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.

NaNoWriMo Still

Laura Highcove

So NaNoWriMo is going well. Pounding out words has never been the problem for me. Right now I am drifting back and forth between thinking that the Arthur tale and what it provides for the characters and their development is a great idea, and thinking it’s stupid and that it doesn’t fit with the story as a whole.

Such is the life of a writer.

I’m also getting a little bit of mentoring surrounding the POV challenges I have for this story. It means some more research, but for right now I’m still focusing on getting the story hammered out, then I can worry about how it’s told later.

Outside of my writing my husband made some slow cooker pork for tacos that was wonderful. I started learning about bending and suppling my horse on the ground. And I played some Hyrule Warriors last night for the first time in a long time.

NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

It occurs to me that writing a blog post while doing NaNoWriMo is just extra work. I have enough trouble convincing myself to do it when I am not trying to write 2400 words a day, because the weekends is when I have the most time to sit down and work on my writing.

I am certainly hitting the same wall I did before with the second half of my book, but having the word requirement means that I just pound out words and I get a few gems. I guess I’m annoyed that I have to write so many superfluous words to get to the good stuff, but I am happy that I am getting any good stuff.

Not much is happening in the rest of my life because I am spending most of my free time writing. Oh, but I am finishing up Christmas gifts for the hubby’s family since we’re going there for Thanksgiving, so we exchange gifts early. I love shopping for gifts.

Researching Arthurian Legend

Laura Highcove

So today I’ve done a bit of research on Arthurian Legend. The first part of the second half of The Storyteller, I’m sending Tabitha into The King Arthur tale.

Before this I knew the basics of this myth like most people:

There was a king named Arthur. He had a special sword called Excalibur that he got out of a stone or a lake, depending on who you ask. He had a wizard mentor named Merlin. He has a group of knights and a round table. He has a wife Guenevere who is also in love with one of his knights, Lancelot and that got everyone into a lot of trouble.

Places I have seen the Arthur Legend:

The Sword in the Stone by Disney, with adorable little Wart and old man Merlin who taught him everything important.

I saw a live action movie one time that may have been based on the book The Mists of Avalon (which I haven’t read) that focused more on Morgan le Fay. I don’t remember much of it except that she was tricked into sleeping with her half-brother, Arthur.

The BBC series Merlin, which toward the end used the less than happy ending to the Arthur story, ie Arthur getting mortally wounded by Mordred and then “disappearing”, but oh hey it might come back some day. (Argh, I don’t care how ‘faithful’ that ending was, I was so unhappy.)

New things I discovered:

Excalibur actually came out of the lake. There was a lady there who took care of it, and she and Merlin had a thing.

The sword that Arthur pulled out of the stone was not Excalibur.

There is apparently a lot of illicit sex going on among the peoples of this mythology. Arthur’s father slept with a married woman to get Arthur. Arthur slept with his half-sister Morgan and/or Morgause and sired the person who would kill him, Mordred. And some of his knights got naughty as well (Besides Lancelot).

Chivalry was a super big thing, but most things involving Courtly Love eventually just turned into illicit sex.

and …

I’m not sure how I’ll use this information for my story yet, but it was only an hour or so of research. Just enough to get me the basics. I think my main issue is that there are a lot of people in the Arthurian Legend, and if I’m keeping with calling people by their roles instead of their names, it gets a lot more complicated when there are all those knights. We’ll have to see what I come up with.

Writer Igniter Con

Laura Highcove

So this past weekend I went to the first ever Writer Igniter Con put on by Gabriela Pereira the instigator of DIYMFA. The best part was it was all online, so I didn’t have to travel beyond my couch.

Day One
The conference started on time and the digital conference room we were in was really a nice format with slides in the middle and a chat to the side so everyone could interact and ask questions without interrupting the presenter.
We had sessions on making a great outline, seven easy steps to a better novel, a guide to the first five pages of a story, and one on rocking your revisions. Some of the information was a refresher since I’ve taken the DIYMFA101 course before, but it’s always good to be reminded of the basics and I also got a lot of new tips since at DIYMFA they are always striving to make their content better.

First Page Critiques
There were also a chance for attendees to submit the first page of their manuscript anonymously and have some agents give a critique on it.
When we got to my first page, I was so glad there was a computer in front of me instead of real people. I could be as embarrassed as I needed to be about my page being read out loud. It actually went over pretty well with the agents. Much better than I was expecting, which felt super good.

Day Two
The second day dealt with the business side of writing more than the craft.
There was a session on copyright law which talked about how copyright works for authors, as well as a bit of advice on contract law, for those contracts we all hope to sign one day. It was a dense class, but had a lot of good information.
There were also sessions for marketing and social media, how to write a proposal, and an open panel where we could ask the presenters anything we wanted.

Meeting new People
And, of course, one of the best things about writing conferences is meeting new people. I am always on the look out for new writing friends and I even found two fantasy writers to exchange emails with.

And Beyond
With fresh encouragement and new techniques on the brain, courtesy of WICon, I am preparing for NaNoWriMo. I finished a revision pass of the first half of The Storyteller, which is now clocking in at about 50k words. During November, I will be writing the second half of the book from scratch, since I am still struggling there. I am hoping for a little ‘pantser’ magic to get some good stuff on the page that I can then revise into the second half of the book I need.

My Unicorn Horn

Laura Highcove

Much better progress this week. Got through two and a half chapters, though one of the chapters was rather short, I was still able to reach my goal which is great! I have started setting my timer again when I begin to write. Something about the numbers actually counting down with the threat of an alarm at the end adds a sense of urgency.

I also wanted to make sure that I don’t always just make this blog a grocery list of what I’ve done or haven’t done. Sometimes that’s all I’m in the mood for, but this week I wanted to share a little bit about me with everyone.

Ever since I was young, I’ve had a bump on my forehead. It’s a harmless little thing, but people notice it from time to time and ask me if I bumped my head. I got a little tired of telling them that, no, I just have a lump on my head (I know, it sounds so pleasant, right?), so I began telling people that it is where my unicorn horn is growing. That tends to give people a laugh.

When I read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, the thing that stuck with me the most from that book was when he claimed that writing is like telepathy. I feel like writing a book is all about the author taking what the story looks like in their minds and transferring it into the mind of their reader.

That is what makes me want to be an author, as opposed to just a writer. Someday, someone else will give my ideas real estate in their heads and, just maybe, they’ll care about my characters and stories like I do.

So now, when I get my first book published, that’s when my own psychic powers will have developed, and that’s when I’ll tell people that my unicorn horn is fully grown.

Next week was two more chapters, but I want to see if I can get the last three done so I can spend the last week of October planning, and then I can spend NaNoWriMo pounding out another 50k words to see if I can get the second half of my book out of them.