Onward to Glory!

Well, not glory but hopefully a finished novel. Got back into the WIP today and added another 1,000 word scene. I had a lot of concerns about what this WIP is and where it's going. For instance so far it has been comedic in tone and pretty light hearted but I've just written a bloodbath in which the main character sees four companions die, ripped apart by a monstrous beast. Not exactly a chucklefest. I think this is why I'd stalled. I felt like this scene had to happen but wasn't sure it was the right direction to take the story. However, even the wrong direction is better than no direction.

So I've done it now and we'll see where it takes me. After all, the whole point of this WIP was to just write, seat of the pants, and get a first draft of a novel done and dusted. Get that first novel under my belt by the end of the year. I might have to up the tempo to get it done by December, but that shouldn't be too difficult as long as I keep on keeping on.

In other news I've finished a first draft of my non-fiction RPG project the Fungus Forest and I'm halfway through editing that. I also need to keep chipping away at the edit for my Blood & Iron story. The deadline for that one is fast approaching.

Listening to: Wild Beasts - Limbo, Panto; The Hooters - One Way Home; Panda Bear - No. 12 Person Pitch; Florence And The Machine - Lungs; Ben Kweller - Changing Horses; Wiley - See Clear Now

Listed

Next Week's writing goals . . .

1) Edit non-fiction project.

2) Edit Blood & Iron story.

3) Continue WIP.

4) Continue notes for next novel.

5) Next scene in Magus script.

And more blog posts!

Worldbuilding Wednesday: Of Men and Monsters

The last Worldbuilding Wednesday entry covered Gods today I'm looking at the non-divine, but no less magical species that will inhabit my, as yet, unnamed world.

Humans
It might be fantasy, and I want my world to be weird and wonderful, but humans serve as a good baseline. Even if it's for no other reason than that anyone reading stories set in (or playing games set in) this world will be able to understand and relate to human characters easily. My humans, in the main, are going to be living in small tribal groups of coastal fishers, and jungle hunters and gatherers. There will be just one or two cities inhabited by humans, one where they are in thrall of another of the races and one or two human coastal city-state. These city states will be the basis of the only human proto-civilisations.

Lizard men
I really like Lizard men. I'm going to have two types: a primitive and brutal race with stone age technology, and a refined high culture race made up of a variety of reptilian species. These latter will of course worship a Dragon god. Neither of them will be bad guys or shabby orc stand ins. As I said; I like Lizard men.

Bird men
Not mighty Hawkmen, but bright plumage, frail and ethereal, avian humanoids. They live deep in the jungles and are small in number. Living in canopy settlements perhaps as few as thirty in number. For some reason I like the idea of them having some sort of bizarre and archaic energy weapon. Perhaps, they're a fallen race and it's the last remmanent of a technology from the time when they were powerful and technologically superior.

Insectoid Hive mind
Always fun. I can't decide if these should be an antagonist race, the mindless relentless, bad guys. Maybe that's too easy and a cliche. Perhaps it would be more interesting if they weren't. Then again' unfeasibly (not to mention scientifically impossible) man-sized insectiod races are great fun as bad guys. I'll ponder this further.

The Nameless Ones
They are called The Nameless Ones because I can't think of a name I like at the moment. However, in my usual brainstorming way, I'll use this. They have no name because they don't communicate using language as the other races might understand it. They are seven foot tall, thin limbed and willowy. Their hands have three long fingers and a thumb, their faces are flat and almost featureless other than a tiny hole where a nose should be, and a thin cut of a mouth. They have no apparent ears or eyes. Their skin is a pale blue in colour. They are only twelve of them but they have power over thousands of humans who worship them as Sorcerer gods in their jungle city of ziggurats.

That's enough to be going on with. I may add others.

ZOMG! It's Monday (Again)

The older I get the faster the years whizz by. It's not funny. They whizz past so fast now that the passing of a month, week, or even days seem almost as nothing. I think this accounts for my drive when it comes to writing. There's that certain knowledge that time is finite. I mean I've done plenty today: housework, weight training, the weekly shop, and now this blog post, but I haven't written yet.

Increasingly, that's the difference between a good day and a bad day for me. If I write it's a good day; if I don't it's a bad day. It's not a question of me needing to write to be happy. No, I can be happy without writing. It's that nagging feeling that every day I don't write is, somehow, a day wasted. A day I won't get back. A day I didn't use to my fullest. A day I could have written, should have written. Everyday I don't write puts me further away from my ambition, my dream of writing and publishing fantasy fiction.

Right, I'm off to write!

Listening to: La Roux - La Roux, Florence and the Machine - Lungs, Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up, Beth Rowley - Little Dreamer, Teitur - The Singer, Belle And Sebastian - Tigermilk

List Again, Again

Another Sunday rolls around. Time to take stock of the last writing week and gear up for the next one. As always, next week's main target is work harder, write more. Last week I only worked on 3/4 of the list. Didn't finish the first draft of my RPG non-fiction project the Fungus Forest, but it's almost done. Will finish it this week. I did continue editing the Blood and Iron short story, and note taking for next novel, but in both cases it was a minimal amount of work. I didn't do any work on my comedy-drama supernatural script, Magus. Must do something about that.

This week I'm going to push on with the first draft of my WIP which desperately needs a better working title to. Currently it called Beware the Sorcery of the Bookseller. Forget that it's clumsy mouthful, it doesn't even make sense anymore as the whole premise of the story has changed. I think for now I'll call it WIP. Ha.

June was good month in terms of word count. My highest since Feb. Lets see if I can top that this month. Anyway, this week's list.

To Do List 6th - 11th July

1) Finish 1st draft of Fungus Forest.

2) Continue editing Blood & Iron short.

3) Continue WIP

4) Continue notes for next novel.

5) Next scene in Magus script.

Not on the list, but something I want to do, a few more posts on writing.

Listening To: Beirut - March of the Zapotec/Holland, Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up, Priscilla Ahn - A Good Day

Work (Not) In Progress

Doubt. It gets to most writers. Pretty standard stuff: characters flat, plot predictable, dialogue doesn't ring true, premise is mundane, theme missing in action, pace is off, reads like drek. Common doubts that most writers have about their work.

Of course, usually this is just your mind messing with you. Usually, these doubts prove unfounded. If there are problems they're things that can easily be addressed in the rewrite. It's just sentinels, writing demons, internal editors that need to be sat down and have the principle write first, edit second explained to them. Call them what you will, your mind's attempt to sabotage your work. Normally I'm very good at ignoring this stuff.

I'm never pleased with my work. Even with published stories I look at them and see problems. However, over the years I've found a way that works for me. A fist draft is just a first draft, get it finished, then fix it. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Sure, but at some point get it out to an editor and start work on the next story, it's always about the next story. But finish what you start. Always, always finish what you start. Otherwise there is no next story, just a bunch of useless false starts. It's a process that works for me.

Until now. With this work in progress, I'm having doubts beyond the usual. I'm very tempted to shelve it.I know that is another common trap. It's not rare for writers to get past the opening of their novel, fall out of love with it, be tempted by all the other ideas they have floating around in their heads. But I don't think it's that, or least not that simple, in this case.

I don't think it's because I've transitioned from short fiction to novels. I've been bursting to write long length fiction for ages. My short stories got longer and longer. The last three have clocked in at 10,000 words. It might be because I'm writing this novel seat of the pants. It not that I've not worked that way in the past. I never used to plan, but over the years, the more seriously I've taken my writing, the harder I've worked at it, the more I've found I like to work to a plan of some sort. I wrote lots of shorts and flash fiction seat of the pants style. But that method stopped working for me. I just ended up with a folder full of openings, stories that died after page one.

I've found my working progress goes a lot smoother when I rough out scenes in advance, when I have a skeleton of a plot to work to. With my current WIP I don't have that and I don't like it.

I think the main problem is, because I came to this story with a very slight idea and just started writing, I now find myself writing a novel that isn't anything at all like the kind of thing I want to write. I want to write dark, action packed, low magic fantasy. The kind of stuff I love to read. What I've ended up writing is a comedic high fantasy. WTF?

Not only is it not the type of thing I really wanted to write, but the bloody thing is out of control!

My main character's chapters I find a bit dull. Shame as she is the main character and the whole premise of the story rests on her. The first antagonist, her husband, who started out as a mean, drunken bastard who followed her into the fantasy world to thwart her, has only gone and got all likable, misunderstood, and heroic on me. Forcing me to come up with a new bad guy. Guess what? The new bad guy only went and got all interesting. Not only that, he was funny. So I introduced another, an ultimate evil overlord. He just happens to be a spoilt nine year old brat. As petulant as he is I just can't bring myself to make him really, truly evil. I'm now on my fourth bad guy. He started out as my main character's mentor. Still I'm learning. I only give him really short chapters in which I demonstrate what a complete and utter bastard he is then get the hell out of there and onto another chapter before he gets all likable too.

So now I'm at the stage where I'm enjoying writing everyone else much more than my original main character. Yet still I've come to a halt. I'm not sure what to do with two of the story strands (my instinct is to kill some secondary characters).

If I had my next novel ready to go, and If I didn't believe in the good writing habit of finishing what you start, I'd shelve this. As it is my next project is still in the planning stage. So I'm going to push on with this even if it's not exactly what I want to write. I'll write the first draft and ignore all my doubts. If nothing else It'll keep me writing fresh stuff, until my other novel is ready to go. There's nothing wasted in writing after all.

Listening to: A-Ha - Hunting High and Low, Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold as Love, Mozart - Concerto in C Major for Flute and Harp, Sam Sparro - Sam Sparro

Wordbuilding Wednesday: 3 - By the Gods!

Magic. The mainstay of fantasy. A fantasy world without magic is like swords without sorcery, dungeons without dragons, lords without rings. So what kind of magic do I need for my belt world? What other fantastical elements should I have? Gods and monsters, a variety of sentient races?

I'm not going to delve into specifics just yet. Instead this post will deal in generalities. How magical will this world be? By that I mean how prevalent will fantastical elements such as gods, monsters, and non-human sentient species, be on this world?

Lets look at the type of world it is. If you can imagine a volcanic island, the sort you find in the Pacific, lush with jungle, coral reefs, sand covered beaches, blue seas, lagoons, all formed around volcanic mountains that jagged out of the sea millennia ago. That's the sort of environment, but instead of islands it's a landmass that stretches around the equator with a spine of mountain ranges. That and perhaps throw in some influences from other earth equatorial jungles, such as those found in south-east Asia, central Africa and south America. Like our equator there are only two seasons, the dry season and the wet season. Some parts just have the wet season, perhaps some areas are desert. On the whole though it's mostly rainforest/jungle and tropical coastal areas.

Mostly, population centres are tribal gatherings of coastal fishers or jungle hunter & gathers, perhaps a few mountain herders? Civilisations limited to single city civilisations, lone Aztec type jungle cities, or coastal trade centres.

Ok, slight diversion there as I restated and reinvented what my world is like. Now I have that settled, back to the magic stuff. I'm going to concentrate on gods for this thread. I think that's a good place to start. Next week, monsters and sentient races, and finally the Wednesday after that magic. Although I'm coming up with all this off the cuff so it might not pan out that way.

Gods.

Looking at the type of world it is, it'd be safe to say that jungle gods and sea gods would be the order of the day, perhaps a sun god. Shamanism and ancestro worship seem feasible too. I think Polytheism, more likely than a pantheon, or monotheism, except perhaps in the few civilisations that exist. But the big question is are they real? Do they manifest in the world, do they care, interfere with and intercede on behalf of their worshipers?

I'm thinking Shamanism: contacting spirits, commanding them for good or ill, transforming into animals, traveling to other plains, works but perhaps more as magic than religion. Ancestor worship works too with priests able to appeal to ancestors on your behalf. The stronger your ancestors, the more power you can wield. This would lead to certain families dominating different tribes, and a powerful (and rich) priesthood.

The more I think about it the more I like the idea of wild and weird jungles rife with many active, but petty deities. Deities who have a small area (geographical and philosophical) of influence. Perhaps some of them are divine in the true sense, perhaps others are unique and powerful creatures who seem divine to lesser races.

What about the sea? Most of the planet is covered by ocean, lots of the population is coastal. I think a different tack from that of the jungle is needed. One mighty sea god? No sea god, just a cruel and merciless sea? Not sure will think on that.

In the cities I think I'm leaning towards a more malign religious influence, false gods, immortal insane sorcerers worshiped as gods, capricious aliens that fell from the sky, immoral priests and oppressive theocracies. That sort of vibe.

Hmm I'm quiet happy with that as an overview. It seems my world is going to be very magical, but with a pulpy feel. I still need to decide what to do about the sea. Must think about that.