R.M. Archer's Blog, page 46

Character Interview: Algon Raen

Algon Raen is the antagonist of The Heart of the Baenor, an ambitious Rashan (they’re like dwarves except they’re not small) who really doesn’t like Torin. Enjoy his interview. :)

Algon: *comes in and sits across from the interviewer, crossing his legs and resting his arms on the back of his chair* Hi.

Interviewer: *arches an eyebrow and shifts kind of uncomfortably* Hello. How are you today?

Algon: Excellent. How are you?

Interviewer: Fine.

Algon: What’s your name?

Interviewer: Lila. *shakes her head* I’m the one interviewing you, not the other way around. What’s your name?

Algon: Algon Raen. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.

Lila: Well, I’m not very familiar with Kaloris. What makes you important enough to be well-known?

Algon: *scoffs* I’m the nephew of King Aidric, not to mention his second-in-command. And I’m coming up on a promotion. *grins*

Lila: How would you be promoted from second-in-command?

Algon: *smirks* Wouldn’t you like to know.

Lila: Um… *looks at her question sheet to get back on track* How old are you?

Algon: Forty-two.

Lila: *raises eyebrows* You looked… younger.

Algon: *grins* I get that a lot. *brushes his red mohawk*

Lila: *clears her throat and looks at her question list again* Do you have any siblings?

Algon: What, hoping I have a younger brother?

Lila: *glares at him* Don’t make me cut this thing short.

Algon: *chuckles* No. I’m an only child. Sorry to disappoint.

Lila: *mutters* Yeah, you’re spoiled like one. Do you have a favorite food?

Algon: Pathar meat.

Lila: What’s a Pathar?

Algon: The toughest animal in Kor-Baen. It’s a bear twice the size of any other, with golden fur and stone-like scales on its back. They’re extremely deadly. I fought one single-handedly once.

Lila: Do you have a favorite color?

Algon: Red, like the forges. It’s a symbol of strength, to me.

Lila: Do you read?

Algon: *laughs, his voice booming out* Absolutely not.

Lila: Geez… Do you have a favorite animal?

Algon: Pathar.

Lila: Do you have any hobbies?

Algon: Sparring, forging, and more sparring.

Lila: Is anything not about strength to you?

Algon: *shakes head* Not really.

Lila: *rolls eyes* Well which of these is the most important to you: Kindness, intelligence, or bravery?

Algon: Bravery, of course, with intelligence in second.

Lila: Honesty or selflessness?

Algon: Neither. Honesty makes you vulnerable, selflessness makes you weak.

Lila: I beg to differ, but okay. Is there anything you can’t leave home without?

Algon: My axe.

Lila: Well, thank you for your time. *stands* That was the last question.

Algon: *nods and stands, whispering something inappropriate in her ear and earning himself a slap before leaving*

That was a more interesting interview than I’d expected. I’m also pretty sure I’ve now had three different named interviewers: Lila, Isabelle, and David. One of these days I’ll have to make them real characters, or at least flesh them out more, lol.

My Editing Process

Over the past week I’ve been working on editing The Heart of the Baenor (which I really, really need to come up with a new title for) and figuring out what editing system works for me. This post will be similar to my story binder post, taking you through the system I’ve developed for myself, and hopefully it will help out some of you with your own revisions.

I actually started with Google Docs, with a copy of the original draft that I just went through and made comments on. I didn’t make any actual edits aside from little grammatical errors, just used commenting and the suggesting tool to tell myself where I wanted to make edits. Then I duplicated the doc, told it to keep the comments, and made that my second draft. On that document I actually made the edits I’d commented/suggested to myself and probably some others that I found along the way. (You can read more about this part of the process in this article on Our Mind Palace.)

After that second draft was done, I printed out the whole thing and moved onto what I’m going to show you in this post.

The first thing in my binder is a document that has info on the theme I want to incorporate. When I wrote this book I didn’t have a theme in mind, which resulted in the story falling flat (well, that and the fact that there were no stakes… but we’ll get to that). Fortunately, since I’ve recently learned about theme, the information is fresh in my mind and I was able to fairly easily pull out a theme I could target and write down the info I needed. This is the basic theme (family), the question that more focuses the theme (“Is family important?”), and then the “experiments of living” for each character, which is what they believe in regard to the theme and focusing question.

These characters really lend themselves well to a theme of family because one doesn’t know her birth family and lives with a shoved-together family, one of them is really devoted to his family, and the third feels like his family won’t accept him and feels like he doesn’t really have a family.

Figuring out how to best incorporate the theme in practical terms is going to be kind of tricky, but I think this theme is going to work really well.

Next is my color code. I did some research on this prior to developing my color code to find out what sorts of things other people marked (I’ll post links to the articles I found at the end of this post), and then commandeered my mom’s colored pens and developed my own. These are Pilot G-2s and they’re my absolute favorite variety of pen. They write really smoothly and they come in a variety of colors and I highly recommend them.

You can probably see most of those, but the blues are kind of hard to read in this picture. The brighter blue is Setting/Description, the lighter blue is Nonverbal Communication in the top key and World in the bottom key.

Why do I have two keys, you ask? One is more for the story itself and one is for my scene notes, and you’ll have a chance to see that more in just a minute.

After I printed out the whole book I read through it once all in one sitting (all 155 pages of it) and I made notes of some issues I saw with it to begin with and wrote them on this list, using my basic color code (the one on the bottom). There were some important plot threads that got dropped, as well as some lines I wanted to relocate, a scene I’d cut that I wanted to reintegrate, and a couple of spots where payment should have been and wasn’t, and I also want to look at the dialogue throughout and make sure it sounds natural (I might enlist the help of my sister to act out scenes with me to test that). And I’ve also added to this as I’ve gone through it to do my scene-by-scene notes.

This is my scene notes page. I have ten of these for the first six chapters. What I do is write the chapter, scene, and scene name (Ch. 1 – Sc. 1 – Tavern pt. 1) and then under each one I write down what the MC’s goal is in that scene, what the stakes are, what the conflict stems from, what the MC’s motivation is, what the primary element of the scene is, and what edits I need to make. This is where my second, simpler color code comes in: Plot, characters, world, cosmetic. If the goal is plot-based, I write it in burgundy. If the motivation is character-based, I write it in purple, etc. There are a couple of things on here that I use the more specific color code for; primarily the detailed code is used for Primary Element, since the point of that is to figure out what kind of writing dominates the scene (it’s almost always dialogue. Even when it shouldn’t be). I mix both color codes in Edits to Make mainly depending on whether they’re larger-scale edits or smaller-scale edits.

Filling out this information shows me where a scene is fundamentally lacking (almost all of mine are lacking stakes, which is an issue at the beginning and an even bigger issue when we get into the meat of the story), because I know that if it’s not filled in it needs to be. Or if I did fill it in but it’s just not shown enough in the scene or I’m not happy with the answer then I’ll jot down in the Edits to Make section that I need to play up the stakes or the goal or jot down a replacement for one or more of those things.

And sometimes there are scenes that are really boring as they are, but just a little tweak makes them a lot better. For instance, I have a scene in chapter four where there’s no real goal, no stakes, no conflict, no motivation, just dialogue that’s there for pretty much no reason as they’re talking about breakfast foods. My note was that just making it an argument over what to eat now would make it a lot stronger. Then Catessa’s goal could be to convince her companions to choose her favorite for breakfast, the stakes would be getting something she wants to eat or something she doesn’t want to eat, the conflict would be between the clashing breakfast opinions, and her motivation would basically be her taste buds. Obviously it would still be a petty scene, but it would have all the pieces it needs and show the character as I was intending, not only through what foods they prefer but also through how they respond to an argument like that.

This is my actual book. Why is the font bright blue, you ask? Well… our printer ran out of black ink about two-thirds of the way in printing from the back and this was the darkest we could get with the colored ink too, so the first 46 pages of the book are this color (which is actually really pretty and a lot less difficult to read than I’d expected). Already with this first page you can see the beginning of my dialogue craze…

What I do with the actual story is take my detailed color code and underline everything accordingly. This first page has a lot of description at the beginning and then shifts into a bunch of dialogue. Obviously if something doesn’t fit into anything (I need a color for action and don’t have one) then it just stays non-underlined.

Here’s a page with more non-dialogue and more wording edits:

I have tried not to line-edit/copy-edit while I’m supposed to be doing developmental edits, but grammar is what jumps out to me most and what bugs me most, so in my stories if I see something off grammatically I am going to fix it, lol. So there are a few instances of rewording things here. Most of this page is description and worldbuilding, and I actually really like this page as a whole.

Anyway, I’m doing this through the whole book and it’s been even more insightful than I thought. I already knew that I wrote a LOT of dialogue, but I didn’t really just how much, and I also didn’t realize how little internal monologue and emotion I put into this story. That’s one of the main things I need to fix, is showing more of what Catessa’s feeling and thinking and building more of a connection between her and the reader.

Just a prettier picture of that page.
Story and notes.

I actually hate these tabs for this purpose, but I have tabs on the first page of each chapter. The problem with these particular tabs for this purpose is that they don’t stick far enough up/down the thing, so you can’t use them as a handle to flip to a page and they come off pretty easily even when you don’t use them as handles. But they’re still better than nothing, and they’re also helpful if I want to look from the side and see the rough length of each chapter. Chapter six, for instance (the one I just finished), is twice as long as any of the five before it (at least as far as scenes are concerned). I would definitely recommend using tabs to mark chapters, but I wouldn’t recommend this variety, lol.

When I’m done with all of these notes I’ll go back to Google Docs and make all my edits on a fresh 3rd draft doc, fixing the tons of issues I’ve uncovered in this pass, balancing stuff out (less dialogue, more emotion, etc.), adding stakes to almost every scene, making her actually feel pain, etc. There’s a lot to get done this month, but I’m excited that I’ll be improving so much.

So yeah, that’s my editing process! What does your editing process generally look like? Have you gotten to the editing stage yet? (This is my first real hardcore edit, and it’s actually been a lot of fun.)

Articles on color coded editing

Ask Jami: Editing Tips–How to Use Color-Coding

Fundamental Check: Do Your Scenes Have What They Need?

What’s next for The Heart of the Baenor?

At the beginning of next month I’ll be sending the completed 3rd draft to beta-readers (thank you so much to all my beta-readers, already! I really look forward to working with you!), and I’m super excited to see what they think of it and what issues they can pull out for me to fix. (Is it weird that I actually like criticism? I’ve always liked having something concrete to improve, so constructive criticism is actually something I love, lol.)

After that pass, I’ll send it off to a couple of professional editors (not at the same time), and then it should finally be ready for formatting and all that jazz in January, and the publication date is set for February. And you know what’s really silly? The timeline for professional edits is entirely dependent on whether or not I can come up with a permanent title in the next two weeks or not. How on earth is that? Well, because I want to start a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for my editors and my cover artist and I can’t do that without a permanent title. And because titles are such a pain for me most of the time… I’m not sure I’m going to come up with one in the next two weeks. Here’s hoping.

Assuming all goes well, I’ll have this book published in late February 2019. :)

Snippet Sunday: Storybook Love

This story is just a for-fun story I started a while back to experiment with the romance genre and have an excuse to write what’s basically Maze Runner fanfiction. (Yes, I hated those books. That doesn’t mean I hated all the characters, and tossing in extra characters means I can partially rewrite the plot.) I actually didn’t intend to ever share this with anyone beyond my best friend, but it was on the list of stories I’ve started and it’s what the random number generator landed on, so here’s your snippet. Enjoy. :)

I woke the next morning with a smile and bounded straight out of bed. I hastily dressed and ran downstairs. “Bye Mom! I’m heading to the holodeck!”

There was no response. She was probably knocked out on the couch.

I headed outside and hopped on my bike, riding straight to Sabrina’s house. I checked my watch. Only nine, so too early to be politely visiting. Fortunately she came bounding out of the house as I put down my kickstand and I was saved the deliberation of whether or not to knock.

“Hey!” Her eyes were aglow and there was a bright smile on her face.

“Hey.” I returned the smile. I considered telling her she looked nice – her sea green top really brought out the green in her eyes and white shorts accentuated her tan – but decided against it.

“So where are we headed?”

“The Grantech lab. It’s just a few blocks away.”

“I know where it is. It’s huge.” She chuckled as she mounted her bike and put up the kickstand. She headed off and I followed, coming up beside her. She looked over at me, dark hair flowing behind her. “Race you there.” She grinned.

“Go!”

We both picked up the pace and she beat me by a foot, pulling into the parking deck underneath the lab and propping her bike up against the cement wall. Apparently being barely beaten by her was going to be a recurring thing. I set my bike next to hers and nodded toward the elevator, gesturing for her to follow. I stepped into the shiny elevator and prepared to press the button for the fifth floor, waiting for her to enter.

We emerged right near the holodeck door. Derreck, a man I knew well from long days spent holoplaying, stood guard at the door.

“Hey, Derreck.” I grinned.

“Your dad said you’d be coming.” He looked Sabrina over somewhat judgmentally. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” I flashed him another smile as I opened the door. I stepped aside and let Sabrina enter the grey-walled room first.

“No wonder the building is huge,” she remarked, eyeing the vast room. “This room alone is ginormous.”

“Yeah.” I stepped over to a control panel by the door. “Name of your character?”

She paused for a moment. “Marie.”

“Like Marie Curie. I always go by Speare in the Maze Runner programs.” I punched in the orders.

She smiled. “Shakespeare.”

I looked over at her before pressing the start button. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” She grinned and I hit the button.

Suddenly we were no longer in a grey room. We were in a box, ascending into darkness. When we reached the top, the box’s lid opened. Blinding sunlight flooded in, blocked only by a couple of guys who immediately helped us out.

As we stepped out we were surrounded by about fifty boys, all murmuring to each other.

“Welcome to the Glade.” The boy’s British accent gives him away immediately. “The name’s Newt, greenies.”

Character Interview: Cordain Celebar

Cordain is a secondary character from The Heart of the Baenor, which I’m currently working on the third draft of. He’s an elf from the region Shae-Nir in Kaloris, and he sees the world very different from Catessa, who’s the main character of the book. (Somehow I haven’t interviewed her yet.) One of the things I most miss after having changed the novel to be almost entirely from Catessa’s point-of-view is that Cordain’s cool worldview doesn’t get explored nearly as much. But on to the interview. :)

Cordain: *enters the interview room and shakes hands with the interviewer* Hello. *smiles as he takes his seat*

Interviewer: Hello. *smiles back* How are you today?

Cordain: I’m doing quite well. How are you?

Interviewer: Also doing well. *smiles* Shall we get started?

Cordain: *nods*

Interviewer: Let’s start off easy. What’s your name?

Cordain: Cordain Elisha Celebar.

Interviewer: How old are you?

Cordain: I just turned seventeen.

Interviewer: Seventeen is when you’re considered an adult in Kaloris, isn’t it?

Cordain: Yes, but not much has changed. *chuckles*

Interviewer: What does being an adult mean in Kaloris?

Cordain: Mostly just that I can get married and drink alcohol if I want to.

Interviewer: Ah, marriage. Do you have anyone you’re looking to marry?

Cordain: *laughs* I’m not ready for that yet. But there is a girl I wouldn’t mind marrying when the time comes. *blushes slightly*

Interviewer: Does she have a name?

Cordain: Madria. But that’s all I’m going to say.

Interviewer: *nods* Do you have any siblings?

Cordain: Two. My younger sister Braia and my older brother Torstyn.

Interviewer: What’s your relationship with them like?

Cordain: They’re both incredible. They both tease me to no end. *chuckles*

Interviewer: Are you closer to one than the other?

Cordain: Not really. I think I’m closer to each of them in different ways and different areas.

Interviewer: *nods* I think that’s probably true of most families. Um… *looks at page* Do you have a job?

Cordain: I’m a fisherman, and I help around on my family’s plantation around the harvest season, and throughout the year for that matter.

Interviewer: Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Cordain: I’m an extrovert, but I do love my quiet time.

Interviewer: What’s your favorite food?

Cordain: Blueberry muffins.

Interviewer: Favorite color?

Cordain: Any shade of blue.

Interviewer: Do you like to read?

Cordain: Sometimes, but I’m not nearly as avid a reader as Braia.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite book?

Cordain: Not especially, but I do have a favorite story. I love hearing the ballad of Rosyn Celebar. He’s a distant ancestor of mine who helped discover the griffins on Tol Dulin.

Interviewer: That sounds exciting! How did that happen?

Cordain: It’s a really long story. *laughs*

Interviewer: You’ll have to tell me later, then. Do you have a favorite animal? Do you have a soft spot for griffins because of Rosyn?

Cordain: I do have something of a soft spot for griffins. Taking flight on the back of one is something that every child in Shae-Nir, or at least in Linwe-Illien, dreams of. But I think my favorite are dolphins.

Interviewer: What are your hobbies?

Cordain: Reading, to some extent. Mostly I do charcoal drawings, and I really enjoy just being on or near the water. Or racing my siblings and the Andunans around Linwe-Illien.

Interviewer: Who are the Andunans?

Cordain: Oh, sorry. That’s Madria and her brother Dacian.

Interviewer: That sounds like a lot of fun.

Cordain: *nods* It really is.

Interviewer: We’re nearing the end here. Which of these is most important to you: Kindness, intelligence, or bravery?

Cordain: Kindness. The other two aren’t any help without it, I don’t think.

Interviewer: And honesty or selflessness?

Cordain: They’re close, but probably selflessness. It’ll breed honesty, at least to some degree.

Interviewer: Last question. Is there something you can’t leave the house without?

Cordain: Not really, in general terms. But in a lot of situations I like to take my sketchpad and pencil.

Interviewer: *smiles* Thank you for the interviewer.

Cordain: You’re welcome. And thank you. I enjoyed it. *smiles and shakes the interviewer’s hand before leaving*

Practical Tips for Using Pinterest to Increase Blog Traffic

Pinterest is the main source of traffic to this blog and has been since my site redesign in February. In the first week I got a total of about 4,600 views. On February 11th, the beginning of the second week, I got 877 views on one day, and that’s still my highest daily viewcount. Now, my usual daily viewcount is somewhere between ten and thirty, but prior to the redesign I’d been getting a max of about ten views a day. How did I use Pinterest to skyrocket traffic? Well, let me show you.

1. Update your account to a business

Once you update to a business account you’ll have access to analytics and thus be able to see how many clicks, views, repins, etc. your pins get. Plus you’ll seem more trustworthy to anyone stumbling across you.

2. Optimize your blog images to be Pinterest friendly

This was THE biggest thing that helped me, I believe. A pattern I’ve found is that a lot of author bloggers have all or part of their image greyed out and the title of the post over that so that it’s readable, and then a band across the bottom that has the blog name so it’s clear where the pin originated. Readable fonts are KEY, as is branding (making your fonts and colors match your site as much as possible). I personally get my images from Pexels and edit them with Photoscape, but you can also use Canva or some other image-editing program. Canva actually has a Pinterest graphic template that’s the optimal size for a pin. I do recommend Pexels, if you need stock photos., but there are also Pixabay, Unsplash, and others.

You want your images to have a consistent design so that when someone looks at your pins they think, “Oh! That pin must be so-and-so’s!” This also means you won’t want it to look to similar to someone else’s. There are a few bloggers I follow who have really similar pin designs and I always have to look at the address to figure out which of them a pin belongs to.

3. Boards to have

You’ll want a board dedicated to your blog posts and at least one dedicated to writing tips (of your own and others). I have about fifteen boards for various sub-categories of writing tips, but I’ve been on Pinterest for a couple of years. Expand as you need to. When you write a blog post, save it to every board it fits on for maximum visibility. You obviously want to be strategic about this and not gimmicky. As an example, I didn’t put my post about the literary world needing better romances on my reading board – even though it could plausibly fit there because it’s about books – because it’s geared toward writers, not readers; however, I put it on both my Christian writing tips board and my relationship-writing tips board in addition to my blog board.

I also have storyboards, character boards, and random boards that are more me-related than writing-related (TV and movie boards, book boards, reading boards, car boards, Disney boards, etc.). What exact boards you make are totally up to you, but there are some ideas to get you started.

To look as professional as possible you’ll likely want to make secret a lot of your non-writing boards, and the writing boards that you don’t pin to consistently or those that belong to projects you’re no longer working on. I’m fairly certain I have just as many secret boards as public boards. You don’t necessarily want to hide all of your non-writing boards (I have a lot still up on mine), but they’ll attract a different audience.

You’ll want to add descriptions to your boards, both to include keywords (naturally in the bio, not forced in) and to tell your viewers about the board. This can be particularly beneficial for storyboards, to start early getting people excited about the book. You don’t have to have a finalized blurb, but something to catch people’s attention is good.

4. Don’t be egocentric

Pin other bloggers’ posts. These posts will be helpful for you as well as your followers, they’ll help out the bloggers because you’re helping the pins see a wider audience, and they’re more pins on your account which helps you seem more legit. The more pins you have, the more trustworthy you’ll seem to people coming to your account.

5. Make sure your account is representative of you/your brand

Make your profile picture something connected to your blog. If you use a profile picture on your blog, use the same one across all your platforms. It’s another trust/reputation thing. You’ll likely want a picture of yourself, but a recognizable logo will also work.

6. Use your bio

Use your bio to describe who you are and link back to your blog. Say what kind of writing you do, maybe mention where you are in your writing journey, and mention anything else that’s important to who you are. Also include keywords (naturally; don’t force them) to make people more likely to find you in searches.

You might also want to mention in your name that you’re an author. My Pinterest name is “R.M. Archer | Author”. This helps people see at a glance what it is you do and what your profile is mostly going to display.

Are you using Pinterest to promote your blog yet? If you leave your username in the comments I’ll give you a follow. :)

Farewell to June

June’s Writing

I wrote a total of 45,229 this month. Some of that was on The Shadow Raven, some was on The Heart of the Baenor, some was on blogging and some was on a short story that I started writing as a possibility to enter into the Story Embers writing contest at the last minute and decided against.

The Shadow Raven is up to 75,915 words now, which means it’s longer than The Last Assassin, but there’s still a month and a half of story time before it’ll catch up with The Last Assassin sufficiently that I can move on to The King’s Paladin and get that caught up. And then I have to be super careful and strategic about which scenes I write in which books and from who’s POV and things start to get really complicated. But it’ll be fun! Once I get there. The Shadow Raven apparently has longer chapters than The Last Assassin, considering it’s almost 76k with 23 chapters and The Last Assassin is approximately 74k with 30 chapters.

Also, EDITING! I’ve been buckling down on The Heart of the Baenor this month, getting the second draft done. I still have three chapters to write to end it (I took a long hiatus from it when I wrote it and thus edited it before finishing it because my writing style had so drastically improved in that time), but I plan on getting those done today and moving on to printing it so I can edit it again. I’ve actually really enjoyed editing this book, which is kind of rare, and I’m excited to get it as polished as I can. :)

June’s Reading

I only finished two books this month: No Dragons, Please! by Annie Twitchell and Azalei’s Riders by Miranda Marie (links to reviews). I also started reading Azalei’s Strategy by Miranda Marie and Infraction by J.E. Purrazzi, and I’m also reading Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris (amazing book), The Odyssey (for school. Being homeschooled is great… until you fall behind. XP), The Sorcerer’s Daughter by Terry Brooks, The Secret of the Desert Stone by Frank Peretti (book 6 of the Cooper Kids series), and Quest for Seven Castles and The Great War by Ed Dunlop (books 2 and 8 of the Terrestria Chronicles), all of which I aim to be finished reading this month. Will I succeed in that goal? Well… I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

Other Stuff

Nothing super exciting happened in June – my sister’s been gone in North Carolina for two weeks, but she’s coming home tomorrow – but I’m super happy for July. For one thing, CAMP IS COMING UP! I can’t tell you how excited I am for camp later this month. I made a couple of great friends last year who I’m super excited to see again, I’m looking forward to growing in my faith again, and my best friend and I are performing (hopefully. If we can practice.) The Other Side from The Greatest Showman at the talent show. (Yes, we got permission to perform a bar scene at a Christian camp. We’re converting it into a coffee shop.)

And also Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m aiming for about 48,700 words (preferably on The Shadow Raven) and having The Heart of the Baenor’s third draft completed. There aren’t going to be any blog updates, but I post my daily word count for the Go Teen Writers 100-for-100 on my Twitter account and I plan on continuing that after the challenge runs out as well, so if you want to keep up-to-date on how much I write, that’s the place to go.

So yeah, that’s what my month has looked like. :) How was your June? What are you looking forward to in July? What’s your goal for Camp NaNoWriMo, if you’re participating?

Snippet Sunday: The Elementals

This excerpt is a continuation of the last one I posted from this story, so if you haven’t read it yet you’ll want to do that first and come back.

Done? Awesome. Enjoy!

It was several more minutes before a bell rang out, nearly deafening, and students began to pour in. Soon I was squished amidst all the people.

Caelum rose once the movement had ceased and all muttering quieted as he raised his hand. “Dear students, old and new, welcome. We’re gathered here for the initiation of another wave of elementals.” Students cheered throughout the auditorium. “New students, I will call your name one by one. When I call on you, please come up and stand in front of my desk. Aira Lannister.”

A girl with pale skin and hair stepped up and Caelum placed his hand gently on top of her head. “Air,” he announced. As Aira went back to her seat, Caelum called up the next student. “Alabaster Graves.”

The brunett elf stepped up and Caelum placed his hand on his head as with Aira. After a moment he shook his head and sent Alabaster down the row to Arianthe, who placed her hand on Alabaster’s head the same way.

“Earth,” Arianthe said.

Alabaster returned to his seat and I zoned out, busy paying attention to all the people around me and still fiddling with the rock in my pocket. Thus when they called my name I missed it.

“Skandain Eyre,” they repeated.

My head shot up. “Yes? Oh, right.” I rose and walked over to Caelum, hearing snickers as I did so.

Caelum set his hand on my head and after a moment sent me to Arianthe. She did the same and sent me down to Baara. All four of them shook their heads.

Caelum frowned. “Come back over here, Skandain?”

I did as instructed and again they all shook their heads. Had I been wrongly selected as an elemental? The four of them stepped into a circle and discussed me a moment, then returned to their places.

“You’re an earth elemental,” Arianthe said.

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure what on earth had happened… No pun intended. I returned to my seat and Brant clapped me on the back, but there was something strange in his eyes. “I guess you’ll be relocated, then,” he said.

Camp NaNo Prep: The Outline

Camp NaNoWriMo Prep Series:

Part 1: The Idea

Part 2: The Characters

Part 3: The World

 

Before we start, here’s a disclaimer: I’m not an outliner. Well, not a hardcore outliner, at least. I do find that I do better when I have some sort of a framework to go off of, though, so in this post I’m going to just share with you a couple of methods I’ve used that have worked for me.

The Chapter-By-Chapter Outline

This is the method I used with The Heart of the Baenor, and it’s pretty simple. For each chapter I’d just make a heading and then under that I’d write brief summaries of what needed to happen in that scene. So the original first chapter, for instance, looked like this:

Chapter 1 – Cordain

Cordain returns from fishing with his father and brother.

Cordain and his family go to the bakery.

Cordain and his family return home.

Cordain’s older brother Torstyn takes him to the tavern for his seventeenth birthday.

A traveler enters the tavern and asks for volunteers on a quest.

The traveler refuses all of the volunteers and looks around for the person he needs. He chooses Cordain.

Cordain refuses to go and returns home. Torstyn stays to spend time with his secret fiancé Adilee?

Cordain ends up staying up late thinking about the quest and falls asleep secretly decided.

Now that I’m editing none of that chapter exists anymore and he ends up on the quest a totally different way, but that’s what my outline looks like. Some of the summaries are more detailed and I made notes on some of them that remind me of names or smaller details I need to be aware of or whatever, and obviously you can adapt it to look however you need it to if you decide to go with this method.

This is the most detailed outline I’ve ever made, and you can see it’s not especially detailed. For the most part the details were either securely inside my head or worked themselves out as I wrote. The benefit of this method for me was that I had a framework that told me everything that needed to happen but it wasn’t so detailed as to be constraining and I had some wiggle-room within the scenes, which I’ve found is a pretty good balance for me.

The Really Bare-Bones Outline

With the Dark War Trilogy I had an even less detailed outline than with The Heart of the Baenor, and I’m not sure that was the best choice. With the Dark War Trilogy I had several plot points that I knew I wanted and then I left the rest to adapt as it would. That worked okay with The Last Assassin and the characters did a good job of directing the plot in the spots I hadn’t plotted. With The Shadow Raven it’s been more difficult as I’m finding I don’t know what the characters do for the majority of the time. This is mostly a worldbuilding issue (not knowing the culture of the palace), but if I’d outlined it more in-depth I probably would have identified the mistake sooner.

I left the trilogy’s outline as loose as I did because they overlap so heavily and I wanted to make sure that if something in one veered away from the outline it wouldn’t screw stuff up in the other two. If I’d outlined deeper I would have felt tied to the outline so as to not mess things up and it would likely have inhibited my writing. So there were obviously pros and cons to both choices for me.

How do I keep track of things with overlapping plot lines like this? My Excel spreadsheet (spoilers redacted):

This is a picture from fairly early on in my planning, so you can see how empty the outline was even at this point. I did have more near the beginning than anywhere else, since I knew how I wanted it so start, but if you look at the timeline on the side you’ll see that there’s a significant gap between the first two dates and the third.

I’ve kept track of every scene I write on this spreadsheet so that I can make sure there aren’t any contradictions or people in two places at once or something like that, and I love that in Excel I can just insert a new row to include a new time. I really like this method for multiple points-of-view and I’ll likely use it a lot in the future with other multi-POV stories.

Want me to make a template of my timeline spreadsheet for the resource library? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Other Methods

I’ve also used the Hero’s Journey to outline stories in the past, but I was inexperienced enough in my writing back then that those stories were terrible, so I don’t feel like I’ll be able to speak accurately about the outlining method at this point.

Hopefully this post has been helpful, and if you’re a pantser wanting to take up plotting (or just experiment with it) these methods might work well for you. If you’re a more hardcore planner and need something more structured, you can adapt these to be more specific or you can find some more structured outlining methods. (You can check out my Pinterest board of outlining tips for starters.)

 

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Snippet Sunday: Apple of My Eye and Underground

Apple of My Eye is the fourth story in The Mirror-Hunter Chronicles, which began with Bag of Beans. It’s kind of tricky to pull an excerpt from a short story when pretty much anything could be spoilers, but here’s a bit of description that I’m really happy with, and it reminded me of a bit of description from another short story that I wanted to share as well. Enjoy. :)

I’d been searching for the mirror for a week between its being stolen and our present story, tracking clues as far from Ambrel as Grell. As I stepped into the city, much different from any I’d seen before, I wondered briefly if I would encounter my cousin Anson. However, this thought was quickly overcome by my fascination with the architecture and citizens around me. The buildings were all made of metal and glass, unlike the wood and sod hovels I was accustomed to, or even the plaster and brick that some larger estates were built of, and some towered into the sky like beanstalks.

The castle visible at the center of the city was the most impressive, with steel steeples and parapets, and windows surrounding every floor. I imagined it would be quite terrifying to be inside the thing and be able to see the hundreds of feet just outside a flimsy wall of glass. As I approached, I could see that the portcullis was made of something that was thinner and yet seemed stronger than steel, crisscrossed and woven with itself into a formidable barrier despite all its gaps.

********

“We don’t need any Underlings up here.”

“We’re the two most skilled hunters in the Underground,” Ronan said. “At least let us see your captain.”

“General,” the guard corrected.

“May we see him?”

The guard exchanged a look with his fellow before sighing. “Fine. This way.” The guard led them into the bustling crowd, his companion bringing up the rear, and Sorcha gave attention to her surroundings again. The ladies around her wore flowing silk gowns that brushed across the steel ground, bumping into her on all sides with a softness that was unlike anything she’d felt. The gentlemen wore darker blue suits of something like suede or velvet, still soft but more matte than the silk.

Towers rose up into the sky, stopping in sharp points just before they would have hit the layer above them, made of gold and bronze and steel. They reflected the sunlight, and Sorcha was incredibly glad for her sunglasses. Blue sky painted a brilliant backdrop for the city, even with the orange tint of Sorcha’s lenses, and she thought it must be even more beautiful to those whose eyes could handle the bright sunlight.

Their footsteps hummed and echoed on the metallic floor, ringing in Sorcha’s ears as they were led to a small iron building at the edge of the level, right in front of a glass wall that ended just below Sorcha’s shoulders to give a clear view of blue sky and clearance for a cool breeze that ruffled her platinum shoulder-length hair.

The 7777 Writing Tag

So today’s post is weird because I ended up spazzing and scheduling Alleyn Everlind’s interview today, except… I’ve already interviewed him. And since it’s already Wednesday and I didn’t feel like coming up with a different character to interview, I’m stealing the 7777 tag (with permission!) from Alexa over at Summer Snowflakes.

Ze Rules:

Open WIP to the seventh page
Scroll past the seventh line
Copy the next seven paragraphs…. and paste them on your blog for THE WORLD to read
Tag seven people!

Well this excerpt from The Shadow Raven is kind of odd isolated, particularly since it cuts off the beginning and end of this conversation…

“I’m sure you do.”

Detren guessed several more times as they ate, and Nissa was nearly bursting from holding in her laughter by the time she’d cleared her plate.

“Fine, I’ll give you the first letter. N.”

“Neana?”

“No.”

“Nalya?”

“Uh uh.”

 

I’m assuming you can tell he’s guessing her name, but the “I’m sure you do” is just really awkwardly out-of-place by itself. XD So I’m going to scroll to page 70 (the 0 is nothing. It doesn’t count. This is totally legal for the tag.) and follow the same procedure and see what I get.

Ooh, this one’s interesting.

 

“We’ll see how it works this time, then, won’t we?” Thorian smiled and Nissa met his eyes for a moment. Something in them seemed dark, like he meant more than he said. She looked back down at the board, shivering inside at the shadow in his eyes. It reminded her somehow of Alastair, and she didn’t like it at all.

“I guess we will.” She watched as he moved a bishop into easy reach of her knight. As soon as she’d captured the bishop, he moved a rook into position to capture her king.

“Checkmate.”

Nissa nodded, knocking her king onto his side, and rose from the table. “Thanks for the game.”

“Of course. You’re a worthy opponent. How about one more round, though? Try protecting your king this time.”

“I’d rather you not comment on my tactics.”

“Humor me? Just one game.”

Nissa sighed and sat back down. “One game.”

 

Yes, I like this one a lot. I’m glad I continued to page 70. *chuckles evilly because she knows things* So there you go. My 7 (14) paragraphs of The Shadow Raven. :)

Nominees:

Victoria at Wanderer’s Pen
Remi at Our Mind Palace
Gray at Gray Marie
Leila at Wildflowers and Cosmic Tea
Hallie Jenkins at Hallie Jenkins
Jess at The Artful Author
Rebekah at Hunting for Truth

Guys! My knowledge of the blogsphere has grown so much since I started! I can now tag seven people and still have ideas to spare! :D (I’m also getting a little more out of my comfort zone with some of these bloggers that I look up to, lol.)