Category Archives: Ideas

Megaladon on My Mind

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been thinking about monsters lately.

My worlds are not bereft of monsters. There are the traditional, otherworldly creatures made of the gathered parts of various “real” creatures, ancient beasts and the “modern” monster of man varying from the calculating manipulator to the chaotic motiveless evil.

I’ve always held with the belief that motiveless evil, that for evil’s sake is the absolute worst kind. You can’t defend against it, you can’t predict it. It will get you. When we understand the motives of a being, villains become less an iconic object d’arte and more human. They have fears, wants, loves and desires. These are the items that make villains endearing or even worse, not villains at all.

So the eight-foot tall jaws of a megalodon have gone up for sale and I find myself thinking what was it like to be that big? What did you do at that size? Eating is a priority, small spaces a pain, the life of yourself and others like you depend on food so much that whole colonies of small food could be downed by you in an instant.

Evil? No. But it makes me wonder about giants. Mythical humanoids that tower over our imaginations. How could they live with crops so small? If they could live with Dinos and Mega monsters, were they just simple creatures easy to kill?

In mythology, giants are usually aspects of forces of nature, earthquakes, blizzards and ice storms, tornados, and floods. They are insurmountable beings that cannot be stopped or cowed.

But evil then?

Creating Religion

Posted on by
Reply

The current book I’m working on deals with the religion in the world I’ve built. Creating a religion for a fantasy is a doubled edged as uni-climate planets and universal languages. Most authors force the entire world to believe the same.

First, I settled on a one religion with many regional parts. There are countries who as a whole do not subscribe to the belief and others that take parts more serious than others. Some of this is regional and some governmental.

The first step is to ask what do these people worship and why. What do they provide? What does the infrastructure provide and why?

In a fantasy world, magic tends to interfere with religion. Whether it is part of the religion, despised by the religion or just separate comes into play. I choose to have the magic interweave with the religion, which poses its own set of problems.

How much is for the people? What isn’t for the people?

In this book, I’m using religion as a haven. The main character wants to part of it but her duties are keeping her from it. It’s about agreeing to lose something for the greater good and what drives you to that.

Every swear, ritual and myth that I work into the story goes into the file. I’m not sure it’s clear all the way through. What pertains to the story and what is relevant back-story is a puzzle that I’m trying to fit into the plot.

Belief is a tricky thing.

CPGO – Step 5: Plot Sketch

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve said good-bye to BiaM and You Can Write a Novel. Smith’s book will be back when I get to the revision stage. BiaM has a little influence in what’s coming next and will have a say when I get to scenes. Then that is it. BiaM encourages outlining while writing for the rest of the book.

Step 5 is the Plot Sketch. The setting sketch was a list of settings in order of appearance with a description of the story at this place, the time period, season and about how many chapters I think it will take to write out the descriptions (which I’m usually wrong about but hey, it’s a starting place).

Now I have this snapshot of a plot, it is time to answer some questions about the plot. I create a new note called Plot Sketch in yWriter.

FDi30D called the Plot Sketch the list of the elements of the story. In all the books, the elements of the story come up. These are the Hero’s Journey, and Story in 3 Acts, Action/Reaction, Quest, Mini Climax, Black Moment, Climax, Denouement and combinations of all of these. The Plot Sketch asks questions about all of these things.

I really like Alicia Rasley’s article, Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes. Here’s a list of questions and answering them gives you a better picture of your plot. So first thing first, I answer her questions about Between Kingdoms. This covers the main character’s motivation and goals. Once I have that down I fill out FDi30D Plot Sketch.

The Plot Sketch starts with the goal and has you identify romance, subplots, conflict, resolution, downtime, black moment and resolution. I now have character motivations and an overview of the plot.

BiaM has two sheets similar to this, the Story Idea Map and the VBIAM Plot Check Sheet. I find the Story Idea Map redundant at this point. The Plot Check Sheet is sectioned off by things that happen in the story and who is there and does it advance the plot. I might come back to this for the revision but for now, I just put it aside.

Next we get down to the meaty part of the operation, scenes.

Originally posted at http://michellejnorton.com

A writer or an artist?

Posted on by
1

Throughout my school career, I loved art. In fact, when I graduated high school, I enrolled in the Colorado Institute of Art for Computer Animation – which is how I ended up here in Denver. I thought at the time that my art was my life, but I soon learned that I was not an “artist.” I didn’t have the right type of thinking to really fit in with the hard-core “artists” around me.

Disheartened, I quit school, and felt very much like a drifter for a few years. I refused to pick up pencil or paintbrush and consequently forgot quite a bit of what I’d learned.

Then, one day, my mother sent something to me. It was a book on writing that some well-meaning relative had given me for my sixth birthday. I looked over the pages and the memories came flooding back. I used to write. Not just as a six-year-old, but well into my high school years. I had given it up to concentrate on my art.

So here I am now, a writer, and happy for it. However, my love of drawing never really went away. I still do it, but I am more cautious; I call my drawings “doodles” and no more than that.

Still, it’s a great deal of fun to combine my writing with my doodling. I like to draw the characters I write about. See, this is what s/he looks like!

I’ve done several doodles for the manuscript I’m currently working on, “Blue Tiger.” I’ve attached the latest one.

How many of us are creative in more ways than one?

Jestler, drawn by Rachel DuChene

Peer Pressure Writing Night and the Demonwich

Posted on by
1

Peer Pressure Writing Night is something I look forward to every week. A small group of us meet up Thursday nights at the River Point Panera and . . . well, we may not get a lot of writing done, but we sure do laugh a lot.

One week gave birth to the “demonwich.” It happened by way of Jeff’s submission for the critique group that week, which was in plain text. When a couple of us opened the file in MS Word, some of the formatting was kludgy – it happens. Not a big deal. But Robin got a kick out of a line that had the words “demon” and “which” separated by a dash and no spaces, resulting in “demon-which.” While the SS Pickle sailed around our table (crafted out of a dill quarter for the boat, a couple of toothpicks for masts, and a torn-up napkin for sails by Kathleen), we laughed at the idea of a demon sandwich, complete, as Ariel put in, with a pitchfork in place of those decorative toothpicks.

Writers are a wonderful group of people. We all have our quirks, and many of us are either too shy or too loud, but we love the process of creation. Sometimes, the best kind of creation comes out of a spontaneous group brainstorm that has us laughing through the whole meeting. I urge any writer to join us; you’ll find yourself refreshed and motivated by like-minded people.

And besides. There’s a sale on demonwiches.

demonwich