Tag-Archive for » projects «

15
Jul
2011

Bad Guys, the Truth and Clarity

By

I had a dream about one of my char­ac­ters once. It was a bad guy…uh…antagonist. Any­way, he just showed up in this dream where he had no place in being. He said and did some not so nice things and then strolled off into the mist of the dream world.

I woke up think­ing to myself: “Damn! If I could write the guy like that in the story, he’d be awe­some.” Too bad I could not, for the life of me, remem­ber the details of the encounter.

I recently read Eric S. Brown’s Big­foot War, and I just SO admired how he pulled that off. I can’t remem­ber who the other authors is, but there is some­one who has a grand old time killing off major char­ac­ters. Although ter­ri­bly frus­trat­ing — and some­times heart­break­ing — I admire any author who can do that suc­cess­fully. I find it impres­sive and some­thing I have a very dif­fi­cult time accom­plish­ing with any panache.

Bad Guy

Snidely Whiplash — Bad Guy

In writ­ing my antag­o­nists for this next novel, I wanted to “up the ante” a lit­tle. I want to see just how bad a per­son can be and still have the reader sort of sym­pa­thize with them. It’s another one of my goals. Make some­one so dark and mean and unfor­giv­ing that you can­not help but hate them; yet, still give them redeem­ing qual­i­ties wherein a reader feels that con­nec­tion, that sense of under­stand­ing of the person’s motives. It will be a tough task, but you gotta try, right?

I’ve heard a cou­ple of other authors talk about how much more they pre­fer to write their bad guys than their good guys. I can see where they’re com­ing from. It’s frick­ing fun! Let’s see how much we can tor­ture the pro­tag­o­nist. Let’s see how much they can take. In order to do that, though, you need an antag­o­nist who can dish it out as well as take it, too. There are always three sides to story: his, hers, and the truth. Pre­sent­ing those sides elo­quently, suc­cinctly and objec­tively can be a mon­u­men­tal task.

And, while I am on the sub­ject of “suc­cinctly”, I do not look for­ward to the edit­ing phase of this novel. I fully expect it to be well over 100K words and the trim­ming and cut­ting process is always painful. I am try­ing to get into the habit of doing it on the fly a lit­tle so that it will be eas­ier in the end. Another dif­fi­cult task. Espe­cially since I seem to write my best stuff in stream-of-consciousness spurts. Going back and edit­ing that kind of prose it truly a nightmare.

So, writ­ing bad guys, writ­ing all sides of the truth, and writ­ing suc­cinctly. Yep. Every­one one of them a chal­lenge for me.

What’s your biggest challenge(s) when writing?

Share
Category: Friday Writing  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,  One Comment
12
Jul
2011

Big Ol’ Writing Goals

By

Title_______________RED TOME

Sub-Title___________Book Two of The Progeny

Cur­rent Word Count__4,300

Goal Word Count____110,000

==========================================

It has begun!

It took me seven years to write my first novel, The Weight Of Night, a tale of demigods and gods, of love and loss and treach­ery and des­tiny. To be receiv­ing the won­der­ful reviews and rat­ings I have been receiv­ing is kind of over­whelm­ing! It gives me hope that I might just have a future at this writ­ing thing.

I’ve been a busy boy since TWoN was pub­lished, in Jan­u­ary 2011. I’ve co-founded an inde­pen­dent writ­ers’ co-op; I’ve released a few shorts for the Kin­dle; and, I’ve writ­ten and pub­lished a nov­el­ette of The Prog­eny called Trin­kets And Arrows. TAA is based upon TWoN in a way…it is Lily Abrams’ *ori­gin tale*, relat­ing how she first came to under­stand her role as a demigod and her first meet­ing with the Greek god of the sun and of prophecy, Apollo.

I have a cou­ple of other novelettes/novellas that take place in the world of the Prog­eny, but I knew I had to dive back in and con­tinue Alexis’ story.

In TWoN, Alexis spent most of the time try­ing to grasp who she truly was and what she might be capa­ble of; whereas, now, as she and Keats and Lily move into even more dan­ger­ous ter­ri­tory, she pretty much under­stands who she is. For bet­ter or worse. Alexis begins to real­ize that she has a lot of her mother, Nyx, in her than she would pre­fer, actu­ally. As her rela­tion­ship with Keats grows, she also has to deal with a level of emo­tion with which she is cer­tainly not famil­iar. This, of course, can only lead to trouble.

With Red Tome, the next book in the series, I have sev­eral goals in mind. Very spe­cific goals. Alexis and her expand­ing lev­els of emo­tion, her dif­fi­culty in deal­ing with them is one of those goals. We all expe­ri­ence a crazy level of emo­tion once we hit puberty, it’s called life. How­ever, with Alexis, once she hit puberty, her lev­els of emo­tion shifted in the oppo­site direc­tion, due to her her­itage. So how does one deal with such things? How does a beau­ti­ful girl, who real­izes that love is tak­ing hold in her heart, face the fact that she places that love in dan­ger every step she takes?

I have my work cut out for me, don’t I?

In future entries, here at The Green Room, I will talk about how things are going with the writ­ing of Red Tome, as well as dig into some other goals I have for the book (and the one after). So look for me to dig a lit­tle deeper into the psy­che of a writer, the depth of fic­tional char­ac­ters and the tra­vails of plot­ting a novel. Oh! FUN!

By the way, are you a writer? Have you ever set out spe­cific goals in your writ­ing? What were they? Did you accom­plish them? Did you even get around to attempt­ing them? I’d love to hear you thoughts on the subject!

Good writ­ing, my friends!

Share
Category: Fiction, Projects, Writing  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
10
Jun
2011

Trinkets and Arrows

By

After hav­ing been quite ill for the past two and a half weeks, I feel I am finally get­ting my bear­ings once again.

I’ve been work­ing with my part­ners on Dark Red Press and begin­ning to really build some­thing of that. It has been quite fun and I’ve been learn­ing a lot along the way!

As for my writ­ing, I had writ­ten an ori­gin story for one of the char­ac­ters in my novel The Weight Of Night, Lily Abrams. She’s a feisty lit­tle red­head with a dif­fi­cult back­story. After I had writ­ten it, I re-read it and real­ized that it was far too dis­tant for what I wanted. I needed the reader to see inside her head more, to under­stand the choices she makes and why, good or bad.

So, now I’m going through the process of rewrit­ing the story in first per­son. It has a greater feel of imme­di­acy now. You get to see Lily’s world through Lily’s eyes, which is a real treat for those who found her brusque per­son­al­ity so damned charm­ing in the novel.

Lily plays a much greater part in the next novel of the Prog­eny Series (slated for next year), but this lit­tle tale should keep read­ers’ appetites whet­ted for the com­ing adventures.

In addi­tion to Lily’s story, titled Trin­kets And Arrows, I’m in the process of revi­tal­iz­ing a story I wrote a few years back that is more of a para­nor­mal romance/thriller, but it cer­tainly isn’t your aver­age take on the sub­ject mat­ter. That story is Valence Of Infin­ity, and it should be com­ing out some­time later this year.

There is just so much to do and so lit­tle frick­ing time! You know what I mean?

Share
Category: Friday Writing, Projects  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
18
May
2011

Double Helix of Writing

By

What are you try­ing to do with your writing?

That was the ques­tion some­one asked me the other day. After almost 30 years of writ­ing every­thing from bad poetry to decent short sto­ries and novel­las to my first well-received novel… I was at a loss for words.

What the hell was I try­ing to do with my writing?

I had to think about that for a while. Was there a pur­pose? Was there a goal toward which I was dri­ving? Was there a moral I was try­ing to get across? Some greater theme that teth­ers all of my work like hydro­gen bonds in a DNA strand? Like a string of grade school kids tour­ing a museum?

No. Just. No.

Do I want to be the next Tol­story? Of course not. I don’t even want to be the next Mar­tin or Tolkien or even Hicks.

I just want to write a good story. What I want to do is to write a story that allows a reader to escape from their day-to-day life for a few hours. Truly, that is all. That is my goal. Those are the sto­ries that made me smile and cringe and gasp and curse when I was grow­ing up (and, to this very day). Those are the sto­ries that I have always wanted to write.

Should I have some deeper mean­ing embed­ded in my tale? Only if the tale war­rants it, I should think. I do have char­ac­ters whose lives are dom­i­nated by rash emo­tion, or tend to make poor deci­sions, or per­haps have a bit of a tem­per. Their sto­ries demand some per­spec­tive and there­fore present a web of greater mean­ing than at first per­ceived. But, those bits and pieces of “theme” and “moral­ity” sim­ply grow out of the char­ac­ters’ world. I’m just relat­ing it as best I can.

I cetainly don’t look for­ward to writ­ing the next great Amer­i­can novel. Not my thing. I’m an escapist at heart and — God will­ing — so are my readers.

I will con­tinue to do my best to write a good tale. Fun. Adven­ture­some. Excit­ing. Romantic.

You know… Fantasy!

I only want to help you escape your own world for a lit­tle while, to join me on the adven­ture my char­ac­ters are going through. Share in their laugh­ter, love, pain and excite­ment. That is escapism. Those things are the ties that bind a good tale. The end result is the DNA of a sto­ry­telling. The dou­ble helix of writing.

So, what are your writ­ing goals? Are you look­ing to write the “great Amer­i­can novel?” Are you look­ing to emu­late your hero(es)? To be the next Stephen King? The next Koontz? The next Bunch and Cole?

Or, are you like me?

Share
Category: Fiction, General Musings  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Leave a Comment
« Previous Entries