Since I don’t actually have better judgment to judge against, I put up a sample chapter. Yes, the actual first-draft prologue of Five Rings is online and available to you right now, ready for perus-ation and scrutinization.

What a great way to kick-off the Novel-Push Initiative, right? Get some of my work out there for curious eyes to see…

I chose to put up the prologue because—as is the very nature of prologues—it’s spoiler-free.

Sure, by sharing my writing, you guys’ll likely find out that I’m in way over my head and you’re all wasting your time here and I’m a total hack. But I figure you’d have found out eventually anyway…. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick check-in to let you know that 5-Rings.com has been updated. As a result, there’s some new links at the top of this page. And yes, I really am thinking about releasing a sample chapter. :P

There’s still time if any of you would like to join us in the Novel Push Initiative.

The Novel Push Initiative:

NPI is a mere four days away.

Packsister and I are going to push our novels’ word counts forward from March 1st through March 31st.

The goal is to write at least 250 words (or half a page) per day. If we miss reporting our progress via our blogs even a single day, we’re knocked out of the event.

If I can’t handle this, I guess I have no business entering NaNoWriMo.

So this is a test for me.

And I’m excited.

And nervous.

The Writing Contest: Read the rest of this entry »

One thing creative writing classes try to teach their students is how to mimic the styles of famous authors.

I think that’s pretty smart. After all, one way to ensure a writer can make informed decisions about the different aspects of their own writing style is to see if they can pick up on and identify the alchemy of other writers’ styles.

I’ve never taken Creative Writing, but I’m taking Lit 110 this semester. As a result, I’ve recently read some short stories that are considered ‘classics’ by the powers that be:

A & P – John Updike
Story of an Hour – Kate Chopin
A Rose for Emily – William Faulkner
A Party Down at the Square – Ralph Ellison
Everyday Use – Alice Walker
Shiloh – Bobbie Ann Mason
Araby – James Joyce
The Man Who Was Almost a Man – Richard Wright
Sweat – Zora Neale Hurston
Good Country People – Flannery O’Conner
The Guest – Albert Camus
Hills Like White Elephants – Ernest Hemingway
In the American Society – Gish Jen
Woman Hollering Creek – Sandra Cisneros
The Red Convertible – Louise Erdrich

I’ll admit I have little patience for old movies and less patience still for old, archaic prose.
To make matters worse, a good portion of the stories featured irritating dialogue, where the writers tried to phonetically transcribe ‘slack-jawed’ or other variant dialect, which made reading them horribly laborious.

But a few were pleasant surprises, such as Araby and The Guest. And every one of these authors had radically different styles, so it was kinda fun to pick up their quirks and nuances while reading.

The point of all this is I tried rewriting the ending to Mr. Updike’s short story, A & P (circa 1930), mimicking his style as best as I could.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a day shrouded in winter.

Talun buried his face in the wool of his hood.

*sigh* They say writers struggle with ‘showing’ instead of ‘telling’ their whole lives. I guess I’m getting better at dodging exposition, but sometimes I’ll write something like the snippet above and have to correct myself.

Then there’s rhythm, clarity, ‘slow death’ control, LS/V, and sooo much more. Paying attention to this stuff is cumbersome, but it pays off greatly in the final draft.

I believe I’ve covered ‘show, don’t tell’, rhythm, and clarity here. But you might be wondering what ‘slow death’ is.

It’s a problem I experience quite frequently– Read the rest of this entry »

A huge element of style is the point-of-view a writer is most likely to write in. Is everybody clear on exactly what ‘3rd person limited’ is? If not, here’s a quick run-down of the POVs.

1st Person:

First person’s easy. Your second grade papers were most likely written in first-person.  And of course I’m writing in first person now. In a story, the writer assumes the main character’s (MC’s) viewpoint and writes only what s/he is thinking.

Avoid:
…making the main character psychic. The MC shouldn’t know what someone else is thinking, etc.

The advantage:
It’s immersive. The reader gets into the story by living in the main character’s head, experiencing exactly what s/he’s thinking and seeing.

The disadvantage:
If other characters split up and leave the MC, the writer might have the tough task of showing the reader what happened to those characters. It can be problematic. Should the writer have the characters catch up with the MC later and fill him in? Or  jump into another person’s head for awhile (This method can be used, but it’s jarring to the reader to adjust to a different character in first person)? Either way, it’s difficult to pull off.

2nd person:

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to part 3!
IMO, style is a fascinating topic. As I write, share, and critique more, it’s just as neat to watch other writers’ styles develop as it is to notice the subtle changes in my own.

I’d love to share with you what writing methods I’ve found myself leaning towards over the past year:

1. I often drop the word ‘that’.

I decided that I would go.

becomes:

I decided I would go.

But not always. I try to play a mix-up game when I write—I don’t always follow a rule. For variety’s sake.

Read the rest of this entry »

Writers (myself included) go into the craft with at least a few misconceptions about how to write well.

Since we’ve established that every writer has a style, here’s some easy technical ways to improve your already-existing style (especially if you’re still new at this like me).

Just a few of many common stylistic pitfalls that can ‘expose’ amateur writers (even writers that’ve been writing for years):

1. Heavy use of words that end in -ly. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been writing - well - everybody ‘writes’, but I’ve been writing writing for a little over a year now. And one thing I remember being worried about when sitting down in front of the keyboard as a ‘writer’ for the first time, was style. As in, “How do I develop my own style?”

I think it’s hard for new writers to imagine they could actually have their own unique style because there’s already a daunting number of both professional and non-professional writers out there staking their claim in stylistic real-estate, so-to-speak. It ’s hard to believe there can be room for a new writer; hard to believe they might actually have something new and valuable to bring to such a saturated and sometimes elitist craft. 

WHAT IS STYLE, EXACTLY?: Read the rest of this entry »

I think I found a great way to smoke out those unsightly plot-holes and other plot uncertainties.

((This is obviously just another way to keep track of plot-threads, but I thought I’d share this technique in case it works for you better than the more traditional plot-thread management techniques (colored index cards, spreadsheets, etc).)) Read the rest of this entry »

During the month of March, I want to push Five Rings‘ word-count through the roof.

But, sadly, maintaining a steady word-count on my own for a period longer than two weeks is too lofty a goal for me.

So I’m asking for your help.

I’ve decided to host a virtual event; one that came to me after reading Chris Baty’s wonderful No Plot? No Problem!. I’m christening this event “The Novel Push Initiative”, an easier-than-NaNoWriMo event.

But it still encourages writing every day.

THE RULES:

-NO PROJECT-JUMPING! (Please focus on only one project.)

-NaNoWriMo famously averages out to 1,667 words a day. SO…
Here’s the Break-down:

a ”KNOCK-OUT” is 0-249 words OR no post with a tally for that day. (No, I won’t sweep you under the rug like a king’s love-child.)
a ”CHECK-IN” is 250-749 words. (for those days something terrible happens, we’re sick, or we’re just not feeling it.)
an “UPDATE” is 750-1,667 words (about 1,000 words per day. Hopefully, this will be the most common one.)
a ”TOUGHER-THAN-NANO” is anything above 1,667 words. (are you nuts?!?)
a ”COMPLETE” is if you get finished with your book and type THE END. (*jealous* I suppose you can project-jump if and only if you complete a project.)

((So, at minimum, you need to CHECK-IN every day to avoid the big game-over.))

-First off, you’ll need a novel or novelette-sized WIP (work-in-progress). Whether you’re middling, have already done your research and are starting a first draft, or just want to dust off an old project you’ve been meaning to finish, you should be able to participate. (If you’re getting out those red pens to do a revision, tough luck!) :)

-Second, you’ll need a web log of some kind. Even a Twitter account will do.

-And thirdly, you’ll need to reply to this post (or any of my later posts this month) with:
A) a link to your blog, and
B) what project you’d like to work on.

-Each day We, united in writerly cause, will promise to add actual words to our WIP—every single day.
We are required to post WCs (word-counts) in our respective blogs Each and Every Day from March 1st to March 31st. 
If we miss a single day AT ALL—FOR WHATEVER REASON—we’re KNOCKED OUT OF THE EVENT. (Of course, I’m wondering how long I’ll last at this point ;D.)

-To actively participate, a simple Tweet can look like this:

CHECK-IN: 250 words.
11:59 PM Mar 1st from web

((But, of course, it’s your blog: You’re welcome to post snippets, musings, and whatever else you’d like. You don’t even have to label whether your WC is an UPDATE if you don’t feel like it. All I’m asking for is a visible word-count.))

WHAT I PROMISE:

I will periodically link to each of your sites and post your word-tallies up to a KNOCK-OUT.

IMPORTANT: I will be using whatever dates your posts are time-stamped with as a guide, so be sure your local settings are updated.

At the end of the month, we’ll see how many total words we’ve harvested.

If you stay with this until the end, just think: at the very minimum, you’ll have added 7,750 words to your WIPs.

So, still with me? Then I advise you take no prisoners as we march our plots ever-forward, all the way to March 31st! Good luck. I know I’ll need it…

Some of you may have noticed I axe’d all my Wordpress.com pages when I converted this blog over to the style of my main page.

Now you might be thinking: “Oh no! What about the character and location pages?” *fingerbite-fingerbite*

Don’t worry. The pages have all been retained on my hard drive, and can still be accessed on my old blog.

Truth is, I’ve had plans to redo them a bit more /professionally/ to help preserve the snootiness of a .COM presense.

The first outcome of this diabolical plan is a new ’About the Author‘ page, also accessible from the main page by clicking on ‘about’. 

You may notice that empty square to the right of the blurb—That’s the spot where I want to add one of those infamous black & white ‘really serious author’ photos of myself.

Even though the passage turned out a little tongue-and-cheek, it still feels (somewhat) more professional. I hope it effectively answers all the questions someone might wonder about me, and I’m glad it doesn’t leave me as horribly stalkerbait-naked and vulnerable as my previous one did. 

Other pages will come in time, but I think the ‘Random Fantasy Clichés‘ page can *ahem* fall to the wayside. As fun as RFCs may be, perhaps they were best kept to myself. :P