The TalynMana project hit a snag a couple weeks ago, when Becky’s day job got slammed with, well, the economy. Not just her job, you see, but the company she worked for, too.
So she’s in the middle of changing everything, and the jewelry part of the TalysMana project is on hiatus until she gets through this particular disaster.
And the contest is on hold until Becky can participate in judging the entries along with me. We’re looking at–realistically–a couple of months for this to happen.
On my end, there’s still a bunch of craziness going on, but it’s winding down. So I should be able to get back to writing TalysMana in another week or two.
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Danzier-
Thank you! I guess I’ll just have to get into the habit of asking questions before I write…or whatever else would work. And after you said that, it made so much sense to me! OF COURSE I should try those things!
My description might not be the greatest in first drafts, but I know that with a little patience I can fix it.
I didn’t get any words today. Had a party to go to, a sick baby to take care of, shopping to do…and a lot of other not so fun things. Maybe if I can manage to keep my eyes open I’ll write some before bed, but if not I’ll try to write tomorrow.
Word Count Goal before Monday: 1000
Tori–
Wow, that’s a lot! I hope you get some sleep in there too. And that your little one’s ok.
Sometimes, all it takes is noticing “something’s not right here…” and then watching to see what happens. That’s what it was with the jays; my sister saw the first one and wondered why he was so quiet–and then his friends showed up, and they were quiet… I’d heard that about larger raptors about five hundred times, but that was the first time I’d seen it, and then I just described it.
Anyway, no beating yourself up.
You’ve got a lot going on, and all you can do really is all you can do.
Another backstory scene finalised…and a half – going to sleep on a POV decision. Invigilating in the afternoon tomorrow, so hoping to get stuck into the remaining backstory scenes first thing.
Hi folks,
Still gnawing at my second book. I’m up to a part where a slew of foreign ambassadors hit the King with bad news in sequence. One of them is a disguised minor villain. I’m going to have fun with his dialogue with kingy, I just need TIME.
Five class days suck.
In other news, I could be very evil, RL, my school just installed new industrial printers with USB ports >.>
But I’ll be nice and print the book at home ;_; even if it takes four times as long. Bah, temptation!
Hehe.
“I’ll have grounds more relative than this. The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” (Hamlet, II, ii, 602-603) I can hardly wait!
My school’s ok with printing stuff from home, so long as it’s five pages or less at a time. I figure they charge me for it in my tuition anyway, so I may as well… Way to guilt trip me!
Backstory finalised – outlines done for all twelve scenes. Finalised the characters I need to develop for it, so that’s a handful of character profiles to get done, but glad the plot aspect is sorted with no glaring problems and a couple of pleasing bonus opportunities to tie in the backstory with the main event. Some maps, the above chars and some miscellaneous other world-building stand between me and the write-in now.
Kingy laid a verbal royal smackdown on the snotty Athoi ambassador.
Damn, he’s fun. But I’m getting sick of him hogging the limelight. Fortunately after these scenes are done he’s basically out of the book until the next one, appearing only in a couple of ‘meanwhile’ spots, and I get my MCs steering the plot again. Can’t wait!
Also miss the villains. Really miss them.
I’m officially on another writing project for a bit. Um, I haven’t even code-named it yet, but I’ve got about 2500 words of plotting. I’m going through Holly’s Plot Clinic with a fine-toothed comb and I’m still getting material out of the second tool. This is going to be a smallish story, somewhat stand-alone, with characters I haven’t played with in a long time. I’m doing my plotting in a regular notebook so I can move around; my lappy is stationary for now. So my word count is approximate: 9 words per line x34 lines per page x 9 pages, round down for drawings and short lines.
Bit distractible today, which I’m looking back on with annoyance at myself. Not as productive as I’d liked, but got five characters developed. Mapping day tomorrow…
Read back over my Book II scenes with the King and the way they’re spliced with the MCs’ scenes, and I liked them more than I thought I would.
Here’s a question, especially for those who have graduated from Holly’s courses:
Is it okay to have foreshadowing carry into the next book in a series? Is it allright to leave a few loaded Chekov’s guns on the shelves for the next book?
Because what I have is, as I’ve mentioned a few times, a book that was supposed to be the first half of a book. So there’s a lot of setup that WAS going to be resolved later in the same book, but is now resolved in the next book or two instead.
It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, the immediate threat (the assassination plot) is thwarted and the heroes win the king’s favor and all seems dandy.
But they only still know about 5% of what’s going on. And the reader courtesy of the prologue and a few villain-viewpoint scenes knows about 10%. The book ends with the heroes vowing to find out the truth if they have to hunt down Snake Eyes and beat it out of him.
I’m just wondering if this is enough, or if I should bury some of those subplots for good? They work, they work well, they just don’t work -within the same book-…
This is advice you’d probably want to ask right to Holly via email since she has direct experience with this sort of thing. Are you taking Holly’s Htts course? In the bonus lessons, Holly makes quite a few good points about how (and why) NOT to write a series.
I can totally see where you’re coming from since I had the same issue with the old, overgrown project of mine: the number of books grew horribly as soon as I realized that every “part” was way too big and I needed to split them. The result was that almost nothing stood up on its own anymore. Only one thing out of billions was actually resolved at the end of the first book, and it also happened in a way that left everything much more confused, insted of cleared up.
I repeat my WATCH OUT caveat here. I bet you already know that series are hard to sell in themselves, since readers are unlikely to just jump in, and even moreso when the series is so tangled that the majority of threads are left hanging from one book to another. Heck, I’m the first who is unlikely to do that. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels work because the books are self-standing, other than because he’s, well, awesome.
I don’t know your situation in detail, of course, and anyway it’s not up to any of us to tell you what you “should” do about those subplots. What I’d do is streamline all my subplots and ask myself if I’m more likely to leave the reader all excited and asking for more at the end of the first book, or to just leave them confused, or worse, frustrated. I know *I* would have no issue with a couple of threads hanging, but I’d be more confused and frustrated if the *majority* of them was left hanging. If closing the book I’m left with much more questions and confusions than when I’ve opened it, well… it’s not really my thing.
If the wide majority of subplots takes more time than the first book, maybe the book needs to be longer, as long as it doesn’t take another book entirely… or maybe there’s too much meat on the fire, as we say here in Italy.
Just my two cents as usual.
(oh and btw: I’m still writing, I’ve just been away from the internet for a while
)
Just as a reader, I like series-length stories. I also decend upon the local library like a plague…so if I can pick up whichever book in a series isn’t checked out and get a good read, I’ll actively pursue the rest of the series. I like Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series especially, for that. In that series, each book uses a little of what came before, and there is almost no forshadowing for continuing books. The endings are satisfying; the reader knows the characters are facing a storm, but confident they’ll get through it whether or not another book documents it. The author seems to go through his past work, find the least noticeable conflicts, the one line about something never mentioned again, and turn it into a mountain of trouble.
***SPOILER ALERT***
My favorite example in the series is when an event the character brushed off as some local marriage custom he had to play to for a short time turned out to be the cause of the world-dooming problem, two books later.
******
Hmmm.
I’d like to ask Holly, but I really don’t want to hit her with annoying questions while she’s dealing with RL stress.
I’m taking HTRYN; I was going to take HTTS, but I only had enough spare funds for one and I’d just finished a novel I was (and still am) pretty happy with, so, HTRYN won out.
I am still intending to take HTTS, mind you. Just not right now.
I can see a lot of logic in Not Doing A Series (I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a few standalones to get my writing career going BEFORE I release the big monster) but the monster is what thirsts to be written, and I’m finding it hard to get inspired to do a different book while its words are itching at my fingertips. I may still give it a shot if something spectacular leaps to mind.
The very few people who’ve read it so far, at least one of whom hadn’t endured my ranting about it and thus had no idea what was coming, said the ending left them ‘wanting more’ and they didn’t find any major confusion in the plot.
On the one hand, the story wraps with the assassins defeated, the heroes hired by the king, and the chessmaster villain (and chessmaster mentor) having a brief conversation that hints at the entire archplot, even as the heroes are, a few metres away and completely oblivious, vowing to uncover it. We know that the immediate threat has been averted but the villains are still out there, and there are various threads tying the political crisis to the ‘cosmic horrors unleashed from an artifact broken in antiquity, all fixated on the heroes for a mysterious reason’ storyline underneath it.
On the other hand, characters (the heroes’ past nemeses, the pirate girl’s mentor, the final villain we saw in the prologue) are mentioned but don’t appear, or are foreshadowed. (The nemeses and the mentor appear in the next book right away, the final villain takes a few books to re-emerge) This might be dangling threads or it might be worldbuilding. Everything else wraps.
See? Now that’s a series I will pester librarians two counties away to get books from. They hate it when I do that.
Seriously, though, just from that, it looks like you wrap all the active story points nicely, while leaving the tie-through bits open, but not bleeding and begging for resolution. If it reads as well as your description, I’d be all for the series.
From your description it sounds like you manage to wrap up the most important things in the end, so I’d agree with Danzier. I wouldn’t worry too much about mentioned or barely-introduced characters if they bring only the hint of a subplot on enrich the worldbuilding.
On the other hand, in case you had several scenes with some mysterious character whom we know is important but you didn’t bring the thing to a resolution – that would be much more than a hint of a subplot, and you’d have a problem.
As long as the “main quest” is resolved, though, and by resolved I mean that the heroes uncover, understand and ultimately foil the bad guys’ plans (though they might not know that there’s much more to it, or what the “final villain” really is aiming to), you’ll be fine.
I stressed on what I meant by “resolved” because at the end of the 1st book of my Huge Overgrown Project I seriously messed up with this: my heroes foiled at least in part the bad guys’ plans, but only by being at the right place at the right time and with a considerable amount of luck. They had no idea what they were doing, and although they managed to stay alive instead of being murdered (which counts as “foiling the bad guys plans”), they didn’t discover really anything more than what was already clear. It is true that a lot of important things happened at the end of the 1st book, but it felt like it all was “useless”, since the plot was just as confused as it was at the start. In short, the book ended but nothing really wrapped up or was resolved. I didn’t like that.
Oh, and yes, I know that even the most wrecked stories can come back from the dead. In fact, I plan to tackle that story again one day, but for now I’m letting it rest until I realize what I really want to do with it. I need to work on other things for now: working on the Huge Monster for more than 10 years had really become frustrating
Of course, I meant “*OR* enrich the worldbuilding”, not “on” -.-
Mapping day put back and more character outlining brought forward as that was just how my inclination was first thing. All characters done now. A good day’s mapping and general world-building tomorrow and I’ll be within touching distance of the write-in!
Having loads of fun doing clusters for my characters. I just found out that my strong mysterious character is afraid she’s insane, so she is mysterious on purpose. About 800 words since last post. And one hour’s sleep. Ah, coffee.
Time for a little update post!
Wrote a total of 1845 words from last update. I had fun with a couple of short, intense scenes that plant interesting clues about what is going to happen. I’m particularly glad of a scene from Urwyn Valdersen’s point of view (he was the uberexpert that was supposed to help get Erthel’s mother back) which shows that all is not what it seems about the latest, horrible news.
Also, Erthel wakes up once more, and faces the dire consequences of the big blow I mentioned (AND of her immediate reactions to the news). She finds out that she cannot summon her gift, at least right now (which is pretty normal given what happened lately)… but her reaction to this is not what her loved ones, and what she herself, would expect, and she has to hide it for the moment.
Word count so far: about 1500
Need to reach: 2000
500 words really isn’t much to worry about, but since I’ve already written a lot more today than I am used to I am a little drained. So I am taking a small break, might watch a tv show, but then its back to work. Hopefully that will give me enough time to figure out how to write out the next scene. Although I am good at plotting it feels like I have left a couple holes, and that bothers me a bit.
My MC is dealing with some scary stuff with her mom, but this isn’t even really supposed to be part of the main plot/problem, so I am worried I am spending too much time on it.
Oh well, that’s what revision is for right? If I end up hating this I can just delete it later. For now though…must continue on!
Oh, and I really need to start writing more. This week has been a hard one and if I don’t pick up the pace I’m not going to finish this rough draft when I need to.
Sigh.
Hope everyone else is doing okay!
Some mapping done, but not as much as I’d like. Bit too much pondering and not enough putting ink on paper. Will do a bit more tomorrow…
Still wrapping the scene with the smug-snake ambassador and the king. Looking forward to my MCs having the floor again.
Making progress planning the summer story. Up to 20 pages, although the word count is off due to diagrams. At least a couple hundred though. I’m trying to plan how my heros would escape an old prison only to be caught once they’re out…without sounding either corny or contrived. I have to design the thing, with the dual interest of keeping people locked up and having my nice resourceful heros nearly kill themselves getting out. My story appears to have a double main plot and no sub-plots. At least it’s only planning right now, everything can be fixed.
Success! The ambassador scene is done.
Now, my MCs! Yess!
Yay!
Time for another update on PoB!
Wrote a total of 946 words from last update. Faurel escorts Erthel to the local bloodline’s estate to discuss the current “situation” (further details would be a little too spoilery), and along the road it looks like something is changing between the two. Yes, we’re talking about hints of attraction here. OMG!
I’ve probably said this a lot of times already, but I’m really liking where this is going.
THIS sounds intreaguing! Didn’t they hate each other’s guts at Christmas?
Heheh yes, they did! Or at least… it took them a real effort to tolerate each other
For now, let’s just say that the latest happenings (extra-crappiful) have brought the both of them to realize that they have much more common ground than what they’d have imagined.
Since you’ve been paying attention, this calls for a special cookie celebration!
*hands cookie to you*
Something Holly said somewhere, that I can’t quite find, has been bouncing around in my head all night…”you only get one gimme. If your world has faster than light spaceships, ditch the magic.” This puts a curious, interesting, and mildly terrifying spin on my summer story, since the idea is that there are no gimme points at all, but there are actually two, and one of them has to be suspended–but since certain characters know about one, and certain other characters know about the other, one has to be suspended with the characters’ knowledge. And the other one must therefore take double effect.
This could cause a LOT of trouble for my characters, especially in how big of a gimme has to go, and how badly that puts my characters at a disadvantage. On the other hand, I read a book once where vampires were aliens with faster than light spaceships AND magic, and it, um, wasn’t as bad as this sentence. I think I like forcing one of my gimme points to go will work more in my favor than putting them all together. The characters will hate it, but it will be good for them. Like veggies and booster shots. 8D
EDIT: I think I like forcing one of my gimme points to go. It will work more in my favor than putting them both together.
Still not caught up on sleep. Running out of coffee though.
Please elaborate when you mean by a ‘gimme.’ Or, if possible, point me to the article of Holly’s.
Thanks.
No new words but made some progress on day job income enhancement / replacement.
Hi Hanna!
A “gimme” is the one thing about which the audience will willingly suspend their disbelief. In a sci-fi, it’s usually warp/faster than light travel; in fantasy, you get that certain types of creatures exist like dragons or elves… In a romance, the gimme might be that the two main characters get together by the end. It’s just whatever your audience will accept without questioning.
…I found it!! http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/rules-for-better-fantasy.html Yay for search engines.
Last day of invigilating today, so that monkey is off my back!
Some progress tidying up my story – I have a couple of pages of miscellaneous notes and things I want to work in so I’ve been taking final decisions on whether to go with them and where to use them. Still a page or so left, though, and I didn’t get my couple of maps done that I wanted. I’ve got some other finalising work to do such as names, ages and spoken languages as well, so I’ll be getting stuck into all of that tomorrow…
In the coming scene, the heroes get the bad news (‘You have to chase A. princess to the most dangerous place off the maps and bring her back or our country’s going to be invaded. Clock’s ticking.’)
The heroine gets to quip a fair bit in this scene too. I love the hero and all but she’s cooler, and they have a nice balance going on – she’s tough, practical and witty, he’s gallant, exuberant and clutzily naive.
I’m really looking forward to the sea voyage: relationship angst, sweeping seascapes, and the uncomfortable combination of a squad of uptight knights and a warband of ferocious tribal beastmen being forced to sail with pirates.
Drink up, me hearties, it’s going to be a hell of a trip. Yo-ho!
Oh, did I mention the sea monsters? And I’m not going for the standard-issue kraken, either.
I’m a paleontology nut, after all.
And that sinking feeling you get is just the prow going over the crest of a twenty-foot wave…
…or is it??
I like boats. A lot. I like old sailing ships better.
*cue stupid ‘You are a pirate’ song* XD
Arrr, matey! It sounds like we’re jumping headfirst into quite an adventure with your 2nd book, Wandersnowhere! That’s cool!
Also, there’s probably a rule somewhere stating that you can’t have a sea voyage without cool sea monsters
We’re looking forward to your paleontologic abomination!
I want to go on this boat ride! It sounds like you have enough conflict and tension to put the Bounty mutaneers to shame!
Don Carnage has nothing on the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything!
Well, maybe he does; he’s the only one who gets to say “One! More! Time!” (…TaleSpin and VeggieTales, respectively)
No, really, I’m quite excited. I love sea stories. If you need places to look for reaserch, please e-mail me! I have a whole list…and then some.
Danzier, I may take you up on that. One of the big hurdles with Book II will be the amount of research necessary to make the voyage believable.
Especially since the heroine and the pirate captain are both experienced seafarers, so any amateurish mistakes on my part will reflect poorly on my characters, who should know better.
That’s how writing generally works, I’ve found.
You guys will love the sea monster. Obligatory or no its presence in the story is anything but random…
Wrapped up Erthel and Faurel’s “on the way to the estate” scene with 636 net words on monday 21st (actual words written were around 1000 though, since I ended up cutting a bit of stuff I decided was more fitting elsewhere). The scene brings them closer together, making Erthel actually open up and frikkin’ *speak* about what she’s going through. Which, knowing her and knowing what happened lately, is pretty amazing in its own right.
Also, we’re past the half of the book and we might be seeing a romantic subplot pretty soon – at least before the book ends, I hope XD
Jesus F’ing Christ! I just got good news for my storyline. The shuttles’ last missions are now delayed until at least Feb of 2011
“These two flights will be the last for the space shuttle fleet unless a plan to launch space shuttle Atlantis on a full-up supply run a year from now is approved,”
I am totally jazzed, fire is lit under my ass now. We are go for MIKO!
Yay! On both counts!
Got my tidying up of the miscellaneous plotting bits and bobs done. Decided to put mapping back a day as wasn’t feeling up for that and did some sentence, theme and title work, finalising the first two and choosing a working title for the work for the first time (on my second draft and nearly two years after I finished the first!). Tomorrow should be some last details on languages and my timeline and hopefully some maps!
I’ve hit my first roadblock of the summer. My friend, who came up with half the characters in PH2, stopped by and said, “I have this cool new story idea I want you to write!” And then he proceded to fill me in. Medieval medical story. Yeah, it’s ok. I could write 40k words on it. But I don’t *want* to. I have a bunch of other much more interesting stuff! Electromagnets! Kidnappers! Russian shock troops! Rant rant rant. Pout. Ok done with that.
Serious question, now. I can’t nail down what the big hard end-of-book climax is. Should I just start writing, and pin it down as I go? Should I keep on planning?
Nuu! Pout no good!
Cookie? Have a cookie. *hands cookie to you*
I remember your PH2 work started out as a shared project, but… I don’t think I could really enjoy writing without having complete control. Especially with a friend who tells me “you should write so and so”. I’ve worked on shared projects in the past, and I had fun, but it didn’t really work out. Just my two cents.
Regarding the book climax, it’s probably good to have a rough idea about how you want the book to end (silly example: the heroes achieve their goals but they have a big price to pay). Then, just write and figure out the details on the go. At least, that’s what I’d do.
Oh! I wanted to tell you that I’ve quoted you on my tumblr
Two cookies, two cents, and a quote! Is it my birthday??
I have a couple of things that need to be resolved at the climax, but it seems anticlimatic. (I don’t think I spelled that right…) I have a bunch of characters escape a jail just to get caught again. I have their friend, who’s going to die in 24 hours if he doesn’t get home, trying to rescue them. Home is under attack, so I have to resolve that. And for some reason the only thing I can think of is to have my dying main character buy his friends’ freedom. Because he has a suitcase full of diamonds. Gimmick city diamonds. But when I ditch them I have nothing to replace them with.
I’ve been griping quite a bit about having to expand my series from three books into more, but I am actually really enjoying writing the early books. They have a kind of lighter, more adventurous feel to them, because once the Big Bads show their face, things get doom-tastic and characters start dropping like flies.
Especially in the case of the ultimate villain, the walking apocalypse, whom we’ll call Mr. Nothing. I have a rule with him. Every time he encounters the heroes, someone dies.
Someone -important- dies.
If he wasn’t too stupidly powerful to let out at this early stage, I’d introduce him sooner, because he’s a LOT of fun to write, and his ideals are diametrically opposed to both the heroes and the other villain (either Snake Eyes or Red Coat, I won’t spoil which).
Nitpicky question: are you sure you’re not just trying to protect your characters from the super bad guy?
I know, that was evil of me (muh-ahahahah! Ehm), but it’s a possibility. At least, I know that’s what I’ve done for ages. I had this attitude of “it’s too soon for the characters to enter a fight with the baddies! Let’s observe them having lunch and talking about social customs, or having mostly unrelated adventures!”
It sounds like you’re putting together two very different underlying threads: the adventurous side, with the “minor” villains, and the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it side, with Mr. Nothing. If you still have a long way to go before he actively appears, watch out for signs of exhaustion (yours, I mean). If you start becoming frustrated that it’s not yet his time, or on the other hand if he starts to feel out of place in the series, so that you keep delaying and delaying his appearance… it’s a bad sign. I repeat my usual disclaimer of “just my two cents”, of course
Working on PoB taught me the magical way of “why not”. Every time I think it’s too soon for something cool/dramatic to happen in the book, I ask myself why it shouldn’t happen right away. If I can’t find a really, really good answer, I jump straight into it and make it happen! It’s really fun
Breaking out the rule of format, here. What if you write scenes where someone important dies, and put a header on them like “Ten years later” or something? If I’m sitting here reading about how Dick and Jane Save The Town, and in the next chapter it’s ten years later and Dick just got splattered for trying to save the southern hemosphere, I definitely want to know what happened in between! If you’re bored with the standard 1-2-3 timeline, you can mix it up. It doesn’t have to stay that way, but it might be fun to write that way.
That’s some cool idea, Danzier! :O
It IS a cool idea, though I’m not sure it fits with my story, it’d be a good one to write.
I’m not actually frustrated or dissatisfied with Mr. Nothing’s absence, I was just throwing him out there as a teaser as to where this story’s going to go
He has his time. There are good reasons other than protecting the heroes (and their planet) that he isn’t in the story yet. He’s essentially in hibernation until the other villain (who isn’t ‘minor’, he’s arguably nastier and more sadistic than Mr. Nothing, he’s just a lot less…final…and he has an almost opposite goal) accidentally wakes him up.
Although.
…Although.
ALTHOUGH.
Mr. Nothing has a profound connection to the heroes. He is (SPOILER) they are, only much much further along, and gone horribly wrong. My heroes are already beset by so many surreal dreams and visions that adding more might be a terrible idea, but having him even in his dormant state be aware of them and interact with them psychically might be an AWESOME way to pre-empt his explosive entry into the story.
Especially depending on how they interpret him before he shows up…
P.S
I have the advantage that neither Mr. Nothing nor the other villain want to kill the heroes.
I stole the idea of mixing up the timeline from Holly’s “Create a Plot Clinic,” although Dick and Jane aren’t in it. I’m not reviewing the clinic so I can’t directly quote her. But if you get the clinic (which is definitely worth it) check out pages 36 and 37 (when printed out; it’s more like 40 in the pdf.) If anyone wants to write “Dick and Jane Save Part of the World” feel free. (See Dick run. Run, Dick, run! Oh, oh. Poor Dick. Don’t look, Sally.)
I like that dream idea! Having a villain so heineous that he fights the heros through sheer existance is awesome.
To clarify, there are three major forces at work in my story (the Rule of Three is a BIG DEAL in this universe):
* The protagonists and the inhabitants of their world, who, while they rarely get along, ultimately share the goal of continued survival, and must protect the Central MacGuffin against all comers (including each other and themselves) to do so.
* The Demonic Invaders, the most constant evil threat, whose leader is charismatic and well-disguised. He is well aware that the heroes and Mr. Nothing outpower him, so he’s using the one power he has utter mastery of that they don’t – Machiavellian scheming.
* Mr. Nothing, who is calmly sitting the story out until the two sides maneuver themselves into the right spot, so he can swoop in and use the MacGuffin himself, to do something that will pretty much screw EVERYONE.
A major theme of this story is that, unlike traditional heroic fantasy where characters are following the destiny of the gods, or some prophecy or other, this quaint medieval world with its quaint medieval people has found itself as the lynchpin and centrepiece of a war of doomsday proportions between unimaginable cosmic forces… almost completely by accident. And they’re barely aware of it, or just how big it is, until it’s too late to get out of it.
And unlike traditional fantasy, where there’s some legend about the Dark Lord So and So and Holy Magic Sword Of the Gods and a prophecy about the Destined Chosen Ones…AND ALL OF IT IS TRUE WORD FOR WORD, in my world, the tales and myths and prophecies are about 80% exactly that – myth – but hold kernels of what really happened and is still happening that created all those cultures to tell all those stories in the first place.
Sometimes it almost feels like stealth sci-fi to me, because there’s little overtly-recognised magic, much of what happens is the result of various primordial beings who might be aliens, gods, or Lovecraftian entities screwing with each other at a level beyond normal folks’ comprehension, and the heroes are just caught up in the tide of it.
The big dance of the story is that most of this cosmic whatever happens well behind the scenes. -I- know it’s happening, but the reader doesn’t and doesn’t need to, because while they’re reading about the hero’s bad dreams about that horrible town his dad went to and came back raving mad before he died, or how a minor character goes apoplectic when she catches a glimpse of Snake Eyes because he’s a major figure of her culture’s mythology, what my readers are reading are the edges of the echoes of the ripples of the cosmic chess game of forty billion years ago that started the dominos falling toward the Here and Now of this story…
And unlike my previous failed drafts where I tried to vomit out all that cosmic backstory in the goddamned prologue (IDIOT), I finally understand that the Edges Of The Ripples are the important part, because they’re what touches the World, the Story, and most importantly the Characters I love.
Wow. That’s even more awesome.
I’m not a fan of the whole prophesy/fairy-tales-can-come-true bit either. It looks like you’ve got all that worked out quite well. Having just the edges of the ripples make it to your readers will have them straining their brains to figure out what’s going on…I can hear the “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” from here. Also the concept of stealth sci-fi (and stealth fantasy by extrapolation) looks like fun.
In PH2, there’s a story that the magic-less (N) culture tells about how there’s a hero who’s going to save them from the exploitation of the magic-wielding cultures. It’s my MC, who hears it from a W soldier, who only heard part of it, by accident while guarding a camp near a village, who retells it so unrecognizably that my hero never knows it’s him, and **never** meets the people he’s saving. He forgets the story in a week.
329 new words on tuesday 22nd.
I realized that going to the bloodline’s estate did not make much sense, since they only had to give some simple information to Erthel that Faurel could have given her instead in a couple of minutes, and I also couldn’t think of new conflicts or twists in that situation. So I just dropped that simple information in the previous scene and changed the setting, so Faurel and Erthel simply talked together where she lives. It makes much more sense now, also because it fits perfectly in the previous version of their conversation. Let’s say we’ve gone from “we have to talk about something important: let’s go to the estate” to “we have to talk about something important: here it is”. Onward!
At 48,843. Hard to keep track of what everyone’s doing here, in this “comment” format. Not very usable. BUT, at least it’s a place to post it.
I finished Ch9 today with 554 words this brings me to a total of almost 32K. I have CH 10 and part of CH 11 outlined and now I have been trying to write at night which usually doesn’t work out. As long as work is slow, I’ll keep writing at work.
You’re on a roll! Way to go!
Writing at work is fun! I used to work in a museum, and in the winter having five people a day was “busy day today.” The first part of my series, the handwritten part, I did at work. The security guards used to come ask me for updates because they were bored. I kind of miss those days…
Sounds like it was fun. For me I’m just sitting at my desk waiting for the axe to fall so may as well do something productive.
Tidying up languages done. Some backstories for main characters added to, but a little left to do tomorrow, along with a handful of maps. With a bit of luck, Friday will be one last read through of my worldbuilding for little bits to work into the rewrite starting Monday.
Before I began to work on one of my items to check off my bucket list, I remember meeting this old guy at a bar in Arizona that was a friend of a friend. We talked about writing and he happened to have his first book he wrote. He told me it was a fictional historical account of the old west. It sounded interesting, so I accepted a copy. The first thing I noticed was the low budget cover art, then that it was a thin book. As I read through, it became obvious that it was a dry autobiography of himself really boring. Well anyways to avoid everything but my own writing limitations does anyone have any advice or recommendations for editors, cover artist, book designer for me? Also now that I have reached the half way mark I’m starting to research on how do I publish. Do I self publish or try for a small publisher, I realize that even if your book is good it is a very low percentage to hit a home run like Holly. Heck I haven’t the slightest idea on how to approach a publisher or where to go.
I’d say follow Holly’s extensive advice (in her articles on the website or through the HTTS and HTRYN courses) as she’s the professional-who-has-been-there and knows what she’s talking about better than us unpublished-types.
But my perspective on it would be: don’t sell yourself short.
I don’t know what your story’s about, what market you’re aiming for, etc, but there’s certainly no harm in trying to aim high and score a good publishing deal. There might be a 2% chance of getting it but if you don’t try, then it’s a 0% chance.
Make a list of publishers you think would be interested in your book based on genre, what else they’ve put out, etc or publishers that YOU would like to see with their name on your book. Put your ideal publisher at the top and your least at the bottom, and then go down the list and send to each in turn until you find one that takes it. If nobody takes it, send it to everyone you can, or self-publish. (Or keep working on the book until it’s saleable.)
Note that this is just my (completely amateur) opinion, and Holly or another published author is a much, MUCH better person to ask.
Best of luck mate, and congrats on the word count and the shuttle mission!
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/faqs3.html
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/faqs2.html
Those are Holly’s essays on agents and publishing, respectively. Somewhere she’s got cover art and articles on that as well.
Writer’s Digest suggests getting the book “Writer’s Market (current year)” and that seems to be good advice, as I’ve seen it elsewhere too. It’s got contact information and useful stuff like what sort of books certain publishers publish and whether they’re accepting new books. A lot of people also reccommend getting an agent, which is harder than it sounds, but can get you in at publishers who are otherwise “closed”.
And the really really obvious advice: before doing either, finish the book and proofread it. STORY: In my museum job I ended up reading about three hundred books on the second world war, all of them related to airplanes. Except one, which was about submarines and was never proofread ever, not even run through a spell checker. The lines were mixed, doubled, and in some places randomly inserted. In one place a line was doubled, and the second line had three words spelled differently than the first line. I bought a copy of that one just to practice my line editing skills. It may have been the book’s only sale…I don’t really feel bad for that author, and I have no idea how he got that poor thing published or on our shelves. Anyway, the better quality you put in to start with, the more likely you are to have it sell.
Hi, Red Dot.
First, finish the book.
Second, figure out how the finished story differs from what you hoped it would be.
Third, revise the book to become the book you want to have written.
FOURTH, worry about marketing it. You can consider genres and possible markets now, but until you’ve finished the book and have discovered what you’ve written, you cannot hope to know where you’ll find the best place to sell it.
I got an idea for a better ending–yay!
It’s “Have the hero trade himself for his friends, then die in the evil bad scientist’s clutches, leaving the scientist with nothing and the hero’s friends long gone!”
Um, I don’t wanna do that. But it might be the only way. :S
KILL HIIMMMMM!!!!
Er.
That sounds like a really great Heroic Sacrifice, and if you feel you can get away with it and still give satisfying closure to the book rather than a downer ending, go ahead!
Just don’t resurrect him for a sequel. The Rezz-o-Matic only works for villains, and only in extremely small doses.
I disagree.
The best hero is the hero who lives to fight again after beating the villain.
Sacrificing your hero and letting evil win is rarely a satisfying ending.
410 words on wednesday 23rd.
I decided to move a couple of scenes I wrote in the first half of the book (those related to Erthel’s job, for anybody who remembers) here, after the big turning point, since I realized (a) they work much better here, and (b) they felt like an unnecessary, albeit short, break from the main issue where I originally put them.
So we’re moving now to that plotline: Mrs. Wilversen (for whom Erthel works) goes to visit her at home to talk about her work situation. If it seems weird, keep in mind that right now Erthel is recovering from a bad sickness (and also from a… spoilery thing) and cannot walk again yet.
So the needle poke is upcoming, then? Or is the the “You do not know your family history” part?
Yes, we’re there! First the evil needle poke, and then the “you don’t really know your mother” part
I see you’ve been paying attention, so here’s a cookie for you! *hands you a cookie*
Ch 10 has a go for launch, 275 words so far today. Going to lunch and come back and see if I can write more. Broke into 32K thanks Wanders for your advice. I find myself trying to do something on the side that might make money, boy writing a book is way harder than starting a technology company!
If only more people knew that…
Bit slow today. Back stories for main characters finished, but some world-building dragged on as I think I just need to expand a little on a couple of points and I got bogged down. Will tackle it fresh tomorrow and hopefully get the decisions made, then settle down with some crayons for a mapping session.
@ Danzier, way back up there before we ran out of Reply buttons: Cooool
I agree with you about ‘fate on rails’ – I read and enjoyed David Eddings’ Belgariad and Malloreon, but the theme of everything being predestined frustrated me. I LOVE the element of chaos, not knowing if the heroes are going to win or what they’re going to lose even if they do.
I like making destiny about as useful as my local wether man on the radio. He’s also on TV, and his weather reports go “As you can see here, we’ve got this coming in this direction, and we’ll likely see showers over this way around noon.” Isn’t it all prophetic of him!
Spoiler!
The fun in predestination is in flaunting it. There’s a fun one out there called Sir Apropos of Nothing (I can’t recall the author’s name, sorry) where everyone has prophesy on the brain and the MC decides “heck with it!” He gets yelled at by the hero a bunch of times–”You can’t do that! You’re not the hero, I am! I’m supposed to do that!”
@ Wandersnowhere: I’ll reply here since we ran out of space! It sounds like you have a very, VERY good reason for keeping Mr Nothing dormant, and a really cool one at that! Keep up the good work!
I really appreciated the bit about prophecy and predestination… too often these things are used just as gimmicks to make the reader stop asking questions when things don’t make any sense. For instance, the old “hero from another world” or “random son-of-a-peasant hero” clichè. The reasonable question would be: why should the world be saved by an ignorant, harmless stranger (or random peasant) – that of course would play the part of the reluctant “I’m a victim of fate! I did not choose this destiny! Oh, the suffering!” hero type -, instead of by a team of trained and motivated heroes? If anybody had a good, and I mean, GOOD answer I’d like to hear it. “It’s prophecy!” does not qualify as a good answer.
Also: legends, sometimes, are just that. Frikkin’ legends.
All I’ve done today is figure out gimmicky ways for my hero not to die. I’ve got at least ten ways for him not to die and a couple dozen workable resurrections. I like this guy; I don’t want him dead. But unless I write a totally different story, he’s toast. I suppose I could use the gimmick in a prologue if I ever write anything else with him in it. Or I could drop him from the story entirely. The narrow character list has fourteen important people on it, and nine of them I can’t ditch. But then I’d be rewriting the story anyway. So, time for me to get mean to my character.
Meanwhile, I also realized that the “friend” in PH2 is really just me, yelling at my character for 10 pages about how badly he sucks for not playing by my rules. When I get back to writing that one, I need to rewrite everything with the friend in it. Won’t that be fun.
And Holly, I read your Tip of the Day (the one about keeping your sense of humor), and giggled…You’re going to have to catch up with us, if we’re still playing by the WABWM rules
623 words on thursday 24th. Almost wrapped up the new scene with Mrs Wilversen being very kind (and a bit creepy).
It’s the 25th, 8:23 am and I have just now realized something that could throw all of my progress out the window: I’m not sure I should be writing this story in third person. Has anyone experienced this? You’re in the middle of writing your rough draft only to find things aren’t flowing exactly how you want them to and wonder if maybe you took the wrong approach? Should I just power through this or seriously step back and see if I need to revamp this thing? I really don’t want to. I want to keep going. I am not known for finishing what I start when it comes to WIPS. When shiney, new ideas come around I almost always take the bait. Or the idea dies a horrible death by other means. One way or another I have not EVER made it to revision, on of the most critical steps of all. And that is where my struggle lies. Because of this…should I just power through anyway? I could be wrong, or procrastinating, or making a big deal out of nothing. I don’t really know. I’m just really bugged by something right now. I seriously need some advice.
Word Count so far: 1800 words and counting!
Today has been one of those awesome days were the words are just pouring out of me. I’m pretty happy with myself right now. Especially since I know after a break I could probably write more.
Don’t let my word count for the day fool you either. I’ve just gone through a four day dry spell. I needed that word count to put me back on track. I don’t normally pull numbers like that.
887. Struggling with some re-writes (so the word counts get deducted and then added back in, so I think I actually wrote about 1800, +/-), and struggling with plotting the final crisis and resolution so I can ‘write to it.” At 49,653. Gaaahd, it’s like plodding through molasses now, not flowing at all. All work and discipline, not fun. {sigh}
49,877. I feel like I’m going backwards. 2 hours, 150 lousy words.
I don’t know if there’s some secret insider knowledge about where we’re supposed to post these things; everyone else seems to have lemminged over to “I remember writing,” but since this is for me, I guess I’ll just keep posting here.
Doesn’t matter anyway, as after several setbacks, I’m just chucking it. First, I find out on Tuesday that someone else–a not unknown author–wrote a book that’s not only similar in title, but exceedingly similar in plotline, at least in synopsis. No way I could ever submit my 50K+ as it’s intended to be finished without someone in the biz (agent, publisher) thinking it was plagiarism, even though I think that the plot details are dissimilar. Then, just when I thought, after 48 hours, that I’d come up with a way to ensure that it’s adequately differentiated, while describing a (previously-written) scene to my sister, she piped up “Oh, I know that one! It’s EXACTLY the same as the scene in Working Girl!”
So, screw it. 3 months, 50K words…what a waste of time.
I’m crying for you and your story. That’s a terrible thing to have happen! Please don’t let it end your writing career. You can still do this if writing is what you really want to do.
I’m thinking about whether to just trash it all–delete the files and the backups and start from scratch–or give it up entirely. I’m not normally a quitter; my self-discipline is pretty sturdy. But these events have just gutted me, particularly the thing with my sister, who seems to delight in interrupting me every time I’m discussing some plot element to tell me how it’s “just like this” or “just like that” or “right out of Movie X.” Or that it’s like Pride and Prejudice (yeah, because there’s a romance story that ISN’T.)
And I’m no plagiarist, and I’m very careful about NOT duplicating what’s come before. It’s just…freaking me out. Maybe I *do* suck at this?
Thx for writing.
No, you don’t. Being a sister myself, I have an idea of where your sister’s coming from. I’d say one of two things: either she’s trying to discourage you and make you feel lousy and give up writing so she can be the writer in the family, or she’s trying to encourage you by comparing your work to other successful works and doesn’t realize that it’s tearing you apart.
If you are as careful as you say you are, then your story *is* original, and you’re not plagarizing. Since I haven’t read your story, I’ll suggest checking Holly’s site for the essay on stealing ideas, just to be sure. It’s a fun read, anyway. You might also look for the test for whether to burn the story. The caption on that one is “Burn it, bury it, let it live” and it’s very helpful in times of writing stress.
Oh, and one more thing: If your sister really is trying to encourage you, then take a look at the things she’s comparing your work to and find the differences. Then take them to her and say, “I appreciate your insight (girls love compliments). It does seem kind of similar, but I’m doing (this part) differently; what do you think?” If it were me, you’d probably pull half a plot or two useable bits out of a conversation that starts that way.
That would be: No, you *don’t* suck at this.
And don’t throw away the files. Six years from now you’ll have other stuff in the works and remember the perfect sentence, and possibly the whole scene from what you have now, and you’ll go looking for it, and if you can’t find it it will drive you crazy. I know. The original beginning of AJCTA (my real actual main book) would have been lost for good if I hadn’t checked all my floppy disks before formatting them to use in my camera. I wrote it 9 years ago and I haven’t come up with a better intro for the bad guys since then. It was lost once before, found by accident on the hard drive of a university computer where it wasn’t supposed to be, and I’m lucky to still have it. It’s the same with camping gear: if you have it you won’t need it, and if you don’t have it, you will.
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