Month: May 2021

The Arena Attack

This month brings you a scene from the second draft of Storge, specifically the inciting incident in chapter 2. It is a fight scene, so content warnings for blood and two “on screen” minor character deaths. It’s 1470 words, so nothing tooo long. I’m super excited to share this with you since it’s one of my favorites and I’ve only ever shared isolated lines before, so please let me know what you think!

Every butcher, baker, farmer, tailor, merchant, laborer and beggar packed themselves into the cramped arena stands to experience the spectacle. Seldom did they see bloodshed beside their own, and they would not waste the opportunity for entertainment. Stuck as they were, Grace strained to see over the crowd. They held their breath against the stench of body odor and fish that baked into the air under the hot evening sun. Luca fought the urge to take off his long-sleeved shirt to cool off, but the sight of the Atilan viewing boxes made him think twice. He tugged the edges down over his wrists instead.

Venders hawked their wares to the crowd, hoping to make some extra money off the event by selling the oily, salty snacks of dried meat. The advertising cries drowned when the crowd rose in a sea of shouting as guards dragged the rebel Master onto the sand. He didn’t take arrest easily. Blood and sweat shone on his bald head and dripped down his bare, lash-scarred back. They chained his hands behind his back, but it didn’t stop him from straining against his bonds. It took three soldiers to force him to move. Jeers sounded as the people of the city unleashed their pent-up frustrations and anger.

The High Atil strode onto the raised dais that stood in the exact center of the arena and raised his hands for silence. Gradually, the crowd hushed and anticipation replaced the fervor. He sneered at the rebel leader and slowly stretched out his arm, pointing his index finger towards the ground.

Kneel.

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Perfect Prose: “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury

Today I’m covering a short story that may already be familiar to my American followers from our high school English classes. Ray Bradbury is the author of many famous dystopian, science fiction and fantasy works such as Fahrenheit 451, and I was introduced to “The Pedestrian” as the primer for our unit on that book. While most English classes focus on analyzing diction and prose, and I could have picked any of the countless pieces I had to dissect over the years, I picked this one because I remember how vivid it was, and how it was the first time I really understood the way words could be used to draw somebody into a story. 10th grade was the year I started seriously learning about the writing craft and working on my own books, and this was the first time I really read like a writer. The act of being able to pick apart a story and learn how it works and then using that knowledge to put your own stories together is a valuable skill that I need to practice more, and it’s what I’m hoping to share with you by doing this series of reading recommendations. So let’s see what we can learn together, shall we?

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Editing Your Novel: My Personal Process

Most writers have a serious love/hate relationship with editing. Rereading your old writing is a special type of painful, but the process of refining the words into something beautiful can be thoroughly satisfying as you watch your skill with writing grow. I’ve been editing the first draft of Storge recently, so I am closely acquainted with that feeling, but I’ve figured out a method at works for me and makes the job a whole lot more enjoyable. It won’t be perfect for everyone, but I thought I’d share it in case you could learn something from it!

For context, when I say I’m editing the “first draft”, I mean I’m editing the first completed draft of the story. It’s the first full manuscript I’ve finished, not the very first set of words I put to page. I started several variations of the story before realizing I had too many plot holes and characterization problems to continue. Then I would quit drafting after few chapters to go back to the drawing board. There were a few reasons for that original block. First, Storge is a very complicated story and I didn’t have enough experience or skill to execute it yet. Second, I was still figuring out my own process and didn’t yet know that I needed a detailed plan in order to tell that kind of story. I think this draft is the 5th version, but it’s the only completed one, which means its the only one that really matters for the sake of this discussion. All of my planning and scrapped drafting ahead of time helped eliminate a lot of plotholes and teach me about my writing process, but it’s not what’s actually being edited today.

I’m also planning to self-publish, and so this guide is geared to that end goal. I do not know where beta readers and professional editors fit into the querying and traditional publishing process, so I’ll hazard a guess that it’s best to go with what the professionals say. Additionally, this process focuses on long novels, but it can also be used for short stories and other works. The steps just would take less time and require fewer cycles of double checking. I wrote this to be as cohesive as possible, but you can always scale it down if needed.

That being said, now what? I’ve got a finished manuscript – how do I even start making sense of this 110K word thing??

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April Goals Recap

Hello and happy April! I don’t know about all of you but I am Thrilled that spring is finally here (at least where I live), even if it means I’m going a bit stir-crazy during my online classes. This was a busy month for me – though to be fair, I don’t know when it isn’t a busy month. I’m happy I was able to get so much done between my classes and job, but I’m looking forward to the summer when I can make faster progress on all my fun projects.

15/24 Overall

7/9 Creative Goals

Do basic website “housekeeping”: As I learn more about building an author’s platform, WordPress, and web design, I realized that this blog was a mess. There was no homepage explaining that it is a writing blog, navigation was convoluted and out-of-date, and the blog feed included the whole post which made it a pain to scroll through. I didn’t understand why my traffic stats were so bad when I was putting so much work into my posts, but once I figured out what I was doing wrong I was able to put some temporary fixes in place until I have time to do a proper overhaul (and teach myself HTML and CSS) over the summer. I’m really proud of how this turned out! If you have a minute to spare, click around the site and see how everything looks. I also made a survey so I can see what content is your favorite and how I can make this blog better. If you could fill it out that would be such an incredible help to me!

New updates include:

  • The menu is organized by topic, and under the “My Writing” page are sub-pages for each of my main WIPs.
  • The pages for each WIP have been updated to include a synopsis, excerpts if possible, featured posts, and a master list of post links for that topic so you can easily find all the information for that story.
  • I figured out how to use the special blocks on WordPress so now my featured/related posts sections look pretty
  • I edited each post to have related post links at the bottom so that you can easily click from post to post without having to navigate back out to the main menu. I also edited them to have “read more” links, so you don’t have to scroll though the whole thing to get to the next post on the main page.
  • The main landing page for the site is still a chronological blog feed, but there’s a sticky post at the top which includes information about what I post, navigation menus, master-links, featured posts, social media handles, and a search bar
  • Misc. editing and updating to individual posts and pages to make everything up-to-date
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