One More Week to Halloween

Journal 106 8-22 October 2023

I almost skipped writing this today, then I reminded myself that I skipped last week and I’ve never skipped two weeks in a row. Hell, I went over two years before I ever skipped a single week at all.

I’m still a little mad at myself for working in skipped weeks over the last few months.

There isn’t a topic today either.

So, what non-sense will I talk about today? I guess I could report what I’ve accomplished over the last two weeks. It’s not as much as I would like but it is something… I could talk about various media consumption (movies, k-dramas, and comics)… I could touch on life in general… but sometimes I think that might be too personal.

I don’t know what is going to come out of me over the rest of this page. But I promise I’ll give you at least a thousand words of it.

Revision and Writing

I’ve revised… more hunted typos, cut down a few sentences, and made notes about future parts of the book that need to be fixed, over the course of the first six chapters.

Once again, I feel the beginning of the book feels (sounds?) like a different book than the end of the book. It is so weird due the amount of time that passed between the start and end of the manuscript.

I’m shaking my head at several things. Such as one character randomly switching from wielding a war hammer to having a sword… and I believe at one point that sword is a curved blade, but later it’s a straight blade. Ha. That is some rookie mistake shit right there and it amuses me that I made it.

Or I could be wrong… maybe there is a part of the story I forgot where he loses the hammer and picks up a sword. I’ll find out as I continue.

On the other side of things, I think my notes and outlining is going really well. I haven’t started the actual chapter outline yet. But I have made some loose flow charts of how the chapters might be laid out.

I’ve instead been concentrating on the background stories and histories of the various characters. I don’t know if I ever brought this up in a previous post?

Character Histories & Side Stories

I find it really helpful if I have an over abundance of information on a character before I start writing them….

Though to be very honest I often make up characters on the spot, or start working on lesser characters while I’m writing and they suddenly become favorites. The characters also change a lot as I “get to know them.”

And this “getting to know them” is part of what I’m doing in my outline.

I find if you map a character’s history, and more importantly follow side threads, you’ll have a richer understanding of that character. Plus, all of those side threads add tons of more world building.

For example: I wanted to do the background of a character and mention some of her living relatives. But in order to get context to who those relatives are I had to think of the government, religion, and culture of her people.

My notes look like:

One paragraph about the character’s childhood that mentions her father and a historical event.

Two-three paragraphs talking about the historical event.

One paragraph on the cultural relevance of that event.

Three paragraphs exploring the nature of senate and how the government of the city works.

Back to the main character, then her father’s name and four other members of the family. So on and so forth.

None of these facts may ever be mentioned in the novel. I might not even drop her father’s name at all. But I now understand how these events shaped her childhood, her city, her culture… how she will act.

Icebergs

I feel Icebergs might be hubris, I don’t quite have that much under the surface. But the analogy is very good. My main characters tend to have a ton of information written about them, and yet I always feel it’s not enough.

Oh, Confession Time!

I FEEL that what I really should be doing is writing my characters into shorts or novellas first. Like I need to take X character and write 2-3 stories with them in it. And the reason for this is find they grow, change, and I understand them better after I write them several times.

Dropping new characters into a novel, even with all the work I put into their pasts, and world building just aren’t ripe yet.

Characters

Take Keegan and Slater, I wrote those characters in a novelette, a short, a full-length novel and the beginning of another novel… BEFORE I wrote my thesis novel, The Ashlands. In the last three books I wrote I knew who they were, they are much better in these invasion books. I don’t need to be so overwrought with their horrible back stories and everything. It has become incorporated into their characters.

At the same time, I then look at Desi and Errick in the Ashlands and then in the most recent book.

In the former they were background characters and Desi was a total antagonist. If I’m being honest her role was “horrible bitch”… though there is an exchange early in the book that proves her dynamic with Caitlyn is far more nuanced and complex. In the recent book, she’s grown to such an extent that she’s a hero. She’s fun, she’s interesting and I understand a lot more about who she is and where she came from.

See, I never did the ‘iceberg’ with Desi. I knew some of her background. Why she acted the way she did was just a single sentence. But now in my head there are paragraphs where I know her history. I can see the events that created her.

It’s a thought…

Maybe some decent advice that certainly no one has ever suggested to me…?

To clarify, it HAS BEEN said many times to just write things every day. Even if its garbage that you throw out or its just a thought exercise. It hasn’t been put into this context for me.

My advice, before writing that novel, take your main characters (and many of your secondary) and maybe write a short story about an event in their lives before the novel takes place.

Write something that shows an event, shows how they handle it, why they handle, what they think. Make sure the piece has dialogue in it so you can work on the character’s voice and mannerisms.

Consider writing something larger, longer, and purely to toss aside as work just to get ready for the novel.

Now, I’m not saying burn or delete that earlier story. I think coming back to it after the novel and having and even deeper understanding of the character you could then fix that shorter work. Almost like a loop; write the side pieces to bring the character to life, write the novel to firmly establish the character, then use those side projects for shorts or extra novel fodder.

It’s a thought.

Media Consumption

I’m actually surprised that a topic came out of me… just out of nowhere. Sometimes I appreciate my mind and its ability to create story or topics out of nothing.

I’m well over a thousand words, but I figure I should at least mention that it is my favorite month, October. I haven’t been hitting the horror movies as hard as I usually try to (mostly because I watch them year-round and I’ve seen them so many times).

I did get a few new ones in though. I watched Renfield and Terrifier 2 and enjoyed both a lot. And I’ve worked through all of the Friday the 13ths and Halloween movies (or at least the ones I like to rewatch).

There is a link to my Letterboxd account on the side bar if you’re really interested in seeing all the garbage I watch. (At least movies, it doesn’t track TV though it does have a large number of Dramas and cable tv shows).

Other media, I’m still falling behind in my comics, mostly because I need to put away and sort a whole box of them and I really don’t want to do that.

Enough is enough

I think I’m losing steam. I got my new Covid shot a couple days ago and still feel somewhat meh. And some personal things are weighing me down, I want to curl up with a good book and a horror movie so, let me leave you here.

Next weekend is the Halloween weekend and I don’t know if I will post or skip. We will see that happens. I’m chipping away at my projects a little each time, and I hope that all of you are accomplishing your goals as well.

Please keep at it and thank you for reading.