Terrible Titles Bloghop

I so wasn't going to post this week since it IS Christmas Eve, but then Tracey tagged me in the Terrible Titles Bloghop, and I just couldn't resist. You should check out Tracey's titles because they're great and I can't wait to read her sure-to-be-gripping "Making War with Acorns."

Now first thing's first...

RULES: Writers scroll through their manuscript and stop in random places. Whatever words/phrase the cursor lands on becomes one of eight terrible titles.

My current WIP is the verse story, so the selection wouldn't be that great if I just used it because 1) it's in verse, so there's not a lot of words already and 2) I haven't written very much of it so there's even less words. So I'm snatching a few "titles" from a couple different files.

Could be an image from "To How She Moved."

(Source: Grace by bunnyjennyy)

Verse Story Titles

1. We Will Not Be Hounded
2. Light Upon My Worn Steps
3. To How She Moved

Equinoxal Titles

4. While His Hand Painted
5. No, That Is An Angel.

Cinders (A Cinderella Retelling) Titles

6. A Great Deal of Effort
7. We Are New to the Area
8. Pretty, Right?


I love how the Cinders titles are the least indicative of what the story is like, but hey, who wouldn't pick up a book called "PRETTY, RIGHT?" because I totally would! I like pretty things...

And now, I TAG Yahong Chi, Miss Cole, and Julie Dao, and anyone else who wants to join! If you're waiting for a tag? THIS IS IT.

Now, get thee to a nunnery WIP!

The Creative Process: Jewelry/Dinosaur Version

Hey ho.  I haven't been doing as much writing as I'd like lately, but that doesn't mean I'm not getting into storytelling shenanigans.  Today I'm going to share with you how my latest jewelry WIP came about.

Basically, our assignment was to create a piece of jewelry using a "found object", definition of which is something that a) isn't metal and b) isn't like a normal jewelry component and c) we aren't supposed to drastically alter (i.e. can't find a thing and then cast it in metal, though it is acceptable to cut bits off and whatnot).

After some scrounging around, I came up with this little guy who came all the way from the desert:

I found him!
...in a basket.
...full of other dinos.
...at the dino museum.
...as a prize for small children who completed the Dino Quest.
...yes, I completed the Dino Quest, as did Krispy.

I stared at him for a while, procrastinating hardcore imagining the possibilities, and eventually an image percolated through my brain.  I have done my best to faithfully render it for you as pictured below:

Like any other person, I decided I'd make a necklace featuring a plesiosaur riding a meteorite that has smashed a chunk out of the earth.  He is the only survivor of dinosaurkind because he hitched a ride on the very bringer of armageddon, but he's not unhappy with being an extremely endangered species; on the contrary, he's had it with the rest of his kind!  Screw them!  He's on to bigger and better things!  Space, the final frontier!  He'll probably don some badass steampunk goggles and become a time traveling explorer who surfs the stars on his own personal meteorite.  Aww yeah.

So, with that in mind, I set about with hammer and torch to bring my vision into three-dimensional form.  As usual, it ended up getting tweaked and modified along the way.

First, I took a rectangle of copper and beat the living crap out of it with assorted tools to get a crumpled shape that my mom said looks cool but not like a meteorite, though I assure you, it is a meteorite.  I then fused silver over the surface to give it texture and different color, and then soldered onto it flattened silver wire for the dino's harness.

Not finished yet, of course. Needs more cleaning,
a patina, a bail from which to hang, and of course the dino
must be set. The harness wires will be crimped to hold him safely
in place during his spacefaring adventures.

Quick test fit to see that the dino can actually be squeezed under the harness.  I've just been calling him Dino, by the way, I thought maybe he needed a poncy or kickass name, but I think he likes being called Dino because he is the last and only dino, thank you, so he needs no other name.  Yes, he has that kind of personality.  Tsk.

I also made a little partly-domed earth with the continents sawed out of bronze and soldered to copper, but it's kind of small and after some general advice and critique, I decided it will be an additional ornamental dangly bit rather than a counterpart to Dino the Meteorite Rider.  Meteorider?  Whatever.  I also decided to make a lariat necklace with the Meteorider Dino at one end and a big copper hoop at the other end for visual balance, fused with silver to match the meteor.  I also added tube settings and will be putting sparkly cubic zirconias in them.

The continents are bronze, they just need cleaning.
The matching other dome half says "Au revoir SUCKERS".
And on the hoop piece, there's a big red CZ at the point
with a smaller orange one on the left, and the third white one
is on the upper right side, by the dino's neck in the pic.

When everything is soldered and sawed and cleaned and polished and chained and patina-ed and otherwise finished, it should look vaguely like this:

I'm still toying with some ideas for the Earth, such as whether I should cut the chunk out or make it some kind of locket (awesome, but I might not have the time and tools to do this), and I'm not sure where/how I will attach it to the rest of the lariat.  I am also uncertain whether the circle part is a wormhole that Dino is using to travel to the far reaches of the universe or if it's an oddly-shaped planet through which he has blasted.

At this time, I have reached the "I HATE LIFE WHY HAVE I DONE THIS TO MYSELF THIS WAS A STUPID IDEA" point that most writers/artists/humans go through when engaged in a difficult project, so I'm definitely having more fun with the narrative aspect as opposed to the actual fabrication.  It doesn't help that Dino is constantly sneering at me either, seriously.

When doing something creative other than writing, do you find yourself making stories?  Also, Dino needs a fancy or badass title.  Got any suggestions beyond the default Meteorider?

WIP Wednesday: Survey Thingy

Our bloggy friend Caroline Richmond tagged us for this WIP survey called The Next Big Thing, and you know how we're all for doing memes and the like. That and we love hearing what other people are working on. So we couldn't resist Caroline's siren call.

KRISPY

What is the working title of your book?
I suck at this title stuff. I always title things at the end, just like with every essay and term paper I've ever written. I've called this WIP "Asian NaNo" (because I started it as a NaNoWriMo) and "Luck."

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Weirdly enough, I was reading an article about the Kennedys (I forget what the article was about specifically) and thinking about the tragic and prominent deaths that have plagued the family.

This somehow led to the idea of a prominent family that was said to be cursed because their children always died young or at the cusp of their greatest achievement. And then I thought about how because this family was prominent, respected, and wealthy, people must also say that they're lucky. So I combined the two ideas and made them literal - the family was both literally blessed and literally cursed.

What genre does your book fall under?
Fantasy, my first and truest love! Uh, I guess YA?

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I'm declining to answer this question because I'm just not very good at picking Real People to be the people in my head. Also, if I tried to do this right now, I'd end up staying up all night. So let's save me some sleep and stress and say SKIP.

I will say that most of the characters are East Asian-looking since the world is based on ancient China.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Augh, I hate summarizing things. Why are these questions so hard?! Uh, I guess...

When the family curse rears its head, Cian and his sister Tae embark on separate journeys to break the curse and save their family - Cian, in search of the Luck Demon and Tae, in search of their missing oldest brother.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I'd love for it to be represented, but I'm nowhere near the querying stage. So we'll see...

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
Uh, can I plead the 5th on the first half of this question? This thing isn't finished, especially because it had to be restarted a few times. This is what I get for being a pantser who insists on complicated storylines. :P This is the original opening, which may or may not change:

Cian searched for treachery in his shadow, but the dark figure against the wall remained as motionless as he was. It mocked him with its innocent mimicry of his posture, the hovering poise of his brush. He lowered his hand and watched the shadow do the same. Perhaps he was being overly paranoid, but he could never be too careful. Better to err on the side of caution, especially when one’s family is cursed.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I suppose it's a little bit like Malinda Lo's Huntress in that there's a quest and it's set in an ancient East Asian kind of landscape and mixes Eastern and Western folklore. But otherwise, it's really not like it at all. Oh and there's a smidgeon of Mulan in here too, minus the awesome musical numbers (I know, bummer). Yeah, I'm terrible at this.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Like I said, I was thinking about the Kennedys, haha. But initial idea aside, I was fascinated by the the dichotomy of gift/blessing vs. curse, and I was thinking about Greek Mythology and gifts from gods (not always good; in fact, frequently not). I was also incredibly frustrated at the time by the presentation of an Asian-inspired fantasy land in a novel I had recently read, and so I thought I'd try my own hand at it (FYI, it's freaking hard to get it right). Beyond that, I love "family" as a theme.

Mix those things together and you get my WIP.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
There are also sweeping vistas, a strange wild girl with red hair, a frozen glass sea, ancient secrets, the Luck Demon, and heart-eating beasties.

Source: viralblender.com

 

Dapple Kirin by *creaturesfromel on deviantART

ALZ

What is the working title of your book?
So far it's "Sanctuary", which is unoriginal but serviceable.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
I wanted to test myself with some first person POV since normally I prefer third person, and as long as I was doing that I wanted to try my hand at writing two different styles: a pragmatic, practical, cynical heroine and a starry-eyed deeply romantic love interest.

What genre does your book fall under?
Urban fantasy and I suppose YA, and I guess murdery mystery since there is a mysterious murder, and romance, possibly, yes, unconventional romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Like Krispy, I'm skipping this one since I rarely ever picture real live people as my characters.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A;kldsja;fjsa I hate writing synopses!  Er, I'll give it a try.

Lammy lives in a little town called Sanctuary, where nobody is what they seem, the least of all Lammy herself--and when an angel moves into town and dismembered corpses start showing up at school, Lammy is the number one suspect.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'd love to be represented by an agency but I have to, you know, finish writing the book first before I can even start thinking about queries.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
I wrote a decent chunk for NaNoWriMo last year and then have sort of been working on it off and on, in between other projects.  This is the current first paragraph, subject to change:

When I was born, my mother abandoned me because I was a freak.  She'd only gone about ten feet before she thought better of it and decided that freak or not, I was her daughter.  She came back for me—and then started to worry that I'd never lead a normal life looking the way I did.  So she did what she thought was best and gave me away to people better able to give me the childhood I deserved.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Hmm. I guess it's a ltitle bit like Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan in regards to playing with some YA tropes, and maybe a little Percy Jackson in the way that there's magic and monsters not readily seen by normal people.  It's probably like other books too but none of them readily spring to mind.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I'd say that at its furthest backest farthest roots, this story came about due to my frustration with reading crappy YA romance where it's Troo Luv at First Sight Because of Destiny, and also the way that stalker behavior and alpha male dominance is styled as hotness.  I also like it when characters lie to themselves or think one thing while acting differently.  All this gave me the basis for the main characters, and everything grew up around them.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Our down-to-earth heroine takes issue with the fact that the angel sent to spy upon her town is convinced that theirs is a destined meeting.  She also has a BFF with a curious aversion to sunlight, a loving and supportive mother who knows exactly what her adopted daughter is, and a serious sweet tooth.  Some say the way to a man's heart is between the ribs; the way to Lammy's heart might well be her stomach, but will our angel-in-disguise figure this out before Lammy permanently sends him back to Heaven?

And we tag these writers to share their Next Big Thing:
Wistfully Linda
Emy Shin
Yahong Chi
Julie Dao
Lori M. Lee

The Last Manatee: Prologue

I am 95% recovered and Krispy is only slightly less so and no longer under threat of zombiehood.  We bring you not only news of our increasing good health, but an exciting announcement!

Our post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy, The Last Manatee, is going to be PUBLISHED!  That's right, folks, the epic tale of our young man Krispin battling the evil Alza Council in order to  spread truth and justice and incidentally get a little closer to the hot mysterious Julien!  What about Krispin's vanished BFF Sophael?  Where does the forbidden manatee Fuza Ti come from? Will Krispin succeed in freeing Heaven from millennia of Alzan rule? Coming soon*!

In celebration, we bring you an excerpt.  We hope you enjoy the hallmark YA prologue of a scene yoinked from late in the book and written to purposefully obscure certain pertinent details!

* Publication date not yet available and may never be available. Distribution subject to change.  Price: 1 soul.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Prologue

I'm going to kill that traitorous pile of manatee dung if it's the last thing I do. And the way things are going, it probably will be the last thing I do. Unless you count dying. That'll be the last thing I do in the long run, I suppose. Which isn't going to be very long.

"I admire your resourcefulness as much as your resilience, Krispin," he says with a lazy smile. "If only you had stayed loyal to the Alza, you could have risen in the ranks and been my partner. We could have shared everything—power and authority. Wealth and grandeur. A home and a bed."

"I've seen how much you like to share," I reply. "At best I'd end up sleeping on the floor. More likely though I'd end up sleeping six feet under."

His eyes narrow. One hand strokes the drying gray skin of Fuza Ti's head while the other holds the knife steady over her throat. Fuza's large dark eyes fix on me in desperation and in them I see the reflection of millennia of Alzan treachery, hiding from everyone the truth of her kind, the truth of the manatees.

The more time I waste here, the more likely it is the Alza will discover the hex-bombs ringing the Archive. Where is Julien? He should have been here by now. If he had, then I wouldn't be in this situation right now, with a traitor holding the last living manatee at knifepoint and me armed with only my wits.

I am so dead.

"Ah," says the traitor, a cold cruel smile curling his lips. "You're wondering about your friend, aren't you? That so-handsome young man with the distastefully long hair."

"Some things are an acquired taste," I say, and have the pleasure of seeing a flicker of consternation cross his face. Slowly and carefully I begin to gather my power, feeling it as a hot liquid pulse in my chest even as the tart-sweet taste of pineapple tingles on my tongue. If I can just keep him thinking about things other than slitting Fuza's throat or calling the alarm—

Fuza Ti blinks. Or is she winking at me? I can't tell because her head is so large and I can't see her other eye at this angle. Maybe she's blinking in despair. With only me to count on, I can't blame her.

"He must be dashing to your rescue right now, you must think," he purrs. He presses harder on the knife so that the tip draws a bead of blood, a single drop of ruby shining against the silver blade and the gray of Fuza's hide. "Prepare yourself for disappointment, Krispin."

"I'm always disappointed when it comes to you," I reply. The pineapple is a yellow burst in my mouth and my power is a fireball of molten gold inside my body, straining for release. I fix my eyes upon the vile traitor. One square straight headshot, that's all I need, if only I can aim true enough, swift enough, sure enough, then—

He laughs and calls, "That's your cue, loverboy."

The door behind him swings open. Julien walks in, all long lean legs and long lustrous locks of ink-black, and in his hands is the tattered original text of the Mythos Grandi, the very book that we have pinned all our hopes upon.

Julien levels me a pitying look. He sighs.

"Oh Krispin," he says, not unkindly. "You should have known better. That's your problem, you know. You're too trusting."

He holds up the ancient Mythos Grandi and, with a snap of his fingers, as the traitor laughs and Fuza Ti trills in anguish, sets our last hope aflame.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We hope you enjoyed our prologue.  Huzzah!  What do you feel about prologues?  Necessary/unnecessary/depends on how they're written?

WIP Wednesday: Inspiring Flaws

The coconut is in Krispy's court on our co-novel collaboration, but despite our colluding it is quite to my consternation that she has yet to conquer some wordcount.

Now that the alliteration's out of the way, the next order of business is to thank you all for your fantasy recommendations.  I must hie myself to the library sometime soon so I can add more books to the pile already sitting on my desk.

Now for the WIP backstory:  When I read something and a flaw bothers me, it irritates me inspires me to write.  And as a lot of things tend to bother me quite a lot, I've had a lot to mentally stew over and everyone knows that stews taste best after cooking for a while.  Although, to put it gently, my cooking skills could poison a world into dystopia.  (And I just said "a lot" three times in one sentence.  I'd shoot myself now but out of respect for my intolerance for pain, I'm going to hit myself with a pillow instead.)

Recently I read a book where the total lack of description of a certain trade made it abundantly clear to me that the author hadn't done so much as a cursory Google search on the topic.  And since this trade was the main character's trade, and played a semi-important role in the story, and as details only got vaguer and more questionable as the book went on--did you hear that sonic boom?  That was from me throwing my hands in the air in disgust.

After I finished the book, I donned my night vision goggles, armed myself with a pickaxe, and went tunneling into the dark depths of my computer, looking for that old story I'd written in which the character practiced needlework.  I found the story, hacked a few good lines free and dumped the rest on the slag heap, and set to writing with a will.  I've actually done a bit of embroidery and have read a few books, though in the latter case it was largely because of the gorgeous pictures featuring goldwork and silk embroidery.

But embroidery!  It was going to matter!  By god!  And crochet too!  And knitting!  And tatting!  And--all right, so I got a bit carried away and possibly am going to have to trim a few things.  My knitting is abysmal, by the way.

As usual, the story evolved while I was writing, and so now it's almost completely different from the original years-old idea, and then evolved further so it was nothing like what I set out to write right now.  But that's all right.  I had an idea but not much of a story but now that have the outline set, all that remains is to bring it to life, stitch by stitch and word by word.

So here's a snippet which, after all that talk of embroidery, contains no needlework references at all.  I know, I know.

The Eleon was not wild. It was not a simple beast, or a mad one, or a beast at all. In shape and purpose, it was the closest thing to a person she had seen. The tentacle birds might dive at Tindy when she crossed their sight and the shadow-hounds chase her when they caught her scent, but the Eleon sought her out. All her life in all her nightmares, the Eleon alone spoke. Only the Eleon had anything like a human face, though its resemblance to one was at once so different and so cruelly similar that Tindy desperately wished that it hadn't a face at all.


Only the Eleon. Until Mr. Shall had begun to appear in her nightmares.

That's my current solo project.  As soon as Krispy gets that next section written *hint hint unsubtle hint* I'll take over and work on our co-novel while Krispy works on a solo project or two or three of her own.

In the meantime, how's your WIP going?  Do flaws and annoyances in books inspire you?

WIP Wednesday: Writing Journals!

On average, I'd say that I do 80% of my writing on the computer, in a cacophany of clickety-clacking on the keyboard.  The other 20% is written the old-fashioned way, good ol' pen on paper.  My weapons of choice are usually a Sakura Micron 0.5 pen (color depends on my mood or what I happen to randomly grab) and one of my many writing journals.

I used to try to consolidate my writing into one journal at a time, before deciding that different journals for different projects was a good idea, and then ending up just writing in whatever was closest to hand. 

I also used to try to keep my writing journals free of doodles before wondering WTF I was thinking and doodling away. I now find that doodling is an organic and often necessary part of longhand writing: it keeps me busy while I think about what to write, without the time-sucking distraction of things like YouTube or Bejeweled Blitz.

My doodling habit began when I hit college and found that some lectures were very dull and my classmates' insightful discussion frequently left something to be desired; I sought refuge in the blank spaces of my notebook, alternately scribbling down stories and doodling like a maniac. People thought I was a studious notetaker.  And actually, I was and still am.  I just drew a lot at the same time and buried story-snippets amidst notes about Murasaki Shikibu.



Not pictured: Alz's notes from Japanese Literature.
Pictured: Alz's writing journal from Barnes & Noble.

Writing by hand works best for me when working out short story ideas or just kickstarting a stalled project.  It gives me more time to think about what I'm writing as I'm writing it, and I find it's often easier to force myself to keep on writing when I have a pen versus staring at a computer screen with all the alluring attraction of the internet tingling at my fingertips. 

I like journals with large margins at the top because that's where I jot notes and follow-up ideas and corrections, word banks and name possibilities and whether or not I'm hungry at the time of writing.



Margins are also good for random unicorns that have nothing to do with the story at hand.

My handwriting, as you may be able to tell, is a symphony of calligraphic perfection.  I never have any trouble reading my handwriting, particularly when I'm lazy or in a hurry to get stuff down.  Though it humbles me to say it, I am a paragon of penmanship.

I like flipping back through old writing journals because it gives me a sense of accomplishment, i.e. wow, I filled up an entire journal!  It's quite superficially satisfying as well as more seriously gratifying to know that even if it's a journal of rough starts and srsly unfinished bznss, there's a body of work to work with.  You can't work with nothing, after all.

It's even more gratifying when I flip through old journals and find forgotten encouragements that I wrote to myself.  Like this one:

So there's a glimpse into a couple of my writing journals. Do you keep a physical writing journal?  Do you like to write longhand?  Speaking of hands, do you think better when your hands are busy?

And last but not least, stay tuned for a special NYC vlog from Krispy coming on Friday!

P.S. (from Krispy) Also, if you haven't heard/seen it yet, LYDIA KANG has an agent!!! She's one of the coolest bloggers we "know," so go congratulate her! :)

Work in Progress Wednesday

I have accomplished multitudinous things this week in the absence of Krispy—which is not to say that I accomplished them because of her absence as much as I have merely coincidentally accomplished them during her absence. Here are a few things I've done recently:

1. I made a bit of progress on our co-novel project, rounding out a scene and generally giving our unsuspecting hero a wonderful time.  A line for you:

In retrospect, it turned out to be a good thing that the bakery hadn't had his cake because it meant he returned in time to see his home on fire.

2. I finished reading Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan. I enjoyed it and today I went to the library to get the sequel, Demon's Covenant. I suppose this isn't really a work in progress, but oh well. (You can find Krispy's review of the first book here and the second book here.)

3. For the first time in over a decade, I attempted some cross-stitching. I remember it being time-consuming and ill-rewarding, but then again I was like six the first time I tried it; it was still time-consuming but the end result is better now that I'm old enough to have the coordination and patience to do things properly and cheat more sneakily. It came out all right. And if I hadn't been too lazy to take a real picture, you'd see how all right it looks, as opposed to this quick crappy picture I took on the fly:

Delicious brownie points if you can identify these creatures.

That's what I've been up to! And quite soon in the future there will be a special post: The Return of the Krispy. What've you been up to writingwise/readingwise/craftwise?

Lovin' the Language Blogfest!

Today's special Monday post is brought to you by Jolene Perry's Lovin' the Language Blogfest!

I was psyched when I found out about this because I, too, am a lover of language. Beautiful writing - like really lovely, oh-that-could-be-poetry writing - takes my breath away. It pushes all my writerly readerly buttons. In fact, if you saw my Favorite Books blogfest post, you'll see part of why I love From the Dust Returned and The Last Unicorn so much is because the language sings. It does things I can only hope to aspire to.

So yeah, I love the language.

Here are the super flexible blogfest rules:

Pick any five lines (yes, it can be a few short lines that roll together. That's okay, and is probably what I'll do) from one of your WIPs. If you're feeling shy, and don't want to share from your own work, share from something you LOVE.

On June 27th (a dreaded Monday post) you can toss up some of your favorite lines - you know - the ones that make you want to jump up from your computer and raise your hands in the air when you get them down, or the ones that make you laugh, smile, or cry each time you read them.

Jolene herself confesses to being something of a blogfest rule-breaker. So, in honor of that spirit, I'm going to be breaking some rules myself this time around.

Instead of lines from 1 WIP, I'm sharing lines from a few. Why? Well, the current WIP has a few good ones here and there, but I have a few from others that I like better. :)

Here's a random sampling of some of my favorite lines from WIPs.

[From something old...]
1) It was a beautiful, delicate thing made of interlocked gears and fine coiled wire all encased in glass. Luminescent spell-fluid glowed within its small chambers, ready to be activated, and in the darkness, it seemed to the man as if he were holding a star.

2) Her memory was long, and the ghosts kept there stirred as she lost herself in the brushstrokes.

She could touch those flowers and be devoured with them by the pressing, encompassing dark.

[From something new...]
3) The girl cocks her head like a bird, pouting her lips at him. They are stained the reddish black of elderberries. “I know you in the sweetness of my marrow, the aching of my bones.”

[From Alz & my current WIP]

4) [Alz] "How far is the Bellows from here?"
The guard looked Cameron up and down.
"A good few miles," the guard replied. "You'll want to take a coach."
"Or I could walk," said Cameron.
"Aye, you could," said the guard, "and end up robbed blind and naked on the roadside."
"That bad, eh?" said Cameron.
"Maybe worse. Depends on the time of day." The guard squinted up at the sky, now a pale blue streaked with white cloudy wisps and the sun rising toward zenith. "Probably just robbed blind, roundabout now. Could end up dead, though, if you swagger through the Bellows flashing a sword around like that."

5) [Krispy] He cut a stark figure against the faded landscape like the first inked letter on a penciled page.


That's that! Thanks Jolene for having this fab idea, and thank YOU for reading!

Care to share a line or two (of yours or someone else's) in the comments? (That is if you're not already doing the blogfest) If you are doing the blogfest, let me know and I'll be sure to stop by!

See you Wednesday!

World-building Wednesday

A few weeks ago, I decided to turn my attentions back to a story idea I'd set aside because I was doing NaNoWriMo. As with most of my stories, I had the two main characters and the inciting incident that happens to them. I even had their motivations and goals.

What I didn't have was a fully fleshed external plot, which is usually the case for me. I also didn't have a fully fleshed world. Aside from a few notes on the existence of magic and what supernatural creatures existed in this world, I knew little else about this new story-verse.

You see, I usually have characters that come to me or a cool idea for a premise. Then I just stick them into a sort of pencil-sketched world and make things up along the way. True pantser here. The rules of the world generally form as I go, and even then, they're very loose. This is usually fine when I'm writing, but it can cause problems later when I have to figure out the logistics of the magical system or what is plausible and what isn't.

So I decided to take a different route with this new story and its world. I decided this world was going to have magic, yes, but there would be some hard and fast rules. Kinds of magic would be limited, and the hierarchy of power for supernatural creatures would be clear. Then I moved on to the human society and its governmental infrastructure.

Two new characters appeared here with their own backstories, and they worked themselves into plot relevant positions.

Let me tell you, it's been so fun making stuff up and watching this totally new world grow around me. It was even better running things by Alz because she asked the pertinent logic questions that I would otherwise gloss over or ignore. (The perks of having writing friends and/or friends who like asking questions!)

However, there was something I hadn't accounted for. The world-building overtook the story. I mean, of course, the world-building helped create plot where there hadn't really been plot before, but I was concentrating too much on random side details and not enough on MY CHARACTERS and what they want or don't want.

So I switched gears, and the plot formed. My problem now, though, is that I have two sides of a plot that are supposed to tie together, but I can't get them to do so. IT IS FRUSTRATING.

The change in my habits and the experience have been helpful and even wonderful, but now I'm struggling to find the balance in the two methods.

How do you world-build? Do you do it on the fly (like I usually do) or do you do it before you start writing/plotting? What's your favorite part to build?

See you all Friday!

WriMo Wednesday: Beginning at the Beginning

I have a confession to make: the first 800 words of my NaNoWriMo project are a prologue. I don't even know if it's a good prologue or a necessary prologue, but there it is. My muse decided You must start here, so here I have started. It also took me an entire week + a few days for me to finally get it all down, and last night, I finally started Chapter 1.

The point of all this is that beginnings are hard. I sucked at writing intros for English essays and college papers. Trust. I was hard-pressed to write the rest of my paper if I didn't have an intro down first. It's why I often had really crappy intros, which I had to go back and revise later, but they needed to be there to direct the rest of my paper. You always hear about the importance of the thesis sentence. Well, it's true.

Strangely enough though, when it comes to writing fiction, I tend to have no trouble with the beginning. It's everything else that gets me. Of course, that isn't to say my beginnings are any good or that they're the right beginning, but they put me in a place to be able to write the rest. For me, my beginnings must set the stage for me and the reader; the tone has to feel right to me, and there has to be a hook for the reader. It's kind of a lot of pressure if you think about it too much. That's why it's the hardest for me to turn off my internal editor when I start. (Yes, that's probably the reason it took me a week to write 800-some words. That and being really distracted by watching True Blood. I finished Season 1!)

But now I'm on Chapter 1, and the pressure is slightly off. The prologue was all SRS BSNS, but now I'm into the fun, ridiculous stuff. Hopefully, the ball will get rolling.

Here's how it starts:

Casey knew it was going to be a bad day when she woke up to an angel leaning over her bed. She reacted by throwing her alarm clock at his face.

----

Endings are hard too (I also hated writing conclusions), but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Do you find it hard to start too? How do you know if you're beginning at the right beginning? Who else is very, very behind in NaNo wordage? Do you think we still have a chance?!

WIP Wednesday: Putting It Into Words

WriteOnCon has started and it's kind of freaking awesome! Ah, to not be at work when most of the fun is going on. Definitely check it out if you haven't! Everything is archived.

So I've been reading Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel. I don't usually read books on craft, mostly because I'm a slow reader and barely have enough time to do all the things I need to do much less want to do. That and there are so many out there, I'm never sure where to start. In any case, I picked up this one, and I'm finding it to be very useful.

Much of what Maass talks about is stuff we "already know." It's those things we hear and read about all the time that it's practically common sense! Show don't tell. Keep up the tension. Heighten the stakes. Create complex characters. Of course, of course! But really, what does all that mean?

I think sometimes, we know these things so well that we sort of lose sight of the meaning or we forget to really think about them. It's kind of like trying to define words out of the blue. These are words you DO know, words you grasp, words you use, but how many of you have been stumped when someone asks you to give a definition? You know the word, you really do, but you're having a hard time finding the right way to explain it. Happened all the time in SAT classes and still happens now when my sister throws a fast one at me.

This writing book gave me that kind of realization. It forced me to stop and ask, what are the stakes for this character? How can they be heightened? Where is the conflict in this story? Will people care about it?

It helped me put character motivations and plot threads into words. It made these things that were vague in my head into solid constructs. Suddenly, from my intriguing (but vague) premise, I could see where the plot should logically go, what the motivations could and/or should be. Pieces started clicking into place, and I found myself staring down a road, instead of stumbling blindly through a thick fog.

By no means am I actually helming the boat, but at least now I have a better idea of where I'm going and what my characters may or may not have in store for me.

Does putting ideas into words help you see the way the story is supposed to go? Does it help you get past writer's block or untangle unruly plot threads?

P.S. Beth Revis has a cool Mockingjay contest here going on right now. GO WIN!

P.P.S. Another fun lit thing happening on the web: YA Fantasy Showdown. Vote for your favorites. Sabriel would so kick Eragon's butt.

COMING SOON:

The Hunger Games Workout:

 EXERCISE or DIE!!!

P.P.P.S. The Universe has been SUPER generous to me of late (and it's starting to freak me out), so I'm going to pay the AWESOME forward. Let's just say, it involves BOOKS and SHARKS. Oh and my birthday. :) Stay tuned!!!

WIP Wednesday: Math Analogies, no seriously.

While trying to convince Alz to sacrifice sleep in order to watch Inception with me and Luce this past Saturday morning, I ended up sort of blowing my own mind. This is what happens when I voluntarily bring MATH into a conversation (which is close to never).

We chatted about various works in progress, which brought up my last year's NaNoWriMo story. The story, if you're curious, involves an esteemed old family, whose baggage includes an equally old curse that hasn't become any less deadly with age. It's supposed to sort of be my summer project, but I got distracted (okay, so really this is just my procrastination in action, but I digress). Alz and I then had the following conversation:

KRISPY: Part of what's keeping me from writing it is I still haven't figured out how the problem is solved. Like I know enough of everything leading up to the climax, but nothing afterward.

ALZ: What's after the climax? Falling action!

KRISPY: Well, maybe it's not really the climax. It's like I have from point A to point B, but not-

ALZ: But not B to Z?

KRISPY: Um, no. I was going to say B to C. There's only 3 points on my scale! A, B, and C! The whole alphabet is too complicated!

ALZ: Okay, so you can't get from B to C.

KRISPY: Right. I can get to the point where the big plot twist/problem is revealed and things are going wrong, but I can't resolve it. I even plotted with Luce! I told her everything, and you know how I hate to divulge secrets.

ALZ: And she couldn't help you figure it out?

KRISPY: No! She helped me un-complicate some things, but we got up to that point and both of us were stumped. I don't know how to explain more without spoiling you. It's like we're at the tip of the iceberg and we can't get down.

ALZ: ...

KRISPY: Or like, you know in math, like in Calculus, when you're trying to - wait, I take that back. You didn't take Calculus and I don't remember enough of it to make this analogy work. Um, oh! Okay, this one's a BETTER analogy. It's like in GEOMETRY, you know, when you have to do those proofs. You have the two statements and you have to use theorems and stuff to show how one gets to the other.

ALZ: Yes...

KRISPY: So it's like when you're doing those and you know which theorems to use to start off with. Then you get halfway through the proof and you realize you have no idea what theorem to use next to get to the end! IT'S LIKE THAT.

ALZ: YES! I know exactly what you mean.

KRISPY: I can't believe I just used a math analogy for writing.

ALZ: Yeah, that was pretty good. You should blog it.

KRISPY: I do need a post idea...

ALZ: DO IT! And write your story.

KRISPY: So, you know what's more mind-blowing than math analogies for writing? Inception. You should totally come with.


I still haven't figured out the rest of that geometry WIP proof. Sad times.

Randomosity on Fridays

Hello old friends and new friends! Thank you for all the LOVE for our 100th post, and THANK YOU for reading through my (admittedly) longer-than-intended opinion on the TLA film. If you haven't seen the original Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, I highly recommend it. It is well-paced, well-plotted, well-designed, and filled with properly developed characters. Also, the bending is actually cool. And it is hilarious.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT. It is FRIDAY, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for this short week. Well, let's just jump into the first of my random, random 5.

1. WTF Weather / Immune System Failure - It is JULY, which is full-on SUMMER in Southern California. This means an average of 90 degree weather, the ability to go swimming at 6p at night without freezing, and shorts shorts shorts all the time. I am wearing a long-sleeved cardigan and sweater dress as I type this. This is NOT summer clothing in CA. After the long weekend, it's been COLD (well, CA cold) and the weird fluctuating weather caused my immune system to malfunction and I caught a cold. A bitty one, but a cold nonetheless. IN JULY. Fail.

2. Octopus oracles and the World Cup - So my sister's friend made the hilarious suggestion that if Team USA, by some miracle, won the World Cup, everyone else would have to call the game soccer. That's obviously out of the picture now, but my sister remained very much into the World Cup because the other team of her heart is Germany. She cheered for them during the last World Cup too. I think this is the result of both of us having taken 4 years of Deutsch in high school (I took some in college too). Anyway, DID YOU KNOW that there's an octopus named PAUL who predicts Germany's World Cup game results??? He's not right all the time, but he gets it MOST of the time. His last prediction = Spain beating Germany out of the finals. Yeah, weird and freaky. My sister threatened to cook him up and eat him, and she doesn't even like seafood. I think I'll get her a vuvuzela to make her feel better.

3. Anime Expo - Anime Expo was also this Fourth of July weekend. Friends and I used to go back in high school, but we haven't been in years. (Yeah guys, if you didn't know by now, I'm a major geek.) It is HUGE now, taking up the LA Convention Center and spilling over into LA Live venues. The dance was even in Club Nokia, which is a major upgrade from JSA Convention-like ballrooms in hotels. Upon returning to this crazy event, I think Luce and I realized a little that we've sort of outgrown it, but it was still fun and hilarious. If you're an anime fan, I'd recommend it.

4. Karaoke in K-Town (sorta) - Of course, we ended the night with some good ol' fashioned karaoke, which was supposed to be in K-Town, but we had to change plans. In any case, karaoke is always awesome and funny and full of random surprises. Near the end of the night, I sang an old, kind of obscure Britney Spears pop song - like I think it was a B-side track. I didn't know all the words (that's what the screen is for), but SOMEHOW I remembered exactly how the song went - riffs and all. Yeah. My elephant memory sometimes surprises even me.

5. The Lost Books of the Odyssey - I just finished this book and it is so very good. If you love Greek myth or the Odyssey or both, you should definitely pick this up. The retellings are imaginative, and the style is perfectly evocative of the original voice of the Homeric epics. The words and descriptions are sparse but precise. I didn't think there could be so many different ways to retell the same episodes without it becoming boring or redundant. Also, Odysseus and Athena are totally like my OTP. Best story of a god loving a mortal ever - and not just because no one gets turned into an animal.

6. Shiny NEW idea - Just because I feel like I haven't talked about writing or anything related to that in a LONG TIME here, I'm adding a #6 as a bonus. I had a weird dream a week or two back, and now I have a shiny new story idea. It involves changing the past without affecting the future - a girl is saved from death but pulled into a future where she basically doesn't exist. Fun times! Now to give it a setting and some characters.

For my fellow Americans out there, how was your Fourth of July weekend? Indeed, how was your week? Will you be tooting a vuvuzela this weekend for any teams? I'll be cheering for die Deutschen and trying to decide if I should grow out my bangs...

P.S. My week just ended awesomely because I found out I won some books from the wonderful Tere at The Lesser Key! Yay! Go wish her a happy (belated) birthday! :)

W(H)IP It Together

I was going to post up some book logs, but I realized that it's the last full week of March. Things are getting crazy at work, where I'm subsisting off green tea, fortune cookies, and Red Vines; I'm not getting enough sleep (I guess full-time work really is more grueling than being a full-time student, when I often got less sleep but didn't feel nearly as tired); and did I mention it's almost the end of March?

One of my resolutions was to finish 2 of the 3 short stories I have sitting around by April, but I instead started a new one. With roughly 7 days left of March, I'm putting my nose to the grindstone (is that a phrase?) and I will attempt to finish AT LEAST one of those. Gotta make adjustments for Real Life, right?

When I return, I will have brief book logs. I just finished Frank Beddor's ArchEnemy of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy and Gail Carriger's Soulless. I'm currently reading Gayle Forman's If I Stay.

So no real blog posts for the next 7 days because I will be whipping up a WIP. Wish me luck.

P.S. I kinda want to try out these Vision Boards or vision journals, but I suck at keeping journals. I'm also intensely adverse to cutting photographic things up like how I can't mark-up books, not even text books for school. It pains me.

Tonal Thursday

I missed what would have been WIP Wednesday because hey, I was actually writing! That brings me to the point of this short post: TONE.

Merriam Webster online defines TONE as: style or manner of expression in speaking or writing.

I like to say it's a "feel" to a piece, and it helps create the overall mood.

Tone is what I've been wrestling with in my current, impromptu WIP short. I wouldn't have started it if I hadn't been intrigued by the idea of "creepy paintings," but I also thought it wouldn't be that hard to establish the tone of the story. How wrong I was.

When I write, tone is usually a by-product of a everything else. Most of the time, tone just happens for me. It's a result of the kind of language I use, the way the characters express themselves, the imagery used for setting and emotion. Let's take the First Lines I shared from 2 of my unfinished shorts, "Thorns" and "Clockwork Heart."

Thorns: Before Leander's father died, he had a moment of burning clarity after weeks of fevered daze.

Clockwork Heart: There once was a man whose wife was in need of a new heart, so he endeavored to make her one - a better one of fine gears and careful enchantment.

I started these at around the same time, probably a week apart. Both of them are supposed to be fairytale-like, but I personally think "Clockwork Heart" has more of the traditional tone of a fairy tale. I didn't really plan out either opening line. I wrote knowing I wanted a kind of dreamy quality to the stories. The thing with "Clockwork Heart" is that the first line clearly sets the tone of the rest of the story. It would be strange if I departed too much from this first line, whereas the first line of "Thorns" allows for more tonal leeway. It sounds serious and a little distant, but it could easily become a close third point of view, for example.

My current short with the creepy paintings is supposed to be, in a word, creepy. The first line does lend itself to creepiness, but it's like the first line to "Thorns" where the tone could easily change in the lines following without making the first seem out of place. You give that to a main character with a flippant, easy-going personality, and she will take advantage of any tonal ambiguity that first line gives. You mix a la-dee-dah attitude with a story that's supposed to be creepy and well, you don't get much of the "creepy," let me tell you. So I've been trying to strike a balance between the intended tone of the story and my main character's personality, and it's really hard! I got two scenes in before I realized her personality had skewed the tone of the piece so far off track that I'd be hard pressed to pull it back later.

This story has existed for somewhere around 2 weeks, and I've already been forced to start all over with a second version. Version 2 seems to be going better with more of the right story tone but still just enough of the main character's carefree approach to life.

My question to you then, dear readers, is what do you do when your character's personality gets in the way of the tone of your story? How do you make them take their predicaments seriously? On the flip side, how do you know if it's your choice of tone that is off and not your character's?

5 for Friday

You're probably glad it's Friday like I am. I mean, who isn't glad when the weekend looms so close you can taste it? Let's jump right into the post then: my 5 random things for Friday. Maybe I'll do random fun facts next Friday! What's with this thing for alliteration? Moving on...

1. Watching ice skating (Olympics and otherwise) makes me nervous because I'm always afraid they'll fall when they jump. The outfits have improved a lot over the years. The Japanese-American skater, the girl who skated last yesterday, is from near my area. W00t, represent! In men's figure skating, Stephane Lambiel does the best spins I have ever seen. His spins are like magic. I kid you not.

2. The sister and I started watching Spartacus on Friday nights since Ghost Adventures (arguably one of her favorite shows) hasn't been on. Spartacus is a bit over-the-top, which jives with its 300-esque look and style, and it is entertaining. I just feel like it's trying too hard to be edgy and artsy (while also trying to distance itself from the whole 300 thing). ROME was much better, granted the style and focus of the 2 shows are pretty different.

3. Speaking of "ghost" shows, maybe I've been watching too much Supernatural lately (trying to catch Luce up to current season) because I've started a new short story. It has creepy paintings. I hate creepy paintings. (Supernatural did a fine episode on creepy, creepy paintings in Season 1.) But I do love the look of the Victorian time period, which this story also has. That probably has to do with my finishing Libba Bray's wonderful A Great and Terrible Beauty on Wednesday. (Book reading update to come.)

4. Criminal Minds makes me paranoid, though I enjoy the show immensely. It also results in hilarious conversations with the parentals. Mostly, they say, "Hey, when are you going to make use of that Psych degree and join the FBI, so you can fly around in a private jet?" To which I reply, "Um, I think I need some sort of graduate degree first and maybe combat training. Also, I think the jet is for business use only." The private jet does NOT outweigh the facing serial killers part.

5. Pet Peeve: People who don't use their turn signals when they drive. IT'S NOT THAT HARD. It's also a matter of safety, especially if said people are going to lurch all sudden-like into my lane. I'd like a heads up, thanks. Common courtesy, people.

Since there's a lot of TV mentioned here, what have you been watching lately?

And that's it for my random 5 for Friday. Oh, and be sure to check out Alz's post below on her short story writing process. Catch you later!