Monday, September 23, 2013

mondays don't have to suck

Because it's Monday,



1. For those of you plotting your story out there, here's a tremendously helpful list you can use to bring that Shiny New Idea floating around in your head to paper. I know I'll be using it for INDIGO TIDES.

Yes, INDIGO TIDES is the name of my new novel. Nothing more can be revealed because nothing else makes sense anyway - yet. I'm hoping that will change once I get to the end of that list.


2. In the similar vein, here's another guide on how not to get lost in your story and finding your way from start to finish. Some suggestions like a) plotting your novel chapter by chapter, b) writing a script beforehand and c) delineating character arcs are pretty useful - at least for me. I've tried them before, and they make it so much easier to crank out the words. 

a) For LAMBS, I plotted about two to three chapters for the next day, and wrote an average of 3,000 words each day. It's how I managed to complete the first draft in a month. 

b) UNTIL MORNING was originally a script (as those of you in EN3271 Advanced Playwriting might remember) before I ran with it and turned it into a novel. The first few scenes took less than a couple of days to write because I already had a little more than the skeleton of each scene ready. 

c) Just a simple line of how you expect the character(s) to change over the course of the story can help provide more focus on where you want to take them. Worked for me for 15 MINUTES, which I finally finished after letting it languish for months and months and months because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my characters.

So give those tips a try and you might just make sense of that Shiny New Idea after all.


3. If you're a grammar Nazi, you'll probably want to figuratively make babies with this website, if you haven't already. I stumbled across it when I wanted to find out what the deal was between addictive and addicting. The latter has never sat well with me, because it sounds about as grammatically credible as "would of" instead of "would have", probably because the only times I've ever seen people use it is when they comment on how "addicting" [insert addiction such as Kpop or a drama series or a figurehead for a beloved book character like Jace Wayland] is. 


Not, of course, that I'm a grammar Nazi.


4. And in case you start thinking I'm only about writing and books and blah blah she has no life blah, here's something other than writing and books.

In the words of Sarah Dessen, "Don't think or judge, just listen."


And this:


And:



I'm not one of those crazy fangirls, but I have to say Big Bang produces some really sick (original) songs. These instrumentals keep me awake during the workday, and are great for working out to!

Have a great week, everyone!

(And just so you know, I'm not usually this organised. I usually just dump all my words into one indiscernible paragraph and attempt to slice it into something more structured after that, but for the sake of those reading it I've decided to be less annoyingly trend-of-thought-y.)

No comments :