500 Words Challenge

Daily Writing Check-in: January 25, 2016

/ Kristi / 4 Comments

Words/Time:  1 hour, 45 minutes starting revision for “Pursuit of Power.” I scanned through the whole story looking for notes I’d left myself while writing. Broad notes that came up during or after writing were written  down. But more detailed notes like reminding myself to explain something sooner or questioning whether to keep a paragraph were put right into the text with parentheses around them. And there were one or two notes that I literally wrote right into the text with no style difference or anything else to make them stand out. It’s possible I won’t find some of those until I actually read through the story.

Now I have a decently long list of big and small changes I know I need to make while I work on the second draft. I think I’ll keep those nearby while I start to read through the story the first time. This will be a broad revision, focusing on the plot and characters, making sure it all makes sense and flows as a whole. I’ll try not to pay attention to sentence structure and word choice now, though I know that’s easier said than done.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 24, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  665 words of writing practice just to make sure I didn’t go two days in a row without posting. Just sitting down at 11:30 pm, I asked my husband for a quick prompt to get me going. He came up with, “Two men walk into a bar and one pulls out a gun.” Not exactly the most inspirational, but I made it work. Not one of my favorite pieces of writing, but they can’t all be.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 22, 2016

/ Kristi / 3 Comments

Words/Time:  523 words of writing practice writing out something that was swimming through my mind all day today. I would have done more, but my husband wanted to play a game we started earlier in the week. It’s called Her Story, and we’re very nearly at the end.

Tomorrow, we’re doing another escape room. The owners of one of only 3 escape room companies in our immediate area, and our current favorite, have asked us to beta test their newest room. So we’re going to do that tomorrow. (The room is already open, but they want us to give them detailed feedback after we’ve finished.) Hopefully I’ll be home early enough to get some work in tomorrow.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 21, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  308 words of writing practice followed by half an hour of working on “Pursuit of Power.” Sort of. I got it into my head that the prologue I wrote for the novel wasn’t going to work for it anymore, because it focuses on the greater mystery that won’t be solved in this book. So the prologue is unrelated enough to not be worth including. And then I had a sudden idea for a different prologue. Not that there has to be a prologue, I know, and therein lies the problem. One of the problems. First, the idea I have for a prologue, which is actually directly related to the main villain in “Pursuit of Power” would be a rather long prologue. And second, in doing some research for how long is too long for a prologue (I know there’s no set length, but I went looking for opinions), I found out that prologues are actually strongly disliked in general. I didn’t realize so many people just skip the prologue. I’ve never been that kind of person, but apparently many are.

Is the story of how the villain (who you won’t even meet in the book for a while) became who or what he/she is, which isn’t integral to the story, of interest? I suppose that’s too vague a question, because that could be anything from a kid who wasn’t loved enough and vowed to never be in a position to need anyone again to a guy whose entire DNA was rewritten and he became a literal monster.

So some questions for anyone who comes across this post:
Do you generally read or skip prologues in books? What kind of information do you hate or love to see in a prologue?

Daily Writing Check-in: January 20, 2016

/ Kristi / 4 Comments

Words/Time:  282 words of writing practice. Also 1.5 hours working on the rest of the timeline for “Pursuit of Power.” There are a lot of places in the story where I wrote vague amounts of time. Something lasted for “several months” or happened “after a few weeks.” Of course it’s much easier to do this while writing than to bother to come up with a specific amount of time. Creating a timeline off that is a little annoying though. I muddled through, and some entries can always be shortened or extended later as I fit other stories during or after this one. I use Aeon Timeline for my timelines, and it’s the most helpful writing software I’ve ever used.

I think my next step will be to plan out a sketchy idea of the events that will take place for Alexander, the main character in this story, after this book ends. From what I can tell from my timeline, the next story involving Alexander has to take place 4 years after this one ends. I think I can make that work

Daily Writing Check-in: January 19, 2016

/ Kristi / 4 Comments

Words/Time:  20 minutes finishing the grammar check of “Pursuit of Power.”

My next step is to finish the timeline of this story that I started back when I outlined it, but only got as far as the last point that this story connected to “Pithea.” That was all that mattered at the time, because I needed to make sure both stories lined up accurately. “Pursuit of Power” goes past the time that “Pithea” ends, so I need to finish the timeline.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 18, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  45 minutes doing some preliminary edits to “Pursuit of Power.” I started by going over the notes I made while I was writing the first draft, notes of things I wanted to make sure to change later, or add, or take out. Then I went through some of the brainstorming I’ve done since then, getting an idea of what I think should happen after the end of this story, because it’s a continuation and is important that I know what to be setting up for later. And then I finally went to the draft and started a full spelling & grammar check. I’d done a spelling check before, shortly after I finished the first draft, but had avoided the grammar part. There are a lot of extra spaces between words, and some lower case letters at the beginning of sentences. I figured it was better to get rid of them now than find them when I start my first revision.

After the grammar check is done (I’m halfway through it so far), I’ll try to outline the broad points of the follow-up story before I start into revising.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 17, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  519 words of writing practice using my Writer Emergency Pack again. I brainstormed possibilities of what could happen after “Pursuit of Power” with questions about where there hero might travel to be out of his/her comfort zone.

“Pursuit of Power” is still something of an enigma to me. I started with the main character, Alexander’s, father dying under mysterious circumstances. When Alexander finds a small clue that suggests it might not have been an accident, he starts down a path from which there is no return.

After 100,000 words, though, the story doesn’t end. His searching leads him down a path only peripherally related to his dad. He draws attention from some very powerful people, including one particular woman who is basically the leader of a crime syndicate. So then the book becomes about him and her sort of squaring off.

The book ends with no answers to his father’s mysterious death, or to some of the other questions that have come up in his searching. So there would have to be another book. I’m thinking it might behoove me to at least have a good idea of what’s going to happen in the follow-up, before I could complete final revisions on the first book, so lately I’ve been brainstorming that. To be honest, I’ve never thought this far in this story arc before, so it’s all new planning.

063

Daily Writing Check-in: January 16, 2016

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

Words/Time:  620 words of writing practice with an idea inspired by a song I heard a few times on the radio today while my husband and I were on our way to and from the theater to watch the new Star Wars movie. The song was “Flawless” by MercyMe, and there’s one line in it that has struck me since I first heard the song. Today was not the first day that it influenced my writing.

Daily Writing Check-in: January 15, 2016

/ Kristi / 4 Comments

Words/Time:  620 words of writing practice using my Writer Emergency Pack for the first time. With The Triangle published and “Pithea” as far as I can take it for now, my attention turns to “Pursuit of Power.” I’m going to wait at least until Monday to start into revision, partly because my brain could use a rest and partly because I’m not even sure where/how to start. But I didn’t want to let the day go by without writing. I wrote a little bit about the MCs in “Pursuit of Power,” though it was about what would come after that book. It was more enlightening than I thought it would be.

063