Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 277

Edginess

The weather forecast had me all geared up for a big rainy weekend, but after a stormy Friday, it ended up being fairly nice. That was probably for the best, as the book I had set aside as the perfect read for that kind of weekend turned out to be a huge disappointment.

It was one of those that seemed to be in the format I was describing last week, with a framing story where someone is tracking down the "real" story, only I didn't get far enough into it to find out just how it would have ended ...

Uncovering Flaws

Yesterday I went through the whole book, analyzing each scene for its purpose within the story, what the "active" character's goal was, and what the conflict in the scene was. That's a great way to find scenes that can easily be cut or that should be combined because it shows when I've repeated the same "beat" too many times. It also can reveal any major structural flaws in the story.

That's a good news/bad news thing when it happens, as it did. It's bad news because, ack, there's something se...

Nice but not Boring

First, I have a crowdsourcing question:
In modern books that are meant as parody/pastiche/homage of Victorian novels, they often do this thing where the chapter headings go along the lines of "Chapter One: In Which Our Heroine Receives Unexpected News." But was this ever actually done in Victorian novels? I've gone through my bookshelves and looked up several other authors on Project Gutenberg, and I haven't found anything like that. The closest I've found was the thing Jerome K. Jerome did (a...

Non-Verbal Communication: Bearing

It's writing post time again (yay!) and I'm continuing my discussion of nonverbal communication.

This time, I'm going to talk about sitting, standing, walking and lying -- all the very basic states of being. People have characteristic ways of sitting, standing and walking, and being able to describe that will make your characters more real. These things may or may not say something specific about the character -- you're the author, so you can decide. Someone who's been in the military (or in a...

Book Report: Past and Present

I haven't done a book report in a while. I've been reading a lot, but some of it has been reference and some has been re-reads. This is a selection of noteworthy books that might be of interest to my readers from among all my recent reading.

First, I have an interesting compare/contrast between two books that are superficially similar, but ultimately different. Both books would fall loosely into the steampunk category and both involve parallel story lines about two orphan (or semi-orphan) teen...

A Proper Weekend

I had a lovely weekend, the kind of weekend that gives the term "weekend" a good name. First, on Friday I spent a relaxing evening watching Friday Night Lights and then the recent two-part Doctor Who episodes (the first part of which just showed on BBCAmerica this weekend -- I have sources for getting them early since I don't have BBCAmerica). There was at least one nightmare generated by those episodes. Then Saturday I went to Scarborough Faire, our local Renaissance festival. It was the per...

In My Dreams

In the "more fun with my subconscious" category, I had an incredibly vivid dream last night about going to see the movie version of Enchanted, Inc. I was at an afternoon matinee at my neighborhood theater, and the theater was a little more full than it usually is for the early show of most movies (aside from opening day for summer Harry Potter releases, and that kind of thing). Strangely, in the dream I was both myself, watching in the theater, and occasionally inside Katie's head within the ...

Fast Track to Fame

I'm starting to get itchy about wanting to revise this book, but I know that would be a bad idea. It needs to rest, and I need some distance from it. Ideally, it would rest enough that I could almost forget I wrote it and I could review it as though it was someone else's work. I don't think I'll go that far, but I'm trying to get through this week at least not thinking about it. Next week I may delve into some of my writing books and use this book as my working example to do the exercises, bu...

Living the Perfume Commercial

The other night, I'd taken advantage of a commercial break to go get something from another room, and I came back to the living room in time to catch the beginning of what looked like the best romantic movie ever. I figured out pretty quickly that it had to be a Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial because they make these mini-movies that have nothing to do with the perfume, and I always wish they were real movies because I think I would love them, and I want to live in that universe. It's just to...

Attempted Relaxation

I guess I'm not very good at "leisure." I can see why one of the psychologists at the medical school said that it can take a few days of being on vacation before your brain really realizes it's on vacation and allows you to truly relax. I'm not actually on "vacation" and the things I do that feel like being at ease are really things that I'm doing for specific work purposes, but it still feels weird to just sit on the sofa and read in the afternoon. Yesterday, I got a little itchy after about...