Tag Archives: Writing

Morning Pages

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Since I have some extra time in the mornings and I really should do more writing not just editing the novel, I thought I’d get back into the habit of morning pages. Also this is an excuse to post here every day. I warn you, no sense may be had.

I needed a coffee cup for Job of Irony. This is a green company, which is fancy talk for more trashcans with no idea what goes in which and we’ll charge you for cups, flatware, plates and bowls. Supposedly this is also a healthly company, but I can’t use those benefits yet. Except the vending machines which say they only stock healthy snacks. However, the nutrional value of the Snickers and Twix stocked in them don’t really fall into the realm of a “healthy snack”.

So I used to have a nice tea travel mug but some how all the parts are gone making it useless. Since I already have a humungo Camel water bottle, I wanted something smaller. Travel chopsticks and Hello Kitty travel flatware aside, I wanted something pretty.

Speaking of which, those ceramic tea and coffee travel mugs look beautiful! But really, how long do those even last? How do you not break them or die from the wieght of carrying those around?

I found this nice mug at Starbucks. It is small, only 8 oz. The lid fits well, and doesn’t do anything wierd like spout or well the coffee that misses your mouth back into the cup. But the bonus is that it is decorated by a rainbow scratch paper that you scratch your self. So I put stars, dragons and a creepy bear fox thing that stares at you from the corner. That way no one will steal it. (Or that’s what I tell myself).

ooo! I got my old bluetooth keyboard to work with my phone. It’s handy for just writing, like I am now. Not so much for the editng but at least that’s still happing. I officially hate the words come, just and look. Sucky stupid line edits.

I’ve put Manali and Memorial pages away long enough that I better get to editing them so I can send them out. That won’t take nearly so long but I’m afraid that Manali may grow to 10,000 words. Then what?

Okay, time for Job of Irony.

How to Write Comic Books by Peter David

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I love Peter David. His sense of humor and writing style was a dear friend during my high school years in form of Star Trek books. I have enjoyed his comics and his novels.

So when I saw this book I had to pick it up.

How to write for comic books is one of the most interesting writing books I’ve picked up. His basic advice on characters, plot, and writing are priceless and filled with interesting ancedotes about writing for Marvel. The book goes into detail on who to write for the major comic publishers, format, and selling your work as well.

For the general writer, his essays on creating characters are excellent. He shows you how to give a character depth and then provides examples from major comic characters such the Hulk. The examples are priceless and for this reason alone I’d recommend this book to any writer.

For those of you wanting to write for comics, this is a must read. David gives examples for full creators as well as collaborators and valuable industry information.

I Finished a Novel

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On Friday, I finished line edits on my novel and I set it out to be read one more time. I’m pretty confident it will be one more time. A person could come back and tell me it makes no sense at all or my characters all suck. That could happen, but I don’t think it will. Okay, I really hope it won’t.

So now, it’s synopsis and query writing time. And more active market research. Oh my.

The Nighttime Novelist by Joseph Bates

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I picked up this book hoping for some inspirational stories about writing a novel when you have time. I didn’t get that. This is a book teaching plot, character and writing structure. That’s fine but I have a million of these. Only the last chapter deals with writing when you have time and is mostly a list of cliches you can find in a Google search.

The book is really for a beginning writer. If you don’t know story structure this may be a good resource for you.

Creating Religion

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The current book I’m working on deals with the religion in the world I’ve built. Creating a religion for a fantasy is a doubled edged as uni-climate planets and universal languages. Most authors force the entire world to believe the same.

First, I settled on a one religion with many regional parts. There are countries who as a whole do not subscribe to the belief and others that take parts more serious than others. Some of this is regional and some governmental.

The first step is to ask what do these people worship and why. What do they provide? What does the infrastructure provide and why?

In a fantasy world, magic tends to interfere with religion. Whether it is part of the religion, despised by the religion or just separate comes into play. I choose to have the magic interweave with the religion, which poses its own set of problems.

How much is for the people? What isn’t for the people?

In this book, I’m using religion as a haven. The main character wants to part of it but her duties are keeping her from it. It’s about agreeing to lose something for the greater good and what drives you to that.

Every swear, ritual and myth that I work into the story goes into the file. I’m not sure it’s clear all the way through. What pertains to the story and what is relevant back-story is a puzzle that I’m trying to fit into the plot.

Belief is a tricky thing.

CPGO – Step 6: Scene by Scene

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We’re down to the meat, the scene by scene outline. The structure I use for this is inherent in yWriter, but let’s talk about scenes first.

A scene is a moment in the story defined by a time and place. BiaM and You Can Write a Novel both adhere to the ten scene model. That is, action packed movies and books have ten or less major scene. Neither of them are talking about fantasy. A lot of writers I know look at the ten scene theory and freak. However, this, like other things involved in novel writing, is only a suggestion. Me? I go through and lay out the scenes without counting them.

Exercise: Do the Scene Shuffle.
If you’re having trouble figuring out which scenes go where then this might help. Write out the descriptions of each scene you know is going to be in your novel on index cards or in a software package that allows you to reorder cards or scenes. yWriter does this but sometimes I like things a little free form. My current writing computer is a touch screen with Windows 7 installed. So I use Windows stickies on the cork board. This way I have card like in real life without needing the space of the cards. Most novel writing packages have this ability and a lot of people use mind mapping software to organize. Do whatever works for you.

After I know what order my scenes are in, I create the number of chapters in yWriter I think I need. This is based off the Setting Sketch step. Currently I think I need nine chapters. Then I go to chapter one. I ignore chapter descriptions until I’m finished with the last revision. Instead, I create a scene in chapter one. I open that, give it a date, fill out the scene description, associate characters, locations and items. Finally, I fill out the Goal, Conflict and Outcome tab. I used to ignore that but I’ve found filling that out gives me a better perspective on the scene.

I do this for each scene in each chapter till I’m satisfied. I copy the date and the scene description in my timeline Excel file. I might find I need more scenes and chapters than I think I do.

This is about it. I have an outline. Used to do more rehashing of the plot sketch but stopped exactly because it was a rehash.

The next step is writing the novel. I’ll be back when I start revising Without Honor.

CPGO – Step 5: Plot Sketch

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I’ve said good-bye to BiaM and You Can Write a Novel. Smith’s book will be back when I get to the revision stage. BiaM has a little influence in what’s coming next and will have a say when I get to scenes. Then that is it. BiaM encourages outlining while writing for the rest of the book.

Step 5 is the Plot Sketch. The setting sketch was a list of settings in order of appearance with a description of the story at this place, the time period, season and about how many chapters I think it will take to write out the descriptions (which I’m usually wrong about but hey, it’s a starting place).

Now I have this snapshot of a plot, it is time to answer some questions about the plot. I create a new note called Plot Sketch in yWriter.

FDi30D called the Plot Sketch the list of the elements of the story. In all the books, the elements of the story come up. These are the Hero’s Journey, and Story in 3 Acts, Action/Reaction, Quest, Mini Climax, Black Moment, Climax, Denouement and combinations of all of these. The Plot Sketch asks questions about all of these things.

I really like Alicia Rasley’s article, Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes. Here’s a list of questions and answering them gives you a better picture of your plot. So first thing first, I answer her questions about Between Kingdoms. This covers the main character’s motivation and goals. Once I have that down I fill out FDi30D Plot Sketch.

The Plot Sketch starts with the goal and has you identify romance, subplots, conflict, resolution, downtime, black moment and resolution. I now have character motivations and an overview of the plot.

BiaM has two sheets similar to this, the Story Idea Map and the VBIAM Plot Check Sheet. I find the Story Idea Map redundant at this point. The Plot Check Sheet is sectioned off by things that happen in the story and who is there and does it advance the plot. I might come back to this for the revision but for now, I just put it aside.

Next we get down to the meaty part of the operation, scenes.

Writing Ideas – You Don’t Have to Pick Just One

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Mums

I’ve always wanted to write, but I have so many ideas I can’t decide which one to write.

I hear this excuse daily. On writing forums, mailing lists, in person, on social media and in my email. They want to know how to start writing. How to choose the idea.

The answer is all of them.

If your goal is to write then you have to write. It’s not about writing once and not every writing again. Oh yes NaNoWriMo is about just that for a lot of people. And that’s fine. This is not for you.

Take all of your ideas and write them down. Stick them in separate folders.

Pick one up and write. Finish. Repeat.

You need to have a lot of ideas in order to keep writing. One idea isn’t going to get you anywhere. In fact, if you only have one idea and refuse to quit until it is executed perfectly according to your dream, then you will fail. You fall into the trap of contamination and you end up gibbering in the woods somewhere with your only companion a puppet with a KFC bucket on its head.

If too many ideas are keeping you from writing, ask yourself, do I really want to write? Really? Maybe you don’t want to be a writer after all.

This is how life works; you will make time for anything that’s important to you. And all those things you wish you had time for? Not important at all.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Thoughts

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NaNoWriMo ML So we have three days till NaNoWriMo begins. I have an outline and my idea is going to be fun. This is my 7th year as an ML and my 9th doing NaNo. I have three wins in all that time, but a lot of material.

This year I have an outline and a manuscript to finish on top of NaNo. Plus daily writing deadlines. It’s a large task but I have a schedule.

NaNo: 2,000 – 5,000 words
Work
Other Novel: 1,000 words
Outline
Video Games
Knitting

Insane right? Oh well we’ll see how it all goes.