Can I Get a Reboot?

I'm going back to the drawing board. Well, writing board. I'm starting fresh.

I mean this not only in regards of climbing out the the gutter, but also referencing an old story. "Some Like It Flame Broiled" is still in the works - I added a small bit and polished some parts that were really bugging me and Ronoxym - but I've also started prep work for NaNoWriMo.

Ron and Cyhyr popped in on Sunday with their baby girl. Sadly, I was in the middle of running a D&D game still, so we didn't really socialize with them for the fifteen-or-so minutes that they visited. Feeling guilty, I sent them both messages once we were done. Cyhyr and I started chatting and it shifted into writing stuff. We discussed that we both wanted to give NaNo another try this year, and we debated what we wanted to write about. As per Cyhyr's suggestion, I'm shaking the dust off of "The Race for Destiny," and boy does it ever need some shaking!

I understand that it was my first NaNo attempt, and one of the key "rules" is "No Editing"; you just write and post and polish later. My problem is that I PUBLICLY posted, not just shared to the NaNo word-count-bots. This story is so raw and rough, it's a joke. There are typos all over the place, I apparently couldn't stand the thought of combining "in" and "to" to form "into" even though every time I use "in to" I really meant "into." And the characters, even though I had been developing them for YEARS on end, seemed so flat. Their emotions were like teenagers still getting use to their hormones. They're hot. They're cold. They fly off the handle about nothing at all. They're overly trusting with no real bases on why. It's a mess.

So, I'm going back to the drawing board.

I'm using September and October as prep time, starting with really TRULY figuring out my characters. I have the amazing Character Questionnaire up again; the one I used to create Jolene. We'll see what shakes loose about these guys in the process. I already know that I knew what I wanted Natalie to BECOME, but I don't really know much about how she is when she starts the story.

Then there's the over-all plot. It's a hodge-podge of three different main "quests" from video games and anime; all three of which were my favorite entertainment in college. Wonder why I picked them, huh?

The overall story is to gather up jewel fragments in order to make the jewel whole again in order to stop an evil villain from conquering the country, and possibly the world. Add in that Connor is a "half-demon" - not really, but as far as the people in the Sister Isles are concerned; yes - who goes "feral" and only Natalie can calm him back down, and you have "InuYasha."

Connor's main backstory is that his village was burnt and slaughtered by raiders, all because the villain was looking for him, his sister, and his mother. Connor's main goal and drive in life is to seek revenge for the desolation of his home town, and his being orphaned; a normal life forever out of his reach. Then add that the entire layout of the world Connor and Natalie are running around in - as well as the secondary villain Jack of Blades - are literally based on a fictitious Albion, and you have "Fable."

Finally, there's all the "little elements" sprinkled throughout the story. Connor has blonde hair that falls in front of his pointed ears. He wears two blue hoop earrings in each ear. His outfit is white tights and a form-fitting long-sleeve shirt under a green tunic. His main weapons are a one-handed sword and bow. Basically, he's InuYasha/Fable's Hero running around in Link cosplay; minus the hat. Then there's the creation of the country via four sister goddesses - instead of three golden goddesses - and they left a powerful sword behind along with treasures that each symbolize a different power needed for leadership. Anyone could possess these treasures, and have their wish granted if they possess all of them. Last, but not least, the main villain is very obviously Ganondorf. So, yeah, equally heavy-handed on the Legend of Zelda references. Specifically, Twilight Princess art stylings.

There's also a large inconsistency in the way people obtain the treasures from the Sister Goddesses. I have that the Goddesses bless someone of their choosing, and the gem is sort of "fused" with them - like the Triforce in Legend of Zelda - but they can focus on it to have it materialize. For that, I think I was imagining the Heart Crystals from a season of Sailor Moon. Anyway, when the bearer dies, the gem disappears into the ether - presumably, it returns to the Divine Plane where the goddesses reside - until the Goddess that owns the gem blesses another with it. Problem is, Ganondorf is forcefully collecting the gems, and has been for a century. Which is why Natalie has a fragment of one, and they have to do an InuYasha-like search for the other pieces to make the gem whole again. How could Ganondorf forcefully be gathering gemstones that are divinely gifted by goddesses? Wouldn't the goddess just be like "NOPE. Mine now"? So, there must be some sort of loophole or clause that Ganondorf can manipulate to try to gather the gems.

My over-all point is that my first attempt at this story was completely unoriginal, not thought through, and rife with typos, poor grammar, and flat characters.

Here's hoping Take Two goes better. I'll be more intelligent about it, though. I'll wait to publish online until it's at least polished; or completed, whichever comes first.

Of course, while changing gears like this DOES mean that I'll eventually have something non-smutty to read at group, it also means I don't have anything TONIGHT to read, since I've been polishing up "Rensin's Conquest" as well as tweaking/continuing "Some Like It Flame Broiled."

With Shadow's encouragement, I ended up biting the bullet, and sending "Rensin's Conquest" over to Carson from writing group. It kept Carson about four or five passes to really make sure he caught everything, but I had a good set of comments when he was done. Mostly, he caught grammar or structure errors, as well as gave a few word change suggestions, and two or three content questions. I was a bit too vague on Jolene's garb descriptions, apparently. All-in-all, not too bad, and not much changed, so I'm guessing it was good? Carson also reassured me that it was less "smut" and more "nice story with a sex scene in the middle." We both agreed that in its current form, it's more "R-Rated" than "NC-17", but if I cut one little scene out where Jolene first introduces Rensin to.... we'll go with "pleasure".... I'm falling more into the "suggestive scenes" realm and could probably call it rated "PG-13" or "T for Teen" depending on your rating preference.

So, if I'm encouraged enough, I MIGHT attempt to finish reading "Rensin's Conquest" at group, but I think I'll probably just stick with "HEY! I'm prepping for NaNo, anyone want to help me figure things out before November starts?"

The final piece of writing work I did this week was actually beta-read for someone. I believe I mentioned that writing group has a semi-new gentleman about my age, maybe a touch older. We're kind of two peas in that group. We both love sci-fi, modern fantasy, and traditional/high fantasy genres. We're gamers as well. So, his was really the feedback I was looking for whenever I presented something from "Glitches," although figuring out if it's still entertaining to people that normally don't read comics was a nice bonus to reading at group.

Anyway, he sent me his prologue-turned-first-chapter to his fantasy story. Sadly, it kept me over a week to get to it, but I finally did this week. There was a good skeleton there that I wanted to know more about, but that was the bittersweet problem: I wanted to know more! Nearly every sentence I wrote something to the extent of: "expand this" or "tell me more" or "show; don't tell" or "describe this for me..." You get the gist. His story definitely needs MORE added to it, but the skeleton is there. He said that Carson sent him some notes too, so I guess Carson's been a bit of a busy Beta-reader lately. I feel like he's betaed for other people at group too. His office hours must have as much downtime as mine. Either way, the guy who wrote the fantasy story doesn't think he'd be able to polish Chapter 1 in time for group tonight, but I hope he'll have something else to present anyway.

As for my reading challenge, I'm SO CLOSE to being done with "Ready Player One." I have like 100 pages to go, if that. I'll most likely have it done before September, but I just didn't quite finish it for this post. I'm in the final act, though, so there's that. Can I just add real quick that I love that Ernest Cline actually put IN act breaks? There was the prologue, and then "Level One" for the first act, "Level Two" for the second, and obviously "Level Three" for the final act. LOVE THAT! Each "level" also has a quote from a book called "Anorak's Almanac"; basically, the protagonist's equivalence to the Bible.

The story is getting SOOOOOO good. You know it is when I go "I should be writing now" and instead I pick up the book again because I can't get the plot out of my head! I cannot wait to talk about this next week! Be prepared!

In the meantime, can I make a shout out to Ronoxym? Can I yell at him? Because after I posted last week's blog update he messaged me to tell me how much he loved "Ready Player One" and I'm like "YOU KNEW THIS AWESOME BOOK EXISTED AND YOU DIDN'T SUGGEST IT TO ME!?"

*Ahem* Now that I've gotten that out of my system....

My only real irk about this book is that Cline seems to keep forgetting the "calendar" for this story. The protagonist accomplishes something, comments about how he did so on a Thursday. Then comments on how a new friend of his did the same accomplishment every following day for the next four days: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. He then says that the Friday a week after he accomplished his goal was "the next day" after the friends completed the goal. But.... that means he totally jumped over Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Ripped me out of the story.

Then he comments about living in an apartment for five months, except we know he moved into the apartment sometime before he graduated in June, and a few paragraphs before the "five months" comment it was stated that it was December 31st. So.... how is it five months between the beginning of June and end of December? Ripped me out again.

He's done this "lost track of time" thing at least five times throughout the book. How did no one else notice this!? Did they just accept it as the narrator can't keep track of time?

Cline also repeats himself a bit much in the start of the book. I must have read how The OASIS is free about three or four times within the first handful of chapters. The reader gets it. It's currently free so any shmuck - including the protagonist - can use it, but billions will be left out in the cold if there were ever a monthly charge put on it. Why Cline (or the narrator; however you want to look at it) felt the need to repeat this so much is beyond me. I couldn't tell if he lost track of what he already said, or if he wasn't sure the readers were quick enough to get the point.

Aside from those "pulled me out of the story" moments, I'm in love with this book. Like I said, be prepared for a discussion next week! In the meantime, I'm back to reworking "The Race for Destiny" - including that god-awful title - possibly polishing and working more on "Some Like It Flame Broiled," and most definitely finishing off "Ready Player One."

I Think I'll Set Up Shop Here In The Gutter

I read my "smut" at writer's group last week....

To be fair, I did spend the last two hours of work leading into the group frantically writing an opening to the story in an attempt to drop the story down to a bit more of a PG-13 rating. I was able to get to about three or four pages into the story before it starts getting "naughty," so I was able to read that much at least.

Nearly had a heart attack in doing so, though. I just sat in the meeting mentally riffling through all of my writing to think of SOMETHING else that I could read. No dice. At least, not unless I decided to bring up something that I wrote YEARS ago just for S&Gs. Then it hit about 7:30. We had a half-hour to still fill. Everyone else already read. We were just kind of staring at each other trying to figure out what else to talk about. That's when I sort of bashfully went "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote about 10,000+ words since last session. I just don't know if anyone would want to hear what I wrote.... it's.... kind of.... MATURE." I then proceeded to explain the rabbit hole I dove head first into.

They all chuckled that we were all adults, and that it would be fine. Granted, there was a gentleman - fairly new, this was his third or fourth meeting - that seemed to be around my age; probably older, though. Then there were two women that may have only been about ten years older. The rest of the group, though, were definitely closer to my mom's age, and older. Being the clear youngest in the group, it still felt awkward to read THIS kind of story for them to critique. What happens if the sex scenes need tweaking? What if they don't? I don't know which would be more awkward, them being like "Well, I think that it would seem more realistic if he...." or if I got a resounding "WOW! Well done." Because that would mean that I now know where there minds were....

It's bad enough that I know family members that enjoyed "Fifty Shades of Grey," I don't know if I could handle actually knowing people who enjoyed my smuttiness.

Anyway, I was later informed that just about as soon as I spoke up with "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote..." that my face just FLOODED with a blush. I was like a human strawberry for the last half-hour of the meeting. And that blush stayed for at least an hour! I'm not cut out for this!!!!

I read the intro to the story, and stopped before anything "naughty" actually happened. Both parties were still clothed - although Jolene was quickly remedying that - and it was just a bunch of flirting leading up to that point. Nothing terribly too bad. I probably would have read it proudly if I didn't know what was going to start happening in the next sentence.

When I stopped, the room kind of filled with a whining "awwwww," so... I guess that means I caught their attention? I don't know if that's because I was doing good, or if they wanted to hear the sex portions I wrote. The only other comment was from one of the newer regular members commenting about my sort of voice change. Normally, I'm about 80% dialogue and only 20% action/scene setting. To try to let the reader know the situation leading into the sex scene, I did a quick recap of the roleplay that inspired me. It was a LOT of background info. She noted that: "You normally do mostly dialogue, and this time we barely had any."

Well, she would have had a lot of dialogue if I had continued, but I wanted to just quickly set up the scene, and including all the dialogue leading up to it didn't seem practical. Still, the way that she said it, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing, a critique, or just an observation.

Then I got an email from one of the group members asking if I cared enough about improving the story to want a beta-reader for it. We could do a story exchange: my smut for his super dark murder scene that he fears will make him look like a twisted psycho. I've written fairly dark and grisly murder scenes - I asked a bunch of people my senior year of high school if they knew what happens to human eyeballs when you burn to death - so I could easily read his bit. STILL not sure about sending him mine, though. Again, I don't know if it would be more awkward if he gave me advice on how to improve the sex scenes, or if he told me it was amazing.

Still, on the off chance that I decide to send it his way, I wanted to polish it first. Slowly but surely, I went back over the story about a dozen times the past week trying to get it to a point where I'm confident that I can't improve it on my own. I still have a couple of lines that don't seem quite right, but it's the best I have for right now. Rensin's a bit harder to get the voice right than I gave him credit for. I just can't give him that spark of bashful innocence like his player managed. So, super added props to his player for being such a great writer. I even asked Mouse to pass along my praise.

She offered to get the two of us in touch - me and Rensin's player - but I just feel that would be super weird considering the circumstances. I'd rather just know the character and not the player at this point....

Despite my better judgement, I DID share the Jolene/Rensin story - titled "Rensin's Conquest" - as well as the Devon/Trish work-in-progress story "Some Like It Flame Broiled." I don't know why, but I just NEEDED to share it with someone, and Shadow happened to be online while I was still trying to calm my blush from writing group. I freaked out to him; basically a "WHAT DID I JUST DO!?"

He chuckled, and told me that he was fairly certain it was good since I'm such a good writer. This of course lead me to tease that he's like my mom: barely actually reads my stuff, but still has unwavering faith that I'm an amazing author. More talking back and forth along those lines, and eventually I just sort of caved and sent him "Some Like It Flame Broiled" with the understanding that I hadn't finished the story yet, let alone went back to polish it.

I dunno. I guess the fact that he's a close friend makes it somehow less awkward for him to read the dirty bits? No real critique one way or the other from him, aside from "<3 Trish" and "You should finish it." Positive reviews, I guess.

Well, last night I finally finished my polishing of "Rensin's Conquest" and sent that over to him too. He's part of the online D&D group with Rensin and Jolene, and so he'd probably be one of the best suited to have an outside perspective on whether or not I have everyone in-character. We'll see if he reads it and/or what his thoughts on the matter will be. I'm predicting it will be raging hatred for Jolene for playing with innocent Rensin's heart, but at least evoking emotion means I did something right, correct?

I also tried to switch gears by talking to Shadow about the MASSIVE love triangles - knots; web? - that I'm trying to set up in "Glitches" between multiple different characters; mainly Chayse, Lia, Willow, Devon, Nyssa, Ripley, and Lincoln. It sort of wobbles between Chayse being the center of a triangle, to Willow being the center, to Devon being the center, to Lia being the center.... I feel like there needs to be more romances in my story that isn't interwoven with those seven characters, but right now the only other option I have is Colette and Joseph.

Anyway, while talking to Shadow about all of this - just to have SOMETHING to talk about that isn't sex-related - I started to get a real passion for "Glitches" again. I think I'm going to finish off "Some Like It Flame Broiled" just so that I don't have ANOTHER work-in-progress hanging around, and then try attacking "Glitches" some more. I need to get an outline figured out. A road map so I know where I'm going with everything.

I think the easiest way is to come up with the individual story arcs for each character and then find a way to weave them together. That was SUPPOSED to be what I wanted to tackle this month while also doing my MasterClass on screenwriting, but somehow I ended up down the dirty-birdy rabbit hole instead. People keep reassuring me that it's perfectly fine; "romance novels" are a big seller. Still.... what a debut into the writing world.

Speaking of my MasterClass, my mother's birthday present to me this year was to sign me up for the Aaron Sorkin class on screenwriting. Isn't she just awesome!?

While Sorkin is entertaining, he also is super awkward to listen to. He's kind of like this:

He even more-or-less said this in a
disclaimer in the intro lesson.

He meanders when he talks, and tends to share examples of what he's trying to teach as a means to prove his point. However, the examples are so specific it's hard to still grasp what he's trying to say. I'm still going through the "pre-writing" portion of the class, and so perhaps it seems only vaguely helpful because I'm not actually trying to do things such as research quite yet. I'll keep you posted on how the class goes once he gets into the actual "this is how you write a script" portion.

To finish up, a quick touch-base on my reading progress:

OH. EM. GEE! "Ready Player One" is quickly jumping up the ranks to one of my favorite books! I'm so in love. All the geekiness. All the 80s pop culture. The actual suspense keeping me on edge. The main character's voice, how he tells the story, is witty and I can't stop promoting this book to everyone I see. Almost literally. I had a customer in the store the other day that basically had the 80s Saturday Morning Cartoon line-up tattooed around his left leg, and so naturally I talked him up about "Ready Player One."

I have no clue if I can finagle things around on the reading challenge check-list so this book still fits, but at this point I don't care. I may not fit all 12 challenge points in before 2017, but I'll definitely have at least 12 books read!

Alright, now off to try to finish "Some Like It Flame Broiled" so I can FINALLY get out of this gutter and start working on something I can read without looking like I replaced my head with a giant tomato.