#reviveandrevise – Drama Llamas

Today’s prompt is to talk about a scene that you’ve already written that creates a lot of drama. Just a small taste, which I kind of like, but I’m going to twist this. As I twist all things if you stay here long enough or if you’ve been here for a while. It’s just what I do. I’m a twisty person. Not twisty dark because this is not Grey’s Anatomy, but bit twisty. So I’m going to talk about an upcoming scene that I’ve got some written out in my outline / road map. It’s also one of my favorite scenes because it’s just filled with crunchy family drama too.

So what happens is that Marian allows herself to be captured, letting them think they have Robin, and when the hood is pulled up she’s all like “hello brother dear” in Robin’s voice. Which just freaks everybody out and they’re like “demon!” and she’s like “…fuck you, illusion magic”. Not in so many words, but you get the idea. There’s a bunch of lead up to this point, like Marian embracing that her true kick ass self is better than using the illusion of a guy, But it is one of my favorite scenes and one of the more juicy drama scenes. Especially because Daniel’s like “is there nobody in this family that is normal?!” and she’s like “nope, not even you” and the little family tidbits. Also, she’s got a specific reason for being captured, as this is between the midpoint and the secondary twist, but that’s just going to have to wait for the entire novel to be written.

There are other juicy drama bits in the novel, including Johanna (Little John) calling Marian out on thinking she has to be a guy for people to listen to her. And there’s the entire possible romance between the Demon King and Marian with all of that inside. I’m just having a lot of fun with writing this novel, even if it’s taking me forever to sit down and write. There’s just been a lot of real life drama and wanting to lost myself in books, but the remainder of the month is for me kicking ass.

So now I turn the question over to you about your favorite drama filled scenes of your work. Leave a comment down below and, until next time, take care.

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#reviveandrevise: The Favorite

For today’s prompt (well, Monday’s, I’m behind due to RL), we’re supposed to take one character from the novel that we’re working on to talk about being our favorite. This prompt made me stop and think to realize just how hard it is to come up with a favorite. I love Marian, my main character, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing her story. Ditto to the two main supporting characters – Will and Ikram – who are the start to her small band of misfits. However, if I’m true to myself and answering this prompt, then we have to go beyond just this novel.

I say that because the one character that will always be my favorite is one that is never just in one of my novels. That type of character comes from the supporting cast, sometimes very close to the main character, in the case of Will in Lady of Arrows, but it comes forth in Mark in Mystery of the Dark. That’s the best friend who acts as or is family to support the main character. They’re the balance to the main character because nobody can stand on their own. Well, they probably can but they’re probably also looked at as a Mary or Gary Stu. We do not allow those in our novels or in our friends’ novels. Friends don’t let friends have Mary/Gary Stus.

So my favorite is always going to be the best friend to the main character, no matter what novel I’m writing. If you ask me where this came from, I blame the fact that I have amazing friends who are my own found family and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. Even the ones that make up my small writing group that I have never met in real life. We can’t be who we are as people without our friends and family, so why should our characters be that way? Spoiler – they shouldn’t be.

Book Friday #9: 4 Books in 5 Days

Over on YouTube, I do a series called Book Friday. I talk / rant about a bookish subject for a bit and throw up the video. This is about how I read four books in five days and my take aways. Also a bit on how you can do the same thing. Enjoy!

Books Mentioned with My Review:
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – http://tinyurl.com/yygh5zox
Fire and Flight (Elfquest #1) by Wendi and Richard Pini – No review, link to book – http://tinyurl.com/y6m93234
The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab – http://tinyurl.com/y25k5wyg
Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah – http://tinyurl.com/y32lbn6f

#reviveandrevise: Main Character on the Scene

Also known as “I have arrived!”

And speaking of arrivals, let’s get to where we first see my main characters in their respective projects. I will point out that Power is a two main character novel while Lady of Arrows is not. Also, this is going to be a short post because … well, because. I don’t have good reasons. It is what it is. So, let’s strut.

Power
Aithne: The first time we meet her, she’s a baby who’s just been saved by her uncle (spoiler: he dies due to magical wounds) as she was kidnapped by evil mage humans. She doesn’t do much but be adorable and sleep so is that really an introduction? The next time we see her, she’s not happy about being kept indoors training to be one of the good mages (hint: human mages are evil, elf mages are good and yes, this is a black and white fantasy novel. The hell with grays!) and it’s a bit more of an introduction because you see a lot more of her personality.

Jasunir: We meet him as he’s coming back from his training to be a knight. He’s happy to be home and he immediately goes and makes good on a promise to Aithne. He promised that she would become his page when he came back home and they would go on grand adventures. This has a huge undertone of be careful what you wish for, of course, and I love it.

I love these two main characters because they play off of each other well. That’s due to a spoiler that I’m not talking about and.. well, I like it when we have these grand friendships that are across gender. It makes the story richer too and a bit more like real life. Okay, next project.

Lady of Arrows
Marian: I’m toying around with this. The first time I wrote the novel, I had Marian at her post, watching carefully for a day ambush, and then going to speak to the King. In my revive version, I think I’m going to switch to a more active position with already being on assignment with Will and being captured. I know that’s a big trope of Robin Hood stories of being captured in the enemy city, but it works for bringing in another strong secondary character. Also, jail breaks are fun to write, so there’s that as well. So we’ll see.

Ta-da, you’ve been introduced to my main characters. Go forth and introduce your own – either in comment or blog post, and, until next time, take care.

#reviseandrevive: Introductions

Because we also need an introduction to the challenge too!

Hello again! It’s a new month and therefore we have a new challenge. No joke here for this today. At least, not from me. I also don’t really believe in doing April Fools jokes unless there’s already a well established rapport between two people and jokes. So, nothing joking here today. Today, I’m introducing my revise project and my revive project. Mine are broken into two because, honestly, I need two.

So, the revise project is Power. It doesn’t really need much of an intro, right? You know it’s fantasy / nearly epic fantasy and YA and so on. I’m working on editing the rest of it this month and actually writing this month as well. We’ll see how it goes.

Next up is my revive project, which is Lady of Arrows. I shelved this earlier because I was having issues with it. The conflict between Marian and Daniel weren’t working well. I didn’t feel there was enough tension and I think I’m going to have to rethink a bit of the plot. However, this is going to be an easy fix. I know that I can make it work and make it sing and all will be well in the world. Also, I need to get on it now because I would like to pitch it for Pitch Wars come August. So we’ll see.

So, those are my two projects for this challenge. I’m not sure if I’m going to do the Friday prompts or have a Friday post at all or it’s going to be linking to the Book Friday posts. I’m just not sure at the moment, but we’ll see what happens. See you Wednesday!

#editnfriends: The End(?)

The man’s right and all.

So, it is the end of March. I am not sad to see it go as March is never a good month for me. I tried to make it better and did this challenge – while I’m grateful for the challenge, I kind of ended up flat on my face – but… it was good. Kind of. March is never going to be the be all end all happy month. Ever. Eh. I really need to work on changing that, so we’ll try. In the future. Not sure which future, but the vague future sense of future-ing.

If you haven’t figured out by now that I’m rambling in order to not get to the point, you haven’t been here long.

Anyways, 8 chapters of Power are editing. They continue with me into the next month where I try to get more done. Also, one of these days, I’m going to not mix up chapter numbering so I don’t have a freak out at a missing chapter. But it was not this month. Or this day. And now I want to watch LotR. But, back to the point, the editing of Power is moving on with me. To snail edit and I’ll give updates as I go along, but I’m also going to introduce what I’m doing next month along with the amazing KA. That challenge is the #reviseandrevive where we’re going to try and get more novels done that we’ve put to the side.

KA is working on making her novel that she edited last month all shiny. I am not doing that, for the obvious reasons, but my revise project will be Power. My revive will be Lady of Arrows, which got put to the side for various reasons (magic system mainly), and I’m willing to take it back up now. I still haven’t seen anybody do the style of the Robin Hood story the way I want to, so this is it. Also, I would love to have Lady of Arrows ready in time for Pitch Wars, so wish me luck. A whole lot of it.

Oh, also, there was reading in March but I’ll have a video up on the YouTube channel about that soon. I’ll try and remember to make a post about it over here, since it is still words and books. Can’t have the words without reading the books. Until next time, take care.

#editnfriends: Positive Mind = Positive Energy

Or bouncing Joy. Either way, positive!

Today, we’re talking about a different take away from the editing experience. It’s how a different mind set can change entirely how you tackle your editing. I know this might seem hokey, but give me a moment to explain. Trust me when I say that it’ll make sense in a moment.

So, with the writing community, there’s a mind set that editing is a necessary evil. That’s true. It is the one thing that all authors, published and unpublished, have to do. Even the big names have to edit their books. However, there’s a way to make it harder without even realizing it or picking up that red pen. It’s your mind set when you sit down to edit. If you’re coming to it with a “omg why?!” type mindset, where all things are horrible and you hate it, then you’re not going to have the greatest experience. You’re going to hate the idea of editing even more.

However, if you sit down with a positive mindset, then it’s going to go a lot better. You might want to come back to editing. I’m not going to say that you’re going to enjoy it – I did the tips and tricks I’m going to list in a moment – and I don’t enjoy editing. It’s a lot less stressful, which is always a bonus, so let’s get down to those suggestions. Also, this isn’t just for editing. I’d bet that a lot of these could also be helpful tackling the dreaded blank page and other horrible things that we need to tackle as authors/writers.

1. Dance it out – no, I’m serious. Put on some good music, dance out your frustrations, sit down and edit a page. Repeat as needed. Slow dancing, fast dancing, horrible dancing – any and all dancing is allowed – but you need to get up and move. Even head banging as long as you are standing. I’ve had a lot of help standing up and dancing / headbanging along to Enter Sandman.
2. Switch to something else – yes, I know, I suggest this a lot but only because it works. It’s also why just doing editing for a month was not a good idea for me, but we’re doing positive shit this post. So, yeah, switch to something else. Or go read a book. Or take a walk. Hug your furry companion. Or your human companion. Go hug a random stranger – well, get permission first so you don’t get a broken nose – but you get the idea. Go do something else and come back with positive vibes.
3. Try smiling while you are sitting down editing. No, I’m not joking. Actually smile while you’re trying to get a chapter edited. The small act of smiling has physiological effects on the brain (there’s more out there, go Google search) and will put you magically in a better mood. Better mood = better editing = better novel = possible publishing of the book. It’s all connected.
4. Make it comfortable. Not going to fall asleep comfortable, but comfortable enough that you’ll relax. Also, if you find that you cannot edit where it’s relaxing, then do some stretching exercises. Roll the shoulders a few times, sit up straight, don’t forget the water, and set a timer so you get up and walk or dance around a bit (aka #1).

So those are my times and how it helped me to keep my mind positive throughout the editing process. What did you do in order to keep positive? Do you think you’ll try any of the tips? Leave me a comment below and, until next time, stay happy.