4 Episodes Down and A Side-Thought on Willpower
Hello!
Can you believe it, it is week 6 of a 10 week term at school? Over halfway, and counting down til the July holidays.
I've spent the past few weeks working on more episodes for my romance serial. Episode 3 took me almost a full two weeks to write. One scene I rewrote three times before I could move on. It took me days to work out what the problem was. In the end it came down to not knowing my characters well enough. There was a new character, Timothy, who I didn't really get. So I ended up spending an hour interviewing him. I asked him all about how he felt, what he wanted, as well as a bit about his past relationships and history. Suddenly he made a lot more sense. Once I got back into my main character's eyes (it's written in the first person), it was much easier to describe what was going on as I could guess what Timothy was thinking behind his actions.
Episode 4 then came out in three days. The second day I really wanted to go see a movie (the new X-Men), but I had told myself I wasn't seeing any movies until I finished the entire series. Surprisingly, that wasn't very motivating. It was just too far off to imagine the gratification. So in the end I said I could see the movie that night if I wrote 5,000 words. 5,037 words and two and a half hours later, I was out that door!
I'm now working on Episode 5, so feel I'm getting somewhere. And just to let you all know, I still haven't worked out which guy she's going to end up with!
To break up the writing a bit, I've also been thinking about cover art (a fun diversion). Testing out fiverr.com, I got Goodaugther to do an original digital watercolour for the serial (just so you know, because I wanted it detailed, high resolution and with the psd file, it wasn't $5, but I think it was still a fantastic deal at $25). I gave her a few examples and told her that I wanted a brownhaired girl in a cafe with a laptop and a coffee. Now I just need to add the text and play with it a bit.
And can I just say that writing a serial is FUN! Each episode is short (12,000-15,000 words), so the action needs to be fast paced, and no slack sentences. But overall it is a much longer work than a novel (I'm aiming for 14 episodes at the moment), so a lot more can happen. I have characters popping in and out, situations coming up and then hiding away until a few episodes later, and lots of other excitement. Though, I do keep remembering things that I should bring in a bit earlier, or refer to again, so I'm very glad that I'm not actually publishing it an episode at a time. Maybe once I'm a bit more practiced at the artform I can do that. But for now, I want to get as closed to finish as I can.
Out of the three publishers I queried, one has gotten back to me saying it was bit too niche an idea for them, which is fair, but the other two are still out there, possibly considering it.
By the way, I've loaded the first day as a free sample on the Synopsis page, if you're interested in seeing what it's all about.
Finally, for those who need some constructive procrastination, I watched this great YouTube video on current research behind Willpower. It is about an hour and goes through some really interest studies, and gives you five great hacks for improving your powers. Who doesn't want more willpower? So enjoy.
Can you believe it, it is week 6 of a 10 week term at school? Over halfway, and counting down til the July holidays.
I've spent the past few weeks working on more episodes for my romance serial. Episode 3 took me almost a full two weeks to write. One scene I rewrote three times before I could move on. It took me days to work out what the problem was. In the end it came down to not knowing my characters well enough. There was a new character, Timothy, who I didn't really get. So I ended up spending an hour interviewing him. I asked him all about how he felt, what he wanted, as well as a bit about his past relationships and history. Suddenly he made a lot more sense. Once I got back into my main character's eyes (it's written in the first person), it was much easier to describe what was going on as I could guess what Timothy was thinking behind his actions.
Episode 4 then came out in three days. The second day I really wanted to go see a movie (the new X-Men), but I had told myself I wasn't seeing any movies until I finished the entire series. Surprisingly, that wasn't very motivating. It was just too far off to imagine the gratification. So in the end I said I could see the movie that night if I wrote 5,000 words. 5,037 words and two and a half hours later, I was out that door!
I'm now working on Episode 5, so feel I'm getting somewhere. And just to let you all know, I still haven't worked out which guy she's going to end up with!
To break up the writing a bit, I've also been thinking about cover art (a fun diversion). Testing out fiverr.com, I got Goodaugther to do an original digital watercolour for the serial (just so you know, because I wanted it detailed, high resolution and with the psd file, it wasn't $5, but I think it was still a fantastic deal at $25). I gave her a few examples and told her that I wanted a brownhaired girl in a cafe with a laptop and a coffee. Now I just need to add the text and play with it a bit.
And can I just say that writing a serial is FUN! Each episode is short (12,000-15,000 words), so the action needs to be fast paced, and no slack sentences. But overall it is a much longer work than a novel (I'm aiming for 14 episodes at the moment), so a lot more can happen. I have characters popping in and out, situations coming up and then hiding away until a few episodes later, and lots of other excitement. Though, I do keep remembering things that I should bring in a bit earlier, or refer to again, so I'm very glad that I'm not actually publishing it an episode at a time. Maybe once I'm a bit more practiced at the artform I can do that. But for now, I want to get as closed to finish as I can.
Out of the three publishers I queried, one has gotten back to me saying it was bit too niche an idea for them, which is fair, but the other two are still out there, possibly considering it.
By the way, I've loaded the first day as a free sample on the Synopsis page, if you're interested in seeing what it's all about.
Finally, for those who need some constructive procrastination, I watched this great YouTube video on current research behind Willpower. It is about an hour and goes through some really interest studies, and gives you five great hacks for improving your powers. Who doesn't want more willpower? So enjoy.
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