Book Review: Scythe, by Neal Schusterman

This book.

THIS BOOK.

Let me tell you about it, because darn it people need to know.

Killing the Darlings: Giving Impact to Character Deaths

It sure does suck when a favourite character dies, doesn't it?

I mean, there's not many feelings quite like it. You're just sitting there, reading or watching or gaming, and then suddenly POOF! Character dead. Gone. No more.

All it takes is a snap of the writer's fingers, and a favourite character is forever written out of the story, never to be seen again...

Hehehe...

(So I'm a mean writer. So what?)

AHEM. Returning to the point of the blog...

As much as it can hurt to have a character die, admittedly sometimes there are character deaths that are just...well...

Let me put it this way: As much as I know I should be caring about the character dying, all I feel is something along the lines of "Meh. Guess that's that."

Kind of surprising how often this happens, now that I think of it...

So that got me thinking. What separates the deaths that make me go 'meh' from the deaths that tear my heart out, stomp it into tiny pieces, and then offer it back to me in a mess of broken shards and sticky glue?

Well, I have a theory that might shed a bit of light on the subject...

Book Review: Cruel Beauty; by Rosamund Hodge

OH BOY! A REVIEW!

FIRST YA REVIEW!

HUZZAH!

Ahem. Anyway, this is going to be a review of Cruel Beauty, by Rosamund Hodge.

Repeating Yourself: The Art of Bookending

We all like a cohesive story, don't we?

There's something incredibly satisfying about a story that has a cohesive feel, where it ends with a tight plot and a nice little bow on top. Ambiguity is nice, too, but there's just something wonderful about a perfectly tied together ending.

Of course, there are many, MANY ways to do this. Everyone has a different answer as to how to make a satisfying and cohesive conclusion for a story, and it's just not a subject that can really be tied down.

One way, though, is the Bookending Technique.

Odds are, you may have heard of it before. If not, you may be able to assume what it is.

(If you are lost, don't worry. I will explain it shortly.)

This is a technique I see more in film than in books (unless I'm just reading the wrong books for it. I don't know) and it's a technique/subject that was brought to my attention by a friend of mine, who I asked for ideas for topics to write on. (He's really into film, so I wanted to see what topics he thought would be interesting to talk about.)

This is what he requested, so let's get started.

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Holding my First Beta Read

So you've finally worked your novel to a place where you feel at least vaguely comfortable with letting other people read it. You have a sense of pride in your work, and you are finally ready to show your hard work to the world.

You're ready for a Beta Read!

How do you hold a Beta Read so that you get the most out of it?

My personal experience with Beta Reads has been a bit of a learning curve, to be honest. For my first book, as an example, I held three separate Beta Reads, trying to pin down what the heck I was supposed to actually do (and consulting the powers of Google when I ran into problems).

Needless to say, I went into my first read knowing absolutely nothing aside from the fact that I needed people to read the book and give me an opinion on it.

This turned out to be far more complicated than expected.

That's what brings me to the subject of today's blog: the Top 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Holding My First Beta Read.

NaNoWriMo musings...

I live!

NaNoWriMo has officially ended! TWO WEEKS AGO!

THIS BLOG IS ONLY TWO WEEKS LATE AFTER A MONTH OF ABSENCE!
HOORAY FOR CONSISTENCY!

...Oh dear...

Anyway, back to the subject of NaNoWriMo! It's over. YAY!

Which begs to question...did I actually succeed?

This seems way more difficult to answer than it should be, but I don't know if I actually 'succeeded' with my first NaNoWriMo.

Why?

Well, I made the 50,000 word mark for November 30. (55,514 words, actually, as of November 30.) So, I succeeded in the overall goal of 50,000 words in 30 days.

However, I do not have a completed first draft. I am in the third act of the draft, yes, but it is not completed.

And I can already see structural issues that will be fixed in revision.

And there are scenes that need to be inserted and removed. (Again, something that is usually fixed in revision).

But, even so, I do not have a complete first draft, which was my personal goal.

So, did I succeed at NaNoWriMo?

Well, in some regards, I didn't.

In other regards, I think I did. I went into this as a learning exercise, as a way to learn more about how I write, how to write faster, and what my process is.

(Part of why I'm really noticing this kind of thing after NaNoWriMo is that I haven't actually written a brand new first draft of a story in...quite a while. I've been mostly working on really heavy revisions on two other books that DESPERATELY needed pretty much a full rewrite to make them work. So it's been a while since I've actually written a first draft of a book. I'm still kind of in revision mode...)

*Ahem*

Anyway...back on topic...

I'm going to focus on the positive side of this.

Here's what I learned from my first NaNoWriMo experience. I know this is just for my own personal writing style, but maybe it would be helpful for other people to see different writing processes. Maybe someone else writes like this, too.

Or maybe I'm just weird. Who knows?

The November Monster...

Happy Halloween, readers.

Today, I'm not focussing on candy and ghouls and all things in between. I'm thinking of something else. A different kind of monster.

Tomorrow is November First, and with it comes NaNoWriMo!

For those who don't know, that is National Novel Writing Month, the event in which people set out to write a novel from start to finish in the month of November. By the technical definition of the term 'novel', that is 50,000 words. There are contests, goals, the whole shabang.

This is also my first year where things have lined up so I can actually participate! Yay!

What, though, is the actual goal of NaNoWriMo?

I recently read an article that was bluntly against the idea of NaNoWriMo, saying that all it did was create crappy novels and bad book proposals, and that people shouldn't bother with it at all. Basically, it was saying that the whole idea of the event was just fostering an idea of quantity over quality in words, since it focusses so heavily on word count. That NaNoWriMo, in spite of starting with good intentions, had devolved into making bad writing acceptable.

In some ways, this can be seen as true. Unless people do NaNoWriMo properly and actually treat this as a first draft and do a solid revision and edit through the next months before claiming it to be publication ready.

The way I see it, NaNoWriMo is similar to an art challenge that has been going around called the 'Sketchbook Slam Challenge'. The concept of Sketchbook Slam is similar to that of NaNoWriMo, but for artists. Basically, the artist has a 300 page sketchbook that they have to fill in one month, both sides of the page, essentially making it a 600 page sketchbook.

That's 20 full pages of sketches every day for a month.

This challenge, obviously, isn't for everyone. However, the purpose of it is to foster a habit of sketching, and teach how to draw quickly. Even if the art is bad, even if the sketches are messy and strange and have plenty of issues, the artist has no time to dally on a single drawing, and has to keep going, forcing them to learn and adapt.

NaNoWriMo works in a similar way.

To complete the challenge of 50,000 words in 30 days, one must write and average of 1,666 words every day. Some people will write considerably more on some days, while others will write less, but the point is that people are writing, and are trying to reach a goal.

They are making a work habit, and learning how to get past the first chapter and actually complete a first draft without being hung up on edits, because they have that word count that they want to achieve.

The words being put to page might not be good, just as the sketches being put to page might not be good.

But the point isn't about writing the prettiest words or drawing the prettiest picture.

The good words and good artwork is hidden behind thousands of words and sketches.

The not so good words and sketches need to get out first.

My personal goal with NaNoWriMo is to become faster at completing a book, and to actually write a standalone story (everything I've been working on for the past several years has been a connected series, so I want to have practice at tying the threads of a story.)

The book I plan on writing is a story that has been lurking in my head for a very long time, and it's about time that I give these characters and this world the time that it deserves, and actually finish a story for them.

Another personal goal I have is to not just write 50k words in this book, but to actually complete the first draft. Considering that my estimate for this book's length is about 100k, that will mean writing 3,333 words on average per day to get it completed.

Whether or not I will successful in this is...questionable, but here's hoping for the best.

Anyway, that's my spiel. Probably going to be blogging a bit on the writing process as I go. That kinda thing.

On that note, happy NaNoWriMo! Enjoy the process, get lots of writing done, and have fun!

Time to get writing!