My blog tour celebrating the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, hits the weekend today as part of Diane Burton’s Saturday Sampler series. Have a wonderful weekend, and thanks for stopping by!
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© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2015. All rights reserved.
Donald Duck
So what seems to be the trouble? Your hero went too dark and lost the shoulder angel? It happens when you’re too rough with them. Guessing you pushed a little too hard and the poor thing couldn’t move on. Did you have a replacement? That’s a shame, but it’s not the end of the story. We can fiddle with your hero to get him on the right track. How’s your villain doing? Not a scratch. That might make things easier. Let me take a like in the old chestnut.
I see part of the problem. You took all of the motivation and controls off the hero. It can work if your story allows for him to go dark, but you just drove him into the ground. Now you can do a few things with this. The easiest ways are to have him go villain, henchman, or feral while introducing a new hero. It’s not unheard of and it takes less effort that dragging him out of the abyss. Many people do this. Let’s not mention comic books here. Great fun, but those characters can switch sides at the switch of a writer. They’re consistent in their inconsistency, which is how they last for so long. Bitter? Maybe, but that’s neither here nor there. We need to fix this guy up. What’s your choice?
Since you want a repair, I should point out the other issue. You never gave this guy any downtime or stable happy moments. All I see here is misery, fighting, and things being taken away. You were going for a gritty anti-hero, right? Well that’s great as long as you don’t go over the edge. They still need a slightly noble goal, a friend or two even if they don’t reciprocate, or something to keep them as a hero. You’ve had this guy go on vengeful massacres, lose two wives to accidents, and forced to kill five of his own children. Why do you keep bringing his mother back and killing her off? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Even a character’s psychology can be broken. At the very least, your story is a mess and this guy is embodiment of that.
Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll keep your hero for a week and remove a lot of the trauma that you caused. In fact, I’m going to take all of it out and let you choose the three pieces that I put back in. You’re going to take this coupon and go to my aunt’s boutique. She designs happy events for characters. Buy some and have at least one with the ‘unbreakable insurance’. That stops you from messing with it. After you do this, go home and rewrite your story. This is only a suggestion though. You can ignore me, do what you want, and break this guy again. If you do then know that I charge extra for customers who repeatedly break their toys. See you in a week, kid.
Art by Jason Pedersen
So I’m going to do a small online ‘Live Chat’ through Twitter using their TWUBS system, which I’ve done twice before. I’m thinking of running this a week from this Saturday from 8PM-11PM EST, which gives more people time to get involved. This is going to help me get a feel for the system again and see how people react to the idea. Part of me is considering doing a monthly TWUBS chat just for a fun, interactive event with readers/friends/etc. So, how does it work?
Well, I’ll post the link that will bring you to the chat area on the day of the event, which does require a Twitter account. You posit questions and I reply. It can be to me or one of my characters. We can chat too, but I will be trying to keep things mature and somewhat professional. For example, I’ll probably be ignoring questions about character’s favorite underwear style.
I have noted that the responses you make end up in your Twitter feed to help bring people into the conversation. I know I’m giving out odd warnings, but these are things that people felt should have been mentioned the first time I did this. For now, I’ll leave you with the hashtag that will be revived:
#windemerespeaks
Hope to see people there when the time comes.
‘Olaf’
This is a personal one, so I guess I’m breaking my own rule here. Anyway, the son has been wanting to make a ‘Snowman named Olaf’ all winter. His asthma has made it difficult to be out in the bitter cold. Also the snow was just too high for him to work in and got coated in ice rather quickly. Terrible snowman material.
Things have warmed up, so he sees the snow is melting and got worried about not being able to make his snowman. I didn’t know if the snow would make it to the weekend, so what you see at the top is something cobbled together in 5 minutes after he got off his bus and before homework. Unfortunately, it melted over night and he spent part of his morning claiming that he will turn the snowman into Olaf and made ‘ice power gestures’ like Elsa. Yeah, he still thinks he should be a Disney Princess, but also Captain America and Thomas the Tank Engine’s driver.
This wasn’t even the solitary event of this morning:
All of this was in the span of 45 minutes during which he still watched ‘Jungle Junction’, drank his milk, and I got the last of my email settled. Can’t say today has been uneventful and now to take a nap.
By the way, I’m going to be making another post later today. Just not sure of the time. It’s a minor announcement/question.
Does this sound boring to you? Probably, but it’s likely the most important obstacle in the way for new writers.
With so many distractions, how does a writer focus on what’s really important – writing?
While there are many answers, I thought I’d offer some personal tips.
Now realize, I came upon most of these thoughts due to practicing poor time management in the first place, so don’t despair if you think you can’t break free from watching your writing time slip down the drain.
To read the rest of this informative article, click on Valerie’s photo or link below:
http://believinginhorses.com/blog/2012/03/06/time-management-in-writing/
Okay, if you follow my Facebook posts you’ll know that I’ve had a disastrous 48 hours with a computer that decided to retire without telling me and taking half a book of edits and dropbox uploads that didn’t seem to work all of which resulting in a missed pre-order upload date…. I am sure glad it’s over. Luckily I had a print out of all my edits so took a notebook computer I never thought I’d use again and wrote like a maniac. 11 hours later I had them done, another read through and I was finished.
Not wanting to tempt fate any longer I decided to publish. I had no reason to hold the book back any longer.
So if you’re interested in checking it out please follow this link here http://goo.gl/qn3M6Y
It feels good to finally publish ‘The Vanishing’… now it’s time to start the next book…
The Idea Pile
I talk about having outlines and making plans before I write. These act like a ‘baby draft’ and make the creation of a first draft smoother. At least to me. It’s this part of my writing system that makes me a Plotter, which is a term I never heard until 2013. Yet there is some Pantser stuff in the details when I get to the actually writing. I also seem to hit that point and never mention the outlining stage. So here we go:
So, do you have any rituals or plans that you do before diving into the actual book-writing?
