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WIP-it Wednesday: August 30th, 2017

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

I added 3,200 words to the new chapter seven of Vivian’s Last Cigarette over the weekend, getting its total word-count to 7,300 as of 11pm Sunday. I’d hoped to finish the chapter by then… but alas… I once again came up short.

However, I didn’t come up short by much! Maybe only by 500 words, and certainly by less than a thousand as I wrap-up the action. In fact, it was a very productive weekend where I reached 160% of my word-count goal!

And the situation wasn’t one where my weekend was entirely free for me to focus on writing, either.

On the fun side, my Saturday evening was spent participating in a podcast/video discussion on the life and works of Edgar Rice Burroughs with my author friend Bryan Aiello. It was another good session for his Mirage series, like the one we did for J.R.R. Tolkien, and something I look forward to sharing with my blog readers in the days to come.

On the decidedly more annoying side of the spectrum, having started my Sunday writing on crisp and quiet morning, just before 8am a mass baptism of all things started in the park just behind my house. The park has a river and facilities for public swimming along with a big field frequently filled with kids and adults enjoying it. People in the park have never been a noise issue for us.

But these guys. Oh boy. They had hired a Cristian-rock band for live musical accompaniment. And of course they made sure to turn it up to eleven so that the whole neighborhood got to listen to their party.

A party that started before 8am on a Sunday, and would last for half the day.

Actually, if it had been these guys, I would have absolutely dropped everything and run to the park… Their early psychobilly-punk stuff is amazing!

While riffs and drumbeats repeatedly interrupted my own music, vibrating my desk as if they were preforming on my porch, I had a vision attempting to write: I saw orcish Viv trying to sleep off a late night crashed on a couch and unable to do so as her bloodshot eyes opened to these sappy lyrics. I’m pretty sure that what would have happened next would involve her stomping down there to dunk some heads in the river firsthand… in her capacity as a deacon of the Church of the Blessed Fist, of course.

Huh. That actually sounds like a good bit for a sequel. I’ve jotted that down now. ;-)

So yeah, writing on Sunday was less than ideal until the early afternoon. But then, BOOM… I made up all the lost time and then some, although I can’t shake the feeling that without the interruption I would have finished the new chapter seven by generating just a little more wordcount.

And about that new chapter…

The whole draft would have likely finished somewhere near 8,000 words. However, my definition of a chapter is one that includes it being able to be read comfortably in a single sitting, and 7,000 words or more is my cutoff benchmark for meeting that. Therefore, I’ve decided to split it into two chapters for ease of reading.

As one big chapter, there was already a major shift in the action at the 3,500 word mark, so it was a very easy and natural division to make. The existing rhythm of the prose worked seamlessly into becoming a chapter break.

This means that I’ve already finished the new 3,500 word seventh chapter, Truckin’. And the new eighth chapter, Touch of Grey —comprised of the other half of the draft— is close to done and looking to end in the 4,500 word range.

(Why yes, there is a Grateful Dead naming convention with the chapter subtitles on these two. It’ll be pretty clear as to why when you read them.)

The new eighth contains the big climax to the second story arc and several surprises. Out of fear of spoilers, I won’t go into a lot of details about what happens. But I will say that I got to write some brisk little action, and some great dialogue I was happy with.

I also laughed out loud many times like a jolly pantser, having fun and seeing what humor I could sprout within my fairly neat garden of story.

For those that are curious, I’m not full-blown pantser. Like most writers, I don’t fall at the end of either extreme of the pantser — plotter spectrum. However, I’ll freely admit that my style is much closer to the pantser side. I do plot and outline; mostly conceiving and refining scenes, characters and the like in my head along while stringing them together to form a consistent narrative.

But what I commit down to paper before starting a new piece of fiction is usually just a handful of pages of jumbled notes, and maybe a brief outline of plot milestones and storytelling progression. My decades spent trapped in worldbuilding dungeons have taught me the harsh lesson that I can easily become lost in research, planning, plotting and outlining indefinitely.

Meticulous outlining and plotting will actually hinder my ability to write far more than it helps by keeping me from starting on the actual story itself. So I quite consciously keep it to a minimum. Discovering this style has worked out well for me and I’m happy and productive with it. But as with anything creative, your millage may vary.

I’m looking forward to returning to editing Viv’s and putting it’s new chapter writing on the back burner for a while. I’ve got plenty of critique feedback to act upon and new drafts to craft. And I’m eager to get the new first act —which at this point feels like it will be chapters one to nine—  tooled-up and into an overall fifth draft so I can send it along to the next reader in the critique chain.

As was the case last update, there has been no movement on my other projects of Cretaceous Queen and Far from Acheron this week. All my fiction writing has been devoted to the novel. However, with only a little left to wrap-up on the new chapter eight, and the long Labor Day weekend coming up, I suspect I’ll have some editing done on them quite soon. They are stories I really want to share here on the blog! :-)

I’m also planning to write a new short story this September: A weird fiction tribute mixing the works of H.P. Lovecraft and R.E. Howard. I’ve had an idea for months, and my intent is to share it with the Fantasy Writers subreddit as part of a writing challenge I’m overseeing.

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

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Talkin’ Tolkien: Mirage #3 with Jason H. Abbott

24 Thursday Aug 2017

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If you have some time to spare or some interest in the life and works of J.R.R Tolkien, have a listen as Bryan Aiello and I discuss the founder of the modern fantasy genre!

WIP-it Wednesday: August 23rd, 2017

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

First, a quick update for all of you who wrote me concerned about my health after last week’s post. I want to thank all of you, and I’m happy to relay that my blood sugars levels are testing around 150-180 mg/dL before meals. That’s above the “average” target of 100 mg/dL, but it’s still a huge improvement and drop from 280! It has also only been about ten days since I started changing things, and signs are good that I’ll continue to improve. :-)

Now, on to updates about my work-in-progress novel, Vivian’s Last Cigarette!

The new chapter seven has reached just over 4,000 words after I more than doubled its size over the weekend. That word-count total doesn’t reflect a big round of editing I did to it on Saturday, or the cuts to several sections that sums to a significant amount of rewritten material.

Still, I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish the chapter this weekend.

My intent was to squeeze in as much writing on the book as I could over the course of the work-week, but my day job was tumultuous and exhausting thanks to being short-staffed with a high workload. I did well enough to keep everything else on track, let alone have time for bonus writing rounds. And the rest of this week looks to be as —if not more— challenging at work than the last.

Yet, I can’t be too hard on myself; I reached 120% of my raw word-count goal for the two days that I did have to write fiction. And as you can tell from reading above, I was busy with a lot more than just that. I got a lot done.

The chapter has been a difficult one to write this far, but fun too. Its opening had me threading multiple plot strings together, and everything I did had to be done considering the ripples they would send through the rest of the novel’s already written tapestry. It was slow going, but now what’s left to write is the exiting climax of a mini-story arc.

This will be the conclusion to the novel’s second mini-story arc. Chapters one to three encompass the first; four is a transition and interlude, and chapters five to seven comprise the second. This second arc has ratcheted-up the tension pretty tight, with Viv and Gronk being outnumbered and chased all over town for two chapters by over a dozen orc-hatin’ Hammerfist skinheads. And that’s where chapter seven, Truckin’, opens…

The opening lines have the pair finding momentary refuge within The Magic Moo-Shroom Metaphysical Shop; the family run business where Gronk’s gnomish friend, Cricket Keebler, works. Unfortunately, there are now a growing number of angry thugs gathering outside the locked front door.

Although Cricket was introduced in chapter four, the biggest fun (and challenge) I had in the opening was introducing her parents: Her willowy human mother Lynn who is crystal loving, new-aged Wiccan priestess and tarot reader… and her changeling father Neil.

Both have been fun to write. But Neil —a Tolkien loving former Grateful Dead roadie who became a dwarf not long after his daughter went changeling— is just a character I love writing dialogue for because the humor just writes itself. He’s such a lovable guy… and also quite possibly the most laid-back, mellow hippie-type dude on the planet. It’s all pretty far-out, man.

However, the Keebler clan isn’t exactly a trio that seems to offer much hope or help in making a stand against a dozen or so threatening thugs. Things seem headed for a dire and violent end, but for the conclusion of the arc I have a few wild surprises I’m itching to release. I have these fairly well plotted-out and choreographed… and to be truthful, I’ve been quietly laughing while crafting them for months now. ;-)

Therefore, I’m looking forward to writing this next bit that features some unexpected turnarounds — and slapstick comeuppance— for the Hammerfist goons that have been chasing our greenskinned heroes. I think the swift change in footing will magnify the humor I’ve planned, and be a memorable part as the protagonists triumphantly escape the bad-guys.

In other novel-progress news, chapter six of Viv’s remains in a second draft and in the hands of my critique partner Lauren. Her hands have been full with a number of things this week, like the release of her second book! ­Yay! :-D However, she’s told me to expect feedback this upcoming weekend, and my goal this week is to get the new chapter seven finished, into a second draft, and off to her by Sunday.

My other projects, Far from Acheron and Cretaceous Queen, are on-hold as second drafts currently. All my fiction writing is focused on Viv’s at the moment, specifically finishing chapter seven. Once I have a second draft of that, I’ll get each of those projects into their third versions.

Then it will be on to the big retool of the novel’s former chapter two, which I will transform it into its new eighth chapter.

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: May 24th, 2017

24 Wednesday May 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

My writing was interrupted by a Saturday that included a half-day of yardwork and a lawnmower that died on me. However, my inspiration never faltered. Even with an abbreviated amount of time to write this weekend, I had added 2,500 words to new chapter five of Vivian’s Last Cigarette by Sunday night.

Monday ended up being one of those rare weekdays where other projects didn’t crowd out my time to write on the novel. With my motivation in high gear by the time I got home from the day-job, a stiff dose of caffeine helped me add a thousand words to complete the chapter before midnight.

The first draft totals a little more than 4,100 words, and I got to end it on a great cliffhanger that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to this:

Overall, the chapter is quite character focused. Viv and Gronk get to have some fun at the start, a nice change of pace given events up to here, and the readers get to see their friendship develop a little more. Minor character Mike, introduced in the previous chapter, gets a touch of development too… although this is the last chapter he’s physically present in.

The big challenge for our protagonists this chapter comes in the form of a new character, Bri (Brian) Kane. He’s a local Hammerfist thug and member of the same gang that attacked Gronk and got the action rolling in chapter one. Although he wasn’t present in the inciting incident of the story, he’s fully aware of the event and serves a role to fill the reader in on how gang has reacted to it.

In monomythic terms, Bri is absolutely playing the archetype role of a Herald (specifically, of the Shadow) and the Trickster in this bit. Although not a physical threat to the orcs, he’s a crap-talking loud-mouth who is trying to taunt and goad them to violence with his anti-changeling vitriol. It’s a test that Gronk passes, but a trial that Viv fails. Her failure has several repercussions, one of which is very immediate and stinging for Gronk.

But, tested as they are, the pair’s bond strengthens for it. I got to illustrate that with some short, well-timed dialogue I’m rather proud of towards the end… And then the sh*t hits the fan.

I’ll be giving the chapter a read through and editing brush-up before handing it over to my first reader for feedback. Hopefully it will be in a second draft state by Friday or sooner so I can send it –along with the second draft of chapter four– over to reader two ahead of the long Memorial holiday weekend here in the United States.

I’m also going to crack my knuckles and try my hardest to write as much of chapter six as I can over the holiday. I have no other firm commitments, and it would be great to finish that draft and enter June on such a high note! But even if I don’t, the more work I can get done on the novel before I temporarily shift focus to finishing (and start crunch-time on) the RPG sessions for PortCon, the better. :-)

I’m really excited to start writing chapter six, too. I’ve been inspired to open it right where five leaves off: With a dozen or more skinheads hot on the heels of our intrepid (and fleeing) orcs. ;-) I’ve got this great idea for madcap chase that leads into the other scenes I have planned… And it all climaxes with the appearance of a majestic, one-horned animal that will tie the new chapters into the rest of the established book. Huzzah!

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: May 10th, 2017

10 Wednesday May 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

I finished the new chapter four for Vivian’s Last Cigarette late Sunday night. Coming in at 4,400 words, it contains a lot of interaction between my orc protagonists and several minor characters. This chapter definitely relays a feel for the town of Buford, something that was missing until late in the book before. It also shows them dealing with several levels of ugly behavior from assorted “normals”.

Poor, friendly Gronk gets put through an emotional wringer this this chapter as his belief in the better nature of people is challenged by his first major encounter with anti-changeling bigotry. :-( Then on top of that he feels the sting of finding out that he’s lost a friend because of his transformation.

The big guy is, of course, too good natured to do anything but get emotionally bruised and quiet. But Viv silently witnesses his rejection. Having been an orc longer than Gronk, she’s grown thick-skinned and canny in dealing and (particularly) avoiding a world that usually sees her as a monster. But writing her reaction to seeing Gronk go through rejection like she did in the past was a good scene.

Her feathers are ruffled, and the display of growing empathy and protectiveness for Gronk I wrote for her doesn’t bode well for his former friend. Viv knows how to play the role of the monster many see her as, and delivers the most intimidating pizza ordering scene ever as a result.

I’ll stop talking now, before I start dropping spoilers. ;-)

I’m at a point where I can start to judge how much of a gap remains to be bridged to weave the old chapter two back into the new narrative. I’m thinking it will take me an additional two chapters to do that, making what was once chapter two the new chapter seven.

Once that’s done, minor edits, additions and reworking will need to be made to most of the other old chapters (3-17) to get them in line with the new events. Chapters nine and seventeen will require more extensive rewrites, but I’m not expecting any big migraines. If anything, I’m excited to be putting in some revisions that will tie in the new part of the book that I’ve grown.

I also worked on my blurb for the novel. This was actually quite a bit of work, —because blurbs are hard, man— and I devoted my free time on Friday and half of my day Saturday to the task. Some of you may remember that back in November I spent about a month coming up with this version.  I got multiple feedbacks on it last week that were less than stellar, so I tried a different approach in a new version:Thoughts? Impressions? I like it better than the old one, and those that disliked the first version felt this was much better.

Over the weekend, I also had a new idea for the book: I’m strongly considering ending the novel differently. What is currently last chapter would remain, but it would be followed by a short epilogue of a few thousand words closing the story. This epilogue would call back to the new material I’ve written in expanding the opening of the novel, and unify its new whole. It would end the book on a stronger note, and set up a possible sequel much more definitively. Not quite a cliffhanger, but I defiantly think that those reading it will want to find out what happens next. :-)

In summation, a good weekend of progress made. Outside of my efforts, Lauren completed her feedback/notes on the new chapter three said she really liked it. And my second beta reader Jessica finally finished the last of her notes on the second draft after many tumultuous months that required her to delay. So now I have those chunks of editing to work on as the book keeps shaping-up!

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

Origin: Stories of Creativity #2 – Author Jason H. Abbott

29 Saturday Apr 2017

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Last Saturday, I was interviewed for a writing podcast that blogger and author Bryan Aiello is trying to launch as a series. Bryan has posted these on YouTube for any to enjoy, so if you’re interested in listening in to the great conversation we had you can check it out above! In it he asks me a lot of questions about my background and creative process, and we manage to walk a funny path at times that ranged from Tolkien to McMuffins…

WIP-it Wednesday: April 26th, 2017

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

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A super friend was inspired to make this from a quip I wrote in my latest chapter. ;-)

Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

After all the roadblocks I encountered last week, this week was a lot more productive! Getting much of my blog work done ahead of time granted me bonus hours to write on Vivian’s Last Cigarette, and with that added time I finished its new chapter three early Friday evening.

At 6,750 words, it ended up being the second longest chapter in the book so far. The number one spot still belongs to the climactic chapter of the novel, if only by 20 words. However, like the climax, there’s a lot of action and thrills so it reads quite quickly. Combined with the revised first and new second chapters, they form an exciting short introductory story arc of about 15,000 words.

This new opening puts the focus right on the two protagonists for some time. It also makes me confident that readers now will have enough investment in the characters by the time the story shifts into a different gear and terrain during the mid-book chapters.

My weekend hit, and Saturday was a full day. I started by editing the first chapter notes of Lauren L. Garcia, my ever awesome 3rd reader, into a sixth draft of chapter one. Thereafter I got Kim’s feedback on the new chapter three, and after making a second draft of it from that I sent the third chapter over to Lauren.

I then started work on editing the new chapter two into a third draft. Once again this was based on feedback from Lauren, and with around a hundred and eighty items to review and take action on, the edit took the rest of the day. However, I did finish it by the evening. And between editing, I was also interviewed for a writing podcast that blogger and author Bryan Aiello is trying to launch as a series. I don’t know what will come of it, but we had a good conversation all the same!

Sunday was entirely about getting the new fourth chapter started, and I got a bit more than 1,700 words done for the day. That’s a decent showing for me, given that I had to stop and think-out several parts along the way. I discovered that, although I have a good idea about what I want to happen in chapter four and have done some planning with that… I didn’t have its opening plotted very well.

This proved particularly tricky, because the chapter features a big shift in setting and tone. Some themes that have taken a backseat since the first chapter are entering center stage again. The initial opening I had in mind was far too abrupt, and a jarring change of gear.

And it really is a radical transition. Going from an abandoned deathtrap of a paper mill –where the focus is completely on the orc protagonists on their own– to interacting with “normals” (some with biases towards them) in a small mom and pop convenience store. That’s quite a shift, and my initial idea to open with them literally walking into the store just didn’t cut it.

So I took a different approach. Instead of the abrupt open, everything I wrote on Sunday was a segue to bridge the change from three to four.

I think it turned out well. I say this because I also used it as an opportunity to highlight and show a few things along with doing a longer and gentler transition. It gave me a chance to illustrate some signs of improvement and a couple of stumbles involving Viv and Gronk’s growing friendship. I also found some opportunities to show more details about protagonists, ideas that I’d had in my head as parts of the background, but hadn’t found a place for in the novel until now.

Lastly, I worked-in some foreshadowing of themes that get more attention later in the book and some that are just about to play out.

All-in-all, I think it’s a good start. It does make me concerned that the material I wanted to cover in two chapters may require a word-count more fitting of three instead. That doesn’t bother me insofar as making the novel too long (I could fit-in several more chapters if I had to), but it would mean a little more work and time needed to finish the revisions.

I’m content to see how things unfold with the storytelling, and modify my plans from there.

Even after the weekend, progress on the novel continued in the form of getting the feedback from my second beta reader on the climactic chapter of the novel (formerly chapter fourteen and currently chapter eighteen). Then I received a check-in email from my book cover artist, advising me that we’re still on schedule for her to start shooting me ideas and cover sketches this weekend.

That’s some news that has me SUPER excited! :-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: April 5th, 2017

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

I write this while it’s just a few degrees above freezing outside, pouring rain falling on melting snow. I like it. I’m happy to have it. I’m ready for the snow to leave and for spring, –or as we call it in Maine, “Mud Season”— to start.

My goals for Vivian’s Last Cigarette haven’t changed or grown from last week, and my focus was on writing and editing it this weekend. I added 2,500 words to the new chapter three, reaching 3k total when I stopped on Sunday. At this point, all hell is breaking loose in the story… Viv and Gronk are running for their lives to get out of that creepy old mill, and the worst is yet to come! I should finish the chapter by the end of next weekend.

I didn’t get in as much new writing as I had wanted to. My desire was to get 4,000 words done and perhaps finish the chapter. Instead, my efforts got divided between that and editing, which proved fruitful if not exactly what I’d planned.

Kim did a read through of the reworked chapter one and the new chapter two. With her notes, I revised the former into to a fifth draft and the latter into its second. Then I sent them along to Lauren, who’s been the catalyst for the changes and new chapters.

Lauren agreed with my gut feeling about the revised chapter one; that it’s far stronger than the third draft version and a good opener. She provided some minor notes and editing suggestions, — Lauren hates my use of interrobangs, but I keep using them like some bratty punk ;-) — but nothing major.

I’ll put together a sixth draft of the first chapter soon. Lauren, who is also hard at work on her sequel to Catalyst Moon while being so kind as to beta read my work, hasn’t gotten back to me on my new second chapter yet. But I’m sure she will, and likely well before I’m done writing the third and fourth new chapters.

And that’s all there is to say on the novel writing and editing front this week. However, over on Reddit’s r/fantasywriters where I’m a moderator, this April marks my first turn running a monthly writing challenge in 2017. My challenge prompt for this one is Blue-Collar Fantasy:

Gnome Engineering by Sacha Angel Diener. Click here for more of the artist’s work!

Your Challenge this month is to write a story containing fantasy elements in a modern or 20th century style setting focused on working class, blue-collar characters. These folks may be as ordinary or exceptional as you want to write them. However, they must pay their bills with skilled or unskilled manual labor. Submissions will need to be five-thousand words or less in length to be eligible to win.

This event will be open to submissions from April 24th to April 30th, with a winner being announced on May 1st. There are already a few authors saying they are excited to participate, and that’s always a good sign.

I considered entering it myself. I have a fun idea for dwarven plumber in a short story (no pun intended) where he and his girlfriend are having a bit of a crisis. It would take place in the same setting and town as Vivian’s, probably even during the same summer. But I’m so busy writing and editing the book proper that it would take a minor miracle for me to find the time to finish it before the contest ends.

Instead, I’ll save the idea and explore it later. I might make it bonus material for the “Fanzine Editions” of the novel I’m planning. If nothing more, it’s additional “worldbuilding” and background for my fictional sister-towns of Summersvale and Buford, Maine… They’re kind of becoming like my own Lake Wobegon at this point. ;-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: March 29th, 2017

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

Last week, I started my plan to add two new chapters to Vivian’s Last Cigarette. These are going in-between the reworked chapters one and two from the prior drafts, with the goal being for them to fill-in some character development gaps and smooth the abrupt start of the story as it stands now.

I got two-thousand words into writing the first new chapter last weekend. This Sunday I finished it, and started the new third chapter thereafter. It was an unusual start for the next part of the book, largely because I hadn’t realized I’d begun it…

Let me back up a bit.

The new material I’m writing seems to be hitting its stride right off the bat. I’ve gotten Viv and Gronk into a creepy, old, wet and drippy abandoned mill. They’re bantering, and between arguing they even overcome a couple of challenges together. The new second chapter hinges on a scene that starts tense, gets tenser, and then collapses into a comedy of errors that ends up working out for the best.

I got some really good laughs writing all that. And amid the laughter, I even managed to plant an emotional seed between the protagonists that will strengthen a critical scene that’s coming right up. All of that is great, but it also leads up to me saying:

Alright… the real thing that happened at this point is that I’d reached where I could start unleashing this important scene in the story. It’s something that’s really needed to cement a change and turning point for the characters. It’s a major reason why I’m adding these chapters in the first place. And I was happy with how I got there.

And by the time I got through all the buildup and fun, it had taken 4,000 words…

There I was, about five hundred words into launching this scene, and I’m looking at the word-count and thinking: If I squeeze all of this into one chapter, it’s going to crazy long! I’m talking longest-chapter-in-the-book and twice-the-length-of-the-chapter-preceding-it long.

I really didn’t want to go from adding two new chapters to adding three, but in analyzing the situation it was the only good option. So, I sat down and expanded on my ideas, plotting the second half into a chapter in its own right.

And that’s how I started the new chapter three. ;-)

This will give me more room to execute that critical scene too. I’m already excited about having more space to pull that off, and I’ve plotted a few additions to make it more memorable.

In writing chapter two, it certainly had tension and stakes, but not of the life and death variety… Resolving its major crux was done mostly with comedic effect. In comparison, chapter three does have life and death stakes that come into play. This shift in tone is shown to the reader suddenly, and at the very end of chapter two. But although the reader knows, Viv and Gronk remain unaware of the impending danger they’re in. Yes indeed, it ends on a cliffhanger.

That’s not to say there aren’t humorous gags in the next bit, because there certainly are. But the chapter’s main focus will be on action and suspense as the protagonists try to get themselves out of a deathtrap situation. Having more elbow room to write that seems like a good deal to me.

All of this also made me take a realistic look at what I have planned for after this new chapter thee, and I’ve decided to make a change there too.

Basically, there are two more major scenes I feel need to be added to segue and connect the newly expanded narrative into the latter chapters I’ve already written. Initially, I thought I could accomplish these in a single chapter. But a more grounded assessment makes that look like a pipe dream. I was already semi-dubious before that I’d be able to cover all the ground I need to in one chapter. After my experience on Sunday, I decided to bite the bullet and plan to do things right from the start.

With that in mind, I’ve proactively split my remaining ideas for the two major scenes into two chapters of allotted space. This means I’m now adding a total of four new chapters of material instead of the original pair I’d planned. On the downside, that’s more new material to write than I had expected. However, the writing is going faster than expected as well, so it’s hard to say how the timetable will be affected.

Even if the new material adds 30,000 words –an amount that I speculate is unlikely— the book would only barely surpass a word-count of 100,000. That’s still in an average range for a novel, in general, and perhaps a little on the lean side for one in the fantasy genre. It’s not something I’m worried about. These new chapters are fun: They’re exciting reading that is going to add a lot to the novel. :-)

Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!

WIP-it Wednesday: March 22nd, 2017

22 Wednesday Mar 2017

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Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!

I spent most of my evenings this week reviewing and acting upon Lauren’s notes for the first chapter of Vivian’s Last Cigarette. This spurred an extensive overhaul of its first half, and a less extensive revision on the second.

As I mentioned last week, the ending of the first chapter is getting a radical change in the fourth draft. Most of the last page got scrapped, along with the original ending. About three pages of new material replaced it, and between that and edits the fourth draft became a thousand words longer than the third.

I’m really happy with this revision of the first chapter. I think it flows much better than the third did, and I’ve ironed-out a number of snags that had been hiding in it since the first draft. In hindsight I think these snags are narrative holdovers caused by the fact that when I originally started writing Vivian’s, I did so thinking it would be a short story.

This problem occurs strongest in the first and second chapters, when I was planning to have only 8,000 total words to work with. Things are condensed and the pace brisk. By the time I hit chapter three, I realized the story my growing vision saw was going to be a novelette or novella, and the scope of my writing adjusted to something much more like novel’s tone.

Reaching chapter eight, which ends what is now the first act, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to make the story a full-on novel. I sat down, did some planning and outlining, and embarked on writing the book’s second and third acts with my mindset as such. I wrote accordingly. However, the terse pacing of the book’s initial chapters remained there lurking. Kind of hiding in plain sight to me until Jess sensed it as the second reader, and Lauren put a spotlight on it as the third.

Here is the first page of the book’s fourth draft. I think it’s a much better hook and introduction to the setting than my prior takes:

(Warning: A little NSFW language. Click for large format.)The chapter’s altered ending leads into the two new chapters that will follow it. With the new setup, I was also able to get in more humor and serious moments. I think Viv and Gronk shine brighter during their introductions because of those additions, and that in turn sets up an immediate hook tempting the reader to check out the next chapter.

I started work on that chapter Sunday… and I had a really good day writing the new chapter two! I doubled my expected goal and reached two-thousand words.

Writing the new material has also been really fun. In short, my intrepid orc teens are trying to avoid trouble by hiding in a creepy, old, abandoned paper mill. To his credit, Gronk is insistent that being in there is a bad idea. But Viv isn’t listening, even when things don’t start off well from the get-go. By the time I stopped writing the other day, their fate was dependent on a Cheez Doodle… And they haven’t even hit the worst of what I’ve got planned for them yet. ;-)

Alright, having said that, it’s time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing them deeper into this mess they’ve gotten themselves into! Take care!