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Posts Tagged ‘world building’

My Wildest Moment

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on November 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

Today, I’m joining in Krystal Wade’s Wildest Moments Blogfest celebrating the publication of Wilde’s Meadow, the third of her Darkness Falls trilogy. 

Now, I haven’t exactly led a wild and crazy life. Tame, really, in many ways–especially right now as caregiver for my elderly mother. Still, there have been moments. And those moments seem disproportionately to have happened away from home. Hmm.

When I started thinking about this post, I thought I’d write about a certain cruise to Southeast Alaska I took a number of years ago. No, it wasn’t that kind of cruise. This was on a really little boat, the MV Sea Bird (run by Special Expeditions) and we got off the boat, usually by zodiac and then wading ashore at least once every day.

 

This is an example from that cruise. We had to cross the river on this bridge, which was really only a log. The crew did put the rope up for use to hold onto. Among the things I did on that cruise:

  1. Take a helicopter up to the top of a glacier and walk around on it (miraculously without falling). By the way, there is absolutely no color like the crystaline, aquamarine blue in the depths of a glacier.
  2. Go ashore on Admiralty Island to look for brown bear. We did watch a three-year-old fishing for salmon. That is also the place where I did fall into the river.
  3. Go out in a zodiac among humpback whales.
  4. Go ashore in Juneau on a Saturday night. It gets rowdy in Juneau on Saturday night.

Lots of inspiration there. My current story involves fjords and glaciers. I’ve been in fjords (although we call them inlets on this coast) and I’ve seen and even walked on glaciers.

By the way, the photo at the top of this blog was taken on another cruise with the same company, this time aboard the MV Sea Lion, in Princess Louisa Inlet, British Columbia. That’s someplace the big cruise ships can’t go. Even the Sea Lion, with a draft of less than ten feet, can only cross the sandbar at the mouth of the inlet at high tide. Once we were in, we were there for twelve hours. That place was the inspiration for the world building for my third novel, DREAMER’S ROSE. (Someday, I’m going to go back and rewrite that story.)

That’s what I was going to blog about, but thinking about that reminded me of an earlier trip. This one wasn’t a cruise. It was a trip with the Nature Conservancy to Santa Cruz Island. One day, we boated from Prisoners’ Harbor to Pelican Bay (no not that Pelican Bay), where we climbed a trail up the face of a nearly vertical cliff. Eek. (I have a more than moderate fear of heights, carefully instilled by my mother.)

We spent an interesting morning at Pelican Bay and then had a choice either to boat back to Prisoners’ Harbor (from which it was a short jeep ride or walk back to the ranch, where we were staying) or to walk back. I still can’t say whether I decided to walk back because I really wanted to see more of the island (I did) or because I didn’t want to go back down that cliffside trail. (Down is always harder than up. You’re looking right at where you’re going to fall.)

What I didn’t know at the time was that the “trail” we’d be taking had been created by feral sheep (which had all been removed from the island by that time) and was maintained by feral pigs (which hadn’t). Both four-legged creatures with a low center of gravity and little imagination. There were places on that “trail” that really had my heart pounding. Places where I had to scramble over rocks with nothing to hold onto where a slip would likely have sent me over the cliff into the ocean. Places where I could look straight down and watch the bright orange garibaldi’s (California’s state marine fish) swimming in the rock-strewn cove below.

I don’t think I relaxed once until we got back to the jeeps. And yet, I have seldom been more aware of my surroundings and I saw a side of the island I would never have seen otherwise. I’m glad I did it. (I don’t think I’d do it again, though.)

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Prologues

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2012| 2 Comments »

Ack! I really generally dislike prologues–both as a reader and as a writer. Besides that, I’ve heard often enough that agents hate them, too. But even I have to admit that sometimes they’re necessary. Unfortunately, it looks like THE BARD’S GIFT is one of those times.

You see, there’s a speculative element in TBG that will be somewhat important to the ultimate resolution of the story. And that element–a particular creature–doesn’t turn up as early as I’d originally hoped. Not until about three-quarters of the way, through, in fact.

In my opinion, any unexpected element that will affect the ending needs to be introduced at latest before the half-way point. Otherwise, you risk the ending feeling like Deus ex Machina–something the characters haven’t really earned. That’s just not satisfying for the readers, generally.

But there just isn’t any way to introduce this creature/character much sooner because my POV characters don’t get into his territory before that. My solution, at least so far, is a prologue–just a short scene involving this character that hopefully also raises some tension, but mainly lets the reader know that he exists.

Sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do.

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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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Authenticity vs. Accessibility

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on August 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Another new issue for my YA alternate history project. Do I go for authenticity or reader accessibility and is there any middle ground.

I put the first part of the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT up for critique on one of the writers’ forums I frequent. The first response I’ve gotten back indicates that certain words are causing a problem. Interestingly enough, not the ones I would have predicted. There are a couple of jaw-breaker words that I expect to have to reconsider.

The story is set against the failure of the viking colony in Greenland. In places, I’m using the actual terminology that these people would use–hopefully with enough context and/or explanation to let the reader know what is meant. A cargo ship is a knarr, for example. Other terms, because of their similarity to English words, seem to be more of a problem.

So, now the question I have to consider is whether I stay with the actual historical term for accuracy or change to something more recognizable to a modern audience. And whether an alternate history ought to try to be as accurate as possible.

These aren’t problems I’ve faced with straight-forward fantasy. When I get to build my own world for a story, the only issues are consistency and not doing anything that throws the reader out of the story. Then again, maybe terms that are confusing because they look too much like English words with different meanings will throw the readers out of the story.

Well, it’s still a first draft. I’ve got time to figure some of this stuff out.

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Ideas

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

First an announcement: For the month of July, BLOOD WILL TELL and “The Music Box” are both half-price at Smashwords as part of their Summer/Winter Sale. (Clicking on one of those pretty pictures of the covers over to the side there will take you straight to them.) “Heart of Oak” is technically part of the sale, too, but it’s still free. Half of zero is still zero. At Smashwords, you can get a version for any e-reader or any computer. Just about everybody has some way to read a .PDF. So what are you waiting for, BLOOD WILL TELL is only $1.50 and “The Music Box” is only $0.99.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to talk about ideas, because I had what I think is going to turn out to be a pretty good one last night, right before I went to sleep. That means I had to bounce out of bed, jot it down, and go back to sleep, but I don’t mind. Just going to sleep or waking up, walking the dogs, and in the shower seem to be the best times for brainstorms.

This idea is for my current wip, THE BARD’S GIFT. That’s fine. I’m about three-quarters of a discovery writer, so there’s no outline I have to revise to fit this in. In fact, the idea came at just about the perfect time. I’m just about to finish up act one, which has to stay fairly close to accurate history, and move my characters to someplace new and exciting.

This is the alternate part of alternate history. Since none of this ever really happened, I get to let world building take the place of at least some of the research. Obviously, not all. My characters are going to carry with them the same beliefs and social norms they had before. They’re going to build the same kind of houses and try, at least, to maintain the same way of life. But, they’re going to be faced with a new world (literally, the New World) with new experiences in store.

I’d always known there were going to be dragons in this new world. (There often seem to be dragons in my stories.) I’ve had a few new ideas about how the characters will choose to deal with that. My great new idea, though, is to sort of mash up the two mythologies–Old World and New.

I haven’t got it all worked out yet, but I will say this: look for thunderbirds as well as dragons. And don’t be surprised if the thunderbirds ARE the dragons.

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Adding Material to a Completed Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on June 6, 2012| 4 Comments »

Wow. Got right to work writing and almost forgot to blog. Oops.

Well, I’m still in the middle (almost exactly) of my revisions to “The Music Box”. Some of that is fixing problems with the story, but a lot of it is adding back in world building details that I’d either deleted or left out trying to make it fit into a more publishable length.

I think I’ve managed to spread out that info dump problem I mentioned in my last post. Let’s see what you think. Here’s the first page or so:

Liri paced across her darkened room. Everyone else was sensibly napping during the hottest part of the day, but there wasn’t anything Liri wanted less than to fall asleep. She didn’t even dare lie down for fear she’d doze off and have the same nightmare again.

As his sister, Liri had been the one to help prepare Eralan’s body for burial. She’d wanted to spare his widow and she was very glad she had. Jenae didn’t need to see that. Liri had seen all of his wounds and the other marks, enough to know the truth. Eralan’s had not been a clean warrior’s death on the battlefield. He’d been tortured to death. And now, scenes of what Eralan must have endured haunted Liri’s dreams.

She needed movement, more than she could get in this confined space. Sometimes when she danced, she could lose herself in the music and shut out everything else. She couldn’t dance here, though. She’d be sure to waken someone. There was a quiet spot out in the garden where she wouldn’t disturb anyone.

Liri picked up her music box and padded silently down the corridor. The box had been her brother’s last gift to her, less than a sevenday before his death. Odd that it should be her greatest comfort now. For a moment, she stroked the smooth, inlaid wood, feeling its texture. It must have been an expensive gift, because it undeniably had a touch of magic bound within it. One side of Liri’s mouth quirked up. Eralan had joked that the music box was supposed to help her find her true love and she’d laughed at him for his naïveté.

Falling in love was not something to be desired for a princess. Liri wouldn’t be allowed to choose her husband, after all. Her marriage would be used to formalize some alliance for her father. When that day came, even falling in love with her own husband would be a risk. Their mother’s fate proved that. Love was a weakness that other players of the Game could exploit.

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Mixing Things Up

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, this is why I like to have multiple projects to work on. I can let THE BARD’S GIFT simmer a bit more, while I work out how to bring my main characters firmly together in a short amount of time and in just about one more chapter. I want it to feel like the end of the world to them when they’re parted, but I can’t spend half the book getting there. That’s a tall order and I need to do some more brainstorming on it.

Multiple projects are wonderful for this. I don’t have to lose productivity; I can just switch to something else–in this case, a bit of editing.

  1. I’ve had some ideas about that ill-fated science fiction story of mine, “Apocalypse Cruise”. I think maybe, just maybe, I can fix it–more conflict and a more satisfying ending. Actually, the ending won’t change. Just a bit more build up may make it work better. It’s worth trying, at least.
  2. Now that my critique group has had a crack at it and I’ve had time to digest their comments, I need to make the revisions to “The Music Box” so I can e-publish it next month. The main revision on this one will be to put back a bit of world building that I’d removed when I was trying to make it fit into a more (traditionally) publishable word count. Novellas are a tough sell, traditionally. If I e-pub it, I don’t have to worry so much about the word count. And it’s precisely the kind of story that should do well in that venue (romance, with only a slight fantasy element).
  3. I was beginning to think that the query for FIRE AND EARTH needed a touch up. The contest below, celebrating the publication of Wilde’s Fire, has provided me with some ideas on a couple of directions I can take to improve it for the next round.
  4. The contest has also given me an idea or two on how to improve the opening of FIRE AND EARTH.

By the time I work through that list, my subconscious should have thrown up some good ideas on how to get through this part of THE BARD’S GIFT. If not, then I’ll either:

  1. Skip ahead and write around it, for now. Not my preferred course, but it can be done.
  2. Or, do a little work on the first draft of my backup, MAGIC’S APPRENTICE.

Forward, always forward.

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Stories Within Stories

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on May 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, things seem to have settled down for the time being. Now back to writing.

I’m beginning to pick up momentum in THE BARD’S GIFT again. That’s a very good thing. This story is a different experience for me in a couple of ways.

First, it’s alternate history set against the failure of the Viking colony in Greenland. This means I’m constantly stopping myself to go check on what plants, animals, birds, etc. actually exist in Greenland. I’m used to making up my own worlds and populating them with whatever habitats and creatures I like. Things will, I hope, get a little easier once I move my main characters to North America.

Second, this is a story about a girl who tells stories, which means that the narrative sort of stops in several places for the story that Astrid is telling. Of course, for the most part, the stories have something to do with what is happening or what is going to happen to the characters. I’ve incorporated legends into my stories before, but never to this extent.

The early stories are more or less traditional, although I’m having to make some modifications to match the life experiences of a girl from Greenland–no castles, no forests, and some animals or birds have to be changed to those that she might actually be familiar with. Later stories will be more flights of my own fancy and I’ll be able to let loose a little more with them.

This book also has a couple of things I’ve never included in a novel before: and afterword on the actual history behind the story and a glossary. I’ve put the history portion up under the “Worlds” tab, if you’re interested.

It’s certainly an interesting story to work on. I hope it turns out as interesting when it’s told. I think it will.

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Time Management and Getting Unstuck

Posted in Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

This last week has not been a very productive one. There are a couple of reasons for that.

On one hand, I’m just a little bit stuck on my current WIP. It’s a problem I anticipated, but it’s still a problem. THE BARD’S GIFT is about Astrid, a shy girl who finds that she’s been given the gift of storytelling–but the gift comes with a catch. Sometimes, even when it embarasses her or when people don’t want to listen to her, she’s compelled to tell a particular story. It’s potentially a very powerful gift, but not a very comfortable one.

Well, the problem with this story is that I have to put in those stories that she tells, which is almost like stopping the flow of the main story and writing a short story in the middle of it. That’s proving a little more difficult than I anticipated.

By preference, I’d like to have Astrid start with traditional stories, then maybe start finding that the story she has to tell has some variations from the traditional story, and then telling entirely new stories. This is an alternate history, so that means I need to find a traditional story from her culture (Norse or Icelandic) that fits with that point in the story. I have some more research to do. The books arrived yesterday.

Now, there are a couple of ways I could deal with this. I could just go around and come back to fill in the story. Or I could work on something else while I figure out the story Astrid needs to tell. I have a novella “The Music Box” that needs work before it’s ready for e-publishing and a short story “Apocalypse Cruise” that might be worth revisting because I might have figured out how to address a couple of its issues. The problem with that is that it typically takes me a day or two to really switch stories in my own head.

The other reason I’ve been having trouble with my writing this week is interruptions. They are, I think, going to turn out to be good interruptions, but I’m going to need to find a way to deal with them without losing productivity.

If you’ve ready my “About Me” page, you know that I take care of my mother, who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. For several years, Mom attended an adult day care run by the Salvation Army and I had my writing time worked out around that. Last year, that day care closed and Mom had a one-week hospitalization. For someone like Mom, an event like that often results in a drop in functioning. Mom was no exception.

So, for the last year, I’ve been basically going it alone with Mom at home 24/7. Now, I’m deluged with potential help. Mom’s doctor switched her over to the home care portion of her HMO, which means nurses will come out to her instead of me having to try to get Mom back and forth to the doctor (not a smal task, believe me). Great. The home care people suggested that maybe she should be on hospice. In the last week, I’ve had the home care nurse, a social worker, another nurse to draw a test sample, and the hospice intake person out. And the hospice people are coming back today. I’ve not been very successful switching back and forth between these roles.

The house is a mess. I’ve never been a great housekeeper. It’s just not where my interests lie. I can always find something more interesting to do–like getting lost in my current story. But it finally does reach a point where I have to stop and deal with it. Those efforts usually run aground in the clutter.

But now I need to find some documentation. And so far, I haven’t been able to. (I have found some other things that I’d misplaced, but not what I’m looking for right now.) So, I’m going to have to start attacking the clutter and the semi-hidden stacks of paper lying around this house.

Looks like I’m going to have to make a plan. I might even *shudder* have to make a schedule.

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Middle Books in a Series

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on March 18, 2012| 6 Comments »

This subject comes up for several reasons. The main one, of course, is that it’s something I’m struggling with myself. In another month or so, I’ll start the second draft of BLOOD IS THICKER, which is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. While I complete the research and preparations for THE BARD’S GIFT, I’ve also been sporadically working on MAGIC’S APPRENTICE, which is the sequel to MAGIC’S FOOL. In both cases, there will be at least one more book in the series.

As I see it, both from reading and writing series, there are three problems inherent in sequels, in particular in the middle books.

The first is one I hope I don’t have in any of my stories because it annoys me as a reader: when the middle book in a series is just a bridge between the beginning and the end. These books often lack an identifiable story arc of their own. They’re just there to get you from the beginning to the end. It’s a problem most often encountered in trilogies.

The second is one of just maintaining reader interest, even if the book does have its own story (although this becomes much, much harder for middle books that don’t actually tell a full story). I have a theory about this that I’ve blogged about before. Particularly in fantasy, in the first book the reader has the wonder of discovering this new world, its magic and its rules, and the characters. The last book has the whiz-bang fireworks of the climax of the series. The middle book is, well, stuck in the middle.

This is where I think there’s a certain genius in series like HARRY POTTER. J. K. Rowling doesn’t show us all of Harry’s world in that first book. We’re still discovering new things well into the series. Yes, THE SORCERER’S STONE gives you the wizarding world, Diagon Alley, Gringot’s Bank, Hogwarts, and quidditch. But THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS gives you the flying car, the whomping willow, huge spiders, and the basilisk. THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (on the television right now as I write this) gives you hippogriffs, dementors, and the Marauder’s Map. I don’t think I even have to go into THE GOBLET OF FIRE. The point is, the wonder of discovering this world is stretched out throughout the whole series.

There’s a lesson in that, I think. Now, if I can just figure out how to apply it to my own stories.

The third problem is one that relates especially to independent stories within a series. To a certain extent in this kind of series, it shouldn’t matter if the reader takes the books in order. And there’s the problem. When I start to write the second (or, in this case, third) book in the series, I want to set it up so that the reader can plunge in even if they’ve never read the first book. But, and here’s the problem, I’ve got all these places and characters that I’ve already established. Some of the things that have already happened in the first book are going to influence the relationships between these characters and how they approach the problems presented in the second (or third) book.

So, the problem is to present enough of that background–and only as it becomes relevant to the story–without slowing the main story down to a crawl or overwhelming it with extraneous details. It’s a very fine line. And frankly, one that I’ve never managed to walk on a first draft.

It’s a very real challenge. To me, this is a place where it’s vital to have beta readers. In particular, two groups of beta readers: some who’ve read the first book and can complain if you slow the story down with too many details about what happened before, and some who haven’t read the first book and can tell you when they get confused because something that was explained in the first book was just assumed in the second.

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