The first order of business is a correction. On Sunday, I said that Camp Nanowrimo was happening during the months of June and July. Fortunately, one of the ML’s for Nanowrimo here in Calgary caught my mistake. Camp Nanowrimo should be happening in June and August. Thanks go out to Candice for letting me know so that I could make sure I have the right information up here.
Now, on to your regularily scheduled blogpost.
A few years ago when I did Nanowrimo my first year I was already working on a novel about some of me and my friends D&D characters. My husband had convinced me to try my hand at writing and what I wanted to write was the adventure that they were on.
Perhaps it just seemed safer to me at the time, but in any case, that story was a bust (as I’m sure most first novels are.) I think I’ve said it before on this blog but that novel was missing quite a few things… up to and including plot or an overarching villain. Though technically, you could say that random events and racial arguments against two people falling in love was the antagonist, that doesn’t deny the fact that it didn’t have a villain at all.
Still the characters sat in my mind, calling to me and urging me to try something unique with them. So after I attempted to edit my manuscript and decided it needed to be rewritten to include all the elements I’d forgotten, I sat down and attempted to plot it out.
The story changed in major ways. Characters were added, other characters were lost. Connections that hadn’t existed in the game showed up and things that made it D&D fanfic were lost. At the heart, the story was that of a love that crossed race and social class. Still, I wasn’t a good enough writer to finish it.
Something was missing and I regrettably decided that what I had on my hands was my first trunk novel. A beautiful idea, intriguing characters and an interesting story, but I was still missing parts that would have made it complete.
I think that everyone who writes a novel makes mistakes that just can’t fix. You just don’t know enough to make it right. You’ll learn but you have to lose that first novel and go on to your next ones.
I did that – moving on to other books as was appropriate – and spent most of my waking hours learning how to do the things I saw other authors do.
Still, I never quite moved past those characters. I don’t know how it with other authors but those first characters are still heavy in my mind. They still entrance me and I will always find myself rethinking their stories and how I can fix them.
What about you? Do you still think about your first? Have you ever returned to it as time when on?
Today, I was going to have a very intelligent on how the people we meet and see every day aren’t people to us. How they are “other” and therefore unimportant or scary until something is done to make them seem real. Everyone does this, to some degree. It’s that feeling when somebody says hello in the grocery line and you nod politely but then go back to looking at the magazines blankly until they ask you about that book you’re holding or something important to you. Regardless of how you get there, everyone experiences a moment when suddenly that other person matters to you as more than an inconvenience.
This is the moment when that girl or guy you were checking out surprises you and you ask them about something personal. That moment when the guy asking for your cash in front of the 7-11 uses $4 of his hard-earned money to buy his dog food and nothing for himself.
It’s a really interesting phenomenon and I would suggest everyone look into it and how it is affecting/informing your daily decisions.
However, that’s what I was going to talk about, not what I am going to talk about. That is due solely to my Asus Transformer. Since I bought it in October of last year, this singular piece of technology has become nearly indispensable to me.
Doing a bit of writing on the go? Take the tablet. Want to waste 5 minutes? Grab the tablet. Want to listen to some music? Grab the tablet. Want to do some reading? Grab the tablet. Want to quickly do some research on the go? Turn on the tablet. Want to do some GM’ing or even playing in a game? Grab the tablet instead of the dice.
I took my notes on it for critiques. For my writing group, Pen Duels, I would put the finished product up on it and read it from there. I could carry everything, including some videos and awesome pictures for when I needed something.
Then today, it broke.
At the end of my day at work, I turned off the device, packed it into my bag and headed out for my bus. After I got on, I took out the tablet and tried to turn it on. It literally won’t boot past the loading screen.
So I devoted a few hours to returning to sanity. I did some house cleaning. I looked into how to fix it. I attempted to fix it myself and failed miserably. Eventually, my husband helped me out by cuddling for a few minutes, got me a warm cover and my gigantic and awesome Android stuffed an animal to cuddle and feel more relaxed holding my comfort toy.
I’ve send a message to Asus about it and I’ll see what they say. If worse comes to worse, I have some money put away that I can decommission from vacation to tablet repair. In the meantime, please give me a moment in your thoughts and hope alongside me that I can get it repaired without dropping an arm and a leg to do so.
Hello? Is anybody out there? Really? After this long I had sorta thought that nobody but the spammers were visiting anymore (and before I get too far off topic, let me say that the spammers have really been active. 2 days generating over 300 spam posts? Either my site has just gotten a lot more hits from regular people and the spam bots are following or somebody is sending them my way because I don’t have a bot detector set up yet). In that case, accept my apology and my most heartfelt thanks. Much like a dog grabbing a toy and shaking the stuffing out of it, Life has been grabbing me and shaking the stuffing out of me. While I can’t point at just one thing, I can say that life simply conspired to make the month of February a really busy month.
As a quick update, I’m still writing and most days I have written, even if I haven’t been making my 750 words a day (and for that matter, being able to get onto their site each day). I have found a way of guilting me into doing a bit more writing each day though… I programed my phone to remind me each day at quarter to 8 pm “Have you written your 750 Words yet today”. Its good because it gets me writing again, even if I have to admit that I’ve been tempted to write excuses and reasons why I haven’t as a response to the question.
I have been writing, both writing in my novel (which I finally have figured out what my “plot point not making sense” was. Knowing a scene is wrong, but not knowing why blocks me horribly) and in new projects that I started off with my friends. We bought copies of 2YN by Lazette Gifford and have been running ourselves through that for the last 3 weeks. 2YN stands for “Two Year Novel” and her book helps take you from base idea/cool scene to a finished novel and sending out queries in two years. I’ve been through the course before and would suggest it to anyone thinking of writing a novel. Even if you’re not a meticulous planner (I wasn’t when I started and though I’m a planner now, I’m still not very meticulous about it), I found it very useful to learn how people plan and what sort of questions to ask. Due in part to my experience in the class, I was able to make the world my characters were living in much more believable.
Anyways, I started doing this with a few friends of mine and have new novel ideas brewing up because of it. One of them is Dual Melodies and I think that I’m going to start posting up my writings on this. Between the 40k words written on it previously and another idea I had messing around in my head I suddenly realized that the story just needed some basic tweaking before I could start re-writing it again. So, I’m starting over from scratch on it… which means an all new story for you guys! The other story is a silly idea that I’ve had brewing in my head about a year now. I’m tentatively calling the project “Erotic Angel” since it’s about a winged woman who is a professional courtesan and bard. It includes a lot of sex (note the Erotic in the title”) and while I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sell this little mini novella/novel thing, it is helping me to step out of my box and understand not only the act of sex more but also the feelings, emotions and behaviors surrounding it.
Something that I had to stop doing during February was reading. Now this was painful to me, mainly because the book was not a good book. Trying to slog through it was like trying to wade through 4 feet of snow… it can be done, just not easily or happily. Now, I will admit that had I been handed this book 2 years ago, I probably would have just said it annoyed me, but not that it was actively bad. However, since I’ve started studying the art of writing, my bar for books has gone way up. Mediocre or not actively bad isn’t a good enough reason for me to read anymore. However, this book did help me to identify two main rules of writing that I now consider to be my two major sins of writing.
1. Never assume that I am familiar with your world or your characters.
What I mean by this is don’t start a book and forget to mention whether your main character is male or female. Don’t assume that because you said, “He’s a monk that was trained to kill people in war” (for instance) that your reader is going to automatically understand that later on when your monk-killer starts emo’ing out and saying people “treat him differently because of what he is” that we aren’t going to immediately think that its because he fought and killed people in the war(Yes, this is has happened before… we were told the main characters profession and emo-tendencies before we found out his race).
2. Don’t make your secondary characters stupid just to make the main character look smarter.
This should be quick because this rule is quite solid. If you want your main character to come across as smart, make him smart. Don’t make the other characters stupid. In the book I was reading, a 40 year old general sent his squad in unprepared to fight mercenaries/bandits who had holed up in a cave that they had prepared in case they needed someplace to fall back to. The war mage (normally the smartest character since that sort of magic is based off how intelligent you are) admitted to not learning battle spells on a day when he should have known he was getting into combat. But the 18 year old Monk could have told him what he needed to know.)
Anyways, I’ll stop on my rants and let you guys go. Keep an eye open, I’ll be posting up two songs I wrote during FAWM(I wasn’t really participating, but I thought I’d give song writing in general a try) and I’ll see you all next time.
Posted in Blogs on February 27th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
It’s only been a few days since I last blogged, but I figured another one certainly couldn’t hurt. Especially since it’s been a pretty good week for me and my writing. I haven’t moved ahead in my novel yet (I’m really good at procrastinating) but I know where I need to go in it. What I have been doing is writing a lot this week on my D&D characters. While most of this writing won’t ever see a publishing world, it is very relaxing for me to try and write about characters that I’m intimately involved in.
That’s actually what today’s topic is… not D&D and how it influences my writing though. That topic has been gone over to death. Instead I’ll talk about the newest thing that me and my fellow geeks are doing is actually a really good idea, both for the game and for writing in general. Theme Songs! I may be getting ahead of myself though. Let me start at the beginning and explain.
Years ago (a good three years ago, maybe four, if memory serves) I started running a D&D game for my husband and friends. It wasn’t the first game I’d run but I decided that I wanted to do something different than the usual type of game. What I decided to run instead was an evil game. We’re playing D&D like we normally would but instead of just having evil alignments or being jerk’s (though they are that as well, quite often), they had a semi-firm goal. Go from being nobody’s at third level to running an evil empire before level 20. Rather early in this game one of my players was pleased enough that he was thinking about it all the time. He was listening to music and suddenly realized that the game as a whole has a “theme song”. The whole group agreed and Nightwish’s “I Wish I Had an Angel” got the passing grade. Although the whole song applies to the game, for me it’s the line “Burning Angel Wings to Dust” that really makes the song match the game for me.
Recently the evil fighter in the group realized he was “Indestructable” (Note: It has a really 45 second beginning before the song starts) and claimed that as his individual characters theme song. It’s now at the point where all of the PC’s (player characters) and most of the important NPC’s (non-player characters) have themes for themselves. We’re doing it for most of the games we play in at this point.
As with anything that takes up my time, I eventually start wondering exactly how I can use this in my writing. To be fair, this idea was easier to implement than you would think. I have started looking at my novel and characters in my story and have been trying to figure out what their songs are. I can see a few of you out there are looking at me as if I’m an idiot now. “How hard can it be to find a song that means something to your characters?” Quite a bit harder than you’d expect actually.
First you need to know about the character, their motivations, how they view the world and why they view it the way they do. Then you need to find a style of music that matches the character. Having a folk song done to acoustic guitar for a tattooed insane woman, like ”Jack” off of Mass Effect 2, just wouldn’t feel like it matched the character. After music type, you need to pay attention to the lyrics. Simply because a character is a pyro-maniac does not mean that the song that applies to that character will be about burning something. In fact, I usually find it more true if it doesn’t. Third, you have to be willing to accept that sometimes it will be the song that you least expected it to be.
As an example, I am playing a Cat-Folk battle dancer in one of my games. She is pretty much a caffeine kitty… She only sleeps two hours a day, and she is always either on the move running around or she is completely at rest and almost cat-napping. She is a happy, pleasant woman, who speaks with a slight accent. She always looks for the best in a situation. I originally thought that her song would show off her nearly inexhaustible energy and pleasure, but in doing so, I forgot about her past. I forgot to ask why she forced herself to look for the bright side. Unsurprisingly, while I was ignoring this, I couldn’t find a song for her.
The perfect song came about when I was listening to an artist that I normally don’t listen to. Avril Lavigne’s Innocence (shown below) encompassed not only my caffeine kitty’s predilection to ignoring unhappy things, but also took into account her tortured past as a sex slave (by the way, the answer is “Yes, my characters never have happy histories.”). The song is below and suits her to a ‘T’.
So, now I’m doing this and every song I listen to has the potential to be a song for a character in my book. “Tear you Apart” by She Wants Revenge is now the theme song for Zack, Xiam’s boyfriend in my Vampire Fiction “Falling through the Threshold”. Listen to the song and tell me that doesn’t make him that much creepier as you read through “The White Citadel”. I dare ya.
So, do you have a theme song? Do you use theme songs for characters? Do you think that you’ll be using it in your own writing?
I have been looking at my own work recently, and trying to decide how best to prepare for Nanowrimo while finishing up my current WIP. Of course, the new project is shinier… It’s new, I haven’t thought about it for months or years, and I haven’t seen ¾ of the book and decided that its crap. The fact that 4 months ago I thought this work was good and now I’m looking at it and worrying that its unsalvageable means that I’ve probably reached that area of the book where all authors suddenly think their work is bad and horrible. On the other hand, I also know (unfortunately) that I’m not yet skilled enough to be able to decide on my own. Of course, my husband says that the story is engaging and interesting but I know that he has a vested interest in it. I wish that I was part of a writing group so that I could pass around a chapter or so and find out what it looks like.
I’m really hoping that I can finish it before SiWC. One of the classes I’m really looking forward to is the one Master Class that I sighed up for. It’s taught by Robert J. Ray. It’s called “Welcome to Your Novel Rewrite”. Since this is really the area I feel I need help in, I’m very excited. I say that I’m rewriting my novel now, but I know that what I’m actually doing right now is perhaps the smallest part of the rewrite… filling in scenes that I didn’t write during November. A small amount of this will be at the beginning, and I’m doing it now. I also know that I condensed an entire scene into the words “romance montage… write when you have inspiration”. I now know what’s supposed to go there (and it’s not really a romance montage, but a scene detailing characters getting to know each other/teaching of the magic system mix) and so I should finally be able to write it down. I know I also need to rewrite the ending. The end of last nano was a bit of insanity for me and I was desperately trying to get 10k words in three days. Not that I required it to win… but I wanted to get more words than a young girl who writes here in Calgary (she routinely hits 100K during the month).
Even so, the main problem with my ending isn’t actually that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t follow the storyline anymore. What had happened is that about 4 days before the end of Nanowrimo, I realized that the story was no longer going where I thought it needed to at the beginning of the month. Instead of writing organically and seeing where the ending needed to go, I ran straight back to my outline trying to write those scenes. Since they no longer fit the story it was hard going, and even harder to fix, since I didn’t realize what had happened when I tried to start editing it.
This is all part of the very painful process know as Improvement. It can also be a very painful process. What it teaches you is that the good work you were doing before isn’t good… in fact it may be painfully bad. For most of us though, the hardest part of this is proving to ourselves that we can get better.
On that note, one of the things that are going to help me prepare to write is the beautiful inspiring Miyazaki film, Whispers of the Heart. This movie is about a girl who falls in love with a boy who seems to know exactly where he wants his life to go. She is amazed at his dedication when he travels to Italy to study for two months towards his dream. Though he also likes her, she is unsure if she is good enough to be with him since she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life at all. She decides to try writing a novel while he is gone. When she is finished she invariably says it’s horrible, but a friend tells her that what it and she needs is polishing. Like a gemstone, it’s dirty and flawed when you pull it out of the ground. Only through work and knowledge can you make it into a thing of true beauty. I now keep a geode on my desk to remind of the fact that even when my writing looks like stupid ordinary rock that it can still be polished to a thing of beauty and something worth publishing.
Other things that I need to finish before Nanowrimo are:
1. Cleaning up my office so that all the garbage is gone and it’s organized. Even if I don’t have my bookshelves by that time, I would like the room to be clean. When it’s a mess, I don’t want to go in and remember that I need to clean it, especially during Nano.
2. Reading a few pages of writing into my computer about my characters for this months novel… I want Dragon to recognize what I’m saying when I talk about Xiam and Zack (the main characters in the novel). Corrections and changes only slow you down during Nanowrimo and I’d rather have as few of those as possible.
3. My novel, nicknamed “Seirei” and called “Memories Written in Moonlight” finished, or at least finished enough that I don’t mind other people seeing it.
4. I would like to have cards done before I attend the conference, even if they only have my name, website address and “Writer of Dark Fantasy” on them.
Everything else can wait if they need to. On a more personal front, I still do not have “The High King of Montival”… The store was out of them. “Mr. Monster” is out now as well for purchase, so I’ll grab both when I head into the bookstore around October 15. This weekend I am gaming, playing my little Whore Queen, Demona… hopefully, I’ll have some wonderful little tidbit to mention in my next blog about that.
Also, coming up mid to end of October… Pictures of my Writing Space! Keep an ear out and I’ll keep you updated on my progress until I put out the pics!
Today, I had a great breakthrough in my demonic love story. I’ve been unhappy with character motivations for keeping the girl at the Lord’s manor house, when there’s no reason for it… a point which was again flung in my face when I realized that my magic system didn’t quite work like I had hoped it would. So, in addition to simplifying my magic system, I’ve decided that the main male demon is going to be an ambassador of his race to this lord, instead of using him as nothing more than a second character for the main character to fall in love with (which is always a bad idea, and wasn’t entirely true, regardless. He was simply much less important in the first half of the book). I’ve included for your perusal (so that you can see how I work) a copy of the changes and how that part of the story will change. I think I’ll be able to adapt the one chapter I’ve already written to reflect this easily enough with a second chapter and a few scattered scenes to cement the change. Unfortunately, it means that my rough draft will probably end up being about 125k words (counting magic system changes to the plot as well) instead of the 100k I was aiming for. While this means a lot of work during the editing stage, it will simply remind me that I will need the wordcraft to be really tight before I consider sending it out to agents. Oh, I’ve also decided that I need a completely different name for the race instead of “demon”… tell me, what do you think of Kissrie for the race name? Corny, Cool?
Original: Seirei is a demon who prefers to not use her birthright magic, and thus she is considered flawed among their race. Kii, a male of her race decides that he will marry her (since she is beautiful and kind) since he desires a woman he can protect over a woman who would be his equal. Before he can propose, Seirei saves a lording named Tenoe from an assassination attempt and is captured in turn by Tenoe’s guards when they arrive. Seirei is held captive and is then forced to stay with the lord because Tenoe wishes to study the connection between their two magics.
Correction: Seirei is a member of the Kissrie, a magically adept race similar to humans. She is a very weak member of the Kissrie in magical power and her family has very little political power due to their “diluted blood”. Kii, a childhood friend of Seirei’s and a member of a higher house is trained to be an ambassador to the humans and travels to the Lord Sumae’s manor with Seirei’s family who happened to be heading a similar direction. He decides that Seirei will be his wife and she cares for him as well, but is unsure if it’s love she’s feeling. However, a marriage to him would raise her families power immensely. They talk about making such a commitment, but decide nothing for certain. When they are only a few hours away from the capital Seirei walks Kii near to the road to the manor to say goodbye, agreeing to see him again after his work has been done. Unfortunately, on her way back to her family, Seirei is captured, having endeared herself to the Lord’s son by saving his life. The lord insists on a hostage to be kept to seal the pack and Tenoe the lording asks for it to be Seirei. Though the Kii tries to convince them that it is he as a trained “ambassador” that should be held hostage the Lords son demands and is granted his request that the hostage be Seirei. Kii demands that she be given the choice, and if she disagrees, then he will be the one to stay. The lord agrees and Seirei frustrates Kii by saying yes to the proposal, since she is running from the knowledge that Kii wants to marry her and she hasn’t decided how she feels about that yet.
As you can see, the second is much longer, much more in-depth and even has motivations that will deal quite well with the sub-plots. Since I’m not much of a plotter I find that I tend to start off with all of my ideas as a big mesh that sounds much better in my head than it looks written down on paper. Thus, my first drafts tend to be overly focused on the main plot, with sub plots being thrown in wherever I happen to find them and ignored until I start the editing process. Technically, the rough draft is done, but I’m still adding in pieces, re-arranging and playing. I haven’t written the ending yet, due mostly to me procrastinating. I know how the ending goes, but in the wilds of Nanowrimo, I had been led astray by my own sense of competitiveness (I came in with the second highest total in Calgary though!). In my desperate attempt to get words, I started following my original plot, which I had changed prior to November. The old plot didn’t work and therefore, nothing about the scene was working… yet, I kept adding words to it. Finally I realized what was wrong was that I was being a slave to a part of my outline that no longer fit. It will be great to get in there and change things around.
On a different subject, I went to visit the Forward Motion forum earlier this week and I found a post that I had made months ago, before I’d even put up a website. I mentioned that I tend to read blogs even more than I listen to podcasts. If you go to my links pages you’ll see all of the blogs I heartily endorse you check out, but the point I made in my post was that following people’s blogs tends to feel just a little bit like stalking must.
Often people will talk about things in their blog that are quite personal, and even if they aren’t we are still putting out private information about ourselves. People who have a daily blog will tell you all about what they are doing every day and we the reader will follow along behind them, at just the safe sort of distance used by stalkers who don’t want to get caught. It is a bit of a creepy way of looking at all of the social media programs actually. By far, the worst one that I’ve seen is twitter where people use apps to let others know where they are and how far away from home they are.
Sometimes it feels as if the internet has stolen our safety and given us a sense of anonymity in return, giving us power that we are missing in our own lives. While this fact does sound horrifying and like my story plots above, much worse that it needs to, we need to remember that we are actually the ones in control. It would also help to remember that the same anonymity lets us feel that it’s safe to watch people online with no fear of reprisal. Before we start placing blame, we would do well to look to ourselves first.
Very little hilarity happened today, but even so it was a good day. I had the day off work, which meant I got to sleep in, but had enough cleaning and other plans to keep me more than busy enough. We had a friend come over, but most of what I was doing were dull things like laundry. I’m going to be doing quite a lot of gaming this weekend… or at least, at lot of character building. And just to make sure the weekend is awesome I’ll be roughing it somewhat, setting up the tent and camping in our friends yard. The game should be interesting since it’s mainly a pirate game taking place in the Shackles… a hive of pirates run by a man now known as the Hurricane King. My character, Demona, is a brothel owner in the Shackles, and an information broker of no small caliber… or at least that’s the idea.
I’ve decided that she follows, at least nominally, a quartet of Arch-Demons, known as the Whore Queens. Which leads me to my gripe for today’s blog. The book has very little information on these demonic deities and from what I can tell, even the book on demons in that world simply gives the information “the whore queens are believed to be angels who fell hoping to find power and equality in Hell.” Long story short, they didn’t. But each has become powerful and worshiped in her own right, even with the bigoted male demons working against them, which is interesting. It’s not just their fight of do I/don’t I and good/evil, which every demon makes, it’s also the inner conflicts that mirror the ones they are making in their world. How did they gain power and respect? Do the other demons respect them for it after all this time or are they still treated more badly than others?
Since the books are less than useless (and I’m a “couch-feminist” in case you couldn’t already tell), I’ve decided that since the books do give me the names, I’m going to write up a story for each of them, what trials and tribulations they’ve faced, who their allies, enemies and minions are, and finally what their goals and dreams are. It would be nice to know what they require of their followers. They’re Lawful Evil… do they require sacrifices? If they do, are males the preferred offering, since in Heaven and Hell all four were treated as little more than decorative wrapping?
They say when you’re holding a hammer every problem looks like a nail… I’d like to change that slightly. When you’re a writer, you react to every situation by wanting to write about it. To quote Timothy Clarke (writing, in turn, about Lazette Gifford), “I’d be afraid to get between you and a sheet of blank paper if you had a pen in your hand.” Off hand, a fellow Nanowrimo-er re-quoted it at me last November, when I told him that I’d was pushing to get over 80k in the month, and he knew that I’d only written 2k in the first week.
Anyways, so I’m taking on a new writing project as well, in writing up the Whore Queens, to be (hopefully) used as a supplement in our Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder game. If possible, I’d like to write 5 – 10 pages on each of the four, fleshing them, their religions and their priests out. If any of you have official information on them to help me out, I would really appreciate your help. After all, there’s no point just writing up what I happen to think if it’s going to be completely wrong and thrown out my GM’s window when/if they put out more on it, right?
This does make me stop and wonder why though. Such interesting characters, and they get a few lines in the main Pathfinder book? Even in the Book of the Damned; Princes of Evil, which focuses on the demons/devils/otherworldly evil of the Pathfinder word, a book of over 100 pages, they spend a meager four paragraphs on them, I’m assuming one each (although I don’t own the book yet. Again, if you do, letting me know what the domains of each Whore Queen is would be nice as well).
Do they truly think that nobody will care or have the desire to look into them more? It’s not just a state of the industry in this case, but a state of them deciding that women don’t constitute a large enough share of the “target audience”? Why go to the trouble of mentioning them at all if you don’t plan on expanding on the information? This is my real point of contention. In a novel, you hope to have the entire world planned, and if you are truly blessed you may be able to use 40 – 50% of the history and setting info in your book. You need enough setting to have everyone understand what the setting is, how the world works, but you can’t do so at the expense of the story. If there’s one thing I hate when I’m reading my books, it’s having the author suddenly take five pages to info dump the history of the last war on me.
With a gaming book though, you’re writing it the other way around. You want to include every organization, even rule for how the world works, all of the important people, and a bit of what their plans are. A gaming book is all about making the setting so interesting and well thought out that people won’t want to leave it. Gary Gygax, known as the Father of modern gaming, knew this and his world Living Greyhawk (Known to it’s inhabitants as Oerth) is still being played today, with its adherents who hate the idea of playing in any other world. Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting followed in Gygax’s footsteps, and in my opinion, the Faerun source books are brilliant. More than enough information on everybody who could be important to your game, while leaving more than enough open for the GM’s to make it their own.
Now, I haven’t read the entire Pathfinder book yet, so I’m not going to argue that they haven’t done their work yet. The odds that you can fit everything into a single book is slim when you’re doing world building for a gaming system and as I have noted, Source Books are still being released for the world setting, so it’s not as if they aren’t working to fill in the gaps. I will say that thus far, I am disappointed with the information on such interesting characters and that I hope my additions will be looked at fondly, and leave it at that… for now, at least.
On a final note, I do want to let everyone know that I reserved my hotel room for SiWC later this year in October… I can’t wait to get there!
Well, I’m back after way too long an absence. It’s been nearly a week after all. I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize. I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding. On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.
Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled. So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before). Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.
It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it. However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations. Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else. The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional. Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.) The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them. I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead. It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.
Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.
Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while. We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive. Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy. The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary. Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die. So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again. By a wonder we succeeded! My character is so energized about it. Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.
Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work. She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with? Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her. Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.
Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her. Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means. He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since. And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff. The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship. She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening. On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause. Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was. In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date. Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time. **Sigh** Good times, good times.
I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.
I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though. I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times. On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet. Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane. I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D. This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
The first order of business is a correction. On Sunday, I said that Camp Nanowrimo was happening during the months of June and July. Fortunately, one of the ML’s for Nanowrimo here in Calgary caught my mistake. Camp Nanowrimo should be happening in June and August. Thanks go out to Candice for letting me know so that I could make sure I have the right information up here.
Now, on to your regularily scheduled blogpost.
A few years ago when I did Nanowrimo my first year I was already working on a novel about some of me and my friends D&D characters. My husband had convinced me to try my hand at writing and what I wanted to write was the adventure that they were on.
Perhaps it just seemed safer to me at the time, but in any case, that story was a bust (as I’m sure most first novels are.) I think I’ve said it before on this blog but that novel was missing quite a few things… up to and including plot or an overarching villain. Though technically, you could say that random events and racial arguments against two people falling in love was the antagonist, that doesn’t deny the fact that it didn’t have a villain at all.
Still the characters sat in my mind, calling to me and urging me to try something unique with them. So after I attempted to edit my manuscript and decided it needed to be rewritten to include all the elements I’d forgotten, I sat down and attempted to plot it out.
The story changed in major ways. Characters were added, other characters were lost. Connections that hadn’t existed in the game showed up and things that made it D&D fanfic were lost. At the heart, the story was that of a love that crossed race and social class. Still, I wasn’t a good enough writer to finish it.
Something was missing and I regrettably decided that what I had on my hands was my first trunk novel. A beautiful idea, intriguing characters and an interesting story, but I was still missing parts that would have made it complete.
I think that everyone who writes a novel makes mistakes that just can’t fix. You just don’t know enough to make it right. You’ll learn but you have to lose that first novel and go on to your next ones.
I did that – moving on to other books as was appropriate – and spent most of my waking hours learning how to do the things I saw other authors do.
Still, I never quite moved past those characters. I don’t know how it with other authors but those first characters are still heavy in my mind. They still entrance me and I will always find myself rethinking their stories and how I can fix them.
What about you? Do you still think about your first? Have you ever returned to it as time when on?
Today, I was going to have a very intelligent on how the people we meet and see every day aren’t people to us. How they are “other” and therefore unimportant or scary until something is done to make them seem real. Everyone does this, to some degree. It’s that feeling when somebody says hello in the grocery line and you nod politely but then go back to looking at the magazines blankly until they ask you about that book you’re holding or something important to you. Regardless of how you get there, everyone experiences a moment when suddenly that other person matters to you as more than an inconvenience.
This is the moment when that girl or guy you were checking out surprises you and you ask them about something personal. That moment when the guy asking for your cash in front of the 7-11 uses $4 of his hard-earned money to buy his dog food and nothing for himself.
It’s a really interesting phenomenon and I would suggest everyone look into it and how it is affecting/informing your daily decisions.
However, that’s what I was going to talk about, not what I am going to talk about. That is due solely to my Asus Transformer. Since I bought it in October of last year, this singular piece of technology has become nearly indispensable to me.
Doing a bit of writing on the go? Take the tablet. Want to waste 5 minutes? Grab the tablet. Want to listen to some music? Grab the tablet. Want to do some reading? Grab the tablet. Want to quickly do some research on the go? Turn on the tablet. Want to do some GM’ing or even playing in a game? Grab the tablet instead of the dice.
I took my notes on it for critiques. For my writing group, Pen Duels, I would put the finished product up on it and read it from there. I could carry everything, including some videos and awesome pictures for when I needed something.
Then today, it broke.
At the end of my day at work, I turned off the device, packed it into my bag and headed out for my bus. After I got on, I took out the tablet and tried to turn it on. It literally won’t boot past the loading screen.
So I devoted a few hours to returning to sanity. I did some house cleaning. I looked into how to fix it. I attempted to fix it myself and failed miserably. Eventually, my husband helped me out by cuddling for a few minutes, got me a warm cover and my gigantic and awesome Android stuffed an animal to cuddle and feel more relaxed holding my comfort toy.
I’ve send a message to Asus about it and I’ll see what they say. If worse comes to worse, I have some money put away that I can decommission from vacation to tablet repair. In the meantime, please give me a moment in your thoughts and hope alongside me that I can get it repaired without dropping an arm and a leg to do so.
Hello? Is anybody out there? Really? After this long I had sorta thought that nobody but the spammers were visiting anymore (and before I get too far off topic, let me say that the spammers have really been active. 2 days generating over 300 spam posts? Either my site has just gotten a lot more hits from regular people and the spam bots are following or somebody is sending them my way because I don’t have a bot detector set up yet). In that case, accept my apology and my most heartfelt thanks. Much like a dog grabbing a toy and shaking the stuffing out of it, Life has been grabbing me and shaking the stuffing out of me. While I can’t point at just one thing, I can say that life simply conspired to make the month of February a really busy month.
As a quick update, I’m still writing and most days I have written, even if I haven’t been making my 750 words a day (and for that matter, being able to get onto their site each day). I have found a way of guilting me into doing a bit more writing each day though… I programed my phone to remind me each day at quarter to 8 pm “Have you written your 750 Words yet today”. Its good because it gets me writing again, even if I have to admit that I’ve been tempted to write excuses and reasons why I haven’t as a response to the question.
I have been writing, both writing in my novel (which I finally have figured out what my “plot point not making sense” was. Knowing a scene is wrong, but not knowing why blocks me horribly) and in new projects that I started off with my friends. We bought copies of 2YN by Lazette Gifford and have been running ourselves through that for the last 3 weeks. 2YN stands for “Two Year Novel” and her book helps take you from base idea/cool scene to a finished novel and sending out queries in two years. I’ve been through the course before and would suggest it to anyone thinking of writing a novel. Even if you’re not a meticulous planner (I wasn’t when I started and though I’m a planner now, I’m still not very meticulous about it), I found it very useful to learn how people plan and what sort of questions to ask. Due in part to my experience in the class, I was able to make the world my characters were living in much more believable.
Anyways, I started doing this with a few friends of mine and have new novel ideas brewing up because of it. One of them is Dual Melodies and I think that I’m going to start posting up my writings on this. Between the 40k words written on it previously and another idea I had messing around in my head I suddenly realized that the story just needed some basic tweaking before I could start re-writing it again. So, I’m starting over from scratch on it… which means an all new story for you guys! The other story is a silly idea that I’ve had brewing in my head about a year now. I’m tentatively calling the project “Erotic Angel” since it’s about a winged woman who is a professional courtesan and bard. It includes a lot of sex (note the Erotic in the title”) and while I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sell this little mini novella/novel thing, it is helping me to step out of my box and understand not only the act of sex more but also the feelings, emotions and behaviors surrounding it.
Something that I had to stop doing during February was reading. Now this was painful to me, mainly because the book was not a good book. Trying to slog through it was like trying to wade through 4 feet of snow… it can be done, just not easily or happily. Now, I will admit that had I been handed this book 2 years ago, I probably would have just said it annoyed me, but not that it was actively bad. However, since I’ve started studying the art of writing, my bar for books has gone way up. Mediocre or not actively bad isn’t a good enough reason for me to read anymore. However, this book did help me to identify two main rules of writing that I now consider to be my two major sins of writing.
1. Never assume that I am familiar with your world or your characters.
What I mean by this is don’t start a book and forget to mention whether your main character is male or female. Don’t assume that because you said, “He’s a monk that was trained to kill people in war” (for instance) that your reader is going to automatically understand that later on when your monk-killer starts emo’ing out and saying people “treat him differently because of what he is” that we aren’t going to immediately think that its because he fought and killed people in the war(Yes, this is has happened before… we were told the main characters profession and emo-tendencies before we found out his race).
2. Don’t make your secondary characters stupid just to make the main character look smarter.
This should be quick because this rule is quite solid. If you want your main character to come across as smart, make him smart. Don’t make the other characters stupid. In the book I was reading, a 40 year old general sent his squad in unprepared to fight mercenaries/bandits who had holed up in a cave that they had prepared in case they needed someplace to fall back to. The war mage (normally the smartest character since that sort of magic is based off how intelligent you are) admitted to not learning battle spells on a day when he should have known he was getting into combat. But the 18 year old Monk could have told him what he needed to know.)
Anyways, I’ll stop on my rants and let you guys go. Keep an eye open, I’ll be posting up two songs I wrote during FAWM(I wasn’t really participating, but I thought I’d give song writing in general a try) and I’ll see you all next time.
It’s only been a few days since I last blogged, but I figured another one certainly couldn’t hurt. Especially since it’s been a pretty good week for me and my writing. I haven’t moved ahead in my novel yet (I’m really good at procrastinating) but I know where I need to go in it. What I have been doing is writing a lot this week on my D&D characters. While most of this writing won’t ever see a publishing world, it is very relaxing for me to try and write about characters that I’m intimately involved in.
That’s actually what today’s topic is… not D&D and how it influences my writing though. That topic has been gone over to death. Instead I’ll talk about the newest thing that me and my fellow geeks are doing is actually a really good idea, both for the game and for writing in general. Theme Songs! I may be getting ahead of myself though. Let me start at the beginning and explain.
Years ago (a good three years ago, maybe four, if memory serves) I started running a D&D game for my husband and friends. It wasn’t the first game I’d run but I decided that I wanted to do something different than the usual type of game. What I decided to run instead was an evil game. We’re playing D&D like we normally would but instead of just having evil alignments or being jerk’s (though they are that as well, quite often), they had a semi-firm goal. Go from being nobody’s at third level to running an evil empire before level 20. Rather early in this game one of my players was pleased enough that he was thinking about it all the time. He was listening to music and suddenly realized that the game as a whole has a “theme song”. The whole group agreed and Nightwish’s “I Wish I Had an Angel” got the passing grade. Although the whole song applies to the game, for me it’s the line “Burning Angel Wings to Dust” that really makes the song match the game for me.
Recently the evil fighter in the group realized he was “Indestructable” (Note: It has a really 45 second beginning before the song starts) and claimed that as his individual characters theme song. It’s now at the point where all of the PC’s (player characters) and most of the important NPC’s (non-player characters) have themes for themselves. We’re doing it for most of the games we play in at this point.
As with anything that takes up my time, I eventually start wondering exactly how I can use this in my writing. To be fair, this idea was easier to implement than you would think. I have started looking at my novel and characters in my story and have been trying to figure out what their songs are. I can see a few of you out there are looking at me as if I’m an idiot now. “How hard can it be to find a song that means something to your characters?” Quite a bit harder than you’d expect actually.
First you need to know about the character, their motivations, how they view the world and why they view it the way they do. Then you need to find a style of music that matches the character. Having a folk song done to acoustic guitar for a tattooed insane woman, like ”Jack” off of Mass Effect 2, just wouldn’t feel like it matched the character. After music type, you need to pay attention to the lyrics. Simply because a character is a pyro-maniac does not mean that the song that applies to that character will be about burning something. In fact, I usually find it more true if it doesn’t. Third, you have to be willing to accept that sometimes it will be the song that you least expected it to be.
As an example, I am playing a Cat-Folk battle dancer in one of my games. She is pretty much a caffeine kitty… She only sleeps two hours a day, and she is always either on the move running around or she is completely at rest and almost cat-napping. She is a happy, pleasant woman, who speaks with a slight accent. She always looks for the best in a situation. I originally thought that her song would show off her nearly inexhaustible energy and pleasure, but in doing so, I forgot about her past. I forgot to ask why she forced herself to look for the bright side. Unsurprisingly, while I was ignoring this, I couldn’t find a song for her.
The perfect song came about when I was listening to an artist that I normally don’t listen to. Avril Lavigne’s Innocence (shown below) encompassed not only my caffeine kitty’s predilection to ignoring unhappy things, but also took into account her tortured past as a sex slave (by the way, the answer is “Yes, my characters never have happy histories.”). The song is below and suits her to a ‘T’.
So, now I’m doing this and every song I listen to has the potential to be a song for a character in my book. “Tear you Apart” by She Wants Revenge is now the theme song for Zack, Xiam’s boyfriend in my Vampire Fiction “Falling through the Threshold”. Listen to the song and tell me that doesn’t make him that much creepier as you read through “The White Citadel”. I dare ya.
So, do you have a theme song? Do you use theme songs for characters? Do you think that you’ll be using it in your own writing?
I have been looking at my own work recently, and trying to decide how best to prepare for Nanowrimo while finishing up my current WIP. Of course, the new project is shinier… It’s new, I haven’t thought about it for months or years, and I haven’t seen ¾ of the book and decided that its crap. The fact that 4 months ago I thought this work was good and now I’m looking at it and worrying that its unsalvageable means that I’ve probably reached that area of the book where all authors suddenly think their work is bad and horrible. On the other hand, I also know (unfortunately) that I’m not yet skilled enough to be able to decide on my own. Of course, my husband says that the story is engaging and interesting but I know that he has a vested interest in it. I wish that I was part of a writing group so that I could pass around a chapter or so and find out what it looks like.
I’m really hoping that I can finish it before SiWC. One of the classes I’m really looking forward to is the one Master Class that I sighed up for. It’s taught by Robert J. Ray. It’s called “Welcome to Your Novel Rewrite”. Since this is really the area I feel I need help in, I’m very excited. I say that I’m rewriting my novel now, but I know that what I’m actually doing right now is perhaps the smallest part of the rewrite… filling in scenes that I didn’t write during November. A small amount of this will be at the beginning, and I’m doing it now. I also know that I condensed an entire scene into the words “romance montage… write when you have inspiration”. I now know what’s supposed to go there (and it’s not really a romance montage, but a scene detailing characters getting to know each other/teaching of the magic system mix) and so I should finally be able to write it down. I know I also need to rewrite the ending. The end of last nano was a bit of insanity for me and I was desperately trying to get 10k words in three days. Not that I required it to win… but I wanted to get more words than a young girl who writes here in Calgary (she routinely hits 100K during the month).
Even so, the main problem with my ending isn’t actually that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t follow the storyline anymore. What had happened is that about 4 days before the end of Nanowrimo, I realized that the story was no longer going where I thought it needed to at the beginning of the month. Instead of writing organically and seeing where the ending needed to go, I ran straight back to my outline trying to write those scenes. Since they no longer fit the story it was hard going, and even harder to fix, since I didn’t realize what had happened when I tried to start editing it.
This is all part of the very painful process know as Improvement. It can also be a very painful process. What it teaches you is that the good work you were doing before isn’t good… in fact it may be painfully bad. For most of us though, the hardest part of this is proving to ourselves that we can get better.
On that note, one of the things that are going to help me prepare to write is the beautiful inspiring Miyazaki film, Whispers of the Heart. This movie is about a girl who falls in love with a boy who seems to know exactly where he wants his life to go. She is amazed at his dedication when he travels to Italy to study for two months towards his dream. Though he also likes her, she is unsure if she is good enough to be with him since she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life at all. She decides to try writing a novel while he is gone. When she is finished she invariably says it’s horrible, but a friend tells her that what it and she needs is polishing. Like a gemstone, it’s dirty and flawed when you pull it out of the ground. Only through work and knowledge can you make it into a thing of true beauty. I now keep a geode on my desk to remind of the fact that even when my writing looks like stupid ordinary rock that it can still be polished to a thing of beauty and something worth publishing.
Other things that I need to finish before Nanowrimo are:
1. Cleaning up my office so that all the garbage is gone and it’s organized. Even if I don’t have my bookshelves by that time, I would like the room to be clean. When it’s a mess, I don’t want to go in and remember that I need to clean it, especially during Nano.
2. Reading a few pages of writing into my computer about my characters for this months novel… I want Dragon to recognize what I’m saying when I talk about Xiam and Zack (the main characters in the novel). Corrections and changes only slow you down during Nanowrimo and I’d rather have as few of those as possible.
3. My novel, nicknamed “Seirei” and called “Memories Written in Moonlight” finished, or at least finished enough that I don’t mind other people seeing it.
4. I would like to have cards done before I attend the conference, even if they only have my name, website address and “Writer of Dark Fantasy” on them.
Everything else can wait if they need to. On a more personal front, I still do not have “The High King of Montival”… The store was out of them. “Mr. Monster” is out now as well for purchase, so I’ll grab both when I head into the bookstore around October 15. This weekend I am gaming, playing my little Whore Queen, Demona… hopefully, I’ll have some wonderful little tidbit to mention in my next blog about that.
Also, coming up mid to end of October… Pictures of my Writing Space! Keep an ear out and I’ll keep you updated on my progress until I put out the pics!
Today, I had a great breakthrough in my demonic love story. I’ve been unhappy with character motivations for keeping the girl at the Lord’s manor house, when there’s no reason for it… a point which was again flung in my face when I realized that my magic system didn’t quite work like I had hoped it would. So, in addition to simplifying my magic system, I’ve decided that the main male demon is going to be an ambassador of his race to this lord, instead of using him as nothing more than a second character for the main character to fall in love with (which is always a bad idea, and wasn’t entirely true, regardless. He was simply much less important in the first half of the book). I’ve included for your perusal (so that you can see how I work) a copy of the changes and how that part of the story will change. I think I’ll be able to adapt the one chapter I’ve already written to reflect this easily enough with a second chapter and a few scattered scenes to cement the change. Unfortunately, it means that my rough draft will probably end up being about 125k words (counting magic system changes to the plot as well) instead of the 100k I was aiming for. While this means a lot of work during the editing stage, it will simply remind me that I will need the wordcraft to be really tight before I consider sending it out to agents. Oh, I’ve also decided that I need a completely different name for the race instead of “demon”… tell me, what do you think of Kissrie for the race name? Corny, Cool?
Original: Seirei is a demon who prefers to not use her birthright magic, and thus she is considered flawed among their race. Kii, a male of her race decides that he will marry her (since she is beautiful and kind) since he desires a woman he can protect over a woman who would be his equal. Before he can propose, Seirei saves a lording named Tenoe from an assassination attempt and is captured in turn by Tenoe’s guards when they arrive. Seirei is held captive and is then forced to stay with the lord because Tenoe wishes to study the connection between their two magics.
Correction: Seirei is a member of the Kissrie, a magically adept race similar to humans. She is a very weak member of the Kissrie in magical power and her family has very little political power due to their “diluted blood”. Kii, a childhood friend of Seirei’s and a member of a higher house is trained to be an ambassador to the humans and travels to the Lord Sumae’s manor with Seirei’s family who happened to be heading a similar direction. He decides that Seirei will be his wife and she cares for him as well, but is unsure if it’s love she’s feeling. However, a marriage to him would raise her families power immensely. They talk about making such a commitment, but decide nothing for certain. When they are only a few hours away from the capital Seirei walks Kii near to the road to the manor to say goodbye, agreeing to see him again after his work has been done. Unfortunately, on her way back to her family, Seirei is captured, having endeared herself to the Lord’s son by saving his life. The lord insists on a hostage to be kept to seal the pack and Tenoe the lording asks for it to be Seirei. Though the Kii tries to convince them that it is he as a trained “ambassador” that should be held hostage the Lords son demands and is granted his request that the hostage be Seirei. Kii demands that she be given the choice, and if she disagrees, then he will be the one to stay. The lord agrees and Seirei frustrates Kii by saying yes to the proposal, since she is running from the knowledge that Kii wants to marry her and she hasn’t decided how she feels about that yet.
As you can see, the second is much longer, much more in-depth and even has motivations that will deal quite well with the sub-plots. Since I’m not much of a plotter I find that I tend to start off with all of my ideas as a big mesh that sounds much better in my head than it looks written down on paper. Thus, my first drafts tend to be overly focused on the main plot, with sub plots being thrown in wherever I happen to find them and ignored until I start the editing process. Technically, the rough draft is done, but I’m still adding in pieces, re-arranging and playing. I haven’t written the ending yet, due mostly to me procrastinating. I know how the ending goes, but in the wilds of Nanowrimo, I had been led astray by my own sense of competitiveness (I came in with the second highest total in Calgary though!). In my desperate attempt to get words, I started following my original plot, which I had changed prior to November. The old plot didn’t work and therefore, nothing about the scene was working… yet, I kept adding words to it. Finally I realized what was wrong was that I was being a slave to a part of my outline that no longer fit. It will be great to get in there and change things around.
On a different subject, I went to visit the Forward Motion forum earlier this week and I found a post that I had made months ago, before I’d even put up a website. I mentioned that I tend to read blogs even more than I listen to podcasts. If you go to my links pages you’ll see all of the blogs I heartily endorse you check out, but the point I made in my post was that following people’s blogs tends to feel just a little bit like stalking must.
Often people will talk about things in their blog that are quite personal, and even if they aren’t we are still putting out private information about ourselves. People who have a daily blog will tell you all about what they are doing every day and we the reader will follow along behind them, at just the safe sort of distance used by stalkers who don’t want to get caught. It is a bit of a creepy way of looking at all of the social media programs actually. By far, the worst one that I’ve seen is twitter where people use apps to let others know where they are and how far away from home they are.
Sometimes it feels as if the internet has stolen our safety and given us a sense of anonymity in return, giving us power that we are missing in our own lives. While this fact does sound horrifying and like my story plots above, much worse that it needs to, we need to remember that we are actually the ones in control. It would also help to remember that the same anonymity lets us feel that it’s safe to watch people online with no fear of reprisal. Before we start placing blame, we would do well to look to ourselves first.
Very little hilarity happened today, but even so it was a good day. I had the day off work, which meant I got to sleep in, but had enough cleaning and other plans to keep me more than busy enough. We had a friend come over, but most of what I was doing were dull things like laundry. I’m going to be doing quite a lot of gaming this weekend… or at least, at lot of character building. And just to make sure the weekend is awesome I’ll be roughing it somewhat, setting up the tent and camping in our friends yard. The game should be interesting since it’s mainly a pirate game taking place in the Shackles… a hive of pirates run by a man now known as the Hurricane King. My character, Demona, is a brothel owner in the Shackles, and an information broker of no small caliber… or at least that’s the idea.
I’ve decided that she follows, at least nominally, a quartet of Arch-Demons, known as the Whore Queens. Which leads me to my gripe for today’s blog. The book has very little information on these demonic deities and from what I can tell, even the book on demons in that world simply gives the information “the whore queens are believed to be angels who fell hoping to find power and equality in Hell.” Long story short, they didn’t. But each has become powerful and worshiped in her own right, even with the bigoted male demons working against them, which is interesting. It’s not just their fight of do I/don’t I and good/evil, which every demon makes, it’s also the inner conflicts that mirror the ones they are making in their world. How did they gain power and respect? Do the other demons respect them for it after all this time or are they still treated more badly than others?
Since the books are less than useless (and I’m a “couch-feminist” in case you couldn’t already tell), I’ve decided that since the books do give me the names, I’m going to write up a story for each of them, what trials and tribulations they’ve faced, who their allies, enemies and minions are, and finally what their goals and dreams are. It would be nice to know what they require of their followers. They’re Lawful Evil… do they require sacrifices? If they do, are males the preferred offering, since in Heaven and Hell all four were treated as little more than decorative wrapping?
They say when you’re holding a hammer every problem looks like a nail… I’d like to change that slightly. When you’re a writer, you react to every situation by wanting to write about it. To quote Timothy Clarke (writing, in turn, about Lazette Gifford), “I’d be afraid to get between you and a sheet of blank paper if you had a pen in your hand.” Off hand, a fellow Nanowrimo-er re-quoted it at me last November, when I told him that I’d was pushing to get over 80k in the month, and he knew that I’d only written 2k in the first week.
Anyways, so I’m taking on a new writing project as well, in writing up the Whore Queens, to be (hopefully) used as a supplement in our Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder game. If possible, I’d like to write 5 – 10 pages on each of the four, fleshing them, their religions and their priests out. If any of you have official information on them to help me out, I would really appreciate your help. After all, there’s no point just writing up what I happen to think if it’s going to be completely wrong and thrown out my GM’s window when/if they put out more on it, right?
This does make me stop and wonder why though. Such interesting characters, and they get a few lines in the main Pathfinder book? Even in the Book of the Damned; Princes of Evil, which focuses on the demons/devils/otherworldly evil of the Pathfinder word, a book of over 100 pages, they spend a meager four paragraphs on them, I’m assuming one each (although I don’t own the book yet. Again, if you do, letting me know what the domains of each Whore Queen is would be nice as well).
Do they truly think that nobody will care or have the desire to look into them more? It’s not just a state of the industry in this case, but a state of them deciding that women don’t constitute a large enough share of the “target audience”? Why go to the trouble of mentioning them at all if you don’t plan on expanding on the information? This is my real point of contention. In a novel, you hope to have the entire world planned, and if you are truly blessed you may be able to use 40 – 50% of the history and setting info in your book. You need enough setting to have everyone understand what the setting is, how the world works, but you can’t do so at the expense of the story. If there’s one thing I hate when I’m reading my books, it’s having the author suddenly take five pages to info dump the history of the last war on me.
With a gaming book though, you’re writing it the other way around. You want to include every organization, even rule for how the world works, all of the important people, and a bit of what their plans are. A gaming book is all about making the setting so interesting and well thought out that people won’t want to leave it. Gary Gygax, known as the Father of modern gaming, knew this and his world Living Greyhawk (Known to it’s inhabitants as Oerth) is still being played today, with its adherents who hate the idea of playing in any other world. Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting followed in Gygax’s footsteps, and in my opinion, the Faerun source books are brilliant. More than enough information on everybody who could be important to your game, while leaving more than enough open for the GM’s to make it their own.
Now, I haven’t read the entire Pathfinder book yet, so I’m not going to argue that they haven’t done their work yet. The odds that you can fit everything into a single book is slim when you’re doing world building for a gaming system and as I have noted, Source Books are still being released for the world setting, so it’s not as if they aren’t working to fill in the gaps. I will say that thus far, I am disappointed with the information on such interesting characters and that I hope my additions will be looked at fondly, and leave it at that… for now, at least.
On a final note, I do want to let everyone know that I reserved my hotel room for SiWC later this year in October… I can’t wait to get there!
Well, I’m back after way too long an absence. It’s been nearly a week after all. I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize. I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding. On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.
Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled. So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before). Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.
It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it. However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations. Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else. The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional. Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.) The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them. I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead. It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.
Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.
Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while. We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive. Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy. The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary. Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die. So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again. By a wonder we succeeded! My character is so energized about it. Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.
Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work. She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with? Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her. Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.
Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her. Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means. He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since. And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff. The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship. She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening. On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause. Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was. In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date. Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time. **Sigh** Good times, good times.
I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.
I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though. I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times. On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet. Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane. I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D. This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
B.A. Matthews is an amateur author hoping to make her way into the world of published works. Her novels and short stories tend to be Fantasy, slipping into Dark Fantasy often as not. She also used to write music reviews over at Pagan Radio Network (www.paganradio.net).
I am currently working on two novels, Falling through the Threshold and a book tentatively titled Dual Melodies.
B.A. Matthews tries to update her blogs once a week and her various writings under the Pages section twice a month.
