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Has your plot thickened?
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message 51:
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Gingerlily - The Full Wild
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Nov 20, 2013 09:36AM
"I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
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Thanks, Peter.Beginnings and ends are fine, and I usually have a couple of 'special scenes' in mind, as well. It's linking it all together, step by step, where I've been falling down. Sometimes the brain work needed to get my character from point E to point F is all too much. I know my protag's motivation - to solve the bl**dy case! I still get stuck.
Will, it's a very useful guide, in a general sort of way, but I, too, smiled at that last line.
Lynda, I hope you're over the worst of it now but for what it's worth here's my twopennorth.1. I always get stuck a third in. It means that somewhere, I've gone off in the wrong direction but that, as yet, my subconscious isn't sure where. It will tell you what's wrong if you give it long enough. Do other books, edit the stuff you've done, let it rest for a while and then when you come back to it, edit it again. You may find the dodgy bit jumps out at you then. My longest time without writing anything during one of these 6 months. (I drew pictures of my characters instead).
2. A book every six months is bloody amazing. I write one every 2 years, IF I'm burning on all cylinders and IF everything goes well.
3. There is NO thing 3.
4. I had a LOT of trouble getting my first (publishable) book right. In the end I wrote all the scenes with the main character in, right through, then I filled out the other characters' bits when I was done. Sometimes, if you can get the kind of skeleton into place, everything else just gels.
I hope that helps. If it doesn't then, at least you know that someone else feels your pain.
Cheers
MTM
Just noticed: three followed by winking face looks like a cheeky devil.
Lynda wrote: "Thanks, Peter.Beginnings and ends are fine, and I usually have a couple of 'special scenes' in mind, as well. It's linking it all together, step by step, where I've been falling down. Sometimes t..."
Actually, it works across many genres, too. Usually in my fantasy romps, the 2/3 point is where I start trying to recover the characters from dire peril after it all went wrong for them in the middle third. Or earlier, if I was in a bad mood with them.
I try to work with the split into 3 acts at roughly set word counts as well, because I find it helps me control the book length, something I know Mary says she has issues with
M.T. wrote: "(I drew pictures of my characters instead)."Funny you should say that... Although I can't draw for toffee, so mine are CGI. I haven't been consistent with uploading them anywhere though - there's some on my KingsmenFlick FB page, others on my web site...
@Will, I try to stick to the 3-act structure too, and I find it really good, cos I know that at roughly 20-25K something nasty needs to be happening... Bwahahaha fnark, as MT would say ;)
You wait that long to mistreat your characters????
I don't know that I consciously 'do' any particular structure but I'd say that 3 act is close. I just stick a bit of action in when I think the characters are getting bored or having an easy ride or something.Tim, I will be looking for your characters now. I'm just trying to convert my crappy drawings into CGI so they look less like home drawn tat and more like something cool!
Cheers
MTM
Will wrote: "You wait that long to mistreat your characters????"No, I mistreat them from page 1. Let's see... book 1: someone is shot at on page 1. Book 2: someone is killed on page 3. book 3: Ah. As they say on Mythbusters, Well, there's your problem!
The worst thing is, since I don't have the time or patience to start designing CG clothes & outfits from scratch, & end up using the nearest thing I can find "off the peg" (much like using stock photos on a cover!), and in one or two instances, I may have adjusted my written description to fit the cg rendition... [whistles]I have some Indian (from India) characters in book 2, but buggered if I can find a single stock CG male Indian! :-/
I've never tried doing characters, but I've done a lot of pirating of people's photos from the web for scenes on Tsarina, and then use them on the Facebook page.If you look on https://www.facebook.com/TsarinaSector you'll see Gingerlily's dirty fingerprints as well :-)
Gingerlily - Dark and Mysterious Stranger wrote: "Ahem! 'dirty'???"well if you insist on standing there with your hands behind your back how are we to tell?
And what copier ever comes away with clean hands, anyway?I never do when I have to change the ink cartridges in my printer
I do wash my hands now and again...
Will wrote: "And what copier ever comes away with clean hands, anyway?I never do when I have to change the ink cartridges in my printer"
Copier problems have always been an issue http://home.earthlink.net/~cyberresea...
