Lightcross, Shadowcross

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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Comments

29 responses to “Lightcross, Shadowcross”

  1. George from Greece Avatar
    George from Greece

    Hi dear Lisa and all,
    I am a writer albeit for film from Greece developing a screenplay with the working title WHY EVIL.
    Can I join you? As I see there is no signing up so here I go.
    The manuscript as of today consists of 7790 words. I will let you know about it’s progress.
    If I do something anything wrong please contact me at GeoMoiras (at) gmail (dot) com

  2. Lisa R Avatar
    Lisa R

    1,523 words for my synopsis. Wow, that was not an easy task.

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      Synopses never are. Ugh. Congrats on finishing yours.

  3. Deb1789 Avatar
    Deb1789

    586 words. . .

    What I got seemed like a good Idea before I wrote it, but now I’m thinking that it might not be. . . My MC let out some viciousness that I’m not sure I like, and that I’m not sure is useful to the story.
    Well, I’ll let it sit. If it’s really useless I can kill it in revision, right?

    1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
      The Pencil Neck

      You ONLY want to kill things in revision. Let it sit and move on. 🙂

      1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
        The Pencil Neck

        I’m tired and I think that might have come across wrong. Holly usually suggests that you get through the first draft by getting everything out and not going back and revising anything while you’re doing it. You wrote this, let it stay, and move on. When you get to the revision process, if it’s wrong, it won’t last.

        1. Holly Avatar
          Holly

          That sums it up. I ended up not using all of Lightcross, Shadowcross that I wrote last week, but it’s sitting in a separate file with its own index card, pulled off to one side in case I discover there’s something in those words I want to pull back in.

          I didn’t edit or revise anything—I just moved something that my gut told me was a wrong direction out of the way. It’ll be there when I revert to the left-brain logic mode of editing, where I’ll be able to re-incorporate it if I discover the story needs it.

  4. Kait Nolan Avatar

    Oh right. I don’t think I remembered to stop by and say that I FINISHED THE NOVELLA! Was home sick with a stomach bug. Finished it on day one, did first pass revisions/clean up on day two. It’s off to my CP now for first serious critique, so I’m reading.

    1. Greg Avatar
      Greg

      Congrats 🙂

    2. The Pencil Neck Avatar
      The Pencil Neck

      Rock on!

    3. DasteRoad Avatar

      Thumbs up, Kait! And remember to update us on any news 😀

  5. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    KavI: 1033
    D&DII: 882
    RFW: 1264
    The motivation deserted me a bit today, so was glad to get the words…

  6. Deb1789 Avatar
    Deb1789

    634 Words.

    I think I realized something about my MC and myself today, something my MC still has but I lost. . .
    It’s this inner Knight Errant, this desire to fix wrongs. I remember having it, but I think at some point it slipped away from me. . . And I realized my MC is on the brink of losing it herself. And now the entire book makes a new and different kind of sense to me.

  7. Elmi Avatar
    Elmi

    I’m jumping in with writing my book along with you. I was really looking forward to starting HTTS this year but since it’s mid-2010 I decided to do something else until then. Now I’m attending a course here locally with a friend, and part of the submission is a 10-page short story which is my current project (“book”). Except, I can’t seem to keep the story within those 10 pages! I think in novel-length thoughts and conflicts (just look at this comment for example!). So I’m working on my 10 page story for the next 2 weeks, and when I check in it will most likely be a case of “I wrote a 100 words today, then revised it a 100 times until only 20 remained”… 🙂

    1. Gabby Avatar
      Gabby

      Good luck! What about polishing your opening “Hook” chapter til it shines? That might be really worth it and you could get some good feedback on it from the class…

    2. Deb1789 Avatar
      Deb1789

      I have the same trouble with short stories, they tend to explode on me, lol. Like Gabby said you might try using the first chapter or so of a WIP. I did that once for a school project and it worked very nicely. 🙂

  8. Khena Avatar
    Khena

    I’ve been MIA for a few days/weeks… but I do stop by and read this. For the most part, I just wanted to say that I have really loved the last three newsletters Holly.

    Other than that, I’ve been taking a few days to read through lesson 7 a few times and dread starting it. But I think it’s time to plow through the endless horror that awaits me and write a little flash fiction when I need a small break =-)

  9. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    KavI: 1033
    D&DII: 787
    RFW: 1236
    and another 3k of OFL revision. I’m actually getting ahead of myself on that, which is useful, as KavI is coming to its end and I’ll need to start revising that.

  10. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    The gods are against me.

    Sadly, I find that hilarious, because I’m writing about… well, gods.

    Still no more words written on that one. It’s sitting in the back of my mind, gaining new rules, characters, and other fun stuff as time goes on. I’m thinking I’ll sit down sometime around midnight and see what I come up with.

    In other news, the muse has decided that it’s been too long since I wrote fanfiction. She sat me down, had me write almost 1k words, then left me halfway through the story. *headdesk*

    I’m going to see if I can get to 1.5k by tomorrow, but somehow I doubt I’ll get anything done. I haven’t been able to really concentrate on anything all day. (Which is probably really obvious from how disjointed this is.)

  11. Larkk Avatar
    Larkk

    Just when I thought I had embraced the concept of “any and all words are good words-(in first draft)” along come yesterday’s 526 seemingly pointless words and I wonder, “Really? ANY words are better than no words?!”
    Arrgh.
    Tonight, I will write for myself, no plotting, no promises, just… fly.

    Oh, and the reading assignment for HTRYN sounds awesome-can’t wait to start that. (But not so excited about the cringing part.)

    1. Gabby Avatar
      Gabby

      Sometimes I just have to rewrite it too. Every so often it takes me 2 or 3 times to get the scene going in the direction I wanted and it actually ends up being worth it. I know it’s really important to just get words down but sometimes they’re just so completely wrong. I kind of go with… did this move the story forward? did it move it in the direction I want it to go? If I can’t answer yes to either one, I go back and start over. I just can’t help it. LOL.

  12. DasteRoad Avatar

    485 words on wednesday.

    I surprised myself again with this little scene. My key twist was that due to some news Faurel started seeing Erthel differently, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with this, since his change of mind would’ve been shown anyway through his different behavior in the following scenes. Instead, while I was in Faurel’s mind, I understood that his change of mind was born from the fact that for the first time he was putting himself at her same level… and this suggested him a way to help her.

    1. DasteRoad Avatar

      758 words on thursday.

      This rocks. This is still rough, and I’ll surely edit it in revision as soon as my worldbuilding settles down, but… still. This rocks.

      This is another big twist, where the importance of blood, the entire novel’s keypoint, plays a terrifying role. Erthel tells Faurel the details of her experience with the prayer… and those details suddenly “click” together, revealing something no one of them expected. Something pretty huge. Onward!

      1. DasteRoad Avatar

        Only 169 words on Friday, since there was a bit of an unpredictable mess at the Evil Day Job that robbed me of my usual little writing time during lunch break. But still, a few words is always better than no words, isn’t it?

        In the light of the revelation following her prayer, Erthel faces some rather dark doubts about her mother and the whole story behind her birth.

  13. Gabby Avatar
    Gabby

    Holly, that sounds like a really cool development (I’m really liking the cop character).

  14. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    KavI: 1031
    D&DII: 799
    RFW: 1293
    …and a couple more k on OFL revision. Nearly a quarter of the way through that.

  15. The Pencil Neck Avatar
    The Pencil Neck

    Well, I was doing good until I read that your cringing for me.

    869 words.

    The Sergeant watches as The Lieutenant (The Princess in disguise) is used as a human shield by a bunch of slaves. The slaves run to the docks with the Lieutenant and her captor folllowing slowly behind. By the time they get to the docks, there’s one ship that’s got an open hold and the captor takes the Lieutenant on to that one. The Sergeant laughs because it’s an Imperial Corvette with military personnel on board. In a few minutes, the Lieutenant walks out with a bunch of slaves, wobbly and uncoordinated, handcuffed and chained together. The Lieutenant hands them off to the Sergeant and orders him and his detail to take them back for processing. She’s got to talk to the Imperial Captain. Then she goes back in… (POV SHIFT) and now she’s the Princess again and she’s split her forces and augmented them with the crew of her first ship (who had been taken as slaves and that’s why she’s here, to free them). She’s prepping both her ship and the Imperial Corvette for departure.

    1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
      The Pencil Neck

      214 words on 1/28.
      386 words on 1/29.

      Scene 1: The Sergeant took his group of slaves back to the slave pens but he found out that they weren’t slaves. They were crew from the Imperial corvette.

      Scene 2: An Imperial freighter captain is lounging around with his engineer on the bridge when he gets a communication from an Imperial corvette who’s escorting a merchant ship. She’s happy to have the corvette act as escort for her, too.

      Last night, for the first night in maybe 7-8 months, I played a computer game that wasn’t Solitaire or Minesweeper or Luminosity. I also watched a little TV and really had given up on writing. But around 1:30am, I figured I might as well get a few. 🙂

      1. The Pencil Neck Avatar
        The Pencil Neck

        962 words.

        Scene 1: The captain, who was happy to have an escort, isn’t as happy when that escort tells her to open her shuttle bay to take on boarders. And then finds out that the Imperial Corvette isn’t crewed by Imperials at all.

        Scene 2: Back at the pirate station, The Princess sells the freighter but refuses to auction off the crew to slavery or give up the military hardware that was the cargo. The Ship-buyer deduces that the Princess is an idealist and involved in some war and offers to put the Princess in contact with the Queen’s Men. Which takes the Princess by surprise. She didn’t realize her mother was still alive.

        Worked on HTRYN and resurrected my WordPress account. But didn’t get as much writing as I had planned.

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