It's a Trap - Evolution of a Story

22APR18

Spent a few hours this weekend editing a story. Rewrote the beginning with more specifics, eventually adding another three hundred words or so, bringing the total word count up to 10, 300. 

I do a weird thing when I edit. I always start at the beginning of the story and work my way through to the end, editing as I go. This lets me get immersed in the story, feel my way through. While this makes for stronger openings, it also makes for weaker endings, and right now I can see that in this story. I'll be working on it for a few more weeks before I release the story for sale. I'm thinking that it will be around 20,000 words by the time I'm done. I still love the midpoint action in this story! Every time I read it I am inspired anew to keep writing the stuff I like to read. Here's a snippet [not my favorite part in the story, but pretty close to it. Spoiler alert, someone dies, almost, well, maybe. Let's just say he gets better later. Mostly.]:

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Murg and Black Char fell back, aghast. Between them, Jagged Edge tried to scream, to get away, but he was stuck straight through from his shoulder to the seat of his pants. Blood turned pink as the light from the crystal sword shone through the spurts from his neck. 

Black Char kicked, trying to get away from the killer blade and Jagged Edge's flailing arms and legs. Murg sat back on his rump and watched from inches away as Jagged Edge twitched out his last seconds of life, impaled by the crystal sword they had come to find.

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When you go looking for power, be careful. You may find it!

So now I need to keep editing, working toward getting to the end without any more rewrites. I wrote in a mid-section piece which adds some more details to the story and gives it a good building feel to the action later. Right now the ending seems a little loose and unfocused. I'm going to tighten it up some, give a bigger role to one of the female secondary characters and make the ending more satisfying. She's due to have a story of her own in the future anyways.

Picture for today: The female secondary character in my story worships the Sun. She is of the People of the Sun. 

Of course, People of the Sun reminds me of something else as well...

People of the Sun


May your days be good and long upon this Earth.

The High Chaparral and Writing

23 DEC 17

I'm sitting here on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for some repairs to a car. An early Christmas present for my wife. While I'm waiting I'm also working on adding keywords to each chapter of one of my longer drafts. It's an interesting process. Once I'm done I'll be able to see how the keywords start, stop, and interweave with each other. 

While sitting in the waiting area, I was subjected to watching several episodes of The High Chaparral, a western series I had never heard or seen before. Made by some of the same guys behind Bonanza. My attention has problems staying on task sometimes, especially when a TV is on nearby. :) I liked the frontier feel of the show, something that I want to mimic for some of my stories. There is some nice interplay between the Indians, the soldiers providing law in the territories, and the ranchers and frontiersman settling the area. I have the feeling that some of the shows I watched today will make an impact on one of my stories someday. All I have to do is add some magic. 

So yeah, that's what I'm working on right now. For the last hour I focused on a part of the draft where a group of adventurers wander into a town, a town with an odd set of four festivals, one on each solstice and each equinox. The group happens into the town just a day or so after the Summer Solstice festival, with some unintended consequences. Think Western Twilight Zone, sort of. With skeletons.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Edits

14 OCT 16: So many things run through my brain each day! One thing today would be using the word 'that' in writing. The last four stories that I sent in all had too many thats! 95% of the edits were removal of that overly used word. OMG! I didn't think I used it that much! Of course, just writing this post I see how easy it is to throw in unneeded words.

The bright side of course, the good news, is that the other 5% of the edits were minor issues, missing words, stuff like that. If you have some experience with people editing your writing, what issues were found in your words?

Picture for today: This picture makes me think of editing my own work. It may seem as if you are reading carefully, but really your eyes are covered, you are blinded because these are your own words, you know them and you aren't actually reading what you wrote, more like glossing over them, revisiting them in other words, not reading them critically. It always helps to have another set of eyes before they're printed.