I am very tired and so this may end up rather rambly. One of the first things I bought with my writing income was a blackboard - It is now a white board and mounted on my office (den)wall. I post an outline of sorts on it when I begin a story - so I will have continuity (that’s important to me and apparently to sales). It will change but it keeps me in line. It also has my characters some of their traits, histories and relatives, etc.
I write every weekday morning. I do rewrites, edits and corrections every evening. Editing is very important to me. I tend to overwrite. I generally will write about three times more than I will use. I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who said, “It’s not what you write that’s important. It’s what you don’t write.” I find that some of my best writing is stuff I don’t put in.
Sometimes I put backstory in and often I don’t. But generally I will know the backstory of my characters even if I don’t put it in. It affects how I draw the character.
The flora and fauna tends to be secondary for me. Much of my stuff is character driven so…Let’s just say, if it advances the story, it goes in, if it makes the story drag and is just there so I can say “Look what I know!”, it gets cut.
Choie I’m going to give that method some thought and I’ll come back to it.
Jules Andre I want to talk to you more about the extreme modeling of the world. Sounds really interesting. There is a significant feature of the tectonic geography of the world that the story revolves around so I want to talk to you more about your study of that stuff. My wife knows that stuff pretty well, but I am daunted by the notion of getting into the planetary crust.
I could say a lot about this, but right now I’m rather tired so I’ll be brief.
Normally most of what I write makes it into the story, with a few editorial changes. The novel I’m working on right now(and by working, I mean, I occasionally think about actually working on it) originally started out as a follow up to a story I wrote a couple years back. It was very ambitious and cribbed a bit from the Godfather part 2 as far as structure goes. I wanted to have half the story follow the protagonist from the previous story around after those events(set in the present day), while the other half would take place in the middle ages and follow around this great, great, great(etc)…grandfather around, with the idea that I’d alternate between the two and they’d end up mirroring each other so some extent.
What ended up happening is that I started working more and more on the mideveal part and the present part stalled out. A lot of this was due the fact I wasn’t at all happy with much of anything I had written for that part. I eventually decided to just drop that aspect and focus on the middle ages as the focus of the novel(particulary as it’s probably going to be pretty hefty as is). I still have everything that I’ve written, so if I ever find a use for it, it’s there. Granted, that assumes I ever finish the part I’m (not) working on and decide I want to go ahead with the present part as I planned originally.
I’d be happy to help if you want to send me a message or something. But I don’t want to misrepresent myself here: I’m by no means a professional or anything. I’m an extreme layman, and I have only a very basic understanding of the science behind these things. I’m use only enough to make it authentic looking, and when I don’t know something or reeeeally want something that doesn’t normally make sense, I just make it up. (It’s my world after all!) Send me a message though, I’d be interested in just hearing what sorts of things you’re working on even if I can’t help much!
(It’s my world after all!) Send me a message though, I’d be interested in just hearing what sorts of things you’re working on even if I can’t help much!