Sunday, January 12, 2014

1st update PS with more writing advice




So here’s a PS that I threatened everyone with. Finally decided I did have something extra to say. A couple of things actually


One:

This one is kinda of obvious. If I did put each of those three theme e-story sets together as a novel--that would be one novel for each set--I would have to divide it up into chapters. But speaking of that maybe I should do that for the 20,000 + word stories anyway. Each story set has one; two at least have tales over 25,000 not sure about the third one yet. And I could make chapters in the 10,000 word stories too if I did the longer ones. In other words which ever way I go--a set of stories or a novel I would have more work to do. That includes finding someone to check the spelling, grammar, etc. And I have to decide which order to place the stories. I have thought about it already and it may not be as easy as I thought. 

Second:

  Finished my UF very looong story. 31,600 and some words. When I go back over the story it’s possible that I could add 400+ words to make it over 32,000. One more shorter story and maybe another and that is it for this series. At the moment. I hope readers will like these and want more. 

Now to get back to the alchemist story. Hmm, thought it was over 10,000 already but it’s under 5. I doubt very seriously that it will be close to 20,000 but it might be around 10. 


Third:
  
Hmm, in my head I may have added a story to the UF theme story set that doesn’t exist.  I was thinking that with this story the total word count would be over 55,000 but so far I have 47,458. Most of the stories are under or just over 5,000 words but I thought I had one other closer to 10. I may have getting it mixed up with one of the alchemist stories that is over 10,000 words. I may also be thinking of one story in which my MC has a cameo but I won’t be including it in the set. That story will hopefully have its own set one day. I will look again to make sure but it looks like I was one story off. I will be writing another one as I said already so the total count will be over 50,000 and maybe a second shorter one but as it looks now I will have around 56,000 words, which would be okay but I really thought I had one more. 


Fourth:

I want to finish all three of my story sets now but I also have a couple or four stories that need revising that I need to send out. I guess we shall see what I decide.

  Some more advice:

While writing the end battle scene  for the UF story I made sure I thought of how I was doing it. I kept in mind some of the best writers-at least the ones I consider the best for this-at expressing what the hero is going through during the battle. What they emotionally feel, think, see, hear, physically feel, smell and even taste. I worked on this while I wrote it but in this tale and the last few stories I’ve gone back to see what I could do to add to that. For me all of this adds to the battle and is one of the details that make each of these writers So Good. I’ve noticed that just a few senses are not enough. A writer needs to get into the battle him or herself. Especially if we are doing First Person as I am.  

I don't know how well I am doing, or if perchance I go too far with it but it does seem important to get into the mind of the hero, even in part to get into his-her-its body, as I stated already.  

A couple of the writers in my mind are Benedict Jacka, Seanan McGuire and C. E. Murphy. 

This is true for not just battles. If your MC walks into a bar--what does he smell? Hear? See? Taste? Fell?  See and hear are easy even though adding something that goes beyond the usual, what a reader may not expect is good too.  Smell can be easy too in a bar but does he get a whiff of werewolf? Or some special Hydraulic fluid so he knows space ship mechanics come to this bar? 



Well, that is all for this PS but I think there was something else I wanted to say so there could be another one soon.

2 comments:

I'm working on turning lead into Gold