progress

Writing Catchup: 15th May 2012

JamesLeave a comment

For your pleasure today I have brought together a collection of blog posts and articles that cover everything fantasy writing related.

I will also share with you a brief update on my own writing progress. I wrote a really nice scene over the past few days which takes place in a subterranean living stronghold that is home to one of my world’s non-human species. Without giving anything away, one of the central characters arrives there after a long time away and discovers that things have taken a disturbing turn for the worse in his absence.

Here is a very short snippet of dialogue from the scene that teases at what’s going on. This is first draft quality, so be kind 😉

‘Haven’t time?’ she said. ‘You have boundless time. Why come back to this world, the place of your making, when there is so much more out there? A tree grows from its roots; it does not grow back down to them again.’

Hope you enjoy the articles below!

Writing the Dream: 9th February 2012

JamesLeave a comment

It’s that time again.

Currently, I am part of the Spring WIPers thread on the SFF World forums. This thread involves deciding on a target amount of words to write for the Feb/March period and then plotting your progress on a graph. My target is a huge 25,000 words. I arrived at this number by seeing that I could write 500 words each evening after work (sometimes more) and I multiplied this by the number of days left over the 2 months. I’m currently sitting at roughly 5500 words, which is quite something considering that for the past few years, I have flitted between projects madly, unable to get past the first chapter of anything I tried writing. I think the main problem was that I couldn’t get a decent story into my head. Not an idea, a story. I touched on this a few posts back (linked below) but it’s a good thing to understand.

These are examples of my previous ideas:

  • I know what would be really cool! Medieval-style fantasy superheros!
  • Hmm… what if I wrote about a vigilante crime fighting fantasy assassin with a stick like Gambit?
  • Yes, that’s it! James Bond crossed with Sherlock Holmes. No, that wouldn’t work, he’s got no weaknesses. I know, the guy has depression but is still amazing and brilliant in every way.

Now, this is an example of one of my previous stories:

  • There’s this kingdom that gets attacked by a dragon that is sent by an evil lich. There’s also a race of elf-eagle hybrids that work for the lich and they are breeding an army in the abandoned lands of the elves. A hero has to rally the forces of good and reawaken the elven homeland’s defences to defeat the eagle-men. First in a trilogy. (This was the first thing I ever tried to write. I reached 60,000 words.)

See the difference? I won’t bore you with more, especially since I had to re-write this after the window crashed on me!

Tune in again tomorrow for something different 🙂

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