Magic Systems 101

What makes a fantasy a fantasy?

Well, there are obviously many things. It takes place in a different world, tends to have lower technology, has new and mysterious cultures and creatures...

Arguably, though, there is one thing that comes to mind immediately when people hear the word fantasy: MAGIC.

Magic sure is fun, isn't it? Adding it into a story can bring mystery and mysticism to the mundane, uniqueness to things that could otherwise be ordinary.

Magic also happens to be everywhere.

Every fantasy world seems to have a form of magic. From Middle Earth to the Nevernever to Narnia to the ever expanding Cosmere, Magic Systems are in just about everything fantasy.

So what sets each of these apart? What makes the magic in Harry Potter different from the magic in Mistborn?

Well, it's all about spectrum, really.

That's right. Time to get to some magical definitions.

Oh, yeah.

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?