Tag: the storyteller

Looking to the Next Project

Laura Highcove

I finished going through the story and adding in Wildrose’s cards. I only had a few hiccups in the three major arcana cards that get used in the story, as I really had to actually come up with names for them, and having their powers somewhat work with both what I needed done, and (even if loosely) with what they actually mean in the tarot.

With that done, I changed one scene with the Archer and I’m kinda …like done until I get the feedback from my beta readers. I’m not sure how to reconcile that. Now if I got back and read through the story again I’m sure I could find things that need to be fixed, but there’s little point changing them until I get my feedback.

Now my plan is to go through a few of my favorite old drafts and see if they speak to me as my next project. If any of you are following along in the sidebar, I’ll be looking at The Trickster, Blessings of the Nerial, The Colors Of, and Demonslayer. Though it occurs to me now that I go look over there, maybe I should update that page a bit. Look for that to happen in the next week or two.

Limits

Laura Highcove

I finally managed it. I figured out what Wildrose’s artifacts are. For a long time (while writing the story basically) I wanted Wildrose to just have a whole bunch of random artifacts that would do random spells that he would use cleverly. I have come to realize pretty hard, during writing this book, that unlimited options is the worst thing you could possibly have. With too much variety, there is no focus. I finally decided I had to sit down and figure out what the common element was for Wildrose’s artifacts. I knew three things:

1) He works at range. Ie, I kept wanting it to be something he could throw into melee from a distance and then have it do the thing.

2) He is very precise.

3) He has a larger variety of things he can do than the others.

I wrote a few scenes with different ideas, brainstormed several times with my husband. and eventually came up with his having a deck of tarot cards that are each an artifact and each have a spell in them. There are a few rules for the cards*:

1) The maximum number of cards in the deck is set, as are the spells for those cards. (I actually haven’t figured out what either of those are yet. I want the number of cards in the set to be a multiple of three as opposed to clinging faithfully to the actual tarot, and no, I have not spent the time yet to figure out what every spell he has is.)

2) He can have duplicates of a specific card, but he still can’t have over the maximum number of cards. For those of you who know D&D it’s like the 3.5 wizard with his spellbook and prepared spells.

3) It takes a certain amount of time to re-imbue a spell into a card once spent. Time it takes is effected by the strength of the spell. If he happens to lose a card, the process of recreating the card is far more arduous.

So now comes the step of going back and retro-fitting this into all the fights. As I said before I really should not have let myself get this far into the story without figuring this out, as it’s going to require a lot of rewriting, plus my beta readers don’t have it to give me feedback, but that’s where I am.

*This is the disclaimer that I’m still working on this story and ideas are bound to change, so nothing here is set in stone.

Only a few bits

Laura Highcove

It really is a lot harder to write these posts at this stage of the revision phase because there are fewer and fewer things that take a long time and it’s hard to remember all the little steps.

I went through all the commands people use with their Storybook and try to figure out a common syntax. During that time I actually realized the Storybook was too powerful, and had to reconfigure how I thought about some things on the back end. Fascinating! I then went through and fixed all the syntax for the Storybooks in the story.

I went through and changed all the instances of Storyteller Guild or Storyteller’s Guild to Storytellers’ Guild. That didn’t take long, but it made me realize that I need to label individual files for the draft number or else I end up search/replacing every file from every draft instead of just the ones that are current.

I spent over an hour working on an important section of about 10-15 lines toward the end of the book that I needed to hash out. Not really in the ‘world building’ section, but it was something I needed to get done. I am much happier with it than with what I had before.

I did some brainstorming on what will happen in the next book(s), just to make sure there isn’t anything I have to add in this book.

Now I need to go through and add in the syntax for using remnants. After that there are a few scenes I want to add in. Then I’ll get to the dreaded task of figuring out Wildrose’s artifacts. I swear, I should not have let myself get this far into the book without figuring it out, but here we are.

Working on Random Bits

Laura Highcove

A very disjointed week in terms of what I got done.

I put in the artifacts in the places I wanted to put them. So that one is done.

I sat down and actually thought about the syntax for using remnants and tried to write out a few things, but I had problems just with some of it. It works to say “Tabitha used the hellhound’s law of fire.” But it’s a little more awkward when it’s “Tabitha used the stone ram’s law of charge.” It feels like it should be ‘charging’, but then that’s a verb rather than the noun. Anyway, I’m still working on it.

I thought about the syntax for the Storybook and had good reasons to have the command be both: ‘Identification’ and ‘Authorization’. Blech.

I now have a list of all of the important characters in the story. i.e. People who get their roles capitalized! I mostly made the list to figure out if I’m balancing the number of male vs female characters until I realized out in the world of this story, there wouldn’t be an equality. Still good info to have though. Also made me think about who is important enough to have a true name, and who needs to have a color.

This week I’ll make a list of the remnants Tabitha uses and how. And the things that people use the Storybook for. That way I can compare what I already have and then stylize them while they’re all next to each other.

New Stage of Revision

Laura Highcove

My writing process involves a lot of: ‘oh I’ll add that foreshadowing later’ or ‘I guess I’ll need to stick in an extra scene sometime’ or even ‘well I’ll get around to explaining that.’ in it. Now, for the first time, I have reached a stage where I actually have everything I wanted to do in the story. It’s not all perfect and beautiful and flowing, to be sure. But it’s all there.

And since it’s out with beta readers, I sort of hit a spot where I have no desire to work on it. It feels like a little switch in my head got flicked to ‘done’, and I have to keep reminding myself that it is not, in fact, done.

So I am using this blogging time to both blog, as well as plan what the next few steps will be, still holding to the DIYMFA revision pyramid, which for it’s simplicity, is so powerful. I have the bottom of the pyramid done. I know my pov. I have my character development done. My plot and story structure is all there.

That leaves making a list!

World building:

  • Make sure I have enough artifacts floating around that the world feels like it has artifacts.
  • Make sure all my magic is logical (As well as Tabitha’s progression through learning it.)
  • Hashing out the syntax of commands used for the Storybook.
  • Figuring out syntax for using remnants.

Description/Dialogue:

  • Mark all the places where description needs a boost. (Most of the fights fall in here.)
  • Make sure every person’s voice sounds right in their dialogue.

Theme:

  • Choice vs Fate
  • Everyone needs friends

Line Editing:

  • Print out the story on paper and see what typos pop out.

Now, the world building is still something I can do while the story is out with the beta readers, because if any of the feedback involves “well, I dunno about this world having magic” then I have other problems. The rest of it should wait until I know what scenes I may be adding or subtracting or moving around. Line editing won’t happen until I’m ready to submit to an agent. (I’ve only line edited one story before. It was annoying, and that story was only 12k words.)

I think the biggest thing I got from this week is remembering the benefits of sitting down and making a plan. Even though I never cleave 100% to the plan I make, it just helps to organize everything in my head and makes everything seem attainable as well. And it’s always important to give myself a little ego boost from time to time.

Embracing Your Zero Moment

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

I wrote this blog post in response to a prompt from DIYMFA.com. I’m a bit behind the curve in terms of timing, but I wanted to write this post anyway, so it gave me an excuse.

Embrace Your Zero Moment
The hardest step in your creative development is the “zero moment,” the point where you go from doing nothing to doing something. The distance between the zero moment and being a newbie is far greater than the distance between newbie and pro, yet rarely does anyone celebrate this pivotal, important step. Today, we want you to celebrate. Think back to your zero moment and do something to celebrate that incredible leap of faith.

The zero moment I remember the best is for my current story, probably because it’s most recent. I have always wanted to do a story based in or around fairy tales, due largely in part to The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey but for a long time I didn’t have a way to make it work or any real inspiration.

Then, in March of 2014 I was skimming through the “fairy books” by Andrew Lang which were published online. I was reading through different fairy tales until I stumbled on one called ‘The Little Wildrose’. As with all of my ‘research’, I don’t so much take what is, as use what I read to come up with a spark of my own. As soon as I got to the point about the Wildrose being raised by eagles, my mind immediately went to gryffins. (Because I love gryffins, but that will be a future post.)

And as basic and uncomplicated as this tale is, this was the spark that I needed to throw me into the whirlwind of creating a new story. I forget why I decided to make Wildrose a guy instead of a girl. I think it may have started as an idea to have all the roles in the fairy tales gender swapped, as an early version of this story had Wildrose attempting to stop a female Bluebeard from collecting and killing husbands. As I wrote my early drafts I kept coming on the issue of needing another character for Wildrose to play off of.

Eventually Tabitha popped out and took over as the main character of the story. I wrote a chapter or so and then the story sat there until October of that same year when I decided I was going to do this story for NaNoWriMo, only one month wasn’t enough, so I gave myself a goal of 40k words for October, and then did the 50k words in November as well, leaving me with over 90k words by the end of November.

During December I organized what I had written (I don’t always write in order, and I tend to go off on a lot of tangents while writing a rough draft) as well as had a mentor call with Gabriela that helped me to make a plan for tackling the revision. This story is actually what started me on my ‘post a week‘ habit as I wanted to keep track of what I did.

Now everything did not go nearly as beautifully as my plan would suggest, but I certainly did a lot of editing and character development and world building in the next five months. I ‘completed’ my revision only to realize the story was only 55k words.

After a break to let the story rest I came back and did more development work until I threw myself at NaNoWriMo again in order to hammer out the second half of the book. (Which I had really struggled with.) Then I stopped and reassessed.

I had my husband alpha read the story at the beginning of this year, and then I just started hammering out problems over and over, until we get to the present, where the story is out for its first beta read. It really is encouraging to be able to look back at the zero moment to see exactly how far I have come. Two years is a long time, but I’ve also gotten a lot of work done, as well as improved myself as a writer. Even with all the ridiculous doubts along the way, it really is all about not giving up.

Resistance to Finishing

Laura Highcove

So I ran into some major resistance this week with my story. And I kind of knew I was having resistance, and I let myself resist. I’m still not entirely sure if the resistance comes from the fact that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make this fight scene satisfying, or because I know that once this scene is done, the story is ready for beta readers. It might be a little bit of both.

Truth be told, it might also come from the fact that I don’t know how to finish. This will be the first time that I am going to be able to say to myself that my rough draft is actually done enough that I am letting other people read it and asking them for real, actually feedback. There is no more “oh I’ll add that later”. It needs to all be in there.

Now that’s not to say things won’t change after this. But this will be a first. A first I’m resisting. It’s always funny when people talk about the ‘fear of success’, but it really is a thing.

My mind is even trying to push me on to other stories, having great ideas for things not related to this story, in a wild attempt to distract me from finishing. Even as I’m writing this blog post. This was the time I was supposed to sit down and use for writing but I’m writing this blog post instead. It’s good to get my concerns out, but at a certain point it’s just procrastination. Back to work.

Taking Stock

Laura Highcove

So this week I spent going through the story and taking stock of the progression of all of my main characters and their relationships toward each other while ignoring everything else. It actually gave me some good insights into Tabitha and Wildrose’s relationship toward the end of the book.

And it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Is everything perfect? Nope, but it is good enough for now. Then I decided to go through and look at all the comments I have and pull out the things that really need to be fixed. And I found myself able to pass over some things that weren’t all that important, that last week I would’ve stressed out over. The list that I have isn’t even that bad. I am feeling confidant about my ability to get this story out to beta readers before too long.

Tomorrow I plan on giving it a quick read through to find any problems I might not have marked with comments. Shouldn’t take too long as I know which scenes are lovely and beautiful and which are not. And that one pesky scene I am convinced I need but have still not been able to write. I’m going to have to nail that down this week for sure.

Also, in case you didn’t notice, I have a sign up for my new Newsletter over on the right hand side. If you sign up then you can get the current version of Chapter One of The Storyteller. Please sign up and let me know what you think.

Mentoring Session

Laura Highcove

This past Wednesday, I was delighted to have another mentoring session with Gabriela Pereira, the instigator of DIYMFA.com. I came into this session, having hit what felt like a wall in my revision. I was trying to iron out a late scene and things were just not coming together.

So we took a step back and Gabriela asked where I was, what my goals were, and then turned my idea of how I was trying to revise my story on its head.

I had been going through the revision pyramid, but she straight up told me to not even bother with the top part of the pyramid before sending it to my first set of beta readers. In fact, she shoved me back down on the pyramid, reminding me of the basics that I had sort of glazed over. She also told me I did not need to polish nearly as much as I thought I should, before sending my story to beta readers.

Somewhere in my mind I assumed I wanted the book to be nearly publishable before I had any beta readers read it, but she made me realize that I needed to get outside input before I worked so hard on the stuff I had that might change. Again, I knew this… but I was thinking about wrong.

So suddenly I had a new direction, and I was feeling light again, and it took me a few days to realize why I was feeling so good.

Gabriela reminded me that the story did not have to be perfect.

So all at once, I stopped beating myself up about the fact that I couldn’t make everything work. I could just stop and focus on the things that I could do. I am going to continue learning my whole life. I am never going to be that idealized “perfect” that sits in that corner of my brain to taunt me. It is good, sometimes, to be reminded that I am perfect exactly where I am.

Colorizing my Scenes

Laura Highcove

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I like colors and I like organization. I had a color system for my notes and so it shouldn’t surprise you that I have a color system for my files within Scrivener.

Here’s a picture of it:

Dark Red = Concept. Those are scenes where there’s not even necessarily a scene there. There might be simply the idea for a scene or I might just know I need a scene. It might be a bunch of attempts at writing the same scene. Basically, if I handed it to another person, they would think it was a lot of gobblty-gook.

Red = Rough Draft. This is a scene where I’ve actually written the scene, hence there is actually prose, but the scene might not be complete, there might be notes for elements I still need to add. It’s the roughest form of a scene that is actually still a scene.

Orange = First Draft. This is when I have all of the elements or ideas put into the scene, and they are in order. Doesn’t mean it’s pretty, but it’s all there.

Yellow = Second Draft. This is the first stage that I would consider ‘readable’ by a third party without explanation from me. At this stage, the scene should have all it’s elements and should flow. This is where the story needs to be for beta readers.

Green = Revised. Yes, technically I have to revise to get between each color, but green is the color where not only are all the pieces there, and it flows, but I have sat down, played with my word choice, and beautified my prose. This is the stage at which a read would hopefully be able to tell that I’m a writer, and not just some smuck.

Blue = Finished. Blue is post line-edit. This is the “and now it gets sent out to an agent” step. Blue is the best I can do.

Purple = Notes. I have notes, lots of them. You can see the ‘Notes’ folder (technically the notes file should be purple, but default for new file is red and I haven’t changed it yet.) This is so I can leave a notes file within a chapter and not get myself confused.

Magenta = OOP or Out of Place. These are scene I write where I have an idea for later (or earlier) in the story and I write it whereever I am at the time. Later it will get moved to where it needs to go, but when I’m in “words on the page mode”, stopping to do that while writing is just a distraction.

Pink = BTS or Behind the Scenes. These are scenes I write that are not part of the story. They might be from a different character’s pov or just be something that gives me inspiration or detail that I want to keep but doesn’t really fit anywhere.

Gray = Obsolete. I rewrite scenes in new files in order to not loose old versions. (I don’t like the idea or execution of Scrivener’s snapshots, so this is how I do the same thing.) The different color keeps me from accidentally reading the wrong scene and wondering why my changes aren’t there.

And as for the file structure, which yes I did leave in on purpose, you can see most of Draft 7. I am currently on Draft 8, which you can see the last chapter is ‘the hero’s return’. I know, spoilers.

The colors are also updated on the folder. The color there is the color of the lowest ranked file within that chapter. As you can see, the beginning of the story is rather clean, with all of that yellow. Later in the story things dip into a lot of rough draft.

Since I am currently revising from the end of the book forward, I hope this means that it’ll be slow going at first, but pick up once I get closer to the beginning of the story. My goal for now is to get everything to the first draft stage. Then, hopefully, there will only be a few tweaks needed to get to second draft.

It took me a week to get through one chapter. If that holds, it will take me over two months to finish this revision. I’m hoping that some of the chapters will go more quickly than that, especially the ones that are already yellow. A scene can lose it’s color if I realize there are new elements I need to have, but yellow still means the scene is rather clean to start.