So, current word count is sitting at 2631.
Sitting pretty at about five pages I've so far introduced my three main protagonists. The problem that I seem to have (besides pacing) is trying to make characters that are both believable and not so mary-sueish. Another issue is the fact where I'm trying to include several clichés and somehow manage to make it original. I'm also worried about the fact that I may be too influenced by things I read and my story comes out sounding like something I have read, thus making it slightly plagerised.
The prophecy has been done a gazillion times, in fact it pretty much seems to be a requirement for fantasy novels, so when I decided to use it for my main male protagonist I wasn't sure if it would add to his perfectness. Plus I always get worried when writing male characters because I have a hard enough time grasping female thought processes without having the added struggle of pausing and asking myself: "What would a guy do in this situation?"
Female characters are different, mostly I try to keep their emotional responses fairly normal because I had a tendancy when I was younger to have my heroines have huge moodswings and thus my stories would read like a soap opera and bad writing than an actual story. It was unbelievable and continues to make me cringe to this day. But this time I am detemined to get my characters right.
The book I'm reading to help me along with that is the Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing A Novel. Yeah, I know. Some of it is vaguely helpful but as for the rest... I'm not entirely sure yet. I haven't been a big believer in how good my writing is and so far I've hit another slump in regards to where my story is going but that's more of a pacing issue than anything else? How quickly should I start to get into the story. How many chapters should I wait before I bring in the main point? Those sorts of things. But I guess I need to write a bit more in order to flesh things out. And work on that whole "show not tell" aspect of writing that sometimes eludes me.
In any case, enough procrastinating on the story writing!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Been Travelling the Universe
Or rather I'm just a super lazy blog updater. Seriously, my lj barely gets updated nowadays. Mostly I'm a facebook hussy, I am on occasion prone to updating my status' more than is socially appropriate. Although, I do draw the line on updating from where I am located, no one wants to know that I'm standing in a queue for KFC or whatever.
Technically this blog was supposed to be about my journey into writing my novel. Sadly, the novel that I had planned (and which I was running a vague idea on) has been put on the very tall pile of ideas for later use. Most of these ideas are for my historical fantasy of werewolves which perhaps fortunately have not come to fruition. The market for paranormal romance is still running strong but seems to have taken a markedly strange turn into the fallen angels angle. But as an update apparently there is a zombie romance novel. I'm not going to try and think how it works. (Iago: "Braiinnzzz." Katerina: "Oh Iago, you are the one for me!").
The thing that mostly stopped me however, the massive case of writers block aside, was the fact that I got a bit too caught up in WoW. But now that I have briefly recovered from my intense addiction to said game - mainly due to most of the people I was friends with disappearing - I am now working my way back into writing again. So my goal is to try for 150 words every day or two until I've reached the level of inspiration that I had a few years ago where I could write 1500 words in an hour or so. The funny thing is, I actually had no real interest in knuckling down no matter how much I told myself I wanted to until I talked to one of my WoW buddies recently.
So now I've started making a plan, which is something I never really did for my writing. I've gotten down my ideas and characters and I've finally started writing. I don't particularly want to say much about it besides the fact that it's mostly modern fantasy and that people close to me won't even see it until I've written at least fifty pages. Mostly because I want to have written down something that long or substantial, to prove to myself mostly that I do still want to be a writer and that this is what I want to do for a living. I have tossed up the idea of having more than one of my friends reading over it though so I can get varied feedback that should help.
I also started reading again which is something else I sorely neglected. Finished about seven - eight books so far in a couple of months which is a lot more than what I was reading before. Mainly fantasy of course, one of them is an Australian author as well that I gave a second chance after buying the series on a whim.
Essentially, I am more or less going to try to come back so I can update more regularly on my progress like I originally planned to do.
Word Count: 547
Technically this blog was supposed to be about my journey into writing my novel. Sadly, the novel that I had planned (and which I was running a vague idea on) has been put on the very tall pile of ideas for later use. Most of these ideas are for my historical fantasy of werewolves which perhaps fortunately have not come to fruition. The market for paranormal romance is still running strong but seems to have taken a markedly strange turn into the fallen angels angle. But as an update apparently there is a zombie romance novel. I'm not going to try and think how it works. (Iago: "Braiinnzzz." Katerina: "Oh Iago, you are the one for me!").
The thing that mostly stopped me however, the massive case of writers block aside, was the fact that I got a bit too caught up in WoW. But now that I have briefly recovered from my intense addiction to said game - mainly due to most of the people I was friends with disappearing - I am now working my way back into writing again. So my goal is to try for 150 words every day or two until I've reached the level of inspiration that I had a few years ago where I could write 1500 words in an hour or so. The funny thing is, I actually had no real interest in knuckling down no matter how much I told myself I wanted to until I talked to one of my WoW buddies recently.
So now I've started making a plan, which is something I never really did for my writing. I've gotten down my ideas and characters and I've finally started writing. I don't particularly want to say much about it besides the fact that it's mostly modern fantasy and that people close to me won't even see it until I've written at least fifty pages. Mostly because I want to have written down something that long or substantial, to prove to myself mostly that I do still want to be a writer and that this is what I want to do for a living. I have tossed up the idea of having more than one of my friends reading over it though so I can get varied feedback that should help.
I also started reading again which is something else I sorely neglected. Finished about seven - eight books so far in a couple of months which is a lot more than what I was reading before. Mainly fantasy of course, one of them is an Australian author as well that I gave a second chance after buying the series on a whim.
Essentially, I am more or less going to try to come back so I can update more regularly on my progress like I originally planned to do.
Word Count: 547
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