Ink-Stained Scribe

NaNo Possibility 2: The Beggar's Twin

When Procne was 15, her twin brother was burned for the crime of climbing into Altaevia—the society built into the second and third stories of the city-state, where nobles live with their artisan-class servants, above the furor of the streets. Since that day, Procne has broken as many rules as she can: she steals, she ignores the curfew, and she uses magic, which is forbidden to women, to keep the sick and dying alive...for a price. But the two commands she is too afraid to break are the ones that got her brother killed: never climb into Altaevia; never touch a Noble.

But when a Lady mistakenly drops her baby from a second-story scaffold, Procne can’t simply watch him die. She catches the injured child and uses magic in front of an entire parade to save his life. But rather than thanking her for rescuing the child, the Jade Guard—Altaevia’s masked, magic-shielded police officers—throw her in jail. But Procne is sentenced to slavery at the Magic University rather than death, and when a Master Magicsinger named Bayek forces her to dress as a boy and then begins to teach her magic, she knows there's something he desperately wants.

Procne soon learns that Bayek is one of two living people with Negravia—the branch of magic allowing a person to manipulate the relationship between spirit, body, and soul—and the other is Procne. Even more disturbing, however, is the fact that Procne has two souls: her own, and the soul of her twin brother, which she unknowingly bound to herself in a desperate attempt to save him. Now he is a hodios, a soul trapped between the realms of the living and dead, and before she can truly learn to control her magic, she must let go of the last connection to her brother.

To save a dying magic, Bayek is willing to face excommunication for teaching a girl. Procne is willing to risk death, but not because she cares about Negravia. For the first time, a commoner is being given a chance at power, and Procne is determined to use that power to bring down the system that killed her brother and made her an outcast.

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

I honestly don't know how long this project will be. I had original concepts for this story back in middle school, but they were really vague and got totally swept out of the way when I went to high school and started creating characters like mad. Then in University, I wrote a version of this story for a class, and fleshed out quite a bit about the two characters Bayek and Procne, and some about Procne's twin Philius, and the basic structure of the world.

It was received in a very ho-hum fashion (unsurprising, considering the largely literary crowd, but that's a university advanced writing class for you), so I set it aside and went back to work on the Mark of Flight. Well, right after Raven finished telling me "you could do better" on "The Mark of Flight" (which prompted me to rewrite the whole damn book), she read my original 30-40 pages of Beggar's Twin, and slammed it down on the floor at my feet.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU WRITE THIS?" she said. "The world hooked me right away!"

And a fan was born. I started working on the magic system and developing more about the structure of the society and its conventions. When I got back to the US (and right as I was in the thick of writing HELLHOUND), Raven helped me develop some of the world, and let me know when something wasn't working (IE, the main romance, and why). In case you couldn't tell, she, Adryn, and Skrybbi are my springboards for almost everything.

So this past March, when Japan exploded and Adryn briefly came home, the three of us played around with some character concepts, and they helped me work on some of the different (literal) tiers of society. I'm especially excited about the revolutionary aspect of this book, and the emotional turmoil that results when the shit hits the fan (oh, you know it will).

INTERACT: Do you prefer single books, duologies, trilogies, or series?


READ THE OTHER POSSIBLITIES:


Roost
Act of Mirrors


*Art: Devil's Eye, by Yang Qi

NaNo Possibility 1: ROOST

I'M SUPER EXCITED RIGHT NOW!

It's the first day of August and I am so close to finishing the final (hah) revision of "The Mark of Flight". The query has been marinating a while and it's about time now to chuck it in the skillet and see if it comes out looking palatable to the agents. HELLHOUND revisions have been postponed until I can get MoF off the table (I'm hungry, can you tell?), but I'm still planning to finish the overhaul before NaNoWriMo...

...WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE REASON I'M SO EXCITED!

I get to decide what book to work on next! *fireworks*

There's something about facing that blank Word document and typing the first words, making that first mark to delineate world, character, or story , that is both terrifying and immeasurably exciting. The idea of digging into this rich compost of research and imagination to make something new out of it is probably one of my biggest joys as a writer, second only to typing that last punctuation.

I haven't been published yet, so we'll see if those get knocked down a notch--not sure if they ever will, though.

SO ANYWAY. I have three projects I'm considering for NaNo this year, and they're all very, very different.

1.Roost
2. Beggar's Twin
3. An Act of Mirrors

Because this would be a SUPER-LONG post if I tried to tell you about all three (and it would take me forever, besides), I'll start by describing ROOST.

***************
Who's excited for the Hobbit? I'm excited for Smaug,
(Read: Benedict Cumberbatch)
ROOST
Alden Finch Craft is the most promising Shanlori trainee in Roost, but he’s never been paired with a Ketchra—the dragon-bonded pilot-half of the Battle Rider pairs. First, he came from Prestia, the city that used to rule Roost and now fights them for access to the wild dragon nests they protect. Second, he’s the son of Argo Craft, Admiral of the vicious Prestian Drakonauts. It doesn’t matter that Alden fled Prestia as a child; blood is blood, and no Ketchra wants an armed Shanlori warrior behind them when they’re not sure which side he’ll shoot.

Alden loses hope of becoming a Rider until a cruel prank on the training platform reveals his potential as a Sling. Roost has never successfully trained one of the deadly wire-diving Shanlori, and if they can find Alden a Ketchra he just might be the edge they need to defeat Prestia…but can they trust him if the battle comes to fighting his own father?

Wing Captain Ruri Kishorn lost both his dragon and his Shanlori sister in battle five months ago, so when his former-instructor suggests he become Ketchra to a teenager with a Prestian accent, he vehemently refuses. What good is a Shanlori—even a Sling—when his partner is shell-shocked, suicidal, and dragonless? But after a brutal attack by the Drakonauts leaves Roost’s lower town a smoking ruin, Ruri can no longer ignore his duty, even if it means opening up to another person.

As the attacks rise in both violence and frequency, Ruri begins to suspect that Prestia is planning to destroy Roost once and for all—but why now? As the hatching draws near and suspicions arise around his new Shanlori, Ruri must push past the guilt of surviving and stand behind the young man who could save Roost from certain destruction.
****************

I'm estimating about 100-110k on this one--comparable to HELLHOUND in length, with a lot of interesting action and emotional turmoil. It will be told from three (MAYBE four) points of view: obviously Alden and Ruri's but also from the POV of Talis, Argo Craft's Shanlori. I'm playing with the idea of a fourth POV--a girl who is a prisoner in Prestia, and part of the reason they're so desperate to destroy Roost. I haven't decided if she's a more powerful character seen from outside, or if we need to get in her head.

Anyway, that's the first possibility! Let me know what you think - I'll be posting a poll with the third story.

Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball

I finished rewriting THE MARK OF FLIGHT last year, and to get closer to the action, I chopped off the entire beginning. I liked how quickly we got to the action, but the pace was halting and the exposition was mainly back-story. It looks like I jumped ahead a little too much.

Rather than scrapping that new scene, I looked at the backstory I put in and retrieved a few scenes I'd cut from the early chapters of the rewrite. This is the part where Beta-readers are awesome. I had Raven read, explained where I was going to go with it, and the following conversation ensued:

"Yeah. That should work..."

"...but?"

"But, I don't know. It's fine the way it is, but is there something else the court ladies can be doing besides weaving favors? I mean, it's medieval--we figure they can sew and stuff. Is there anything you can have them doing that makes us go, 'Hey, we're in Rizellen! Rizellen isn't Camelot or Middle Earth! Or whatever. Like something more exciting, like a sport."

Badass chicks are badass.
Bingo. I love it when Raven's right, but it usually means at least an hour of brainstorming. The result was something I can only describe as Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball.

Yes, Medieval Mounted Backwards Paintball. And it's ladies only. Sorry, gentlemen; go play with your swords.

In historical Rizellen, women were allowed to join the ranks of soldiers as part of the cavalry. Most of them were mounted archers, but of course they also trained with polearms and swords. Why cavalry? Simply because it gave them both an advantage of strength and momentum for melee combat, and the speed to make a fast retreat. Also, female Mages and Markmasters often entered battle, and the safest way to do that was on horseback.

Because of this, women would have spent a good deal of their time on horseback. It makes sense that some sort of game would be developed that requires the women to be both mounted and performing difficult maneuvers without the use of their hands to direct the horses.

Then I looked at my heroine, Arianna. What is she good at? Horseback-riding. Politics. Oddly enough, I always had her be good at throwing things. Before, it had been a way to show that she and her mother were both a bit hot-tempered, and tended to hurl teacups at people who displeased them. There were lots of places in the book I could have made that skill useful, but didn't--mostly because Arianna wouldn't have trusted her own aim in that kind of situation. Now, however, she can.

In the sport, which i have named Threshing (because it used to be played in threshing seasion, with wheat shafts bound into targets), women ride on horses with satchels of ammunition tied on the saddle. The ammo could be anything from rotting fruit to stones to missiles made from sheep-intestine and filled with dye. They run a course which has jumps and turns, and must hit targets both in front of and behind them.

This requires horsemanship, reflexes, and good aim. Also, much like modern soldiers are given a few "civilians" on their courses which they absolutely cannot shoot, Threshing courses have a few "villager" dummies, which the women get docked points for hitting. The game doesn't require great strength, and it would have helped the historical women soldiers practice directing their horses with their legs, and with coodination.

:)

Have you ever invented a game or sport for your story? What are some of the most memorable games from fiction? (I know, I know: Quidditch)

I'm Alive!

Hey there, everyone! Just dropping in to reassure you that I have not been eaten by the zombies. I moved and started a new job, and my childhood just ended with the last Harry Potter movie installment. Mischief Managed. It has left me a bit drained of energy and free-time, so, I decided to devote what I had to my fiction writing instead of my blog.

BUT, I'm taking the bus to work, which has given me the perfect opportunity to do some reading. Luckily, I don't tend to get motion sickness from reading. So here are the books I've recently finished:

BEHEMOTH by Scott Westerfeld ***** The second book in the trilogy was excellent. I adore the main characters. Scott Westerfeld does something I think is very hard, which is writing from two characters' points of view and making them both so completely interesting that you're not bored by POV change. And it's a WWI alternate-history with steampunk bio-engineered airship-whales fighting against dieselpunk mecha. This second book got political, and the stakes got higher, and the characters got more conflicted and interesting. I'm seriously looking forward to the third installment, which comes out in September.

SUNSHINE by Robin McKinley ****1/2 The book was wonderful, glorious--the vampire book for people who don't like vampire books. But I wanted about five more pages after where she ended it which is why I hesitated to give it the final 1/2 star. I loved every bit of the last page. I just wanted a tiny bit more.

THE NAME OF THE STAR by Maureen Johnson **** MY lovely roommate brought home an ARC of this book from ALA, and I read it almost immediately. This is probably my favorite of Maureen Johnson's books, and I think she handled the supernatural element really well. I'm not afraid to admit I stayed up really late reading, because the first half of the book was a bit too scary to put down. Hey, it's about Jack the Ripper. And ghosts. I did find myself gravitating more toward two supernatural characters as love interests rather than the main character's hunky classmate.

Currently, I'm reading: "Red Sea under Red Sky" by Scott Lynch, "Sabriel" by Garth Nix, and one of Brandon Sanderson's original novels, which I'm reading on the Kindle for iPhone app.

Is it weird that I usually want to buy the novel again in paperback if I've liked it? Does anyone else do that?

Thoughts from Places



I just wanted to share this video. John Green expresses everything so well, and I love the way he talks about his relationship to writing and traveling in this video.

Five-Minute Fiction!

Hi, everyone! Guess what? I'm judging five-minute fiction today!


What's Five-Minute Fiction, you ask? Let's see what its creator, Leah Peterson, has to say...




"It’s an adrenaline-fueled, instant-gratification sort of writing contest. Sound fun? Great! Get in there and get dirty!
The Rules
* You get five minutes to write a piece of prose or poetry in any style or genre
* You must directly reference today’s prompt: to be posted at 1:30 pm Eastern"
And she somehow got hoodwinked into letting me judge. ;)
The winner of today's Five-Minute Fiction will have their work read and aired on Pendragon Variety. So what are you waiting for? Go check out the blog, wait for the prompt, and write like crazy!

The "Guest-Post" Talk

I've had this blog for a while now, and I just thought it was about time we sat down and had a serious talk about, well, guest-blogging.

You see, sometimes, when two blogs really love each other, they get together and post in each other's archives.

And sometimes, even if two blogs DON'T really love each other, they have a few shots of tequila and...

Oh, wait. No. I don't think my blog's old enough for that talk yet.

Listen up, writing-bloggers! I'm looking for some guest-posts for Ink-Stained Scribe. If you have a writing blog and post a comment or drop me an email so we can cross-pollinate. No birds or bees required.

Photo by Raymond Hicks.

Procrastination


Procrastination just seems so much more efficient when you have a British accent.

Charlie brings up a good point when he said creating videos for YouTube used to be what he did to avoid his real job, but now that making YouTube videos is his job, making videos has become the thing he avoids rather than the method of avoidance. That's generally true for me when I'm faced with "having to do" something, even if it's something I usually like doing. I love reading, but it was hard to make myself do assigned reading. While I was unemployed, I decided to try writing as if I were a full-time writer, but had neither the pressure of a time-constraint nor the accountability to help facilitate the process. I was suddenly faced with a seemingly-interminable span of time in which to complete something, so it was really easy to put it off for another hour while I "woke up more" or "caught up on email".

I'm ADD, and so the "I should take a nap - ooh, a chocolate-chip cookie!" part of my brain is pretty loud and tireless. To make matters worse, a lot of my methods of procrastination is masquerading as productivity, like Charlie's taxes.

Procrastination-Methods Masquerading as Productive [PMMP...that's a horrible acronym]

Sleep in late, even when I've had plenty of sleep

Make tea or coffee.

"Research" (camels, eco-systems in tide-pools, windmills, wheelbarrows, irrigation, slate quarries) for details that amount to less than a sentence or two the text.

(From Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh)
Procrastination Methods that Ain't Even Trying [PMAET]
Sims3
Dr. Who (and other TV Shows)
Facebook (the whole thing)
Stumble Upon
Watching DIY Videos...without the whole DI part.

Charlie explained the biological reason we procrastinate, which actually helped me to understand something about the relationship between work and satisfaction when you're writing a novel. The satisfaction of completing a novel or a novel revision is enormous, but there's a ton of work that goes into reaching that one big goal. If we as writers allow ourselves to think only of the satisfaction (or validation) we will feel when the entire thing is finished, the limbic system is going to win out pretty easily with "Hey, don't you want to go feed your virtual cows?"

I suppose this is why some writers set daily word-goals - to make the satisfaction more immediate. Unfortunately, that usually caused me to stop writing once I reached that word-count, no matter where I was in the scene, so the satisfaction wasn't as high as when I completed a scene. The satisfaction of finishing a scene is enough to drive me past the point of procrastination. Of course, I may reward myself with an episode or two of Dr. Who before I move on...but that's a "natural break" in my productivity.

Because I'm ADD, removing distractions rarely works for me, since I'll just make new ones of my own. One brilliant thing about having a deficit of attention is that you can always find something new to do. If I'm at home, I tend to choose whatever will provide me with the most satisfaction at that moment. Sometimes that's writing, sometimes it's cooking or watching Veronica Mars or making throw-pillows for my new apartment or looking for pictures of steampunk wedding cakes, even though I don't even have a boyfriend...

Which is why I tend not to write at home. Certain rooms are primed for certain kinds of behavior, and when I'm in those rooms, I have a harder time resisting Neil Patrick Harris's dulcet tones.

If I'm in public, surrounded by people, I'm less likely to let myself get distracted because I know that people could be watching. I don't usually think they are, but they could be, which gives me a pretty good reason not to sit in Starbucks with my headphones in, squealing over Bradley James in full-plate armor.

What are your favorite ways to procrastinate? How can you make writing more satisfying in short-term ways? What other methods have you found to beat distraction?

Magical Motivation

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Magical Words blog. I've been following them since last winter, ever since I decided to get "serious" about my own blogging. Their blog posts (and comments, and responses to comments) provide an endless source of "aha!" moments and motivation for me. I was even lucky enough to meet a number of them at StellarCon this year, and the lovely (and awesomely bedecked in cool jewelry) Faith Hunter shuffled a copy of their book Magical Words: A Writer's Companion into my hand for review.

Wait, what? You don't know Magical Words? Well, then allow me to introduce the main characters of this blog post:

(click for exposition)

David B Coe (aka D.B. Jackson)
Faith Hunter (aka a lot of things)


It's been a few hectic months of earthquakes, tornadoes, and moving house since I got the book at StellarCon, but eking out time to read it has not proved difficult. First of all, this book comes endorsed by Orson Scott Card himself, and you can just about hear the man's sigh of relief in the printed words - he's not alone in trying to teach the sea of would-be genre authors how to write!

With Edmund Schubert's forward about "price tags" in fiction and AJ Hartley's essay on High Concept leading off the pack, I knew within a few pages that I was going to need highlighters. Yes, it's a signed book. I even got a super-special copy with the title page printed upside-down (the only one!), which we deemed the "collecter's copy", and I'm pretty sure the smudge on the top is relic of one of Misty Massey's chocolate-chip cookies. And I highlighted it!?


Hell yes, I did.

Books about writing are plentiful. Writing advice - good or bad - is easy to find, and part of what makes this book so valuable to me is that Magical Words offers advice for writing genre fiction. That isn't to say every essay has to do with creating magic systems, effectively using genre tropes, and whether the Kessel run should take the Falcon eight or nine parsecs--far from it. Most of the essays deal with skills, techniques, and problems faced by writers of all genres: character creation, motivation, and development; world-building at all depths and levels; and all manner of best-practices applicable to writing fiction that doesn't suck. Especially the bits about it being okay to suck before you're any good.

What sets Magical Words apart from other books on writing, however, is the fact that nearly every essay goes back to practical application in genre fiction. From the worlds of Jane Yellowrock, Mad Kestrel, the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, and many others, the authors of Magical Words show us how they applied the lessons to their own fiction, or how they struggled to make the discoveries they now share. Everything goes back to applying writing techniques to genre fiction. Unlike the college writing professors who sneer at the mention of magic, or the more literary books on writing that simply don't mention other genres exist, Magical Words dives joyfully into the way these tools of the craft apply to speculative fiction, and how we can harness them like dark wizards harness the power of the innocents, bending them to our will to make greater the worlds over which we reign.

MWAHAHAhahahaa...ha...no? Fine. Bad analogy. I guess I'll have to go back and reread the essay on metaphors and similes.

Another bit about this book that I think is really great is that a good number of the comments from the original posts were lifted from the blog and printed after the essay as a sort of dialog. The discussions that arise in the comments are part of what makes the blog itself valuable, especially when one of the other authors expands, disagrees, or provides an alternate perspective on the topic. In the book, it does double duty by reinforcing the oft-cited claim: "there is no one right way". It also provides us aspiring writers a peek at the way we should be analyzing other writers' advice, which is an important skill as there is a lot of advice out there and a lot of it is conflicting.

Another benefits of reading about writing, for me anyway, is that it always inspires me to write. Something about those little "aha!" moments gives me the motivation to get over whatever hurdle I've set in my own way. The other day I was worrying about HELLHOUND and how I could make the tension more apparent, and a well-timed post on MW set me to thinking about Helena's desires, and whether any of them conflict with each other. Aha! There's that little missing screw that was holding up the entire machine. My main character's own conflicting desires should work directly against whatever is happening. If there's magic, the tension should come from her desire to escape that life and find her own humanity. If she's hanging out with her roommates, the tension should come from her desire to protect her pack and her friends, which she must do by learning the magic that makes her not belong. Those desires conflict with each other rather directly.

If you scroll back through my blog, you'll see a lot of my posts start with "So I was reading the Magical Words blog today, and..." There's a reason for that, my friends.

I encourage you to check out the Magical Words blog and add to the comments. I've never had a comment go unanswered, and part of what makes me love these guys is the fact that they give so much of their time to the readers of the blog. Now, you could sift through the years of posts and comments to find all the posts in the book, but I encourage you to buy the book. Highlight it. These guys write this blog pro bono, and a look at any one of these posts will show you how much work they put into bringing the wisdom-of-the-published to aspiring genre fiction writers like you and me.

Kids, this book is only $6 on Kindle. Shoo! Go! Purchase! You won't be sorry!

For a little taste of what the MW crew is like, check out this interview with Kalayna Price (the chick on the far right, who is often a guest-contributor to MW, and whose wardrobe rocks my face off), recorded last weekend at ConCarolinas! Yeah, I was moving that weekend, but I was there in spirit. Possibly the spirit of Edmund's shirt...



Other frequent guest contributors to the MW blog:
Lucienne Diver
Mindy Klasky

INTERACT: Are you a MW reader? What blogs or books on writing have you found helpful? Does reading about writing inspire you to write? What inspires your "aha!" moments? Have you ever networked at a convention?

Limits

Short-ish post today. I'm thinking of posting a YouTube video I find relevant every Friday, but I don't know if it's going to be a thing. It might be a thing. We'll see. /Wheezy

In the past few weeks, there have been a few really inspiring vlogs from a couple of the YouTubers I follow. While not directly about writing, I feel that the videos apply to the lifestyle of any creative type. Today, I'd like to share a video about "limits", by one of my top three vloggers, Wheezy Waiter.



Personally, I have a lot of trouble with short fiction. The limit is so strict that I'm barely capable of spinning out something interesting. Twabbles, drabbles, micro-fiction, flash-fiction, short stories - no matter what I shoot for, I tend to end up with too much for one, too little for the other. That's probably why I lean towards writing novels and novellas, but even those have limitations.

 In the world of fiction today, word-count is a huge limiting factor for a book. When I tried to pitch THE MARK OF FLIGHT the first time, the agent told me "the writing is nice, but the story is too long and slow". 130,000 words was clearly past the limit. Of course, insanely-long epic fantasy exists, but it will be hard to publish unless you're A) already an established author B) a celebrity or C) able to write like Tad Williams. On the other end of the spectrum, an adult fantasy novel that's only 70,000 words long is going to have a hard time finding a home unless it can be bulked up without sacrificing the story.

In what other ways do limits affect your writing? What do you think of the limits imposed by the current industry? Do you think limits impede art or improve it? Or both?

Also, go follow Craig on his YouTube channel: wheezywaiter