So!

How has your guy's writing been going?

Have any recent stories of writing woes, triumphs, frustrations? If not, what's one of the biggest things you think you struggle with, as well as one of your biggest strengths?

Thoughts on violence.

Recently I picked up a copy of the writing magazine, Poets & Writers , because I've been staring at the writing magazines for ages at work (BN) and wanted to give one a go. This issue looked promising, and in it I found an article about violence and blood in novels. The article asked when it was appropriate to "show" violence, and when it was appropriate to "hide" it, and leave it to the reader's imagination. It gave examples of mystery, fiction and crime novelists, and how they effectively freak out the readers without going into gruesome detail about every drop of blood or every knife plunge.

And, as writing thoughts do, it got me thinking about what I consider effective in fiction, in books and in movies and shows alike.

As SoF is a series that is 75% fighting and war and 25% talking and scheming, I am familiar with the concept of choosing to display what and where and how. King Allan, my antagonist, murders his father and mother violently in order to ascend to the throne (or is that his reason at all? ;) ). He cuts his father's throat and drowns his mother in the palace fountain, all with his bare hands. I could have easily gone into great detail in some flashback about how it happened in disgusting detail, but instead I focus on how Allan, at that moment, felt to have power enough to kill his own parents. They are his first kills, which are important in the life of any antagonist, but I purpose to leave the gruesome details to the readers. It's their imaginations that are being provoked to see it, after all. If I had gone into pages and pages of detail of the struggle (Allan's father and mother were not soft shadow cats- they were warriors through and through) I would have taken away a huge portion of the raw feeling I wanted the scene to have.

This morning I considered two of my favorite shows, CSI (the original way back when) and Castle, and how they portray murders. I love CSI dearly, but most of the time, I'd say 90%, they show the murder happen, either in the end when the suspect is caught, or in the beginning. While there are plenty of episodes of CSI that freaked the willies out of me (people living in your attic and spying on you at night? Noooo thank you.), I find that the gut response to those murders are not nearly as strong as what I experience when I watch something like Castle. In Castle, when the show begins with murders, we see the murder scene and the body with the suspect gone and the victim just waiting to be discovered. Immediately (especially if it's incredibly bloody) I'm drawn in, and immediately I want to know how it happened, and who was responsible (and how badly Beckett will kick their skull in, but that's not the point) and why. The murders are never shown (at least to my memory), even during one episode where they have a recording of the murder happening. The screen pans out and we focus on the characters watching it, on their reactions, instead of the actual violence happening on screen.

To me, the descriptions the detectives and investigators give are far more effective than the scenes of the murders actually happening in CSI. If I told you there was a man holding a family hostage, and he was executing them one by one, but doing it by dragging them into the other room or across the street to the woods where you can't see, and all you hear are gun shots, what do you think of? The unknown, and your imagination runs wild with it. This murderer is taking the kids one by one, taking the parents, with no mercy, and the others have to listen and know he's coming for them next. If he shot them all "on screen" and I described a brutal killing with punctured chest wounds and skulls splitting open, it would invoke either numbness, or disgusted horror- not quite the emotions needed for the scene.

Thats not to say I believe EVERYTHING should happen off screen. There's a need to know when to show the violence, when to describe it, and when to imply it. I don't describe Allan's first murder in detail, or how Se'vre kills off characters. There's a scene I wrote where he is sitting across from a woman (she's not important) he fully intends to kill, but he's seducing her into relaxing in his presence. She does, to his delight, and he, as Se'vre does, toys with his food and victims in such a way that it seems for several moments that he's actually quite harmless. The scene ends with him, in a "round about" way, telling her he intends to murder her. When Se'vre appears again, he has blood on his face and makes a comment alluding to her murder- but I never write about how it happens, what he did to her, or how the blood got on his face. Se'vre is a messy killer, and he likes it that way.

My antagonists are created to be horrible, twisted and rotten people through and through, but they are also written to be people. I want to invoke emotions and reasons and moments where the reader believes, for a fraction of a second, that whatever is about to happen has a chance of not happening because they see that Allan and Se'vre and Avlon and Revelin are just, in the end, people doing horrible things. And that it's a choice.

In the same way, I wrote an entire (albeit short) chapter of a character being tortured. I needed to show the reader everything that happened in that period of this character being brutalized and tortured in every which way possible, because later, those same readers needed to connect and remember what happened as this character remembers. I needed that connection of sympathy and horror when the character reacts the way they do to situations, of understanding, because this torture is an experience kept between the character it happened to and the audience. The other characters are suddenly the ones who heard about it but did not see it, did not feel it, and it switches the stage around so that the readers have a behind the curtain look at a huge aspect of this character's development. It was a hard chapter to write because of the violence, but it was necessary, and I believe it made the story, the latter books, more effective in their telling because of it.

Of course, SoF is about war, and there are many deaths I am forced to describe. However, I have tried to be careful in how I describe them. Saying a blade was run across someone's throat verses going into great detail about how the tendons were cut and the blood gushed is a line that needs to be recognized. I've read writing before where brutalization, especially by the antagonist, is described in such great detail and so often that I became numb to it. It desensitized me in every way as I read about these deeds this character committed, and I became less interested in his crimes and how to stop them. There's a point you reach where you cannot take it to the next level, where you are stopping your reader from teetering into suspense and horror because you've started the violence at the highest level it can get in the first place. They will flinch at first, sit on the edges of their seats and immerse themselves, but the second they see this is the norm, that this is what will be happening at every plot twist and turn, it becomes ineffective. They become less invested in the characters and their own emotions and reactions.

If I described every swing of Lonlor's sword as he fought in war (he fights in many of them), every limb he cuts off or every person he kills, it would get not only tedious, but annoying. Instead I focus on what he feels, or if he even does. Does it numb him, fighting for hours upon hours, watching his comrades and friends fall by his side? Does the smell of blood and death become so normal to him that he can't remember what clean air is? Shadow cats are a race that delight in blood, and they tend to bleed out their victims in gruesome ways. I wanted to include a scene in SoF where this is shown, and I did describe it through Lonlor's eyes. But I don't describe every murder and every happening of violence in such detail that it numbs the reader. At least, I like to think I've learned enough to not do so. Naturally, if acts of violence happen and are so important to the plot they need to be described in great detail, then do it.

But remember we live in a world where murder happens every day, unfortunately, and most readers will be well familiar with the motion of slashing someone's throat or running them through or shooting them. "He put three in her chest" can provoke more emotion then "The bullets hit her once in her shoulder, her collarbone, her chest, and spurted blood across her shirt". Don't take your reader's imagination for granted, especially if you write fiction. Give it help, show it what you want to get across, but don't assume that they have never seen a crime show in their life or don't know what bullet wounds look like. Give them a taste of the scene, but don't shove it down their throats. They won't be able to enjoy it then, and savoring is important.

And for goodness sake, please don't slather your fiction with blood every page. There are people who enjoy that type of fiction, but you would be doing yourself, your future shrink and your readers a favor by limiting it to when it's necessary.

Find the balance and stick with it. Don't be afraid to show some violence, but be wary of showing far too much.

Started a new manuscript today.

Because I'm already restless with no writing project in the wing. The manuscript tab to the right has thus been updated!

This one's style incredibly different from how I'm accustomed to writing (this story is told from the perspective of a modern teenage girl in first person, the direct opposite of SoF), and the writing just springs out of nowhere as I type. It's very exciting...so exciting that I wanted to share a snippet I just finished with ya'll. Read on for it! :)

I know how the world ends.

Some say the world ends in fire. Others say it ends in a flood, or a supreme deity smites us all with no mercy. I’ve heard people stand on street corners on soap boxes and shout to the world that it’s end is near. We will all be judged at the end times, they say, their eyes wild and frantic. There is nothing we can do to stop it. I always wondered, as I passed such people, why they were raising their voices and screaming for all they were worth if what they preached was true. Would that be how any of us, should one of us be gifted with the ability to see the truth, with how it all ends, act? I can’t say it would be my first response. Warn people, yes, but I’ve seen crazy people all my life. I know the signs, I know what others shrink away from and decree as abnormal.

I know what will not be tolerated.

It would be my choice, if I knew when it was to come, to let it. I have no one to warn, no one to frighten with my doomsday speeches and predictions that none would take seriously. I have nothing, but even as I passed such people in the beginning, my head down and my eyes cast anywhere else, my music blaring in my ears as I walked, I had everything. I had everything because I was not standing at that street corner screaming those words, I had everything because I was not in this moment that jars the irony so deep into me I wonder if anyone would be able to extract it, if I were to live. It’s doubtful.

I know how it all ends.

It is with none of the things that humans, over time, have concocted. The irony of it all is what the world does end with, and how it is so simple. How something like this eluded even the greatest story teller, even the greatest mind that ran over the probability of the universe running it’s course.

The world ends with a name.

My name.

My identity strung in one word. Three syllables for those who do not know me, two for those that do. The very few I held close to my chest and refused to let go.

It would be a very short tale to tell if that was how I began, with the end. All tales have beginnings and ends, and I could not help but begin mine with where I stand now.

I’ve always been a bit backwards.

Let me begin again, the best I can, with what I know.

My name is Cynthia McDonnell.

Remember that name when it is whispered at the end, and remember, remember as this unfurls, one very important fact you cannot let go of.

I know how the world ends.

And very soon, so will you.

Draft 2 of Book 2...

...is done.

.....

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:)

Sometimes a scene must be shared

Mortals were predictable after thousands of years watching them.

“High Messenger, is there something that you need?” the king finally glanced up from his reading to stare blankly at Nycon, his posture equally stiff, his courtesy forced.

“For you to take responsibility for your actions,” Nycon suggested with a slow smile that did not reach his eyes. “As unlikely though that may be.”

The human’s eyes narrowed, and Nycon shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I am here to ask you what you are planning to do with what your son has sent you,” he changed the subject, though his terminology caused the king’s jaw to tighten.

“The Commander,” he corrected not so subtly, glancing back down at the parchment in front of him, “has said that Allan remains within the bounds of the treaty at all times. They ventured to the desert, where the Commander ran into your supposed savior.”

“Appointed and supposed are two incredibly different things,” Shainaka interrupted.

Faran’s lips were ghosted with a smile, the first Nycon had seen from them in years.

“That’s right,” he nodded in agreement. “The Messengers lied at the council, pure servants of the Guardian that they are.”

Nycon chuckled.

“I know it is a foreign concept to you, Faran, protecting those you are supposed to protect,” he drawled absently. “But sometimes, doing your duty involves breaking a few rules in order to fulfill it.”

Faran tilted his head back to the parchment.

“So Kanaray has found nothing for months,” Nycon summed up lightly. “Call him back.”

“No,” Faran shook his head. “The Commander needs to stay where he is, should they grow to trust him.”

“For the free nations, or for you?” Nycon challenged.

Faran looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

“What is it you are here for, High Messenger?” he demanded. “What is your purpose in lingering in this room?”

Nycon leaned away from the column, rolling his shoulders.

“Anden’s burning was never part of your motivation to send your first born to his death,” the High Messenger said quietly, a rumble of anger sparking across the words, electrifying them. “You are playing with fire, Faran. I thought that you would have learned long ago it will burn you.”

“You and your riddles,” Faran snorted, dismissing him by glancing back down at the table.

“Riddles they may be, but I was right about his mother, wasn’t I?” Shainaka pressed, half hooding his eyes. “It played out just as I said, and now where is she?”

WHAT.

I'M SO BLOODY CLOSE.

I have to write in three or so chapters, edit three more, and then I AM DONE WITH THIS SUCKER.

AHHHHH!!!

SO EXCITED.

They keep surprising me, even so.

This is madness.

Making Sense.

Sometimes, as I go over old drafts and polish them up to my current writing style, I find gems such as this:

"He had sprung from his bed, grabbed his blade gone to where it had come form."

Where not only is the writing surrounding it terrible, but it in itself does not actually make any sense whatsoever. That was from book 2. Other jewels of horrible include:

"There was a brief silence before the wooden gates were heaved inward in much protest as they departed from one another. And that was all. "

And, my favorite because it is SO terrible, from Draft 1 of Book 1:

"A narrow yet used dusty street. "

Yeah. That's the complete sentence.

EDIT: Found another LOVELY one just now:

"He cut himself up and jerked his gaze to the Messenger."

My gosh, Lonlor, that sounds painful. Quick, hide the razor blades everyone, we've got a real emo on our hands.

EDIT 2 (4/20/2011):

"D'hiren watched in complete silence as Lonlor took a dew steps backwards until his back hit the oppisite wall."

I don't even...just...no. NO.

EDIT 3 (4/21/2011)

"Lonlor stood on a snow-covered hill that overlooked an untouched Anden spread out and huddled below him."

It is spread out... yet HUDDLED. Yes.

My gosh I'm just going to make this a log of all the mistakes I find. WOO.

Do you guys have anything remarkably close to this that you groan when you go over a while later? Better yet, can you come up with what you'd consider a terrible sentence?

Off to more editing, where I'm sure there will be more awkwardness aplenty. And yeah, I'm totally listening to Katy Perry as I trudge through this draft.

Don't judge me!

Mary Sues

I've taken a lot of "Mary Sue" tests for fun, just to see what on earth the general writing community considers a Mary Sue- or a Gary Sue, what have you. Usually, however, I really don't agree with how the questions are set up. They make it impossible to have a character who does not possess the traits they list, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be a fictional person. It's especially difficult to do with a fantasy like setting because "magic" is involved, and unfortunately a lot of stereotypical crap is lumped in with that. I took one over at KatFeet.net that I've taken before, and my results were thus:

"Lonlor is nothing like you. He isn't really very cool: he blends into crowds, he hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes him run into things. He may have sometimes thought that he was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. He's had more than his fair share of hard knocks, and probably spends more time than he ought moaning about it. And he's gotten no slack from you.

In general, you care deeply about Lonlor, but you're smart enough to let him stand on his own, without burdening him with your personal fantasies or propping him up with idealization and over-dramatization. Lonlor is a healthy character with a promising career ahead of him."

Which was pretty interesting to me, though I'm glad to hear he of all characters scored low on this particular Mary Sue test. Because as far as main characters goes, he has the teenager finds amulet has to go save the world and reluctant hero nonsense counting against him, because heaven knows THAT'S been done before.

And, granted, a lot of the questions on there were questions that held incredibly over used cards that authors tend to favor and readers tend to somehow eat up. Half breeds, outcasts, abuse, torture, tattoos, scars, etc. And I do agree that these things can be overdone, and in a lot of cases, they are. However, it caused me to question the definition of a Mary Sue outside of fan-fiction. What would qualify a character to be a Mary Sue? The first thought that comes to most recent reader's minds is Bella Swan from Twilight- at least, thats the first example that comes to my mind. But what makes her a Mary Sue? Is it over used cliches? There's nothing really extraordinary about her, if you think about it. She is apparently the cats meow (or the vampires bite, the dogs bark- yes, I think I'm hilarious) of Forks, as she attracts every male within miles. She also takes to the vampire mojo very quickly with disturbing ease, but beyond that, what is so Mary Sue about her?

Yeah, I drew a blank too. So then why, if she has these two big things that could have been written well, do I immediately jump to her when I define Mary Sue? There are people out there who are naturally great at many things. I bet you can bring to mind a few of them that you know or know of, and how it can be a little annoying that they are so naturally gifted. There are also women who men tend to think of as beautiful across the board and who always get the attention of the opposite gender. So what's the big deal when you combine these things? What makes a Mary Sue...sueish?

My answer is this: Execution.

No, not a massacre of Mary Sues (though I do support that), but how their writer's actually execute their characters. Stephanie Meyer could have pulled off Bella Swan. She could have bulked out the same character instead of letting shallow, bland facts define her. I'm never against the general story of Twilight- what has always been a chip on my shoulder was how it was written. How the tale was carried out, how the characters were fleshed out (well, they really weren't. They all have one general emotion to stick to- Jacob was usually aggression, Edward melancholy, Bella passiveness), and how the author chooses to portray them. Because you know what? I love mush. I love triangles of the mushy variety, and I love torment and conflict and meshed together feelings with a random mythical creature thrown in. I'm all for these things, but if executed poorly like they were written by a chicken with it's head cut off, they turn sour. It's like leaving a banana on the counter for three weeks. You don't want to consume it, you don't want to go near it, and you definitely don't want to touch it. You're not entirely impressed by who left it there, because they certainly did not pay enough attention to put it into the trash where it belongs.

I don't believe in "over used" cliches. I don't think that all because a thousand people execute the same idea poorly, that one person should be denied a shot at it. Because hey, I have a half blood in my story, and he's one of the main characters. And guess what, my main character was abused growing up, and yeah, it affects him whenever he interacts with women, because he has two categories for women in his life time. One, his foster parent who never hesitated to smack him around and use force to enforce her will, and two, his sister, who is the direct opposite and sweet, caring, kind and was the only thing keeping him sane during their childhoods. Then you toss in Naomi, who starts to file into the latter category for him, but then he realizes that hey, she's not his sister. She has no reason to act the same, yet she does, and it's different, so what does that make her?

The point is, my personal definition of Mary Sue characteristics is this: A Mary Sue is made up of seemingly randomly, unexplained pieces that are not at all sewn together properly. This doesn't mean you need to provide answers for everything. Reader's don't need pages of back story of why a character's hair is a certain shade, or why they like baloney instead of turkey in their sandwiches. It's a good idea to get a grasp of what is considered cliche, or over used, or Mary Sue-ish, and to check out how not to execute your personal character. But heck, if you want a love triangle, you go for it. If you want your character to be tatted up, if you want your main character to be blonde, if you want them to have unusual coloring, magical powers and fairy wings that bring all the boys to the yard, then go for it. Write and create your little heart out, but remember that when people look at your character, they will be able to see how much you've actually put into it. And what you put in is exactly what you will get out.

Just remember to connect those pieces, stamp your own mark across the creation, and to never be afraid to do something that has been done before. Because guess what? As true as it is that there is nothing new under the sun, it hasn't been done by you before, now has it? And that, in itself, is new.

Just don't go out and make it a Mary Sue.

Keep Moving Forward

I've been sprinkling different scenes into Descent to "spice it up", most that have to do with showing more of my villains. I'm trying to use chapters from other perspectives to "break up" the chapters totally focusing on Lonlor. I'm doing this for two reasons. 1) Following Lonlor exclusively can be incredibly frustrating for readers, as he is stubborn, hard headed, and at a transition stage right now where he's JUST getting the hang of what is going on. And it only took him 400 pages. WOO! (Character building pages that needed to happen, I swear) and 2) This story involves a lot of other characters that do really interesting stuff while Lonlor is doing something entirely different. I also feel it's a good way to give a breath of fresh air now and then, and give my bad guys a stronger presence. It helps when an audience sees glimpses of why the bad guys are threats that need to be faced.

However, only this morning I found myself plunging into one of those very breather chapters, and after a page I wrote, in all caps: "WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS CONVERSATION. IT SHOULD MOVE THE PLOT FORWARD OR BE TAKEN OUT. DUH SELF."

And it helped me realize that if the chapter, conversation, event, etc doesn't move the plot or the character themselves forward in some way, then why on earth mention it? It's like retelling an event that has happened to you to a friend and mentioning the weather when the story you are telling took place inside and was totally unaffected by the outside.

I can tell pretty quickly when chapters start to go nowhere that they either need to be taken out, or given a purpose that actually ties in with the plot or shows something about the character that is important. It doesn't have to be life changing for them, but it should have an impact (such as factoring in to characters relationships with one another, giving new information, a new obstacle for the character to overcome, etc), otherwise you are forcing reader's to read irrelevant nonsense that does nothing but hold your story back.

Just something to think about, and definitely something I've been focusing on recently in rewriting book 2 of SoF. Has anyone else found something similar in their own writing? Do you notice when you do it, or does it have to be brought to your attention? Can you spot it when you are reading a published book?

Prompts.

I've been writing a lot of SoF lately, so I wanted to do something different. I think it's important to switch it up now and then with writing. I searched for some prompts, and came up with "Flourish of hate". It seems different enough, so I ran with it; featuring Cindy from Crossfire!

Do any of you guys have any prompt ideas? I'd love to try them out!

There were two things that I had never felt before.

Two very important things, both interlinked by their intensity, woven into each other like needle and thread. These two things were as important as life to many and were nothing to a very few, and even those few were lying. I knew they were lying now, as I stood and stared, and I knew that as soon as one of them clicked into place, the other would be out of my grasp for forever.

You could not hold all the cards and still sit at the table.

I had never been skilled at bluffing, and I refused to let this be any exception. I had not been told by a kind parent or a loving mentor that either of these things were dangerous, that either of them were binding. That if you put your hands into the shallows it would envelope you, suck in you in and never let you go as if it were tar. It would stain your skin and rip whatever was left of you out through your pores until you were convinced that you could never feel more alive, never feel more invigorated then you did at that moment. It would throb and ache and shoot ice through your veins that was melted by fire shortly afterwards, singing everything else that you thought you held. Your fingers would be raw and bleeding after you touched it, and once you invited it in, once it slunk lovers hands over you, you could never go back.

It would take a part of you you could never replace, and it would own that piece until you died. Until your last breath scattered through your body, it would have you.

I would like to say that I fought, that I struck out against it before it could claim me. I wish that I could write this to you and tell you of my struggle, of how it clawed at my throat and I pried it away from my skin before the claws sank too deep.

But I can not.

It slunk up to me and I threw open my arms and invited it in. I wrapped it around me like a second skin, as if it clothed me and I were naked without it. I let it choke every breath out of me that I had, let it rip my veins and replace it with its own pounding venom until it escalated in my ears and thrummed its touch across every part of me.

Never had I felt more alive, and as I stared across the room at the woman on the opposite side of the table, it was through new eyes. Everything had been repainted in aggressive shades of crimson, and I let it curl my lips into a snarl, I let it lower my brows over my eyes and coil my body into tension that could only be released by a series of three words- three words that were representations of one of the two things I had never felt. Three words that were equally important to another set.

“I hate you,” I whispered, and watched as the ripples from my body plunging into the thick feeling boiled to a stand still and the identification was complete.

And with a flourish of hate, I leaned back in my chair against my bound hands clasped behind me and smiled.

Inspiration

A list of things that inspire me creatively, because I think outside influences of inspiration are important. Equally important is realizing what inspires you.

• God. He's given so much to inspire me with, from the beauty of the world around me, to the amazingly complex manner humans function, to awe inspiring grace and movement in my life that I could do nothing BUT write an entire series from it.

• Friends. Yeah, ya'll. People around me have always inspired me to push myself and do better, especially when they are driven and purposed in their own lives. I'm very blessed now in my life because I am surrounded by nothing BUT creative friends left and right, and I cannot get enough of it. It's amazing to see their projects and characters and art take life, and it gives me determination to do the same with my own stories.

• Bad writing as well as fantastic writing. To explain this, I read an article over at YA Highway that suggested that just as you get just as inspired from bad writing as good writing. Good writing, great writing, causes you to want to be at that level, to inspire and provoke the same feelings that you respond with in your own craft. You want t craft the same emotion, the same depth of characters and cleverness. Horrible writing on the other hand makes you take a step back and say "I can do better than this, and I will." Seeing other's mistakes and (sadly) failures in bringing to life what you are trying to allows you to strive to overcome those same problems. Reading flawless writing 24/7 can be inspiring, but pick up a lame novel every now and then to see how things can go wrong (and what makes them wrong in the first place). It helps with evaluating your own progress and gives you a list of things to not do in your own story. (For this I recommend Nevermore by Noel and Twilight.)

• Music. Obvious, but its totally true. Music inspires moods, lyrics and swells of music flash scenes at me at every which way, and it always gives me something to think about in relation to characters and their emotions.

• Animals. From my horse to the screech and barn owls that nest and hunt on our lawn every winter, fall and spring, animals inspire me. They are front forward, always honest in their emotions, and never fail to let me know what they are thinking (or trying to think). Their crazy antics and willingness to spend long nights with me at my desk (this is clearly my cat, haha) makes them the best companions a writing recluse could ask for! And they are great therapy during NaNo.

• Movies and writing books. Because come now! How many times have you seen a movie and the characters cause you to wish to create something just like them? Movies are a favorite source of inspiration for me. When I'm stuck, I often put on LOTR just so that I have something to listen to while I plot. It helps that the characters in LOTR talk like mine in terms of time period. Also, writing books because I've recently been collecting them like a mad woman, and am currently at 4. They include (all of these are fantastic) Your First Novel: A published author and a top agent share the keys to achieving your dream By Rittenberg and Whitcomb, The Little Red Writing Book by Royal, Revision and Self-Editing by Bell, and The Art of War for Writers.

Of course there are many other things that inspire me, but these are the first ones that sprang to mind.

What inspires you?

Finally! And yet...

So Christopher Paolini, someone who's books I've been reading since the first one was published (2003), has finally announced the fourth and final book in the Inheritance Cycle. It's called Inheritance. (I...really wish I was kidding with that title, but I'm not. It's official.) After years of waiting for him to even announce the title and cover and tentative due date, he just splurges it out there today and it's everywhere.

Now, when I first read his writing, I was 13. My Auntie Carrie gave it to me for Christmas in 2003, and told me how she thought of me and how I could do exactly what he did (get published successfully at a young age). I looked to him as inspiration from that moment, and absolutely LOVED Eragon. I loved everything about it, the characters, the concept of dragon riders (I was a huge fan of the Pern series at the time), and I was constantly drawing fan art for it all over. Its pretty much what jump started me starting SoF "for real", and I began to wonder about my own stories and how I could make them into something. A few years passed and the second one came out while I was 15. I bought it at once and sped through it- and noticed that the writing seemed... different. More advanced. I grew excited because of this, realizing that Chris had improved and how this, again, could be me. There were things I noticed in the book even at the age of 15 that I felt were off, like pacing and plot (and I HATED Arya. I still dislike her), but I shrugged them off because c'mon- dragons! And lots of betrayal!

Fast forward to 2008 and Brisingr comes out in all it's golden glory. And I'm now 18, almost finished writing my own books, and I pick up this story again, eagerly. And find out that not only has his writing style altered completely, but along with it, the characters are suddenly, without explanation, different. There was more life in them, more fire and personality, and suddenly I was plunged into 784 pages of character development and depth that should have been crafted in the very beginning. It felt like a completely different author had taken the helm of this book and was pouring themselves into it, unlike the first two. They paled in comparison, and as a result, it turned me sour against the story. Because now it was choppy, sloppy, inconsistent, and these characters I had invested five years of my life in where only now being developed. I was disappointed, and realized that this man who had written these books had made a drastic and terrible mistake.

He'd published the books before the story was ready.

What I read in Brisingr, the style and characters, was a different animal all together. It threw me off horribly, and while it is awesome that he grew, what he failed to realize was that he took his characters and story along with him, and in turn left the other two books behind. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was 15. He edited it once himself, his family then edited it, and then sent it off to his parents publishing company, who then got it picked up by Knopf, a major publishing company. Then it was spread all over, and he became a success, a marvel at his age (He was 20 at the time) and now millions of people are in love with this story. I have NO problem with anything I mentioned, because it's his story, if he wants to pump it out like this, then good for him. I still consider him remarkable, I just no longer consider his actions smart.

This author quickly went from one of my inspirations to a large, fat example of "do not do." Make no mistake, I will be pre-ordering my copy of the last book and most likely enjoy it. I do expect that it'll be totally different than the 3rd book, and I have little concern that I'll be wrong. The red, flaring warning signs I have taken from this near 10 year venture I've been on with these books, however, is that my first instinct, what I wanted to do at once, what people urge me to do all the time, is wrong. I cannot tell you how many times my family and friends hear that I've finished what I explain very clearly is a first draft, and they immediately respond with "So when will it be published?" This question used to stress me out, because then I'd walk away thinking "Yeah, when WILL it be published? I should write faster."

Which, for me (and in my opinion for any young author) is not at all the correct attitude. I feel that Chris was asked the same question and he turned to his parents and repeated it, and they published his book as a result. I'm not degrading the success he has, or saying that he's an idiot. In fact, he taught me a valuable lesson- to wait. I would sit and stew over SoF and pump out draft after draft of crap (will you believe that Kanaray used to have the power to shape shift into a small black cat? As in, HOUSE cat size. That poor boy.) and start to panic because I wasn't anywhere near complete. I had my family tell me how I could be published, how I should be, and would flip out because I wasn't. Now I look at my books and think "Slow and steady wins the race." Because guess what- it's taken me 4 years of writing to complete the first "complete" round of drafts, and now it may only take me 8 months to write both book 1 and 2. It's taken me 12 long years to get to this point where I feel confident about my writing and happy with slivers of my writing style. I don't feel I'm completely "there" yet, but I feel like I'm on the brink of it instead of miles away.

And I don't want to be like Christopher Paolini. I don't want my novels to jump styles and feel like different people are trying to write the same story and totally not succeeding. I don't want to be an astonishingly young author when these stories get published. I don't want them to just fall into someone's lap. I've grown so much in writing these books, and still am as I rewrite them, and I could rewrite them until the end of my life and learn something new each time- but I want to get them to a point where I know that this is the story I wanted told. That I don't have to suddenly develop characters in book 3, because they've been growing with the story this entire time. I think about the difference between him and me all the time. He didn't wait until his story was ready (if he had, it would all flow, all be in the advanced style he now uses.) He didn't even wait until he had the second book written before he published the first. And I think, for him, it was a mistake. At least from my point of view, because now these published books all feel so different to me and I can't enjoy them as the one story they are supposed to be.

Its just interesting to see him go through these books, and it'll definitely be interesting to see how he concludes this story. I learned a lot from these books, both when I loved the writing and even when I outgrew it. I'm still learning from them.

Oh, and to all my friends who have heard me say this before-

I TOLD you the last dragon (and the cover) was going to be green.

:)

Notes

In rewriting a manuscript, I've come across several differences that vary from writing one from scratch. In the first book of SoF I rewrote last fall/winter, I was faced with the task of taking something both hideously old and out of date and transforming it completely (plot, characters and style). With that, I was also heavily challenged to both change the development of the characters and factor in many ideas that had been completely missed and/or ignored, as well as trying to match it to the later two books. (There are four books in this series, all with finished 1st drafts). With book 1 it felt like less of a challenge because I had a lot of room to explore and reinvent the beginning of my tale.

I also had the first draft of the second book acting as a buffer, so while my goal was to still make the story smooth and flow into the other three books, it was not as if I had to immediately make it fit the same tone. I'm learning so much with the book 2 rewrite, and I'm astounded all the time by how I am relearning a lot as well. I feel like since I've been writing these books for 12 years I should know exactly what to do, what to write and where to write it, but most of this remains new to me as I go along. I feel seasoned and fresh to the scene all at once.

With book 2, the one I am currently writing, this is not the case. Book 2 is by far the most important book story wise because of it's content and how it ups the stakes of everything presented in book 1. Now, I take notes on my ideas as soon as they come to me, no matter where I am, because I know I'll forgot them if I don't. While this sounds handy, I often scribble them on obscure, odd pieces of paper located at work, at school, home, etc. I have a journal I take everywhere to keep all of these ideas in one place, but sometimes I forget it. So these ideas are pretty much scattered throughout a range of various places, and while I try to collect them all as I write, sometimes I miss things. And then we have situations like what happened this week, where I rewrite an entire series of events and forget to slip in a conversation that I was stoked about earlier but overlooked because I could not remember where the notes were. Turns out I scribbled them in my sketch book, which I never do.

And while I really liked this idea and conversation that I had scribbled about in my sketchbook, when I found my notes and skimmed them, I found out that what I had written and how the events had unfolded were ten times more accurate to the characters and the story than my "super cool" conversation idea had been. Basically it was going to be a discussion between the protagonist and the antagonist without the protagonist knowing he was speaking to the source of his misery and woe. That was going to be how I "introduced" my hero to my villain, and I thought at the time that it was clever and would give the scene an edge. It was going to be a cat and mouse game of the antagonist teasing whatever he wanted out of the poor main character Lonlor Swift, and Lonlor thinking he was in the company of a stranger that was on his side.

The major problem with this is that at the point where Allan (my bad guy) would approach Lonlor anonymously, said hero is feeling immensely betrayed and has so much conflict going on internally that Allan speaking to him would cause him to immediately jump to conclusions and mistrust (as he tends to do). The conversation would be very short, and Allan would be left looking like an utter fool. Which he is not.

If I had remembered where those notes were, the scene that is now unchangeable would have been written so much differently. I know I would have gone by my notes because this is a scene that got me "stuck" and wondering how to overcome it, and a simple fix like a few jotted sentences would have been very easy to enter. I didn't, and I think the story is better for it. I often find myself writing down ideas, thinking them utterly fitting for the story, and then being swept so far out to sea by the same story that I forget to insert them completely. I come back to them and say "Darn it, that was good" but then look back at my imperfect scene that just spewed from my fingertips in spurts, and realize "Well yes, it was, but this could be great. This is where it needs to be." Situations and characters change from what I originally plan.

Sometimes my story just needs me to get lost in it instead of it lost to me. Most of the time all I need to do is stop flouncing about trying to make every scene memorable, and to just write. I desperately want my story to be something that readers are immersed in, that they can barely tear themselves from, but what I want most of all is for me to be immersed. When I read books, I can tell when the author was in their world, with their characters, and when they were eyeing the entire story with a scrutinizing gaze and throwing in turns to spice it up.

Stories don't need flare, or edge, or added excitement and epic scenes at every corner. The scene I wrote instead of the one I planned was ten times better suited to the moment and situation, to the characters and story, and I think that gave it its own special place. I still keep all my notes and all of my discarded ideas, because maybe one day they will spark something different, or remind me of how I once went with the story instead of my head. I'll never downplay having and taking notes, or brainstorming ideas and using those, because I do it all the time.

But sometimes, it pays just to let the story breathe by itself without shoving an oxygen mask on it. Sometimes it pays just to lean forward and let it take on a life of its own.

I'm learning with this draft that when I do, when I stop worrying and concerning myself over details, magic happens.

And I like where it's taking me.

Swift

I just created an entire outfit based on the bird to the left, a whiskered tree swift. Beautiful birds, I cannot get enough of them! I love everything about their design and movements and voices.

What, you say, but something in the name of the bird seems familiar. Almost as if it's relatable to a character's surname in SoF! Even the colors seem to be in common!

Ah, says I. You'll just have to wait and see ;)

I encourage, as a writing or drawing exercise, to take a bird with multicolored plumage and see what you can make of it in regards to an outfit. Can you manage all of the colors while still getting the idea across? What about keeping certain, stronger characteristics?

Its a fun challenge!

Tricks

I've been coming up to little blocks in rewriting Descent.

I wouldn't call them writer blocks so much as tiny snags that keep tripping me up for a day or two (which sounds like a short time, but is incredibly frustrating to me and feels a lot longer as it happens) With that, I've been coming up with different, new ways to overcome them. Listening to favorite songs and taking a line of the lyrics, translating it into the story or my writing style, and working from there. I did that just now, and it pumped out two pages of thoughts I had not known my character even had.

Or picking a current mood or random theme to work into a scene or even a chapter. Googling "writing prompt ideas", reading one of the four writing books I have sitting on my shelf unloved because I've been more preoccupied with writing my book than reading any others. Or even posting on FB that I need help and sitting back and watching what creative friends come up with in regards to prompts and opening chapter line ideas. Sometimes its interesting and refreshing to stop staring at the screen waiting for your brain to come up with the brilliance, and let something else small or large spark the mood for you. It seems to give new perspectives and angles to an otherwise worn story. My story is so old to me that sometimes, I just want a breath of fresh air and a little nudge in the right direction that is not determined by me. Shuffle on iTunes often helps me with mood, or figuring out writing.

It's important, as a writer, to let trickles of outside influence in from time to time. I feel as writers and authors, we often are under the impression that any ideas and influences from the "outside" are bad. That everything has to come from us directly, as if we're reinventing the wheel. Authors and artists are obsessed with either two concepts- conforming to one "style" or genre of their craft, or being so obviously original that they have difficult times differentiating between the two. Balance is hard to find. In the Bible there is a verse that says "There is nothing new under the sun" and I often repeat it to myself as I write. It sounds so negative, but it's a helpful reminder that yes, people have written similar stories to what I am currently slaving over day and night. That yeah, fantasy is not a new concept, nor is a teenager trying to save the world, or a war that involves dragons. The difference is I'm the one who is telling it this time around, and I haven't before.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

Definitely something to reflect on as I plow forward with this draft and meet plenty of snags along the way. I'm in no race to finish this bad boy, but it is immersing me so quickly that I cannot help but speed on ahead. I'm in love with this story.