WiPpet Wednesday: Locked Up

It’s that time of the week again, that’s right, it’s WiPpet Wednesday. This week I’m sharing some more of the Autharium Project with you all. I really do need to come up with a new name for the story, one that I can actually use when I start searching for a cover artist and when it comes time to hit that publish button. After a week or so of making no progress I finally sat down yesterday and wrote almost an entire scene. That’s about 1,531 words for this particular scene. Now I’m not going to show you all of it, that would be silly. But I thought that I share with you the first part. I think I’ve done quite well with the world building here and the reader starts to see the kind of society that Kaya and her crew live in, or rather have escaped from.

To catch you up, Kaya has broken into Crown Haven’s dungeon, managed to make her way to Marrick and make her escape. It was all a trap though and the ‘lovely’ Arnoth Bay caught her and her crew and put them on trial before the Council of Elders. Understandably, as pirates, she and her crew were sentenced to hang until Bay stepped in and offered a deal; they get something for him and they take their chances fighting in the civil war plaguing the Empire. Kaya, naturally tells him no and now they’re stuck in the dungeon, arguing amongst themselves about what to do.

“We don’t even know what the Oracle looks like!” Keiran cried “It could be absolutely massive or the size of a thimble. It’s a death trap taking on this journey,”

“It’s a chance to live,” growled Carrock “A chance for us all to live and go back to our lives,”

“Go back to the front lines you mean,” Carter said, “Or did you miss the bit where Bay said we would be sent there as cross bow fodder should we succeed? We aren’t going to come out of this alive, whichever choice we make. Taking this mission is just postponing the inevitable,”

“At least on the front lines we know what we’re dealing with,” Cassie said, glaring at Carter “We have a chance there! We can fight and we can survive long enough for Bay to forget all about us,”

“You mean the men will have a chance to survive,” Carter said dryly “Or did you forget that women don’t have a place in the Empire’s military too? You won’t get to serve on the ships, you’ll serve at the ports, spreading your legs for whichever pathetic flier has enough silver to line your master’s pockets,”

The cells descended into shouting and yelling, much as it had done for the past two days. It was the eve of the hanging and Kaya had grown tired of the constant talk. Marrick was a little better, able to sit up by himself now but it made little difference, he would soon be swinging from the gallows just like the rest of them. Kaya watched as her crew grew more and more irate. These men and women were not made to be confined, to be locked up within four walls. They were meant to roam free, like the mountain eagles. The confinement, the constant threat of death and the promise that was dangled before them was so tempting but so dangerous, were all wearing thin on everyone’s nerves.

And then, right on cue, came the whistling and slow footsteps of Arnoth Bay, for the third time that day, the arguments died down into silence.

As always this is completely pure and unedited, exactly as I wrote it yesterday. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s there.

Is the world building nice and subtle enough? Is Carter being a bit too mean? Do all my characters sound the same (because that’s something I’m a little worried about)? What do you like about it? What do you hate about it?

Let me know down in the comments and keep an eye out on Friday for a new Series of posts that I’m starting.

WiPpet Wednesday: A Darker Side of the Heroine

Here we are, another Wednesday, another Work in Progress. I actually quite enjoy doing these to be honest, it’s nice to get some feedback from people regarding my writing, especially which characters they really like.

This week I’ve returned to the Autharium Project (that really needs a new title) and we take a visit to Crown Haven’s lovely neighbourhood dungeon. Captain Kaya has finally managed to track down the wayward Marrick (who you all loved last time) and they’ve gone to get him out of whatever trouble he’s in. Of course, being pirates, she and her crew haven’t exactly taken the front door. But when they get inside they begin to realise that all is not as it seems and it’s definitely going to be harder to get Marrick out than they expected and we begin to see a darker side of our heroine.

She rushed through and knelt by Marrick’s head, gently brushing the matted and bloody hair back from his face.

 His eyes were bruised and battered, one so purple and swollen that he could barely get it open. The skin had split, leaving a line of blood to trickle down one cheek and a oozing mass of black clotted blood filled the wound. His nose was swollen too, bent out of shape like it was broken. His lip was split down the middle and bruises covered his face. Some were yellow and green, telling the tale of strikes made days ago, others were purple and black, only hours old. Marrick tried to sit up, grabbing at Kaya’s hands but he was too weak, his body too damaged for him to be able to.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered quietly, his voice thick and rasping “It’s what he wanted.”

 “He doesn’t know I’m here,” Kaya whispered back, stroking her hand through his bloody hair

“We’ll get you out of here.”

“We’ll get you out of here.”

 She slowly climbed to her feet and rounded on Malcolm who had drawn closer as she had tended to her injured friend.

 “What did you do to him?!” she hissed.

 Malcolm didn’t answer, he was gazing at Marrick with shock on his face, the blood drained from his features leaving his skin an ashy white colour.

 “I didn’t do this,” he said slowly, horror in his voice as he shook his head “I had no idea things were this bad, I swear. Bay took him to a room, said he wanted to have a little chat. I didn’t know he was doing this to him.”

 “If I find out that you had any part in this…” she said. She suddenly reached for Malcolm and pulled him close, hissing in his face “I swear that I will kill every person that you love and make you watch,”

There we are. I hope that you like it. Is it mysterious enough for you? Do you want to know more about this Bay chappy? Are you getting the hint that Kaya and Marrick are more than good friends? (Hint: they are) Who is this strange Malcolm chap? Will they manage to get out? As usual let me know what you think in the comments below and please, don’t hold back.

What's Up Pussycat?

So I have been a busy little beaver lately. My freelance work is coming slowly but steadily and I have no complaints there, although there is the faint whispering in my mind that I really need to get a website up and running as well as a Facebook page sorted out. That’s something I did begin to do but I never finished so it’s on my To Do list. There’s a lot on my To Do list really. I also wish that I did have a little bit more business coming my way but I suppose that’s the perils of only using one website and not having my own form of advertising.

My planning the Autharium Project (as I am temporarily calling the book I am creating for That Blog Series) is coming along well. I pretty much have the outline done, now I just need to expand the chapter outlines a little, or at least the scene sketches. More importantly I need to actually create my characters. Right now there are only two that I know that I need but they have no name, no personality and no backstory. So basically they are just words in an outline as opposed to real people. I’ve also been thinking about titles. I hate titles, like to the bottom of my soul. It’s why this blog doesn’t have the best name (I will change it one day I promise) and why so many of my Works in Progress have generic explanatory titles that don’t really grab your attention. It needs to grab your attention if I’m to have any hope of getting people to read it. I will be writing the next post that will go on the Autharium blog and this time I will, hopefully, put a version of it up on here too.

The planning came a lot easier than I expected. I can see what happens when and how I can keep the tension up and then let it down again. I also, finally, managed to apply the three act structure to my outlines at last. It’s something I’ve avoided in the past, I didn’t want to restrict my writing or do what everyone else does. Now I’ve actually used it though I can see how it is in fact very, very helpful. I can see where the tension is, how the stakes get higher and higher until it all comes crumbling down. I haven’t followed it exactly (I’ve not got to that point quite yet) but it’s there and the arcs are there and I’m definitely going to use it again. I also plan to do a proper post about it in more detail at a later date too (if I remember).

Don’t think that I’ve forgotten about the One Freelancer’s Journey series either. I’m hard at work on that and should have another post up about it soon. Right now I’m just mulling over some of the content and try to work out ways of phrasing it without making it seem as though I’m lecturing. Writing on blogs, not novels or stories, is something that I find a little tricky, I will admit. I want to get the tone right, I want to keep it casual, but when I start talking about something or explaining something to you all I can’t help but slip into lecture mode and I hate it. I Hate It!

I also want to quickly catch you up on what’s been happening with my WiPs, specifically Love Complications (which will be renamed eventually) and Feral Diaries 1 (which will also be renamed).
The notes for revision on LC are complete. Now I’m working out what needs to go where, the time frame and what new scenes need to be added. It needs a lot of work and I need to actually put in some sort of three act structure. Most of all I need to stop letting it read as though it was written by a teenage girl (which it was) and instead make it read as though it were written for a teenage girl (which it was). The characters need to be rounded out and I need to stop my main character from being such a Mary Sue! Yes, that’s right, I wrote a Mary Sue. In fact it was a little bit of a wish fulfilment novel for me at the time, having everything happen right, just how I wished my life could be. Of course that doesn’t make for good reading so it needs to be shaken up, torn to pieces and reassembled into something shiny and new. And the Mary Sue needs to be burned and destroyed.
Feral Diaries (whose title also needs to be changed), meanwhile is not coming along so well. I’ve been making my notes, I’ve actually gotten quite far in with them, almost halfway. But then I looked back and noticed that in the earlier notes I had been actually outlining the new scenes that I needed to add to the story. I hadn’t been doing that for a while. So I need to go back and do that for the other chapters and it’s starting to feel a little one step forward, two steps back. BUT! It’s not all bad news. A friend of mine, wanting to procrastinate, decided to mess around with some 3D imagining software that she loves to use and actually created an amazing cover for me. I’ll show it to you another day although you could always check out my twitter feed and see for yourself.

But for now, it’s back to the grindstone, I have a few chapters to write for work and then it’s on to transcribing my planning notes for the Autharium Project. Do you have any ideas for what to do with the Mary Sue? Have you ever written a Mary Sue? Do you want me to get on with the Freelancer’s Journey Series? Or would you rather I shut up and share a bit more about Feral Diaries?

Let me know in the comments, I love hearing from you.

A Good Week

Well.... what can I say about this week?

On Monday I started reading again, specifically a bunch of Darren Shan books, mostly his Saga of Darren Shan series. First off, I love them and I love how they develop. The gradually get darker and darker as the character of Darren delves deeper and deeper into the realms of the Vampires and the Vampeneze. Initially I got these books on my Kindle because I’d seen the movie ‘Cirque du Freak’, based on the first couple of novels, and really quite enjoyed it, even if it was a little childish at times. The books though are almost entirely different. Things happen a lot slower but you can see the plots growing and getting more and more complex as Darren ages and learns more about his new people. The film, in comparison, shoves huge chunks of the novels together, giving Darren his nemesis almost instantly and revealing almost all the information about the character of Mr Tiny within the first hour. Characters are switched around, brought in too early, completely left out or just created out of nowhere (You know who I’m talking about little monkey-girl).

Secondly, about the books, they helped me realise something about my own writing. You may know if you’ve read my archives, numerous as they are (*cough*) that I’ve been having trouble editing my completed novel. Since I’ve started working on the first page I’ve always felt that something wasn’t quite right about it. When I was reading the Shan Saga, as I refer to it, I realised that it was possible that I was using the wrong perspective. So I switched it around. I’ve spent this week rewriting my manuscript in 1^st person and already I’m seeing an improvement in the writing.
The trouble with my story is that it’s somewhat of a mystery. I’ve got some characters that know everything, some that only know parts and one that hasn’t a clue what’s going on. The temptation with writing all that in third person though is to reveal too much. All too often I found myself writing exposition that wasn’t needed or was coming too soon, now that I’ve switched perspectives though I’ve stopped that happening. The reader is only told as much as my main character knows, which at the end of the day, isn’t an awful lot. I’m actually starting to believe that I’m going to be able to finish editing this novel and make another step down the path to being published. 

I’ve also been working on my newest web-comic idea oSaM. The script was finished at the beginning of May and I’m now halfway through the edits/rewrites. It’s a fun thing to do and it feels like it’s going the way I want again. It’s also helping me stay inspired about the story itself and while I’m rewriting I keep coming across all these things about my characters that I didn’t know. It’s a lot of fun.

I’ve been drawing as well while I rewrite, sketching my characters and mostly doing anatomy studies. While I’m still unsure about the style I plan to use a good grasp of anatomy is essential when drawing any form of humanoid. In the past I’ve not bothered trying to learn and as a result my characters have looked odd and out of proportion. Now though I’m happy to say that even in my most cartoony of styles they’re looking normal and it’s easy to take a step towards imagining them in reality.

Basically, I’ve had a good week full of creativity.

There is a big painting bubbling away in the back of my mind though so who knows, next week I might even be able to talk about that.

Ciao.

The Sunday Workspace: A bit of everything.

So it's the first Sunday Workspace post. I've got a lot of projects going on at the minute so there's a good chance that this is going to be a ridiculously long post... you know, just for a change. Sadly, the photos aren't exactly the best quality, given that I spent most of the day hungover, unable and unwilling to do much more then shuffle between the kitchen and the living room. Enough of that though, I'm fully recovered now and intending to start and finish this blog.

First up, this is my big pile of crap. It's basically a shelf where I place everything that I'm working on, whether writing or drawing or a book I'm reading. It could probably do with a bit of tidying and I fully intend to get on that... tomorrow. On my pile of crap shelf right now are my journals, several books that I'm reading and the little pile of Works in Progress. At the bottom of that pile is also the stuff that needs to be put away or is waiting to be stuck into the Sketchbook Project book.

Speaking of, this is my Sketchbook Project stuff. Those scraps are hopefully going to go towards creating an image for one of the pages. The covers need a bit more work but I'm going to do those at a later date, once I've gotten the pages a bit fuller. I just love that filling of a book slowly filling up and looking through to see more and more pages being filled. I really need to get some PVA glue and more paper scraps though so that I can start sticking stuff together.

 These are my story notes, right now there's two different sets; one for the novel, in the green portfolio and the other for a new idea that's gradually taking shape in the notebook and sheet of paper. As I'm slowly getting back into the swing of writing for my own amusement there's only 2 but at some point I know there'll be as many as 5 or 6 sets of notes there. It's the way my brain works.  I prefer to write the basic info by hand, as well as usually the first draft. It takes a long time and my hand ends up sore but that's just the way I like to work. It does lead to me having a lot of notebooks and pads of paper lying around. It gets worse once there's loads of written loose sheets everywhere. We'll find out how I solve that problem at a later date though.

These are two of the pages for my webcomic. I'm slowly getting the hang of a new technique I'm trying for my pages so these are really quite experimental. I'm attempting to blend both traditional and digital media for this next chapter as it seems to be easier for me to draw most of the page on paper. I find it comes out how I want much, much better. This pictures a bit unclear but you can also see the handmade notebook I have where I sketch out individual page layouts before I put them down onto paper. That too is something I'll come back to another day.

As it is, this is what's in my workspace right now, I'm going to be working on several of these things in the next week and who knows, I may have new images for you to have a nosey at.