The Dark Corner of the Mind: April 2012

First draft officially finished!: Revisiting "The Editing Process"

As of last night, I've officially finished the first draft of Aundes Aura.

I still have some things to do before I start the real revisions; I have to rewrite the first chapter with my new vision for the beginning.

Time to copy my file and save it as "draft one", rename this one "draft two" and get to work.
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Disclaimer: The following process was suggested by Marie over at Critique Circle.

Once your novel's first draft is complete, it is essential that you revise it if you want to [give readers a good impression and improve your chances of selling].

1.
Edit for storyline. This is the round where you go through and make sure the plot makes sense and follows through the story. That the subplots wrap up. That you haven't forgotten, lost or dropped anything while working your way through the book. Make as many passes as needed to fix any and all plot issues and oopsies.

2.
Edit for character. Everything from behaviour to appearance. Make sure names are spelled consistently throughout the book. Also, make sure that characters don't mysteriously vanish without concluding their plotline or even more mysteriously reappear after death.
[Yes, I have a vanishing character. I either have to take her out or include her more.]

3.
Edit for description. By now things should be getting better, but make sure that you are describing things effectively, using all five senses. Also, this is a good time to make sure physical items don't unexpectedly change colour, shape or location.

4.
Edit for genre elements. For fantasy you might double check on world building. Since you've already done three passes through the novel, things really should be fairly solid but this gives you one more chance to spot a problem.
[I think I'll be cleaning up all the intricacies of what's really going on between the Gods, the Naeveri and the characters, and how all the complicated events are linked.]

5.
Edit for grammar, punctuation and spelling. By now you should be able to run through and focus just on the clean up details. If you spot other problems, back up and give the earlier steps another pass. Don't rush things. You're not ready for the polishing up unless you've already fixed the plot. Take your time.

Repeat as needed.

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Buy this book if you want to sell yours (it's not my book)

Building an Author Platform That Can Launch Anything: a Social Media Minibook

This concise ebook . . . oh, just read the reviews. All 14 of them are 5 stars. You want to buy this book. It's usually 99c. It's currently free.
(This isn't my book.)

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I need more carrots!

When I'm this close to the end, there's no reason I shouldn't be writing. Every hundred words is a weight off my shoulders.

So I bought chocolate. My favourite: Caramello Koalas. Yeah, two of them. And I'm going to eat them. Not yet, though. 100 words will earn me a Caramello. Yum! Actually, let's make that 150 words. I'm sure I can manage that.

If I follow that, it'll put me over 68,000 words in the first draft, and not much left at all until the end.

Although I'm having thoughts about an epilogue. I think it might be necessary for a proper denouement. Because there's a way I'd like to finish it, but that doesn't clearly tie up a lot of loose ends. What happens to them afterwards, like, just afterwards? Like, a week later?

There's an ending, and then there's a satisfying conclusion. I don't want just an ending. If I were to end it without that final part, I imagine I'd end up with something that feels like "he woke up and it was all a dream".

I don't think it'll be a long epilogue. Partly because I want to get it finished; partly because it won't need to be a long epilogue.

Also, just now I've been thinking about writing a short story before or while working on Maechre Aura, so I have something I can sell in between the two novels and keep that "push" going, if you know what I mean. I might discuss that in a couple of days.

For now, writing time. See you soon!

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Edit: I didn't end up writing just 300 words. I got a whopping 472 -- pretty good since I wasn't going to write at all. And best of all, I haven't even eaten either of my Caramello Koalas. I think I'll eat them now as a reward for my efforts. Yum!

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A Look Back: Influence

I believe that my writing style is affected by every different fiction author whose books I read. It's affected even more so by fantasy writers, which isn't surprising because the main genre I read and write is fantasy. In Grade One, when I was seven years old and writing stories that lasted anywhere up to 100 words, I had no particular influences. The stories I wrote were generally accounts of true events hidden (very badly) behind a creative guise.
I don't remember where all the magic in my stories came from. Maybe films and cartoons, or fairytales. But when I wrote my first "longer" story (A Whole New World, or something very similar), it seemed set in stone the kinds of stories I would be writing.

I must have started reading Harry Potter in Grade Two because that's when I wrote "A Magical World", a hilariously bad rip-off of the idea of Harry Potter, with matching 8-year-old style writing. At least it had a unique plot. I was still about nine years off being ready to attack something of Harry Potter's relative grandeur.

So when I was 8 and 9 years old, my biggest influence was J. K. Rowling.

At 9 years old I started including ideas related to my sudden interest in language and worlds hidden within our own. Somewhere between 9 and 10 years old I tried to rewrite A Magical World. It was still terrible and I didn't quite finish it.

Fast forward to 11 and 12 years old, and I was influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean, and my friend and I co-wrote 3/4 of a story called British Pirate before we burnt out and didn't finish it.

I don't recall writing anything at 13, but at 14 and 15 I was working on Until They Unite, which wasn't terrible, but wasn't particularly good either. That seems to have been influenced by Emily Rodda's series Deltora Quest (which I read when I was about 8 or 9), what with the travelling and collecting special items of power. I didn't finish Until They Unite, either.

Then it was this, Aundes Aura. The plot is influenced by nothing other than my imagination ad my ideas. But everything's influenced by something, right? Well, yeah, but now that influence is tucked away in the past. I burnt out all my copying until I finally had something truly of my own to work with.

And this is where I stop looking at the influences on what I write, but how I write. This is where I stop looking at plot and start looking at style, because that's where the influences have been in my writing of late. I think I was still writing Until They Unite when my friend was flicking through my copy of Eragon and said, "You write like him." I was humbled, as Eragon was what I was reading at the time. I've spent the course of Aundes Aura refining my style and phasing out elements that were holding it back.

The next influence on my style, I would like to believe, is George R. R. Martin with A Song of Ice and Fire. I've read the first book and am halfway through the second. I think the witty and well-written dialogue, dealings with the intricate plot, portrayal of characters, depiction of scenes and the breadth of the world all really stand out in this series, and these skills are what I aspire to, but in a more compact way. Maybe one day I'll be able to write longer works like his, but I'm not at that stage yet, and I'm content with my full-length novel, if not the typical length for fantasy, let alone high/epic fantasy.

The last influence I want to talk about is purely stylistic, and I think an interesting one. It's also the one that inspired me today to write this post, after this little feature cropped up in my writing again.

It's also interesting because Beowulf was a set text for Literature in Year 12, not one of my books for leisure. In Middle English, or whatever period it was originally written in, the verses didn't rhyme at the end of the lines like many do today. The lines were alliterated.
Every now and again when I'm writing, an alliteration springs forth and I have to stop and think . . . can I actually do that? Of course I can. Why not? Of course, when I revisit them in my readings, I'll have to decide whether they work or not. But for now they're not really doing any harm. Here's the example that inspired this post.

He filtered his memories over the sights before him. Black bark turned brown, bare branches burst full of autumn leaves.

So what books and authors have influenced your writing?

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