So I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks, since my life at school has gotten really... unfortunately weird. A few weeks ago my roommate and closest friend on campus decided to leave school for mental health reasons. She was my companion in this adventure and her absence has been really hard to get used to, especially since we had no warning of this decision, and only two days afterward to pack up the room and say goodbye.
To make matters even more ridiculously hard I was just diagnosed with mononucleosis the other day. Basically this means that everyone expects me to be pretty much bedridden for a while, and I'm really really tired and feel like something is rotting inside me.
But this experience made me think of something I don't think I've treated very well in writing. Loss, especially of another person or relationship, can be a debilitating thing to go through. In Elle's journey she goes through multiple kinds of loss, be it losing her old life outside of the castle and her friends, losing her reputation, and even the death of a friend.
Everyone deals with loss differently; whether it be immersing themselves in work and being productive (a habit that I very much wish was mine), or lying in bed for days in sadness, or even going out of their way to avoid anything that would remind them of their loss. It's these differences and reactions to hardship, especially hardship regarding interactions with others, that show a character's inner self. A person's true character can be seen in times of hardship.
As for myself, I will be dealing with this hardship by spending a lot more time in bed with hot beverages and good bread and working on my nanowrimo attempt this year.
Happy Halloween and First of November, everyone.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Real Villains
Recently I submitted my prologue to my writing club to have it workshopped, and I learned a few things.
First of all, that the writing is older and more immature than I'd thought. But hopefully they didn't judge me terribly for that.
The majority of the comments, however, were focused on one character that is briefly introduced in the prologue and later becomes very important, and is in many ways an antagonist. I've been thinking now how to flesh him out more in the prologue and what else it takes to make a proper, realistic villain.
My favorite villains have always been those I could sympathize with. I think it's a mark of great writing to be able to get writers to feel torn, especially when in regards to a villain. To have my heart broken between hating and loving a villain is one of the greatest pleasures I have experienced in a story.
A trend I've noticed recently is that there are two types of villains: outrageous, evil creatures who have little or nothing in common with the protagonist, and whose motives are sometimes otherworldly; and more human characters, who started off as or seem as regular people, though corrupted.
The absurdly "other" villains can be fun to write; they can be exaggerated, outlandish, and completely crazy. However they seem to lend themselves to lazy writing. When a creature is just simply evil, there is not moral struggle or doubt when it comes to the quest to defeat them. There are many villains that seem otherworldly that work just fine, but I prefer to write the other kind.
The relatable villain is more of a challenge; you have to pay close attention to where they came from and their motives and everything they say to achieve that balance between making a reader hate them and feel sympathy. Most of my villains come from the same stock as the other characters, and become corrupted through their lives.
In my prologue someone dies-in one of those slow painful ways with the family by the bedside, and I introduced this character then to show how they would deal with that kind of emotional situation. It's subtle differences in priorities and views of justice that make my villains what they are, and open the opportunity for protagonists to question who is really in the right. To me a more realistic world is one where the line between villain and hero are a little blurred- where you can see clearly how the villain is the hero in their own story- because that's how it is in real life.
There's one villain in my story that I have done a bad job in developing, I now realize. The character that appears in the prologue doesn't come into play until after the events of the first book and its war. However the main villain of the first book remains nameless and faceless until the very end- and I am thinking that I should give them a voice earlier on and make them less sympathetic, because I've given them possible too-valiant a cause and too short a time in scenes. Villains need also to be hated.
I recently wrote more on villains and how I see other people treating them on my tumblr, at wilsathethief.tumblr.com
First of all, that the writing is older and more immature than I'd thought. But hopefully they didn't judge me terribly for that.
The majority of the comments, however, were focused on one character that is briefly introduced in the prologue and later becomes very important, and is in many ways an antagonist. I've been thinking now how to flesh him out more in the prologue and what else it takes to make a proper, realistic villain.
My favorite villains have always been those I could sympathize with. I think it's a mark of great writing to be able to get writers to feel torn, especially when in regards to a villain. To have my heart broken between hating and loving a villain is one of the greatest pleasures I have experienced in a story.
A trend I've noticed recently is that there are two types of villains: outrageous, evil creatures who have little or nothing in common with the protagonist, and whose motives are sometimes otherworldly; and more human characters, who started off as or seem as regular people, though corrupted.
The absurdly "other" villains can be fun to write; they can be exaggerated, outlandish, and completely crazy. However they seem to lend themselves to lazy writing. When a creature is just simply evil, there is not moral struggle or doubt when it comes to the quest to defeat them. There are many villains that seem otherworldly that work just fine, but I prefer to write the other kind.
The relatable villain is more of a challenge; you have to pay close attention to where they came from and their motives and everything they say to achieve that balance between making a reader hate them and feel sympathy. Most of my villains come from the same stock as the other characters, and become corrupted through their lives.
In my prologue someone dies-in one of those slow painful ways with the family by the bedside, and I introduced this character then to show how they would deal with that kind of emotional situation. It's subtle differences in priorities and views of justice that make my villains what they are, and open the opportunity for protagonists to question who is really in the right. To me a more realistic world is one where the line between villain and hero are a little blurred- where you can see clearly how the villain is the hero in their own story- because that's how it is in real life.
There's one villain in my story that I have done a bad job in developing, I now realize. The character that appears in the prologue doesn't come into play until after the events of the first book and its war. However the main villain of the first book remains nameless and faceless until the very end- and I am thinking that I should give them a voice earlier on and make them less sympathetic, because I've given them possible too-valiant a cause and too short a time in scenes. Villains need also to be hated.
I recently wrote more on villains and how I see other people treating them on my tumblr, at wilsathethief.tumblr.com
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Coincidencing
Editing is going smoothly, and in trying to reorganize scenes and make connections between characters, I've come across things that rely on coincidence.
In my story this doesn't happen as often, as my setting is in the first volume limited to three small kingdoms, and it has a lot of everyone's-related-to-everyone-else happening, especially among the upper classes. However, I've come to ask myself- what is taking coincidence too far in a story?
In life there are crazy coincidences. For instance, my brother and I visiting family months after our grandfather died and going to a 'paint your own pottery' place only to meet a woman whose own grandfather died on the same day as ours, across the street from our grandparents' house.
If this turn of events happened in a book, would you find it believable? At what point is coincidence too much?
The general consensus seems to be that coincidence becomes unbelievable when it becomes too convenient to the characters or the plot- once it becomes a deus ex machina.
A general rule also seems to be that if something makes things worse for your characters/protag, you're doing it right. However I'm sure it's possible to overdo that as well.
A good example of this would be Les Mis, where coincidences (as with most things in Les Mis, to be honest) are usually unfortunate for Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo also, as I have been informed over-enthusiastically by two friends in the room with me right now, plays a lot with coincidence purely because he can.
I feel like it also can make a world more real, to have random coincidences, because these things do happen in real life. To make a random character related through some convoluted tale and happenstance event, or have that apple fall on the old alchemist's head. It makes a world just as messy and intertwined as ours, just like having a character trip or stutter over their words makes them more relatable and susceptible to gravity.
I'm carrying on, in the meantime, and adding more connections and subplots- most of which revolve around family members and their hidden mischief.
In my story this doesn't happen as often, as my setting is in the first volume limited to three small kingdoms, and it has a lot of everyone's-related-to-everyone-else happening, especially among the upper classes. However, I've come to ask myself- what is taking coincidence too far in a story?
In life there are crazy coincidences. For instance, my brother and I visiting family months after our grandfather died and going to a 'paint your own pottery' place only to meet a woman whose own grandfather died on the same day as ours, across the street from our grandparents' house.
If this turn of events happened in a book, would you find it believable? At what point is coincidence too much?
The general consensus seems to be that coincidence becomes unbelievable when it becomes too convenient to the characters or the plot- once it becomes a deus ex machina.
A general rule also seems to be that if something makes things worse for your characters/protag, you're doing it right. However I'm sure it's possible to overdo that as well.
A good example of this would be Les Mis, where coincidences (as with most things in Les Mis, to be honest) are usually unfortunate for Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo also, as I have been informed over-enthusiastically by two friends in the room with me right now, plays a lot with coincidence purely because he can.
I feel like it also can make a world more real, to have random coincidences, because these things do happen in real life. To make a random character related through some convoluted tale and happenstance event, or have that apple fall on the old alchemist's head. It makes a world just as messy and intertwined as ours, just like having a character trip or stutter over their words makes them more relatable and susceptible to gravity.
I'm carrying on, in the meantime, and adding more connections and subplots- most of which revolve around family members and their hidden mischief.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Breaking Ice
I've just written a new scene-- not really a whole scene, just a new addition-- but it's the first really new material I've put into the manuscript in a while. It feels like breaking fresh ground.
Excitement is high though. I'm all settled back into school and life is a little less hectic now. I've been getting some organizing done, rearranging things in the outline and outlining new scenes that have to be put in. But this is the first actual change I've made to the document. It's the beginning. This is the big edit.
I'm ready to chop up this thing and make it good! TOUGH LOVE!
I'm only a little overwhelmed thinking about it.
There's a new thing, though! I'm in the writing club at my school, and we meet every other week to workshop. I'm starting to send them all my manuscript bit by bit so I can get critiques on it. The first meeting was the other night and it was the first bit of the prologue- the absolute oldest part of the manuscript (though arguably the most heavily edited so far) and it went really well. For what I think is one of the choppiest and immature bits, getting good comments really gave be some hope.
Hopefully this will give me momentum to be ruthless.
There's just so much of it.
That's all for tonight, I'll be back in a week with more.
Excitement is high though. I'm all settled back into school and life is a little less hectic now. I've been getting some organizing done, rearranging things in the outline and outlining new scenes that have to be put in. But this is the first actual change I've made to the document. It's the beginning. This is the big edit.
I'm ready to chop up this thing and make it good! TOUGH LOVE!
I'm only a little overwhelmed thinking about it.
There's a new thing, though! I'm in the writing club at my school, and we meet every other week to workshop. I'm starting to send them all my manuscript bit by bit so I can get critiques on it. The first meeting was the other night and it was the first bit of the prologue- the absolute oldest part of the manuscript (though arguably the most heavily edited so far) and it went really well. For what I think is one of the choppiest and immature bits, getting good comments really gave be some hope.
Hopefully this will give me momentum to be ruthless.
There's just so much of it.
That's all for tonight, I'll be back in a week with more.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Jigsaw-ing!
I'm just going through and figuring out solutions, where i need to add/drop a scene, which characters need more page-time. I also have a list of new conflicts and subplots I'm going to expand, and I'm going to fit those in as well. It's a lot of color-coding and marker-juggling, but it's coming along.
Right now I'm not panicking- everything is pretty easy to solve according to this. Fitting things into the current writing however will be another task.
The last few weeks I've taken some time from the story, started a new novel that I may end up saving for nanowrimo, and done some illustration and reading.
I've just finished my first week back at college and getting back into classes and learning things is really energizing. I'm up for challenges right now.
I'm still running the writing tumblr, were I'm posting more about my other writing and illustration projects. Feel free to take a look! The url is wilsathethief.tumblr.com!
Here's what my mess of a notebook is enduring right now:
Have a great Saturday everyone!
Monday, August 11, 2014
Next Step
Alright so since I last posted I've done a lot of stuff, including finishing the read-through.
I have a notebook now of all my problems and even have the two problems I was most worried about kind of solved in my head. So it's a successful step in this whole beast of a project! The 'Giant List of Doom' method totally works and I maybe should have done that first. But it was easier to read now that I've gone through it all for phrasing already. So no regrets.
I'll start the actual going-back and chopping things up next week. For now I have a million other projects to get started on/work on/finish before I go back to school in a few weeks so I should do stuff with that.
Other news! I'm making a tumblr. You should all go check it out in a few days once I start posting. For further reference though the url is wilsathethief.tumblr.com! It'll be great fun. It's going to be a writing blog, but not just for my manuscript like this one is. I'm going to supplement this blog, as well as promote it on the tumblr but I'm going to do the more tumblr-esque reblogging and general writing nerdery as well. I used to have a tumblr way back when and the writing community on there is really fun.
The tumblr will also update on my other writing projects, and probably some illustration as well. So yay! more projects! and Art things!
Speaking of illustration: I have like three more painting ideas for this story, and I really want to start working on a full-cast painting, or at least a couple of different-setting casts. I've been doing more digital painting and it's beautiful to work with.
New inspiration: Wildweasel339 on deviantart, I believe his name is Lane Brown? this is a link to ONE of his beautiful paintings: http://wildweasel339.deviantart.com/art/Rooty-Tooty-196344648
but really he does the most amazing things. especially fantasy landscapes and scenes. It amazes me beyond words.
That's all for this post! More next time! (hopefully that won't be three weeks from now!)
I have a notebook now of all my problems and even have the two problems I was most worried about kind of solved in my head. So it's a successful step in this whole beast of a project! The 'Giant List of Doom' method totally works and I maybe should have done that first. But it was easier to read now that I've gone through it all for phrasing already. So no regrets.
I'll start the actual going-back and chopping things up next week. For now I have a million other projects to get started on/work on/finish before I go back to school in a few weeks so I should do stuff with that.
Other news! I'm making a tumblr. You should all go check it out in a few days once I start posting. For further reference though the url is wilsathethief.tumblr.com! It'll be great fun. It's going to be a writing blog, but not just for my manuscript like this one is. I'm going to supplement this blog, as well as promote it on the tumblr but I'm going to do the more tumblr-esque reblogging and general writing nerdery as well. I used to have a tumblr way back when and the writing community on there is really fun.
The tumblr will also update on my other writing projects, and probably some illustration as well. So yay! more projects! and Art things!
Speaking of illustration: I have like three more painting ideas for this story, and I really want to start working on a full-cast painting, or at least a couple of different-setting casts. I've been doing more digital painting and it's beautiful to work with.
New inspiration: Wildweasel339 on deviantart, I believe his name is Lane Brown? this is a link to ONE of his beautiful paintings: http://wildweasel339.deviantart.com/art/Rooty-Tooty-196344648
but really he does the most amazing things. especially fantasy landscapes and scenes. It amazes me beyond words.
That's all for this post! More next time! (hopefully that won't be three weeks from now!)
Thursday, July 17, 2014
On to Part Three
Well I'm over halfway through the story on the read-through. Now we're getting to the action.
Part Two is a little beat up, but in a good way. There's a lot I left undeveloped, and a lot I can add to make it fit even better into the story, which was a main concern from the beginning. I've got my notes and while I'm sure when I go back and fix things this part will take more time than the first, I'm not worried.
Going into Part Three I've got to look at a lot of pacing, and this is where many of my main logistical and agreement concerns lie. My notebook's about to get much busier.
So far I've had mostly local problems, and very few if any that affected larger parts of the story and plot. Going forward there's going to be bigger problems. I'm going to try my best to brainstorm solutions as I go, but also to try my best not to get overwhelmed.
It's hard changing something you spent so much time creating, and I find myself wanting to be lazy and saying that something's "good enough." But I can't allow myself to fall into that trap. You don't get better by accepting your faults, but by striving tirelessly to fix them. I have to stay vigilant, no matter how much more work I discover has to be done.
Here's hoping everyone's having an inspired week, as I am.
Part Two is a little beat up, but in a good way. There's a lot I left undeveloped, and a lot I can add to make it fit even better into the story, which was a main concern from the beginning. I've got my notes and while I'm sure when I go back and fix things this part will take more time than the first, I'm not worried.
Going into Part Three I've got to look at a lot of pacing, and this is where many of my main logistical and agreement concerns lie. My notebook's about to get much busier.
So far I've had mostly local problems, and very few if any that affected larger parts of the story and plot. Going forward there's going to be bigger problems. I'm going to try my best to brainstorm solutions as I go, but also to try my best not to get overwhelmed.
It's hard changing something you spent so much time creating, and I find myself wanting to be lazy and saying that something's "good enough." But I can't allow myself to fall into that trap. You don't get better by accepting your faults, but by striving tirelessly to fix them. I have to stay vigilant, no matter how much more work I discover has to be done.
Here's hoping everyone's having an inspired week, as I am.
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