I’ve finally finished the new ending of the novel in progress. Yay! Now to go back to the beginning and start cranking through various rounds of revisions. The new ending came about as part of a revision on the story/plot level. Now that the story is (I hope) solid, I can focus on making the characters and locations more vivid and interesting, as well as ratcheting up the dramatic conflict a bit more.
characters and emotion: a short bibliography
July 30th, 2010 · book review, character development, revision
I’ve been struggling with a problem that I think is probably pretty common for writers: getting the emotions of a point of view (POV) character across in a way that is vivid and engaging yet not hokey or too “on the nose.” Of course my first impulse was to look around to see what other writers have to say, and I found some useful resources, which I’m happy to share with you. [Read more →]
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wisdom of the controlled burn
July 27th, 2010 · Uncategorized, editing and revising, general, productivity
I’m back at work today and there to greet me is a shiny new operating system on my work computer. In some ways it’s a lost day, since I have to install and configure a bunch of widgets, get all my devices talking to one another again, et cetera, et cetera.
On the plus side, getting a new operating system has also forced me to degunkify my desktop, which also serves to clear my head via a process of sympathetic magic. Being gone for seven workdays (eleven calendar days!)* has also helped with the head-clearing. And now I get to learn some new computery stuff about the operating system and new versions of various software tools I use for work (Windows 7 and Adobe CS5). [Read more →]
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three books to help you revise your novel
July 8th, 2010 · book review, revision, writing process
I’m deep in the throes of revising the current novel manuscript, and it’s going well (yay!), partly because I’ve found a book with a novel revision process that seems to work well for me. The book in question is The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work
What’s working for me: Ray lays out an actual step-by-step process to complete a novel revision, and has a raft of tools to help the struggling writer think about the structure of the novel-in-progress, as well as the characters and their arcs within the larger story. He focuses on revising subplots, which I’m finding immensely helpful, because it’s the subplots that give a book texture and make it seem like a whole, three-dimensional world. [Read more →]
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review: black blade blues
June 30th, 2010 · book review, character development, reading
I just read Black Blade Blues, the debut urban fantasy novel by J. A. Pitts and first of a series of three from Tor, and it was a LOT of fun. The the book features left-handed lesbian blacksmith and martial arts expert Sarah Beauhall, who
- inadvertently reforges a magic sword,
- befriends a six-foot tall dwarf (the supernatural kind, not one of the Little People),
- works out some issues of internalized homophobia with the help of her equally kick-ass girlfriend Kate, and
- fights dragons, ogres and trolls to saves the world (naturlich) with the help of various friends from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).
Not necessarily in that order. Also, at one point she gets hit on by a Valkyrie (squee!). [Read more →]
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