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Absent

20 Mar

Oh boy, I’ve been neglecting you, poor readers!

Work, New Jobs & Stuff

Honestly, I’ve been so swamped with finding new work and getting my business running that I’ve completely pushed aside my writing life.

*sighs*

Lately, when I come home from work, I’ve noticed that it’s almost impossible for me to get into the mood to write or edit.  As such, I’ve determined if I’m going to keep at this novel thing, I have to get up extra early and do my writing then.  In the afternoon/evening I find myself naturally wanting to work on stuff related to my business.

So yeah, early morning novel stuff–that’s definitely gonna take discipline…lol.

Inspiration

What actually prompted me to remember all of this was the fact that I just finished playing the new Tomb Raider reboot last night.  Some of you know I’m a fan of Lara Croft, as well other archaeological and tomb-raiding characters such as Indiana Jones and Evelyn from The Mummy series.  I love globe-trotting adventures that are connected to mysteries of historical significance.  This very same spirit runs through my novel, Element 7–in its own fantastical “secondary world” way, of course. ;)

For reasons I can’t explain, few things make me say “stop the world–all else is on hold!” like a new Tomb Raider game would–and that’s Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and new episodes of “The Legend of Korra.”

Silly, but true.

Anyway…the new Tomb Raider game was pretty darn awesome, imo.  And even though it’s set on one island rather than in multiple locations like the old games (or the ones I played, anyway), it’s still epic in its own way.  As you can imagine, after finishing the game I was reminded of my own adventure story, which has gone neglected for too long now…

A Struggle

This editing/writing stuff has always been a constant struggle for me, but now it’s only going to get tougher.  I’m basically going to be working three jobs in the upcoming weeks–one with my current part-time retail position, another part-time job as a contractor for a lady who runs an estate sales business, and then my own business.  So, as you an imagine, squeezing in writing time is not gonna be easy.  (Of course, not playing video games might help. ;) Though, everyone needs a little downtime and a way to replenish their imaginations.)

So why am I doing aaaaall of this?

Because I haven’t been able to find something in my field full-time.

The good news is that the estate sales lady wants to draw in more business so that she can have a full-time team and offer better pay–which means I could eventually drop the retail job and focus on the other one while doing my own design stuff on the side (as most interior designers and decorators do these days, I’ve learned).

It might all work out; it might not.  At this point, though, I’m willing to try just about anything!

Carry On

I don’t know how much blogging I’ll get to do nowadays, but I’ll be sure to keep you folks posted.  I’ve got a lot on my plate, but Element 7 is always on the back of my mind and I’m not gonna abandon it yet after all this time.

As it always has, it will take time to finish the job, but by golly I will finish it!

Addendum: oh yeah!  By the way, I came across this cool new blog called The Archaeology of Tomb Raider, if anyone is interested. :D

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Epic Emotions, Heroes & Parallels – Writing From The Heart

5 Dec

I have to be honest… I’ve felt a tremendous need for introspection over the past week or so on things that have nothing to do with my writing–probably because I’m going through a lot of changes.  Though, don’t worry, I’ll spare you most of the details.

One thing I do want to say is this: one way some of my most recent experiences are actually related to my writing, however, is that suddenly I feel more connected to my characters–particularly my heroine.

I remember when I was working on the last couple of scenes in Element 7 during my heavy edits, I felt really emotional about them because, in a way, I was going through some of the same things that my MC (main character) was: heart-break, confusion, disappointment…

Those are very potent, less-than-desirable experiences.  Though, perhaps going through these things will only help to make my writing that much more potent.

2012 has been a very dark year for me, actually (and most will never understand just how dark it truly was for me).  And really, it’s only been in the last couple of months that I’ve felt those dark clouds start to roll away.  The future–my future–doesn’t look quite as…well, bleak as it once did before.  I’d lost any sense of purpose in my life, but lately I’ve seemed to find some…

The Drifter, by Jack Vettriano.

The Drifter, by Jack Vettriano.

A Call to Action

I’m sure many writers know that there’s a moment in every epic “Hero’s Journey” story known as the Call to Action (or Adventure).  (This is relevant because Element 7 is, essentially, an nontraditional hero’s journey, folks!)  Typically, this Call occurs closer to the beginning of a story, but…I’m working on a trilogy, and I think my novel actually has two Calls to Action–one near the beginning, and one right at the end.

Why?

Well, there’s got to be something to look forward to in the sequel…right?  (‘Course, gotta leave readers hanging a bit, as well. ;) )

Anyway, the reason I’m even bringing this up is because right now I feel like I am facing my own Call to Action (with starting my own interior design business and whatnot)…and, to be honest, it’s a pretty darn scary place to be.  If I chicken out, then I won’t have a “story” to live out and tell to others; if I answer the call…

…Well, I’ll kinda have to change.

Fact is I can’t continue to be the person I currently am if I want to get to where I want to go in life.  I have to move even more out of my comfort zone than I’ve been doing lately.

Baby steps are great, for a while, but sometimes you just have to take a huge freakin’ leap if you want to get to The Next Level.

You know what I’m sayin’?

Personal (Ironic) Parallels Between Fiction & Reality

So when I first started formulating the basic ideas behind Element 7, I was 19.

I’m 24 now.  (Yes, that means it’s been over 5 years since I started working on this thing!)

Ironically, my main character, Voi, is also 24, so I’m just now catching up to her, lol.  Also, ironically, Voi once made the decision to run her own business at a young age.  She’s a bit ahead of me, in some ways, and lately I haven’t just been looking at her as a hero so much as my hero.

Yes, that’s right–I actually look up to a fictional character.

You see, Voi is a lot more outgoing than I am.  She’s not afraid to do something crazy–like drop out of college to pursue her love of flight and become a stunt flyer then later an entrepreneur.  She’s not afraid to make mistakes–or rather, she doesn’t let fear stop her from making them.  Also, she’s a bit of a pioneer.

Most entrepreneurs are, methinks.

The point is I kinda admire that about her, and it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to relate to her so utterly directly.

It’s kinda neat.

So, as I sit here churning out my last edits before beta reading, I feel that I’m at a special point in my life where I can stop writing/editing from the notes and outdated plans and whatnot and just simply write from the heart.

Hmm…yeah, so no prompt this time!

Like I said, I’ve kind of been in an introspective mood, so I don’t really have a prompt for you readers like I usually do at the end, heh.  However, if you have any comments, do feel free to share! :D

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On Planning & Writing A Trilogy (Or Series)

19 Sep

Some of you probably already know that I’m a pantser; in other words, I don’t really like to plan my writing!

Well, I take that back.

I do like having a little bit of a plan, but it’s so sparse that most probably wouldn’t even consider it “a plan.”  It’s more like this: “I want [insert big event] to happen in [insert cool locale], where the characters then find/achieve [insert objective]!”  Then I just figure out the rest from there.  And I think this only has a chance at working because it is a quest/adventure series; it’s “mission-driven fiction,” essentially.

Not plot-driven, exactly, ’cause I still focus on characters along the way, but in terms of planning I think of the story in terms of missions…if that makes sense.

So yeah.  That seriously has been my plan for an Element 7 trilogy, in a nutshell.  (“What?  A trilogy, you say?”  Yes, dear readers, you read that right.  Though, I should have probably already mentioned that on my E7 page…heh.)

Planning A Trilogy

Why a trilogy, you may ask.

All right.  Well, I have this thing with numbers, in case you haven’t noticed, particularly the numbers 7 and 3–kinda similar to Dan Brown’s obsession with symbols, though maybe to a slightly lesser degree.  3 is just neat and tidy, in my mind.  I also like to use Platonic Solids in my novel (one in particular, for now, until later books…but we won’t get into that right now.)

So I’ve read only a little about how authors like J. K. Rowling went about their work.  Apparently she took around five years to plan the Harry Potter series before writing it, though I can’t recall reading the specifics about how she did this.  (It’s probably out there; I just haven’t had time to look it up, lol.)  Though, honestly, there isn’t really a lot of advice out there for folks who do want to write a trilogy or series (not in comparison to other writing topics, anyways).  Most times it seems writers are actually discouraged from doing so–at least when they are working on their first novel.

Apparently it’s too “cliché,” when you’re writing fantasy…

As for me, “planning” out a trilogy has kinda just naturally been happening while working on this first novel–like I’ll be in the middle of a scene and think to myself, “Hey, that would make for a totally cool thing to explore in Book II/III!”  And then I just plant the seeds, make a note to water them later and roll with it.  (I’ve actually got probably half of Book II planned out by specific scenes I’ve already written or summarized in my journals, with a few ideas for the other half and Book III still subconsciously cooking in my messed-up head.)

But really, all I’m doing is using that basic formula I mentioned at the beginning three times and designing each end objective so that they tie into one another, leading to the final objective in the last novel, while also figuring out the interconnecting threads (those “ah-ha!” moments) along the way.

I bet some people wonder why it would possibly take 5+ years to plan out a bunch of books, but now I’m pretty sure I understand why…

There Are Just SO Many Little Details That Have Got to Work Together!

Especially when you’re writing secondary world fantasy.  Every piece of invented information that’s in that bad-boy-of-a-series is coming from your brain.  It’s like this giant sprawling 50,000-piece puzzle of your own personal design; everything’s gotta fit together.  And when you do sit down to try and put this puzzle together, it typically doesn’t happen overnight.  Plus, you gotta hand craft all those pieces before that can even happen–nope, none of that computer-aided/die cut business.  So you can’t just toss in stuff willy-nilly because you think it’s oh-so-cool (learned that the long, hard way, lol); everything has got to have a reason for being in the novels–or else you have to work backwards and find a gorram reason for all the dangling stuff to matter.

Harder to do, imo, but doable.

When I first started learning how to write a novel my mind just couldn’t even begin to grasp this concept.  ”Whaddya mean I can’t just throw in what I want and expect it to work? Bah!  Watch me…”  And y’know how that turned out…

Lots and lots of experimental drafts that went nowhere.

But that’s okay! ’cause I eventually figured out how to make all that cool stuff I originally wanted to shoehorn into the same story actually work together–haha! (Or at least I think I have…lol.)  Plus, I learned oodles, like…

The Importance of Foreshadowing

…which, I think, is extremely important when you’re planning and writing a trilogy.  Foreshadowed details provide rhythm and continuity and are like the threads that bind the novels in a series together–along with recurring themes, characters, settings and/or ideas, which all help to create a sense of unity and cohesiveness.  (Sorry, I’m using those pesky Principles of Art/Design again…but you’ll find them everywhere that good art or designs reside.  Writers and literary critics just tend to use different terminology for them, I think.)

You know how excited you get when you pick up Part II of a book, game or movie series and learn that some of your favorite characters are back?  Or the telltale hint, or sometimes outright slap, of a promise that “hey, there’s more yet to come”?  For me, that’s part of the excitement of reading/watching/playing a series; it’s also one of the reasons I want to write one.  (That, and getting to my favorite “candy bar scenes.”)

…Because I just love the characters so darn much.  And the world.  They’re just people (and places) I’d like to come back to again, to experience their adventures through their eyes.

‘Cause trust me, if I didn’t love them I wouldn’t even still be working on this project, haha.  (5.75 years is a looooong tiiiiime to be attached to the hip with the same old ideas…)

So how do you plan for a trilogy/series?

Or maybe you’ve never worked on one before; that’s cool.  You’ve probably read at least one, though, right?  What kind of things do you like about series?  What do you wish authors who write series did a better job of?

I know one of the reasons I started writing was because of my own “fantasy novel pet peeves;” I thought hey, why do writers keep doing this and that?  Let’s write a story that does it different!

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Update!

5 Sep

Hi, everyone.

I’m not dead, I assure you!  In fact, I’ve actually been getting some editing done, lol.

Last week, since I was (finally) approaching the 75% mark, I figured out how many words a day I’d have to edit in order to finish by the end of the year (about 500).  Then I realized I still have to do another sweep for line edits and stylistic decisions, so I tacked on an extra 100 words per day.  By that rate I’ll be done with heavy edits by Nov. 21.

And since my mother has recently challenged me to finish my current round of editing by Thanksgiving…well, that works out quite nicely. :D

Editing has been a bit of a mind game for me.  I’ve tried a lot of different ways to be consistent–because the fact is I haven’t been very consistent, lol.  I tried setting higher goals but then felt super guilty when I couldn’t meet it.  Then I wouldn’t get any work done for days…  Though, with the lower word count goal (paltry as it feels to me…) I know I’m able to do it every day, and even if I do miss a day I can divvy it up (or double up) and add it to my goals for the next days so it isn’t so overwhelming.

Seems to be working all right.

In any case, I plan to beat the turkey to the table!

How are you folks doing out there?

I know I haven’t really been commenting much lately–or blogging, for that matter!–though I do still read people’s blogs.  I’ve been researching what it’ll take to start my own business (still struggling with this whole career thing…) so I guess my attention has been elsewhere. *sighs*

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A Tribute To Poison Ivy: Best Villainess Ever!

18 Jul

So The Dark Knight Rises will be out soon (totally psyched!), and it got me thinking about some old school Batman–namely the animated TV series.

I should explain that I was never a comic book person, you see.  It just wasn’t part of my “growing up” experience.  More recently I’ve bought some, but it’s still a pretty rare occurrence.  So essentially, everything I do know about Batman has come from the animated series that used to air (on WB, if I’m not mistaken).

Anyway, for some reason I’ve also been thinking about villains lately.  When it comes to the more recent Christopher Nolan movies the Joker inevitably comes to mind…for reasons I hope I need not explain!  (Another one of my favorite villains is the Operative from Serenity.  He was very intelligent and a skilled martial artist but also very unconventional–I mean the combination of his sword, the inflicted paralysis upon his opponents and the archaic fall-on-said-sword ritual in a futuristic sci-fi setting was just mind-blowingly awesome, imo.)  When I think back to the TV show, however, the villain that most stood out to me was actually…

Poison Ivy

Why her, you may ask?  Um, well let’s see… She’s:

  1. beautiful
  2. graceful
  3. seductive
  4. hard to resist (we won’t mention those *ehem* noxious toxins…)
  5. has this weird but completely awesome obsession with plants & the mad ability to control them (she’d fit in nicely with the world of Element 7, actually)

…BUT…once you get past all those things, she is still pretty evil–the only reason Batman was able to resist, imo.  (I always thought they should get together, but t’was not meant to be.)

Le sigh.

I love her so much that she has been somewhat of an inspiration for one of my characters–you know, that traitorous double agent I’ve written once or twice about.  (She’s reported dead but still an important part of the story.)

Anyway, you should totally check out this 2min. YouTube video featuring Poison Ivy and relive the wicked glory that was she.

Who are some of your favorite villains/villainesses?

How come?

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Back On The Saddle…Sorta

6 Jun

…So to speak.

But First–Some Wicked-Cool Inspiration

‘K, am I the only one wiggin’ out about how completely awesome the new Avatar show has been so far?  The battles are epic, the foes are worthy, and the (element) bending…

In-credible!

The music is also gooooooorgeous.  And epic.  And as much as I love it, I also secretly envy it because it has most of the traits I want my WIP to have.

[Insert Witty Title Here]

When I’m watching & listening to the soundtrack for “The Legend of Korra” (LoK) TV series, I can’t help but think of Element 7.  It shares similar themes with LoK and, now that the show is mostly set in a 1920s/30s Shanghai-kinda city, also a few similar aesthetics here and there.  Seeing this show done so well actually makes me feel bad about neglecting my own work–because ultimately I want to see it also at its absolute best and for others to see it, too.

I want it to be epic, I want it to be lovely and, most of all, I want it to be darn good.

Not that it means it’ll sell to traditional publishers even if it were all of these things…but it’s what I’ve always aspired to.  And sometimes that can be overwhelming.

Back On The Saddle…Sorta

After the Accident, I wasn’t doing any editing for about two weeks.  Though, over the past few days I have been able to get something done, so I guess it’s a start.  I need to do it every day, though, to get it done this summer (before my birthday in mid-August would be nice).  Recently I came up against another tricky scene in which I was unsure how to describe certain technology being used, so I had to go back and do some research–which slows things down.

You see, sometimes I seriously wonder how I’ll pull off certain scenes, lol.  I get like, “AH! OMG, too hard!” *runs-n-hides* I hadn’t run into a scene like that for a while…  Anyway, I think I’ve smoothed over that hitch now, so hopefully it’ll be easier to find a regular rhythm (and some confidence in what I’m doing) again.

Though actually, when I look back at what I have spiffed up, I’m really happy with about 90-ish percent of it–like giddily happy.  It’s just getting the rest of the manuscript to that point that’s so gosh-darn difficult.

Grrrrr…

A Thought

One good thing I can say about working on a story for this long, though, is that it allows you to think about it over time in many different ways…in layers.  All the dead time in between is an opportunity to see something you wouldn’t have otherwise, to make connections you previously overlooked and weave a tighter, more resonant and cohesive narrative… In other words, it allows you to really flesh things out and explore things deeply.

I’m a pretty meditative, analytical kind of person, so I like being able to do this.  Though, I’m also a bit of a perfectionist–which could end up being my Achilles’ heel if I don’t finish this thing at all.

Anyways…hopefully–if I get my act together, lol–I’ll be able to share this beast-of-a story with my first readers in a couple of months and they’ll understand exactly what I’ve been up to all this time.

*sighs* Yeah…that would be nice.

In the meantime, I’ll stop talking about it, heh.

So What Do You All Think?

Go ahead, be brutal.  After all, I probably don’t know where you live. ;)

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Wordle, Childhood Wonders & More!

11 Apr

Hey, all!  I hope everyone had a good Easter Sunday. :)

‘K, so to be honest…I really don’t have much to say this week.  Like nothing is coming to me. -__- I feel like my brain is everywhere and nowhere all at once.

How is that possible?

‘K, I Got Something…

I think. <_<

Speculative Fiction Novel = Literary Mishmash of Childhood Wonders

Have you ever worked on a project where you felt like you pretty much just dumped everything that ever fascinated you when you were younger into one big story?

I kinda feel that way about Element 7.

The other day I was reflecting on the things I’ve chosen to put into this story and I wondered to myself, “Why?”  I hadn’t realized before just how many individual elements I’d decided to mix together.  It kinda boggles the mind.  Check out the word soup, yeah?

 

I just made a Wordle ’cause it was fun, lol.

Anyway, I think all this stuff actually ended up in the same story because, well, they’re all things that have fascinated me growing up.  So let’s just hope it all works out in the end, heh.

What kind of “cool” things do you have in your current writing project?

And “cool”, of course, is entirely subjective to your own personal definition.  I don’t expect everyone to agree that Platonic Solids are cool, though I certainly think they are!

I kinda think of these things as the little candies or treats that keep me writing/editing/whatevs; they’re a real pleasure to indulge in every now and then.  And what better way to indulge in the fascinations of life than to write, or better yet speculate, about them?

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Subtlety, Progress & More Mass Effect Stuff

28 Mar

‘K, this post is just gonna be a jumble of things.  Thought I’d warn you now, heh.

Subtlety

A couple of days ago I went to see The Hunger Games in theaters (and it’s really wonderful, btw), and fellow writer Jay Noel and I got to talkin’ on Facebook about whether we thought the movie or the book was better.  We have different opinions, though my primary reason for liking the movie best was a matter of personal taste, I think.

I thought the novel itself lacked subtlety.  Everything was made so obvious that I didn’t really have to use inference at all.  And maybe it’s because it’s a YA novel, idk, but I like having a mixture of things you have to figure out for yourself and outright explanations.  Personally.

Anyway, this got me thinking about subtlety in fiction and the challenge of achieving it.  Soon enough I was on Google seeing what other writers had to say about it.  I came across two really good articles that were more or less saying the same things, just differently, though they were both insightful, imo.  I think the one explains things more in-depth, but the other is good, too.

Check ‘em out, if you’re interested.

Progress

Hey!  I’m actually making some progress on editing!  (I change the color of the progress bar some whenever I advance a percentage point or more, hehe.)

It’s been hard getting back into some kind of rhythm after all that’s happened, but excuses aren’t going to get things done.  (Sometimes I feel like I need permission to work on this thing, as it currently does not bring in any income.  Maybe that’s silly, but it can be hard internally justifying a time-consuming effort when you have no guarantee whether its fruits will be lucrative.)

Anyway, my goal is to sift through a minimum of 500 words every day until the end of June.  (Might sound like very little, but I’m not just making quick fixes this round.)  After that, I should be ready to start sending chapters for critique out to first readers–yay!  Maybe I get done before then, but in any case that’s gonna be my mandatory deadline.  We’ll see how that goes.  (So far I’ve been doing considerably more than my daily goal, so I’m off to a good start, at least.)

More Mass Effect Stuff (SPOILERS!)

Last time when I talked about playing Mass Effect 3 a couple of folks requested I do a “spoiler-y post” on my interpretation of the game’s ending.

I give in.

My thoughts aren’t just my own, however.  When I finished the game I knew something felt “off”, but I didn’t realize that this could have potentially been Bioware’s intent all along.  And, after considering other people’s theories and thinking in retrospect…I had to come to the conclusion that maybe the writers at Bioware are just incredibly clever folks (and not the sloppy plotters so many fans are making them out to be).

As I said once, the ending felt really strange and eerie to me, like what was happening wasn’t the “real” ending.  Then I watched a few videos like this one and thought, “Whoa…that explains almost everything!”  Perhaps there was a reason I felt so out-of-sorts at the end; perhaps I, the outside player, was experiencing a simulation of the in-story phenomenon of Reaper indoctrination (brief 87-second video).

I have to tell you, this theory changed the entire way I looked at the game.  It truly blew my mind.  The fact that I had no idea what was going on at the end of the game and, according to this theory, quite literally fell into the trap of the Reapers (by tossing myself into the energy beam that would bring about the Synthesis of organic and synthetic life) is just brilliant; it’s also sad.  If I were actually Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect universe, I would have voluntarily doomed the galaxy to Reaper control.

And I didn’t even see it coming.

Now I’m kind of determined to replay the game and make the theorized “best” choice at the end, the one that has mattered all along: destroying the Reapers.  Still, I enjoyed my original gaming experience with my “guinea pig” character Genevieve Shepard, whom I’ve used on my first play-throughs for all the ME games.  In any case, I do think Bioware should release free content with some real answers. :P  (I suppose I get why they might hold back answers for a while, though.  It does encourage a lot more discussion and theorizing.)

In the end, I guess it’s still possible that all the available endings are failures, depending on how you interpret them, but I guess us fans will just have to wait and see.

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Consistency

18 Jan

Consistency is remembering to account for the fact that your heroine is still trudging around in snow when you mentioned back in chapter such-n-such that it is, in fact, snowing.  (Though I grew up in a snowy state, it’s easy to forget details like this when you’ve spent the past 16 years of your life in a snow-less desert.)

Consistency is fixing that reference to your characters being able to make out the expressions on each other’s faces when only 500 words earlier you said the light switch wasn’t working in the room.

Consistency is making sure you spell a name the same way twice, thrice, four times…seven times…a hundred times–even after halfway through the story you’ve decided to change it.

Consistency is continuously imposing your decision to have characters with special abilities display certain physical effects (emit a certain odor, a change in eye color, whatevs)…every time there’s a new scene in which they use their powers.

…

Consistency is a devil, and the devil is in the details, as they say.

But Don’t Overdo It

One of the challenges I’m facing with my story revolves around the constant rendering of my characters’ defining traits and gradual changes…without sounding like a broken record.

Good characterization is tough.  I read a lot of reviews on other author’s works and characterization is one of those things that the author is either lauded for (“I loved such-n-such’s character!  He’s so real!”) or criticized for (“How many times does he need to say ‘bloody’?”).  Too much of one thing and people are all over it; too little and your characters run the risk of being cardboard.  It’s partly an issue of balance that has to be sorted out while editing; there’s no way you can keep track of the frequency of little characterizations when you have to focus on first getting the entire story down on the page.  (I can’t, anyway.)

A lot of the fixes I’ve been making lately on the first half of my edits (remember the scary stack of notes I was talking about before?) are mostly consistency checks.  It’s like I have to do one sweep for fixing plot issues, another for consistency with smaller details and then eventually another round for line edits.  This whole project has been a big experiment in discovering my own writing process and learning what does and doesn’t work.  (One thing that doesn’t work is trying to do line edits on your first sweep; don’t even waste your time with stylistic changes until everything else is solid.)

So yeah.  Though it took me longer than it should have, I’m just about done with integrating the suggested changes noted in The Stack.  Now I can focus on editing the remaining 100K words of the novel without said Stack piling higher and glaring at me.

*grumbles things*

In any case, I’ve really got to get back to a regular rhythm of editing ’cause I still got a lot of work ahead of me.  And folks, this is the year to finish Element 7 and start querying agents–well, after hitting up my beta readers.  Though I’m sure I’ve got plenty left to learn, I’m feeling confident enough in my writing now to know that it’s nearing time to start putting myself out there.  It’s only been five years in the making, but hey, no one learns to write a novel overnight.

What are your thoughts on consistency and characterization?

Also, how goes those writing projects?

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Tone & Emotion

2 Nov

Last week I’d intended on rushing enthusiastically into the second half of my edits, and then I realized, after staring at the same section for way too long, that this just wasn’t gonna happen.  My brain, apparently, didn’t want to be an editor; it wanted a different kind of stimulation.  So despite my intentions, I took a week-ish break from actively editing the story and just thought about some things.

I kind of feel like I need to do this at least for every 50K words or so that I go through because that’s a lot to focus on continuously when you’re making changes beyond line edits.  Stepping back every so often to see the big picture helps to keep things in perspective.

So as I was looking back at the changes I’d made so far, I noticed something about the tone I’ve been using: at the beginning I tried to keep things very light and whimsical, but then by the halfway point it’d become considerably more matter-of-fact and blunt.  (And I think I didn’t notice this until now because it happened so gradually.)  Suddenly things are really serious–a fact which has made it increasingly more difficult for me to edit and rewrite certain areas.

Tone & Emotion

I don’t really like to write serious stuff; deep down I prefer to be silly, to be honest, so if I’m required to write something serious it takes more effort than writing something that is more lighthearted.  Emotionally, it takes a toll on me because I strongly empathize with everything I put my characters through.  (I imagine this isn’t too uncommon with writers, though.  Especially women.  I was reading one author’s blog one day and she talked a bit about how sometimes she needs a break from writing from a certain character’s perspective; she finds it depressing, just due to the nature of the character.  So she’s now experimenting more with changing POVs.)

I wasn’t sure why this happened at first, the change in tone, but then I thought more about it and realized it’s actually a reflection of what’s happening in the story, of what the protagonist is going through: the story’s tone matches the reshaping of her worldview.  For some reason I was kind of disturbed by this realization, actually.  I mean, do I want to have her views influenced, and in what way?  (I’m sounding like an overprotective mother or something now.)  This can’t really be helped, of course, ’cause people’s views are influenced all the time when they step beyond what they know, but I can control how the protagonist reacts to those influences.

In any case, this is really making me consider my ending again to ensure it gives off the right message for the established story and character progression.  I recall fellow blogger and writer Mark Andrew Edwards musing about something similar not long ago, on consciously thinking about the messages being communicated in one’s story.  (I don’t necessarily think a story’s ending has to be uplifting and entirely likable, but it should be intentional–or rather unexpected yet inevitable, as they say.)

Ultimately, this project has not just been a huge learning experience but also a meditative one.  Writing stories isn’t just about putting words on the page and getting ideas across to readers; it’s also about engaging them–mentally and, even, emotionally.  Personally I feel I get more out of storytelling experiences when they accomplish all of these things, and sometimes I feel gypped when they don’t.  Though, it really depends on the kind of story, as well.  For most adult literature, however, those are my expectations, so I hope to meet them with this project in the end.

Do you find it easier to write in certain kinds of tones more than others?

If so, which ones, and why?

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