The first surprise was when it decided to grow from an intended novelette or maybe novella into a full-fledged novel. It’s currently at almost 58,000 words and I project 65,000 to 70,000 when I reach the end of the first draft. (It’ll grow a bit more in second and third draft. They always do as I flesh out descriptions and give more attention to the secondary characters.)

Why this is a problem and how it relates to the title of this post is this: the original conflict for a nice little novelette can’t sustain a novel. I’ve had to work in a bigger conflict and allow the original to become a subplot. Unsurprisingly, this is something that’s going to need a lot more attention in the next draft. It’s sort of a hodge podge right now. But it has to be done for the whole thing to come together.

The irony of this situation is that I took up this story at this time (intending it to be much shorter) as a way to keep the writing muscles flexed while I try to work on the central conflict of what I intended to be my next novel. The best laid plans of mice and men . . .

Don’t forget, FIRE AND EARTH is now available just about everywhere.

 

And, as always, new chapter of FIRE AND EARTH and BLOOD WILL TELL are available free on wattpad. (Although, if you like the stories, you can read them much faster then two chapters a week if you buy a copy.)

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Deleted Scene

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 7, 2013| 1 Comment »

Housekeeping out of the way first. New chapters of FIRE AND EARTH and BLOOD WILL TELL are up on wattpad.

Now, in honor of the release of FIRE AND EARTH in two weeks, here’s a deleted scene (or part of one, it’s actually a very long scene).

Fire And Earth Cover (Provisional)

This used to be the beginning of this book. It was cut because it took too long (and too much of a diversion into setting up the world) early. It’s still a good scene, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see more of this deleted scene in the next couple of weeks.

Casora stepped into the practice circle and grinned as she saluted her opponent. The sword was not her best weapon, but the chance to spar with Marcian was too good to pass up. The only sanctioned time they could touch was during such training duels. Oh, they could hold hands occasionally, but anything more would have to wait until they’d completed their required service in the war band known as the Deathless.

Of course, there wouldn’t be much chance to touch in a sword match, either. On the other hand, if she disarmed him, he could turn it into a wrestling match. Naturally, he’d win. Her speed and agility wouldn’t be much use against his size and strength in that kind of fight, but there’d be plenty of touching. Every inch of her skin tingled at the thought.

Marcian returned her salute and took up his stance, giving her the first move. She took a moment to admire all those muscles. This was going to be fun. She closed in with a move intended to lock Marcian’s sword, then danced aside when he countered with an attack. Evidently, he hadn’t thought of turning this into a wrestling match. He winked at her. Or else he was going to try to at least make the sword fight look believable first. Casora could go along with that.

She rushed forward and spun at the last instant to hit Marcian from the side with the flat of her blunted practice sword. She’d learned that move from her oldest brother and she didn’t use it very often. With real, sharp-edged weapons, it was too risky, leaving her open to her opponent’s back stroke, if he was quick enough.

Marcian was faster than he looked, but she’d taken him by surprise with that move. In trying to follow her spin, he’d left himself open. Casora took advantage of that by dropping low and pressing the point of her sword against Marcian’s belly. It was then that she noticed the edge of his blade resting beside her neck. If this had been a real battle, they’d both be dead.

She reached up and rubbed at the little scar above her right eyebrow. Maybe she should have remembered how Marcian had given her that scar the last time she tried a trick move. She’d acquired other scars since then, of course, but that had been her first. And it had become something of a joke between them.

Marcian looked down at the sword pointed at his gut and shrugged. Casora stood up and took her stance, waiting for his move. A horn blast made them both turn toward the road that ran past their camp. At the cry of “Riders coming!” Casora dropped her practice sword and dashed to her post.

 

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The Need for Something New

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’ve come to the conclusion that part of my problem recently is that I’ve just been doing revisions for too long. Now, I don’t normally mind revisions, but I’ve been doing them for an awfully long time, now. First getting THE BARD’S GIFT ready for first readers, then the revisions to FIRE AND EARTH that came from my Pitch Wars mentor’s comments, and now on THE BARD’S GIFT again.

I love both stories, but I think my brain just needs to be allowed to go play in a new sandbox, with new characters and ideas. There’s nothing fresher than my “Jurassic Oz” story. It’s not ripe yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t let my mind go play with some world building so I can be ready to write it. I have a couple of good ideas, but they’re not enough, not yet. Plus, I still have to figure out how I’m going to get my “Dorothy” to Oz. I did a little Halloween story on this idea, and that might be a good starting point, but it needs a bit more development.

Or, I could play with my secret history idea that plays on the legend of King Arthur (to start with, anyway). That one needs a little more development, too. You know, as long as I’m just dedicating some time to letting my mind out to play, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Meanwhile, I have to stick to the revisions for just a little longer. My goal is to have THE BARD’S GIFT ready to start querying next month. I’m almost there. This is no time to quit.

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Blah

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on February 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Not much to say today. I’m just having one of those days where everything feels like I’m Sisyphus perennially trying to push a boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom again. (Gotta love the Greeks for imaginative punishments in Hades.)

Sisyphus

Sisyphus (Photo credit: AK Rockefeller)

I’m basically an optimistic person (which is very useful for an aspiring writer), but every once in a while . . . . Maybe I’ve just been doing revisions for too long and it’s time to start on something brand new. Maybe I just need to go outside and dig up some ivy. That should help.

Well, enough of that. Since I can’t come up with anything else, here’s the latest (but not the last) version of my query for THE BARD’S GIFT:

Sixteen-year-old Astrid keeps mostly to herself, amusing herself with the stories her grandmother used to tell. She’s too shy even to talk in front of the young man she secretly dreams of, Torolf. Then the Norse god of eloquence appears in Astrid’s dreams and forces her to drink from the Mead of Poetry. Suddenly, she’s compelled to tell her stories. In public. Even in front of Torolf.

This leads her to actually talk to Torolf–and find out that he likes her, too. They’ve barely enjoyed their first kiss when the seeress makes a prophecy that will split them apart. The seeress proclaims that Astrid’s gift for knowing the exactly right story to comfort, inspire, instruct, or warn is the key to a new future for their people. According to the seeress, Astrid must sail with the people to the part of the map labelled “Here be dragons”, while Torolf undertakes a hazardous voyage in the opposite direction, to Iceland, to supply the fledgling colony. 

What they don’t know is that ambitious Helga has a plan to control Astrid’s abilities and status to take power for her own family. First, they need to get Torolf out of the way, so they arrange for him to be stranded in Iceland.

It will take both of them to thwart Helga’s plot. Torolf strains his inventiveness to its limits to get back. And Astrid has to learn to trust herself and her stories to keep her people from repeating past mistakes and hold off Helga’s attempted coup which could doom their only chance.

 

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Asking for Knowledgable Help

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on February 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

In my last post, I blogged about asking on one of my writers’ groups for someone who knows about sailing to read excerpts from my current WIP, THE BARD’S GIFT, and give me feedback on the sailing stuff.

Even though I’d done a lot of research before starting this story, there are some things that are just hard to come by in book (or internet) research. My main concern when I asked for help was certain innovations one of my characters (whose main quality is his inventiveness) made. Were they believable? Or would they be embarrassingly stupid?

I got that, but I also got so much more. Some of the sensory details that I wouldn’t ever have thought of. There are a lot of things I can convincingly describe. The sounds of a wooden boat or ship in a storm aren’t among them. And those details will enrich the story so much.

Now, there are a lot of places I might have gone to ask those questions. But, probably only another writer would have realized the importance of the sounds and other sensory details that my character would be subjected to.

Glad I asked.

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Sailing Scenes and Traveling

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on February 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

Oops. Got busy on my revisions yesterday and forgot to blog.

I’m in the middle of the (hopefully) next-to-last revisions on THE BARD’S GIFT, based on feedback from readers. This will take probably two passes and then it will be time for the final polishing edit. The last couple of days I’ve had two particular issues in my revisions.

One chapter involved sailing and a storm. Well, I’ve never been in a wooden boat during a storm. In fact, I haven’t often been on a boat because, well, because I get sea sick so it’s not much fun. So, I asked for someone on one of my writer’s forums to read those sections and let me know what I’d gotten wrong. The feedback was very helpful, but it takes a lot of work to incorporate some of those suggestions.

Deep breath and move on to the next chapter, which was boring. Boring. Well, the problem with this chapter was not that nothing happened. It was that a large part of the chapter as originally written was wrapped up in the characters getting from point A to point B. A couple of things that will be important later happened, but they were buried in the travelogue.

Note to self: This story doesn’t take place in Middle Earth and I’m not J. R. R. Tolkien.

Hopefully, I’ve fixed that by deleting a lot of stuff that didn’t move the story along and substituting a little character development. It’s possible that development will get deleted in the next pass, too.

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Still Revising

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

And likely to be revising for a while.

I’m still deep in the revisions to FIRE AND EARTH, though I hope to finish up today or tomorrow. The agent round started today, so it really needs to be ready, just in case I get a request.

That’ll be the major revisions. There are a few smaller suggestions that I may tinker with later. Things like name changes, which literally, with the magic of word processors, take about a minute. Pitch Wars aside, I think I may want to try to find another reader just to look this over after I’ve torn it apart and put it back together again in the course of two weeks. I’ve lived this story for that period and I don’t think I’ll be in a position to see it clearly myself. Then I’ll make a decision about what to do with it next.

After that, it looks like I’ll be getting to the revision on THE BARD’S GIFT. I have four critiques back to start working on. I’ll need to really work on the query and *gasp* write the synopsis, too. I want to have this one ready to start querying by this summer. Maybe earlier.

That’s part of the reality of writing. Revisions usually take more time than the first draft.

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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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