Mystery

What I'm Listening To: Alexander Rybak - Foolin'

What I'm Doing: Reading. A lot.

This is probably going to be quick and dirty; I felt guilty for not posting anything for nearly a month, and I just had a thought that I felt deserved to be written down.

I'm reading fanfics at the moment, and this particular one is by a 'big name author' in the fandom. That said, I expected her to be really fantastic.

It's... okay, but it lead to my complaint.

There's no mystery. It's a novel-length fanfic (over 98k in words) but so far there's been no 'page-turning' to it. It's just... 'fact. This happens. That happens. He's bored. He's sleeping with someone to stave off boredom. He's spying. Here he is. They meet.'

There's no 'what is he doing here? Why did that happen? Who was that? What's going to happen next?"

No mystery!

It's a strange thing to realise, that I'm actively becoming a better writer; I can see it easily, when looking at my writing from several years ago, versus now. Even when looking at more recent things Pre-Book, versus Post-Book. (fanfics I wrote before I attempted Eversong and Eden's Gate as opposed to what I've written since those two novels.) But to KNOW that I'm seeing what makes a bad writer, or a 'not-good' writer, and to be able to apply it actively to myself, is a strange feeling.

Frustration

What I'm Listening To: Tiziano Ferro - Ed Ero Conentissimo

What I'm Doing: reading fanfics, and considering sleep.

I've been reading a lot of fanfics lately, trying to recapture the writing spark. Some are so-so, and some are just so ... utterly amazing. I get completely sucked into them, and it's only afterwards, when I'm sobbing into a tissue over such a happy/bittersweet ending, that I think, How do they do it?

How do they write characters that make me feel so much for them? What is it about that story that sucked me in so hard? Why am I crying right now, how did they DO it?

I'm proud of myself for these questions. Because I know it means I'm asking myself, How can I do it, too?

But it doesn't lessen the frustration of not being able to pick out the moment when they turn generic characters into real people that I feel for. I foresee a lot of rereads in my future as I try to decipher this little mystery.

Writing For Something

What I'm Listening To: Crazy Loop - Crazy Loop

What I'm Doing: Reading Crystal Line by Anne McCaffrey, and poking at my novel, seeing if it'll want to cooperate today.

First of all, a shout-out to Tara Maya, who guest-blogged over at The Literary Lab with an utterly fabulous post on Epic Fantasy.

This post was spawned by the fact that Mami prodded me last night and said, "You haven't updated your blog for six days!"

My excuse was, "I have nothing to say!" but it's also been because my computer is going crazy, and refuses to let me do anything. I finally switched over from Firefox (which is constantly giving me seven-hour 'not responding' messages) to Internet Explorer for the duration. (Eventually Firefox will come crying back to me, and I am weak, so I will return to it.)

So, from IE, I blog again! Mostly about not blogging. But I did think up something useful to say this morning, as well, so you get an actual blog about writing, and not just some random ditherings about not being able to blog.

Work on Eversong was ... slow going, to say the least. I started writing weeks ago, and had only about 5k in words to show for it. When a friend of mine started updating her wordcount on Twitter, my competitive nature came out, and I realised I'd only feel better about it until I'd surpassed her wordcount.

Still, the inspiration was there, but the motivation was seriously lacking.

Until Mami shared details about her book, which she's currently in the process of querying about. (Good luck darling! I cannot wait to see it in print!!) I couldn't rest until I knew more. So I avoided work on Eversong in favour of figuring out her book, interviewed her on my favourite character, decided I was focusing too much on just one, started asking questions about the others...

And got the first three chapters out of her.

Oh. My. God. I'm a long-time fan of her fanfics, and knew she was a fantastic writer. I was still not prepared for how quickly it sucked me in, and how totally my obsession was cemented. I fell utterly in love with everything I'd seen so far, and immediately began plotting ways I could get her to send me the rest.

She said she felt bad, because she didn't want to take away from my writing time. I joked that I wasn't getting much writing done anyway, and was more interested in her book than my own to boot. Then I remembered that if I have something to work FOR, I work BETTER.

So I said, I'll set myself a goal of 500 to 1000 words written before I read the next chapter.

With the knowledge of her book waiting for me, a chapter at a time if only I could write, my wordcount exploded. Whereas it had taken me several weeks to get to only 5k words, over the course of three or four days, my wordcount doubled, and is currently sitting at over 12k. Knowing that I couldn't allow myself to read more before I got something written suddenly overcame the hesitancy in my writing, and it advanced by leaps and bounds. It actually feels like it's going to become a novel now, and not remain unfinished forever. I have the end of her book waiting for me to write some more, and as soon as I'm done, I'm already wondering if she'll continue this for the next two books.

Now, because I know she reads this, I don't want to guilt her into thinking she's got to send it to me - it will just be very much loved. And I can write without AftG... it just tends to be more along the lines of one or two hundred words every few days. I'm not sure what I'll do when I've finished reading it all.

Start again, I suppose. It's easy enough to do. I'm afraid that my love for her books will never be diminished, and will remain a lifelong obsession. (Not necessarily a bad thing.)

What about the rest of you? Do you write for something, or do you just... write when the mood strikes?

The Journey

What I'm Listening To: Poe - Hey Pretty

What I'm Doing: Reading Sunshine by Robin McKinley, and debating on whether or not I should brave the weather and walk to 7-11.

I was going to say something about this in the comments of Jess Jordan's blog, but then I realised with the way I talk, especially about writing, I'd be better off putting it in it's own post.

She talked briefly about how she always wanted to be a writer, but got somewhat distracted on the path to becoming a lawyer (I believe that's what she said... my bad memory in action: I just read her blog not ten minutes ago.) and then picked up writing again when she was fed up with it.

I hear a lot of people say that. "Well, I've always wanted to be a writer."

Well, by that logic I've always wanted to be an astronaut, a singer, an actress, a marine biologist, a storm-chaser, an archaeologist, an artist, the list goes on. Whatever I was interested in at the time, I wanted to be. Twister came out; I wanted to chase tornadoes. I was in love with JTT (remember him?) - I wanted to be an actress. But the only thing that's ever come from within me, with no outside influences, was writing.

I had a diary in second grade, it was heart shaped, with pink, heart-shaped paper, and the last thing I recall reading out of it was my 'script' for a sequel to "Shiloh" (a movie I don't even remember now, except that it had something to do with a dog.) and a "script" for a romantic sort of movie that takes place in Australia (even at such a young age, I was in love with the Australian accent. I blame this entirely on Jake from The Rescuers Down Under.)

What I was really doing was not 'script-writing' as I imagined at the time, but writing a fanfic, and my first original story. In first or second grade. True, they weren't very original, but I was six or seven at the most.

And I've always had an overactive imagination. As a toddler (one of the very few memories of my childhood that I retain) I recall being laid in my crib for a 'nap' but instead, I sat among my stuffed animals and created fantastic stories with them. I was a solitary child, a product of too much reading, and bullying. None of the kids liked me, for whatever reason, so I turned ever further into my books, and was never happier than when I was by myself. Another fond childhood memory is being on a swing set and swinging so high that I imagined I would simply float off the seat and drift away to adventures unimaginable to the kids who had nothing better to do than pick on a quiet girl who made no fuss. I would climb trees or find solitary corners, and read for hours; something that hasn't changed in the least.

Thankfully, at least, my skill as a writer has improved, and continues to do so. Eventually, I want to go to college, and get my masters in Creative Writing. (MFA, I believe is what it's called, but I could be utterly wrong.)

A lot of people say they've always wanted to be a writer. I have no way of judging whether they actually have or not, but I can say honestly, that from the moment I learned to form letters on paper, I haven't WANTED to be a writer - I've BEEN a writer.

First Sentences

What I'm Listening To: Cinema Bizarre - Forever or Never

What I'm Doing: Reading NightMare by Piers Anthony

In my last post, Discussion, I mentioned I'd been thinking of posting the first line of my newest idea-in-progress, an as-yet untitled 'vampire novel'. To my dismay, I can't recall the exact wording of it, so I'm going to jot down what I recall of it here, and ask a few questions, as well as the other first lines.

An explanation: I'm going to post the first sentences of my three novels-in-progress, as well as the first sentences from some of the books I've got laying around, and give you my opinion on what makes them worthy. I suppose I could have just said that in the first place, but I was a bit distracted by my winamp behaving oddly.
*
She was dreaming. It was a familiar dream, one she’d had several times over the course of the last month, and it was always the same – the dark haired man, the tall forests, and a massive city rising above the trees.
-Legends of Eversong, Eversong (book one)

At first I was thinking I was going to hate this, because I haven't reread any of Eversong, and my overall impression of what I've written so far is that it's going to need heavy revisions when I'm done, but I surprised myself; that's not too bad for a first line, in my own opinion.

*

My name is Riley, and I’m a rat. A really old rat, or so my grandkids say, but I’ve also got a really old memory. Not that it doesn’t work – oh no, my memories are as clear as the day they were made. None of us who lived through that hellish time were ever the same again, not really, but none of us ever forgot. It was the beginning of my sixteenth summer when the bottom fell out of my life, and my world was changed forever. This is where my story starts.
-Mischief and Murder

Not the first sentence, but the introduction. The whole thing is NOT in first person; just a brief blurb from older-Riley, narrating bits and pieces of the story, where-as younger-Riley is the one the story actually follows.

*

I've been a vampire-hunter my whole life. The whole of my mortal life, anyway.
-Unnamed "Vampire Novel"

Ehhh. A couple days ago I had a really brilliant first line from the MC of this story, but it's gone out of my head now, which makes me very sad. This will likely NOT be the first line when I begin writing it, and I include this here just for posterity.

*

The stork glided to a landing before Stunk's residence and squawked for attention.
-NightMare, Piers Anthony

I think it's a good line; it naturally leads into the next paragraph, explaining who Stunk is, and what the stork is doing there. It doesn't make much sense taken out of context, but for what it is, it's good.

*

It was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn't that dumb.
-Sunshine, Robin McKinley

The first line of my much-lauded favourite novel, Sunshine. This is a brilliantly executed first line. It sets up the tone, the voice of the character, and sets you down right in the middle of everything that's going on. Of course, McKinley reverses that just two sentences later, by launching into a narrative of Sunshine's home and family life, but it does what it needs to do, and gets you started.

*

Winters on Ballybran were generally mild, so the fury of the first spring storms as they howled across the land was ever unexpected.
-Killshandra, Anne McCaffrey (Crystal Singer Trilogy, book 2)

An excellent introduction. It gives a little bit of backstory on Ballybran (mild winters and raging storms in spring) and kickstarts the story, which follows that line by setting up the character coming in to the guild complex on the edge of a storm.

*

"One drink. You'd think I just asked you to check into the Marriott."
-Timeless Passion, Constance O'Day-Flannery

Starting a novel off with dialogue can be a bit sketchy at times, but it works here by giving the reader a conflict right off the bat. The main character is single, and is being hit on by her married coworkers. And yes, this is a historical romance/time-travel romance. Hush.

*

The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent.
-Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

One of the most famous novels by the late Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park was slated to become a movie before he'd even finished writing it. Sadly, most people have never read the book, and don't even know it WAS a book. This is an absolutely fantastic first line. It sets up everything: place, actions, environs. Place, somewhere tropical. Actions, it's raining like mad. Environs, it's a clinic in an old building.

*

As the bus entered the prefectural capital of Takamatsu, garden suburbs transformed into city streets of multicolored neon, headlights of oncoming cars, and checkered lights of office buildings.
-Battle Royale, Koushun Takami

Another one that sets up the beginning quite nicely. You know where your main character is - on a bus - and where he's going - the city of Takamatsu. Granted, this may not make much sense to people who aren't familiar with the geography of Japan, but it's okay, because it's a good entrance anyway; you don't need to know what Takamatsu looks like; they've given it to you. Neon lights and lots of traffic, and office buildings, with garden-filled suburbs.
This is an interesting book, because it's been translated into English from the original Japanese, but it didn't, as far as I know, lose anything in that translation. This is either because it was a phenomenal book in the original language, or the translator did a fantastic job, or both, but I don't read fluently in Japanese yet, and couldn't tell you what the case was.

*

The bus had no business stopping where it did. We should have gone straight on across the Coldingham Moor, with Dunbar to the back of us and the English border drawing ever nearer, but instead we stopped, and the shaggy-faced cattle that lifted their heads on the far side of the fence appeared to share my surprise when the driver cut the engine to an idle.
-The Shadowy Horses, Susanna Kearsley

So I squeezed two sentences in, I love this book too much not to. It has all the makings of a beloved book, but I'm no longer in the mood for frivolities, due to a slight misunderstanding with a friend. I'll do one more, since I have the book in front of me, and then I'll let you be.

This is a book I haven't read yet (rescued it out of the GARBAGE. TAT Who THROWS AWAY BOOKS!? It's MADNESS!) so I don't know what it's going to be like; a completely impartial opinion.

*

Rain was in the air. Kolb had never given much thought to the weather in Los Angeles. Most days were seventy-five degrees and sunny. But in January came drenching rain that flooded the streets, causing traffic snarls and fender benders and, sometimes, fatal accidents. The rains could kill.
-Dangerous Games, Michael Prescott

It was technically three paragraphs, ending with air, accidents, and kill, but I lumped it all together to make it easier to type and see. But my first reaction upon reading 'the rains could kill' was, 'ooh! what's going to happen?' And this book moved up on my list of 'what to read next.'

This has been, if boring for you, an exercise in reader-hooks for me, figuring out what should be in a first sentence/paragraph, and how it should be phrased. A lot of comments people made in the Secret Agent contest was, "Don't report the weather." Mostly on excerpts that began, "The morning began dark, and wet..." or similar such phrases. But here, you can see where the authors have 'reported the weather' in such a way as to make it part of the background, and not the most important part of the opening of the story.

Thank you for reading, I'm off to alternately kick myself for having a flare of unnecessary temper, and hope that I can get a chance to actually talk TO my friend, and not just exchange infrequent messages while she's uber busy with something else.

A Discussion Post!

What I'm Listening To: Cinema Bizarre - Escape to the Stars

What I'm Doing: Reading Nightmare by Piers Anthony, and trying to decide between actual food, or more coffee.

Because I can't (or don't know how to) reply to comments, and some of you have left meaningful, interesting, and insightful comments on some of the things I've got to say about writing, and I just can't not start a discussion about them. (Mostly because, if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know this already: I like to talk.)

Point of View

tokidoki-muse: I was mostly ranting because I'd just seen thirty plus badly written, first person excerpts. First person isn't as horrible as I seemed to have made it out to be, in my own opinion. Mami said something similar, that once she starts working on a book, it'll tell her what it's going to be written in, and some of them refuse to be written in anything BUT first person, so I'm not going to rag on your book, simply because it's in first person, which would make me a hipocrite in any case, because the vampire-novel idea that I've got kicking around around in my brain is in first person, itself. Also, a bit of a nightmare is a bit of an understatement. XDD Instead of rewriting the whole MS, just try rewriting certain scenes in third person limited, see how they work, and if you could possibly do the whole thing that way, or if it would be better off as is, in first person.

marynoel: That felt weird. I'm so used to calling you Mami... XD Any way, I've already told you about the spine-creasing and whatnot. And I've always thought that I wouldn't be able to write in first person, and obviously, after thirty-fourty first-person, badly written excerpts, I was ready to tear first-person out of the book altogether, but then I found myself building the possible-vampire novel in my head, and the main character immediately started narrating in first person. I was actually tempted to post the first words that came out of his mouth in my own 'are you hooked' post, and find out if it would be decently eye-catching. AND PERHAPS I SHALL SUGGEST THAT TO THE ANONYMOUS AUTHORESS, AND YOU WILL GET ANOTHER CHANCE. ^3^

farfums: I don't think it limits possible dialogue, because I see it as instead of sitting on the shoulder of the main character, you are instead sitting inside the head of the main character; you'd still be hearing the same things that your MC hears, so it doesn't matter if you're outside or inside, if there's two people too far away from the MC to hear what they're saying, you're still getting no dialogue. And I HEARTILY suggest you find The Shadowy Horses and Sunshine, as they are, to me, the pinnacle of first-person, as well as altogether amazing novels.


Story Creation

Valerie Wangnet: Thank you for commenting! I love hearing about how other people write, because it's such a personal process. I've heard fiction described as 'pouring your soul out to complete strangers' but I consider it more like... making a pretty picture. With words, naturally. But I often compare writing to drawing. You're doing the same thing, in my opinion, only instead of presenting people with ready-made images, you're creating the images with words, and then giving people the option of creating their own pictures from those words. No matter how a character is described to me in a book, I form my own image of their appearance based on how they act, and on other characters that I've seen. Prince Josua, from The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy by Tad Williams, is described as having close-cropped hair (which I initially imagine to look like the stereotyped 'Roman' look) but after that first mention of his hair, when I picture him in my mind, he's got somewhat shaggy, ear-length hair.
And I suppose I lied slightly about creating a story, and then stuffing characters into it. Mostly, my ideas come to me as single-shot images, or ideas - a world where dragons, elves, and unicorns are the norm, a forest ravaged by a nuclear explosion, a 'vampire story' unlike most of the popular vampire novels out there. The stories come to me (I'd be fooling myself and everyone else if I tried to say I create these ideas) based on those initial images or wants, and then the characters to fill those stories arrive.

tokidoki-muse: Gladly taken. They own mine, too, but I refuse to allow myself to fall into the 'vampire romanticism' that has swept the nation with Twilight; if you get right down to the bare bones of it, there's nothing romantic about vampires. Someone said (and I forget who) that vampires are walking corpses who eat people.
No one romanticises zombies.


Inspiration (in the weirdest places)

moonrat: My friend told me about you commenting on my blog, and for a moment, I was terrified. Thank you for taking the time to drop by, though! I'm glad you think so. I'm excited, too.


Some Good Advice and a little more

jessjordan: I read this at nearly three in the morning last night, and it was your comment that sparked the need to create this post, because you raised some interesting points, and I couldn't let it rest without talking to you about it. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a comment. It was incredibly heartening to know that I'm not just blowing smoke, and actually say things worth thinking about occasionally, and your comment gave me quite a lot to think about, myself.

I'd originally imagined Eversong to be three, self-contained books in which the conflict of each book is resolved at the end of the book, not the end of the trilogy, but what makes it a trilogy, a set, and not just three books in the same 'world' is that they follow Vicky as a person, going from a slightly-lost twenty-something with no aim in life, and few friends, to finding - and losing - her first love, to finding good friends, and growing as a person, to eventually become a powerful, important person with great inner-strength.

I believe what I'm trying to say is character-driven stories, not plot-driven. I use the same example as from my post here, in the LotR trilogy; characters drive the story anyway, I'm aware of that. Someone (my memory feels like a collander at the moment, and all the important bits slipped out through the holes and left me with vague ideas and memories of what people have said, but not who said it in the first place) said that if in LotR, Aragorn had been the one to take the One Ring to the volcano, then the story would have been much different, nigh unrecognisable. It's Frodo's journey to destroy the ring that makes it what it is, but there is no resolution of major conflicts at the end of each book. You've got to read all three, in order, in order to reach a satisfying conclusion, and as I said, the first book is interesting and attention grabbing because it's the introduction; you get to know your characters, get to see them starting out on their massive journey, and become friends with them. The last book is interesting, because you see how their travels have changed these new friends of yours, and you get to see them triumph in the end, but the middle book sags just a bit, because there's nothing really... happening. They're traveling a lot, and having mini-adventures, and fighting battles, but it just put me in mind of a rope-bridge - on either side of the chasm you're crossing, the bridge is tight and balanced, but in the middle, it droops because of gravity. And that's just my own opinion, and what I, personally, took away from them, and it coloured my desire to NOT fall into the same rope-bridge story, to instead make it a suspension bridge - it's solid and bends enough in the wind so as to not break, but without the suspension cables - the characters, in this case - the whole thing would collapse under it's own weight.

Also; longwindedness is a word if you say it is. x3 The stars and spirits know that I've made up enough words in my day (publishment, I think was the one I said in a previous post)

I value people's opinions, because in my own, Eversong can do no wrong, and I wouldn't see it from enough distance to know why people were calling it contrived, and not good enough, or whatever else you can think of to say about it. It's like being on a mountain, versus looking at it from afar. When you're on a mountain, the only thing that matters is what's right in front of you, but if you're standing at a proper distance, you can get a proper look at the whole thing, and make observations about it as a complete unit.

I hadn't thought of it that way, as in your examples of option 1 and option 2, but you made an extremely good point, and I'm going to try to work that in somehow in order to keep it flowing, introducing the conflict of the next book at the end of the one that precedes it. That would also negate the need for a prologue in book two, explaining how the Dragon problem got started in the first place, I can make an epilogue at the end of the first one, showing that despite the defeat of the Mir'naam (what I referred to as 'dark elves' up until the point that I actually started writing) all is not well in the land of Eversong, that someone is climbing a forbidden mountain, and no good will come of it.

That sets up the next book neatly, and gets people's attention, "OMG, what's going to happen next? I can't wait for the next book!"

I just realised that I'm talking my way through this to you, and somewhat apologise. It's just easier for me to talk my way through problems, rather than sit and think about it myself.

As for the characters, I could also begin set-up for the emotional conflict between Jesse and Vicky somehow; I'm glad you pointed that out. You've helped immensely. <3

And I couldn't get that out of my head all last night; "If you make me love Vicky, I'll follow her anywhere." It's reinforced my desire to make Vicky a likable, relatable person, and not just a 'hollow placeholder for fans' in the way Bella Swan of Twilight was described; someone you wouldn't want to BE, but someone you can sympathise with, and become friends with as you read.

Thank you SO SO SO MUCH for your huge comment. <333 You may find yourself mentioned somewhere when I FINALLY get myself to the point of publication, because you've contributed immensely to the way Eversong is going to work.


Pseudonyms

ReNu: Oh thank god. XDD Thank you for commenting! I am absolute pants at naming things (or rather, titling things, as names come to me as easily as breathing.) I was slightly worried that Eversong, despite it's aesthetically pleasing sound (to me), wouldn't grab people's attention, and that's the base of all books. It doesn't matter how well it's written, or how good it is overall, if it's got a bad title, no one's going to pick it up to find out if it's good.


Thank you again to everyone who's taken the time to read and comment so far, and a thank you in advance to anyone who feels the need to comment in the future. I absolutely adore your comments, and every little bit of good advice helps.

Point Of View

What I'm Listening To: BT - Circles

What I'm Doing: Recovering.

I just spent the majority of the day reading over Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent Contest entries, and I now feel as though my brain is leaking out of my ears. The entries I saw this time around weren't as bad as the entries I saw for the last Secret Agent contest, which was a mild improvement, but I've got to know:

When did the memo get around that all YA novels have to be in the first person? That detracts so much from a book, more-so if it's not all that interesting in the first place. I can name two first-person based novels off the top of my head that I willing read over and over: Sunshine by Robin McKinley, and The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley. Ally Carter's I'd Tell You I Love You but Then I'd Have to Kill You is also in first person, but I've not read more than the first page, when I found it in Walmart. And although I loved the first page, and I'm partial to Ally as a person, that's no guarantee that the book is going to be one that I'm going to love, and reread so many times it begins falling apart.

(I know there are people who take meticulous care of their books, and don't bend or crack the spine at all, but I'm not one of them. If a book is worth reading a hundred times, then it's going to show the signs of those hundred reads, and I do have more than one book that's in two pieces because I've read it so many times that the binding simply gave out.)

But for the most part, first-person is a no-no for me. And after thirty of them, my patience started to give out, and it showed in the comments I left. I read them backwards, from 50 down to 1, simply because it was easier to keep up with that way, and my comments on the first thirty (by which I mean from fifty down to about number twenty) have good, written out, well-thought comments on what worked, why I didn't like it, why I did, what I would have changed, and the like. Down towards the bottom, the comments started to say things like, "First person point-of-view would have been better as third person, limited. Not hooked."

Think about it. My example would be this:

I stepped out of my shadowed doorway, and gazed across the open courtyard before my house. God, what a mess this is, I thought, and carefully picked my way across the open spaces between piles of junk.

(When I'm reading first person, I feel as though the story is being told to me by someone. Normal people don't say "I carefully picked my way through the labyrinth of trash" they're going to say something like "I had to watch my feet so I didn't step in a pile of shit."
So I like to feel like I'm sitting on the main character's shoulder as they're making their way through the story.)

Katreen inched the door open slowly, and stuck her head outside, surveying the mess that was the open courtyard in front of her house. She shook her head at it, thinking of all the work that would have to be done. What a mess this is. Stepping out into it, she made her way carefully among the piles of trash that littered the ground.

--
There are two reasons I prefer third person (generally limited) to first person. The first is that I read a story for the characters. It doesn't matter that the setting is in a beautiful palace filled with jewels and rare treasures if the main character is a shallow, empty-headed thing. But if you've got a rich, dynamic character set within a dirty shack, well, I'm still interested in it, because I'm not reading for the setting. I'm reading for the character.
That said, third person introduces the character to you immediately. It has to. Even if it's something as simple as "She opened the door." You know something already; the main character is a girl. With first person, this is utterly lost, until someone says "Katreen! Girl, get over here!" which could be anywhere from the first sentence on into the third page, and that whole time, you don't know who your character is.
The second is the reason I gave above; I don't want to be told the story, I want to be right there in the thick of it, feeling what my main character is feeling, and going where they go.

Story Creation

What I'm Listening To: Poe - Haunted

What I'm Doing: Writing down this blog so that I can finally get some sleep.

The brilliant and famous J. K. Rowling (that's ROLLING, not RAOW-ling, for the record) said that Harry Potter was born the day he strolled into her head, fully formed. For some reason, (I don't know if this was ever mentioned anywhere, or if it's a figment of my own imagination) I always picture him walking into her head in his Quidditch gear. No explanations for that.

And recently, another author I've been speaking to (there are about a dozen, all told, so I couldn't say with exact certainty which one it was) said that her main character, Alex, also appeared in her mind, fully formed, and then pestered her until she wrote the story out.

I don't write this way.

For me, the stories themselves come to me, and then later, they tell me what kind of characters they'll feature. Vicky was born after Eversong created itself in my mind, and cried out for a hero from the human world. Mischief and Murder was brought to life in my mind as a forest ravaged by humanities atrocities, and then ravens and rats were brought in as the main characters because of the idea that sparked it's birth in the first place. (See "Inspiration In the Weirdest Places" for more details.)

After a two hour chat with a lovely group of Sarahs (Sarah Maclean, Sarah Ockler, Sarah Cross, and Sarah Rees Brennan) and some other fantastic people, I told myself I would go to bed at a decent hour. (IE, 11:30 ish, right after the chat ended.) But I found myself gripped by a powerful need to read fanfiction, so I went to my favoured fanfiction site, and dug around a bit until I found something to read. It wasn't enough, so I read another, somewhat longer fanfic. Which had a sequel. Which I then read.

It has sparked a third.

I am overwhelmed with a burning need to write a vampire story. It's lodged inside my chest like a column of flames. It will not rest until it has characters and a plot.

This is the last thing I need.

Oh, what sweet torture we create for ourselves. I am more excited than I could possibly say about this. I don't want it to be a rehash of Sunshine (one of the most amazing Vampire novels I've ever read; go read it now, even if you've already read it before. It bears rereading.) and neither do I want it to be as pithy and insulting as Twilight, which is a black smear across the good name of Vampire fiction.

I have the feeling it will be both of these and more. Not better, perhaps, but different. And until it is born, I am consumed in its flames. Being the creator of worlds is an immense, heady feeling.

Some Good Advice and a little more.

I've been reading Robert Gregory Browne's blog of sorts, and it's filled to the brim with interesting articles and anecdotes about writing and publishing. He's a little confused on the subject of agents, but that's because he's never (by his own admission) written a good query letter in his life.

But he raised some interesting questions for me, and I have no idea how to answer them myself. He's discussing structure and conflict, and the three acts of a story; act one - the beginning, the set up, the lead in, what-have-you. Act two - the middle, the meat of the story, the bridge. Act three - the conclusion, the climax, wrapping it all up and finishing with a bang.

And it made me start thinking about my book, versus the other fantasy trilogies I've read, and another sci-fi trilogy that just popped into my mind.


I'll clarify.

Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy is one mega-quest that spans three novels in order to complete, the quest to save the world from The One Great Evil, and it's stuffed full of mini-quests, and tangents, and the stories and set up of other characters that don't show up until later, at which point they serve a great deal of good towards the completion of the Mega-Quest.

In contrast, Eversong is one book with two sequels
rather than a comprehensive story that spans three novels. Does this make sense?

I'll rephrase, because it's not really making sense to me, so I can't expect it to make sense to other people.

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is one story that spans three novels. Eversong is three completely separate stories, and over the course of those stories, Vicky grows as a person. The same thing happens in MST, granted; Simon starts off as a care-free lad more interested in daydreaming than anything serious, and by the end of the trilogy, he's a mature young man who becomes king. I'm still making no sense to myself.

Expect the rest of this entry to be likewise as rambling.

The problem I'm seeing with Eversong is that it doesn't quite need to be a trilogy. From where I see it now, each book could probably stand on it's own, with references from the previous novels standing in for having read the novel itself. If you picked up Eversong: Dark Star Rising, you'd see Vicky on the eve of her wedding, when something happens to disrupt it, and then she goes on a quest to defeat the newest threat to Eversong, does so, gets married, and lives happily ever after. You won't have to read Eversong or Return to Eversong in order to understand Dark Star, because each novel is it's own, contained arc, with it's own, contained three acts. The reason there's three of them is to follow Vicky on her quest to find love, friendship, and a place in life, and to see how she matures through the trials she experiences.

The reason I mentioned The Crystal Singer Trilogy above, is because it does the same thing. You don't need to have read Crystal Singer and Killashandra in order to understand Crystal Line. They're each self-contained stories, within the same universe and with the same characters. There are references (in Killashandra, the main character talks about 'The Trundimoux Installation', an event that took place near the end of Crystal Singer.) but from the surrounding paragraphs, it's easy to deduct that the Trundimoux Installation was a complete mess for Killa, and she didn't like it, and she doesn't want a repeat of the event in the newest mission she's been given.

And here's where I feel like I need to go shout my blog from the roof-tops, because I need people to read it, and tell me what they think, as I'm wondering which why is better. After having gone through all this trouble to set up the three novels as self-contained stories that simply follow Vicky on her journey, should I scrap the whole thing and re-write it to be one cohesive story, that the dark-elf menace and the Dragon Wars were the harbingers of the Dark Star problem?

TL;DR: Most trilogies ARE the three acts of novel writing. The first novel is the set up, the second novel is the bridge, and the third novel is the climax.

This way of writing is good, but often the end result is something like The Lord of the Rings, in that the first novel, the set up, is infinitely interesting, because you're just beginning to learn about your main character, and the troubles they're about to face. The third novel is also infinitely interesting, because the story is wrapping up, the threads are coming together, and the Ultimate Evil is about to be vanquished once and for all. The middle book, the bridge, is unquestionably the most boring, and the toughest to get through, because nothing's happening. It's just a path between the set up and the climax.

With Eversong, this isn't the case, and I just want some opinions on what the majority of readers think is a better way of going about it.

Reading and Writing

What I'm Listening To: Hey Pretty - Poe

What I'm Doing: Still reading The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams, and enjoying my theft of the fan from the living room. Not hot for once!

First of all, I have to share this absolutely mind-wrenching link from Meg Cabot: My Little Pony, Live Action Thriller.

My childhood.

Moving on. I was thinking of popular bloggers, and what they do, and came to the conclusion that they blog. Brilliant, wasn't it? I think so. In that vein, I've decided to actually do so, myself, and as I was casting around for something to talk about that wasn't a rehash of yesterdays blog (a friend on LJ was talking about how bad her first chapter is, and it reminded me of what I was saying yesterday.) my roving eyes fell upon the novel I'm reading.

The Dragonbone Chair, by Tad Williams. It's an absolutely fantastic novel, and a long-time favourite of mine. It seems I'll be rehashing a bit of yesterdays blog, anyway; one of the commenters on said-friends' LJ said something to the effect of 'chuck the first chapter, and start right in on the action if you want readers hooked.'

That's a good idea, I suppose, but I can't really recall any books that started, "My sword cut swathes through the hordes of vampires like a hot knife through butter..."* can you? No. Most books start out something like, "The vampire scourge has walked among us for thousands of years, but it's only been recently that they've come forth from the shadows and made their presence known; recently that they've moved themselves from legends to reality. My childhood was a happy one, and I grew up neither knowing nor caring what happened beyond the walls of my house, so long as my family was safe within... " etc, etc.

They give a little bit of back story, and introduce you to the main character before the action starts. Because even if you've got an action-packed thriller for a novel, if people don't know your main character, they're not going to be interested in the book.

Take Tad Williams' trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, of which The Dragonbone Chair is the first. Quite literally, no action begins until approximately 200 pages in. The first two hundred or so pages are just introducing Simon, the main character, and his home life, and some of his back story, and by the time you get into the action, the meat of the story, you feel like you've grown up next to Simon, and have always been dealing with him, and are maybe a friend of his, and once the action starts, you're on the edge of your seat, wondering what's going to happen to your new friend, and whether he's going to make it or not. This makes it a little bit harder to get into, I suppose, because you've got two hundred pages of Simon catching beetles and bringing home birds' nests, and knocking over suits of armour in hallways, but interspersed with that is the tidbits that make it interesting; the old king is dying, and his two sons don't quite get along, and then suddenly the younger son disappears and some people think he's dead, but what's going on? Mr. Williams achieves two separate things before the action even starts; he lets you into the life of Simon, and he drops hints and sets up for later story points that grab your attention and make you think.

There's another book in a totally different setting that I absolutely worship. It's called Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, and when I first picked it up, I got about two pages in, and then didn't touch it again for about four months. It starts right in on the action, or at least, AN action: "I didn't hear them coming. Of course, you don't, when they're vampires."

This tells us two things. There's vampires, and the main character is involved with them in some way. But then instead of continuing on in this vein, the main character (whose name is Sunshine) immediately launches into a ten-page jaunt of talking about her family, and her youth, and where she works and lives, and it's all very interesting, but it's a bit like talking to someone who can't quite come to the point. The entire book is like that; it's less of a story you're experiencing as you read, and more a story that you're sitting down with Sunshine, and she's telling it to you after it all happened. Sunshine, as a character, tends to go off on rambling tangents for pages and pages, before she finally comes back to the point, but the author, Robin McKinley, doesn't always write like that. If you pick up Beauty: A Retelling of the story of Beauty and the Beast, The Blue Sword, and Sunshine, and read through them all, you'd probably think they were written by three completely different authors. Not one of her books has the same 'voice', but they're each engaging and interest-snagging in their own ways.

On the other hand, Anne Bishop has written several inventive and interesting trilogies, and one 'twosome', but they're all the same. Notably, The Black Jewels Trilogy and what's listed as The World of the Fae on her website, are like reading two different versions of the same novel. Both trilogies are good, but they have exactly the same 'voice', and basically the same characters, rehashed, and the same basic idea, rewritten. It's like she's got cookie-cutters for her books, and when she starts a new one, she just recreates her old worlds and characters and renames them before setting them into a new plot. Even her Ephemera novels are slightly similar to the other two trilogies, but not in exactly the same way (which is something of a relief.) The world of Ephemera is utterly different than the worlds of the other two trilogies, but she undoes her good work with the world building by plopping the same, cookie-cut characters into those worlds. There's the dark, mysterious main male lead, the ditzy/clueless/otherwise innocent female love interest, the dark, mysterious, super-powerful outcast main female lead...

They're good books, don't get me wrong, but I don't like the feeling of rereading the same thing over and over again. If I want to reread the same novel, I'll open it back up and reread it. I don't want to spend money on three different sets of novels, only to find the same underlying themes and people running through them all.

This is a good way to improve your own writing. After you've gone through the bookstore and read the first page and decided why you'd continue reading or not, pick two or three off your list, and buy them, or get them out of the library, and actually read through them.

Did they live up to the expectations of the first page? Would you read them again, or was it a waste of money? Did you learn anything to incorporate into your own writing?

I own dozens of books. Scores of them. If I sat down and counted them all out, I'd probably have well over a hundred. And even for myself, looking over my collection, I think I must be slightly schizophrenic in my tastes, because there's no set genre. They span the range.

An example:
Directly behind me (I have no bookshelf, so the coffee table in my room is crowded over with books) there is approximately thirty books. (probably more; I didn't move any of the stacks, just briefly glanced over them.) Clearly visible are books like The Bride and the Beast, by Teresa Medeiros, Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.

I make that one historical romance, two suspense fiction, and a YA fantasy. And that's just a sprinkling. Other favourite books of mine include The Crystal Singer Trilogy by Anne McCaffrey, and The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

A sci-fi trilogy and one that I have no name for, (it's about ebola and marburg, the effects, origins, and outbreaks.)

My book tastes run the gamut, and it's made me a better writer because of it. I don't limit myself to just one or two authors (though I do admit to seeking some authors out repeatedly. If I see something by Michael Crichton that I haven't read yet, I pick it up. Likewise, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. And Teresa Medeiros is my absolute favourite historical romance author ever; I'm well on my way to owning every single book she's put out to date). Because of this wild and eclectic taste in novels, I have no shortage of places to turn if I'm feeling the dreaded Writer's Block. It's amazing how a little reading can turn that around. After staring at a blank word document for an hour and a half, all it takes is for me to sit down somewhere quiet with a book, and about ten pages in, I'm itching to go write for myself.

What amazes me is the amount of people who don't read, who can't read. I inherited my love of reading from my mother, and it's something I've never regretted. But then I look back on people I went to high school with, who struggled to read to themselves, and made me want to snatch the book out of their hands and beat them with it when they tried to read out loud. That these high school seniors - people about to graduate from mandatory school and either go on to further schooling or unleash themselves upon the world at large - can't read...

I suspect that many of these people who never willingly picked up a book in their life are the ones who attempt Nanowrimo and then immediately upon finishing their 50k words send it to publishers and editors and the like. It is, I'm firmly of the belief, utterly impossible to be a writer if you don't read.






*Addendum: I ammend that. Certainly there may be some books that start off that way, but it would be followed with something like this. "My sword cut a swathe through the vampire horde like a hot knife through butter. I'd been fighting them since I was fifteen years old, and my mother sat me down and said, "Michael, daddy's not coming home." and into the shocked silence this statement produced in me, went on to explain that he'd been taken by the vampires on his way home from work." Sure, it starts off right into the action, but then it takes a step back and introduces the main character, and gives you the reason he's currently 'cutting a swathe through a horde of vampires.'