Shanung has a meeting with some of his most trusted members. There’s Mourn, a woman of the ‘third-culture’ (a group of rebellious young Shiirati that dislike the old traditions they were raised on). There’s Cyronil, her boyfriend that she indoctrinated into the third-culture. There’s Eth, an analytical, highly intelligent man who’s only ambition is to study literature abroad. And, of course, there’s Marrow.

Writing dialogue between five people was quite a challenge. In fact, I used to rewrite this particular scene for practice over and over again. So really, this is a very familiar scene to me, and this version is a re-re-re-re-rewrite. It feels almost as polished as my short story. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve read this before—and I should have suspected it would come naturally like they said—but I felt like an average person looking into some sort of glass room full of untouchable writers each time I’d read it. The idea was a pleasant, comforting thought for me. But it felt too alien, like it was doubtful it would ever come into play. After all, I was merely a beginning writer.

But writing routinely, even just a few times a week (as I have been doing), really does make the words flow more freely. And before too long, you actually start to feel like writing the next part of your book without having to view a cavalcade of motivational posters; You start getting genuinely excited about all the fantastic possibilities that will come from you sitting down in front of that keyboard. Read the rest of this entry »

Cirellio enters Shiira, ties off his horse and gets hydrated. He wanders the city until he finds his target, a building called a ‘relic house’, which is much like a city museum.

Before long, people start flocking south to prepare for the Feast of the Eight, but a woman appears to be following him.

No matter how many turns he takes, she keeps pursuing. When he finally lets her catch up, it turns out her name is Cauinn, a mystic. A Legionnaire.

She can tell he’s a thief right away and disapproves of his lifestyle. He doesn’t think much of mystics, either. Read the rest of this entry »

Yep, it’s my B-Day. I’m twenty-nine years old now—just one more year ’til I have to start claiming I’m ‘young-at-heart’.

Anyway, G got me a lovely present: http://www.5-Rings.com

There’s nothing there right now. Nothing but liquid-concentrated potential. Am I allowed to squee? ^___^

Prev: The assassin and the guardian angel | Next: Stars

Scene 7 cont’d: Originally I had the last scene and this part merged together as one scene. I was thinking of splitting them, but that’s no good to do this early in the book—this scene is the first real emotional hit and the reader might be like “Okay… so why are we paying attention to these two again? When do we get back to Cirellio?” So this scene needs to weather it through to the hit. As long as I write it quick and interesting, the story shouldn’t lose its footing.

Asyria releases her shielding, opening up the floodgates for the emotions to pass between her and whoever is on the other side of her thread. It turns out to be an older woman, horribly tortured, miserable, panicked, and abused. Read the rest of this entry »

Chapter two returns focus to the Meiallin and Giver Greggor. Written from Asyria’s point-of-view, it seems Greggor has taken up permanent residence at the temple and Asyria has grown quite a bit older. She no longer has the willpower to resist Greggor’s commands and Larimosa has become merely another temple servant. She has lost her connection with her child. Eager to please, Asyria grows worried Greggor has no use for her anymore since she had already found the brightest star, until he sets up a ritual, instructing Asyria to project so she can locate a fully developed anima that will come into existence out of nowhere, which he wants her to form a connection to.  Asyria does as she’s told.

510 words.
4147 total.

Prev: Through the gates | Next: The assassin and the guardian angel

Another very short scene; it ties together the brief flashbacks with the current storyline nicely.
As Cirellio goes through the gate customs, he finds he was expected—something very unusual. The gatesman passes a message to him from Lord Gazic ordering him to return to Aydomar immediately. Cirellio ignores the message and continues into the city of Shiira. There are also posters everywhere for the Feast of the Eight, an event happening later that night. Read the rest of this entry »

This scene continued with Cirellio reaching the city of Shiira. It allowed me to describe what he saw as he approached the east gate.

Then it cut to Lord Gazic attaching a message to his avian courier, Matar, who he instructed to fly to Shiira.

Quite a short scene! It came out to 533 words.

2496
+533
=====
3029

I suppose I should get to updating the characters and locations pages. Oh, and it looks like ‘Nick Enlowe’ won the poll for best pen name by a landslide. There must be something special about the extra ‘e’ at the end, hm? :)

Onto the next!

Prev: Checklist | Next: Through the gates

Once upon a time, I was feeling down. But I tried to turn a negative into something positive by making a goal-oriented checklist that day.

Now, I’m feeling much better. So let’s see how I did:

X - Challenge 1: Argue with that little voice inside my head that keeps telling me I’ve no business writing a novel.

I haven’t been feeling insecure about my writing at all. In fact, I keep surprising myself with what’s pouring from my fingertips.

X - Challenge 2: Find time for my book. My free time just isn’t cutting it. Not even close. Whenever I get geared up for writing, something always seems to come up that demands my immediate attention. So I suppose I have to make time by sacrificing something, somehow.

While I still don’t have much time for my book, it’s true that I tend to squander my time if I have a lot of it, whereas I make the most of my time when I don’t have much. Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! probably says it best. Read the rest of this entry »

Scene 04 starts out with Cirellio riding through the desert. His horse is named ‘Twice’, a brown palfrey with patches of white fur around his eyes. After days of travelling they are finally seeing signs they’re nearing the desert city Shiira, and the river that runs along it.

The scene shifts gears and goes into a prior event. In Aydomar, in the high office, Lord Gazic (leader of the largest guild of theives in the world) has been keeping tabs on Cirellio and two other men who had left Aydomar days earlier without permission. Gazic is doing some information gathering and has summoned Redmond, the leader of a faction in Brennan, (’the underground city’ which is on unclaimed land—therefore one of the lost cities which swears allegience to no one) to recant everything that had happened, despite having already read the dossier sent earlier.

He tells of how Cirellio had gotten seized by a blacksmith named Taglaraun, who had publicly accused him of being a thief. This brought much unwanted attention. Taglaraun, ever the showman, insists they duel, hoping it would draw in more business before he turns him in for the ransom. Cirellio came out of it the victor, but the mob of people rushed him and the valuables within the tent. Read the rest of this entry »

Larimosa and her daughter were interesting characters to write. I actually modelled their relationship after how I imagine Marie Antoinette’s relationship would’ve been like with her daughter.

Also, the temple was named after Le Marais in Paris, France.

Scene three’s weigh-in:

798 words.
So the grand total comes to 1881.

And with that, the prologue comes to a close.

And I’m not going back to it until the revision. I’m. Not. Touching. A. Word. Read the rest of this entry »

What a beast scene three has turned out to be! (I’ll explain why in a bit.)

It involves three characters: Asyria, Larimosa, and Dahjal. (And the temple servants)

The backdrop is the Temple of Marais … actually, the rune-covered central chamber of the temple, known as ‘the convergence’, built over where the ley lines of Kassara intersect.

Asyria is a young child who also happens to be the Meiallin, the most powerful mystic in the world. She is practicing the art of projecting herself to the fourth ring from within the convergence.

Larimosa is Asyria’s mother, a giver who has shown her child the less fortunate people of the world (in hopes of showing her how to be virtuous before her title and power has a chance to go to her head), letting her play regularly with underprivileged children and giving Asyria many chances to be generous—something the troubled world of Lura has eagerly taken notice of.

Larimosa recognizes Dahjal as ‘Giver Greggor’, a famous living saint who has travelled the world performing miracles. Read the rest of this entry »

Prologue-

1. a preliminary discourse; a preface or introductory part of a discourse, poem, or novel.
2. an introductory speech, often in verse, calling attention to the theme of a play.
3. the actor or actress who delivers this.
4. an introductory scene, preceding the first act of a play, opera, etc.
5. any introductory proceeding, event, etc.: Appetizing delicacies were the prologue to a long dinner.
–verb (used with object) 6. to introduce with or as if with a prologue.

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The WC on the first scene weighed in at 323 words. Which is good. I predicted the first scene would be much shorter than the targeted 1,000 words per scene.

As I started on the second scene, I found some of my notes were missing! So I did a search and found no less than SIX (!) more data files that managed to elude me. This is a major bummer because I totally thought I was completely done arranging my data into the scene files. Sigh…
Read the rest of this entry »

I definitely wanted a prologue that started out with something highly atmospheric.  Scene 01 was inspired by the crumbling palace in the prologue of The Eye of the World.

Mine starts with an ancient city that appears in seemingly random places on Lura, this time sinking into the ocean. I felt this would create atmosphere similar to the crumbling palace. But it turned out this scene was awfully hard to write. Here’s the first line:

“The city had settled beneath the ocean by the time Dahjal arrived.”
Read the rest of this entry »

What had me so nervous yesterday? Maybe it’s that I’m finally at the edge of the diving board and just need to jump.

It’s always disheartening to see someone climb all the way up the ladder, nearing the edge one nervous baby-step at a time; Then, as they gaze out over the crystalline waters and at all the staring faces, realize how high they’ve climbed … just to cower and climb all the way back down. And all they had to do was jump—just once—to find out it’s not as scary as it looks.

Did you jump? Read the rest of this entry »