Thursday, June 27, 2013

What's Up Wednesday? Not Much

Well I'm late, but that's okay. I honestly don't have much to say. I've been very productive this week, but I'm still working with the note cards. I'm almost done outlining the 70,000+ words I have so far and I've come up with 12 new scenes to be inserted into those 70K words. I'm rough guesstimating (that's an actual word?) that those 12 scenes will get me about 16,000 more words. This story is definitely going to be 90K, if not 100K, words long. *passes out* That's a lot of words.

So, yeah, I'm still plugging away. I'd really like to have this whole story plotted out and begin working on the real first draft by the end of July. It would be kind of nice to have the first draft finished and resting by November so that I can do NaNoWriMo this year. But we'll see. My writing plans and deadlines almost never work out. :)

And of course, before I go, I'll share some more Chuck Wendig gold. If you're not following his blog already then you need to fix that. 50 RANTYPANTS SNIDBITS OF RANDOM WRITING & STORYTELLING ADVICE  My favorites are #1, 3, 6, 10, 14, 16, 34, 45, 49 & 50. So, like, all of them. :D


Wednesday, June 19, 2013

WUW: Organic Outlining

Outlining my story onto note cards is going really well. I'm coming up with new scenes, filling in plot holes, finding and fixing little inconsistencies, and diving deeper into my characters. I'm anxious to get back to actual writing and have a complete first draft.

While doing all of this I think I've come up with a term for my writing process. I'm an Organic Outliner. I come up with a story idea and then I'll start writing it. That goes for a while until I realize how shallow and weak the story is. Then I'll stop and do some world building and outlining until I'm ready to go back to writing. This spurt of writing goes longer, but it too will eventually grind to a halt and that's when I get out the note cards and break the story down scene by scene. Once I have all the scenes plotted out, I rearrange them and modify them and make sure everything flows well. Then I can get down to actually writing a first draft.

So, see, there's a lot of outlining and planning involved, but I can't really get to know my story, it's characters and the world until I'm writing it. So many awesome things have come up while writing that I could have never thought of while outlining. Most of it is character stuff. I don't get to know them until I have to write as them.

And once that first draft is complete, with Once Upon A Time..... Awesomely Cool Stuff Happens... The End, then I can start the editing process. But we'll save that for another post, *coughbecauseI'mnotreallysurehowthatworksyetcough*.

In the mean time, I have some stuff to share. :)

People like using parentheses in their titles don't they?

Anyway, where do you fall in the outlining vs. pantsing debate? Leave a comment down below and let's have a conversation!

Happy Wednesday!

Snoopy is wise, listen to him.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

WUW: Glorified Outlines

You said it Snoopy!


Just the other night I passed 70,000 total words on this first draft of Moon Dragons. But let's be honest here people, this isn't a first draft, it's a glorified outline that I spat out onto the screen. There are soooo many missing bits. Scenes I skipped so I could get to the more "exciting" bits and such. And then, my brain is not happy with a simple plot line told from the point of view of a single character, no! It wants to know what this character is doing over here and it wants to go take a peek at the bad guys over there. And don't even get me started on sub plots. I know they're there, waiting for me to trip over them.

*big deep breaths*

So, here's my plan, I've done this before and it worked pretty well. I'm going to stop where I am and go back to the beginning and do a more formal outline of my story. Find the scenes that I'm missing and write everything out so that I know what the heck I'm doing for my ending.

I've realized over the past couple of days that I've begun to meander in my story and I kind of lost my direction. I know where the end destination is, kind of, it's all kind of foggy. So I figure that if I go back and re-chart my course, maybe explore a few paths I ignored before, I'll have a better idea of how this all ends up.

And so, as it stands right now, I have a 70,000 word, glorified outline that I'm stuck on. Once I get a few more scenes figured out, maybe I can get to the real business of writing this thing.

Do you ever get like this when you write? Have to stop in the middle somewhere and go back to figure out where you were trying to go to begin with? Or do you just press forward and damn the consequences?

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

WUW: Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Right?

Writing has been slow lately. The words just haven't wanted to come out unless they were just right. It's been very annoying. I just stare at the screen waiting for better words  to come. I know where I want the scene to go and what happens I'm just at a loss for words. But, so far, I think it's going pretty well.

I'm now up to 68,050 words and I can feel the ending in my bones. I'm not totally clear on what that ending is, but it will come to me. I have a few vague idea floating around but nothing is solid yet. It's tough, sometimes I feel like I could end this thing in just a few more chapters but then I worry that won't be enough to wrap things up.

Also, I'm being distracted by ideas and random little scenes for my other project. It keeps quietly jumping up and down in the back of my brain like a kid who really needs to go to the bathroom but is too afraid to interrupt the teacher to ask. I am getting to the point where I really want to just finish Moon Dragons and put it down for it's waiting period so can tinker with yet another version of White Crow.

I pray that the Writing Gods will bestow on me more focus on a single project and more time to write. Amen! :)

And now, here is a bit of something I wrote this week.

He didn’t see the hand flying at him or realize what had happened until he was laying on his back looking through the stars in his eyes to see the blank ceiling. He tasted blood in his mouth and had to turn his head to spit out two teeth. Blinking hard to clear the spots from his vision, he tried not to moan as the throbbing in his face set in.

The Eyon came around beside him and lifted the chair upright with one hand. He came around in front of Alvin, placed his hands on the arm rests and leaned his face close to Alvin’s. “This will only get worse little Human, if you don’t cooperate. Now tell me what I want to know.”

Alvin shook his head. “I don’t know the answers. I don’t know anything. I just do what I’m told.”

“Lies,” the Eyon said as he stood up straight. “We might not have been able to understand what you were saying during the battle, but I recognize a commanding voice when I hear one. You were the one giving the orders.”

Alvin shrugged. Every movement made his head pound. “That doesn’t mean my superiors told me what was really going on. I just do what I’m told.”

The Eyon shook his head. “I don’t believe you. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll get the information I need one way or another. In the meantime,” he said as he began to walk out the door. “I’ll leave these two here with you to teach you about being polite to your host.” He nodded to the two broad guards that had dragged Alvin from his cell to this room.

Alvin raised his head and glared at all three of them.

The Eyon chuckled. “Human’s got spirit. Remove it from him.”

The guards nodded with wide grins on their faces and stepped into the room. The door closed behind their leader.


And now for some writing things I'd like to share. :)

  1. This is a great article I discovered about challenging the roles of women in stories. It's a truth versus what we are being told is the truth sort of thing. Give it a read. 
  2. Felicia Day has created a new channel on YouTube called Geek & Sundry Vlogs. And on there is a vlogger who talks about writing. She gives weekly writing challenges and the like. So if you're looking for more ways to be creative, check it out here. And check out the other vloggers as well, it's all very geeky. 
  3. I'm a girl and most of my main characters are girls, but I do have boy characters and this article has helped me figure out better ways to write men and make them more realistic. 

That's it for now, friends! So tell me, how's your writing week been going?