#I’ve only ever written novellas and short stories until now

[corkcitylibraries]

Cork In Verse | J. Michael Tynan

J Michael Tynan worked for 40 years at the Irish Examiner newspaper, acting as a sub-editor and equestrian correspondent. His poetry has been published in literary journals in Ireland, the UK and USA, along with the Blue Mondays Poetry Anthology 2021. He is the co-writer of the winning entry in the 2019 Cork International Folk Festival Song Contest. He has staged two solo exhibitions, featuring works combining his poetry and his photography. Delving into film (scriptwriter/producer/director) has seen his first short, ‘Sorry’ premiere at Fastnet Film Festival and reach the semi-finals in Stockholm, Berlin and Madrid. He is finalising plans for his second short film, ‘Leap of Faith’.

When did you start writing poetry?

I was a latecomer to writing poetry and a rook is to blame. I had worked for the Irish Examiner for almost 40 years - acting as a sub-editor and equestrian correspondent, but also writing about science, art, basically anything that took my interest. 

However, creative writing was not part of my output… until that raucous rook called to me in 2015. Such was his insistence, that I promised to listen to him and his friends instead of music while cleaning out a stable. In that moment, I was transported back to my childhood, engendering my first line of poetry: A rook called me back to my past. More lines emerged and I decided to put them into the ‘notes’ section of my phone. To this day, I write my poetry in my phone, as it is ever present if a moment of inspiration reveals itself.  

I genuinely believe, now, that writing is in almost everyone’s capacity, as in its essence it just amounts to expressing our thoughts through words. We all have thoughts... One should consider that this writing is a private expression - one that is often essential more than desired - and is not for public consumption, then it will be its truest form. Any decision to share it can come later. 

With prose, I think that, once you put down the first words, it can be like taking a dog (the story) for a walk, with the route only limited by one’s imagination. Sometimes, the dog takes me for a walk, in that the work takes on a life of its own. 

Besides writing poetry, you are also a photographer and a film-maker. Do you sometimes intertwine those art forms?

I have staged two exhibitions of framed pieces that combined my photography with my poetry. The exhibitions were held in the fantastic venue of St Peter’s on the North Main Street. The exhibitions gave me huge personal satisfaction. I had one very special, intimate moment with a man, who had bought a piece that resonated with him to such an extent that tears drenched his face and he could not speak. I felt compelled to put my arms around him to console him. The first exhibition was memorable, too, in that John Spillane performed the opening, singing some of his best-loved songs and reciting some of my poetry.

I have made one short film - ‘Sorry’ - which made its debut at the prestigious Fastnet Film Festival - and am about to start my second. These are based on short stories that I’ve written. I do harbour ambitions to adapt a feature film from a novella I’ve written. 

While writing poetry is, typically, a solitary exercise, I like making films for their collaborative element, so, perhaps, one day I’ll get around to making a poetry film and contribute to a genre that has flourished in recent years.  

Where do you seek inspiration from?

I don’t actively seek inspiration. I await it. I don’t like to force things, as the work can emerge as contrived.

However, I have learned to seize inspiration when it emerges. Like all skills, it’s one that improves with practice. 

Also, I am a member of the Blue Mondays Writers’ Group - we meet most Mondays on Zoom - and we always finish with prompts that get the creative juices flowing for the following week… and there now follows a blatant plug: ‘The Blue Mondays Poetry Anthology 2021’ can be purchased in outlets throughout the city and also at [email protected]. It costs just 10 euro, features great poetry and artwork, and 50% of the proceeds go to Cork Simon.  

In your opinion, what are the most important elements of a good poem?

The best poetry comes from the writer’s experience, particularly interaction with others, along with self-awareness and awareness of the natural world. Insight and fearlessness are major components for me. Confession: Sometimes, I will aim to provoke, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment of my words. Is that disingenuous or a betrayal of myself? I don’t think so, as it means you have touched the reader, while getting a reaction is an achievement in itself. As for the aesthetic elements, expressing thoughts and emotions in language that is lyrical, combining words in a symphony, so to speak, will help the work resonate with the reader. Cadence is also something I like and strive for.  

In saying all of the above, it’s important to remain open to fresh and inventive styles.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’ve just finished ‘The Dark’, by John McGahern and am now reading ‘War and Turpentine’ by Belgian author Stefan Hertmans (translated by David McKay). Shortly before his death, Hertmans’s grandfather gave him a set of notebooks that revealed the old man’s heroics in the First World War. 

‘The Brendan Voyage’ is now top of the pile on my bedside table. I’m passionate about currachs, so am a little embarrassed to say I’m only now getting around to reading Tim Severin’s account of his epic voyage across the Atlantic. ‘Saving Eden - The Gearagh and Irish Nature’, by Kevin Corcoran, is another I’m looking forward to reading. 

Potato picker

Day calls, unrepentant…

Digging shallow

to 

  deep 

    brooding

Brittle air

sifts vapour from breath 

hhhuuuhhh 

Evanescent ghosts

Fork shares in my tact toil…

Soil crumbles 

and

  soul 

    tumbles

Denied tears nourish nothing

Propagate pain

hhhuuuhhh

The earth blithely accepts and gives

Scarified memories…

Stalk comes

Soft

  lift

    up

Extract anguish

Leaves brown blotch

hhhuuuhhh

Telling of terminal love

So sense, the Earth spinning…

Orbs dangle 

goodness 

  signals

    virtue

Salve for the suffering 

Of blighted summer 

hhhuuuhhh

Emotional famine since you crossed many fields

(First published in Blue Monday’s Poetry Anthology 2021)

#CorkInVerse #CorkCityLibraries #JMichaelTynan

[the-al-chemist]

15th December

It’s not a big day, really. But, buried deep in the files saved to my cloud storage, there is one document that was created on the 15th December 2020. That document is titled: “HPHM Adaptation - plan.”

All my life, I’ve loved stories. Reading them, daydreaming about them, writing them. And all my life, I’ve struggled to finish them. Around 20 months ago, I (and the rest of the world for that matter) suddenly ended up with a lot more free time, and my forever-overthinking self needed to fill that time. So I got very into cleaning the house, learnt more about Tudor history than I will ever need to know, figured out how to play Taylor Swift tunes on the ukulele, started an online creative writing course, and opened up a mobile game I had played for about two months when it first came out, then got bored.

I was getting back into writing, but wanted to write something other than short scenes, and I was struggling to piece together a plot, and that was when I read an article about aspiring writers developing their skills through fanfiction. I looked at that mobile game and its plot that was intriguing but never seemed to live up to expectations, and decided that this was what I’d do. I’d adapt the plot and write until I felt comfortable in my style and skills, and then I’d move on. So that’s what I set out to do.

But then, along came Artemis Hexley, and she had other ideas.

On the 15th December, I mapped out the four years that I had played in-game, listed the side-quests and started linking them to plot points where they might fit, either without taking away from the plot, or even adding to it. On the 16th December, I planned out the first “book” in the series. A week or two later, I’d finished it. It wasn’t good, but I’d finished it. Two weeks after that, I’d done the same with the second. By the start of March, I’d written first drafts of the first four “books” of what I’d started to call “the saga”.

I had also, in that time, become confident in my skills, my style, and my books. The first two were admittedly a bit crap, but by the middle of the third book, I was starting to actually enjoy reading my writing. Not only that, but Artemis had developed, too. She’d become a character that constantly seemed to niggle at my consciousness, and who I had grown rather fond of.

I read back over the fourth “book” and thought that I was proud of it, and of Artemis. I’d achieved what I wanted to, but neither I wasn’t ready to let go of Artemis or her story. Or, maybe she wasn’t ready to let go of me. So, instead, I decided to not only carry the Saga on, but to share it as well.

By the 31st March 2021, I had almost completely rewritten what is now ‘Artemis Hexley and the Mystery at Hogwarts’. I then did the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and published the entire thing on AO3, set up a tumblr account, and shared a link to it on my blog. It was a shout into the abyss, but - amazingly - people heard. And people read. And I wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

Now, I have over 200,000 words of the Saga published on three platforms with more saved in the documents, a 63-chapter-long collaborative AU novel, a novella about Charlie Weasley, and several short stories, novellas and novels either written or planned. And that’s just about Artemis. I have other characters, too, now.

But, when all is said and done, this isn’t about them. Not today. Today is for Artemis, the one who started it all, who made me realise that I could actually write, and keep on writing, simply by being the tenacious little gremlin-child she is.

Of course, she’s not the only one who has kept me going. I didn’t think in a million years when I posted on this tiny little blog in a small corner of the internet that in just a few months’ time, I’d have met and been encouraged by so many amazing people.

So, to @gaygryffindorgal, the first person ever to follow my blog and comment on my writing, to @hogwartsmysteryho whose fangirling has literally stopped me from giving up on so many bad days, to @ag907 @hphmmatthewluther @amerrymystery @madelineorionswan @toads-in-my-pockets @official-weasley @ridersinpandoria @theguythatdraws @imma-too-many-fandoms and @thatravenpuffwitch who have all taken Artemis into their hearts and followed her story both loudly and quietly, to @kathrynalicemc who invited me to write for her story, to @slytherindisaster @anthamariemayfair and @that-scouse-wizard who became invested in the Rockstar AU, to my newest pal @charlieweasleysimp, and to the Wine Club @kc-and-co @whatwouldvalerydo @samshogwarts and especially my bestie @lifeofkaze (last but anything but least - what would I do without you?!) who act as terrible influences, are true friends, and who keep me semi-sane on a daily basis… Thank you. All of you.

With all the love in the world,

Al and Artemis

#al speaks #artemis hexley #hogwarts mystery #hphm fic #anniversary #tell them stories

[mikauzoran]

Updated January/February 2022 Release Schedule

Hi, guys! I hope you’re doing well. I just wanted to give you an update on my release schedule for January/February 2022.

Now through Monday, 01/10/2022: Quick Kisses: A Short Story Collection -  A collection of unrelated short stories featuring the Love Square, other pairings, and some platonic interactions. Each chapter stands alone as its own story. Read them all or just your favourite pairings.

Tuesday, 01/11/2022: Mikau’s Three-Year Anniversary in the Fandom Surprise Event (Tentative based on how exhausted I am at the time.)

Sunday, 01/16/2022: Up in the Air (Adrienette) - Marinette never stopped looking for her partner who disappeared after the final battle. One day, on an airplane back from New York, she’s reunited with the “two” boys she’s never been able to forget.

Sunday, 01/23/2022: In Another Life (Marichat/Mariblanc) - When Chat Blanc escapes into Marinette’s timeline, she does everything she can to keep him happy until reinforcements arrive. Meanwhile, Chat Noir watches his akumatized self act all lovey-dovey with his friend, and it makes him feel things. Namely, jealousy. Maybe he does think of Marinette as more than a friend after all.

Sunday, 01/30/2022: “Office” (Lukadrigaminette) - I don’t have a title or summary for this one yet, but it’s a Lukadrigaminette story where the four of them plus baby live in a tiny Paris apartment and need to work together to figure out a way to make things work better until they can afford a bigger living space. It’s very cute and affirming, if I do say so myself. ^.^

Sunday, 02/06/2022: Selfless to a Fault (Lukadrien) - Selfless as ever, Luka attempts to set up Adrien and Marinette despite his feelings for both of them. His plan backfires, and Luka ends up making Adrien fall for him instead.

Sunday, 02/13/2022: “02/14 Marichat Passionfruit Chocolate” (Marichat) - This one is tentative. I haven’t written it yet, and I only have a vague mental outline, but I was thinking of writing a story where Marinette makes chocolates for Adrien for Valentine’s Day but doesn’t end up giving them to him. Chat knows that she made them for her crush, but they end up sharing them. Cue accidental confession/identity reveal/happily ever after. We’ll see if I actually write this.

Sunday, 02/20/2022: “Minnows DAdrien” (Adrienette) - I don’t have a proper title or summary for this one either, but Adrien is a foster dad to these three kids, and one of them gets sick, so instead of them going out on a date, Marinette comes over to help with the kids. Fluff, fluff, and happy ending.

Sunday, 02/27/2022: “His Theme” (Lukadrienette) - I haven’t written this one yet, but it’s next on my list. After I did the Lukanette story Clarity in the Harmony (which someone asked me to do based on my Adrienette story Piano for Four Hands), someone said I should do a Lukadrienette story similar to those two to complete the circle. XD I think I said that I would think about it. I haven’t stopped thinking about it, so I guess I’m doing it. XD It’s a story where Luka and Marinette learn a song to play together with Adrien.

Thursday, 03/10/2022: Mikau’s Birthday (You know. In case you want to prepare a nice gift fic or art or song and dance number or something. XD Reblogs of my work are good too. If you’re on AO3, comments/kudos/bookmarks also make nice gifts. XD)

What Happened to This City Needs You But Not as Much as I Do?

So, I began writing an Adrienette novella in October that I was going to start releasing in December, and then I pushed back the date until January. I have the first twelve chapters written, but I kind of burnt myself out and haven’t started working on it again yet. :/ I don’t want to start publishing it until I’m actively working on it again, so the release date is to be determined for now.

In the meantime, I’ve got a bunch of one-shots that I’m working on, so there will be plenty of content. Thanks for your patience! ^.^

#Adrinette #Adrienette #Marichat #Mariblanc #Lukadrien #Lukadrigaminette #Lukadrienette #Lukadrinette #Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain Cheng #Chat Noir #Luka Couffaine #Chat Blanc #Kagami Tsurugi #Status Update #Mikau's WIP

[dragonthusiast]

Writeblr Intro and Book Masterlist

Hi, my name's Gabs, and just finished studying the riveting subject of English linguistics at university. 

I love writing, particularly fantasy and sci-fi with LGBTQ+ characters, and theoretically also drawing, though I'm really not good at that. When I either get better or stop caring, I'll probably make a graphic novel or a webcomic.

I've written several books in several series, most of which are still ongoing, which you can read more about below :) I’ve also posted most of my writing on Wattpad here if you want to check it out. Or you can go to my website to get the book files directly.

My current project is called Nightstar, a medieval-ish fantasy with people who have various powers. You can read the WIP intro post here and the character introductions here. And you can read the full first book here.

The Children of the Sun

The first series I've written, which is also complete now with 4 novel-length books.

The story is science fiction with fantasy aspects, set in an original world with somewhat more advanced technology than we have today.

It features super powers, ancient conspiracies, epic battles, awkward romantic tension between a grumpy 40-year-old  and a 400-year-old immortal ball of sunshine, angst, and dragons (which sounds random and weird, yes, and that's because it is, but it makes sense in context).

The Kingdom of Dragons

Currently an 8 book fantasy novella series, god only knows how many there will be by the end. Unlike Children of the Sun, this one is very straightforward, as it started its life as something simple for me to take a break from complex plots.

It follows two characters, Rhenor and Kazterrak, usually called Kaz (yes, I named him that, not knowing there was a very known character named Kaz already so RIP to me I guess) Most of the time an installment in this series deals with a conflict unique to each book, and the characters travel around a lot, so the locations for each book are usually unique to it as well.

My current plan is to release them in chunks, for now 4 books at once, that each include a conflict to tie them together, even while unrelated stuff is happening, usually said conflict being emotional.

This series might never end :D I already have vague brain material for at least 8 more.

The Curse of Magic

A fantasy series about elves and humans, this one includes only the first book for now, which is my latest novel. 

The series centers around two elves, called Edwyr and Feyrith. Edwyr is Cursed, meaning he was born with no magical ability, while Feyrith is brimming with talent for using it. However, when the two cross paths, a lot of things change, including the status quo for not only both of them but the elven society in general. To be extra vague about it. I want to avoid too many spoilers.

The world is basically humans living on the outskirts of a large continent with most of it covered with a dense, dangerous jungle full of strange beasts that no one has ever traversed and lived to tell about it, while the elves live on an island, separated from all of that. Also everyone rides around on squawkers, which are basically a cross between a bird and a horse. I thought that was a very important detail to include.

And finally:

Wings of Gold

This is a fantasy gay romance series, featuring a thief and a dragon (who can shapeshift into a human form, of course). There’s really not much else to say about this one :D There’s 2 relatively short books so far, and I’m not sure how long this series will get until it reaches the end, but I thought it might be a good idea to try my hand at writing romance. It’s published under a pen name because I wanted to separate my non-romance books and romance books. I hear readers don’t like it when you branch out too much and don’t stay focused on a niche or genre.

#writeblr #amwriting #original writing #fantasy #science fiction #writers of tumblr #urban fantasy #original character #book series #LGBT books #my writing #nightstar series #children of the sun series #wings of gold series #kingdom of dragons series #penned sea hearts

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

#writing #writeblr #writerblr #amwriting #writingupdates

[missroserose]

Fic Writer Question Meme!

Thanks for the tag, @venhedish—I love stuff like this! I'd apologize in advance for how long this is likely to be, but I suspect we share that tendency, haha.

How many works do you have on AO3?

20 total. I've been publishing there since late 2018, so about three years now. That sounds right for me—I'm way too perfectionist to ever be prolific.

What's your total AO3 word count?

125,744! Apparently it takes me three years to write a novel's worth of words I feel are worth publishing...which also sounds right.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Three, primarily: The Lost Boys, Stranger Things, and Supernatural. Mostly Stranger Things, since I was pretty enmeshed in the Harringrove community for about a year and a half, though these days I'm hanging out more with the SPN crowd. We'll see if that translates to more fics.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1.) Sunflower (524) 2.) Quickly, look away (506) 3.) We'll Become Who We Meant To Be (383) 4.) Too Young To Fall In Love (333) 5.) When the Waters Start to Cross (283)

First, what's not surprising: all are Stranger Things/Harringrove works. I'm a little surprised to see that "Sunflower" had edged out "Quickly" as my most-kudosed story, for years it was the other way around—but maybe that's actually not that surprising—part of the reason I haven't been as active in the fandom is that I really love the darker and more complex renditions of Billy Hargrove's character (a la "Quickly") and since S3 aired it seems like the fashion has moved more towards more lighthearted fluff (a la "Sunflower"). Still, both are pretty undemanding smut, so it makes sense that they're on top; similarly, I'm not surprised to see "Too Young To Fall In Love" in the top five either.

I am a little surprised that "We'll Become Who We Meant To Be" is #3—it's honestly close to genfic, there's only the tiniest moment of hinted-at attraction in there. I'm not mad about it, I honestly feel like it's one of my better efforts; on the other hand, "Wake Me Up" was in a similar vein and it's close to the bottom. I guess there's just no telling what's going to catch on...in fairness, a 25K outsider POV novella is a much bigger ask than a 3K short story.

Honestly, I'm probably most surprised at "When the Waters Start to Cross" cracking the top five—it's a 52K+ WIP and a profoundly complex atmospheric existential horror/romance, which is, like, five strikes against it. I'm not mad about it, though—I love that fic, even if it is a huge time and energy suck, and it definitely contains some of my best writing.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! Sometimes it takes me a while, but I genuinely appreciate people taking the time to leave feedback (even if it's just a string of emoji!). And every once in a while I'll get really thoughtful or incisive comments that spark whole conversations—that's one of the best reasons to write fic!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Hmm...to be honest, nothing immediately comes to mind; I love angst but tend to want it to serve a purpose, i.e. it gets a character closer to who they want to be. So most of my endings are at least hopeful. *checks list* It looks like probably my angstiest ending is also my first fic posted, "Blue Masquerade". Poor Michael.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

I don't currently write crossovers; I wouldn't rule it out, but frankly I haven't come across an idea that appeals to me. Waaaaaay back in the mists of time I had a Daria/Harry Potter crossover that I was actually pretty proud of, but I got about as far as getting them to Hogwarts and then kinda ran out of ideas, so I never posted it.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not that I can think of? I'm not big-time enough to get hate, haha. Worst I ever got was some rando asking for top or bottom tags, which I just ignored, and one person on "We'll Become" who was like "I don't like this pairing but you did a good job", which kinda had me like ??? thanks, I guess? I did get one comment on "Quickly, look away" from someone who felt like it was in a different headspace from the fic I wrote it as a sequel to, but that didn't strike me as hate, it's a perfectly fair observation.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

So first off, yes, and second...I recently came across this great Garth Greenwell quote that really gets at what I'm trying to do when I write smut:

In America in 2019 we are inundated with images of bodies to an absolutely unprecedented degree—images of eroticized bodies, images of sexual bodies; the Internet makes all our fantasies visible, and it trains us in new fantasies. And yet it also seems to me that our culture suffers from a dearth of representations of embodiedness, by which I mean of bodies imbued with consciousness. I’m not at all antiporn, but sometimes pornography (maybe especially Internet pornography, with its arms race of extremity) seems to want to evacuate bodies of personhood, to present them as objects. I think literature is the best technology we have for representing consciousness, and so I think there’s a kind of intervention that literature can perform in representing sex explicitly: it can reclaim the sexual body as a site of consciousness.

"Embodied porn" is probably the best description I can come up with—I love writing sex precisely because it's such a charged form of communication (Greenwell's words again), because there are things a character can do and say in that context that they never would normally. Like, sex acts are great and all, but what really does it for me is what's going on in their head, what's the history that brought the character to this point, how're they handling the inherent vulnerability and intimacy of this incredibly risky but potentially rewarding moment. Kink (whether through roleplaying, props, costumes, or whatever) is really just another way of adding to that personal meaning, since without the characters' reactions any trappings are meaningless.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I'd love to work with a translator someday (whether with fic or another context)—I'm fascinated by the inherent puzzles in translating between languages, especially with informal speech and its many idioms and cultural references.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet! I'd be open to the idea, but it definitely has to be with the right person...

What's your all time favorite ship?

Isn't that basically like asking a mom to choose her favorite kid? Seriously, I like different things about all of them...which one's getting the most attention depends entirely on mood and headspace and other effectively random variables.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I don't have any I've given up on entirely, yet. Even Waters, as beastly complicated as it is, I've been ruminating on and adding to and arranging in my head lately...

What are your writing strengths?

Atmosphere, character, dialogue. I've said it before, I'm a capital-R Romantic at heart: I love writing settings that reflect and reinforce a character's headspace—while also implying what said character might be missing in their viewpoint.

Something I've noticed—my husband worked for years as a penetration tester, which meant he would regularly have to talk his way past people on a moment's notice. So, unsurprisingly, we both notice people, but he tends to observe their presentation (clothing, accessories, especially ones that're markers of social class and group belonging that allow him to tailor his approach), whereas I notice what they say and how they say it—and, often, what they don't say.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I suddenly feel like I'm in a job interview, haha. Perfectionism is a big one—I have a tendency to feel hopeless and quit if something's taking too long, rather than persisting until I get it sorted, even though some of my best work is stuff where I persisted. Also, I'm big on emotional intensity—which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I sometimes read back over my stuff and I'm like "geez, Ambrosia, ease up a bit"...I could definitely use some comic relief in my writing sometimes, but I think I'm often too insecure to try it.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don't have any in particular—I rarely do it myself, because I don't trust myself to do it properly. (Perfectionism again!)

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Daria, way back in the day. My work is still up on FF.net...sometimes I wonder if anyone's ever going to dig it up and confront me with it, haha. (I doubt anyone will ever care that much...I guess I'm more just curious if my style from twenty years ago is recognizably me.)

What's your favorite fic you've written?

If we're talking about finished fics, probably either "Wake Me Up" or "Young At Heart"—they're both pretty oddball, but both required a fuckton of work and both came out pretty close to what I wanted. But "Waters" is my biggest baby...maybe I'll open up Act III to work on today...

Thanks again for the tag, Ven! I'm going to tag @ihni, @redmyeyes, @twobrokenwyngs, @skybound2, @sambrosia, @shewritesdirty, @introvertia, @coffeeandchemicals, and @anarchist-billy—if you're up for some rumination, I'd love to hear your thoughts on your writing!

#author stuff #my writing #fanfic culture #about me #tag games

[princip1914]

A few thoughts on writing longfic

I’ve had this post brewing for a while and I figured since today is a Friday I might as well let it out into the wild. 

First off, this is not writing advice. I don’t feel qualified to give writing advice. This is a few observations I’ve made over the course of trying to write something that feels, well, long. Fandom is full of excellent authors writing long chaptered fic, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about how they go about producing such fics. I remember feeling like long fic was really out of reach for me when I started writing again in the summer of 2019 after not writing for years and years and I wanted to talk a bit about how that changed for me. Of course, this post comes with all the caveats that there is no need to ever write long fic if you’re not feeling it. Some of my favorite authors write mostly or only oneshots! But, if you are interested, here’s my lengthy, self indulgent, and entirely personal take on ~the longfic process~ below the cut. 

First, to get this out of the way: long fic is anything that feels long or complicated to you, the author. “I’m working on my long fic” can mean that you’re branching out from microfiction to write something that’s 2k long, or it can mean you’ve got a multi-part 800k epic. There’s no objective measure of if something is “long fic,” Your own personal definitions can also change as you grow in confidence or change your focus as a writer (a little over a year ago when I finished Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire topping out at 31k, that felt very very long to me. Now it feels….still long, but not very very long.) 

Here are a few specific things that helped me write something long. I don’t know if they will be interesting for anyone else, but at the very least writing these down has been a fun way for me to reflect on my own process. 

Practice exercises. Ok, this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but writing one shots prepares you for writing chaptered fic. Here’s what I mean more specifically: if you know you want to write (as a totally hypothetical example) a chaptered fic set in America in the summer that relies heavily on a nature metaphors, is written out of chronological order, and features a melancholy tone--it helps to write a few one shots like that before you embark on the Big Fic. Just like artists tend to do sketches before starting a big piece, it’s very helpful to write something small that gives you a feel for the ~vibe~ of what you’re trying to do in the long fic. It’s helpful for all the usual reasons--you get to know a specific version of the characters which helps plan out a character driven plot for the long fic--but it’s also helpful because you will learn if the tone and mood of the fic has enough staying power to capture your interest for the long haul. For instance, I have a few unfinished chaptered fics that have a humorous tone. I wish I had done more short humorous fics before starting them, because I would have realized that I don’t currently have the mental stamina to hold up a humorous tone for the length of a chaptered fic (hopefully that will change and I will finish Last Days some time this century!). 

Plan it out ahead of time. I used google sheets for The False and the Fair. I do not think God intended google sheets to be used for fiction, but that was not going to stop me. On a more serious note, I think the best tool for planning fiction is the one you’re the most comfortable with--the notes app in your phone, handwriting, word, google drive, sheets, chalk board, summoning circle, the blood of your enemies, etc. The reason I chose to use sheets is that I knew from the very beginning that I wanted certain things to happen at specific places in the story--for instance, I wanted the first kiss to happen at the end of the first third of the story and I wanted the “reveal” about the mine accident to happen at the end of the second third of the story. But, I didn’t know what was supposed to go in between those elements. A traditional outline for a story at this point in development might have looked like: 

Meet cute

Kiss

Reveal 

Ending 

But, what my brain needed was to preserve the blank spaces in between these story elements, and specifically to preserve the right amount of blank space between these story elements so that it didn’t end up, for instance, that the first kiss was halfway through rather than a third of the way through. In this way, I found google sheets an invaluable tool for pacing in the early parts of the planning process. I simply made 30 rows assuming 30 chapters, and started plugging in the elements I knew I wanted in the locations I wanted them. Then I filled in the blank spaces by asking myself “how do we get from X plot element to Y plot element in Z amount of chapters.” I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve often thought about the first things that go into the spreadsheet in terms of mountain climbing terminology.  In climbing, a crux move, which can be anywhere along the route, is the most difficult move of the route: if you can’t do it, you can’t do the route. I think of the first things that go into the planning spreadsheet as the crux moves of the story, the most important pieces around which everything else turns. It was not an accident that those were also all the first scenes of the fic that I wrote; if I couldn’t do those scenes, I couldn’t do the story the way I planned it so I wanted to know early on if I needed to make changes.

Make changes if you have to: even though it helps to have things planned in advance, don’t resist the story if it tries to change on you while you’re writing it. Usually the feeling that you have to make changes stems from having a plot that is not entirely character driven. As you write the story, the characters reveal themselves and sometimes the plot has to change to change with the characters’ motivations. Here’s an area where fanfic writers have a leg up on everyone else: if you write fic, you already know the characters really well. That means, (in my experience anyway) it’s less likely that you’ll have a surprise character development which leads to a rethinking of the whole plot. Less likely, but not completely unlikely, unfortunately.

Lie to yourself: The False and the Fair was supposed to be 90k words. I thought that sounded reasonable, a little less than 3x the longest fic I had ever written. Now it's 161k and will probably top out a little over 170k. Ooops. But I never would have set out to write something that long. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it, even though anyone more experienced looking at my plans for the fic probably would have laughed at the idea I could cover all those plot points in 90k. Ignorance is bliss. Protect your ignorance.

Scrivener: Long fic for me means “fic that is long enough you can’t hold all the parts of it in your head at once.” That’s where Scrivener comes in (or another app if you’d rather, but I really like Scrivener for the ability to see the project either linearly or as condensed notecards). You can put together an organizational scaffold in Scrivener that allows you to move back and forth between the forest and the trees. So, for instance, you might be going for a jog and come up with the perfect line of dialogue for chapter 27 when you’re only up to chapter 5 in terms of writing progress. With Scrivener, you can go home, and put that dialogue in the “bucket”/index card/whatever for chapter 27 without compromising your ability to see chapter 5 clearly or muddying up your google doc. You can then use the fact that you’ve started writing bits and pieces of the later chapters in conjunction with the tool of lying to yourself that, actually, you’ve written a lot more of the fic than you realize and that when you get to chapter 27 it won’t be as hard as chapter 5 because you’ve put in the groundwork already. In my experience, this lie turns out to be true about 50% of the time, which is better than 0% of the time.

Digestible mini arcs: The False and the Fair was originally broken up into thirds. I thought it would be 90k and 30k was the longest I had written, so thirds seemed to make sense. Also, 3 is a nice, time honored storytelling number. I think it’s good to give yourself seemingly achievable milestones along the way to completion. These milestones (for me anyway) lined up well with the “crux moments” I’ve described. If you’re someone who likes to write out of order, writing your way to an already written milestone can feel like sailing to an island where you get to rest for a bit from the stormy seas before setting out for the next island in the archipelago.

“It's all part of the process”: I’m categorically incapable of describing things without resorting to running metaphors, and so I apologize in advance, but I am now going to do the insufferable thing of comparing writing a long fic to running a marathon. Here’s the thing with a marathon. You are not going to feel good every step of the way. We all know this. It’s a marathon, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, especially at the end. In the same way you literally cannot write something novel length or even novella or long short story length without, at least at some point, feeling bad about yourself and your writing. But you also can’t run a marathon if the whole thing is agony, and for most people, it’s not--your meat sack shuffling along the course is subjected to the slings and arrows of all sorts of weird body chemistry that only happens when you push it to its limits. So, you’ll be in agony and then the endorphins will kick in for a while and you’ll be thinking “this isn’t nearly as bad as everyone said,” and then you’ll drink some water at a rest stop and feel like a God for half a mile before you crash and you’re in agony again until that one perfect song comes up on the playlist...and you get the idea. Writing something long, for me at least, is a bit like that. There are massive ups and downs. The key for me is to just understand it’s all part of the process, a necessary step on the way to the finish line. If the fic is 10 chapters long, at some point you have to write chapter 5. Just like you have to write chapter 5, at some point you also have to go through a bit of despair before reaching the end. It is unfortunately non-optional. In fact, despairing is something you can check off your list each time you’ve done it. Cut dialogue tags, check. Feel awful about my writing for thirty minutes, check. Write ending section, check. Often I feel that the stress and shame and fear that come with bad emotions while writing are worse than the bad emotions themselves. It really helps me to remember these emotions are all part of the process and nothing to worry about. If I didn’t have them, then I would worry! 

I certainly have plenty more to say about writing, but this ramble has gone on long enough. If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please feel free to send me an ask. 

I would also love to know more about everyone else’s writing processes, so feel free to pop into my ask box to talk about your own approach too! I am very interested in this stuff! 

#long post #writing #fic #princip's fic #princip writes #princip's musings #longfic #how make words go

[tamorapierce]

Tammy's Spring 2020 Reading Recommendations For the Bored

Sooner or later the bookhounds among us are going to start joining my relentless song, from age five on up, of “I don’t have anything to read!!!!”

 I am here to help.  In this space, as I get to it (knowing, as my readers do, that I have no sense of deadline), I will be posting a constant set of collections of book titles by authors my team and I have read and will recommend in a wild variety of genres and for a wild variety of ages.  (And I’ll give a short hint as to the subject of the first book/series—if I did them all I’d never finish this.)  This last is for the many of you who are reading teen and adult books in grade and middle school, and those adult readers who are reading teen and kidlit. These people are for those who love books and don’t care who is supposed to be reading them.  

 Also, you may have to look far and wee, since we will be drawing upon not only recently published books but older ones that we have either read recently or that we read long ago and have re-read or have never forgotten.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the writing is archaic.  If you’re a true nutsy reader like the rest of us, you won’t care.

 -Tammy Pierce

                                                        *     *     *

Assume the book came out within the last 2 years unless I put LO next to the title, which means you have to check libraries and bookstores online and paper for copies.

 *     *     *

 Diana Wynne Jones  LO

A generation or two of fantasy writers, particularly those who love humor, bow to this woman as our goddess.  Not only was she out of her mind in a very British and manic way, but with her TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND she taught a number of us to ditch some ill-considered tropes of our genre.  If you write historic fantasy in particular, move heaven and earth to track this book down.  There’s a bonus: some of the entries will make you laugh till you cry.

           She is best known for her books for middle grade and teens, but they are enjoyable for all readers.  I cannot list them all here because my fingers will break (curse you, arthritis!), but these titles will give you a jumping-off point.  And remember, authors change with each book, so you won’t encounter the same author with each title as the author you read in the previous one!

           The Chrestomanci books, all in the same universe, in order of story,

                       not publication

Charmed Life  (1977) An innocent lad follows his plotting egotistical sister to live with England’s chief wizard

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

Conrad’s Fate (2005)

Witch Week (1982)

The Magicians of Caprona (1980)

Short stories

 The Dalemark Quartet begins with

The Spellcoats (1979)

3 sequels

 The Derkholm books are

Dark Lord of  (1998)

Year of the Griffin (2000)

  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is standalone, but is a kind of offshoot of the Derkholm books.  You don’t have to have read the Derkholm books to get Tough Guide!

 There are other books and stories by Jones—I’ll let you find them on your own.

  Philip Pullman

To this day I am unable to call him anything but Mr. Pullman—that’s how much in awe of the man I am.  We’ve had dinner together, talked on the phone, talked at an event or two, done a conversation on audio with Christopher Paolini—it’s still Mr. Pullman to me.  (I was an assistant in a literary agency when I discovered his work, and I never recovered.) He is, in a word, brilliant, and his interests range through all kinds of areas, particularly history and religion.  I could have talked with him forever that night we had dinner, but the poor man had jet lag and I let him go to collapse.  It was one of the best exchanges of ideals, values, and books I’ve ever had.  

Read his work carefully, because what he discusses is never just the story on top.  No matter what he writes, he is making strong points about social justice, human nature, religion, and history without preaching.  He is one of the few male writers out there who can write female characters as people, not Something Different.  And you never know, with his work, where he will go next.

 The Ruby in the Smoke,

book 1,  the Sally Lockheart mysteries

Victorian mysteries with a female hero and male assistants,

           The Book of Dust and sequel,

first 2 books of The Secret Commonwealth

           His Dark Materials trilogy

                       The Golden Compass

                       2 other titles                

           THE COLLECTORS

           LYRA’S OXFORD

           THE WHITE MERCEDES

           FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM

           I WAS A RAT!

           TWO CRAFTY CRIMINALS

           COUNT KARLSTEIN

           (I will stop here and let you find the rest. Most are available as Nook books.)

  Sharon Shinn

I discovered Sharon Shinn with JOVAH’S ANGEL, but a shortage of funds left me unable to pursue my interest (I am an economic disaster with libraries, so I buy rather than borrow) until, with a job and money to spend, I spotted THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET.  It is the story of a medieval-ish world and a small village where a baby was left with a childless couple.  She is raised as their daughter and discovers, as she grows, that her mother is an important, a Safekeeper, the person to whom a secret can be told, relieving the person who told it of the weight of guilt from it, to be carried by the Safekeeper until the owner either decides to tell or dies.  (And if they die without giving permission, the Safekeeper never reveal the secret.)  The baby who is adopted by this town’s safekeeper becomes the safekeeper in her turn.

           The next book is THE TRUTHTELLER’S TALE, about a girl who acquires the gift (??) of telling the truth, whether the person she tells it to wants to hear it or not. The third book is The Dream-maker’s Magic.  The three main characters now learn why they have been brought together over the course of the two earlier books, in what I thought was a satisfying, if unusual, conclusion.

           And there’s more!  I just did the two I love best!

             THE SAFEKEEPER’S SECRET (book 1, two sequels)

           ARCHANGEL (4 books)

           TWELVE HOUSES (5 books)

           ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS (4 books)        

SHIFTING CIRCLE (2 books)

           UNCOMMON ECHOES

           GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

           GATEWAY

 Daniel Jose Older

 I was a Daniel Jose Older fan before I was sent DACTYL HILL SQUAD for a blurb (preodactyls in flight!  Of all sizes!  Confederate spies!  Thuggish bigot northerners!  The backlash of Gettysburg and the forced recruitment of blacks for the war effort! And strong, smart, fierce kids of various ages, sizes, colors, national heritage, and skills doing their best to help the war against the slaves, keep escaped slaves safe, duck the cruel managers of the homes and jails where they are being kept, find a half-decent meal, free other kids in trouble, learn who’s killing their friends, and help the dactyls!  That’s part of it, anyway!

Yeah, I loved it.  And there’s at least one new book, and once I’ve mowed though that, there are his older teen books, and his grownup mysteries, with their half-dead taxi driver who doubles as a part-time troubleshooter for the undead powers in his Bone Street Rhumba series.  {happy sigh}

  Edgar Allen Poe

Yes, some of these are reminders of why we ended up to be the readers we are and to nudge us to corrupt—I mean, “introduce”—­new readers to the glories that are our legacies.

­

THE COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE

           Here are the greats:

poems like “The Raven,” and “Annabelle Lee”

stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Telltale Heart,” and  ::shudder:: “The Pit and the Pendulum” (yes, a deep pit and a swinging pendulum topped with a razor-edged blade will be featured in this story).  

My dad would read these to us on dark and stormy nights when we lived near the Pacific ocean, when the fog came rolling in, softening every sound, when there were no cars driving by and no other sounds in our house but his deep voice and the crackle of the fire in the fireplace.  We would listen, soundless, as he wove the stories and poems around us and the foghorn sounded offshore.

           That’s the power of Poe.

  N. K. Jemisin

I think I began with Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, soon followed by its sequel THE BROKEN KINGDOMS.  The series ended with a third book, THE KINGDOM OF THE GODS.  She presented a rich and varied world from the aspects of people of different classes, showing the growth of societies and their formation.  I have a secret passion for society-building and social interaction, and whether or not a book is difficult to read (as Jemisin’s books are in spots because she refuses to insult a reader by talking down to them) is immaterial.  I want the world and I want the characters, and with her far-reaching mind and her respect for her characters she delivers each and every time.  I have read almost everything she’s written since that first trilogy: if I’ve missed something, it’s because I was in the middle of a deadline and on the road and somehow didn’t see it.  I’ll catch up!  This is just a sample:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

 The City They Became (pub’d April 2020)

 The Inheritance Trilogy:

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

           2 book sequels

Novella: The Awakened Kingdom, 2014

                       Triptych: Shades in Shadow, 2015 (3 short stories) 

             The Dreamblood Duology:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

                       Two sequels

 The Broken Earth series:

         The Fifth Season (August 2015)

                       Two book sequels

And there are plenty of short stories out there.  I may even have missed a book or twelve!

For those who prefer to hear my ramble in person, a video!

#tamora pierce #tortall #book reccs #book recommendations #YA #fantasy #science fiction #diana wynne jones #edgar allen poe #philip pullman #sharon shinn #daniel jose older #nk jemisin

[justforbooks]

Fifty Great Classic Novels Under 200 Pages

We are now end of February, which is technically the shortest month, but is also the one that—for me, anyway—feels the longest. Especially this year, for all of the reasons that you already know. At this point, if you keep monthly reading goals, even vague ones, you may be looking for few a good, short novels to knock out in an afternoon or two. So now I must turn my attention to my favorite short classics—which represent the quickest and cheapest way, I can tell you in my salesman voice, to become “well-read.”

A few notes: This list will define “classic” as being originally published before 1970. Yes, these distinctions are somewhat arbitrary, but one has to draw the line somewhere (though I let myself fudge on translation dates). I did not differentiate between novels and novellas (as Steven Millhauser would tell you, the novella is not a form at all, but merely a length), but let’s be honest with ourselves: “The Dead” is a short story, and so is “The Metamorphosis.” Sorry! I limited myself to one book by each author, valiantly, I should say, because I was tempted to cheat (looking at you Jean Rhys).

Most importantly for our purposes here: lengths vary with editions, sometimes wildly. I did not include a book below unless I could find that it had been published at least once in fewer than 200 pages—which means that some excellent novels, despite coming tantalizingly close to the magic number, had to be left off for want of proof (see Mrs. Dalloway, Black No More, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. etc. etc.). However, your personal edition might not exactly match the number I have listed here. Don’t worry: it’ll still be short.

Finally, as always: “best” lists are subjective, no ranking is definitive, and I’ve certainly forgotten, or never read, or run out of space for plenty of books and writers here. And admittedly, the annoying constraints of this list make it more heavily populated by white and male writers than I would have liked. Therefore, please add on at will in the comments. After all, these days, I’m always looking for something old to read.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, tr. Ruth L.C. Simms, The Invention of Morel (1940) : 103 pages

Both Jorge Luis Borges and Octavio Paz described this novel as perfect, and I admit I can’t find much fault with it either. It is technically about a fugitive whose stay on a mysterious island is disturbed by a gang of tourists, but actually it’s about the nature of reality and our relationship to it, told in the most hypnotizing, surrealist style. A good anti-beach read, if you plan that far ahead.

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) : 107 pages

Everybody’s gateway Steinbeck is surprisingly moving, even when you revisit it as an adult. Plus, if nothing else, it has given my household the extremely useful verb “to Lenny.”

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) : 112 pages

If we didn’t keep putting it on lists, how would future little children of America learn what an allegory is? This is a public service, you see.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) : 112 pages

A people-pleaser, in more ways than one: Sherlock Holmes, after all, had been dead for years when his creator finally bent to public demand (and more importantly, the demand of his wallet) and brought him back, in this satisfying and much-beloved tale of curses and hell-beasts and, of course, deductions.

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1933) : 112 pages

A 20th century classic, and still one of the best, most important, and most interesting crime novels in the canon. Fun fact: Cain had originally wanted to call it Bar-B-Q.

Nella Larsen, Passing (1929) : 122 pages

One of the landmarks of the Harlem Renaissance, about not only race but also gender and class—not to mention self-invention, perception, capitalism, motherhood and friendship—made indelible by what Darryl Pinckney called “a deep fatalism at the core.”

Albert Camus, tr. Matthew Ward, The Stranger (1942) : 123 pages

I had a small obsession with this book as a moody teen, and I still think of it with extreme fondness. Is it the thinking person’s Catcher in the Rye? Who can say. But Camus himself put it this way, writing in 1955: “I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.”

Juan Rulfo, tr. Margaret Sayers Peden, Pedro Páramo (1955) : 128 pages

The strange, fragmented ghost story that famously paved the way for One Hundred Years of Solitude (according to Gabriel García Márquez himself), but is an enigmatic masterpiece in its own right.

Italo Calvino, tr. Archibald Colquhoun, The Cloven Viscount (1959) : 128 pages

This isn’t my favorite Calvino, but you know what they say: all Calvino is good Calvino (also, I forgot him on the contemporary list, so I’m making up for it slightly here). The companion volume to The Nonexistent Knight and The Baron in the Trees concerns a Viscount who is clocked by a cannonball and split into two halves: his good side and his bad side. They end up in a duel over their wife, of course—just like in that episode of Buffy. But turns out that double the Viscounts doesn’t translate to double the pages.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) : 128 pages

I know, I know, but honestly, this book, which is frequently taught in American schools as an example of early feminist literature, is still kind of edgy—more than 120 years later, and it’s still taboo for a woman to put herself and her own desires above her children. Whom among us has not wanted to smash a symbolic glass vase into the hearth?

Leo Tolstoy, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) : 128 pages

Another classic—Tolstoy can do it all, long and short—particularly beloved by the famously difficult-to-impress Nabokov, who described it as “Tolstoy’s most artistic, most perfect, and most sophisticated achievement,” and explained the thrust of it this way: “The Tolstoyan formula is: Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God’s living light, then Ivan died into a new life—Life with a capital L.”

Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar (1968) : 138 pages

Brautigan’s wacky post-apocalyptic novel concerns a bunch of people living in a commune called iDEATH. (Which, um, relatable.) The landscape is groovy and the tigers do math, and the titular watermelon sugar seems to be the raw material for everything from homes to clothes. “Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.” It’s all nonsense, of course, but it feels so good.

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) : 140 pages

Another early novel on the subject of passing—originally published in 1912, then again under Johnson’s name in 1927—this one presented as an “autobiography” written by a Black man living as white, but uneasily, considering himself a failure, feeling until the end the grief of giving up his heritage and all the pain and joy that came with it.

Thomas Mann, tr. Michael Henry Heim, Death in Venice (1912) : 142 pages

What it says on the tin—a story as doomed as Venice itself, but also a queer and philosophical mini-masterpiece. The year before the book’s publication, Mann wrote to a friend: “I am in the midst of work: a really strange thing I brought with me from Venice, a novella, serious and pure in tone, concerning a case of pederasty in an aging artist. You say, ‘Hum, hum!’ but it is quite respectable.” Indeed.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) : 146 pages

If you’re reading this space, you probably already know how much we love this book at Literary Hub. After that excellent opening paragraph, it only gets better.

Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (1964) : 152 pages

Isherwood’s miniature, jewel-like masterpiece takes place over a single day in the life of a middle-aged English expat (who shares a few qualities with Isherwood himself), a professor living uneasily in California after the unexpected death of his partner. An utterly absorbing and deeply pleasurable novel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Notes from Underground (1864) : 154 pages

Probably the best rant ever passed off as literature. Dostoevsky's first masterpiece has been wildly influential in the development of existential and dystopian storytelling of all kinds, not to mention in the development of my own high school misanthropy. Maybe yours, too? “It was all from ENNUI, gentlemen, all from ENNUI; inertia overcame me . . .” Actually, now I’m thinking that it might be a good book to re-read in pandemic isolation.

Anna Kavan, Ice (1967) : 158 pages

The narrator of this strange and terrifying novel obsessively pursues a young woman through an icy apocalypse. You might call it a fever dream if it didn’t feel so . . . cold. Reading it, wrote Jon Michaud on its 50th anniversary, is “a disorienting and at times emotionally draining experience, not least because, these days, one might become convinced that Kavan had seen the future.” Help.

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923) : 158 pages

Toomer’s experimental, multi-disciplinary novel, now a modernist classic, is presented as a series of vignettes, poems, and swaths of dialogue—but to be honest, all of it reads like poetry. Though its initial reception was uncertain, it has become one of the most iconic and influential works of 1920s American literature.

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962) : 158 pages

Only in a Ballard novel can climate change make you actually become insane—and only a Ballard novel could still feel so sticky and hot in my brain, years after I read it in a single afternoon.

Knut Hamsun, tr. Sverre Lyngstad, Hunger (1890) : 158 pages

The Nobel Prize winner’s first novel is, as Hamsun himself put it, “an attempt to describe the strange, peculiar life of the mind, the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body.” An modernist psychological horror novel that is notoriously difficult, despite its length, but also notoriously worth it.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956) : 159 pages

Still my favorite Baldwin, and one of the most convincing love stories of any kind ever written, about which there is too much to say: it is a must-read among must-reads.

Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913) : 159 pages

A mythic, proto-feminist frontier novel about a young Swedish immigrant making a home for herself in Nebraska, with an unbearably cool and modern title (in my opinion).

Françoise Sagan, tr. Irene Ash, Bonjour Tristesse (1955) : 160 pages

Sagan’s famously scandalous novel of youthful hedonism, published (also famously) when Sagan was just 19 herself, is much more psychologically nuanced than widely credited. As Rachel Cusk wrote, it is not just a sexy French novel, but also “a masterly portrait that can be read as a critique of family life, the treatment of children and the psychic consequences of different forms of upbringing.” It is a novel concerned not only with morals or their lack, but with the very nature of morality itself.

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor (1924) : 160 pages

Bartleby may be more iconic (and more fun), but Billy Budd is operating on a grander scale, unfinished as it may be.

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) : 160 pages

Everyone’s gateway to Pynchon, and also everyone’s gateway to slapstick postmodernism. Either you love it or you hate it!

Franz Kafka, tr. Willa and Edwin Muir, The Trial (1925) : 160 pages

Required reading for anyone who uses the term “Kafkaesque”—but don’t forget that Kafka himself would burst out laughing when he read bits of the novel out loud to his friends. Do with that what you will.

Kenzaburo Oe, tr. John Nathan, A Personal Matter (1968) : 165 pages

Whew. This book is a lot: absolutely gorgeous and supremely painful, and probably the Nobel Prize winner’s most important.

Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936) : 170 pages

In his preface to the first edition, T.S. Eliot praised “the great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterisation, and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy.” It is also a glittering modernist masterpiece, and one of the first novels of the 20th century to explicitly portray a lesbian relationship.

Yasunari Kawabata, tr. Edward G. Seidensticker, Snow Country (1937) : 175 pages

A story of doomed love spun out in a series of indelible, frozen images—both beautiful and essentially suspicious of beauty—by a Nobel Prize winner.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) : 176 pages

This novel, Rhys’s famous riposte to one of the worst love interests in literary history, tells the story of Mr. Rochester from the point of view of the “madwoman in the attic.” See also: Good Morning, Midnight (1939), which is claustrophobic, miserable, pointless, and damn fine reading.

George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861) : 176 pages

Like Middlemarch, Silas Marner is exquisitely written and ecstatically boring. Unlike Middlemarch, it is quite short.

Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963) : 176 pages

The girls of Spark’s novel live in the May of Teck Club, disturbed but not destroyed by WWII—both the Club, that is, and the girls. “Their slenderness lies not so much in their means,” Carol Shields wrote in an appreciation of the book, “as in their half-perceived notions about what their lives will become and their overestimation of their power in the world. They are fearless and frightened at the same time, as only the very young can be, and they are as heartless in spirit as they are merry in mode.” Can’t go wrong with Muriel Spark.

Robert Walser, tr. Christopher Middleton, Jakob von Gunten (1969) : 176 pages

Walser is a writer’s writer, a painfully underrated genius; this novel, in which a privileged youth runs off to enroll at a surrealist school for servants, may be his best.

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) : 179 pages

Read for proof that Holly Golightly was meant to be a Marilyn.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) : 181 pages

A powerful, clear-eyed, and haunting novel, which at the time of its publication was transgressive in its centering of African characters in all their humanity and complexity, and which paved the way for thousands of writers all over the world in the years to follow.

Leonard Gardner, Fat City (1969) : 183 pages

Universally acknowledged as the best boxing novel ever written, but so much more than that: at its core, it’s a masterpiece about that secret likelihood of life, if not of literature: never achieving your dreams.

N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (1968) : 185 pages

House Made of Dawn, Momaday’s first novel, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and is often credited with ushering in the Native American Renaissance. Intricate, romantic, and lush, it is at its core about the creaking dissonance of two incompatible worlds existing in the same place (both literally and metaphysically) at the same time.

Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) : 186 pages

Himes’ first novel spans four days in the life of a Californian named Bob Jones, whose every step is dogged by racism. Walter Mosely called Himes, who is also renowned for his detective fiction, a “quirky American genius,” and also “one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.” If He Hollers Let Him Go, while not technically a detective story, is “firmly located in the same Los Angeles noir tradition as The Big Sleep and Devil in a Blue Dress,” Nathan Jefferson has written. “Himes takes the familiar mechanics of these novels—drinking, driving from one end of Los Angeles to another in search of answers, a life under constant threats of danger—and filters them through the lens of a black man lacking any agency and control over his own life, producing something darker and more oppressive than the traditional pulp detective’s story.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) : 189 pages

All my life I have wanted to scoff at The Great Gatsby. Usually, things that are universally adored are bad, or at least mediocre. But every time I reread it, I remember: impossibly, annoyingly, it is as good as they say.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957) : 190 pages

Still one of my favorite campus novels, and short enough to read in between classes.

Charles Portis, Norwood (1966) : 190 pages

Portis has gotten a lot of (well-deserved) attention in recent years for True Grit, but his first novel, Norwood, is almost as good, a comic masterpiece about a young man traipsing across a surreal America to lay his hands on $70.

Philip K. Dick, Ubik (1969) : 191 pages

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly have more mainstream name recognition (thank you Hollywood) but Ubik is Dick’s masterpiece, filled to the brim with psychics and anti-psis, dead wives half-saved in cold-pac, and disruptions to time and reality that can be countered by an aerosol you get at the drugstore. Sometimes, anyway.

Clarice Lispector, tr. Alison Entrekin, Near to the Wild Heart (1943) : 192 pages

Lispector’s debut novel, first published in Brazil when she was only 19, is still my favorite of hers: fearless, sharp-edged, and brilliant, a window into one of the most interesting narrators in literature.

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962) : 192 pages

This novel is probably more famous these days for the Kubrick film, but despite the often gruesome content, the original text is worth a read for the language alone.

Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1954) : 193 pages

Comyns is a criminally under-read genius, though she’s been getting at least a small taste of the attention she deserves in recent years due to reissues by NYRB and Dorothy. This one is my favorite, permeated, as Brian Evenson puts it in the introduction of my copy, with marvelousness, “a kind of hybrid of the pastoral and the naturalistic, an idyllic text about what it’s like to grow up next to a river, a text that also just happens to contain some pretty shocking and sad disasters.” Which is putting it rather mildly indeed.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) : 194 pages

In 194 pages, Janie goes through more husbands than most literary heroines can manage in twice as many (and finds herself in equally short order).

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911) : 195 pages

To be honest with you, though it has been variously hailed as a masterpiece, I find Ethan Frome to be lesser Wharton—but even lesser Wharton is better than a lot of people’s best.

Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) : 198 pages

The mood this novel—of disappeared teens and Australian landscape and uncertainty—lingers much longer than the actual reading time.

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967) : 200 pages

“The summer she was fifteen,” Carter’s second novel begins, “Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood.” It is that year that she is uprooted from her home in London to the wilds of America, and it is that year she comes to term with herself. “It is often the magical, fabular aspects of Carter’s stories that people focus on, but in The Magic Toyshop I responded to the way she blended this with a clear-eyed realism about what it was to live in a female body,” Evie Wyld wrote in her ode to this novel. “In a novel so brilliantly conjured from splayed toothbrush heads, mustard-and-cress sandwiches and prawn shells, bread loaves and cutlery, brickwork and yellow household soap, the female body is both one more familiar object and at the same time something strange and troubling.”

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#JUST FOR BOOKS

[fae-fucker]

Review: Stolen Shadow Bride by S.M. Gaither

A desperate sister. A cold Fae prince. A dangerous trick, and a spark of passion that might set a fragile peace ablaze… Sephia has always known that her younger sister was destined to wed the prince of the Sun Court. Long ago, the human kingdom of Middlemage struck a bargain with the neighboring Fae that resulted in peace between them. As part of that bargain, one of the two ruling Fae courts lay claim to a human bride from each new generation. As long as anyone can remember, this is how it has been: The Fae come to take their bride on her eighteenth birthday, the humans allow one to be stolen away, and the peace continues. Until now. Until the Sun Prince comes for her sister, and Sephia does the unthinkable: She disguises herself with magic and goes to the altar in her sister’s place. And she doesn’t intend for her marriage to end happily ever after. But Sephia soon finds that all is not as it seems within the cruel and sparkling Court of the Sun. The king is sick. Strange shadows paint the halls of his palace, leaving death in their wake. The prince is desperate to find answers, whatever the cost. And Sephia is the wrong bride, but she may be the right woman to help the prince save his world— That is, if they can somehow find a way to work together... while ignoring the forbidden passion igniting between them.

This is gonna sound rude, but I finished this book yesterday and I’ve already forgotten it.

I didn’t dislike it, mind. I actually thought it was one of the better ones so far.

And then I promptly forgot it. Which tbh is all you need to know. Or maybe it says something about how they’re all starting to sort of merge together into a generic fae-flavored sludge.

Anyway.

Blurb check! Is it accurate to what actually happens in the book? Yes, it’s all there. Hooray! 

Once again, though, the bride isn’t stolen in any way. It’s literally just an arranged marriage.

Like the previous book, Mage Bride, it’s competently written, and I actually thought the heroine had a proper motivation. The hero was the weak link this time, he was just a very generic edgy guy with a soft side, and there were several references to him being “beastly” and “possessive” in the typical SJM fae way, which I just thought were unnecessary and a turn-off, but then again I love pathetic, beautiful and breedable men. If you’re a straight woman who wants to be ravaged by a hot manly elf, then more power to you and your bad taste, I guess. He was also 27, while the heroine was 18? I guess I’ll let it slide since it’s the same age gap as the one in Howl’s Moving Castle and I’d be a hypocrite to harp on it, but it’s something to keep in mind.

The plot was somewhat confusing and the worldbuilding not fully explored or explained. One very important plot point is dropped entirely by the end, which struck me as extra jarring as it was part of the prince’s motivation for going through with the arranged marriage? Like, Sephia being the wrong princess should’ve been a lot more important to him than it turned out to be, because it would’ve impacted his ability to help his people in a very significant way, yet it’s never mentioned and I guess we’re supposed to believe he’d ignore it because he just loves her so much? But it’s only been a few days? Maybe a week, tops? And he’s shown to clearly care about his kingdom and his people? Ok.

The main problem, and I’m starting to realize it’s a recurring theme in these books, is that it’s so fucking short and the time frame is so minuscule that things are rushed beyond reason. Mage Bride at least had the soulmates excuse so it wasn’t as jarring there, but here, the heroine literally plans to kill the hero at first. But then after a few days of flirty interactions, we’re led to believe she’ll abandon her quest (which includes returning to her sickly sister) because of a few hot makeouts with a dude who’s kind of a douche? Idk man.

I honestly don’t know if these sorts of stories can really work as such short novellas? The fantasy genre sort of relies on a longer storytelling style that allows for exploration of the new world the story introduces, and by making them this short and tiny in scope, it’s obvious that the storytelling and worldbuilding suffers greatly. This could be a writer brain/personal preference problem, though, so maybe a more casual reader would vibe better with these sorts of stories.

Still, I keep having a really difficult time believing these epic love stories when they take less time to develop than it takes me to complete an essay assignment, ya know? The quick pacing, combined with how much of the outside details are lost in the speed and focus on the love story, really weakens the overall experience. And that’s before we take into account the “stolen” part and how many of these books advertise themselves as being about people finding love despite how it may have started, a plot type that inherently relies on believable character development and proper interactions that explore different power imbalances and character flaws. It’s just not a very good base for a short love story, I think.

I don’t know how much of this is personal taste and how much is a genuine flaw of the format/base idea of this series. Part of me honestly believes these were mostly written as a way to promote each author’s personal works, which is fine, but doesn’t make the stories anything more than what feels like appetizers for the author’s main course. And that doesn’t generally make for a good story.

Anyway, back to the book itself.

It was fine. You can read it if you like. It didn’t take years off my life, but it didn’t add anything to it, either.

(Also, there are reviews on Goodreads saying this book was spicier than the previous ones and warning teens away from it, hilariously. I guess it’s true, if you also think salt is a spice and mayonnaise makes your mouth burn. They make out a bit and the scene cuts off, only for the heroine to later clarify that they only kissed. So that’s the level of “spice” we’re dealing with.)

#eff reads: stolen brides of the fae #book review

[englandsgray]

Sherlolly Self-Interviews 2020

Well hi 👋

Ignoring the internal image of Gilderoy Lockheart smiling smugly while flashbulbs pop and saying ‘In my autobiography, Magical Me...’ 🙈😆 I shall take the opportunity of this lovely event to introduce myself as a writer of Sherlolly fanfiction on AO3...

I am English and somewhere over 30.  I watched the show as it aired, and lost my heart as quickly to Molly Hooper as to Sherlock Holmes.  The kiss is British television history.  Series 4 is my favourite.  Moriarty on the beach is life.  The Holmes brothers break my heart every time.

I am extremely lucky to have been provided some questions to answer here by @ohaine and @mybrainrots - huge, huge love and thanks to these two lovelies, and not just for this.  I admire you both so much as writers, and your support means the world to me ❤️ Thanks too, to @sherlollyappreciationweek!

Where did you begin to write, and have you written for other fandoms?  I wrote my first fanfic when I was eleven years old - a 100 page ramble about The Monkees.  Oh yes.  Then in 2018, I fell for the characters of the Disney Pixar film Cars and began writing and publishing.  So far so random!  Writing in this fandom sprang from binge-watching all four series of Sherlock during lockdown.  I remembered reading Louise Brealey talking about being disappointed Molly didn’t get chance to ‘roundly kick Sherlock’s arse’ and agreeing with her wholeheartedly.  That, over a few weeks, turned into my first fic - Who You Really Are.  

You’re a recent (and welcome!) arrival to the Sherlolly ship, and I was wondering if writing in an established, less active than it used to be fandom has been a challenge?   Thank you, firstly.  My experience of this fandom has been incredibly positive - the sense of welcome has been wonderful.  I will admit I was terrified posting the first fic - there are hundreds of times more stories posted daily in the Sherlock fandom as in the one I had some experience of.  But I needn’t have worried, it’s been a blast.  I will also admit, that it’s no small thing to be surrounded by such brilliant writing and the long-standing passion which goes with it.  But I find that inspiring in itself, and I’m very glad to be here - how supportive the fandom are makes me feel like I always have been!       

What’s your favourite place and way to write?  My aesthetic is Lin-Manuel Miranda in his in-law’s laundry room 🤣 I wrote my first ten-thousand words on the notes app on my phone before my other half told me to stop being ridiculous!  I switch between the laptop, my phone and longhand (I’m a sucker for a nice notepad and a Uni-Ball Eye) and, more often than not, not sat up properly at a table.   

Since you’ve (done something I’ve never managed successfully and) written a novella length fic... how did you organise/keep track of all the details and where you wanted the story to go?  Did you outline/plot in advance?  First of all - I would love to see a novella length fic from you @mybrainrots!  The final scene of Who You Really Are came to me very early on and I knew I wanted the fic to fit within TFP - a lot of it takes place in the timeframe of the final montage.  At first, it was going to be much more about Sherlock’s relationship with the ideas of sentiment and love (the phrase ‘I’m not sentimental about you, I love you,’ haunted me for a while) and I spent some time researching the psychology and playing with scenes from throughout the series - one of my favourites I didn’t go on to use was inspired by the final scene of THoB.  Using scenes from the canon gave an automatic structure, and I was always aiming for the final one I wrote early on - the two of them on the beach (everything is about the beach, with me!)  As I went along and started, inevitably, to slow down, I mapped out the chapters with a short note of what I wanted to be in each, then would add notes or phrases as they came to me - often emailed from my phone!  I had to force myself through a tricky section set in Baker Street at one point, but it came together in the end.  I did plot The Pathologist’s Skeletons on paper first, as I found with a casefic which remains a WIP, that I can get confused and lose focus when it comes to details and how to reveal them in a way which stays paced and interesting.  I’ll certainly do that from now on with longer stories and cases.  How did you keep up enthusiasm for the work?  I want to write an original novel, so I am forcing myself to work through the knotty bits and blocks as a learning experience.  Not everything is destined to be finished or finessed, of course, but I’m finding this process is building my confidence that I can overcome problems and slow periods.  I also find I know when I need some external inspiration - some of my favourite scenes have come to me while out walking the dog or sitting on the beach.  I’ve also been inspired by books or other series or things going on in the world, as we all are, and sometimes that’s pushed me on.  Plus, of course, I’m a newbie - I’m very much in the honeymoon period of my writing, even though I’ve loved Sherlock for ten years! (Ten years! Bonkers.) 

You’ve got a knack for writing Sherlock’s thoughts and capturing his voice.  That said, which character do you find easiest to write?  Which is the hardest?  Thank you so much.  I absolutely love writing Sherlock and Mycroft, and I’m sure that’s because they suit my somewhat over-the-top writing style!  I find Molly and her POV really difficult.  I want the scenes I write from her perspective to sound completely different to Sherlock, but that means writing in a style which doesn’t come as naturally to me.  I’m a long way off happy with that at the moment, but I’m enjoying the challenge.

Is there a scene or character that specifically inspired you to start writing Sherlolly?  The whole of TFP, but especially from the moment Sherlock arrives at Musgrave onwards.  I am desperate to see what a Sherlock Holmes who has been reacquainted with his own heart would look like.  I find his emotionality in those final scenes hugely compelling (Mycroft’s office is one of my favourite moments from across all four series) and, as I have always believed in him and Molly, I practically jumped up back in May after watching it and said ‘right, where’s my notebook?!’.

There’s a lovely peaceful, quiet feeling to your fic ‘We’re All Right At The Moment’.  Can you tell us what inspired it and if you’ve thought of doing the backstory that goes with it?  Thank you!  Like everyone, I would go back to January of this year and start again in a heartbeat, but I am hugely fortunate to be able to say that I have a lot to be grateful to the UK lockdowns for.  I might never have begun writing in this fandom otherwise, for one, and I have had a brilliant time so far and met some lovely people. Honestly, I don’t feel able to do any sort of justice in my writing to what has happened in the world in any broader sense than drawing on my own experiences of staying at home and enjoying my family.  This particular super-short fic sees Molly cutting Sherlock’s hair at home in Baker Street.  I wrote it in the evening after I had cut my other half’s hair and had been reminding myself that despite how horribly worried I was - and still am - about everything, we were all right in that moment, and to focus on that as much as possible.  I wanted to try to capture that, if for no reason other than to look back on this entire experience and remember something lovely, so I am so pleased to hear you felt the fic did that.  It was only after I finished it and reread it, that I realised it is ambiguous as to whether Molly is worried about Sherlock contracting the virus, or whether she is remembering him being treated for it... As I say, I don’t think I could write more about these extraordinary circumstances - perhaps it’s just too close at the moment - so I don’t plan on extending it.  But you know how it is, the plot bunnies hop where they will... 

Do you have a Sherlolly music playlist?  What are your top five favs from the list? Here’s a run down of (6 🙊) songs I have been getting emotional over in the last little while, leading my brain to assign their significance to my favourite couple...

Kissing You - Des’Ree - It’s so 90′s, it’s a bit cheesy, it’s oddly disturbing.  It helped me write A Request, Made Properly, and that gave me an excuse to have Sherlock kiss Molly in the snow.

How Long Will I Love You? - Ellie Goulding - part of the playlist, but also in remembrance of a friend who passed away recently.  Life is very short, love is forever.

High and Dry - Jamie Cullum - It’s made me emotional for a very long time.  The original is my partner’s version of choice, this is mine.  

Think About You - Delta Goodrem - Okay, this one isn’t emotional, and it’s not my usual vibe!  Blame the zoom exercise class I do!  But oh my goodness, it’s Molly.  Bless her.

Blinded By Your Grace (P.T.2. F.T. MNEK) - Stormzy - One of the best ever, I reckon.  Spent an awful lot of time thinking about angels and demons, grace and what it takes to save someone, while writing my latest - The Pathologist’s Skeletons.  This has been in my head most of the (blimmin’) time!

Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding - I didn’t know I was a fan of Ellie until I wrote this list... I don’t subscribe to the theory that the love Molly wants or that which Sherlock has to offer is any lesser because it isn’t ‘normal’ or expected. I don’t think romantic entanglement would come easy to either of them. But it’s still love and it would be beautiful.

Thank you so much for reading.  Thanks and love to @ohaine and @mybrainrots. And thank you @sherlollyappreciationweek for the event and for everything you do ❤️

Feel like I should sign off with a quote from the show...

“You’re not a puzzle-solver, you never have been. You’re a drama queen!” Dr John Watson (Moffat & Gatiss) 2014 😜

X

A fav fic of mine by @mybrainrots

https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563193

A fav fic of mine by @ohaine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562904

My stuff:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/works

#sherlolly #sherlollyselfinterview20 #sherlock #sherlockbbc #writing #fanfic #ao3 #ao3 author #read on ao3

[rataltouille]

For that wip folder game, I’d love to hear more about (The) Incompetent Children and What You’ve Lost in the Jasmine Woods if you’re up to share! (-@cecilsstorycorner)

of course let’s go!!

[this is my original work, do not use / repurpose / plagiarise in any form]

[THE] INCOMPETENT CHILDREN

[tw: cult mentions]

this was my og “cult story”, way before force majeure even happened. tbh IC has nothing in common with FM apart from the fact that they both involve a cult but still it's hard not to compare them? i’d say that IC is just a tonally very dark story; FM is kind of daylight horror-esque while IC is pure grit and zero chill.

the tentative logline: the incompetent children chronicles the rise of the present day leader of a religious and technological cult as his power is threatened as his childhood friend returns home, told in dual timelines.

don't ask me what “technological cult” even means i don't know. highlights:

childhood friends / crushes [except you’ll never know if it was mutual] to mortal enemies who also happen to be very annoyingly flirty [that's not an actual trope but it is the story]

queer relationships except it's toxic [oops]

betrayal as redemption

dual timelines: one when the mc was a child right until the point his friend, the antagonist / deuteragonist / love interest leaves the cult, and the present day one where said friend returns except he’s like. directly working against the mc now.

the spotify playlist has got the vibes + the cover is very on point

also this is i think the one story of mine which has a main cast of more than two living male characters lmaooo. there are zero excerpts i’ve written for it. like i don't write stuff for the wips in my writing queue until i actually near the point where they’ll be written, and this is like seventh on the list.

WHAT YOU’VE LOST IN THE JASMINE WOODS

omg this story... love it so much. the logline is this: a girl travels through a place with no one to keep her company except for herself and miles of breathing, dangerous wastelands in an attempt to find out who created her. facts:

this is a novella!! it would literally not work in any other form because there is not enough “conflict” for a short story and not enough “plot” for a novel. and also novella is an intriguing form which i’m excited to try out!

there is only one living character throughout the entire story, who is our protagonist, vasilisa. the entire story is just exploring her relationship with the extremely strange, vaguely fabulistic world around her. the ONLY conflict is with her surroundings. there are no other people here.

told fully in second person :)

exploring gender and being trans in a world where there is no “society” or “civilisation”

here’s the playlist because fun fact! this story was fully inspired by the song “the life of hilda”, and also “i lost something in the hills” by sibylle baier [as the title suggests]

i am actually dying to write this because it is literally my dream story: very little clear conflict, nothing but nature descriptions the entire time, fabulism, full second person omg, gender fuckery. this is most self-indulgent story ever and that’s so beautiful to me.

ask me about my wips!

#don’t reblog but feel free to comment / dm! #someone: mentions what you’ve lost in the jasmine woods #me: combustsand short circuits in sheer joy #the story... i just... *holds gently* #now that i think about it there are multiple reasons why it's so beloved to me and it makes me so glad because #i’ve never been this excited to write a story before! #like ever. #i know nothing about what actually happens in the story but everytime i think about it i just sob with happiness #i remember the day i got the idea and i just sat there laughing while compiling the mood board #i will shut up now <3 #ask game #the incompetent children #what you’ve lost in the jasmine woods

[razieltwelve]

Start Small

One of the questions I’ve been asked in the past is about how to write a novel. Now, setting aside the technical and creative aspects of writing a novel, I’ve noticed that this question often comes from people who haven’t done a lot of writing before, which might actually be the biggest hurdle.

Most novels are in the range of 70,000 to 100,000 words. If you haven’t done a lot of writing before, those 70,000 words can feel like 7,000,000. It’s like running a marathon. No matter how hard you try, your odds of completing a marathon without practicing long-distance running first are essentially nil. It’s just not going to happen. If you want to complete a marathon, you don’t jump into the deep end right away. Instead, you work your way up. You start off by running shorter distances, and then you gradually increase the distance you run each day until you’re comfortable running a marathon.

Back when I had two good knees instead of the dodgy pair I currently have, I used to be able to run 10 kms (roughly 6 miles) in rugged terrain fairly easily. However, I didn’t start at that level. Instead, I started off by running laps around the local park. Each lap was roughly 400 metres, and I wasn’t able to do many at first. However, each week, I tried to run a little bit further, and I eventually got the point where I was running 10 to 15 laps, which was when I realised I was ready to run longer distances in tougher conditions.

Writing your first novel is the same. It’s never going to be easy, but you’re going to make your life far more difficult if you don’t practice writing other things first. Before I wrote my first novel, I had already written plenty of short stories and novellas. Admittedly, short stories and novellas don’t have the exact same structure as full length novels, but many of the technical and creative skills do transfer. Perhaps the most important thing, however, was getting experience in writing longer and longer pieces until I was finally confident that I could write a novel-length story. The confidence I built writing these shorter stories was also important because writing a novel can definitely dent your confidence if you run into a rough patch. Likewise, the experiences you acquire (e.g., plotting, writing dialogue, etc.) are useful across different story lengths.

So if you want to write a novel, but you don’t know how to get started, consider starting small. Instead of jumping straight to your 100,000 word magnum opus set in a unique and engaging fantasy world, why not try writing a 500 word vignette set in the same world? Do that a few times. Get your confidence up, practice the technical and creative aspects of storytelling. Build those writing muscles. Then, after you’ve gotten good at that, why not try a 1000 word vignette and then a 2000 word one? If you can do that, it won’t be long before you’re writing 10,000 word short stories, and that puts 30,000 word novellas within reach. And if you write a 30,000 word novella, well, is 70,000 words or a 100,000 words really that much more?

Writing a novel can be tough, but writing one without trying to write shorter stories first can be even tougher. 1000 words might not sound like much, but it’s a start. Likewise, 10,000 words isn’t a novel, but it is a good-sized short story. And 30,000 words is right in novella territory, which means you’re almost all the way to a novel. Writing these shorter stories will help your practice all of the different technical and creative aspects of writing whereas it can be all too easy to get stuck doing the same things over and over if the only thing you’ve ever tried to write is a novel.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

#writing #writing tips #improving your writing #writing advice #writing technique

[alcego-writes]

The 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter Plotting Method

There are countless ways to structure your story. There’s the general plot structure (exposition, rising action, etc.), the hero’s journey, and three-act structures—but do you really know how to put together a plot and put it into action?

The 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter plotting method is an excellent resource for both plot and pacing, and I use it for almost all of my projects. I’ll review it here and give you an idea of what it is, when to use it, and how to put it into action.

What is the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter Method?

The 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter outline method is exactly what it sounds like: there are three acts, which are divided into nine blocks, which are then divided into twenty-seven chapters. Be Your Own Mentor has an excellent page describing each block and its subdivisions here. I strongly recommend checking out this page, as it explains each aspect of this plotting method in detail.

However, this outlining method does more than just suggest where to put plot-points—it’s also a guide for pacing. Each block should be roughly the same length, which helps prevent your story from getting a sagging middle. This relatively uniform length also allows you to set word-count goals for each section, particularly if you’re aiming for a specific word-count in a project.

For example, in an 18,000-word novella, each act (which I split up evenly—some people prefer to have the second act span from the first plot twist to the second plot twist) should be roughly 6,000 words. With three blocks in each act, this means that each block should be roughly 2,000 words. This allows me to keep an eye on how much I’ve written and adjust my scenes/pacing accordingly.

When to Use the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter Method

First of all, this is most useful when you need to fast-draft a clean, tight, and effective story. I use it for all of my ghostwriting work, as it is simple, straightforward, and allows me to both discover and understand my story (and what I’ll need to pull it off) while outlining.

That’s not to say that this method is ill-suited to other projects. It’s actually quite versatile (I’ve gone so far as to merge it with the formulaic structure of mystery novels) and simple to use, once you understand it. Even if you’re a discovery writer, it can be really helpful to keep an eye on this chart and make sure you’re hitting all the beats you need to, and that you’re moving your story forward instead of stalling.

That said, it can be less useful for short fiction. Short stories tend to follow a different structure altogether, with many focusing on a specific scene or mood-related to their premise (although I have, on occasion, seen short stories with full plots), so having a beat-sheet or three-act outline won’t necessarily work for you. Now, you can absolutely take parts of the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter outline and focus on, say, only Act II or Block 4 for the duration of the short story—because, as I said before, this is a really versatile tool. Play around with it and see what works for you!

Basically: if you need to know the beginning, middle, and end of your story; need a simple beat-sheet for your project; or even just want to familiarize yourself with the generalized structure of a long-form story, this is a great resource.

Key Terms

While BYOM does an excellent job explaining the gist of the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter outline, there are a few things that may still be confusing if you’re not 100% familiar with all the fancy plot-terms involved. So, before I dive into how to use the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter plot structure, I’m going to clarify a few terms that may cause confusion.

Plot Point - You’ve probably heard of them, but I promise they don’t have to be as dramatic as popular media would have you believe. There’s no need for a surprise! The character was dead all along! if it won’t suit your story. Still, plot twists make for a good story. They keep things fresh and interesting. And, this is important, they don’t have to come out of left field. For example, in romance stories, a plot twist could be something like a plot point the main character forgot about coming back to influence their story, or a revelation of an important character’s backstory, secrets, or other important traits. What I’m trying to say is that these should be Big Moments of your story, but they don’t need to be world-shattering. They should feel natural and rewarding to your story’s premise. These should occur at roughly the 25% and 75% mark of your story.

Midpoint - Strictly speaking, this is the middle of the story. It marks a change in your protagonist: where they were reactive in the first half, they become proactive here. They’ve learned about the new world/situation they’re in, and it’s time for their character arc to impact their choices going forward.

Reversal - Here, both the readers and the protagonist see something in a whole new light. This may be caused by a change in circumstances (in a thriller, for example, this may be a trusted ally betraying the protagonist) or by the protagonist’s new perspective shifting the way both they and the readers see the events of the story. To put it simply, this is where something known changes form. A friend turned foe, a job gone wrong, and even a sudden realization that demands the protagonist’s attention all work. This should occur after the midpoint, where the protagonist has changed.

Reaction - You’ll notice that this appears twice in the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter structure, and the ambiguous nature of the term may be confusing for some folks. The Reaction is not so much your protagonist’s response to everything that’s happened thus far so much as it’s their reaction to the plot point that occurred immediately before it. How does the protagonist react to the inciting incident (and its immediate consequences…)? How does the Reversal affect their behavior? These are the questions you’re answering at this point in the story.

Action - While the first half of the structure is mostly reactionary, there’s no getting around the fact that a reactionary plot can be boring, even annoying. This is where you show how your protagonist acts under pressure; something Big has just happened to them, and now they need to decide how to proceed with their life. Do they run, or do they charge into conflict? This defines your protagonist at the early points of their arc and serves to contrast their eventual development in Trials and Dedication.

How to Use the 3 Act, 9 Block, 27 Chapter Method

If you haven’t already, I recommend taking a look at BYOM’s break-down of each block. It’s a very useful guide and will give you an idea of how each point ties into the next.

Ready? When outlining, I keep a “skeleton outline” on hand that looks like this:

This “skeleton” allows me to keep track of everything while I put together a plot in another document that will get far messier and harder to keep track of than the clean, easy-to-read skeleton. In the functional outline, I usually mark my actual outlines with the block numbers and goals, as seen in the second image, but that’s largely due to how I structure my Scrivener document after I’ve completed the outline.

After I’ve set up my outline and have my “skeleton outline” (combined with any genre formulas, as with mystery) ready to go, I begin writing the plot. This usually takes me 1-2 days, depending on my current work-load and productivity levels.

As you can see, I’ve blended a few points together (such as in Block 4, where there’s a lot of overlap in the block’s structure) and added several notes to myself while filling out what happens at each point. You’ll also notice that I write more the further I get through the outline—this is partially because I’m getting familiar with the story, and thus have more to say, and partly because there’s more to keep track of as I get further through the plot. (Including b-plots, which I also make note of in this outline.)

The goal here isn’t to map out everything that happens so much as it is to give me an idea of what I want to be doing in each part of my project. At the beginning, I need to focus on the romance, but in Act II I’ll pay more attention to the b-plot. I often jump around on the outline as I figure things out (such as plot twists, as knowing what these are in advance makes it easier to build them up) and add notes regarding characters I need to create, places I need to have descriptions for, and other project-relevant details.

From there, I set up my Scrivener document. As you can see, I combine and separate each aspect of the blocks as I see fit; the ‘27 Chapters’ is more of a guideline than anything else. When working on a project with chapters, I’ll label each scene with the chapter it will go into, but I don’t sort them into chapters until I’m done writing.

You’ll also see that I write a schedule for myself based on a) how much I need to write, b) when I need it done by, and c) how much I’m able to take on. This is my job, so my schedule is tighter than it would be for someone doing this in their spare time. And, while having a schedule is by no means required, it helps when it comes to managing your project and working to its end. I use highlights, labels, and status markers to keep track of my work and let myself know where I am and where I need to be.

Outlining is a really personal thing, as you’re not just putting together the structure for your story—you’re putting it together in a way that makes sense to you. With the exception of clients who request outlines, no one except for me will ever see this outline. Ultimately, the outline is yours, and yours alone.

Find my blog useful? Leave a comment or check out my Patreon for early-access and extra content! Thanks for reading, and happy writing!

#Plot #Outlines #Writing Advice #hgwhhsj i forgot i’d scheduled tis to post here from my website #but it’s here!

[writer-workshop]

WIP Introductions (now with graphics)

Referred to as ‘DAGN’ in tags

Think of if Euphoria met Supernatural wrapped up in a Kill Your Darlings type setting

This doesn’t have a name just yet, but when I get one so will yall 

Set in present times (2020- without any of the present time happenings) 

Synopsis: Bev loved her brother. Right until the day he decided chasing monsters was more important than her and walked out of her life some odd 10 years ago. Now, at 27 Bev attends Institute Auréole D’or where her father, Mr.Mystic, is currently dean, but that hasn’t, and won’t, stop her from living her best life. But now her brother is back and he’s hunting something big. Something that could be the end of him and he wants his little sister help in stopping it. The only problem? She’s told everyone, including herself, that her brother had died. And she doesn’t have much longer to decide if he’s going to stay that way or not. 

Character introductions to come later. 

Progress: Because this is my first time doing both a graphic novel and dabbling in Dark Academia, it’s taken some research to make sure I’m getting this right. With that being said, this is all in the very, very early planning stages. Yet, as I go I’ll keep yall updated as well

Story Type: Graphic Novel

Genre: LGBTQ+, fantasy, supernatural, mystery/thriller

Warnings: graphic (both sexual and gore), mention of drugs, sex, overdosing, hospitalization, mental illness, emotional abuse, trauma (i did mention it was a mix of Euphoria and Supernatural), adult content

Pinterest board: to be created

Apple Music playlist: to be created

Referred to as ‘SSS’ in tags

This actually does not have a time period. I don’t think it’ll have one at all. It also won’t mention any major time plots so like just put whatever time period you want.  

Name is not finalized and probably won’t be for a while

Synopsis: The island of Winterfall, Isle has known peace ever since Alatar Wintergreen found it back in late 1806. Banned from the United States, and really the rest of the world, after the practice of magic was also banned. Now an idyllic little place where the inhabitants practice magic freely. That is until a jealous prince decides he is tired of no being in the spotlight. With a dead general, a court whose loyalties are divided, and a missing king it’s up to Ikiair’s, the king's youngest, to stop the sure destruction of their home. Will he stop his uncle in time to also marry the love of his life and live happily ever after? Or will greed and vengeance lead him to an early grave?

Type: Novella

Character sheets to come later

Progress: There are several chapters written to this but I took another break from this. 

Genre: LGBTQ+ (secondary character), fantasy, romance,  

Warnings: mild sexual content, mental illness (depression), death (heavily mentioned

Pinterest board: https://pin.it/4Ss2Ga6

Apple Music playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/short-story-series-soundtrack/pl.u-XkD00bRFoZ6XmE

Referred to as ‘Happy Ending’ in tags

Set in the year 2023 

Name is kind of finalized

Synopsis: Welcome to Malacity. The perfect city to raise your family and advance your career. With no (at least to the citizens) crime rate, beneficial city placement, and a town built specifically to meet the needs of its citizens; you won’t find a better town in this US of A. The catch? The government spies on you and does routine “health” checks on all citizens. Also, disobeying rules could mean something worse than death. Enter Jaime who is trying to live her best life. Even if it means fighting feelings for her best friend, going at it with the one person who knows who she actually is, summoning a demon that now doesn’t want to leave, all while taking down a corrupt government and learning the true nature of her parents death. Yeah, so she’s living her best life. Or trying to. At least before the government gets her

Type: Novella

Character sheets to come soon

Progress: I wrote 75% of chapter one but then took a break because I really need to find out where I’m going with this story.

Genre: LGBTQ+, fantasy elements, realistic fiction, dystopia kinda  

Warnings: mention of COVID and it’s after effects, police brutality (implied/maybe mentioned), sexual assault (implied), drugs, adult content, mental illness (depression/anxiety/personality) gore (not heavy)

Pinterest board: https://pin.it/2kbWINS

Apple Music playlist:https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/happy-ending-soundtrack/pl.u-yZyVP2lsDqeb0R

Referred to as ‘Something Like’ in tags

Set in current time (not really 2020, but somewhere between 2018-2021) with no real time mentioned. Also, nothing that’s currently (or have been) going on will be mentioned. (I may make every other chapter flashbacks and if that happens then it’ll also be set during 1990-1999 [ish]). 

Name is finalized

Synopsis: Alisa Matthews has always gone above and beyond for both her school projects and while documenting life. So why should her senior Documentarian project be any different? Cue Dr. Banks, former Aubrey School of the Arts student, turned professor. She’s been taking the school by storm since she stepped onto campus back in 1991. Although a big name on campus, no one has ever gotten a full blown interview about how she actually got a start. This is where Alisa comes in. She wants to talk about Dr. Banks' early years. How love of life and friends and a certain French man changed her perspective on how art should be, how art could be. Yet, Alisa can’t shake that Dr. Banks is hiding something about her early years. Will Dr. Banks warm up to her before the premiere of the documentary? Or will the truth about the passion behind Dr. Banks stay hidden forever? 

Character introductions to come later

Progress: There are about five to six chapters already written, but I’ve taken a break for a while. I’ll be circling back to this one shortly. 

Type of story: novella 

Genre: LGBTQ+, romance, historical fiction, 

Warnings: mention of historical racial abuse, mention of homophobia (implied), secondary character mention of physical/sexual abuse (sexual abuse is implied not described)

Pinterest board: https://pin.it/62uITaN

Apple Music playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/something-like-a-love-story-soundtrack/pl.u-qxyllZBt8GeNjk

Referred to as ‘My Own Undoing’ in tags

A collection of poems & prose that explores the author’s struggle with religion & relearning to love her body. Broken, much like her faith & her love, into two parts; the collection tells of how her faith is shaken. Shambled. Non-existent. How she is waiting for God to answer questions she didn't need to ask. For ones she shouldn't have asked. Tells of the struggle it's taken to love a body that she abandoned long, long ago. Of the body's silence when she is being asked, no begged, for forgiveness. Of the body's acceptance for all she has put it through. Even if their body doesn't want it. Even if the body knows it's what's best for the both of them. 

Title will remain the same

Type: Poetry

Genre: Non-Fiction, Religion

Warnings: n/a?

#marshmallow introductions #none of these graphics are even close to being finished #but they are as close to the real thing as my non-drawing behind will get #I forgot the excerpts because of course i would #so i'll add those in later

[sadistic-second]

HOW I RUN MY BLOG.

SPEED: What is speed? I’d like to believe things are done as quickly as possible. Written word says that I’m pretty quick about things, 1-3 days tops. But if you’ve ever actually heard be vocalize my “speed” then well. :fingerguns: I’m a lazy piece of shit. So, that being said, depending on motivation levels that I currently possess, that reveals the speed in which I operate things here. But a good baseline is still 1-3 days.

REPLIES: For starters, I use thread tracker for all the threads I currently possess. And if I haven’t replied to something then I sincerely apologize. I am not ignoring you. I either fucked up tracking it (which I’ve done before) or something happened to the tracker itself. I know it had some issues recently. Can’t recall if it got fixed or not, but I know for a fact it fucked some of my replies up. 

On that note, if I have taken longer than seven (7) days to reply to something, hit me up. Let me know. Either the tracker or I fucked up and I need to be told. As stated above, I usually take 1-3 days to reply to things. So if it has been at least that long and you’re still waiting on me for something, chances are the above happened. 

You’d never know it by looking at the lengths of most (all?) my roleplays here, but I am a novella roleplayer at heart. Love me some details, bro. Setting scenes, getting the atmosphere just right, making sure you know for a fact what I’m doing at any given moment. Why? I dunno. That has a story in and of itself that will not be disclosed here. 

But don’t let that discourage you. I am adaptable and I can be flexible to what my partner needs/wants. Will I get carried away sometimes? Absolutely. Do you have to panic and try and match? Not at all. You do you. I’ll do me. We’ll work it out, don’t worry.

STARTERS: Don’t at me, I already know I’m stepping into a baited trap. 

Starters are nice. However, they take time to write and think up. That being said, if I’m writing it, you best believe it's tailored to you specifically. Though I do enjoy at least a basic idea discussion beforehand so I know what direction I’m supposed to take this, I can wing that shit like no tomorrow. Again, not that anyone would know since I haven’t exactly, uh . . . Done it yet. Rest assured, I have the list. I will be doing something eventually. 

You can also tag me in starters if you want. I’ll notice and I’ll get the idea and we can go from there. If it's just something you came up with outta the blue or it's from an ask or whatever, all fine by me. I’m pretty much open to any and all ideas.

INBOX: Ahahah, my inbox. Yes. That motherfucker. Look. I have at least one meme queued for every single day up until the first week of August. Not quite sure what possessed me to do this, but you know. At least you’ll always at least have one thing to choose from to send me every day. Old memes, new memes, random ass shit you just thought of at 3am because you figured I’d like it, send that in. I’ll answer it.

Sure, okay, yeah. I’ve currently got week old memes sitting in there right now. And there are at least month old memes sitting in my drafts that I haven’t posted yet. Doesn’t mean I won’t answer them. Just gotta wait for that good ol’ inspiration to kick in. 

Oh, and I hear Tumblr still eats things. So if you’ve sent me something and its been quite a while and you haven’t seen an answer, chances are I never saw it. I sincerely apologize. Send it again. Send something new. Eventually, I’ll see it. Tumblr can’t eat everything, right?

SELECTIVITY: What is selectivity? I’d write with a sentient stuffed animal if it had a good enough idea. Yes, I’m very aware of what that sounds like. Does that make me any less of a person, a writer, because I said that? Fuck no. I am more than willing to give anyone and everyone a chance provided you aren’t cringey.

Oh but Asher, what does that last bit even mean? Don’t be fucking weird. That’s all I ask. If you’ve got an idea, come to me with it and we’ll work something out. Don’t have an idea? We’ll talk about it. I will roleplay with you. I am by no means selective. 

WISHLIST: OH BOY! A WISHLIST!

Although, I suppose this would be where I’m supposed to give you some semblance of ideas or stories that I would like to give a shot at. :fingerguns: What is creativity? I will admit that I like to spout out about how creative I am and shit. However, put me on the spot and I will go blank and make myself a fucking liar.

I’ll give you some hints though. Love me some angst. I am one angsty boy. Do your absolute worst. It takes a lot to make me feel things and only two people have managed to get me to the point of tears thus far in my Tumblr career. If you think you got what it takes, bring it on.

I’m still exploring Reno’s drug habit(s). So I guess that’s sort of a wish list idea?

I want an excuse to be sadistic. My fucking name is literally sadistic-second and I cannot recall an opportunity in which I have gotten to display that true nature. I think I’ve hinted at it before? I know there are a couple shorts that I’ve written floating around. I think you can find them under “Asher writes” and uh . . . Fuck, what was that other one I wrote recently? “Raw meat” brings it up in the search so there’s that, too.

So those are kind of wish list ideas? I guess? 

HONEST NOTE: :dogekek: Bold of you to assume I have anything else left in me to put here. Nah, but like it was 2am when I wrote this. And you’re seeing it now at whatever the fuck time my queue put it at. Early morning, I know that. 

I’ve done a lot of changing, a lot of growing up in the last year or so. Big life changes happened and well. You gotta adjust or ya kinda sink. And boy did I sink. But I’m back now. I’m better. I’m getting the hang of things once again. 

No, but like what the fuck is supposed to go here? Oh, wait. I have an idea.

You guys want a better way to communicate with me? Ask for my discord. Tumblr messages are great and all, but uh . . . You’re more likely to get more out of me on discord than you are Tumblr. Why? I dunno. I’m always on discord. I’m kind of on Tumblr? Granted, I’m always on both places, but discord is where its at, man.

TAGGED BY: @that-turk-laney

TAGGING: Uh. Steal it, fam

#Just Asher Things