WRITING CONTENT MOVED!

As of today, all new writing content on http://blog.dawnsrise.com has moved to The WriteRunner (http://blog.writerunner.com).

Please update your links and subscriptions accordingly!

I’ll still post links to new content here for a while.

Not sure what I’m going to do with this blog, but I’ll probably post things dealing with workouts, the Mariners, skiing (or the lack thereof), family, political opinion (if I’m brave enough), and life in general.

Thank you so much for your patronage of this site, your feedback and involvement has been invaluable!

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to re-do the layout of this site into a new format.

Dream Scene/Beach Scene Blogfests – Dawn’s Rise

Dream Scene/Beach Scene Blogfests – Dawn’s Rise

Thanks to the great Amalia T. and the powerful Rachel Batemen for hosting the Dream Sequence and the Beach Scene blogfests. I have a scene that (hopefully) satisfies both!

Turns out that Steam Palace has neither beaches NOR dreams (what’s wrong with me?). So I had to go back a couple WIPs to Dawn’s Rise. Here, our heroine has just fallen and hit her head, and she wakes up to experience some weird dreams, one of which occurs on the beach!

 Where am I?

Towering fir trees menaced her, extending up to the sky. A mat of soft moss tickled her fingers.

Great, I’m dead.

Dawn gesticulated and then poked her skull. “Location. Map me. Call Rose.” Her implants remained silent and blank.

“Come on!”

A chilling breeze rustled the trees, prickling her skin and showering Dawn with needles. She rubbed her arms and stood, studying the verdant forest for signs of civilization.

I’m not dead. Trees bent and branches snapped from a sudden gale. I’ve seen this before. A tree splintered in a loud crack and slammed the ground mere feet from Dawn. Wind rumbled and moaned.

Dawn scrambled among the swaying trunks. A gap under downed tree beckoned. Dawn huddled, shivering in the freezing air. “Come on, this is enough!” Her breath blew clouds of steam as she panted.

The wind snatched her words away. Trees bent and creaked, snapped and fell. A tremendous rush of air tugged her, clawed her, and then yanked her up into the sky. Trees scattered like twigs blasted by a leaf blower. A hail of snow whited out the world, clinging to her with numbing cold.

A vast cityscape appeared. The slush coating her limbs slid off. Yet Dawn flew, suspended in the air. Her heart pounded and her arms swam through the sky, seeking anything to grasp.

What’s happening to me? It’s a dream, it must be. Or a premonition. She gasped for air as the city sat far below. It’s happening again. The night monsters. The violent days are coming, days of disaster and death. She swallowed. Her medplants had kept the terrors at bay for years. No. Not coming. The truth of it slammed her bones. Those days are here.

She covered her eyes, but the vision remained. The murmur of normal city life bubbled up, cars and planes and construction. Picturesque skyscrapers soared above the nearby clouds. Her gut clenched. Those days are here. “Nonononono. Please! I don’t want to see it!”

The spires swayed, shudders rippling along their flanks. The glass blew out in a haze of white, and then the concrete exploded into clouds of dust. Spires toppled sideways; others sank into the streets in boiling cauldrons of death. Dawn reached out as if she could grasp the towers and pull them back. Screams and cries shivered Dawn’s soul as the city disintegrated into dust in a massive quake. “No, no! Stooooppp!”

Dawn twisted and wriggled but nothing ended the destruction. She plummeted.

Burning sand seared her skin. Dawn jumped to her feet and hotfooted it to the shade of a palm tree, blowing on her blistered hands. A turquoise ocean lapped against a white sandy beach, but Dawn recalled this scene from the blanket-tearing dreams of her childhood. The sun blazed overhead. It’s here. It’s here. Nothing can be done. The low hum of a motorboat pulled her gaze to the ocean where a parasailor practiced, his rainbow-printed chute billowing out behind him. She studied the figure, an element she had never dreamed of before. The smell of salt wafted on the light breeze. Dread crept up her spine. The parasailor’s chute snapped and he plunged.

“No!” Dawn raced down the beach, ignoring the blistering of her feet. This is a sign, a signal. He must be rescued. She plunged into the waves, the warm waters supporting her body. The waves grew in size and force, until she battled boiling waters. A vast curling wave collapsed, driving her down into the depths. Where is he? Where is he? Burning liquid consumed her lungs as her breath escaped.

Dawn convulsed, seawater pouring out of her mouth. She dripped with liquid and coughed up more. An ugly landscape surrounded her. Smoldering ruins lay crumpled on the ground, nothing but empty skeletons of buildings and vehicles in all directions. A murmur arose. Huddled figures approached her. “Dawn,” they cried. “Dawn, Dawn, save us.”

They sported terrible injuries, weeping sores and matted blood, with only primitive wrappings to protect them. Their ribs protruded through their tight skin, and their eyes sunk into their skulls. They approached Dawn, their hands reaching towards her. Dawn jumped and backed away. Her legs shook and her breath wheezed and gurgled.

“Please, stop. Stay away from me, I can’t help you. This isn’t real. None of this is real.” But it is. This is all real. Their hands grasped her clothes and the stench of unwashed bodies and infected wounds sickened her.

Blinding light swept the sky. Pure heat slammed the ruined city. The supplicants’ flesh ignited, burning them to skeletons. Dawn’s own hands flamed to bone and dust, yet she continued to witness the scene.

The ground shook and an ocean half a mile high tumbled across the landscape. It washed over the city, covering it in black waters, and then receded, leaving nothing but an empty plain of mud in its wake. It has come. It has come. All this has come. The Days are here.

Dawn screamed.

First Kiss Blogfest – Dawn’s Rise

First Kiss Blogfest – Dawn’s Rise

Thanks to Melissa Dean for hosting the First Kiss Blogfest! Click through to check out the other entries!

Also, please check out these other Blogfests including the Bad Girl Blogfest!

I don’t really have a good “First Kiss” in Steam Palace, so I’m going to have to go back a bit to a previous WIP called Dawn’s Rise, where two characters discover something they share…

This is set in 2101. Dawn has just remotely orchestrated a rescue of John who is marooned in a crippled space platform (which is indeed called Obama…it used to be called Bush before the election…just keeping up with the times so don’t get all antsy-pantsy on me).

John fidgeted while Alpha worked the makeshift communications array from the command center. The 28-second delay between Earth and Obama chafed him.

Instead of the cool, subdued woman from the previous message, an excited girl faced him. She waved, grinning from ear to ear. She had pulled her long hair back in a ponytail, and her lips shone with a bit of gloss. “Hi,” she said. “You can call me Dawn. I know you won’t get this message for a half a minute so I’ll start.”

Her head sat in the monitor, close enough to touch. John spoke directly at the image as if Dawn stood in the room. Judging from the austere background, he decided that she hadn’t altered her image, something he appreciated. She continued.

“It seems like some force in the universe has been drawing us together. Did you know people have been having visions of me and all these disasters? It’s true. I’ve been dreaming about you. When I saw you tied to the chair, I recognized you from my dreams, and I knew I had to save you. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the ‘Mystery Woman’ but—that’s me! Not so mysterious anymore, I guess. I know how this sounds, but I think I may actually be psychic. Ok, go.”

John just stared for a moment, his mouth agape. The tall, slender, dark haired girl with an accent didn’t quite resemble the older woman in his dreams. He spotted the Chairman’s Insignia on her lapel. Could this be some cruel joke his crew had come up with to welcome him back? Did she just say she was psychic? Surely this was a joke.

Before he could question her authenticity, something clicked in his head, and he drew in his breath. “Wait—I do know you. You grew up in the Carolinas, right? Did you ever attend soccer camp during the summer? There was this girl there, a couple of grades behind me, but maybe a couple of inches taller. I’m pretty sure her name was Dawnie.”

“Hello?” she said, interrupting. “Oops, sorry, still getting the hang of this.”

She paused, waiting for his response. The faint echo of his voice carried through the transmission. Her face clouded, and she squinted at John’s bandaged face. Recognition lit her eyes, and her mouth dropped open. “No. You’re…Johnny? JJ? No way. You were my first crush, and you—you totally ruined my summer! All this time I thought I’ve been dreaming about some awesome man—and it turns out to be you the whole time? I don’t believe this.” She shook her head and crossed her arms, scowling.

Memories flooded John’s mind. “Oh my God, you are Dawnie! That crazy girl from camp. You! You wouldn’t leave me alone. You were like a little sister, following me everywhere.” The most embarrassing summer of his life. A summer well worth forgetting.

Dawn shifted as she listened to his words. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have kissed me! Do you know what that did to me? Kissed by the hottest boy in camp? That was my first kiss. And then—you wanted nothing to do with me.”

This was not going well. Was he really having a long-distance argument with the Chairman of HLSCO? Each second of transmission must cost countless shares. “Jeez, that was a long time ago, I was just a kid. And you were, well, you know—” The embarrassment still felt fresh.

“What? What was I? I’m waiting for your answer.” Dawn’s eyes blazed at him as she waited for his response.

John mumbled a few words. “I’m sorry, Dawnie. You were really, really nice. I was really stupid. You were a little—different. What did they call you? Crazy legs? Spiderella? No one ever told me you were in Junior High, I swore you were older than me. I was bragging about how I made out with a senior. When my friends found out you were just a kid, they wouldn’t leave me alone. I was a laughing stock.”

The woman in the console almost choked when his words arrived. “Jeez, Johnny, thanks for reminding me of that time of my life. I can’t believe you remember that stuff. How do you think I felt?”

John tried to recover. “I remember everything. You know, I still wanted to hang out with you, but I had a lot of peer pressure. I always wanted to look you up again.” He paused. “You were my first kiss, too.”

He studied her features. Even filled with anger, her large almond eyes captivated him. Her smooth neck descended into delicious shoulders. She had no figure to speak of, but he imagined her long thin arms wrapped around him. His reverie vanished as she spoke.

“You’re a frigging jerk. God, how I hated what you did! You made me feel so worthless, like a freak. I wish I’d known this before I saved your ass. You broke my heart. Mister ‘King in the Field’ super soccer star. You do remember I beat you for the winning goal that last game, right? About the only redeeming moment of camp. Now I’m older, and I’ve gotten over it. Let’s just drop it. Looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

I wanted to add some tension between these characters, and unresolved past, so I added this shared history. I think it came out a little goofy but I like it.

Dawn’s Rise Title Analysis

Dawn’s Rise Title Analysis

I finally put a whiteboard up in my office and here’s what I wrote today:

I didn’t come up with the title until I had finished the first draft. The name “Dawn” just came to me, possibly based on the character in Buffy:TVS. I thought of phrases that included the word “dawn” and came up with this one.

Right now I’m reanalyzing the entire story (and backstory), focusing on Dawn’s transformation throughout the story. I thought about the meaning of these words. I wrote down a bunch of related words on the whiteboard. (If you can’t read them, then you’ll understand why I don’t write drafts in longhand).

I want to narrow down to the central theme of the book. I like the metaphor of dawn, along with the concept of rising. Rebirth, resurrection, transition and transformation, the circle of life, and enlightenment. It just seems to work.

This is my current task. I’ve outlined the whole book, identified the major plot points, extracted the theme(s), and analyzed the problem areas. I’ve concluded that I’ve approached writing a bit backwards. I’ve written a story, then taken the above steps, instead of the other way around. I think it’s because I enjoy the act of sitting and writing most of all. It’s where I’m the most creative. Plotting and planning are a bit laborious. Even when I worked in software, I found it much easier to design code by writing bits and pieces of it. I’m discovering the drawbacks of this approach. I don’t know if there really is a “perfect” approach to writing, but I don’t see the harm in trying different things in the future.

How did you come up with your title? Does it have a deeper meaning or is it more of a marketing name?

Goals, Obstacles, and Epiphanies

Goals, Obstacles, and Epiphanies

A couple weeks ago, I submitted some chapters from Dawn’s Rise to an online critique group. One person provided some sage advice:

I feel that the POV characters are lacking in well-defined
goals that drive them.  This … made the story feel to me
like a sequence of events rather than a coherent story.

I’ve really been pondering this statement, and the more I think about it, the more I realized that it’s true.

I had one concept/premise when I created Dawn’s Rise: throw in every conceivable disaster into one novel. “The Disaster Novel to End All Disaster Novels.” Every bad thing I could think of. So, my characters are thrown about like clothes in a washing machine, unable to affect the outcomes of their lives to any meaningful degree. Things just happen to them, and they react. Usually with fear and profound amounts of sweat.

Then came my first epiphany: Crap happens to everyone. Most people don’t just sit there and go, “oh darn. More crap.” Well some do, but there’s no story unless the events affect the characters in some way. More than that, we need to know what the disasters mean to the characters. Everyone will agree that 9/11 and Katrina were disasters. No one was affected the same way. Some saw those events as failure of governments, some saw them as murderous incidents that stole their loved ones. My epiphany was that I need to focus on the inner state of my characters more than the outward events. My characters need to be the masters of their own destiny, and interpret events in their own unique way. Crap doesn’t happen to my characters. My characters are trying to do something and crap gets in the way.

I’m starting to look at each chapter differently. I now think about what the character wants to accomplish, and what obstacles are in the way. Without obstacles, the chapter is simply an expository narrative of events. Dawn saw a city fall. Dawn saw a tree fall. Dawn fell down and bumped her head. Nothing interesting in those compared to: Dawn figured her rent would not need to be paid since her apartment was rubble, but now where would she live? Dawn barely escaped with her life as the falling tree swung by, blocking her path. The last thing Dawn needed was a concussion, not with the fate of the world in her hands.

Still, something didn’t sit well with me. I mean, when I wrote the first draft, I knew the characters had goals. I knew Dawn wanted—well, I kinda wanted Dawn to be this big hero and save the world. I knew John wanted—well, I kinda wanted John to come up with the solution. Do you see where this is going? My second big epiphany was this: I’ve totally confused my personal goals with my characters’. Dawn doesn’t want to save the world. She just wants to pay rent, and maybe save up enough to co-own her own place outside of the city. She doesn’t want to fall in love with John. She wants a man who will accept her and love her for who she is. John doesn’t want to solve any problems. He doesn’t even want to do a good job at his current position. He just wants his life to mean something, to have a reason to get up in the morning, to get out of the dreary work he’s been performing for the last eight years.

In summary, I’ve imposed all my own goals onto my characters, and haven’t even let them breathe or be human. I wanted a novel with tons of disasters and that’s what I got. I wanted John and Dawn to just like each other right away and that’s what I got. I wanted everything to be resolved in a nice tidy fashion and that’s what I got. The overall problem is not that my characters have no goals in any specific chapter. It’s that they don’t have any goals at all outside I what I want them to do. They may have goals when it’s convenient, when danger is staring them straight in the face, but not all the time.

This is my conclusion: Every single event in the book has to become an obstacle or boon to a specific character’s specific goal. No random trees falling in the forest unless it either thwarts my character’s progress or helps them along. No achieving goals either. I mean, this is a disaster genre novel. Heck, even if Dawn goes to brush her hair, either the comb breaks or her hair is too tangled. Otherwise, no brushing of the hair. (And I know from personal experience that the simple inability to brush one’s own hair can lead to dramatic consequences). No goals may be fully achieved until the very end. And that’s my goal. I hope my characters are onboard.

State of the Novel Address

State of the Novel Address

Here’s the long-promised self-analysis of Dawn’s Rise. Now if you’re an agent or publisher, note that all the problems mentioned in here have been long since addressed, so you needn’t read further. After all, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, everything about my novel is pure perfection.

Okay, are they gone? Good, it’s just us writers now.

As I’ve mentioned before, the parallels between literature and software are remarkable. What I’ve been doing so far is what I call a “bottom-up” approach to editing. I first address the line-level problems, things like grammar, style, POV, showing vs. telling, etc. Reduce redundancy, keep to the point, remove extraneous information. In software, this involves coding small components first, working through the intricate details and fixing the bugs before putting everything together. You start with something simple, and build complexity on top of it.

Last week I encountered a problem with this approach. I’m a little over halfway through an complete novel edit, and I realized that the book just doesn’t “work”. I have characters and events with no purpose, I have climactic events in the wrong part of the book, and things happen for no reason. For the last two weeks, I’ve been in a complete standstill, not knowing what to do. It’s like I’ve written all the components, and they operate correctly, but the software doesn’t do anything useful. The problem with a bottom-up approach is that you are building something bit by bit. It’s like building a complete wall with trim and windows and paint, but you don’t have a floor or ceiling. You may have to tear down that wall if the ceiling doesn’t fit.

This brings us to the other approach, the “top-down” methodology. This is where you build the framework first. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? From a software perspective, the drawback is that you have nothing to test until the whole building is completed. Bottom-up lets you test individual components as soon as they’re completed. Literature is different. It’s very linear. It’s not like after reading chapter 10, the reader goes back to chapter 5 six times and then you read chapter 22. Every line of writing affects every line that comes after it, whereas in software, everything is compartmentalized with minimum interaction between components. So I thought that if I start at the beginning, the story will logically flow, and I’d figure out how to fix it. Building frameworks sounded like a useless exercise. I was wrong.

I’ve discovered that there is a top-down approach to writing. (Most people call it “plotting” or “outlining” or some such nonsense). I’ve been reading a book called “The Writer’s Journey” which describes the twelve steps of “The Heroes Journey”. I was surprised and relieved that my book contained all twelve steps to varying degrees, although maybe not all the character archetypes. (I’ll save the details/review/application of this method for another post). So, I’m now writing out the plot of Dawn’s Rise chapter by chapter, with the intention of identifying all the elements and arcs in the story, and figuring out what needs to be fixed, because I’ve discovered that my writing style is the least of my worries. I think the worst possible thing in writing is to capture a reader for 50, 100 pages and then they throw the book out because it starts to suck. It may work for landing an agent, but I suspect that publishers'/editors read the whole book at some point.

I think I need to abandon my software mentality. Each chapter is not a software component. I can’t just treat every issue like a bug. There are these lines and themes that run through the book like a river that flows from point A to point B. I need to judge every line not by whether it “works” in isolation like a line of code. I’m not writing a novel of 2500 perfect individual sentences, or 1000 well-crafted paragraphs, or 74 scintillating chapters (although I should wind up with them in the end). I’m writing a novel, which is one coherent piece, beginning to end. It doesn’t have “features”, it has “themes”. It doesn’t have model-view-controllers, it has characters. It doesn’t have components, it has story arcs that run through every single page.

So here’s the “State of the Novel”

I started Dawn’s Rise in Feb. 2002 after a startup I worked at went belly-up. I’ve worked on it off and on since then. but full-time since March 2009. In terms of full days, I must have worked at least 9 man-months all told.

Dawn’s Rise currently stands at 143K words (down 10K from its high point), approx. 500 pages, divided into 74 chapters.

I’ve edited through about 60% of the book for this revision.

I’ve received dozens of critiques, almost solely on the first 7 chapters. Critiques have been mixed, but I think I’ve drastically overhauled my style and improved by leaps and bounds. The problem with critiques is that everyone will find something to comment on, so they’re not the best indicator that I’m “done” with a certain chapter, so I just have to use my best judgment. They’re also out of context with the rest of the book, so they’re not a great indicator of how the whole story is faring.

My best guesstimate is that I have at least 3-5 months of editing on this revision, unless I magically begin to crank out edits at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, I don’t have an income.

Here’s the crux of the issue: I’m wondering whether to continue on or abandon this project. Can I whip Dawn’s Rise into publishable shape in a reasonable amount of time, or is it better to abandon it while I hone my craft on some other piece that has higher market potential?

I’m reminded of my mom. At one point, she desperately wanted to be a novelist. She wrote a Regency-era piece called Belinda’s Lock which she must have slaved on for at least three years. She even caught the interest of some agents. But it never sold, and she never worked on anything else. She put her heart and soul into BL, working on revision after revision. When it didn’t sell, she gave up.

I don’t want to fall into the same trap. I don’t want to beat a dead horse so to speak. I want to maximize my efforts and my possibility of future income.

Is Dawn’s Rise a marketable story and if not, can I fix it in a reasonable time? Does it require just some minor tweaking or wholesale revisions that could take months? I don’t know if there’s any way to answer that. I don’t know “how good” a first novel should be. Obviously blow-your-socks-off-good would be preferable. But what about “nice story, interesting plotlines, but characters are too shallow, and style a little flat. Shows a lot of potential, I should lock him up now”? Yes, I know it’s a harder sell.

Which of course brings me to the other unfortunate question: can I write? Can I write publishable material? Am I just throwing good money after bad? Only I can answer that (and the answer right now is YES until proven otherwise).

As of this moment, I’ve taken a step back, examining Dawn’s Rise from the top-down. I’m coming up with a plan for a final revision I can take to agents. I’ve identified my style issues (I hope). I’m investigating my story issues. I hope that what’s going to come out of this is something remarkable. It may be a tough sell, but I’m going to come up with something I’m proud of. Even if I wind up self-publishing, I want Dawn’s Rise to be something people want to read and can’t put down.

With the distraction and excitement of NaNoWriMo just around the corner, I want to really have a plan in place in the next week. Like that publisher mentioned to me, I need to act like a professional, and look at my writing with a critical eye. Unless I win the lottery, this may be my last shot at becoming a writer, so I need to give it everything I have.

Excerpt of Dawn’s Rise with Edits

Excerpt of Dawn’s Rise with Edits!

Victoria Mixon was gracious enough to do a one-page edit of the “hook” for Dawn’s Rise. You can check it out here. Please read the rules before making any comments on her page. However, feel free to leave any comments here. I believe she is still offering free one-page edits of your hook if you’re interested. 150 word max.

I’m always amazed by how much crap I throw into my writing that can be edited out. And yet I still have readers who get confused.

What NOT to Blog About as a Writer

What NOT to Blog About as a Writer

I had an interesting encounter yesterday. A publisher on Twitter tweeted something like “I’ll listen to pitches” so I figured “what the heck, it’s first thing Sunday morning” and sent him my 140 char pitch. He responded something to the effect of “I read your blog and saw that you’re still working through some problems, come back and see me when it’s ready.” I guess he read last Friday’s post where I outline areas I’m still working on.

Therefore, I’ve decided that I will only blog about my writing in the most positive light possible. You never know who might be reading. Here goes:

Dear Anyone Interested in My Work:

Dawn’s Rise is the most amazing story ever written, both eloquent and exciting at the same time. Towering in at an impressive 144 thousand words, I’ve written an epic masterpiece that will stand the test of time. I’ve filled the book with reams of detailed exposition to clarify every aspect of the dubious technology I’m proposing. I have pages and pages of calculations demonstrating that a tethered space platform is on the edge of theoretical possibility. I’ve dedicated a chapter to the marvels of the internet as well. It’s a hoot when my characters discover Twitter, with pages of funny tweets between them.

I’ve also become a master of characterization and viewpoint. I’ve made sure to hop around each character’s head, to show the reader what each character is thinking at each moment. I think I’ve created pretty lovable characters, full of remarkable traits and special powers, not a flaw among them. People will love them, but I’ve left their motivations open so the reader can kind of fill that in. I think you’ll see from their inner soliloquies exactly where I’m going.

I’ve totally pwned the world of adverbs and adjectives, using them to the most positive effect possible. The reader is really, really going to know exactly what I’m talking of. I’ve included serendipitously exquisite prose with long flowing sentences so the reader doesn’t have to stop for punctuation or anything that would interrupt him from the enjoyment of the marvelous world that I’ve created for the last seven years while either working or being unemployed and having to take care of my family while they recover from injuries or in my case some kind of mysterious stomach problem that never got resolved to my satisfaction in case you were wondering about that since I don’t really bring it up that much.

And finally, I’ve tried to maintain a high level of conflict throughout the book. Someone dies on every page, so right now I’m on 525 deaths overall, depending on page count. How could writing be more tensionfied? Although, my characters don’t ever argue with each other or anything because I can’t really handle confrontation so I keep their world safe and relaxed. They don’t really deal with their issues but I have a magic wizard from space come along and solve their problems so everyone is happy at the end. Don’t get me started on how great the ending is.

So that’s Dawn’s Rise in a nutshell, one of the greatest novels ever written, flawless in its perfection. I’m just fixing up some tiny, tiny problems at the moment that I probably shouldn’t even bother with so it’s pretty much ready to hit the “print” button at a publisher. If I’ve ever blogged anything negative about it, let me assure you those problems are way in the past, because I’m suddenly an expert on all these issues because I read a couple writing blogs. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

There, is that better? I think I’m really selling it now. :)

Supporting Characters

Supporting Characters

I’m learning what it feels like to have a supporting role in my wife’s broken-leg drama. She garners all the attention and sympathy while I’m tasked with picking up all the duties she normally performs, leaving no time for my own pursuits. Now, this particular drama isn’t one I’d want to star in mind you, but it’s started me thinking about supporting characters in general, and what their true purpose is.

This is some of the activities I’ve been working on in the last two weeks instead of running and writing and drinking:

• Cleaned the family room so we can put in a hospital bed (pictured above)
• Cleaned the kitchen (a daunting task)
• Hosted a BBQ for her friends
• Bought special pillows and sheets for the hospital bed
• Bought a special basket and accessories for her walker
• Took her to the hospital in the middle of the night to be re-cast
• Dispensed the 13 different meds she needs to take
• Installed some lovely handrails (they came out real nice. I rounded the ends with a circular sander and stained them with some random wood stain I picked up. The end result looks much better than I had hoped, and walking up and down those 2 steps is now easier for me as well). Also added rails to the toilet (pictured below).
• Handled all the shopping and transportation of kids to classes and appointments
• Walked/groomed/fed the dog

Meanwhile, this is what my wife has accomplished in the same time:

• Hurt
• Hurt some more
• Hurt instead of sleep
• Take maximum doses of Rx painkillers
• Hobble
• Miss out on two incredibly important trips

This all brings me around to the role of the supporting characters. I’ve realized a couple of key points:

1. Supporting characters do all the work (while the hero endures heavy emotional trauma and of course physical pain)
2. Supporting characters have their own story arc and challenges to face
3. Supporting characters are wholly underappreciated

This is one of the major flaws that I’ve been correcting in Dawn’s Rise. I’ve focused all my attention on Dawn, and completely neglected my supporting characters. When it comes down to it, Dawn doesn’t really do anything. She doesn’t save the world. She doesn’t fight the bad guys. She’s half crazy and a pretty poor leader. In fact, one could argue that she’s not even worthy of hero status (I’ve got other posts somewhere that explain why she is the hero, mostly because she sacrifices the most, blah blah blah). John creates the plan to save humanity. Sam figures out the cause of all the disasters and validates Dawn’s paranoia. Maj. Edwards puts together her army. Alpha captures the equipment they need. Kaila defends her from an attack.

But my supporting characters don’t really have complete arcs. Dawn’s Aunt Rose shows up once and then disappears. She’s Dawn’s only link to her past and I killed her off. Um…no. Need to fix that. John does all this heroic stuff in his own right, but what does he really learn from it? What’s his transformation? Where are his flaws? I have elements here and there:

• Alpha, the secretive commando leader, must become a father instead of a commander to his children/troops.
• Kaila, the only female commando, must learn that there’s another side to life besides fighting, and she can allow herself to be a woman.
• Sam, who could have easily become Chairman instead of Dawn, must stop playing second fiddle in his own life.
• Major Edwards must come to grips with his grief over losing his family (as most characters must, but he’s particularly shaken)
• Rose, Dawn’s aunt, must stop playing the victim all the time and take responsibility for her life.
• John must also take charge of his life. He must also allow himself to care for someone who drives him crazy (don’t we all).

And then, of course, we have the anti-supporting character, the villain, who also needs an arc.

• Susan, the evil corporate Chairman, must reassert her power at all costs.

This is kind of a negative arc, probably worthy of a separate blog post.

I still have a handful of supporting characters I haven’t even mentioned: Brenda, Izzy, Missy, Joe, Angela, Delta, Muhammad Saed, Mya (Dawn’s dead mother), and more. They all show up at random times and either help or hinder the rest of the characters, but most of them don’t really have their own stories. I need to fix that. This experience has taught me a much greater appreciation for supporting characters, and how they can make or break the hero’s journey.

So as an aspiring Supporting Character, I’m working out my own story arc: Iapetus999 must find a way to publish his breakthrough novel while tending to his stricken and immobilized wife and two children. Can he succeed in reaching his dream or will the financial and emotion burdens force him back into the wretched workforce?

Stay tuned. Who knows where my dreams may wind up?

Gang Aft Agley

Gang Aft Agley

Recently, someone asked me what the theme to Dawn’s Rise is. Among others, I came up with, “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley” (often go awry). Which I have converted to “No sufficiently advanced technology can save us from destruction. Or ourselves.”*

Take stairs, for instance. Not very advanced technology. Yet how many people are injured on killed on stairs every day? Hundreds, probably. Well, my dear wife fell down some this weekend, and practically ripped her foot off her leg. It was awful. She needed surgery including screws and plates and a basic reconstruction of the ankle. It will be months and months before she can even walk, and more months before she’s back to normal. This comes right on the heels of my own hospital adventure. At least this time we know exactly what the problem is. Needless to say, I’ve gotten absolutely no writing or critiquing or blog reading done.

I had a lot of running plans this summer, and they’re all falling apart. My wife had a lot of travel plans, those have gone up in smoke. Who knows how much all these bills will come to. I can’t imagine surgery is cheap. I’m starting to get sick of the drama and unexpected expenses. I just want to focus on my writing career, but life is getting in the way. Sure, maybe this is good “writing fodder” but enough is enough. 

Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. Maybe I need to work on a book with a more positive theme.

*Thanks to Robert Burns, Arthur C. Clark, and Edward Murphy, if such person ever existed.

 

Reaching for Something

Reaching for Something

Last night, my wife asked me, “so how many followers do you have in Twitter?”

I proudly responded, “thirty.” That’s about twice as many as I had a week ago. “And I just got a new one an hour ago.”

She laughed. “I have 237 and I haven’t been on Twitter anywhere as long as you.”

The wind dropped out of my sails. I had thought 30 was a huge achievement. I mean I know a couple of those are spammers, trying to lure me to their lurid web sites. Still, thirty people sounded like a lot to me. I compared our Facebook stats. Wow, I have a total of 94 friends! Then I checked hers. 1081. I don’t know a thousand people. I don’t think I know a hundred people. I don’t even know some of my own Facebook friends.

I don’t even want to compare blog followers.

I know her secret. She’s an net-ho, following each and every person she finds. She throws herself out there like party girl, enticing all those unsuspecting victims into her web of iniquity. Me? I’m like, “Hey, what’s up. You can follow me if you want. Or not. Whatever. No big deal.” I want to earn my followers through my brilliant analysis and fascinating blog posts (too bad I don’t have any—which is why the 30 followers surprised me).

So that brings me to my next thought.

I’ve added so many feeds into my reader that it now says “1000+ unread posts” at the top. I’m following 123 different feeds, although some of those don’t actually have activity anymore and need to be pruned. I’m inundated with posts from aspiring writers, established authors, agents, and editors, not to mention just other random feeds I find interesting (running, etc). I’m getting a sense of what topics are interesting to writers, what agents are dealing with, and what the book market is like (getting published, idiots, and depressing in order).

I’m trying to find a way to share these lists. Google Reader has some kind of “sharing” feature but I want to share subscriptions, not posts per se. I can add a bunch of feeds to my blogger page, but it only shows the last X posts. I don’t know if anyone would even find that interesting. If you go to my blog you can see some of the blogs I follow. Just scroll down the side until you see a bunch of faces. There’s some way to see what I follow through that, but it only lists Blogger blogs. If there’s a good feed-sharing site out there, let me know.

On to the next topic.

I’ve made a decision that I need more beta-readers for Dawn’s Rise. I feel like self-editing is only getting me 50% of the way there. I’m improving things, but I’m also missing tons of problems, not identifying flat areas, and since my ms keeps growing, I’m not cutting things out like I should. My critique group is around page 40, and I’m dealing with issues on page 150. At this rate, I won’t be completed until next year, while my brilliant epic fantasy novel languishes. I never realized this would be so hard or take so long (or how crappy my previous drafts are).

I’m therefore beginning an active search for beta readers, including posting some chapters out on Critters. And of course I’m willing to exchange whole-novel critiques. If are interested or know anyone out there willing to exchange critiques let me know. All I ask is that once you commit, you stick through to the bitter end, no matter how cheesy and unbelievable the novel becomes.

Now for a Medical Update that has no connection with the rest of the post.

There’s nothing wrong with me. I basically wracked up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills (still waiting to see what insurance covers) because—listen to this—I had a STOMACH ACHE. What I’m left with is my original theory: I overdid it, eating and drinking too much, maybe got dehydrated, and things just got a bit clogged up. Maybe if I had drank some coffee and gone for a walk, things would have resolved themselves. I don’t have Crohn’s. I don’t have cancer. I don’t have diverticulitis. I don’t have ulcers. I don’t have Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I’m 100% disease free (AFAIK). I feel like I should be happy about that, but this knowledge comes at a great cost, and doesn’t change what I already knew. I’m not disappointed that I’m well, I just feel I sacrificed a week of my life and have nothing to show for it but bills.

So I’m trying to get back to my workout routine, but I’ve been unmotivated lately. I’ve missed a few of the big races I wanted to compete in, and I really have nothing I want to sign up for right now. I just want to get my novel out there into agents’ hands, but I can’t in its current format. I don’t where all the time goes, and I don’t know if my novel’s getting any closer to anything. My self-confidence is starting to slip away like Jell-O left out in the sun.

Critique Technique Part 2

Critique Technique Part 2

I submitted some fairly unedited text to Edittorrent. You can read it here. They did a pretty good job with it, and it’s a good example of what to look for in a critique. BTW everyone, it’s iapetus with an i.

Here is a small bit of background that those editors didn’t have. This is typical for critiques; they usually are considered in the context of the rest of the story:

During a meeting with our villain, Dawn freaks out, feeling something bad is about to happen. She is being transported back to a jail in a van when the ground begins shaking violently. The van tips over and she escapes her captors. She runs through the city, avoiding falling buildings and crumpling streets. She finds some relative safety in an old cemetery. The earthquake grows in intensity, until…

Original line in italics.
Edittorrent comments in normal face.
My comments in BLUE.

---

Iapetus posted:
A bulge of earth in the distance raced towards her at jet speed. As it passed, the ground ripped upwards, throwing Dawn into the air, almost 15 meters high. The earth threw off the top layers of soil, flinging buried pipes and wires as well as huge chunks of asphalt and concrete into the air. Dawn sailed over the soil, reminded of documentaries where tons of dynamite blew away a wall of material. The earth exploded in every direction. Dawn crashed onto a soft pile of debris and ducked from rain of high-flung rocks and bricks. A couple blocks away, Charlotte’s jewel, the HLSCO HQ building, the huge elegant structure almost a kilometer high, crumpled into itself, imploding in a huge cloud of dust and noise. Dawn spotted her own apartment complex, presumably with her Aunt Rose inside, settling down to the ground in a plume of debris.

"Bulge" seems to me still attached to the earth, not a projectile. Not sure if anyone else felt that way! Or do you mean it was still attached?
This should probably be “A bulge in the earth”
You know, a line of description might clear this up-- however, it's possible only I didn't get it.
I’m going to work on this a little more. With powerful quakes, you can actually see the earth ripple like waves on the ocean. If you watch videos of nukes, you can see this.

Good frenetic feel here, right for an action scene. Yay!

As it passed, the ground ripped upwards, throwing Dawn into the air, almost 15 meters high. The earth threw off the top layers of soil, flinging buried pipes and wires as well as huge chunks of asphalt and concrete into the air.

Maybe earlier say where we are? See if you can sneak it in-- like the bulge of earth ran past a highrise (we're in a city) or a silo (we're in the country).
This is out of context, so we know she’s in a cemetery within the city.

Notice that you've buried the experience of the POV character, in the middle of a line. How close are you to her own feelings? If you're in deep POV, or any kind of personal POV, you'll want to tell how it feels to be flung that way. If you're in omniscient, however, you want to concentrate on the overall scene-- but seeing a person flung into the air might be worth describing. Are her arms flailing, etc?
This is unfortunately typical of how I write drafts, where I just tell everything. :( It’s probably my number one style problem right now.

Dawn sailed over the soil, reminded of documentaries where tons of dynamite blew away a wall of material.

Uh, this doesn't seem to be a real person. She's sailing through the air, and a bulge of earth is pursuing her, and she's thinking about documentaries? Come on. Be in her. Close your eyes and imagine that you are her, and you are there on earth and suddenly you're flung into the air, and there is NOTHING you can do, but you try to do it anyway-- grab at the air, reach down for the earth, anything that can stop your flight. Be in her, and tell us what it feels like, and what you're thinking as you sail through the air to probable death.
I just love that image and I tried to sneak it in. I knew it wouldn’t fly (pun intended :). I’m thinking of rewriting sections in first person to get inside my character, then changing it back to third and see how that works. Or maybe I should go into screenwriting. Nah.

If you want to talk about documentaries, you need to be in omniscient POV, I think.
I think I see the topic of my next blog: what POV should I write in? Because I don’t know, and I’m not getting it right.

Then again, maybe she's a lot cooler under pressure than I am!
The earth exploded in every direction. Dawn crashed onto a soft pile of debris and ducked from rain of high-flung rocks and bricks.
How does it feel to crash? Can she scramble up, look wildly around, and then duck?
Noted. She’s dazed and confused, and of course terrified. This is the most dramatic scene in the novel save the final climactic scene (which makes this look like a walk in the park), so I have my work cut out.

A couple blocks away, Charlotte’s jewel, the HLSCO HQ building, the huge elegant structure almost a kilometer high, crumpled into itself, imploding in a huge cloud of dust and noise.

I like that "almost a kilometer high", and I can really see it "crumpling".
Maybe too many short elements there? The punctuation is right, but so many short elements might be kind of choppy, and the main purpose of the sentence might be lost. Maybe if you get rid of "Charlotte's jewel"? and end the sentence thus:

crumpled into itself and imploded in a cloud of dust and noise.

See what you think--
That sounds better. See? Editors do help. :)

Dawn spotted her own apartment complex, presumably with her Aunt Rose inside, settling down to the ground in a plume of debris.

I'd delete that "presumably" right away, as it bleeds out all your credibility. Come on, this is a novel. You're in charge. Aunt Ruth is there, as far as Dawn knows.
Hmm. I like that thought, that I’m in charge. I do rule this novel! Sometimes authors need a slap in the face.

I live in the Midwest, and we have tornadoes that will mow down a town and then delicately take one car and set it down undented a mile away. So I envision that apartment complex landing intact and just causing a big dustbomb as it lands. What do you mean? Is the apartment complex destroyed? Tell us.
Good idea. It’s a 300+ story complex, taller than the HQ building. It takes a while to fall down, too, like half a minute.

Also, Dawn is not just a camera. What's going on with her? Is she crouched behind a broken shard of concrete, watching helplessly as her home hurtles by and crashes into the cornfield/desert/parking lot?
See that? I don't know where we are-- the verdant farmland, the desert, the suburbs. "Ground" can be on the moon, for all I know. You did mention Charlotte, presumably the North Carolina city and not the girl I went to high school with. But you know, I'm from Virginia, just north of there, and I still want to know-- are those buildings crashing into the mountains? the mall? a lake?
Got it. I make sure the context is clear. Need to get in Dawn’s head. Working on it.

Look for non-informative words. "Ground" says less than "dirt" even. Sneak in info whenever you can without calling too much attention to it. You can almost always replace a generic word like "ground" with something more interesting, like "the North Carolina clay," or "the desert sand," or "the mall parking lot."

Challenge yourself. Find every generic word and see if you can specific it up. :)
Will do.

---

So I took my own advice, and rewrote it in first person, trying to get into my character’s head:

I staggered over to an old cemetery covered with dust. My throat ached and my eyes watered. I waved the dust away and covered my face with my shirt. My legs trembled, and I felt dizzy and disorientated. I prayed that this terrible vision would stop, that I would wake up in my apartment and everything would be fine, that there wouldn’t be bodies and buildings lying everywhere. The earth kept swaying as if I walked inside a canoe. I trembled with every cry and scream that mingled with the thunder of collapsing buildings, sounding like a rollercoaster that continuously plunged down. My voice keened as I looked around for a safe place, only to find nothing. From my small hill, I looked down past the airport towards the Catawba River. The land over there seemed to rise up in a wave, traveling towards me like a train. The river splashed into the air like someone was fishing with dynamite. Everything in the wave’s path exploded into the air. A plane tumbled into a fireball as it landed. I ducked, covering my head, knowing the wave would hit me in seconds. The ground dipped and then pulsed upwards, throwing me and the very ground I stood on far into the air. I screamed, swimming in tombstones and debris. The dirt blinded and choked me as reached out for anything. I hung in the air like a ragdoll tossed by a child, helpless and frantic, seeing nothing but brown soil flying everywhere.

The dirt collapsed back onto the ground. I landed with a thump on the freshly turned soil while tons of the stuff rained onto my back. A tombstone narrowly missed my head. I gasped for air, my lungs refusing to function. Pain shot through my body from a dozen places as rocks hit me. I pushed myself up before the raining soil could bury me. My head swam from lack of oxygen and I felt faint. As I rose, holding my arms over my head, my blood froze. A couple blocks away, the enormous HLSCO HQ building—where I had just been interrogated—imploded, folding in on itself in a tower of dust. I felt my stomach charge up my throat when I spotted the next sight. I watched the Edenville Sky Towers, all 325 floors, sink down to the streets with my Aunt Rose inside. I tried to scream but dirt clogged my throat. I retched, falling to my knees as my stomach spewed its contents. I could only breathe in tiny quick inhalations like a dog panting. My Eyespy warned me of my dangerously low oxygen saturation, and my Earbug chimed, another reminder that I was dying.

And then converted to 3rd person with some additional minor edits:

Dawn staggered over to an old cemetery covered with dust. Her throat ached and her eyes watered. She waved the dust away and covered her face with her shirt. Her legs trembled, and she felt dizzy and disorientated. She prayed that this terrible vision would stop—that she would wake up in her apartment and everything would be fine, without bodies and buildings lying everywhere. The earth kept swaying as if she walked inside a canoe. She shuddered at the cries and screams mingling with the thunder of collapsing buildings, sounding like a rollercoaster plunging down in an infinite loop. From a small hill, she looked down past the airport towards the Catawba River. The land rose up in a wave that travelled towards her like a train. The river splashed into the air like someone was fishing with dynamite. Everything in the wave’s path exploded into the air. A plane tumbled into a fireball as it landed. Dawn ducked, covering her head, fearing the wave would strike her in seconds. The ground dipped and then pulsed upwards, throwing her and the cemetery plots far into the air. She screamed, swimming in tombstones and debris. The dirt blinded and choked her as reached out for anything. She hung in the air like a ragdoll tossed by a child, helpless and frantic, seeing nothing but brown soil flying everywhere.

The dirt collapsed back onto the ground. Dawn landed with a thump on the freshly turned soil while tons of earth rained onto her back. A tombstone narrowly missed her head. She gasped for air, her lungs refusing to function. Pain shot through her body in a dozen places as rocks pummeled her. Dawn dug herself up before the raining soil could bury her, her arms and legs burning from exertion. Her head swam from lack of oxygen and she felt faint. She rose, holding her arms over her head, and her blood froze. A couple blocks away, the enormous HLSCO HQ building—where she had just been interrogated—imploded, folding in on itself in a tower of dust. She felt her stomach charge up her throat when she spotted the next sight. The Edenville Sky Towers, all 325 floors, sank down to the streets with Aunt Rose inside. She tried to scream but dirt clogged her throat. She retched, falling to her knees as her stomach spewed its contents. She could only breathe in tiny quick inhalations like a dog panting. Her Eyespy warned her of dangerously low oxygen saturation, and her Earbug chimed, another reminder that she was dying.

Okay, still not perfect, but is it better? It’s a heck of a lot longer, so I need to trim it. I think I grabbed a few things from surrounding paragraphs, so the whole chapter can be pared down.

Now your turn. What additional edits do I need now? What still needs work? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

---

[Edited 6/23/2009]

After I read Merrilee's comments I came up with this re-edit.

Dawn thought it appropriate to flee to a cemetery, because when she spotted the wave of destruction flying towards her across the landscape, she knew she was about to die. In the distance, a violent upheaval of earth raced along, flinging rivers into the air, tossing cars like toys, and detonating the ground like a vast field of dynamite. She prayed that this was a vision, one of her crazy delusions. It felt so real, and the fear reached down to her bones, shaking her knees and cramping her stomach. She saw Death coming in the form of an earthquake beyond her poor power to comprehend. The wave carved down streets and buildings, then before she could take another breath, it flung her and the contents of cemetery high into the air. She closed her eyes and held her arms across her face as she sailed through the flying soil, tensing her body in anticipation of the final impact that spelled her doom.

With a violent whump, she landed in a pile of loose dirt. Her breath escaped her body and she lay there trying to draw in air while dirt and debris rained down. Her eyes refused to focus, her legs threatened to collapse, and the dirt prepared to bury her like the other corpses all around her. Dawn clawed her way free, her breath finally coming in tiny gasps. Her only thought was survival. Just survive one more second. She pulled herself up by grasping a large tombstone that had narrowly missed crushing her head. She cleared the dirt in her eyes, and witnessed a sight that froze her. The grand HQ building, a kilometer high and the pinnacle of modern architecture, imploded on itself and collapsed into the streets in a huge cloud of dust. Dawn knew thousands of people worked there, all crushed in an instant. Another sight made Dawn wish she had died in the cemetery. The Edenville Sky Towers, all 325 stories, tilted and fell down, thundering and generating more dark dust clouds. Dawn’s heart sank. Not Rose. Please, not Rose. This vision has to stop. This can’t be happening. I want it to stop. Now! Everything she had in the world just vanished. Her family, her home, her job, her city, all destroyed in one instant. She fell to her knees as her stomach rebelled and purged itself, then she rolled onto her back, wishing her suffering would just end.

Agent Query Letter Redux

Agent Query Letter Redux

Okay, as you can see over there, Dawn’s getting a bit ticked at the delays getting her story published. Hey, I’m doing my best! Settle down!

I’ve been working off and on on my Query Letter for Dawn’s Rise, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts: Secret Screwup, The One Sentence Summary, I'm Wripped, Done Moving, and a bunch more I’m too lazy to list now.

Earlier this week, I posted my latest version up here on Agent Query. Click that link if you want to read it. As usual, people ripped it apart. Confusing, unoriginal. So I wrote this long reply explaining everything. I use the word “prophecy” in the query but it’s not a prophecy. I use the word “psychic” in the query but Dawn’s not (well, I leave it up to the reader to decide). I talk about the future but even that confuses people. So when all was said and done, I looked at my long reply and thought, “Hey, this isn’t a bad query in itself.” It’s a little cheeky, so I need to tone it down (maybe), but I think I’ve finally captured the essence of Dawn’s Rise in it. It’s a bit long, and I need a closing paragraph with genre, word count etc, but maybe this will finally fly with few edits.

So here’s my “fun” query:

Dear Agent X:

When bad things start to happen, some random person may have happened to make an accurate prediction about it.

In this case, a bunch of people dream of a very tall woman as a Savior during a time of disasters. This woman resembles Dawn, who happens to work as a psychic, but the computers do all the readings based on client's history and interests so she really isn't. Enamored by the idea, she keeps finding evidence that she's this Savior—and of course it's confirmed by this random guy (whose own friends think is nuts). He's also promoting this idea of “Dawn is the Savior” online, so it grows into a worldwide phenomenon. She's an overnight sensation.

She's not super stable, so when the corporations decide to shut her down, she sees it as further confirmation that she's this Savior person. Her own dreams become filled with these visions. When disaster wipes out most of the population, she becomes leader because her "citizen value" is higher than anyone else the computers can locate. As this leader, she tries to work with the computers, but as we all know, computers suck and screw everything up because they have no reasoning—even 100 years from now. So she kills them, a nice logical solution. (not).

So she's completely incapable of performing this job, she's thrown away the only tool that can really help her, and now that the computers have stopped regulating her mental state, she's relying on hallucinations to guide her to save humanity. Naturally, she's overthrown and locked in a jail cell to die. When even her rescuers decide to abandon her, she finally decides that enough is enough—and whether or not she's psychic or insane, she's going to lead mankind to safety. She uses good old-fashioned willpower and conviction and finds that she really can be a leader. The rest is a bunch of fighting and race-against-the-clock action. Interested?

NOTES:

• I used the words “random”, “bunch”, “happen”, and “so” a couple times each.
• Plenty of nasty adverbs. I frankly don’t care.
• I use a conversational voice. I think previous attempts always come off a bit stiff. I think now it’s too “cute” and will put off agents who might think I’m a dingbat. But when I write the query very professionally, it’s too dry and uninteresting.
• The line starting, “The rest” just cracks me up. I’m hand-waving over my own novel. Maybe I should add “yada yada” at the end.

Let me know what you think. Should I focus on this one? Keep the tone? Or just work on the one I posted on the Agent Query site?

Dawn Anami—In the Flesh

Dawn Anami—In the Flesh

I found this awesome site called Hero Machine that lets you create comic-style images of heroes. So I made a picture of Dawn from Dawn’s Rise, the novel I’m trying to publish.

The outfit is something from the late middle part of the book where Dawn has to wear whatever scraps the remains of the HLSCO Army can find, which of course don’t fit her very well.

Here’s how I describe it in the book:

She threw on a plain tee shirt and jeans, which was fast becoming her outfit of choice. The jeans were Capri-styled, ending just below her knees. For shoes she wore some black combat boots. Her shirt had some simple lettering on the breast: “Property of HLSCO”. They had also found her a large camo jacket for travelling outside.

Well the image isn’t exactly the same as the description. They also provide a ton of implements for her to hold, but I didn’t find any that were appropriate. If anyone makes their own character, upload the image somewhere and I’ll link to it from here.

[Edited]

Here's Suzanne's Hero "Jakob"

I’m Wripped

I’m Wripped

No, I’m not well-built (yet).


For some crazy reason, I sent my query letter for Dawn’s Rise to Evil Editor and his minions to destroy. Actually, I sent him three queries, and suggested he use the one he hates the most. So he chose the one I didn’t even write (someone online rewrote it for me and I liked the style). You can read Evil Editor’s mockery of Dawn’s Rise here.


So people have been ripping my poor query to shreds, and in the process, throwing derision at my whole plot. People have wondered if I’m even serious. Dawn’s Rise isn’t meant to be a serious study outlining some real threat to life on Earth. It’s just something along the lines of The Day After Tomorrow or any disaster genre piece. It’s meant to be a fun adventure more than a treatise on the world 100 years from now. Yes there are social themes in there dealing with technology and our dependence on it. But mostly, a lot of horrible stuff happens and our heroes must survive it.


So not only am I being ripped publicly, my writing is being shredded in private as well (and I’m grateful). It’s hard for me to think of a more humbling experience. Except when I was shitcanned a couple months ago, but that’s already ancient history. I’ve moved on. I’m being forced to rethink my style, my beliefs in “what works”, and even question whether my plot will hold up under scrutiny. I hope I get the feel of it really soon, otherwise it will take a year to polish Dawn’s Rise. I was hoping to finish it by June 1! I think the practices I’m learning right now will become invaluable, and it will make my next manuscript that much better.


So if anyone out there wants a piece of me, have at it! Send me your email and I can set you up.

First Line Of Dawn’s Rise

First Line of Dawn’s Rise

Isn’t this exciting? A bonus weekend blog post! Since my last post was dedicated to Triathlons, this post is all about writing. I’m also going to present you with the first line of the soon-to-be-classic SciFi masterpiece Dawn’s Rise. Okay, maybe classic in the sense of a classic disaster, but a classic nonetheless. BTW what do you think of the book cover I took all of about 5 minutes to create?

Here’s an update on the writing front:

• Went to another writing meetup. This one was pretty fun. We spent the first 45 minutes writing, then some of us (including me) shared what we had written. I started a new chapter of The Immortals where this character Brandy (not an Immortal) is pouty and depressed. She’s about commit a desperate act of a desperate woman. Should be fun to write the rest of the chapter. I also somewhat finished a “chapter from hell” that’s taken me weeks to muddle through. This group meets twice a week but I can only make one of them due to my training schedule.
• Submitted the first 6 chapters of Dawn’s Rise to Authonomy. Please, everyone go register and add Dawn’s Rise to your bookshelf! If enough people like it, I can get my ms in front of Harper Collins editors! Or, if you just want to read those chapters, go here. Comments, critiques, observations are all welcome.
• I’m still looking to get a bit more feedback before I start sending letters out to agents. The whole 300-to-1 odds seem a bit daunting. I guess I’ll have to send out my query to 300 agents before one requests my manuscript. I really just need to believe in myself and my writing.

I’ve been thinking that writing literature is not that different from writing software. I’ve developed a good plot, I have a lot of excitement and action, and created interesting characters. Now it comes down to the mechanics, the engineering if you will, of the actual words. Each line of the story must work like a line of code. It must have a purpose and a function. It must adhere to accepted literary standards. The weird thing is that instead of programming a computer, I’m developing code for the human brain. As you read each line, I expect it to affect your brain in a certain way, by creating an image, by eliciting an emotion, or by driving a thought. My story must get inside your head in a way that compels you to read more and give me your money! (is it working?)

Okay. Now, without further ado, here is the First Line of Dawn’s Rise.

Gravity stopped.

Interesting? Compelling? Stupid? Give me some feedback, people!

UPDATED 6/21/2009

Here's my NEW first line, and the feedback from Victoria Mixon. She's an editor-for-hire but I won a first-line-edit from her.

Red letters scrawled across John's vision, projected from his Eyespy.

Hi Andrew,

This sentence has the mark of an excellent first sentence: power. It's straight-forward and direct, no fancy footwork to confuse the reader. Writers often misunderstand just how important it is to come across in that first sentence with authority, to sound as though you know exactly what you're talking about. John Gardner discussed this in On Becoming a Novelist when he compared the first sentences of two of Melville's books, showing how "Call me Ahab" carries that authority that says to the reader, "I know how to tell this story. Sit back and listen. You're in good hands."

Your sentence has a character in it--excellent, tells us whom to pay attention to--a visual, the red letters--excellent, pulls us right into the scene with something concrete to picture--and the information that this story is, if not sci fi, at least science-based (this matters, because the reader's not always paying close attention to genre if they find something they like on a shelf), with the named gadget Eyespy. Terrific.

As far as the character, I hope he's either the main character or the narrator, as this reads as if we're going to get this story from John's perspective. This is communicated through the visual clue: we're not looking *at* John doing something, we're looking *through* John's eyes. This is very important. You've given us the information that you want us to do that. Your sentence carries enough authority that I think you probably did this intentionally, but it's worth mentioning.

As far as the visual, that's good. Red's an arresting color, plus it implies that John may be reading a warning, which is a great hook. Even if it's not a warning, you have now given the reader the impression that danger is part of this story. We read red that way, particularly on a technological gadget, particularly in a first sentence. The visual's also not overwritten, good again. It would have been very easy to get involved in what the letters look like, trying to insert an overloaded image into the reader's head right off the bat, which undercuts the authority of the sentence. If you want to talk about what kind of red letters they are, you certainly can, but that info does not belong in the first sentence.

As far as the technological gadget, you give us several concrete pieces of information about it: it projects letters onto a person's vision (onto their eyes? in front of their eyes? good question--the reader likes questions, and a page-turner by nature is a book in which the reader is constantly asking important questions and reading to find the answers). You also tell us with the name that this is its purpose: to interact with the eye. Not only that, but there's a hint of danger in the reference to 'spy' that, again, gives the reader a little jolt of warning.

Your sentence opens with the word 'red' and closes with the (partial) word 'spy'. If your intention was to tell the reader, "This story is about someone getting into danger through their need to know others' secrets" you have hit the nail right smack on the head.

The one thing that threw me is the verb form that could be a past participle, in a position in which this particular common past participle often turns up: "scrawled". It would not be at all unlikely for the sentence to read, "Red letters scrawled across John's vision [did something]." It's a good, active word, but it makes the reader think about it, which is a problem. This is compounded by the use of a past participle "projected" in the following phrase. I'd alter "scrawled" to some verb with a less common past participle

Good luck on your book. It looks from the chapter name as though you've thought your plot through carefully. All the best to you!

Victoria Mixon

Your thoughts?

PS.

Here's the first line of The Immortals. This is totally first-draft, so it's highly likely to change.

A heavy hand slammed Amelia's face and she tumbled onto the ground.