Writing Excused 10.11 - Outlining

Next month we’re going to talk Beginnings: decide on the promises you want to make to your readers in your story. Then outline according to those promises.

Original outline (using short story structure from RMFW 2014 panel with Betsy Dornbush) for the first story I'm working on:

Story Problem

External - Need to secure right of passage through Panamanian territory/airspace.
Internal - Crippling shyness? Sent along to learn to deal with others.

Character - Protagonist - Cabin Boy
Character - Antagonist - vs Eclipse? Spanish? Unsympathetic Captain?
Character - Local Native authority
Character - Albino Eclipse crew leader

Inciting Incident - Crew sent to secure treaty for airspace rights for the next period. Protag’s father initially supposed to lead the expedition, but pulled out at the last minute.

Obstacle - But I don’t want to be a cabin boy! At least, not under this other captain. This is going to suck…
Tough. You’re going anyway
I don’t like this guy.
I don’t like you either, brat, but we’re stuck with each other.

Call to Action - Locals are not in a negotiating mood - it’s the season of the eclipse, and that takes priority.

Obstacle - They demand cabin boy’s participation in the eclipse ritual or else the deal is off.

Point of no return - Cabin boy left with locals - crew to stay away during the eclipse, return afterwards. If ritual succeeds, all will be well.

Obstacle - Failure. Cabin boy runs away from his captors, catches up with his crew.

Black Moment/Dark Night - Crew unsympathetic - everything’s riding on this. He’s turned back over to the locals.

Final obstacle overcome - Ritual is largely symbolic, but very important - keep up appearances. Man behind the curtain? Locals know perfectly well what causes eclipses, after all.

Moment of peace - treaty secured, sense of accomplishment.


***************************************************

Promises Made:

Adventure Story
Interesting location - Panama Colony AU
Interesting characters for protagonist to interact with - Local Indigenous population
Action oriented plot - need to work on this, as the interior is getting top billing
Coming of Age? Character development, at least
Interior dialog vs. External dialog - conversations with other characters to show growth over time.
Make this a little more secondary - as noted above, this is positioned as an action story.

Conclusion: I need to develop much more detailed outlines before I start writing.

Writing Excuses 10.9: Where Is My Story Coming From?

Take a favorite piece of of media (but not something YOU created,) and reverse engineer an outline from it.

Back when I first thought about writing, I had an idea for a story that involved a fairly standard twist - the antagonist identified at the beginning of the story would turn out to be something else (a dupe, or a red herring) while the real antagonist would be revealed at or after the climax of the action. About 2 weeks later, I read ASCENSION by Meljean Brook, and realized she’d written a story using exactly that plot, with a secondary romantic story line woven through it. I tried reverse-engineering the outline, and was moderately successful. Now that I know more about plot and structure, here’s the rundown:

CH1
Scene 1
     A: Main Plot: Protagonist is investigating
a. Antagonist is subtle, working behind the scenes
b. Backstory explains the setup
c. Protagonist notices something that could be the Main Plot, but...
     B: Subplot introduced
a. Secondary character introduced - history between Protagonist, Secondary
b. Backstory explaining subplot/history between characters
     C: Main Plot - minor characters introduced
a. One is related to subject of murder investigation
b. Suspicions raised about characters
c. Relative didn't hang out with others until after the murder
d. Protagonist has a lead - former friend of the girl who's related.
CH2
Scene 1
     D: Secondary plot 
a. backstory regarding relationship
b. decision to continue to figure things out
     E. Main Plot
a. Protagonist interviews former friend of grieving relative
b. Relative had been hanging around with other girls before murder, not after - but                     more obviously after
c. Relationship issues
     F. Secondary Plot
a. Relationship issues reflect history of the Protagonist and Secondary
b. More backstory, some movement toward reconciliation (or at least the
  possibility)
CH3
Scene 1
     G. Main Plot - 
a. Another lead is interviewed
b. Girls at same location?
c. Red herring - girls parked there, but are somewhere else.
d. Second red herring - subject not demon.
e. Pacing slows a bit - investigation slightly bogging down?
f. Dialog and character development.
g  Interview commences.
h. Dialog to provide information on how much this character knew, and when
     H. Secondary Plot -
a. Interplay between Protag and Secondary - her interest is growing.
b. So is his. Among other things.
Scene 2
     I. Main Plot -
a. Protagonist and Secondary go to another location to interview another source
b. Source has been killed
c. Investigation undertaken
d. More deaths - not just source, but another vampire and a human
e. Can't be a demon acting directly, unlikely but possibly vampire - more likely human
CH4
Scene 1
     J. Sub Plot -
a. more backstory about the main characters
b. Character details
c. Decision is made to pursue relationship, but carefully (subplot climax)
CH5
Scene 1
     K. Main Plot
a. More Investigation - details about the dead vamp and relationship with coroner revealed
b. also a revelation that one of the girls is related as well.
c. Murders occurred after sunrise, so definitely human
Scene 2
     L. Main Plot
a. They leave the morgue.
b. Phone call - antagonists want to meet
c. It's a Trap!
Scene 3
     M. Main Plot
a. Meeting at football field
b. details revealed - girls misled about nature of things
c. conflict - girls attack, attack ultimately fails
CH6
Scene 1
     M. Main Plot -
a. Protagonists recover
b. Previous encounter analyzed - they weren't acting on their own
c. Previous hints about the library point to conclusion that it's at the center.
Scene 2
     N. Main Plot
a. Demon is the librarian.
b. confrontation and trickery ensue
c. Antagonist is defeated
     O. Subplot -
a. reiteration of intent to have relations.
b. The end.

It's interesting to note that I kind of skipped over a lot of the romantic secondary plot points in favor of the major plot - shows my initial bias, since I had no interest in putting together a romantic plot. There is definitely room in the story for a secondary plot, however, so looking at how Brook wove the two together is instructive. In the early part of the story, the plot lines alternate - Main, Second, Main, Second, Main, Second. Then, she ramps up the tension to a (literal) climax in the Secondary plot line (which, depending on one's point of view, could also be the main plot if you're viewing this as a romance story with a mystery subplot). Then the main story takes over, with a few lines of secondary plot tucked in here or there (mostly as character interaction, not as an entire scene), peaking and then tapering off, with a final romantic interaction between the two main characters to close out the story.

Writing Excuses 10.8: Q & A on Character

Sketch out the events before and after your dead-drop scene from last week and three weeks ago.

Possible backstory from earlier? Lachlan and Livonia met each other as the result of a kidnapping adventure story, and have kept in touch with each other despite their social disparity.

Scenes included mention of prior surveillance by Pembroke - more to this story than starting with market drop scene?

When did Lachlan learn carving? Possibility of other coded messages?

Possible earlier scenes:

- carving the item while on return trip from New Glasgow/New Edinburgh (need to figure out which city Livonia’s family inhabits - nobles as colonists? In the absence of a plantation system in the Darien colony, what are they there for?

- earlier scene where they set up the arrangement with the toy seller? Need to make him an actual character, rather than a piece of the scenery.

- run this through either short form template or STC to see where the market scene fits?

Possible later scenes:

- Conversation with Livonia. How do they arrange more face time?

- Party invitation? Butler not the final word…

- Are there any circumstances in which a young man in trade could be in the company of a young lady of quality? Chaperones? Public events?

- Another rescue? Rewrite original rescue outline to include this scene?

Writing Excuses 10.7: Who Are All These People?

Pick one of the dead-drop characters from the exercise two weeks ago, and turn them into a secondary character. Now take one of the characters with whom they interacted, and write the same scene again, but from this new character’s POV.

Pembroke stalked through the marketplace. How could he have been so oblivious? The young mistress had always been obstinate, and her interests were vexingly eccentric, but it was his job to notice patterns of behavior and curtail any that posed a danger to her person - or her station. This obsession with carved figures of animals had seemed harmless enough, after all. The family’s peculiar attachment to Presbyterianism meant that a carved Noah’s Ark was one of the few toys deemed acceptable, and it dovetailed neatly with her new interest in “Natural Science”, which was considerably less acceptable to the elder Stewarts - but as long as she kept the scientific interest quiet, it was easy enough to explain away the growing collection of carved animals as a young girl’s whimsy.

The carver being the actual object of interest hadn’t even occurred to Pembroke, until one of the maidservants had happened to complain that MIss Stewart always went to a particular stall that was inconveniently located at the other end of the market from a stall operated by the maidservant’s particular object of interest - a tall native fellow with intricate tattooing on his face and chest. It was at that point that Pembroke suddenly realized that the Ark was not only full of native Panamanian animals, but contained pairs of European and African animals, carved with the same cunning skill. In hindsight, it was certainly possible that a Native carver had consulted the same picture books available to colonists - after all, the bookseller was only a few stalls down from the carver - but it was at that point that his suspicions were aroused.
Taking his liberty on the day before market day had been no great trouble, and he had staked out the carver’s shop for nearly a month before the connection finally made itself clear - the MacAuslander whelp. He’d been sneaking his own carvings into the inventory of the toy shop, with the obvious collusion of the carver. Pembroke waited in the bookseller’s stall, peering carefully around the bookshelf that formed an interior wall as Lachlan made his own cautious approach to the toy dealer. He smiled grimly to himself as the youngster ducked inside, and followed silently as only a butler can.

Writing Excuses 10.6: The Worldbuilding Revolves Around Me (“The Magical 1%”)

Think about the last time you lost at a game. What was the process of thought that led to your loss? Now, replicate that moment in the dramatic structure of the story, except the story isn’t about games.

Casual games (especially those available on smartphones/tablets) often employ randomization. The ability to successfully complete a level may be set up to depend on the player giving in and buying one of the micro-transaction items that’s available to make winning easier. If one doesn’t, finishing the level is dependent on blind luck, and may be impossible without giving up and doing something else for a while until one has enough in-game currency to buy whatever item they’re trying to get you to purchase.
For example, in a particular level of Plants Vs. Zombies 2, the boomerang trees need something to block zombies so that they have enough time to fire enough boomerangs to finish them off. The Bonk Choy are more capable, but still need a little delay for some of the tougher zombies. The zombies carried by birds aren’t held up by the Spikeweed, so they wind up chewing through the randomly available defense units - unless one has enough money to buy butter pats to take them down, at 300 coins per shot…

Lachlan tossed and turned in his bunk, not sleeping at all. He kept running through that morning’s encounter, trying to figure a way in which it could have gone better. Having it go worse was easy enough to imagine - punching Pemberton in the nose would have been briefly gratifying, but that was assault and would have led to arrest and scandal. What he couldn’t figure was why Pemberton (and by extension, the rest of Miss Stewart’s household) was so dead-set on keeping the two of them from being friends. They’d gone through the whole ridiculous spy novel charade of passing carved animals back and forth just to maintain some connection, and now even that was gone.
When the obvious truth finally broke in Lachlan’s brain, he sat up suddenly enough that he smacked his forehead into the bunk above him. They’d both been thinking like children, when it came right down to it - not just the toys, or the playing at spycraft in the marketplace, but the whole situation between them. And if there was one thing a daughter of old money had to be aware of, it was her future beyond childhood. 
And her household was making sure that Lachlan was not to have a place in that future.  It wasn’t about his family’s wealth, or his working on a ship, or his personality - it was about him knowing his place. MIss Stewart would be presented to society soon, and while it was perfectly acceptable for her to dance with a junior officer or three at balls, service on a commercial ship didn’t carry the same social status that a commission did. The answer had been staring him in the face this whole time - and it all came down to the very thing they’d both decided didn’t matter - Class. She had it, he didn’t, and that was all there was to it. He’d never win over Pemberton, or finagle an invitation to one of their balls, or be allowed to approach her in public as anything more than a tradesman - certainly not as a friend.
Because they were worried about him becoming more than a friend. 

Writing Excuses 10.4 Exercise - Ideas

This week's writing exercise:

Take one of the ideas you're excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role in that story. Make sure they're all different from each other.

Technomancer in the music-inspired story - who should the character be?

1. Initial idea was to write a character very much NOT like myself - an anti-Mary Sue. Female, sexuality somewhere at the other end of the Kinsey scale, loves electronic/techno/dance music, one rent payment shy of being homeless, dark-skinned (specific ethnic background TBD), young (early 20's), skinny, hyper - sleeps a couple of hours at a time, then goes for hours on a project. Employment? TBD. Magically aware - knows that something's happening, is fusing magic and tech to create a new Path.

2. Chaos magician side character from UF novel? I'm planning to kill him off in the novel, but this could be part of his backstory. Some tech elements possible with chaos magic - conspiracy theories definitely cross over, and it would flesh out the character's moral compass (or complete lack thereof) - he finds the MacGuffin, and is out to get as much for it as he can without actually getting killed in the process. Youngish - 30's? Male, white, suburban, kind of an asshole when it comes down to it - would have to spin him as an antihero, perhaps.

3. Female lead, based loosely on X? Loves music, especially country (much to her boyfriend's dismay). Does karaoke regularly, downloads MacGuffin while looking for new tracks to practice with. Completely out of her depth when things go sideways, and nearly as disoriented by the Itchy-O performance as the thugs chasing. Not aware of the magical reawakening - could be horrified by the idea, reacting from a strongly anti-magical bias (it's all Demonic...)? Not a technomancer, obviously - might need to add a character if I go this route.

4. Fish out of water - the person who downloads the file is computer-savvy enough to know it's not what they thought it was, but has no idea what it actually is. Engineer pulls a copy off of a shared directory that shouldn't have been shared? Leads down the rabbit hole - weird phone call(s), people following, foot chase on Broadway, cue Itchy-O in 3...2..1... mass hysteria. Could do this with or without the UF framework, as a straight-up mystery/thriller.

5. Or push the competency slider up - the person who downloads the files knows exactly what she's looking for. Perhaps she's actually a member of Itchy-O? Could pump my sources for road stories - the West Coast Tour would have been a perfect opportunity to do some research on an unconnected laptop, then ditch/disperse/pass along the file in California to a Silicon Valley bigwig (either technical or magickal or both)

Writing Excuses 10.3 - Lovecraftian Horror

This week’s writing exercise is:

Take a character, and from that character's point of view, describe their reaction to something horrific and awful, but do so without describing the thing itself.

When I looked around the corner, my brain refused to process the information my eyes were seeing for a couple of minutes. My friends were obviously dead, but there was no way that the indescribable sight before me could have happened between the time they called out and the time I got to the end of the hallway. I think I was in shock. The whole room seemed to pulse and dilate, and I remembered an experiment in time perception that demonstrated that people simply don’t remember all of the visual information that they take in, so when under stress, more stuff gets remembered and it seems as if time slows down because our perception of how quickly things happen gets screwed up by what seems to be additional input, when it’s actually what we’re seeing all the time - we just forget most of it because it’s not relevant.

Gods, I wish I could forget more of what I saw there.

Old fashioned words like “abbatoir” and “charnel house” might work in attempting to describe the scene, but who talks like that anymore? Perhaps if I had been in the military and seen death rained down from above in a shower of high explosives and napalm, I might have the words. Then again, seeing something like this more than once might have driven me to catatonia, and I can't be certain whether that’s not exactly what happened to me at that point. What I remember seems almost as disconnected as the bits of flesh and bone that were once my friends, now littering the room at the end of the hallway. A ring, still encircling a finger bone; a spray of droplets on one wall, outlining a shape that can’t possibly be real; one hiking boot, still smoldering and with a stain I really just don’t want to think about; more will no doubt come back to me in nightmares, should I ever fall asleep again.

Whatever had done this had not come back down the hallway. I looked around the room for another exit, my brain strangely compartmentalized. One bit focused on figuring out where the thing that had done this could have gone, while another processed snapshots of the horror that surrounded me, and yet another distracted my conscious mind from what the second bit was doing.

++++++++++++++++

I enjoyed this exercise enough that I even started writing an opening chapter - but since I might actually work on that as a short story, I'll keep it under wraps until it's ready for critique.

Writing Excuses 10.2 - Writing Exercise

This week's exercise builds on the first one.

Writing Prompt: Using last week's five story ideas (or five new ones):

• Take two of them and combine them into one story.
• Take one and change the genre underneath it.
• Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it
• Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice.

Combining the idea of a discovered artifact and the research idea, the new Shaman finds something in the belongings of an elder that leads both to the discovery of a new healing method, and to the solution to an old, old mystery about what exactly happened to the elder (a story that he wouldn’t talk about…)

Porn idea - change it to YA fiction instead of porn? Something a little less NSFW - this idea still comes across as low-hanging fruite, and I probably won’t do much more with it.

Drinking from Sprinklers - warning to children, perhaps? Kids invent a ridiculous tale of gaining superpowers from drinking sprinkler water, only to discover that the truth is even weirder…

Technomancer idea - the Technomancer finds out that the AI is actually amoral, bordering on psychopathic and evil. The “Black Hats” could either be using it for their own nefarious purposes, and she has to either destroy it, neutralize it, or enslave it for the greater good - or they could turn out to be the good guys, and she begins working for them (or at least with them, on a case by case basis).

Writing Excuses 10.1 - First Exercise

I'm following along with the Writing Excuses podcast's Season 10 Master Class series. Here's the exercise from the first episode.

This week’s writing exercise is:

Writing Prompt: Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less. Generate these ideas from these five sources:

• From an interview or conversation you’ve had
• From research you’ve done (reading science news, military history, etc)
• From observation (go for a walk!)
• From a piece of media (watch a movie)
• From a piece of music (with or without lyrics)

1. An author decides to let off some steam in order to distract himself from an impending deadline and writes a terrible porn novella. On a whim, he releases it under a pseudonym, and it’s a surprise hit. The publisher (would this work if self-published?) demands more of him, resulting in pressure to punt his other deadlines in order to continue to produce terrible porn. Ending could go full O. Henry, with the author punting his porn deadline in order to finish the novel he was originally working on, or could go darker with some trope about art vs. Paying the bills.
2. In 1493, the author cites modern genetic research that indicates that the native lack of resistance to Western European diseases has a genetic component. What if a particularly gifted shaman discovered genetic manipulation via shamanic healing techniques, reversing Clarke’s Third Law (”Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”)? The discovery could lead to, say, genetically altered berserker warriors (my alternate history project posits early, sustained contact with the Vikings, who melt into the indigenous population as they tended to in other areas where they colonized).
3. Do not drink from the sprinklers. Who does that? Thirsty runners, homeless people, aliens misunderstanding how water distribution works on this planet? What happens as a result? Superpowers? What if it’s a communication to someone, or something, cleverly disguised as a health and safety warning regarding potable water? What would it be communicating, and to whom? And what might happen to someone who inadvertently cracked the code?
4. After watching a lot of History Detectives and Discovering Your Roots, it’s interesting to see what kinds of stories can be written about objects and their provenance, and about familial relationships. A young woman discovers an object (to be determined) among her otherwise unsentimental mother’s belongings while sorting through them after her mother’s funeral. The object’s story winds up revising a lot of the stories that she had been told about her family history, leading to a disruption of her remaining familial relationships and/or a new relationship with a distant branch of the family whose story was unknown to her.
5. A young technomancer, working on a musical side project, downloads a file that’s supposed to be a set of samples, loops, and/or full tracks for remixing. It’s not - someone has leaked a file containing something entirely different (perhaps an encoded intelligence?), and soon the Black Hats come looking for whoever downloaded the file. HIjinks ensue, including a chase scene through an Itchy-O concert, before the technomancer finally figures out how to release the “djinn” from its digital “bottle”.

The Year of Writing Dangerously

Has it really been over 2 years since I posted anything here? Sadly, it has. In that time, an awful lot has happened, but this year it seems as if things are coming together. The writing group has pretty much collapsed back in on itself, and all of us are focusing more on actually getting stuff written than on getting it critiqued - especially in my case, as my rough drafts are either getting rougher, or I'm getting better at figuring out what's wrong with them before submitting them to readers.

NaNoWriMo was a complete wash for me - after two middling days, I got sick and just never got my momentum back. I've continued to poke at one of the short stories I outlined, and it has possibilities, but I really need to do some research and rewriting before it's worth showing to anyone.

Since I tend to work better with actual deadlines, though, I went ahead and signed up for the Writing Excuses 2015 Retreat, which will take place on a Caribbean Cruise Ship (tragic, I know - one must suffer for one's art...). I'd like to have edited rough drafts of as many of my stories as possible before sailing, so that I can use what I learn on actual work that I've done. We met one of the WE crew (Mary Robinette Kowal) on the first (and second) Steampunk Cruise during my hiatus, and she's a great presenter - I've been listening to the Writing Excuses podcast for the last couple of seasons after finding out that she was one of the "cast", and we bought a copy of their anthology, which they workshopped in a series of episodes of the podcast in order to demonstrate portions of their process in writing, which was very useful in learning to analyze my own weaknesses.

Now I just need to make it through Jim Hines' "Prosekiller Chronicle", which promises to be even more enlightening for a rank beginner such as myself.

Second thing coming together in 2015 is the new format of Writing Excuses - they're conducting this season as an extended Master Class in writing, so I've elected to dust off this blog, which I plan to use as my "notebook" for their writing prompts, exercises, and so forth - if nothing else, it should get me back in the habit of blogging, which in turn should help me rediscover a writing habit, which should help get some of my stories onto pages/disc storage, and so on down the domino chain.

Let us see what happens. We all know what road is paved with good intentions.

E-Books, Dead Trees, and Writing

Woohoo! The box from Writers' Digest arrived yesterday, and I now have my own shiny new copy of Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint to pore over, mark up, and learn from (as well as the other 4 books in the "Write Great Fiction" series. Now to make sure that the task of writing up the exercises doesn't actually interfere with getting started on learning to actually write creatively...

We went shopping this weekend, and took a look a the Barnes & Noble Nook line of e-readers. B. and I are quite happy with our Kindles (though we're seriously considering getting a second one each, tied to each other's Amazon account, since sharing isn't particularly easy on the Kindle...). I picked up a copy of the first book in Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series, B. picked up the first of Jeanne C. Stein's Anita Blake novels, and then we went to Tattered Cover to cleanse our souls a bit.

Sadly, we found that we're just not liking Tattered Cover nearly as much as we used to. I've had this conversation with other book lovers and TC fans, and the theater space just isn't quite as cool as the old space in Cherry Creek. The downtown branch still has a lot of that atmosphere, but the Colfax branch is closer to us. The business of selling books is rough even in the best of times, and the pressure of e-books and online sales is taking its toll, sad to say. Thing is, keeping the kind of inventory on hand that got us hooked on Tattered Cover in the first place is nearly impossible for a brick-and-mortar store anymore - which creates a really vicious circle for bookstores, as customers who used to be able to pop in and trust that they'd be able to find at least one copy of any given book in a fairly extensive series (say, the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs or the Company novels by Kage Baker) find that this is no longer the case and turn to Amazon. We found a number of books on writing, style and grammar - but it was a much smaller shelf than we were expecting, honestly. I replaced my missing copy of Strunk and White, and found the parody version A Manual of F*cking Style (which I'm loving). B. picked up a grammar workbook, and I found The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, which looks like a great deal of fun.

I'm also finding that I like my Kindle a lot more than I thought I would. The advantages of electronic copies of books have long been obvious to me (my back still twinges at the thought of carrying a weekend's worth of so-called "light reading" around in a backpack), but I hadn't realized how quickly some of the quirks of book handling would seem to be irritating - marking your place with a bookmark, turning pages, keeping a stack of current reading by the bed, schlepping half of it into the den or downstairs, etc.

Books on Writing

One of the books that I checked out for perusal on our Moab trip was one of the Writers' Digest "Write Great Fiction" series - Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress. After giving it something of a quick skim to see what Ms. Kress covered and what sort of writing exercises were included, I'm now in the process of typing up a set of worksheets with each of the exercises so that I can start working my way through them, once I get to the point of doing actual writing.

And my lovely wife has decided to purchase the entire "Write Great Fiction" series for our edification and instruction, so I'll be working through the rest of them eventually, as well!

Vacation Reading

I'll probably write up the long story version later, but for now I'll just outline it - after Plan A for Thanksgiving went out the window, we settled on Plan B and were about to lay in supplies when we wound up going to Plan C, then ditched that and wound up in Moab instead (Plan D). Since I'm saving up my allowance for a side project, I only bought one book for the trip (Sandman Slim) after previewing several possibilities, and hit the library to fill in a proper holiday reading basket:

• Jailbait Zombie, Mario Acevedo
• The Blight Way, Patrick McManus
• Just After Sunset, Stephen King
• Mercy Thompson: Homecoming, Patricia Briggs
• Welcome to the Jungle, Jim Butcher
• Dreamsongs, Volume 1, George R.R. Martin
• Characters, Emotion, & Viewpoint, Nancy Kress
• Copy Editing, A Practical Guide, Karen Judd
• The Writer's Path: A Guidebook for Your Creative Journey, Todd Walton & Mindy Toomay
• The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel, Joyce & Jim Levene

And because no trip is complete without buying a book while on holiday, I acquired the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library volume American Indian Myths and Legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz.

Didn't actually finish all of them - I'm one story away from the end of the George R.R. Martin volume, and most of the craft books will require actual study rather than the somewhat cursory reading I gave Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint (though that was enough for me to decide I'll need to own a copy, possibly of the entire Write Great Fiction series, and probably subscribe to Writers' Digest sometime in the near future).

How-To Books

So this weekend, I finished up reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel, by Thomas Monteleone, and purchased Stephen King's On Writing. And then proceeded to read all of On Writing on Sunday evening. 

I heard about Monteleone's book from Mario Acevedo at MileHiCon 2011 - Monteleone was one of Acevedo's instructors, and his book does have a lot of very practical advice, not only on the craft of writing, but on the business of writing (which is just as important, if one plans to make any money from one's prose). Stephen King's book, in turn, was mentioned by Monteleone as another good resource, and was also recommended by a friend of mine who is willing to be one of my early readers (in exchange for me providing a similar service). So far, so good...

I'm finding that reading about the process of writing is fairly interesting, though I suspect I'll have the same problem writing as I do with any other hobby - making time to do it regularly. It's one thing I'm seeing in every interview, blog post, or book on the craft of writing - regular practice and time management are critical in developing one's talent/skill. And time management is not high on my list of skills - it may be time to do something about that.