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| Writer's Journal: Think back over your reading life. What books, novels, even stories have you loved? If you like, consider movies, television, and visual media. Perhaps even stories told you by your friends and family. What qualities stand out? For example, many of them are engaging. Be it the writing of Edgar Allan Poe or that ten seconds of good scene in Invasion of the Space Preachers. Others are thought provoking. Stories like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone, the best of Star Trek bring ideas into sharp contrast. Others may be absurd or hilarious. Sylvia Plath had a richness of phrase so that every word said more than the usual--there wasn't the expected words that you see in ordinary text. (You'd have to observe it yourself.) The thing is that by gathering all this together at once you can sort through these. The things you love, either some or all of them, can become the qualities you put in your writing. If you envision the final draft having one or two of the things you love, that will drive you. Add in the rest of them and you begin to envision your voice. It becomes easier to listen to feedback when you stop asking, "is this good?" and begin asking, "how does this help me get to my vision?" Drafting and block climbing (getting over the writer's block) become natural and automatic. And most of all it becomes easier to figure out which of the ten versions of this paragraph move you closest to your vision. |
| Little tip. I have found that pantsed novel -length works for me require me to solve my personal problems before I can even begin tthe final bit. I finished à book without actually ever facing the Lie that my hero believes. Raised covert military, as a spy he does not believe in just advertising what you want. The evil empire he works for doesn't need violence to take over when they can offer lifestyle upgrades. Enough people would pay to get Holy-Terran therapy and media they could charge people for brainwashing. But I am a hysteric. That is archetypically I believe that I need to get a message out and that nobody will listen. That means I expect to do something excessive before I get the message out. I should have known when I named him Brannon and described him blacking out (Like everyone's favorite dissociative hysteric, Dr Bruce Banner.). The subconscious does great writing but who the  knows what it is getting at? |
| Chapter 2 in my Trek Based alternate timeline. Darro takes a fare. A cab ride across the world "Chapter 1: Bitter Pill"  if you missed it and the new one: "Chapter 2: All's fare" |
| Insight for the day: My character was a covert operative in the castleShe worked hard to build a reputation among the common folk as too-afraid-for-picking-up laundry despite the fact that there was only one other in her weight class of courage in the entire duchy (dukedom). As graduation test she would lead the recruits on a fake mission where they would obviously talk at being led by a shell shocked laundry lady. Some of my readers thought he was misogynist.. wHAT DID I DO? I changed it so that you'd see seven signs of his respect for female authority, so that they would see my antiheroic character as the bully she intended to be. Rather than mining it for the conflict it had. Don't be like that. Fake conflict is still gonna get the reader interested. |
| Getting somewhere with my fanfic. Got the character's save the cat move---we see him not regretting the fact he spent a fortune on his adopted daughter's elective procedure---something that would keep her safe in survival situations later on---even though he is scrambling for the basics. Not sure if I should keep the exotic name or shift to something more corn fed---need to express that this is a Hew Mon not some Denobulan. |
| Thought for the day: Everybody talks about how bad Immortality would be, (during the survival of the universe). Do you know what's probably worse? PLOT ARMOR. Plot armor means that you're going to be alive to know how bad things can get. You're the one that the Writer in the Sky has set aside to keep alive so he can torture them. The only good thing about it is that it usually ends sometime in the next 100 years. The point being it doesn't reduce tension even if both the reader and the character know they're going to survive. Just like knowing that Captain Picard doesn't have to worry about paying for health insurance doesn't make you worry less about the Borg that took his friends. (I would love to see an alternate about fighting the Borg while struggling to pay the Ferengi for medical care and wondering if signing up for Assimilatech Health might be the answer.) |
Raven  - Working now on my second fanfic of my life, that I know of... with the first being I must have been eight. Hope it doesn't come out info dumpy. Don't want to spend a lot of time on why the Federation isn't taking care of Darro. So far I'm suggesting that the Romulan-Dominion joint action ruined BOTH our health AND our tech, except for pockets. I might have to pull an E..L. James. and rewrite it as my own world. A milieu where we're on the run except for rumored bastions has huge potential. But BORG and Ferengi are such perfect shortcuts right now... so, that'll be later. |
| Writing theory 001: presuppositions The rules aren't rules once you understand how they work. For example Jim Butcher says to make all dialogue blocks down to five words or less because that's how people talk. If you follow this as a rule sometimes it will make it better and sometimes it will ruin your *draft.* Following crazy rules and doing your best to make it work---the crazier they sound the more likely you'll learn something. So whenever a person tells you a rule don't gibber about the exceptions, but instead become curious as to what happens when you follow it. And for goodness sakes, save a copy before you do something. (Put the date in the file name year month day.) |
| Here's a trick from hypnotic marketing. And how to do it. The idea is that all's meanings of the word leak out into the mind so you can flavor a story with the tone and meanings that don't fit. So how to do it is to describe how your POV feels in the telly-est language you want. Was she left feeling crushed , isolated, forlorn, and hollow? If so you can use those words to describe what she sees. An isolated cashier... selling crushed seeds. She kicks aside the empty boxes and steps on the hollowed out shell of a coconut. Now of course you'd want to sprinkle these adjectives in through the text. And adverbs. Then if you like infuse them directly into the verbs. Maybe hollowed out shell is just a shell. And then notice stepped on appeared. The thing is that these terms hit and your mind will use them to steer to the emotion if there is anything that fits it. Adverbs aren't the enemy they just don't all belong in our finished work. Use them when needed. Look for the single word that does the work of both, of course! But a good way to find that better word is to add the adverb in the second draft. |
So what I did was switch my hidden files to rate NPL since they have a lot of views that make me feel suss. And renumber them (Raven  ) which took a lot longer. I'm like no---that scene has her still on the road, it can't be after she's embedded in the city. I'm thinking that if I keep my frame---A scene where my protagonist is asked to tell her full story---then it might be obligatory that we get an epilogue where her story is judged, and she is judged. Something that typical members of their persuasion can be relied on to NOT do... but which fits their purpose. |
| You ever had that moment when you realize that none of your heroine's worries have to do with staying alive? When if she or the reader knew that she'd end up alive and in a position of leadership in ten, twenty years it would only increase the tension? Because the question is not will she rise, but will she be able to look herself in the eyes. Not even that--will her friends be safe around her? If the reader doesn't get that, when she stumbles over the faces of the people who murdered her family and they shift in their sleep. And she grabs a meat cleaver, and readies to kill the man who drove her uncle's friend insane--but Uncle Mack's ghost begs her to let someone else dispense justice. When the local nature priest says that fear is the least burden her courage will ever face. When she is upset that the 'pixie' is there to take her on an adventure rather than taking her spirit home to the White Gates. When she strides out of hiding to hurl insults at the pig-nosed urgans who are making jokes about turning her into stew (in their own language, which they didn't think she could speak.) While it's not the latest version, the above story is in "The People of Glass (Saga of Sigrun)" I'm thinking of stealing the format from In the Name of the Wind, where we start with our hero discussing his story and then going back to his childhood. And you better believe I'll leave everybody hanging for the third book. But I don't even have the second one going. The first one is coming out of Novella form. But the open version is available "The People of Glass (Saga of Sigrun)" |
| I have a blank format that never fails to build a plot. Sometimes it's harder to fill out than others, and I just realized that it could be in the wrong order sometimes. But nearly every time I get a passable idea. And you can use it to plot out the villain's story and the supporting cast too, so it would be a lot. Four blanks/four sentence completions. I want to: (Possess/escape/revenge ____) So I _____ (Action I take) Hopiing that _____ (anticipated good result) Fearing that ______ (anticipated bad result) instead ______ (unanticipated result.) So I: _____ ... (ad denouement) Perhaps the hope and fear will work better before the action. It seemed to get me out of a stuck place where I did that. the thing is that you can just say the most banal things and follow it until dopamine and consequence build a story. This prompt allows you to follow a character around until he or she just gets to doing something interesting. Quote Hitchcock: "Drama is life with the boring parts cut out." It's also a good way to restart a plot because it's quick, you can just have the character tell you what they do and what happens. And then summarize all the time they spend being a wimp, sitting on the couch or the like. It's good for ADHD because it artificially forces you to follow one cause and effect line as if it is more important. That's how Neurotypical minds work, I think, and it tends to trigger dopamine (interest) even in those of us who are deficient. In the last case I had a budding romance with a woman who is afraid to go offworld but once you get her on your ship (for a joyride to the moon) she's drunk and 'accidentally' pushes you through a wormhole to be lost in space... she drank to get the nerve to go through the wormhole. If I write it they'll probably be bounty hunters chasing her. And she'll try to tell him she chose him because she liked him, but he'll have his doubts. Opportunistic much? I'm thinking sci-fi rom com?Sci Fi adventure. Next is to format that into a few scenes POV Goal Resistance disaster Change required Mood at the beginning Mood at the end Flavor words to sprinkle in For example: |
| Fifteen years my Nano hero has been fighting 😠and today I realized thà t he was his own antagonist. He designed the protocol he is trying to defeat. The Empire listens to his input. But he hasn't raised his own standard of behavior. He thinks that nonlethal is good enough and that's what the Empire is doing: Stomping on people for their own good when their tech could just uplift. Th. e woman called to defeat his villainy supports it. Inured to bloodthirsty villains, gangsters and predators, she can't even detect his vicious side-though she can hear his conscience blaring the alarm. In fact, she does the same to him on the small scale. Psionic enchantments and manipulations to keep the bloodless conquerer from hurting people when he built THAT into his own DNA. So the enemy is us. Man v Self. |
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