What Is A First Draft? I’ve added it to pages for new folks to find. It’s important. Please take a few minutes to read it.
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From the category archives:
ON SPEC
First, a note. The Write A Book With Me entries are going to be going to the TalysMana weblog after this entry. If you’re playing or following Write A Book With Me, be sure to bookmark the TalysMana weblog now.
Pocket Full Of Words will be going back to the essays, commentary on writing, and other things that I previously had here which have been neglected lately.
For tonight, though…
What Kind Of Day Has It Been
Tonight, Kettan discovered exactly what went wrong in Rengarde. Her actions in the What Is had consequences she didn’t predict…but she hasn’t yet discovered why. That’s tomorrow.
Got 843 words.
If you’re playing, how are your words coming?
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Yesterday Becky posted her first rough concept sketch for what the Fendle Warrior’s Heart would look like. I meant to come in here last night and post the link, but after writing 4000+ words of lesson, I was just too fried.
Today, though, I wanted to let you know her sketch is up. It’s SO much cooler than anything I was imagining.
And she’s open to comments at this point in the design process, too.
INCIDENTALLY…
I’m going to have a little contest for folks who are reading TalysMana. Becky and I are still working out the details on her end, but from my end, one reader is going to get to be in the book. (Probably to end up dying in some dramatic way…but still.)
If you’ve been dying to die heroically in a novel, make sure you’re signed up to receive the TalysMana chapters. Only story readers will be eligible for the contest, and details will be going out in one of the TalysMana e-mails soon.
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Since ecto ate my post TWICE now, I’m going to keep this short.
Got a spiffy cliffhanger for TalysMana tonight, wrapped the scene, posted it, and some folks may even receive it yet tonight. Most of you who are up to date will get the latest installment on Friday. For everyone else, it’ll be along in due time.
Will Grey (now playing the part previously played by Bill Hawthorne) is paying off for me. He came through for me tonight, he’s showing me more of who he is, and I like him.
And Kettan made me laugh.
I got some subtle tension into the scene, too. That’s where I’ll be picking up when I start in tomorrow night…with the little thing that went wrong.
If you’re playing WABWM, I hope your story is coming along for you.
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I focused on character development in TalysMana tonight, since I was actually giving Will Grey his first real time onstage.
Kettan ended up with a few good moments, too. I’m still not to the big bang for the scene, when Will finds out what Kettan’s been up to.
But he’s going to be smart getting there…and that part of the scene, which I’ll hit tomorrow night, will be a lot of fun.
It’s important to keep asking yourself, “Why would he do that?” about any character while you’re writing him. Your characters with make a lot more sense to the reader and your story if you keep that one question in mind every time you get ready to have a character do something. Saved Kettan from a moment of deep stupitude by asking that just before she was ready to answer a question Will asked her.
For tonight, I got 517 words I like. I’ll take that.
Am a couple thousand words now into Lesson 13 of How To Revise Your Novel. Am dealing with all the issues of revising and tracking conflict that come up as you’re in the process of hacking your first draft to pieces.
This is one of those area’s that can be tricky to work through, and require a lot of effort to get right.
I want to make sure I cover all the possible problems AND the solutions.
It’s an interesting writing night.
How are your words coming?
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I threw out 364 words I wrote last week, and wrote 738 new words on TalysMana tonight.
The clue I got while posting my last TalysMana post last week, where I suddenly realized that the story would be more interesting if Bill were present when the next big thing happened, led me to toss everything I’d done on Lightcross, Shadowcross, and redo it.
It paid off. I actually like what I got on the scene—and writing it filled out a couple of neat details of Bill’s personality that made him a smart protagonist, and fit in with who I’d already said he is. And added some good conflict.
Tomorrow I have to see what Kettan does with the situation. But I’m excited to write that.
How are your words coming along?
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Got 364 words on TalysMana tonight. I’m back in Kettan’s point of view, and she’s with Bill (the detective from the Broward County Sheriff’s Department), and in a couple of minutes she’s going to have to figure out a way to politely shoo him out of her apartment, because…well, that’s tomorrow night.
Tonight, though, she was simply wrapping up her sketch of her Kendles under his admiring gaze.
And I find myself wondering…what if she didn’t shoo Bill out of her place? What if he was there when the next big thing happened?
That might be cool. Something to think about for tomorrow.
Finished up Lesson 12 of How To Revise Your Novel . By the time I got to the end of it, I was cringing for my students. I had forgotten how huge the character revision process is. It’s amazing how much of the whole process disappears once you’ve internalized it to the point that it’s second nature. Writing out the steps, I once again remembered what life was like before I internalized the steps.
Ouch.
It was a good writing day.
How about you?
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Well, on the bright side, I got 3700 hard-fought words on Lesson 12 of HTRYN.
On the dark side, I’m too freakin’ fried to do any fiction.
So.
How are your words coming along?
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Writing fiction went pretty well tonight. I got 601 words, and wrapped up the scene Interlude: Spinning Back the Reel.
Got it posted, so if you’re that far along in the story, it could show up in your mailbox as early as tonight.
I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with it. I think there’s more I could do… but I kept to the rules of the world as I have them right now, which includes denizens of Story not being able to cross the Gray, or from one Story world into another, unless led by a Spinner. And Spinners not being able to rewrite their worlds from within Story.
Like the separation of Church and State, those two requirements are necessary for limiting the magic in Talysmana, and also like them, they do limit a lot of really over-the-top power plays (which are cool in fiction and suck like a Hoover in real life).
I don’t see myself changing the rules in the revision. I do hope I’ll figure out a way to show a bit more of the magic and wonder of what just happened.
Now, though, on to Lesson 12 in How to Revise Your Novel, and Keeper Characters.
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421 words on TalysMana tonight—it was another interlude chapter, this one taking me into Kettan’s world after she returned to the What Is to make her talysmana to protect her Fendles.
Tonight I got as far as showing what happened to them after she left. I have not yet gotten to the point of showing what happens when she works out the idea for the talysmana. That comes next, and I’m looking forward to it. Tonight, the writing was grim.
Elsewhere, it’s been a zoo. I’m still coughing up junk and tired all the time. I remembered income tax stuff in time (barely) to get the info for the 1099s I have to send out to my accountant. It was pretty cool this year to have a handful of affiliates who made enough money that they NEEDED 1099s. There would have been a lot more, but many of my affiliates are outside the US, and don’t have to report their earnings in this country.
We’re looking for new digs, which is about the least fun thing ever—but rent is high, and our current neighborhood isn’t great. Somewhat better than the place that had the crime scene tape a couple buildings down from the building we thought we wanted into, though. Amazing how much less attractive “Police Line, Do Not Cross, Crime Scene” makes a neighborhood.
And I’m doing the HTRYN course. So I was AWOL from the writing diary for a lot of last week.
Hoping this week will be better, but I’m remembering that every January is a zoo. So I’m not holding my breath.
How’s your writing coming along?
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