I’m working on a short book (the one mentioned in the process post a couple days ago) and have just edged my way past 10%, which is one of those milestone numbers. It’s starting to take shape structurally, too, which is great, because it’s a blueprint for the structure of the rest of the books. And it’s still amusing me, so hopefully it’ll amuse readers too. I’ve also gone off-synopsis already, although the off-ness isn’t relevant to the overall structure; it’s just a nicer/smoother opening than what I’d envisioned. So…
Tag: writing
evolving process
Following up somewhat on last week’s process post… Recently on Twitter Tobias Buckell mentioned he was 6K into a 10K synopsis for a 55K book. Kate Elliott chimed in to say that in December, she’d managed 4K a day for 2 weeks straight–far above her usual writing average–due to having a supremely clear idea of what had to happen in the book at that point. I myself have become increasingly aware that the more I outline, the more smoothly the book goes. Particular cases in point were THE PRETENDER’S CROWN,…
worth the price of admission
I had the sudden suspicion that Scrivener might let me put both my synopsis and the chapter I was working on up in a split screen, and lo, within a few seconds I’d figured out how to do so. That feature alone is worth the price of admission. I’ve also got an obviously-increasingly-useful sidebar going on with research materials filling up, and find a sort of unholy glee in the idea that it’s all just right there to flip through instead of digging through browser bookmarks or random text files.…
Reader Questions: process & projects
Joliene asks: [What] drives your writing and keeps the juices flowing? What are the project ideas you have in the works, now that The Walker Papers is being put to bed??? Occasionally what my publisher is looking for drives my writing ideas–that’s what prompted the Strongbox Chronicles, for example, and it’s behind one of the projects I’m putting together now. Far more often, though, it’s a random comment or thought that ends up getting terribly out of control. :) I’ve mentioned before that the Walker Papers were born out of…
Reader Questions: Doing it all
Thirzah asks keeping kick-ass real? Why is it ok to have a hero/ine shoot people in fiction, when we’re opposed to guns & violence in real life? Well, I write about a god-fighting shaman, so I’m not sure how *real* I keep kick-ass, but… :) I think it’s all right for us to explore violence in fiction precisely because we don’t in real life. It’s a way for us to imagine and experience things we actually really hope we don’t encounter in real life. A lot of fiction is about…