Wednesday 24 December 2008

Season's Greetings

To one and all.

I hope everyone has a happy time and remains fit and well.

If you are celebrating then have fun!

Tuesday 9 December 2008

Wrapping the Candy Bar

Did I say I could wrap up this scene in another thousand words?

Why did I have to bring another four baddies into the fray?

I am being particularly evil to my hero at the moment. :-)

Monday 8 December 2008

The First Kill

Yay! My protagonist got his first kill in the candy bar scene. In fact, he's now had two kills (about bloody time too) and that really cool idea I had last night is about to enter stage left.

I can see this mammoth (at least for me) scene wrapping up in about a thousand words or so.

By and large it is the longest scene in the book, but I need to resist the urge (as ever) to go back and look at this part of the novel's structure.

It's quite possible this scene can be condensed and the chapter breaks juggled around a bit so it isn't spread over the current 3 chapters but I really need to look at things like that at the end during revision time.

Sunday 7 December 2008

Still at it!

I'm still writing that Candy Bar Scene. Although I haven't spent nearly as much time as I would have liked on it, it is starting to come together. The scene has now managed to span 3 chapters and I think I can feel a fourth coming on.

One thing is for certain, the way my story is going it is not going to survive in its current format. This scene is way to big and there is nothing else that comes close. So, I either beef up my ending a bit or I'll have to take the ideas I have for the two sequels and sling them in here and then lop off the first third of the book.

There's going to be some serious juggling going on but for now I will continue to write it as it is. Who knows, something beefy may come up. This scene has already taken on a life of its own and there are other dogfights to come - just none at the end where they may be needed.

My original intention was for the dogfight to take place in space, which it did, but my protagonist had this crazy idea that his ship would fare better against, the dozen or so ships, in the atmosphere of planet.

Did it fare better? Hell no! When things are really bad they just gotta get worse.

Then again, maybe this scene will be heavily pared down once the novel is finished and it is edited for large-scale structure.

Well, I'm hoping tonight that my protagonist will at least get his first kill...

You're probably thinking it is crazy to have this scene sprawling 3 chapters and the hero still hasn't shot another ship down. In his defense, he did have to contend (unarmed) with a very nasty autonomous killing machine, which managed to get aboard undetected in the previous scene (yes, there was one but it was so long ago I forget) and all the while the ship was plunging into the planet's atmosphere and four enemy ships are...

I'll leave it there I've just had an amazing idea.

Gotta go!

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Revision Revision Revision. . .

Some pearls of wisdom from Holly Lisle:



If you're interested in reading more advice on revision from Holly then check out:

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Queries

Over on Author's Echo Adam asks what's the Point of Writing Queries? Time and time again this crop's up on agent blogs and as Adam points out it's part of the job.

Lucky, for me, I'm nowhere near ready to start the query process, but for those of you who are but are finding it difficult check out Janet Reid's query shark.
 
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