S.C. Barrus's Blog, page 4

Fifteen Years A WriterA Short History of S.C. Barrus

It’s been nearly a month since I started this blog chronicling the production of my novel Grim Curio. I haven’t spent much of that time talking about myself, and that’s been deliberate. But today I want to do something different and share the writing journey I’ve gone through over the last fifteen years.

High School

I began writing in high school, took every creative writing elective I could. It was there I wrote my first novel, My Field of Everlasting Smiles. It was an angsty coming of age sto...

Fifteen Years of Writing with S.C. Barrus

It’s been nearly a month since I started this blog chronicling the production of my novel Grim Curio. I haven’t spent much of that time talking about myself, and that’s been deliberate. But today I want to do something different and share the writing journey I’ve gone through over the last fifteen years.

High School

I began writing in high school, took every creative writing elective I could. It was there I wrote my first novel, My Field of Everlasting Smiles. It was an angsty coming of age sto...

S.C. Barrus’s review of The Well of Ascension

S.C. Barrus’s review of The Well of Ascension

Grim Curio’s Style Update

The weekend’s almost over, but I’ve got a lot of work done. I’ve been focusing on the style of Grim Curio. Check out the first couple paragraphs, all newly rewritten:

The wailing of worn iron hinges ripped me awake. The sound grated. It squealed with an irregular rhythm, accompanied by constant popped corn sounds of spores, carried in the air, beating against the thick, wobbling sign out my window. The sign read:

James Bartlebee
Detective of Anomalies, Curiosities, & the Supernatural.

I...

41 tools to write (and critique) effectively

When refining, rewriting, editing and critiquing, what should you be looking for? Sentence structure? Character believability? Setting? Sometimes it can be a bit much to keep everything in your head, so I’ve written the following list of things I look for (or need to remind myself to pay attention to) in order to make my writing, and my critiques of other writers, as effective as possible. Hopefully it works for you too.

StyleIs sentence length varied?
Do sentences flow naturally?Is the informa...

From Mind to Paper: Creating a Character

Above: Ginko from Mushi Shi.

Writing is a process. Prose don’t appear on paper perfectly executed. First drafts are a spew of consciousness, a firehose of concepts splattered haphazardly with the wrong words in the wrong order, the wrong setting with the wrong details, the wrong character featuring the wrong motivation. But you have to start somewhere.

First I mash my mind onto the keyboard, sleep it off, then begin the process of refining everything. Rearrange sentences. Alert the senses. Mold...

Just thought I’d share this.

Just thought I’d share this.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

Read Chapter 2

It’s been a while since I posted a critique ready excerpt of Grim Curio, not for lack of writing though. I’ve actually hit a flow that’s been pretty great, removing around 2,000 words and adding about 4,000 in the last two weeks. Progress.

In this excerpt we meet a new POV (Point of View) character, a young girl who’s about to join a small extremist group called The Cleansing Sisterhood. I’m really happy with how this chapter has turned out.

Enough talking, follow one of these links to checkout...

Ideas are a brewin’

Welcome to another Grim Curio production note, a post where I share something that I’m thinking about for a future scene. If you want to learn more about production notes, read this.

The Nihilists 

Part of Grim Curio’s subtext involves a variety of groups that live in or around Oasis – the last city on earth. I’m considering new names for the city, maybe Final Refuge or something. In recent excerpts we were introduced to the Naturalists and the Students (they were called Scientists in the...