Tag: #amannoyed

Writing blindness. Is it a thing?

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For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to get feedback for my immortal around Manchester (England) story ‘Do I have parents at all’? I have had varying degrees of success with this. But the success I’ve had has been very useful.

This success has come in the form of some very useful pieces of feedback that have opened my eyes to something that, if I wasn’t so biased towards how good I thought my story was to notice it, was staring me in the face; A different ending to my story. Each piece of feedback had the same theme that the ending wasn’t believable or that the reader needed more information to believe it. On each occasion, I pondered if what I was being told was just the reader not reading clearly enough or if the current ending to my story was too far-fetched.

Turns out, it was the latter.

Reading through my story’s end again, which has my hero become one of 21 supreme overlords of the world, made me realise that no amount of explanation could make my ending realistic enough. But thankfully another ending came to mind almost immediately. I have since re-written the ending that suits my lead character a lot more. Turns out he wasn’t cut out for world domination. Not many people are I suppose.

This all got me thinking about all the other story’s I have written and whether their endings are correct. I admit it’s hard not to be blinded by how apparently great the first ending that I have come up is, is that writing blindness?, but I think it’s something I’ll have to get over. I am now a lot happier with the new ending I have come up with and may test it out on people in future. I continued to think that at no point have I questioned any of my endings accept for a time travel story I wrote a few months ago. I’ve mostly just taken them as being what’s best for the story. I have a lot of endings to look back over and possibly change. Though I might just write alternate endings for all of them, regardless of how I feel about the first one, and then take it from there.

With all this in mind, I ask you this, do you write one ending for your story’s or do you have several in mind before or after you’ve written them?

Have a good week. Bye!

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If one road fails, try another.

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Hello

The last couple of times out I have requested feedback from you fine people on an excerpt from one of my short stories ‘Do I have parents at all?’ Now, I have only received a few pieces of feedback and they were very helpful and has helped me along. Even though I haven’t received anything more I’m not feeling too disheartened. I’ll just have to take a different road in order to get the feedback I may or may not need.

So, I’ve started back writing my western yarn about a travelling cowboy looking for a new home. It’s moving along nicely and the characters and story lines are taking shape. Up to now our hero, Benedict, has begun to settle into his new surroundings but is still worried that it all might change at any moment like has done so many times in the past. Will my western hero catch a break finally? With a love interest and a new father figure in the picture it might just happen. Though he does have to contend with a clearly jealous wannabe cowboy who has manipulated himself into owning most of the town. And it doesn’t help that our hero has already, within a day of his arrival into town, shot and injured one of the villains, Geoffrey’s, main henchmen. I have the story pretty much mapped out in my head but I’m conscious of making sure said story is not just set pieces and is an actual story.

This is something I started writing without using notes and it was a little bit daunting but I now have some good notes to help me along. I‘m filling in the blanks and now have town and supporting character names, descriptions and potential side stories that I could use. Research is also helping me attempt to get the finer points of the story, which so far is what they would eat and wear, correct. Writing down all of this needed stuff is made all the harder when I have the main set pieces of the story playing in my head. And with all the characters screaming ‘Get on with it!’ I respond, though they don’t listen, I’m trying but these things take time. But never out loud. Not yet anyway.

Those voices are screaming again so I’m going to get back to the writing. I hope you all have a good and productive writing and/or non-writing week.

Bye

The loss of notes for a finished story and the lack of notes for a new one.

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Hello

So, I’ve been working my way through the first edit for the story I’m going enter into the 5000 word competition at www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk. I got into the habit a few years ago of writing stories down instead of keeping them in my head and waiting for a competition to present itself so I could use it. What if such a thing never happened? Anyway, I wrote down one such idea and it will be my entry into the aforementioned comp. The story centres on a man with a special gift that he does not know and has yet to discover why it is in fact special and why he has the gift in the first place. He takes drastic measures to try and find answers when a random crime happens in front of him and gives him an idea. Will the idea help him or will it be his down fall?

I’m not sure yet to be honest. So far my hero is following along with a new friends plan for world domination in the quite literal sense. I’ve already spotted a few changes I’d like to make to my story so I’m sure that will be fun chopping and changing stuff to get them in (yawn) This story had been floating around in my skull for years until I committed it to paper and made plenty of notes to back it up with. But, after years of it just sitting on my laptop and waiting to be edited (sad face) it finally got its wish.

And now I cannot find the smeggin notes I made. None of the bloody things. Not one single chuffin word. I’ve checked my high number of note pads and books and nothing. Goose egg none. This does mean I’ll have to remember it all again but this may be a good thing. Possibly. I’ll let you know how I get on.

With this loss of notes I decided to try something different. I decided to write another story, this time a western, and only make notes as I went along. I can only makes notes as I write with any plot points and such being created along the way. I’m not sure how this will work out but so far I have given my hero, currently named Benedict, a back story involving his parents and possible the reason why he is going to do…whatever it is he is going to do. In truth, I have plenty of ideas knocking about but so I’ll either use them for something else or throw them all in at once for this new story. May god have mercy on my soul.

Well, thank you for reading and I’ll see next time.

Bye

The story gets bigger and (hopefully) better.

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Hello

So, last time I said I had started a story and that I would probably need only another 8-10 pages to finish it.

That was a lie.

And…well that was the only lie from my last post.

My story, which involves time travel and the impact it has on those who are lucky or unlucky enough to partake in it, is picking up speed but is taking longer than I thought it would. It is for a good reason though.

I realised that I had a lot to explain and that I just wanted to get the story written and not worry about it being a short, novella or long story. In my head I thought 15 pages would be enough but I sit here now with fifteen pages of it done and no time travel having happened. How could such a thing happen? You might ask.

I don’t know, is the answer.

I have made sure to describe everything well enough and to move the story along at a natural pace that I’m comfortable with and 15 pages isn’t enough. At this rate I’m sure it’ll be double that by the time it’s finished. And it doesn’t help that each time I think the next paragraph is going to have my hero travelling through time, which will change the pace of the story and everything from there will move along a lot faster, I discover I need to explain something else. Or set something up. Or describe something important. Each time this has happened with this and every other story I’ve ever written, I’ve been annoyed.

But then I move on.

To what? You may ponder. Well, to bigger and better things regarding my story hopefully. Each time I thought of something else I needed to cover I immediately knew that it needed to be done for the story to work. All the seemingly endless parts of the story must link together to make the whole thing run just like a song right?

And so it is that I’m now on the cusp of making my hero travel through time. What will happen to him? How will it change him? What will happen?!

No idea. But I’ll tell you when I know.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.

Bye.

And the Edit goes on La de da de de, la de da de da

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Hello

 

So, as I’ve mentioned before I’m editing a story for the month of November and it’s moving along steadily. I have been doing NaNoWriMo for the past two years but I fancied a change.

As the edit has gone on I’ve picked up on a few things that will need researching and looking into in future. I’ve made a note of these things and they just so happen to be very important to the overall story. I’m considering doing an editing month for December more and more. Well, December through to January as December has a couple of birthday’s and Christmas parties that require my attendance. The research will cover my lead characters sister and her involvement in the whole thing and how the searcher general came to find the recipe for immortality. I’m about 2/3 of the way with the immortality back story and about half way with the sister back story. Hopefully by the end of the edit I’ll have a better idea of what I had planned for her.

I have also found that I may or may not have been trying to come up with my own language whilst writing the first draft of my human vs demon yarn, The Searcher’s Want. Some of the sentences, and paragraphs for that matter, just didn’t seem to make any sense. I’m being as ruthless as I can be and have deleted plenty of full sentences but I came across one paragraph and I could not stop frowning. What the hell is that? I found myself going back over the last paragraph or two to see what would make sense. It’s sorted now. Until the next edit anyway.

I also found that I had made one chapter 14 pages long. Now, that isn’t longer than any chapter I’ve ever read or written but when you’re editing a story that averages 8 pages per chapter, it’s a lot. I cut and chopped and changed some things round and it’s all evened out. Though my task is that little bit bigger than before. It’s all part of the fun I suppose. *groan

Anyway, I’m going to get back to it. Have a good week.

 

Cheers

A competition entry, the start of another sequel and a bit of therapy.

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Howdo!

 

Since last time I have focused on two things. Editing a short story I’m going to enter into a short story competition and writing a short story, which could be a novella, that will set up the sequel to another story of mine, my 2012 NaNoWriMo entry about demons and those that hunt them and protect the world, The Searcher’s Want.

The first thing started with me writing a brand new story for a competition. 1000 words about anything I wanted with a deadline of 14.08.2014. As I racked my brain to decide what I could write about, I remembered I had planned ahead. I had already written a fair few short stories for just this kind of situation. So, I found one of them that was 750 words, and started to edit the hell out of it for the competition. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing the story I picked, about a man scared to share a secret condition he has with his nearest and dearest in fear of rejection (not from personal experience I might add) and editing it brought it all back. Of course I think it’s awesome, but I shall keep editing until I have all angles covered. I’m also thinking it will be fine practice for when I edit The Town of the Mountain. It’s going well so far and I’ve started to edit it only looking at character with the next part being location as I’ve already finished the grammar and punctuation check. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The second thing was the start of my Searcher’s Want sequel. I did start to write a 1000 word story using characters from my demons and hunters yarn, but I stopped and started all over again without the 1000 word limit. And immediately wanted to plan for a sequel. I’ve written 2000 words so far and thought of new things I’ll have to embellish on at some point before I write the full sequel. It’s shaping up already and I think I have the theme and story line for the whole thing. Which has helped me a lot as, in between all this wonderful writing of mine, my day job is winding me up something rotten. I’d write more about it but I don’t want to waste any more time than I already have. So…

The writing has been a kind of therapy for me and helped me get through the last few days. I also know, more than ever, that I want to AT LEAST write stories for the rest of my life. If they’re only for me, that’s fine. If others like them, cheeky bonus!

Ok. Going to get back to it.

BYE!!