Tag: gabir

Changing the List

Laura Highcove

Last weekend I went to Otakon with my husband and two of our friends. One of these friends I will refer to as ‘The Cheerleader’ and they drove up with us. The Cheerleader has been beta reading for me since LotPC because …well they’re good at stories and good at encouragement. Anyway, we all ended up talking about LotDK for a good portion of the trip up. I had lined up questions to ask my Hubby and the Cheerleader and I got a lot of good answers.

Not only that, but I was able to just talk about my story and hear what other people thought about it, which is very valuable. I know how the story goes in my head, and it’s interesting to see if that’s translating properly, and if it’s not, where the disconnect is and why. And even, if sometimes the way someone else takes it is even better. Or if I get to be all superior in thinking that my ideas are better and I can’t wait until they get to read it. Mwahaha!

As such, once I got back I was able to finish writing up my List of Revisions for LotDK, which after a few passes turned into a chapter by chapter list. I also managed to make a schedule for how many chapters I need to get done per week in order to be done by November (for Nanowrimo). I start out with four chapters per week and eventually end up at two a week. Obviously because the later chapters are far messier and will need much more help.

I have already started, and so far things are going well. I do anticipate problems, but every bit I get done is still done, even if Wildrose and Gabir continue to give me problems. I feel like a lot more things are starting to come together though, and that’s good. And I’m still enjoying the story, which is also good.

Before the Shift

Laura Highcove

Didn’t quite make my goal of getting through Gabir’s turning point by Sunday, but I was pretty close. I had it done by Tuesday. All things considered, this first part of the story is starting to come together. However, this is the point at which the story really starts to fall apart. I have ideas of what I want to have happen, and some of them aren’t working, some of them feel forced, and others just aren’t good.

Part of what I want to get out of the alpha read is feedback and even suggestions for the story. At the same time, I feel rather icky with the idea of sending it out in this state. (Even to people I trust.) The Law of the Prince Charming’s story was solid all the way through before anyone but my husband saw it.

A few things happened since my last post. The Show Team is back from Nationals (they did very well) so I am currently enjoying my first full day off in two and a half weeks. However, two weeks ago Nickel, one of my cats, started having a health issue and while I don’t have a solid answer as to what’s wrong, the possibilities are rough. As such, I haven’t been in an entirely good mental state. I haven’t been able to go ‘head down’ on my story like I was planning once the Show Team was back. Nickel has an appointment with a specialist next week, and depending on the answers (or lack thereof) I’m not sure how things will be going forward.

I’ve been trying to get as much done as I can before the possible shift in my reality. But even on a good day it’s hard to slog through the story when nothing feels like it is coming together. Maybe I really do just need this feedback. While I was able to write the Law of the Prince Charming almost entirely off my own ideas, it’s a book two and I have even less skill with this than I have with ending a book. Maybe a little outside influence is exactly what I need.

Letting my Characters Go

Laura Highcove

I did a few smoothing passes on the Huntsman, each focusing on one of the main trio: Gabir, Tabitha, then Wildrose. I was able to push what I had written a little further with each pass.

Wildrose’s storyline is the one that needs the most work right now. I know where I need/want him to be at the end of this book, but he still has a large number of steps to get there. This is after I admitted to myself that the way I *wanted* him to get from here to there wasn’t going to work. I think the past two weeks I’ve repeated: “No, it doesn’t fit with my plan, but it’s what the character would do.” sooooooo many times.

Whenever I get stuck, like sit and stare at my computer screen for ten minutes without typing, stuck, it’s generally because I’m trying to force a character to do what I ‘need’ them to. (And I don’t always realize this right away.) When I release that expectation, they go off on their merry way, and while I have no idea if it will tie back into what I already have, it is much more natural and enjoyable.

I also made a list of the scenes that still need to be written. Not nearly as long as it was last time I did it which is encouraging. I wrote out two or three of those scenes and revised a few that I had previously written but needed to be updated. I had a few new things pop out that very possibly could lead somewhere nice in the way of tying things together. Still worried that I have too much going on, but I figure I’ll never figure out what’s the most important if I don’t write everything first.

Wildrose’s Arc (Aug 28 – Sept 10, 2017)

Laura Highcove

I’ve been pushing through Gabir’s character arc and it’s going well, if not more slowly than I was expecting. I misjudged my timeline for a couple reasons. One being the downtime I needed to get reorganized after being away from home for two weeks, another in that the last time I made estimations on how much time revisions like this would take, the story was far closer to completion than this one.

Gabir’s arc is done and now I’ve moved on to Wildrose’s about a week late. I am really enjoying delving more deeply into Wildrose, since I hadn’t done any scenes from his pov yet. When I started this book I thought I was only going to use pov from Tabitha and Gabir, but I realized that Wildrose was doing a lot of stuff in the background and not confiding any of it to anyone, which means for the reader to have any idea what’s going on, he would have to have his own pov scenes.

On the other hand, there are many scenes where Tabitha and Rose interact, so as I’m doing Wildrose’s arc, a lot of work is being done on Tabitha’s arc as well. So I hope to have the both of them done by Sept 24th. Which will give me plenty of time to fix up the rest of the story, do a smoothing pass, and be ready to start on the draft 0 for the Wizard (Book 3).

Gabir’s Arc (Aug 14 – 27, 2017)

Laura Highcove

So these past few weeks were rather busy. After Otakon I spent a few days with my husband’s family and I got a good amount of writing done in the mornings. I got my Scrivener outline done and started to fill in the scenes that involved Gabir.

On Thursday the 17th I went up to New York City for Writer’s Digest Conference. Had a lot of great stuff happen there, from the panels, to seeing other DIY MFA people, and the Pitch Slam (speed dating for authors and agents). I’m working on a post for what happened at the conference that will be posted later. I am going to be putting the details of the pitch slam in my newsletter so sign up for that if you haven’t already if you’re interested in hearing more about it.

I had a great time overall, but I neglected to remember/predict how hard I would crash on getting home. After being gone from home for almost two weeks I needed decompression/organization time. I barely worked on any writing until Friday which means I didn’t finish Gabir’s arc. On the other hand, my house looks beautiful. 😀

The plan is to finish up Gabir’s arc and then move on to Wildrose’s arc.

As a side note: During the drive, my hubby pointed out that my numbers for how much I planned on writing for NaNoWriMo were wrong. I had gone back and forth on how much I was planning to write and when, and I think I just got my numbers crossed. (I have a math minor but that doesn’t mean I’m good at it, just that I know more math exists than most people.) Here are the actual, correct numbers:

26 days (since I’m taking Fridays off) x 2.5k a day = 65k total

Smoothing Pass (Aug 7 – 13, 2017)

Laura Highcove

So I managed to get this done even with Otakon this weekend. I finished creating the summary/loose outline before I left, and this morning (which is technically the 14th, but I’ll count it) I went through and moved the pieces around a bit. Now I’m feeling better about how things are coming together.

This is the reason that I sit down and just do overall organization passes. It’s pretty much like creating an outline, only I don’t think I refer back to my outline as much as writers who outline do. The process of creating the outline helps me fit everything together in my head, and then I only refer to it if I get lost.

This time I plan to try something new and create an outline with the notecards in Scrivener. Not sure how well it will work, but I am going to put together the middle of the story where things are really rough right now as just an outline in order to shoehorn everything in. Shouldn’t take me more than a day. Then I can get to work on Gabir’s arc which, while it is the most important, it is also the most solid right now. So even with Writer’s Digest this weekend, I should be able to get that done.

I think the Wildrose arc will give me the most trouble, but starting in September I’m back to working at the barn only half days and so I will have more time in the afternoon to work on his arc as needed.

Of course with Writer’s Digest this weekend, I may attend a panel that completely changes my writing life and give me some sort of amazing insight, but barring that I think my plan is pretty solid.

Character Creation

Laura Highcove

I don’t really plan my characters. I may have a vague idea that I need a character in a certain place and they might be kinda like this. But I never know my characters until I write them. I consciously put more of myself in Tabitha than any other character I’ve written in the past. And even that didn’t happen until I had written a lot of her already. In fact I remember the specific place where Tabitha shoved her personality in my face.

It was a similar situation with Wildrose, in that he ended up being a lot like my husband unintentionally, and later I put more pieces of my husband in there. At the same time he is himself.

And some characters come more easily than others. The Huntsman was the most difficult character for me in this novel. I literally did not pin him down until several drafts in. He was going to be the huge gruff guy, then the comedic relief, and who knows what else. He flopped all over the place until he finally settled where he is.

In general, I don’t think I ever look at a character or a person and set out to write any of my characters based on them. It just drifts that way as I go, but then I am a discovery writer. I am convinced that those characters just exist in my brain and I write until I pull enough of them out.