WIP Almost Done!

You know you're typing too fast when you try to type the word nausea and Microsoft Word changes it to Nashua. But I'm so excited to finish my WIP. I'm at the final chapters, and thanks to everyone who gave me great advice on endings, I've got the story all mapped out.

I even have a list of agents I'm going to query. And don't worry, I'll keep you all updated on that front as well.

I have three beta readers that have agreed to read the entire thing, and I'm also working on edits as I finish. Today I axed all of the "justs" and "she thought/she realized".

For example:

"She realized she would never see him again."

It's much better if you say, "She would never see him again." It's implied that she realized it, especially if the chapter is written in her POV.

Tomorrow I'm going after all of the "was's" and "thats".

I'll be on a reduced posting schedule until I finish. But I'll keep you all updated.

How to Write a Satisfying Conclusion

As I approach the end of my WIP, I wonder how to conclude everything in order for every reader to feel satisfied. My question to you is, what constitutes a great ending, an ending where you feel the book is complete? How many of you out there like happy endings?

Here are some of the points I'm working toward:

1. Tying up all the loose plot ends.

2. Making sure each character is accounted for!
a. Who gets a happy ending.
b. Who gets what's coming to them.
c. Finding out what happened to that guy they met for two minutes at the bar.

3. Creating a big climax/battle scene.
a. Laser fights
b. Surprise death of a main character (maybe)
c. Almost impossible rescue mission


What else? What am I missing?

Passionate Characters

Today I played flute at a memorial service for a woman who'd passed away rather young because of cancer. One of the speakers during the service said people were drawn to her, not because she was beautiful, or because she was intelligent, it was because she was passionate about life. She loved animals, the environment, music, the arts.

Something clicked in my thoughts as I listened. To make our characters come to life and draw our readers in, they have to be passionate about something. So I leave you with this question:

What are your main characters passionate about?

My MC in Desert Nomad is passionate about freedom and choice. Her nemesis is passionate about his duties and the mission, and her love interest is passionate about finding a place to relocate the people suffering on the space station.

Stealing the Show

Credit for Picture

*First of all, the winner of Pitch Black is Theresa Milstein-Congrats! I'll be sending you an email*

What do you do if your secondary characters are developing so nicely that they are stealing the show from the MC's?!

I'm right in the middle of my WIP (49,000 words) and I needed sub plots to keep my story going. That's all fine and good, but my characters from my subplots are taking over. I love how they have so many flaws, because I tried to make them not as likeable as the MCs. But their flaws have made them more interesting and given them more room to grow, and they are turning into better people and learning from their mistakes! Imagine that?

So, has this happened to you in your books? How can I make my MC take the stage back again?

WIP Wednesday! Help me with my first page?

Okay. I'm going to be brave and post my first page of my WIP. (Which is now at 45,513 words *applause for me*) I was inspired by the first page blogfest last week, and I know you guys will tell me how it is and not in a mean way, right? *cringes*

Here it is:

Desert Nomad
Chapter 1
Descent

The escape pod hurtled through space as if it fled the event horizon of a dying star. Aries clutched the handlebars of her seat, her sweaty palms slipping on the cold metal. She could feel freedom flowing all around her and inside her as well, coursing through her veins like she drank liquid fire.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she hollered, her voice resonating inside the small compartment. The primal call released raging emotions held back from years of silence. Many times she thought she’d implode from the pressure, but instead she schemed, plotting the day of her departure down to the last water bottle. As the spell dissipated, she opened her eyes and peered up at the stars as they blurred into streaks of shimmering light.

She’d have at least three hours before the ceremony ended, and they came looking for her. Her shipmates would check her cell first and then activate her locator. When they realized that she wasn’t on board, they’d stop the ship and count the escape pods. By then, the Ark would be a parsec away.

Aries wondered if they’d come back. Giddiness bubbled in her throat with the thought of the ship coursing away without her. But she knew better. They’d turned the Ark around before, and knowing Lieutenant Barliss, he’d have it no other way.

The orange hulk of Sahara 354 claimed the horizon like a distant dream. Her eyes soaked in the sight of the small, forgotten planet, like the first time she laid her eyes upon pictures of old Earth. Although it was a bleak desert, inhabited by lizards and other primal homo sapiens, to Aries it was a haven. Her own ceremony loomed a month away. Guilt seeped in, and Aries swallowed it back. Feeling sorry for those closed-minded pragmatists would only bog her down. Besides, they never asked her what she wanted.

Blue and red lights flashed on the panel in front of her, warning her of the change in trajectory as the pod entered the planet’s pull of gravity. Aries shut off the main thrusters and allowed the vessel to be pulled into orbit. She glided in space, figuring new coordinates for her entry into the atmosphere. Completing a full scan of the surface, she searched for any signs of resources or life. Although she had enough food and water for days, it would be useless if no further sustenance could be found.

Time ticked away, seconds that she knew she didn’t have. The Ark traveled much faster than an escape pod, and she needed time to fake her own death and disappear. But Sahara 354 was a vast wasteland with small pockets of water and plant life. If she didn’t choose her landing spot wisely, she’d be plummeting to her own demise.

WIP Wednesday-word counts

I'm up to 40,000 words in Desert Nomad. *phew* But the greatest thing that happened was yesterday when I outlined the entire rest of the story! I'm shooting for 75,000 words. My last manuscript was rejected by an agent for being too short: 64,000. She said, "I love this premise, but it's too short." *headdesk*

If I'm writing a science fiction space opera, for adults (primarily women-like women's fiction). How long should it be? Will 75,000 be long enough?

The first book I ever wrote turned out to be 116,000-way to long, and since then I've been so concise that I always end up a little short. Word count plagues me as I write. I keep a list of every chapter and how many words each one amounts to. I want to reach novel length, but I don't want to bore people with extraneous information.

What word count are you aiming for?

Juggling Multiple Writing Projects

Credit for Picture:
www.shadowscapes.com

Klo recently asked me in the comments if I have a hard time juggling more than one writing project at a time.

The answer is no! In fact, I need to have several projects going on to keep me on my feet. I usually have 1 major WIP, and then a few shorts to keep my writing fresh. Sometimes I get stuck on my WIP and need time away from it to think things over, and I want to get to my 1k word count for that day, so I work on something else.

How do I do it?

* I keep lists next to my computer. Whether it be word building lists, chapter lists, POV lists, whatever to keep the characters, setting, and plot straight.

* I always read the previous day's writing before going on to submerse myself into the world.

* I always have the next chapter or event planned out in my head before going on. I do this while driving to my ridiculously far away job at the University or while folding laundry :)

Thanks, Klo for asking! Who has multiple projects going? How do you keep things straight?

W.I.P. Wednesday

The winner of Mindflights Issue #5 is Michelle! Congrats Michelle! I've sent your email over to Angie and she'll be in touch with you concerning your prize.

Now, as for my WIP, Desert Nomad, I'm at 35,000. Not much more than last week, but that's because I worked on two short stories this week. And I'm taking the WIP slow this time, perfecting every sentence for those agents :) It's a new tactic and you'll have to stay tuned to see if it works.

The two short stories that I finished are Malicifer, for the Sword and Sorceress Anthology


and Lion's Heart



A story I wrote for my friend's new publication Hazard Cats. Everyone should take a look and consider writing something. The only criteria is that it has to be about cats.

With this story I tried to write outside my comfort zone. For the first time in my writing life, my setting is Africa and the POV is a male warrior. I had a lot of fun imagining the bush and researching plants and animals in Africa.

Have you written outside your comfort zone? What was it?

The Color Green

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'm going to do a post on the color green. As a fantasy writer, I tend to use other words to describe the color green because the word "green" seems so ordinary.

Here are some of my substitutes for green:

* Emerald (this one is my favorite!) "Emerald eyes..."
* Olive
* Lime
* Jade

And then their are words I put in front of green to provoke a certain image:

* Sea green
* Forest green
* Jungle Green
* Camouflage green
* Moss green
* Shamrock green

Then there's the blue green word that I love:

*Teal

And for those word collectors out there, here's one that I'd never heard of until today:

* Celadon (Which is a pale tint of spring green)

What color words do you use for your writing? Any other green ones that I missed?

Character Names

This is one of my favorite parts of writing: naming characters in my stories and novels. I try to find names that go with the theme of the short story, or with the personality of that particular character.

In my Atlantis story I came up with sea/water names:

Baltic (named after the Baltic Sea)
Caspain (named after the Caspian Sea)
Marina (place where you store boats)

In my Mesopotomian Winter Solstice story I came up with old names from that region:
Tigris (named after a river in Mesopotomia)
Syria (named after a place in that region)
Basra (named after a place in that region)

In my current work in progress I tried for sci fi names and short and blunt pirate names:
Aries (named after a constellation)
Striker the space pirate (named for his ability to strike anytime/anywhere!)
Tiff the tough pirate girl (named after another word for a petty quarrel)

How do you come up with your character names? What is your favorite character name you've made up?

Writing Inspiration

A lot of people have been asking me where I get my pictures for the covers of my books and short stories. I spend a lot of time on Dreamstime.com in the fantasy category looking through images for my writing. I'm lucky enough to have publishers (Gypsy Shadow Publishing, SynergEbooks) that accept my own pictures. (Lyrical Press does their own covers, but they are so beautiful that I won't complain).

Sometimes I even find an image and then write the story about it! This is what happened with my short story Night Dance. Something about the image inspires a story out of me. Now, it's not every image that I see, only certain ones, like the picture above. What do you think her story is? What inspires you to write?

Progress on Desert Nomad

desert nomad by ~salamandersoup on deviantART

I'm now up to 20,146 words. I'm taking my time with this novel, making every sentence shine. There are absolutely no was's had's or adverbs to be found! I plan to send this novel to agents. Yes, scary as it might sound, I'm going to try to break out of my ebook reign and feel the heat and sting of rejection. It was one of my New Year's resolutions. I'm not rushing it because I find that if I take my time thinking about the plot and the characters, the story develops with much more depth. If I write fast, all I write is crapola.

My question to you is: What would you expect from a sci fi book titled Desert Nomad? What comes to mind? Dune? Luke's home planet of Tatooine? Stargate?

So many stories combine the sci fi with the desert!!! What did you like about them? What drew you in?

I wrote that?

It's not official yet, but I believe that I'll have a print contract for The Voices of Ire, my debut fantasy novel written four years ago. It was an ebook for awhile, but the company went out of business before it went to print, and so I left it on the back burner and started new projects. I've finished two other books and a number of short stories since then and my writing has morphed so much that I can hardly tell I wrote some of those passages at all!

Now I had to rewrite the whole thing!! Not from scratch, but enough to make it the same quality as the other projects I have out there. It took approx. twenty hours, a lot of coffee, and sour apple candies! I thought I'd share with you how my writing has changed, and then you can share with me your own stories of when you looked back!

#1. Passive voice was everywhere!

Here's a direct quote from the old Aubrie, "The ground had become uneven, and Fiona had to use her walking stick to remain steady, jumping over crevices and sliding across slates of granite."

And here's the new rewritten sentence, "The ground became uneven, and Fiona used her walking stick to steady herself, jumping over crevices and sliding across slates of granite."

I can't believe I used so much "was,were,had". Horrible, just horrible. My editor from Lyrical Press would be all over that. (Hi Stef!)

#2. Point of View changed all the time.

Epic fantasy novels are typically written through a lot of points of view, but my pov's changed right in the middle of a passage all the time. I had to go through entire scenes and choose whose point of view to keep and whose to keep quiet! I lost a lot of good sentences in there in the rewrites, but it's just not possible to allow everyone to think out loud all the time. If I really wanted to keep something, I had to have them say it.

#3. I loved loved loved adverbs! Why, I don't know? But I had so many interestingly's and suddenly's that I had to take a machete to the screen and chop chop chop away. I understand now why adverbs don't read as well. Why I didn't see it then? I'm not sure.

Now, all of you out there that had the courage to go travel back to the dark ages of your own writing, what have you found? What did you used to do? What has improved?

What I've learned so far from "The Fire in Fiction" by Donald Maass

Okay, this was one of the books that I bought with my Christmas B&N gift card and I'm about half way through. So far, it's a big help, as much a help as his other book, "Writing the Breakout Novel." I've decided to post interesting tid bits from the book as I go on reading it.

The most helpful advice for me, so far, is that every chapter must have a turning point: both an outer turning point in the plot/events, and an inner turning point in the character's motivations. Now, the outer turning point is the easier one for me, it's the inner turning point that's hard to pin down. Both turning points should relate to each other, such as: the outer turning point changes the characters POV and causes he/she to think/act a certain way.

Very helpful advice.

I've been constructing my scenes with a main purpose in mind and going from there. I find I have much more focus and can write faster when I know exactly where I'm going and why. Also, it helps me identify the inner struggle that each character faces and whose POV to write the scene in.

What do you think of this advice? Do you have turning points to every chapter?

NaNoWriMo!

This year I'm going to be a part of National Novel Writing Month! It's when you try to write a novel/50,000 in one month! I know it sounds crazy, but with an official website and the support of your peers, people really do pull it off. Once you've sweated out 50,000 words, you can polish the novel until it shines. At least you have the words plunked out and actual paragraphs and chapters to work with.

It's a great idea.

My novel for NaNoWriMo is titled, "Desert Nomad". I'm currently working on the outline and blurb, but I know its going to be a science fiction/fantasy story about a woman who crash lands her escape pod on a remote desert planet. There's going to be sand pirates, desert worms, and of course a romantic interest along the lines of a Madmax type of male character.

Who else is going to brave the trenches of NaNoWriMo? If you are, please friend me: My username is authoraubrie. What kind of novel are you planning to write?

First Lines: The Hook

The first line of any novel is the most important line in the book! It sets the mood, establishes a character, narrator, or setting, and should compel the reading to keep reading. It sums up the book in one line, and also sets up expectations of what is to come. It is like the first notes of a symphony.

One of my favorite first lines in literature is:

Pride and Prejudice, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

I thought I'd also share the first lines in my books:

from Dreams of Beauty:
Although Emme had never met him, his face appeared every night in her dreams.

and I'm currently tweaking my first line for Messenger in the Mist:
It wasn’t the thought of the countless spindly legs that frightened Star, it was the idea of being carried away into the mist to a place that no one had ever returned.

What are your favorite first lines in literature?