Guest Posting!?

Laura Highcove

So this week I decided I would take the plunge and actually attempt to write a guest blog post for DIYMFA at the encouragement of my mentor. It is something that I haven’t thought about very seriously before this because I have very little skill writing blog articles. Despite the fact that I post something here every week, I have rarely made any attempts to make these posts follow a typical “blog format”. I found the best way to keep myself able to write one of these posts every week is to just allow myself to write what I want, how I want it. It helps to keep me accountable when I’m actively working toward a goal, and it helps me to evaluate and record my process. What is the point of spending hours struggling with a “real” blog post when I could be using that time to be doing literally anything else.

So it took me several days to come up with possible blog topics. Then a day to write the email pitching them to the web editor. I had to convince myself that my mentor would know if I didn’t send an email. I don’t know if she would or not, but I used it as a way to force myself to send the email.

Then I was nervous as I waited for a reply. Then when I got the reply it took me a day to work up the nerve to read it. Then when I read it and saw the topic the web editor had picked, I realized I was going to have to actually write the article. And I did, and it was horrible. So I let it sit and cleaned it up, and sent it to my hubby, and then edited it, and sent it to him again, and now I think I actually have something that will at least not embarrass me.

So what am I trying to say with this post? I am celebrating the fact that I was nervous and scared and outside my comfort zone and I did it anyway! Even if I send this post to the web editor and she says it needs to be rewritten. Even if it goes up and no one comments. I will still have done it, and that experience is very important. It has also taught me that when I am not writing fiction, I can’t keep a consistent tense to save my life. That is also important to know.

Mistborn (Part One) Story Structure

Laura Highcove

In our most recent DIYMFA call, we were challenged to take a short story or children’s book and see if we could identify the parts of story structure within the book.

This fell right into a question that had been pushing around recently in wondering if, when a book is broken into parts (common in Fantasy), each of those parts also follows basic story structure.

So I decided to make the challenge a little harder on myself and see if I could figure out the story structure for Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson, Part One. (I used the paperback version to get the page numbers.)

Here’s what I found:

Opening Image (Part One): Description of Vin’s crew’s safe house. (pg 19-21): Seeing Vin as the main character, I made this decision based on the fact that the first part takes Vin from where she is, to bring a part of Kel’s crew, so her opening image is her little world.

Inciting Incident (Part One): Vin’s crewleader kicks off his plan. (pg 25): This is why the story starts here, because this plan is what leads Vin to being found by Kelsier.

Opening Image (Mistborn): Description of Luthadel by Kelsier. (pg 28-30) The overarching plot of the novel is the caper, so Kel’s description of the city seems a much better “opening image” for that story.

1st Reversal (Part One): Vin decides to use her “luck” on the High Prelan. (pg 39) This is the choice Vin makes that causes everything after to happen.

Inciting Incident (Mistborn): Kelsier and Dockson observe Vin using her “luck” on the High Prelan. (pg 40): This event is what brings Vin into Kelsier’s noticing.

Temporary Triumph (Part One): The crew members saying they’re in after hearing Kelsier’s plan. (pg 79-81): Getting the crew to agree to the plan is a triumph, even if it doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

2nd Reversal (Part One): Kelsier and the crew outline the steps of the plan, everyone really sees what an impossible task this caper is, and Yeden wants to pull out. (pg 122): I had trouble with this because there isn’t a *ton* of conflict considering it’s the beginning of the book.

Dark Night of the Soul: (Part One) Vin doesn’t want to trust Kelsier (or any of the crew for that matter) (pg 156-157) At this point, Vin almost leaves the crew due to her inability to trust.

1st Reversal (Mistborn): Vin actually agrees to be part of Kelsier’s crew (pg 158): Vin makes the decision here. She has an out and chooses to stay anyway.

Crisis/Climax (Part One): Vin has to fill in the role of a noblewoman for the caper to work. (pg 165) Vin finds her role will be larger than she thought.

Closure (Part One): Vin settles into the idea of Kelsier being a good man (trustworthy). (pg 168) Vin has changed just a little bit, in that she’s willing to trust Kelsier.

I’m not sure if people more studied in story structure would think that my interpretation is sufficient, but I feel like all the beats are there. At the same time I could be grasping at straws because I went into this wanting Part One to follow basic story structure. Either way, I think the exercise is helpful and if anyone would like to challenge what’s here, I would love to discuss it.

New TV Season

Laura Highcove

So, the new season of TV has begun. Here’s a quick review of the new TV series I’m watching and what I think an episode or two in:

Shadowhunters

I liked these books by Cassandra Clare (though I liked the “Clockwork” series based in the same world better) and so I figured I would give the TV series a go.

While the differences between the TV series and the books did not bother me, (Except the fact that Brother Zackariah has his eyes and mouth sewn shut.) the acting was so poor that every time any actor opened their mouth, all I could do was cringe.

Seeing as it was the pilot, I did give it a second episode, in which the acting was thankfully better; except for Clary. She’s still pretty bad, but at least now I’m not wincing all the time. I was not expecting this to be amazingly written or acted, so now it simply falls into the “I could enjoy it.” space, which is a fine place to be.

Legends of Tomorrow

Another DC series set in the same universe as Arrow and Flash, and quite obviously as this series pulls the …well ancillary characters from those two series and gives them something to do.

It was a two part pilot in which it set up the basic premise of the show. Does it count as spoilers if it happens in the pilot? Anyway, we gather six minor heroes and two villains who are told by a rebellious Time Master (Not Time LORD mind you.) that since they don’t really effect time much on their own, he’s going to pull them out and go after this super bad dude who, in the future, takes over the world, but since he killed the Time Master’s family, we have enough bodies in the refrigerator to spur action.

The most amusing thing about this show, and the real reason we’re watching it at this point, is the amazing dialogue created by taking such a wide cast of characters and playing them against each other. It seems it will be entertaining at least, even if we have to continue to put up with the Time Master’s cheesy dialogue.

Lucifer

I had a hard time with this episode at first since I was raised Christan, there was no space in my mind for Lucifer to not be a villain. Once I was able to put years of religious conditioning to the side, I was actually impressed with this episode.
Mostly I love the actor playing Lucifer, who I followed over from Rush (which was pretty bad and canceled after one season). He has such a boyish innocence to him which somehow lends itself wonderfully to the confidant character he’s playing.

Now the main female lead spent most of the episode with her pupils absolutely tiny which just made her freaky to look at, but she doesn’t seem too bad.

Writing wasn’t amazing and my husband and I are wondering how convoluted things will have to be considering most people just blurt out important information whenever Lucifer smiles. Time will tell, but I am super excited for the second episode.

Picking Jeremy Five-five

Laura Highcove

So now that The Storyteller is out for it’s alpha read, I had to decide what I was going to do in the meantime. I actually spent a day making a chart for all the stories I have written. I recorded how far I am in them (most of them have far less word count than I thought) and what about each story makes me want to write it.

I decided on a story with the working title: Jeremy Five-Five. This story has a bit of an interesting backstory. I started it for NaNoWriMo one year. While I was writing it, I wasn’t really into it. My problem was that my main character (Jeremy) kept flipping back and forth between wanting to hide in the background and having nothing to do with the game being played by his classmates, and getting super pissed off when they were playing it poorly and I was having a hard time understanding where he was coming from. So I decided to stop working on it, and instead go back to working on Shifting Winds.

When I went back to read Jeremy Five-five later, I realized that what I had written was really good, and I was able to figure out what Jeremy’s motivation. The back and forth of the apathy and anger actually works for his character. I pushed forward on it a bit, created a new draft and then it had been sitting there when I got more serious about my writing and worked on Shifting Winds and then The Storyteller.

Now I’m back to it in the drafting phase. I’m just plowing forward on word count, and Jeremy continues to be a bugger and a half to write. I just can’t seem to pin him down, but at the same time I’m drawn to him like the other characters in the story seem to be. There’s something about him that is peaking out and I need to figure out what it is so he can really shine.

Super Sick

Laura Highcove

One of the joys of my life is that I tend to only get sick about once a year. Other times when sickness tries wiggle in, I can nap for a few hours and wake up and be fine, or sleep overnight and kick it.

When I do get sick, I take a light day from work, where I go home between chore times, take it easy, nap a bit, and then I’m okay in a day or two.

A week ago Thursday evening, I got a scratchy throat. I took a light day on Friday. The scratchy throat progressed to ouchie throat and lasted through the weekend.
On Monday I bundled up and went back to work and scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the afternoon. The Doctor said I looked fine, and gave me a prescription for Wednesday in case I wasn’t feeling better.

Tuesday my workmates tried to send me home but I didn’t want to sit at home and feel useless.

I woke up Wednesday morning with a fever. That’s when I began to realize that I was probably sicker than I thought and by going out in the (sudden) cold, I was just making myself worse.

Then I had my call with my mother and she smacked some sense into me, at which point I had to come to grips with the fact (I was now almost a week in) that I was, in fact, really sick and I needed to sit on my couch and do nothing.

So after discussions with my boss and workmates, I proceeded to send my husband out for battle supplies and I spent Thursday, all of it, on the couch watching movies and playing Zelda.

By Thursday afternoon I realized I wasn’t going to be better by tomorrow, so I called in for a second (!?) day off.

I didn’t sleep again Friday night, in fact I was brought into sharp awareness by the feeling of something draining out of my left ear. (Now, I have no hearing in my left ear, result of a surgery gone bad, so I am super sensitive about things going on in my ears.) I got an appointment with the doctor for 3:45 Friday sometime Friday morning, and then I slept until 2.

I actually felt much better on the sick front. Then I went to the doctor and was told my ears were red and horrible (infected) and I was given another antibiotic in addition to a steroid shot.

Friday night was the first time in a week I slept through the night. I took it easy Saturday as well, doing some laundry, playing some Zelda, doing some writing. Saturday I also slept through the night, so I think I’m on my way to recovery now.
It took me that long and that much hassle to admit to myself that I needed to take it easy. I am so human.

In light of my week, I am curious what things other people are stubborn about like this?

The Storyteller Revision is Done!

Laura Highcove

I officially reached my goal of finishing my revision pass of the Storyteller. This is Draft 6, and it has now been sent to the hubby for an alpha read, which means that is off my plate for at least two months.

Finishing up a draft and shifting to something else is always a weird time for me. I keep feeling like I should be doing something with the story and I have to remind myself that not only do I not have to, I’m not allowed to. It has to sit, after all, so I can go back to it with fresh eyes.

How am I feeling about the story thus far? Pretty darn good. Very good about the first half, and okay about the second half. It’s newer than the first half so it’s still rather rough.

And there’s one character that I haven’t decided what to do with at the end of the book. He might be there or he might just disappear until book two. I feel like I should keep him in, it just means the final fight has seven people in it, and that is a lot of bodies to keep track of. I’ll just wait for the alpha feedback.

For now, I’m working on cranking out words on a new story, though I’m not planning on working on it hard enough to have it done in the next two months. Part of the reason for that is I’m sick right now and being sick does not make me want to commit to 90k words in two months. (It is also why I didn’t get this post up yesterday.) We’ll see what happens when I get better.

But anyway, I’ll be off celebrating finishing my revision by replaying Twilight Princess.

Year In Review

Laura Highcove

I just read through a post by Brandon Sanderson, which was extremely long, and was basically an overview of what he got done this year.

It gave me a few moments of panic and self-doubt. He’s turning 40 this year and has already been publishing books for 20 years. It’s easy for me to regret that I’m not further along than I am with my writing career. I mean I have been writing since the second grade. I wish I had realized earlier what I could do with that. Or that, at least, I had put a little more focus and discipline into it.

But then who knows what my world would look like if I had. I’d like to assume I would still be in a good place, but who knows what turn my depression may have taken had I not ended up at Advantage Ranch. I might not have gained the mental fortitude to get through the process of writing a book, and so I would have ended up writing my whole life without ever being able to stay with something long enough to make it good.

And, because I like making lists, here’s what I accomplished this year in the Storyteller:

I spent January through June working on the first revision pass of The Storyteller. It taught me a lot about my process and even ended up spitting out an improved rough draft.

I then took a month off. It was good to do, and I struggled a lot with what to write about on my blog when I wasn’t talking about what writing I was doing.

At the beginning of July I made a new plan to read through my story and add notes about everything that needed to be tweaked and changed without actually doing any of the changes yet. I was a little overwhelmed by how much I felt like wasn’t done. I had to do a lot of self encouragement during this time (and it helped that I went to Writer’s Digest in the middle for support from other writers)

The end of July and beginning of August was a lot of travel for Otakon, Writer’s Digest, and then a horse show in Florida. It really wiped me out. I got back on track by using Dungeons & Dragons to flesh out my character and their fighting styles.

At the beginning of September I refocused my plan. The plan only lasted two weeks until I decided part of my process is repeatedly going back to the beginning of my book to clean it up. So I stopped trying to fight it, and embraced it instead.

So I got through my revision of the first half of the book, and made the plan to completely rewrite the second half of the book during NaNoWriMo. I did that and I spent up until today putting what I wrote in order and ironing it out.

The plan from here is to go over the story once more and make sure everything is ironed down before I give it over to my husband on the first of the year for an alpha read. My husband is great at plot and pacing, so that should help to tell me what I’ll need to do next.

Tropes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Laura Highcove

So all of our shows are going on their winter breaks, so my husband and I are back to some of the things we have on the back-burner, one of which is the original Man from U.N.C.L.E season 1, made in the 60s.

We both enjoyed the movie and my mother-in-law loved the show, so we figured we would give it a shot.

So for those of you who don’t know, the premise is a spy agency made up of people from all over the world who deal with things that are a threat on a global scale. Our main characters are Napoleon Solo (An American who likes his women and is suave.) and Illya Kuryakin (A Russian who has a myriad of skills).

It has been quite an interesting ride. Some of the episodes are better written than others.

Last night we watched “The Double Affair” in which the bad guys replace Solo with a double in order to get access to codes to a vault that has “something world changing” while they are being transported.

So this episode was bad for a number of reasons.

1) The opening sequence was the bad guys trying to kill Illia, since he knows Solo and would possible be able to out the fake. Illia knowing Solo did not play into the episode at all. He raises an eyebrow when Duo (what we called the fake Solo) does not mack on every woman he sees, and that’s it. If you’re going to have a Chekhov’s Gun, then fire the thing!

2) We assumed, because it was the 60s, that the ‘world changing power’ would be nuclear, it turns out instead to be, I kid you not, some sort of glowing energy (from space?) that if you look at it without protective glasses, will take over your mind and make you walk into it. This is what befalls the one poor chap who figures out that Duo got into the briefcase holding the codes. Yeah, it was basically a genre break, though TV Tropes doesn’t have a page for that one. Basically, we’re watching a spy show and then suddenly SCIENCE FICTION!

3) And, at the end of the show, the resolution is ‘hey, the real Solo didn’t get shot, everything is great because Duo couldn’t kiss well, and now the woman are happy’. Not: ‘btw, the bad guys actually did get the codes to the vault, is anyone even going to mention that we’re taking care of that?’ No? Okay…

It’s handy to be able to point out the blatantly bad writing and plot holes (along with MST3King it) because we also discuss how we would’ve written the episode. Luckily the next episode was far better, and not only because few minutes into the episode my husband said ‘Is that Leonard Nimoy?’, to which I replied in the next scene: ‘Maybe, but that is William Shatner. Man, he was hott when he was younger.’.

Current TV

Laura Highcove

So I’ve been trying to figure out what I can talk about on my blog besides my writing. My interests outside of writing include reading, movies, tv shows (including anime), and video games. All which are different mediums for telling stories and I have started watching them with an eye toward story as well as for entertainment value.
Our current tv watch list is:
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Arrow
Blindspot
Castle
Gotham
The Muppets
The Flash
Sleepy Hollow

We’re enjoying all of these shows (obviously, or else we wouldn’t watch them) but right now, top of the list are The Muppets, Blindspot, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

I’ve always been a Muppets fan, and this show reminds me why. The dialogue is snappy, there are great drive by jokes, and it’s just entertaining to watch. I’ve never been able to write humor as well as I would like, but I figure maybe if I keep watching funny things I’ll gain some by osmosis.

Now when my husband and I first saw ads for Blindspot, we figured we’d give it a shot and see if they were obvious about having set tattoos that will be revealed as the show goes on, or if they just bring up tattoos when they need them. Luckily they did the former and it is wonderful. The tattoos have legitimate reasons for taking a certain amount of time to decipher, and the secrets they reveal are not time sensitive. (Besides the first one, which was probably intentional.)

They also kept us guessing with some not to obvious twists. Especially with the three people they just killed off, two of which were really surprising.

Also on that list is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, which is just on another level of storytelling altogether, and that is because of Joss Whedon. I love watching Joss’ stuff, and I admire him, but I’m not sure I could ever be as cruel to my characters as he is to his. Whenever there is a particularly nasty twist, my husband and I always tell the characters, “No, you don’t get to be happy because you’re written by Joss Whedon.”

I used to watch TV just for entertainment, but since I’ve gotten more serious about my writing, I am much more mindful about pacing and how the shows are written, to the point where I can see some twists coming. (If I see them all, then the show is probably not that well written.) This is helpful to my writing because the more of it I see, the better I can apply those same pieces to my own writing. It also allows me to enjoy watching TV and get something useful out of it.

James Bond’s Spectre

Laura Highcove

So last night my husband and I went to see Spectre. He has wanted to see all the Daniel Craig James Bond movies when they came out, but we never managed to. When I saw Spectre was coming out, I made a point of having a marathon of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall so that we could see Spectre.

Warning: Spoilers

The opening sequence at the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico City was visually stunning. With the added effect of it being one long shot, it was rather impressive. I also liked the worlds slowest parkour as James walked down and across the rooftops for his assassination.

That is about where my enjoyment of the movie stopped. The chase through the crowd and the helicopter fight were too close and jumbled to be very exciting, and I wasn’t even able to suspend my disbelief that helicopters CAN’T turn over, (much less then come back under control) in order to enjoy the fight.

Then is James Bond getting in trouble for being off doing his own thing. (Shock.) He gets repercussions, and then they mean diddly squat. Not only that, but he steals a car he’s not supposed to have, somehow gets it to Rome (18 hour drive btw, in a rather unique looking car) so he can listen to people talk, have some shadowy guy realize James is there, and have an entirely lackluster car chase through the streets that I’m told was supposed to build tension but during which I simply got sick of him glancing in his rear-view mirror to see his pursuer in exactly the same spot as before. And then he dumped that beautiful car in the river.

Off he goes to get info out of a dying guy he somehow magically knows the location of so he can go find his Bond Girl. Ms. Assassin from Mission Impossible 4. Her dead-fish eyes really worked well for that role, but in this role I felt her just dis-likable.

Then sitting around and waiting in the hotel room before heading off to the middle of nowhere, punctuated by a fight with the ‘heavy’ on the train which wasn’t completely horrible, (He even hit the girl and she got back up and shot him.) before sitting around and waiting until a car came to pick them up. I guess we get a little tension because this guy knows all about them. He shows off his power a bit. Tortures James with a brain drill that is supposed to disable him and does absolutely nothing, nor does the explosion he uses to escape, since he then comes out of that building and drops the bad guys with a shot each.

All while Moriarty …pardon me, ‘C’ is running around being obviously evil while our secondary characters scramble to do something about it.

The walk through the old MI6 building was not bad.

I was impressed that James didn’t shoot the bad guy, and that they had foreshadowed that a bit. (Though this comes right after I saw Jim Gordan decide not to kill a bad guy in Gotham, who then kills a police officer on the way to lockup.) However, I was a little surprised that apparently James actually loved this Bond Girl (like run off together, love) because the actors had no chemistry.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent an entire movie thinking: “So it has to pick up soon since people have said it’s so good.”

So in conclusion, the best part about Spectre is that I saw Skyfall and Q was cute.