How Do You Bridge the Gap Between Two Cool Moments in Your Novel?

This link was shared on a forum recently, showing three established authors' views on connecting plot points.

The first one really hit home for me, because I'm doing something very similar, utilising three characters' points of view to minimise on "uncool" sequences. Maybe I'll do a more in-depth post on that another time. As for now, here's what he said.
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David J. Williams, author of The Mirrored Heavens and The Burning Sky:

Writing with an ensemble cast of main characters has its disadvantages, but one of the big pluses is that it makes it easier to maneuver past this kind of problem. The entirety of the Autumn Rain trilogy is cutting back and forth between (widely separated) points of view, focusing on the highlights of each "plot vector", whether that's in a maglev tunnel beneath the Atlantic or in a bio-dome in the middle of a lunar fortress. This was a deliberate decision, in that I often find myself skimming pages of various books to get to the Next Cool Moment, so when it came to writing MIRRORED HEAVENS, I wanted to leave anything skimmable on the cutting room floor. That being said. . . sometimes "downtime" affords hidden opportunities. . . . are there implications or clues to the situation that two characters can talk about? Is there an opportunity here for more exposition or a newsfeed, or some kind of world-building? If the answer's no, then just fast-forward as much as you need to; readers will forgive almost anything save being bored. Screenwriters are taught to get into scenes late and get out of them early, and there are times I wish more novelists did the same!

Wow! I can't believe it's been 5 months since I last worked on this.

Here is what Válkia looked like before I worked on it last night. (Click on the images to see them in more detail.)

Hooray for writing 8 days in a row!

I've had a lot of late nights this month. And I mean a lot. Speak of the devil, it's currently 3:40am in Australia. I blame daylight savings.

My writing is coming along smoothly. I've written five days in a row, never less than 200 words, sometimes passing 300. That's all I need. 7,000 words in one month is just awesome, and I'm well on track.

How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done

Two samples today, because I feel like it. And, I suppose, because it's been a while.
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Miren chuckled and shook his head. “So innocent of the power within you. Saera,” said Miren, shuffling the chains around between his fingers, “Aundes’s light penetrates corruption. The master is afraid that you might know how to use this against his men. The way of the Order has slowly corrupted their souls, and if they are too corrupt, there wouldn’t be anything left when you were done.”
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“He says you can burn our souls through our eyes.”
“Oh, yes,” mocked Saera. “And you wouldn’t want me doing that. You see, when I burn your soul, you can never go to the gods. Never.”
He stopped and stared blankly into the distance.
“You remain here, a phantom watching over your rotting corpse into eternity. Eternity’s a long time, my friend.”

Put simply: success.

Nothing has been happening for me on the writing front. I'd say I was too busy with school, but that would be lying. I'm a lazy student. But it's still tiring, and it's much harder to write after a day of school than without.

I haven't written these holidays either . . . until now.

And after I'd decided to write tonight, I took special note of the fact that tomorrow would be the 1st of October. I thought fondly back to July, when I started writing on the 1st and managed to hit 7,000 words.

I want to do that again.

My intentions for the next month are this:
- Writing is back in
- Habituals are back in
- Blog posts are back in

Can I achieve my goals? We can only wait and see.

Miren stood and straightened his shirt. "Small piece of advice. Don't compare us with the Church. Given the numbers we'd bring them down in a heartbeat. But fear is a powerful tool, and they wield it like a hammer. That's how they build their army. Not even the Queen could match their numbers, let alone surpass them. Duthonne faces a dark future. You're better off here."

Useful if you're Splurging. Useful if you're not Splurging. A good beverage is an all-round good egg.

Maybe you like tea. Go with that.

Maybe you like coffee. Why not?

Me, I like iced coffee. That one's great for summer.

I go through what I call drink fads. At one point in time I'll have a tendency towards iced coffees. At the same time the next year I'll be drinking chai tea all the time. Well, that's me now.

Whenever I'm writing, I have a chai tea. What I like to do is fire up the computer, open up my manuscript, read over the last few lines and skim the last page or two to get my grounding, and then go off to make my chai. While the kettle's boiling and as I make up the drink, I'm free to think about how I'm going to approach the next page. I love this because then, when I sit down, my mind's already "warmed up", so to speak. I've got an idea of where I'm going and how to start off.

Maybe I don't know how to start, and that's fine as well. I've got a drink to occupy myself with while I think.

One more perk of this little "tool" is the subconscious association I've undoubtedly developed between having a chai tea and actually writing.

Try it out if you want. It might work for you. It might not. We all know how subjective writers are.

It's hiatuses, if anyone was wondering.

Dear God, I've had too many of these over the last month and a half. Two too many. [Winks.] Those two hiatuses are from writing and blogging, which invariably go hand in hand. When I write, it stimulates ideas for me to blog about, apart from the regular excerpts and progress updates (for which it also helps to actually have written something!).

It was the return of school that really threw me off. Unfortunately, this is one hell of a year, and the work is tiring. Fortunately, in three months it'll all be over.

I wrote tonight, inspired by the words of a friend. < Good use of the passive voice, I think. I could've said, " . . . inspired by a friend's words", but 1. That's less common in colloquial language and 2. The passive voice draws attention to the "words" rather than the "friend". I'm planning on doing a separate post on passive voice as part of my grammar series.

Anyway, yes, I wrote tonight. It felt good, of course. It might have felt better if it had been earlier and I hadn't avoided writing two pieces for French by doing it, but I'm glad I did. I'm now in a much better position to continue writing from where I finished tonight.

I'm in a tricky place. There aren't any scenes coming up that I already have an image of in my mind. Oh, maybe one, I guess. You see, I keep these scenes in my mind at points all along the story, and I use these to urge me towards them. They're my motivation. Then when I get to them, I seem to charge through them like a lightning bolt. Then I need a new vivid scene that I can write towards.

I passed 50,000 words. It felt mighty victorious at the time, but I would have felt much better had I kept trundling along. I've lost so much opportunity, but I must accept that there are times when writing isn't the most important thing. The thing is, when I'm not writing, I'm not doing "the most important thing", either, and I think that's what disappoints me the most.

I've bought a device which switches off my internet between 5:00pm and 7:00pm. I can switch it back on manually, but that would defeat the purpose. I haven't been using it. I will again at some point. I've set it back to working now.

The holidays aren't too far off, and I think my writing will benefit greatly from them. (Hopefully I'll have hit 60,000 by the end of them.)

I'll be trying to phase my writing and blogging back in over the next couple of weeks. Bear with me, and thanks for sticking around!

Thanks to Serendipital Me for the Liebster Award. This is apparently an award for friendship. I looked up the translation of Liebster for interest's sake, and it means "favourite", so there you go!

I've been seeing some confusion between these two words around the internet, so I thought I'd go over the basics.

Whether to use "who's" or "whose" is a question of contraction vs. possession.

Knowing that, it's pretty clear which is which, isn't it? But it's when people come to using the possessive variety that I often see them fall back on the contraction.

So here are a few examples of the rights and wrongs of this minefield.
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Correct: "Who's that?"
(Contracted version of "Who is that?")

Correct: "Who's been here before?"
(Contraction of "Who has been here before?")

Incorrect: "Who's cake is that?"
(To check this: it would be weird if you said "Who is cake is that?"
Also, this is another way of saying "Who does that cake belong to?")

Correct: "Whose cake is that?"
(It is a question of possession.)

Incorrect: The man who's dog ran away.
(Check: "The man who is dog ran away?" That doesn't make sense.)

Correct: The man whose dog ran away.
(The dog belongs to the man.)

Chapter Seven of Aundes Aura is now up for review!