A Minor Focus on Scripts and Other Creativity

Before I get in to the rest of my week, I'd just like to point out an amusing little tidbit about DarkAngel1326 's first installment in her "Stories from the Winds of Hillwood" saga. In my review I playfully accused her of stealing the plot to my two-part story "I Caught You A Star". Well, after my blog post last week, she contacted me to let me know that she had no clue what ChibiSunnie and I were talking about when we commented on the story similarities. It turns out that DA had never read my story! It was just a major coincidence that I wrote a very similar one for V-day two years ago! She has since read the story....
So fret not, Dear Readers, DA thought up her plot all by her lonesome. Just another case of "Great Minds Think Alike".




Also, if you haven't read her story yet, here's the link again: "Stories from the Winds of Hillwood"

I'm not going to lie, I both didn't really do much creatively speaking and did do a lot creatively speaking.

At the beginning of last week a coworker signed up to join the X-Men forum RPG that Hubby runs. He brought his wife and a friend of theirs that they used to play with on a different X-Men RP. So now we have three new players and it's gotten me and Hubby excited about the game. Creativity is starting to flow again for this universe. I can't wait to officially start back up, in the meantime it was fun to re-read what already happened as well as read what the new players have to say - as well as see the cool backstories they each came up with. The coworker and his friend have their characters both speaking with British dialects, so it will be interesting to try to understand the slang they use. Worse comes to worse I guess I could always ask Ali Luke to translate for me.




On Wednesday I had this strong desire to waste the large majority of my morning getting a full plot bunny farm out of my head. Plot bunnies for more stories!? Sadly, no. They were different concepts for a multitude of fan-made music videos using footage from Hey Arnold. Much like my Plot Bunny posts I have here, I wanted one for my FMV ideas. It didn't seem appropriate to include here, so I posted it up on DeviantArt.

The rest of the week was wasted in many hours of Kirby's Epic Yarn. I didn't even do my normal 7hrs straight on Facebook.

However, aside from a small bit that I need to ask DA, Chibi, and possibly even AngelBlood666 for some advice on, I'm more-or-less all set to FINALLY get to working on my next chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be. I have four days until the end of the month. Even though I've written full stories in 24hr periods, I really don't want to end up doing the same thing for a chapter for this story. People have dedicated too much time and emotion for me to try to rush it. That being said, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep up my New Year Resolution to update monthly. However, considering I used to take anywhere between three and ten months to update, posting a new chapter every OTHER month is still an improvement. We'll see how it goes. I swear I'm not intentionally slacking on this.

Another reason why I might alter my resolution to every other month is that next month starts bi-weekly writing challenges with the Hey Arnold group. These aren't competitions; instead they are like the daily challenges I did back in July. I'm not entirely sure if I'll be participating in all of them, but I'm going to at least try.

The following month is then April! For those who have been following my blog for a little while, you already know that since two years ago April is Script Frenzy Month! It's basically the same thing as NaNo, but it's writing a 100pg script in 30 days. It's even run by the same organization: The Office of Letters and Light. At least, it USED to be run by the same group. Sadly, Script Frenzy didn't get nearly the same reception as the other writing programs that OLL hosts and so they regrettably had to drop the program. What really saddens me is that I didn't have money to purchase any merchandise for the 2012 Script Frenzy and now it's not available for me to ever get....




However, Script Frenzy shall live on in my heart and April will still remain the month where I get crazy and try to write a full script in 30 days. Since it isn't an "official" Script Frenzy I will cheat a little bit this year. Instead of writing a script from scratch I'm going to use the opportunity to work with Chibi to finish up the fanscript for Hey Arnold that we started during our first Script Frenzy.

If you want to have Script Frenzy live on in your hearts as well you could use this golden opportunity to build up your portfolio! Maybe you could even enter one of these contests that Chibi found this week!

The clever girl managed to find a few contests that networks are hosting in order to bring in new talent to their writing staffs! How awesome is that!? The deadline for the Nickelodeon one is this Friday, so it's probably not a possibility for anyone, but it's an annual contest so you might as well get started for next year, right?

Anyway, here's the list. It's also in my Handy Links page - which was updated with a few other websites as well, thanks to DA!
Nickelodeon Writing Program
Disney/ABC Television Writing Program
NBC Early Career Program: Writers On The Verge
WB Writers' Workshop

If you like the idea of writing for a production team and need a bit more help on the actual formatting and the like, you can check out the free-to-download writing software Celtx. I use it for every Script Frenzy and I LOVE the program. There are so many fun toys you can try out! I also have some information on that Handy Links page in the same category as the writing programs listing.

Beta Reading and World Building

If you didn't see my post this past Wednesday, go ahead and scroll down to read it. As you scroll you can check out a few links in the sidebar. First up is the "Followers" section. If you have any form of Google account you can click on the handy button there and become a follower of my blog! Or you can continue to scroll down to my post and keep an eye out for that "Subscribe to" section. There you can add me to your RSS feed, or drop in your email address for my posts to go directly to your inbox - no spam included.

If none of those options are your cup of tea you can keep scrolling down, read that blog post, and then hop on over to twitter to follow me. I made it super simple: @LycoRogue. Still don't like your options? How about friending me on Facebook? Lyco Rogue. I usually only go on that account to announce blog updates, so even if you place me as a close friend you'll only get an occasional notification.

There, wasn't that easy? And now you don't have to worry about ever missing another update.
YAY!

Anyway, getting back on track. Since my last post I FINALLY got around to reading both ChibiSunnie's Valentine's day entry "My Oh So Special Someone" and DarkAngel1326's two stories that she sent me back in like January!

Chibi's story was ADORABLE and I'm thinking it's yet again a strong competitor. Everyone is in character, the story is sweet, and it's a pairing not too many people write about. So make sure to check it out and let her know what you think. Here's the link again:

"My Oh So Special Someone"

DA sent me a revised version of her Soldier Story and I sent back a few more notes. I'm not sure where she is on polishing the story up, but I feel like we'll all be able to read the story soon.

I've actually been debating sending the story to my mom. It's that Nicholas Sparks-esque story that she LOOOOOOVES. However, it's a bit of a tear jerker - which, let's face it, she also loves, but she'll still yell at me for - plus it might remind her of my dad a touch too much.

For those of you who don't know, my father lost his battle with cancer when I was 13. It's still weird to know that I've had a single parent longer than both. Anyway, the last family trip we all took a little more than a month before he passed was to Disney World. In DA's story a young boy's last trip with his father before the man shipped off to Vietnam was to Disneyland. Also, the name of the soldier just so happens to be my father's name. All the more reason why this story is extra powerful to me and all the more reason I both want my mom to read it, and fear the backlash of her weeping over it.

DA's other story that was waiting patiently in my inbox was a drabble she wrote about her Of Blood and Honor main character 33. A simple little tale about 33's reaction to his missions to burn down whole villages. I can't wait to see more progress on the character and world building of this tale - which seems to be growing in to a full book series at this rate!

Sidenote about DA... she snuck in a Valentine's Day story as well. She didn't make it in time for the contest, but she did manage to post the first chapter last night. I really enjoy it and recommend the read for some fluffy goodness.

"Stories from the Winds of Hillwood"

When I finished my extensive beta reading I also made sure to spend some face time with Omnibladestrike. Haven't heard THAT name in a while, right!? Well, the poor guy has been in a massive writing funk, one that made him want to scrap his story and start from scratch YET AGAIN, as well as made him seriously wonder if he even had any writing talent.

I helped him out the best I could, but deciding if writing is really what you want to do in life is purely a soul-searching experience. No one can tell you if you can or can't. Only you can figure that out. I feel like I should write a full blog post dedicated to that, but I'll wait for a week where I don't have so many updates to talk about. That is, of course, unless you, Dear Readers, would greatly appreciate said post ASAP. If you guys are questioning yourself and need an inspirational/insightful post about the subject feel free to let me know and I'll get cracking on that.

In the meantime, check out my Handy Links For Fellow Aspiring Writers page. I just updated it on Friday, complete with a whole new category for fantastic blogs about writing that I've found.

Anyway, back to Omni. Poor guy has been dying to talk to me about his story for a while now, but every time he visited he either spent the whole time playing Magic: The Gathering with Hubby, or I had my own writing to work on, or he was helping us move. I'm not entirely sure why he didn't just call me or visit with the sole purpose to talk to me about his story, but regardless the poor kid waited months before we finally had our little heart-to-heart this week.

There still needs to be a bit more tweaking in my opinion. Things still don't exactly mesh with each other, but I think he's getting a much better handle on what he wants to do with his story. I think his biggest roadblock is that he's been working on this tale since like middle school and he wants to hold on to a lot of that original story - even the parts that don't quite work anymore. It's a noble effort, but his creativity and abilities have matured so much since then. He knows what works and what doesn't. I feel like he should just drop what doesn't work instead of constantly trying to rework it until it does work. I had to do that with Amara and a lot of the background I did with her way back in 2004. It's hard to do, but the pruning process really does need to be done. Once he manages to do that, I think he too has a nice book series on his hands.

Speaking of Amara, after discussing fantasy world building with both DA and Omni - as well as trying to help DA out with creating a village name - I became reinspired to work on world building Gyateara. So I broke out my 3-ring binder filled with different D&D campaigns as well as notes on the world I was building for Amara. I had two countries named: Kerizmar - the country that most of Amara's adventures would take place - and Gancrock - the country where Amara was born. The majority of my world building thus far was in Kerizmar. To help DA figure out the best way for her to come up with names for her villages and such, I composited a listing of all the cities I came up with and how I came up with the names. I called it "The World of Gyateara and how it was named.... OOOOOOR.... a lesson in how bad I am at naming things".

A large chunk of the city names I couldn't remember how I came up with them, and my notes on how I came up with the names was missing from my binder. However, there was still a vast majority where my name-creation notes were still available. Most of the names were simply me trying to describe the location of the place and then tweaking the name so it didn't sound like that was what I was doing.

For example, here is an exact note that I had on a Gnome village:
Gnome -> David the Gnome -> Forests -> Animals -> Forest Thief -> Forthee -> Forthy

It's mostly just a train-of-thought freewrite. In the end I liked the description of that particular location of gnomes being the "corrupted gnomes" territory. I then took elements of the words "Forest" and "Thief" and merged them in to "Forthee". I then worked the word in my mouth a little until I spat out "Forthy". Thus the village name was born.

As I worked on my extensive list of locations, and compared notes with the map that I created - in an attempt to remind myself how I came up with some of the names - Hubby saw my little pet project. We got to talking about all the work I had put in to Kerizmar back in 2008/2009. He was shocked at the number of locations I had and the vast population I was trying to distribute between all the communities. I had made Kerizmar a bit bigger than Pennsylvania but was still trying to squeeze in roughly 30 cities and a population of  8-million. Since there's over 8-million people in New York City alone, I thought these numbers were about right for a medieval country about the size of PA. Hubby thinks otherwise.

This is a perfect example of what I was saying about Omni's need to let some things that don't work go. Even though I put extensive hours in to researching general D&D population break-down, the rough population of medieval Britain, and made sure to measure out the distances between towns to make sure they weren't too close or too far from each other.... well, Hubby still thinks it was a bit overboard. I was so afraid of UNDER populating my country that I went a bit too far in the opposite direction. So now I must also practice pruning. Drop some of the villages with crappy names - such as Forthy - shift some other towns in to a different country, rework the populous, and rename all of my natural landmarks. Since I was originally building Kerizmar as a D&D campaign setting I had all of the major mountains, deserts, lakes, seas, and rivers named after D&D deities. Now that I'm trying to switch Kerizmar and the whole of Gyateara in to my own original world I need to drop any and all references to the D&D-specific deities.

It's a long trial for sure, but Hubby should be helping me out this time. In the meantime, I can still use my limited world building knowledge to help DA name locations, and use my trial of pruning to help encourage Omni to do the same.

Happy Early Valentine's Day!

What's this? A special Wednesday post?

Yeeeeaaaaaaah..... u_u I was still really tired from the long nights this Friday and Saturday and so I forgot to mention some key things Sunday. I originally thought about just updating/editing this week's post, but then I feared those of you that read my post when I updated on Sunday wouldn't know that I edited it, and therefore would miss what I wanted to say. Also, the more I worked on this "quick" update I realized it was a fully realized blog post in and of itself.

Well, anyway, I want to start off this mid-week update by letting my beloved readers know that I'm already in the process of outlining the next chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be. I've had the concept in my head for about two months now, so I'm excited to get to work. The only thing is that I was incredibly excited about my last chapter too when I started out, and we all saw how that turned out.

The way I set up the format of my story, the best way for me to get a chapter out is if the song easily and clearly formed a linear story in my head. The first chapter was birthed from me completely picturing a Hey Arnold music video to the song "Life After You" by Daughtry. Since I could never create the video that was in my head, I went for the next best thing; a story inspired by it.

The chapters that have all come easily to me were all the same way. I heard the song and I envisioned a complete music video. All I had to do then was describe what I saw in my mind.

Then there was the latest chapter. All I had was a visualization of the first stanza and the knowledge that the whole song would fit with what was happening in my story. That was probably why it was such rough going writing the chapter; I just couldn't properly picture it.

However, I do have a very clear mental picture of the chapter I'm currently working on. In fact, not only have I had a clear picture of my current chapter in my head more-or-less since I heard the parent song it's based off of, but I've also wished someone would do a cover of the song as a duet. Yes, ever since I heard this song and knew it would be a chapter in my story I've heard it as a duet between Arnold and Helga.

What song is it? Yeah, right! Like I'm leaking that! But it would make a beautifully painful duet in my opinion  When I finish the chapter and post it you can decide for yourself if I was right.

So there's the story progress update that I wanted to let you know. But there are two major updates with regards to building up my readership, professionalism, and over-all platform.

Although it doesn't seem to be there any longer for whatever reason, Chibi informed me that exactly a week ago a member of the Hey Arnold! Save The Jungle Movie group posted about my story What Is Truly Meant To Be! She asked the group what fanfics they are all reading, and then she stated that she was reading "What is Truly Meant to Be by LycoRogue and I highly recommend it"!!! *Squeal* I was so excited!

Chibi and DarkAngel1326 have both been bugging me about how I need to promote myself more in the Hey Arnold fandom groups. Everybody else posts their fanfics and chapter updates and that's why their readerships are so much higher than mine. I shouldn't feel ashamed about promoting myself.

Yet, I do. It took a lot for me to even promote this blog on my two Facebook accounts, my DeviantArt account, and on Twitter. Every now and again when I comment on a blog or on the Writer's Huddle forum I'll include a promo for this blog - mostly when it auto-links to the blog when a comment is made. However, as a whole I don't really promote the blog, or my writing. It's only been through continued encouragement from Chibi, DA, and my uncle that I started posting links to my writing on my main FB account. It's not that I'm ashamed of my work - I'm not; I'm very proud of it. It's more that it seems needy and shameless to self-promote.

I would go to the HA groups and see other people constantly going "I'm reading such-and-such fanfic and it's fantastic! You should all read it" or go to DeviantArt and see a new fanart group set up specifically for a fanfic and I wanted to have my stuff be good enough that I didn't need to promote it. My readers would do it for me.

NOT THAT I'M TRYING TO MAKE YOU FEEL FORCED IN TO PASSING ON MY WORK! IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING IF YOU FEEL OBLIGATED TO DO SO!

Anyway, for someone I'm not friends with to actually and sincerely enjoy my work enough to pass it on and promote me..... It was such an ego boost. THIS was the main reason I was upset about not winning the Halloween contest. It wasn't so much because other people were able to write better than me or because I didn't get the prize. It was because my work wasn't being promoted by an impartial outside source.

Granted, as I started this whole thing off saying, the post isn't there any longer so there aren't any further promotions off of it. Plus, I don't know how many people actually started reading my story because of the link - I didn't see a huge spike in readership. However, the point is that at least one impartial person promoted me. Who knows how many more there are throughout the internet that I don't know about. To me, that's huge!

So, if you are one of my faithful readers passing my name and my works on, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.


AGAIN, NOT TRYING TO MAKE THE REST OF YOU FEEL OBLIGATED!

Anyway, now on to the other big milestone in my writing "career" - as it were.
This past Sunday - the tenth - I received my first review about my actual writing style; not the content of the story!

Yes, in the past I've had generic writing style reviews such as "this feels like I'm watching an episode instead of reading a fanfic" or "I could really feel the character's pain" or "Everyone is totally in character! It's fantastic!" as well as the even more generic, but still heartwarmingly awesome "You're such a great writer! Please write more!"

However, Sunday I received the following review for the first chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be:

dyingXdasies: "I adore your word choice. The way you place words in your sentences heightens the intensity of the moment. All in all a greatly written chapter."

That is the coolest review! Someone commented on my SENTENCE STRUCTURE!

WHAAAAAA!?

Personally I think that's quite an accomplishment. So thank you, DxD!

Speaking of reviews, I've also had quite the positive feedback on The Adventures of Brainy already! I posted on Sunday and already have four reviews! Heck, my first reviewer couldn't wait until she was done reading before she reviewed!

"I haven't even finished half of this but had to comment funniest thing ever."

Pretty much all the reviews are the same. Granted, this was supposed to be a Valentine's Day story, but I went so far from fluffy this year! I'm glad it turned out so hilarious. I'm always so concerned when it comes to writing humor. I feel like I suck at it, but everyone seems to enjoy my jokes....  GO ME!

I had 39 views the first day that I posted and I'm up to 55 total. Not fantastic numbers, but considering the number of views versus number of reviews, and then comparing to the same ratios for my other stories, I think this story has the greatest reception.

In contrast, I've had 46 views but no comments over on DeviantArt. So there goes my theory that more people now read their fanfiction over there...

Regardless of where you find my stuff, if you fave it, if you review, if you've read more than one - or more than once, or if you promote my work; if you read my stories at all I want to thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day

Two Stories? Amazing!

My ninetieth post already!? And boy is it a good one for you guys.

Once again I didn't intend on my "post will be delayed" update to be my ONLY weekly update. Life got MAD CRAZY.

Hubby and I found a new apartment and spent a week transporting everything via packing multiple cars. Our house is in chaos complete with mini-mazes made out of egg boxes we got from the grocery store. We also couldn't get internet in the new apartment until this past Tuesday. Throw in work, the winter storm that came through this weekend, and my sister-in-law's baby shower. My netbook is also pretty much shot, and so I'm only using my desktop once again - meaning no progress during my work breaks any more.

The few moments I was able to find to write I used for my stories. Which means you guys had two in about a week!

First up - as mentioned in my delay post - was my latest chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be. Another super big thank you to ChibiSunnie for helping me FINALLY get that chapter done! You're a godsend m'darling! Now to keep up the momentum to get the next chapter out before the end of the month! Whoo-boy, the next 18 days are gonna fly by quick, aren't they?

So, after I was finished with the latest chapter and the packing, and moving was more-or-less complete, it was time for me to get cracking on the Valentine's Day contest entry. I tried on multiple occasions this past week to work on both the delayed blog entry and my contest entry. Things didn't go according to plan.

But Friday I was determined. I had one day to work, but I promised myself I would write something for the contest. I started first thing in the morning, but I got stuck in multiple places. So I unpacked the bedroom while I thought. I washed dishes while I thought. I organized the bathroom while I thought. I watched videos to try to inspire me. And thus I wrote off and on for about 17 hrs.

Throughout the day I would send Chibi my story scene by scene to get her opinion. Although the darling woman was still struggling to finish up her own writing entry, she took multiple writing breaks to read my story and give me feedback. Meanwhile, I only gave her feedback on one part at the end of her story. I feel bad about the one-sided-ness of that day.

SORRY, CHIBI! SOOOOO SORRY! I HOPE YOUR STORY TURNED OUT WONDERFUL REGARDLESS!

Actually, I could let you guys know soon enough. She sent me the final draft. I just haven't had time to read anything - with still unpacking and whatnot. Speaking of which, I also have two things to beta-read for DarkAngel1326. First up was a revision to her soldier story, and second is a drabble about her Of Blood and Honor character 33.

I swear, ladies, I will get to your stories this week!

But getting back to my stories.
I've determined that not only do I suck at creating titles - I mean, my Valentine's day story is called The Adventures of Brainy - but I also suck at fight scenes. I had to break out the HeroScape to play out the fight scene for my Script Frenzy screenplay last April. I then struggled again for the fight scene I had in my Valentine's Day story. I'm just not very good. I just can't picture the fight choreography, and so it's hard for me to describe it. Things to focus on improving I guess.

I'm also a bit nervous about how the judges will "grade" my entry this time. I got originality points off last time simply because I purposely wrote the story as if it were an episode - as well as writing a ghost story even though it was specifically listed as a viable option in the rules. I'm still a little irked at both deductions. However, due to me purposely writing my story as a cheesy melodrama, which is where most cliches come from, I'm afraid of again losing originality points. I'm also fearful of losing points for not keeping the characters....in....character. Since the whole story is a dream sequence, much like the Married episode of Hey Arnold, the characters are supposed to act a little different than normal. In the case of Arnold it's REALLY different than normal.

Then again, part of me really doesn't care if my grade is lower than last time. It's a simple story clocking in at about 5,000 words - one of my shorter tales - and I'm proud of it. I guess that's all that matters, right?

Moving Delays and New Chapters

Due to crazy packing and movingness as well as the fact that we won't have interwebs at the new place until Tuesday, February 5th, this week's blog update will be delayed.

BUUUUUUT, thanks to ChibiSunnie I was able to finish my latest chapter - FINALLY. A full report on that will be in the blog update - whenever that happens. In the meantime you can actually read the chapter! YAY!

What is Truly Meant to be: A Hey Arnold Musical 

Chapter 8: Break Even