Big Steps

So I've had some issues recently with determining the exact plot of my book. Looking through what I had in place, I realized that it really didn't feel genuine. Everything felt forced and thrown together haphazardly.

Essentially, it sucked.

The book I'm currently working on is the first in a series I'm planning on writing and I had no idea how to end it. I know how the series ends, but each book was a mystery to me. It was actually partially in thanks to Moody Writing's posts about sympathetic characters that I finally figured out how to end the first book. In disaster! I had been trying to avoid major disaster in my writing until later in the story, but it just made no sense to keep everyone alive all the way through to the end. Someone had to die.

As soon as I realized who I needed to kill off at the end of the first book, everything else seemed to click into place. Story began to flow naturally from step to step. No longer did I have to force the characters into the conflicts I needed for the story to move, they went there by themselves. Each book finally has an overarching theme and the character development is finally where I need it to be.

As I continue to solidify the plot, I will start finalizing my character sheets and hopefully get one or two major ones posted shortly for you guys to critique. I apologize for the overall vagueness in what exactly I'm working on, but since it is still in the planning phase I'd rather not get too specific since knowing me, it could completely change by my next post.

I spent this entire weekend not paying attention to my writing which I now regret, but it helped some of the ideas I came up with over the week settle. I wasn't initially sure whether or not they would have the staying power necessary to be acceptable, but I am pleased to announce that they are!

I'm going to remain vague as to the specifics as I continue to nail them down, however I can speak on the general focus of each book. Book 1 is about searching for the truth. Book 2 is dominated by personal revenge. Book 3 is about acceptance and understanding. Vague enough for you?

Before I close this out, I would like some input from you guys about magic and how you feel it should be done. This is not in relation to anything in particular, I just like to see how others view magic and other such supernatural powers and how they would like to see them used in novels. How has magic been used well in a novel? Are there instances where you didn't like how it was used? What would you like to see change or be done?

I look forward to your input.

Worst Intro Ever

This may be my finest work to date. This post is in response to this awesome post about the Word Master Challenge for January which goes as such:

How Not to Write a Novel Beginning.

In less than 300 words, I want to see your idea of the WORST beginning you can possibly write. The funnier and more creative you are, the better.

So I took it upon myself to make something truly abhorent. The result is as follows:

It was a warm day on Earth, but this isn’t Earth so there. It’s cold here and Bob was mad then jim showed up and shot at Bob with his super cool arm cannon thingy. Oh yeah, Jim’s a robot or something sweet like that.
Bob jumped like wicked high and totally dodged the blast as the snow started except it was snowing up from the ground. Weird right? Except not cuz this isn’t Earth remember.
Now some space men show up and attack because they want to win or something so Bob and Jim decide to work together so the space men don’t get to win at all. They kill all the space guys and Jim activates his rockets and flies to a space station nearby. The space station is totally cool looking and can fly around and blast stuff like whoosh and fa-pow!
So now Jim and Bob are on this super cool space station thingy and now they are mad at each other again but Bob totally whoops on Jim and kills him dead then Jim is all like oh wait I knew your dad and I could have taken you to him. Bob was an orphan btw. Now bob is all sad and stuff because Jim is gone and he has no idea what to do and that sucks except now he has to go get ready to find out the mystery of the space station because it’s haunted but he doesn’t know that.
Bob now puts on some super cool sunglasses and walks around like a total boss but he isn’t. then the ship blows up.
Bob is fine.

It's Been A While

Wow I have really neglected this blog!

I can make all kinds of excuses, but the fact remains I dropped the ball which I seem to do quite a lot, especially when it comes to keeping up with my writing. Life gets in the way, however I happened to get more writing done when I was working a 65 hour a week job than I did back in classes. Over four months of work I wrote around 50 pages of background information in my free time. Since then, I've done nothing.

Fortunately for me, I started back at my job for January through April and will hopefully be getting more writing done. I decided to look back over all of my prior writing and decided that there was one common denominator; a complete lack of organization. I had several page documents on anything that was going through my head at the moment. While I like just getting my ideas out and sifting through them later, I had never actually done the sifting before very recently. The result was a jumbled mess of contradictory work that needed to be redone, so that's exactly what I'm in the process of doing.

Rather than creating a new document for each time I had free time, I have decided to create topical documents ahead of time to guide my thoughts into the right channels. Rather than dicussing geography, food, and the potential side plots all on one document, they each now have their own word doc.

So far its worked out, but down the road I can see it becoming somewhat restricting. Anyone want to share how they approach (or ignore) prewriting? Rather just critique my method? either way I look forward to your feedback.