Writer Senses

Word Count: 116,500 Page Count: 502 Double-Spaced Listening to: The Last Airbender: We are Now the Gods by James Newton Howard ____ Yesterday marks the two year anniversary of the completion of the first draft of the first chapter of ARK. A DIFFICULT YEAR One year ago the manuscript contained 90,000 words, this year, just over 116,000. It is startling to think that in one year I wrote 90,000 words and the next less than a third of that. It’s been a difficult year of writing. I mentioned in a previous blog that it took six months to write the climax (chapters 18-23, respectively) of act (or “book”) one. The events of the climax, while complex, still needed to be believable. As my own biggest critic, I asked myself constantly why something less complex wouldn’t have happened, or why this or that wasn’t present in a certain scene when we could reasonably expect it would have been. When I finished book one, I told myself I was not going to go back and edit...

Current Word Count: 111k altogether, 105k from prologue to interlude. Song I was listening to when the the final period was put on chapter 23: Chrono Cross: Chronopolis ____ After twenty-one months of writing, the first twenty-four chapters of my novel, encompassing the first act, are complete. Part of me is relieved. The climax event is over 110 pages long and stretches across five chapters (18-23; there is a 24, but I'm debting putting it in act II.) I have been writing it for over six months. It's cool to see things I thought of years ago finally put down in a readable format. Connecting dots A to B was a much lengthier process than I had imagined. Another part of me is not so relieved; if my estimates are right (and if history teaches us anything, it's that every estimate I've made so far has been very low ) I am only halfway done. And that is a very daunting prospect. On the other hand, I have multiple scenes--bits of dialogue, some of the stuff is actually good, I...

I was recently discussing a novel-in-progress called The Fisherman of Cat Island, about a Frenchman named Pierre, with the story's author. I raised in my critique of his work the topic of the infamous "info dump." Here are some thoughts about sprinkling that information in a contextually-appropriate manner. ____________ I think every writer has their own method for revealing information. If a story is told from the POV of a certain character, the reader may still be interested in the back story and physical appearance of said character. The problem is, in real life you and I don't sit around day in and day out thinking about how we look, so it doesn't make sense for a character in a story to do so--if we want the character to be real and the story to be true-to-life, that is. Information is contextual in a story like in life. There are times when you muse on your appearance: perhaps when you are getting ready in the morning, shaving, or dressing up for a spe...

Regarding "restraining your research" (the topic of my last update) I began a short dialogue with the author of a blog about exposition. It went a little something like this: Daniel, thanks... I recently gave a seminar about the subject of revealing too much of your valued research via exposition. Many professional authors still to this. I could name a few, particularly in the SF field (it's hard not to go on and on about your cool discovery of (theoretical) particle inter-dimensional plasma dark-matter propulsion that you've researched for months)...  I'll share here what I shared in my seminar:  One way to keep yourself from over-sharing all those "clever bits" (instead of keeping them to yourself) is to purposefully file them away in a backstory scrapbook or dossier or in directories devoted to spin-offs, short stories or even novels set in that same universe, world, time period.  Think of J.K. Rowling's spin off book on Quiddich, the ga...

The following is a response to a question about realism in fiction: I'm basically begging for advice on how to write this so it doesn't seem fantastical or contrived. Any ideas? Realism requires research : books, internet, knowledgable people, personal experiences. As an example, things I have researched for my novel include: British accents, Muay Boran, bo staff fighting (YouTube,) magnetic fields and space travel (a friend who works for NASA,) animal behavior (a friend who studies wildlife,) names and ideas in religious history (school,) human muscles (Wikipedia,) the feeling of a stiff drink going down (I went to a bar and bought a stiff drink; asking a friend did not suffice.) Realism requires familiarity : even if you were to write speculative fiction in which you engaged in full-blown world building, your story would still written by you and would thus be crafted with your experiences and expertises operating behind the scenes. For example, the relationsihp betwee...

Current Word Count: ~90,000 in the manuscript. Listening to: Not too much of anything recently. ____ November 5th marks the 1-year anniversary of my completion of the first draft of the first chapter of ARK. For any unversed readers of this blog, the novel follows two alternating story lines from the points of view of Tru Arneau, a powerful Telepath in the ranks of the Magisterial Authority, and Laro Sadoleto, a crime boss of the Antipodes who finds himself in the jaws of the World's most dangerous fugitive. Each story line contains its own specific characters: we learn of the workings of the Authority as Tru traverses the vaunted halls of the Citadel while weaving her way through the political spider web to achieve her own goal: justice at any cost. And we see both the vast expanses of natural beauty and the grimy back alleys of port city of Fair Havens as Laro is forced into the service of the fugitive Sa'ava on pain of death. The (current) novel synopsis is as follo...

Current word count: ~87,000 Listening to: The Wallflowers, "The Difference" ____ As I steadily approach the closing of the first book of the novel, I realize that in the face of a number non-book-related responsibilities (umm, seminary) it is possible that I need to encourage myself by reading over some of the comments I've received on ARK since I first started writing it. I think I just need to hear this for myself, but if you feel like reading over a few of the comments I've received, well, I'm sure it's better than playing ball-in-cup or something. Also, publishing is kind of a frightening, nebulous monster to me at the moment. I wonder if these statements will be helpful when the time comes? All comments come from reviews on the first half of the first chapter. ____ This is fantastic; I'm already hooked. I really look forward to reading more. I love your writing. I'm a definite fan, and hope you keep the chapters coming. Tease with the bait, then l...