Week 7 4-10 Jan 2021

May you live in interesting times

Chinese curse…

Probably a silly way to intro this post… I know but last week was historical, and it was a total shitshow… I know this is meant to be a blog post about my writing and my thesis class and all of that, and I promise I will get on topic. But you can’t just report on a week without acknowledging that a lot has happened during it and is still happening as I write this. (And more things will have happened after this goes live).

But I digress…

Revision:

Well, I said it last week… I’ve turned in the first 80k of the novel for my teacher to review… and the last 110k of my novel is not getting workshopped or reviewed. So, I know that the last half of my book is weaker than the first half…

I mean, it hasn’t had as much input and feedback, so I FEEL like it is weaker. But, I started the first half of the novel over 2 years ago in my Undergrad, and as far as I’m concerned, your writing is always improving. Meaning that in the latter half of my book I had a better grasp of my characters and where I was going.

But that all said… without being able to workshop the latter half of my book I’m at a loss for what else to do with it.

Done?

Do I have a finished manuscript? Well, yes… I’m just doing that thing where I think everything I’ve written is just crap. You know, being a writer. Almost every writer I know thinks they suck, or at the least thinks that there are things that can be improved. I can only think of a handful of people who actually think they create gold right out the gate… and to be honest they are very wrong about that.

Now, in the last update I said I had finished compiling the manuscript and that it was as good as done. It’s at the point where I am willing to think about submitting it. (Though of course I await my Profs feedback on my opening chapters, and will do another round of revisions on the first 80k, then it will truly be ready for the Agent hunt and beyond).

Feels like you’re Padding this Post?

Yeah… so go back to the first paragraph… and know that I did not write a single word all week. Hell, I didn’t even read comics or anything else for that matter. My week was literally spent working and doom-scrolling through my twitter feed trying to get more information or retweeting people to keep the information flowing.

I really have nothing to write here.

There was zero work done on the manuscript, and last update I said I was going to start my character work for the outlines of the rest of the series. I guess I could talk about what that entails?

Character and World-Building

The Thesis novel is meant to be a prequel to a series, though with the way I worked the ending it comes across more as a book 1 rather than a book 0. It ends with a lot of information revealed and with all of the characters saying they have new business.

“New Business?” That is a rather silly way of segueing into Wants and Conflict. Every character in my novels (main cast and secondary) all have wants and goals. Some of them are small some of them are grand, but the point is that they all have needs and they all want to get to something. The Need/Want is what drives the characters, whereas their past experiences color HOW they try to achieve that goal. The Conflict is in what keeps them from attaining their goal and what they are willing, or unwilling, to do for that goal.

Goals in the Thesis

My thesis was told around five individuals who each had an over riding goal. These five individuals also had supporting cast and secondary characters that also had goals. The whole novel revolved around these five people (and secondaries) all heading toward the same place.

Each of them achieved their goals to various levels of success, or learned that they in fact wanted something totally different. In the conclusion one character was mostly dead (inside joke), two of the sperate main characters had joined forces to create a new team, one character had completely redeemed themselves and found a new calling, and the last main character had matured and wanted to rush back to the responsibilities they had abandoned.

So, the novel ends with all of these characters being lead away from a dangerous place, together for now, but with them separating at a later time between books.

The Structure of the Series to Follow:

I have mapped out a five-part series in multiple story arcs.

There is the main arc that links all of the stories, a war/invasion that is happening during all five novels. Also, there is an arc for the newly teamed up characters from the Thesis as they try to thwart a mad god who is setting everything up.

Each novel then has its own internal story that is happening WHILE the war and other such is happening.

To be honest, reading those three paragraphs makes it sound very confusing, I think… I mean, I hope it’s not, but I fear that it is. I had to make a chart to see the pattern of the story and once I did that it all made sense to me. I’m not about to share that at the moment.

I think I have actually digressed further off the main topic…

Getting back to the point

I was talking about characters and their wants and how I kind of just end the thesis with my characters transitioning from their original goal (which was mostly achieved, to various levels in each of the characters) to new goals.

I only brought all of this up because I was supposed to spend the week creating the new characters and revising the old characters for the first book of the new series. And going back to my intro paragraphs, I did NOTHING last week.

Except….

I did school work. I revised my Resume and updated this website a little and had to submit them to my teacher. I also got feed back on my synopsis, back cover text, and query letter and did intend to make changes to those documents… so I guess that’s work I will do this week.

I have a single journal entry to write for my class which will probably be done before this goes live on Monday morning, so no excuses for the week.

I actually managed to make this post longer than expected. That’s what happens when I start to ramble about writing. It just keeps on going.

Hopes

I hope that this post finds you all well. The handful of you that read every week and the dozen of you who get these in email. Thank you for the kindness in reading my thoughts and holding me accountable for posting and working.

Oh, I almost forgot… last week was not a total waste, I threw myself into painting again. So, I painted a bunch of minis, I don’t know if I can call it art but it is something I enjoy. I was very close to making this week’s post just have a bunch of pictures of what I painted and nothing else, but that wouldn’t be right. If you do want to see what I did, I do have an Instagram that is mostly for Custom Toys, Miniature Painting and models.

https://www.instagram.com/ariesgamingstudios/

And now, good bye, be kind to each other and try to stay healthy.