Stephanie Bibb's Blog, page 56
July 24, 2015
Thoughts on Writing – Developing a Magic System
I’m in the process of polishingMagic’s Stealing, anda beta reader pointed out a plot hole regarding one of my magic systems.Since my mind is now stuck on working through that problem, today I’m going to go intothe process of developing magic systems.
In Magic’s Stealingthere are three types of magic:ribbon magic, string magic, and word magic. The problem system isribbon magic, which is the mostcommon. It’s the magic that gets stolen, leaving the two main characters as the only mages.
As it st...
July 22, 2015
Thoughts on Publishing – The Unboxing of Battle Decks: Multiverse 1953
Guess what my husband and I got in the mail today… the full version of our Battle Decks: Multiverse 1953 card game! Woot! :-D
We unboxed the gamealmost immediately, and now you can get another sneak peek into Battle Decks(including the cover). We printed the gameatThe Game Crafter, a site which is little pricey but not bad for print-on-demand games. I was a bit nervous as to how well it would print, but I’m happy with the results, and I’m looking forward to playing our first game with the act...
July 20, 2015
Thoughts on Writing – The Magic of Writing
When I was in high school, my language class read a short story about a manwho spent his life on the river. When he first started sailing as a boy, the river was magical. The eddies and sand banks… he didn’t understand them, but they called his attention and made him want to know more. As he grew older, he learned to understand the river. To know what caused the eddies and where the dangerous currents hid, and as he learned, the river lost its magic.
I can’t remember if the story ended with h...
July 17, 2015
Thoughts On Writing – The Revision Process
I recently finished the major revisions on Magic’s Stealing, and though I’m still in the process of making a few tweaks (trying to give the end just a bit more ‘oomph’ and trying to make sure that the antagonist has a clear motive while maintaining her mysterious persona) I thought I’d spend today’s blog post talking about my revision process.
First off, the difference between editing and revising. Honestly, I confuse the two and tend to use the terms interchangeably. But for the purpose of t...
July 15, 2015
Behind the Scenes – The Stage
This is a cover for Barking Rain Press. For this cover, the author and publisher decided to focus on the setting, rather than characters, so we set out to create a mysterious club. With symbols from the book and direction from the publisher, I incorporated various different stock images from Shutterstock (provided by the publisher) to create a new scene: a nightclub for vampires. I chose the swirls to overlay across the door to add a hint of mysticism, and we went with the blue color because...
July 13, 2015
Thoughts on Writing – Humor in Dark Places
After recently watching the full series of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and getting started watching season two of Agents of SHIELD, my husband and I noticed the stark contrast in the style of storytelling. The Last Airbender has a lot of lighthearted humor, with a few dark moments interspersed throughout the series. The first episode in season two of SHIELD is mostly dark with very, very little humor. As such, my husband and I began thinking about the roll that humor can play in the dark mome...
July 10, 2015
Thoughts on Writing – How Studying Movie Scenes Can Help With Writing Book Scenes
I’ve been thinking about how movies pace their scenes and use various shots to draw a viewer in. This started after watching an episode of Film Theorists (they’re a Youtube Channel):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyVlnPLaC7swhich talked about where some of the common elements of movies got their beginnings.
We can learn a lot aboutwriting scenes in a book by studying the methods used in film. I’m mostly going to take a look at three primary shots used in movies and TV shows: the wide shot, t...
July 8, 2015
Behind the Scenes – Blood Loss
A cover for Melange Books. For this cover, we wanted to have the dark color scheme while keeping the coverlight enough that the colors wouldn’t go to black in the print version. So I createdthe basic scene first, then played with multiple color options once those basics were in place. For the castle’s glow, I masked out all the windows, then tinkered with the lighting on layers below the castle layer. Once I had the light source, I added ‘soft light’ and ‘overlay’ layers over the castle layer...
July 7, 2015
Thoughts on Writing: Author Interview at Cathleen Townsend’s Blog
Just a head’s up if anyone’s interested, Cathleen Townsend interviewed me at her blog today: http://cathleentownsend.com/2015/07/07/interview-with-stephanie-bibb/
Check it out, and if you like that one, she has a few other author interviews on her blog, as well. Enjoy. :-)
July 6, 2015
Thoughts about Publishing – Fireworks and Photoshoots
A photograph from our fireworks photo shoot for the book trailer. The ‘scrying bowl’ from Magic’s Stealing.
Over the weekend, my husband and I visited my family for the Fourth of July. Among the things we did… per usual tradition… was to purchase fireworks. In previous years, we’ve typically picked up an assortment of fountains, smoke balls, and sparklers, then headed across town (or recently) up the hill in the evening to watch the fireworks from the city display. Over the years, thepeoplear...
