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Articles/Ideas/Prompts - Fictional Worlds

Falling Behind

March 11th 2010 13:09
Unfortunately life has gotten in the way of my editing this month. I've begun the second draft of my novel, writing a new first chapter-but life has stalled me. Between a crippled grandmother, old friends coming back into the picture, and my general exhaustion, my started second draft is sitting on my USB key gathering dust.

Luckily, being a student in Toronto (I don't know about this in other places) I've got next week off of school, freeing up several hours of five days of my week. Some of this time will be devoted to catching up on school-my editing isn't the only thing I've fallen behind on-but I'm hoping to get most of my second draft done during this time period.

Hopefully you've come further with your work than I have; if not, don't give up hope. If you're participating in Nanoedmo, don't fret too much about your hours. Focus on how much of your manuscript you get rewritten. Don't think about how much time to do it; your goal is to finish a second draft of your novel, and even if it only takes you 40 hours, or you only make it most of the way to the end, it's still a huge accomplishment starting with a first draft and having a second draft in a month.

How are you coping with life and editing your novel?
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Book Review: George R. R. Martin's A Game Of Thrones

March 10th 2010 12:03
Instead of today's update, I've decided to write a book review of the book I finished last night, George R. R. Martin's a Game of Thrones.

The first thing I'll say about this book is that if you aren't prepared to commit yourself to a lot of reading, don't even start it. It's the first book in a series, and this book alone is eight hundred and seven pages.

From the moment you start reading until the moment the book is over, the story of the Stark family, one of the seven great houses, will pull you in and keep you there. It starts with the discovery of a litter of direwolf pups, a litter without a mother. The direwolf is the symbol of house Stark, and after some debate about bad omens, Ned Stark decides to give each of the wolves to one of his children.

King Robert, who Ned was once close friends with, comes to visit and asks Ned to become his Hand, his most powerful advisor. Ned doesn't want to go, but a letter that is convinced the Queen murdered the last Hand convinces him to leave, to try and discover the truth behind Jon Arryn's death.

The moment Ned Stark heads south, everything changes for the Stark family. The family is separated by thousands of miles, politics, and eventually death. The story is dark but it's realistic, set in an extremely well developed world and revolving around a set of fascinating characters, all of whom grow throughout the novel.

Putting down this book to get off the subway-I spend an hour traveling and that's my prime reading time when I'm too busy to find other time-is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I plan on starting the second book tomorrow morning on my way to school, and I hope that you'll decide to start reading these books too. If you love fantasy and don't mind blood and guts, this is a great series, not only to read for the joy of reading, but to read to see what works in his writing that you can experiment with in your own.

You can buy the book below:

A Game Of Thrones on Amazon.com
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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts
   


Prompt One

March 9th 2010 12:20
Your goal for this month might be all about editing, but it's always good to keep the writing juices flowing. To help you keep writing, each week there will be a writing prompt. These are designed to be 500-1, 500 word writing exercises. They don't have to be full stories, as long as they sort of make sense.

This week, take a character from a different project than the one you're currently editing, someone who you are somewhat familiar with but who isn't quite a close friend yet. You will be writing from their point of view.

Your goal is to write 500-1, 000 words about this character traveling through an unfamiliar forest. Have them describe the forest as best they can, trying to figure out types of trees, types of flowers, any animals that they find.
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Week One Pep Talk&Short Exercise

March 8th 2010 12:21
The first few days of March have passed, and the first full week of March is about to begin. You may not be where you wanted to be, but remember that there's still most of a month left.

You might also be frustrated with the big picture problems of your first draft. If you find yourself dreading the words and dreading the work, while you look through the badly written parts that you've figured out, try to find things that you like. Great scenes, great description, real emotion, realistic characterization. Underline those parts or at least make a note of them. You'll find yourself liking your work more, and you'll find that rewriting what you don't like will come to you more easily


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Three Editing Links To Help Out

March 5th 2010 12:38
Every week for the rest of this month, I'm going to post either three or five links to good articles about editing fiction, in the hopes that you'll find the information useful or at least interesting. I still haven't made a final list of websites, so if you have a link you think should be listed in one of the posts this month, please send me an email at diannalgunn@gmail.com.

On to the links for this week


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Editing Exercise One: Overused Words

March 4th 2010 12:20
Based on what you've read and worked on so far, make a list of five words you think you overuse. You'll probably-especially in a Nanovel-find an overuse of words like 'was', 'have', 'bloody' if you have a lot of gore, 'beautiful' if your character's exploring a new world. 'Moments' is a big one for me as I've struggled to find new ways of judging time for my world.

Beside each one, when you do your work for the day, do a tally of how many times that word has been used. After you've read your chapters for the day, find a thesaurus and look up similar words. List three similar words that you are comfortable using beside each word that you overuse, and then replace each word you overuse at least once in your chapters for the day. Keep this list close to you when you're editing the rest of your novel


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A Prompt To Distract Yourself

March 2nd 2010 12:39
Your goal for this month might be all about editing, but it's always good to keep the writing juices flowing. To help you keep writing, each week there will be a writing prompt. These are designed to be 500-1, 500 word writing exercises. They don't have to be full stories, as long as they sort of make sense.

This week, take a character from a different project than the one you're currently editing, someone who you are somewhat familiar with but who isn't quite a close friend yet. You will be writing from their point of view


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Introduction To An Editing Workshop

March 1st 2010 12:12
Today is the first day of March. It is also the first day of Nanoedmo, a month during which many writers work on editing and some reach for the goal of 50 hours of editing. In honour of these events, and considering the fact that I am also editing my novel this month, I decided at the beginning of this year that I would be doing an editing workshop in March.

Most writers experience some difficulties while writing their books, but for most of us, when we get past that point, we discover that writing is the easy part: rewriting is the hard part


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When You Think You're Done, Something Else Comes Up

February 24th 2010 12:25
For the last few weeks, I've been working a fair bit on building the world of Tamraq, the world in which my Jihad series takes place. There is so much to create in this world, so many things to talk about. I've already got a binder that's mostly full of notes, and I'm beginning to think that I might need to get a bigger one.

I thought that I'd done enough worldbuilding to at least write the first couple of books, but after writing Phoenix Falling I realized just how much needed to be done. How much more can be added, how much more should be added. We're quickly approaching March and NaNoEdMo and I've barely got anything done in preparations for a rewrite


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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts
   


Characterization Workshop: The End

February 20th 2010 12:29
Hopefully you've gotten to know your characters better over the last week and gotten used to writing in their voices. These exercises are designed to help you create real characters with distinctive voices. If these exercises have helped you, I would love to hear from you what you enjoyed about them. If you have any suggestions for characterization exercises in October, please send me an email at diannalgunn@gmail.com.

Now that you're done the workshop, go back to your character profile and fill in anything that you didn't know about your character before that you do now. If you want to send me your responses to these exercises at any time down the road, send me an email with Characterization Exercises in the subject line. If you want a critique, mention that in the email itself and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible


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Day Four: Final Prompts

February 19th 2010 12:51
Today you're going to write 300-500 words per character to a prompt of your choice. You can do this as the character freewriting about the topic, or as a scene related to the topic. What you write should be first person from the character's PoV.

You may want to do more than one prompt for each of your characters. This is perfectly acceptable


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Day Three: Character Interviews

February 18th 2010 12:29
Today you're going to interview each of your characters. Either you, the author, or another character who is involved with your world's media will interview them.

Some of the questions your character is asked will depend on your story, your world, and your character. You'll want to ask about hobbies, interests, and their feelings about the events of your story. Depending on what your character's story is before the book, you might ask some questions about the character's past. You might also want to ask what the character's plans for the future are


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Day Two: Dear Diary

February 17th 2010 12:29
Today you're going to write a diary entry for each of your characters. This is not going to be an entry about an ordinary day, but it will be an entry about an important day in the life of your character. It should be a turning point in their life. It could be the day of a breakup, a death in the family, or the day your character found a new job or got accepted to a good school. Anything that changes your character's life in a major way.

It doesn't have to be an unpleasant event, just an important one. Make sure that you are writing from the character's PoV, and that it sounds like it's really them. This is a diary entry, so it should be in the first person, using 'I'. Each entry should be 300-500 words long


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Day One: Expanded Character Profiles

February 16th 2010 12:16
Today you are going to create a profile for each of your characters. If you've already made character profiles for these characters, don't worry. These profiles are more detailed than the basic profile (link) that I asked you to complete in the October pre-Nano workshop. Fill them out to the best of your ability. If you find yourself drawing a blank on one of the areas, you know you need to pay more attention to that part of your character's life.

Name


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Characterization Workshop: Intro

February 15th 2010 14:08
This workshop is designed to help you get to know the important characters in your novel. You should already have a sense of who they are and what they do/what drives them after writing your first draft. Through questions and prompts, you will get to know three characters of your choosing.

If you want commentary on your responses to these exercises, either comment on the posts with your responses or email them to me at diannalgunn@gmail.com. I will respond to these emails as soon as I can, probably within three days


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Book Review: A Scientific Romance: A Novel

February 11th 2010 12:34
Click Here to Buy

This book was recommended by my English teacher. The back cover and the inside don't really tell you anything about the book, so it's a leap of faith


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5 Great Websites/Blog Posts

February 5th 2010 12:22
I've decided that every Friday I'm going to blog a list of great blog posts, websites, and/or markets. This is part of an attempt to try to regulate my writing and my blogging.

Today's list consists of three interesting blog posts and two interesting websites, in no particular order as usual


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Making A Workshop List

February 3rd 2010 12:06
As some of you already know, this year I want to do a workshop that lasts at least one week on my blog. These are meant to be intense, short workshops. In January I did a workshop on Organizing Your Novel, and this month I'll be doing a workshop on characterization. These workshops are designed to help writers with a first draft figure out what they want their story to look like in the next draft, and to help them figure their characters out as well.

I've come up with a theoretical list of workshops for the next year. I'm hoping for some input on what you think would be most useful. Take a look at my list and let me know what you think. Suggestions are welcome


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A Reading List

January 27th 2010 12:28
I've decided that as well as making writing goals for this year, I'm going to create a list of books that I want to read this year. Of course the list is subject to change at any moment, depending on how quickly I'm reading. It also depends on things like money and what I can find in the library. Some of these books are fiction, some of them are non-fiction, and a couple of them are books about writing.

Here goes


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The Love Of Books

January 26th 2010 12:15
For the last few months, my teachers (wonderful people that they are) have been feeding me good books. Ishmael Beah was a recommendation from my English teacher for an assignment involving reading a biography or autobiography. I loved it-a terrible story, one that I wish wasn't true, but well told and showing an underside much darker than the one here in my own city.

Right now I'm reading a book called A Scientific Romance that was recommended by my geography teacher and given to me by my English teacher. (Crazy stuff.) You'll get a full book review probably at the end of this week or the beginning of the next. Suffice to say that it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read


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