I'm Slowly Returning

There has been a lot of things going on in my life that have NOT included writing. It sucks.

BUT

I did come back home to fiction with a little piece called Tink, Wink, and Nudge.

"Hey, Tinkerbell!" Nudge catcalled.

"Stop calling ME THAT!" Tink's glow turned red and she hovered above her twin Wink.

"It's the only way I can tell you apart! You two look alike."

The truth was, Wink was a cerulean blue and rather stout, not to mention male, while Tink was green, lithe, and female. Nudge just had to push others' buttons. 

Tink punched him in the arm, but he was so portly, it only wobbled like jelly. He giggled. The three had been friends since they were rung into being.

Tink ducked back down behind the plastic holly leaf and calmed her red light. The stakeout had only just started and already she'd had enough of the two boys. "Shh."

If a fairy wasn't vigilant, they'd miss their only opportunity to ask for one wish from the greatest magical being of all time.

The mantle clock clicked midnight. There was a speck of sparkle on the hearth below. Tink jumped from behind the holly and yelled, "SANTA!"

An old elf turned his bearded face in shock, frozen in mid-appear, then grinned in relief.



Yeah, so I got a little festive this holiday season, but hey, I wrote some fiction.

And I promise to only get better as I return to my roots.

A to Z - "R" is for Research

I was going to talk about Red Room, a website for authors to meet and share their works however it seems to be down for new site building.

Instead, I will talk about Research. Writer's Digest has a great article on Research for your novel.  This quick summary drew me in:

There are plenty of ways to research your novel including the following:

•    Using the internet (obviously the quickest and most painless way)
•    Visiting the library (ah, check you out…the old school approach)
•    Traveling to locations where your story will take place (a bold move there Hemingway, you sure you’ve got the moxy?)
•    Interviewing people who know about the things you are writing about (now you’re just getting crazy)

 Research makes your writing REAL. Even if you are working in a fictional world, of you don't want to explain the new physics laws or how every element works in your story, you need to use some familiar constants from the real world to give your readers a base to stand on and grasp the world.

When I first read  Incarceron and Sapphique, I was kinda lost. It took a while to get into the world and create a mind picture. Not that this is a bad thing, but to rely solely on the human aspects of emotion to connect your reader and not on the settings or events is quite a shock to a reader. I understand that sometimes it must be done. Clearly it worked for Catherine Fisher. But I doubt she did no research. There were period pieces in there, some technologies in there. All good writers do research.

My husband was working on a piece that he wanted to begin in the 1990s. The characters couldn't just borrow a DVD or text each other if they didn't have the correct phones or the right technological devices to do this. Society's opinions of the characters, how they lived, what they wore, whether it was cool to hang out in certain places all have changed from the 1990s to now. He had to do research and couldn't rely solely on his memory.

I am working on a piece that takes place in a forest. I need to know what plants are available for mice to eat in the spring, what threats exist in the settings, and how quickly a baby mouse matures, grows fur, and opens its eyes. My research allows me to make the story more real. I hope some child one day learns something from my books.

It seems there are 2 kinds of research, Background Research, and Spot Research. (Resource here.)
Background is investigating a subject, era, industry, or whatever makes your novel believable. Spot Research is the stuff you need to look up to make it accurate, little facts, names of real things or places, or the details that the character knows. It's trivia.

Also, it is recommended to do your research in the outline phase of your writing. Imagine having all your notes right there in the plot points you are going to elaborate on as you finally draft your complete piece! How much easier than flying by the seat of your pants.... but maybe not as much fun.

:)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Work In Progress: Tentatively titled "The Savior of Mousekind"

More snow today. Best part is, it's Saturday and we have nothing to do and nowhere to go. You know what that means? WRITING DAY!

I've already put in almost a thousand words on my work in progress. I bought Scrivener for Windows. It is inferior to the original Scrivener for Mac, but it is better than Word in that I can go back easily to chapters and find things; characters, plot holes, places.

I took a little break from creating new scenes and renamed some chapters. I didn't have to go in and make a table of contents and sync everything up like I do in Word. Scrivener does that for me. It outlines everything as I go and gives me little note cards to make notes on about the chapters if I want to. It gives me a place to store my research, character sketches, and anything novel-related that I have in electronic form. I even moved entire sections around with ease. I moved an entire a chapter, adding it to another to make the flow better.

I'm really happy with it. I even learned how to take a document in Word I had already been working on and import it into Scrivener with chapter breaks already done. All I have to do is put pound signs in my .doc. Beautiful.

I guess I should share a bit with you readers, huh?

:)

Here is a little bit where Councilmousewoman Melma Bristle coldly tells Flora, nearly a new grandmother, that she must take her youngest daughter and flee in order to protect her yet unborn grandbaby who is prophesied to be 'the savior'.

“The savior of the race must be protected.” She stared coldly into the eyes of the still-smiling mother. “No matter what the cost.”

Flora’s smile faded. “I..I think I understand.”

“As the time draws near, the birthmother should be taken to the Council. We will protect her.”

“I and Maisey will come, too. Camber needs her mother at a time like this, and I can’t leave my youngest.”

“No. You will take Maisey and hide, far away. The enemies could use you or her to get to your daughter. Think what you would do to save your child’s life. That is what your daughter would do to save her babe’s. If she has to choose between you or her offspring.. well.”

“You think they will torture us, to get to Camber and the Savior? You think we should flee?”

“The sooner the better.” Melma stood and calmly walked to the door on her hind paws, nose not quite so high. Flora got her coat and helped her into it. She curtsied her out of her home.

As the door closed, a scream was heard from the nursery.

Do you think the councilmousewoman has a bigger plan?
Why did Maisey scream?
Will Flora leave or stay? Will she believe the warning?

The parts I am working on now are far into the story. Many things have happened in the story and giving you a piece in the middle would confuse you.

This is only a first draft. I still have to finish it, then go back with a little more research and polish up the settings. I also want to add more layers. The idea of a bigger plan, or things that can be read between the lines to add depth, or even more subplots I can tie together, are all things I want to do with the second draft.

Before I get ahead of myself, I think I should return to the action in the middle of this novel.

Sci-Fi

I don't venture into Sci-Fi very often. I'm a dabbler in it. Recently I wrote something a bit Sci-Fi and since it is a rare thing, I thought I'd share.

Let me preface this by saying I sequeled a story where the Main Character created a time machine and supposedly an error in calculation left them 10,000 years in the future instead of 100.

After months of walking, surviving, fighting off beasts, eating only things I saw other creatures eating, and building a hut and a fire, I have given up hope that humankind survived.

Putting together a rough signal transmitter from the parts in my time machine, I wait here, the latitude and longitude beeping out endlessly into the sky above. I wrote a message with rocks ten feet wide on the top of a plateau. I am building myself a wall.

I could travel farther, keep looking for clues, but it seems this land of forest and wild things has recovered from some terrible shock. The trees here are too young, the vegetation fast growing, I assume it has only been the last 50 years that this area has bloomed.

What did we do to the Earth?

I began to dig just last week. I was looking for trash they said would never decay. I found a layer of dark rock, the kind made by intense heat and quick cooling. I can’t get past that without advanced tools.

I am sure my ancient race lies below it.

The neat part is, a person sequeled me and took my new looking land and turned the mathematical error BACKWARDS, thus creating the existence of homo-sapiens.

:D

Behold the power of collaboration!

Update: I found another Sci-fi piece I wrote recently and still am collaborating on. Here's my earliest contribution.

They were watching her. A myriad of screens lit up their faces with a blue glow. Tiny cameras were everywhere, undetectable, always watching. Dakota couldn’t get the image out of her head. Somewhere safe, those sick bastards were refusing to help her, watching like she was the animal on some documentary that is hunted by a lion.

Stealthily she crouched, laser pen her only weapon, walking with knees bent so her shoes wouldn’t squeak. She measured her breathing and tried not to sweat too much because there was only one beast that could smash a steel lab table and break through the wire enmeshed glass, and it was blind. It hunted by smell and sound. Tiny polyps along its frilled neck sprayed a paralytic on its victims so they wouldn’t run as it pounced on them. Its venom smelled of cucumbers. The lab reeked of cucumbers.

This could be why her team did not come for her.

Or the people behind the cameras could have set this all up. An exercise, a test, to see what she could do.

Well, she could live.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Cell Phone and Being Unwelcome

Here's your next installment! I did edit some of the first posted part, nothing big, yet.

My thoughts now turned to home. I reached for my cell phone in my pocket. It was the latest model and could reach a satellite even from this remote place. It wasn’t in my right pocket, so I checked my left. I checked my back pockets. It wasn’t there. I searched the ground, thinking it must have fallen out. I trudged back toward the hut, still searching.

If I hadn’t remembered which hut I had just come out of, I could have found it simply by the smell. It had only been a few minutes, but the temperature was rising fast and as the heat came in, the bile turned more sour and permeated deeply. How do they clean this stuff up here? They must be smart enough to puke in the forest.

I searched my pallet, and the fur hide, holding my nose with one hand, fighting off the urge for a repeat performance. No cell. The hut was bare, the dirt floor packed down, even a small cell phone would have been easily spotted lying on the dirt. Nothing. I went back outside and checked all around the hut. I must have been carried in, but from where? Possibly from the pier. I began searching the most direct path between the hut and the pier.

When I had reached the middle of the small ring, people began emerging from their huts. Or maybe they were there the whole time. I hadn’t paid any attention to the slight, dark bodies before. They had the tan colored skin girls spend hours in the sun or tanning beds to achieve back home. They had dark hair and wore close to nothing. Some kind of islander, I guessed. I decided to try talking to them before they got too close. Who knows what they thought of me!

“Hey! You, uh, find a cell phone?” I made a phone gesture with my finger and thumb to my ear and mouth. They just stared at me. They probably didn’t know about phones. How did I get myself lost on a primitive island?

They turned away from me, as if speaking were a disgrace or a social faux pas. One male bravely spoke nonsense at me and pointed with his whole arm towards the rainforest. Maybe I had come from the forest and he was kindly asking me to return. I stared at him. He repeated himself, then walked toward the forest. He beckoned at me to follow him. That gesture must be universal. I followed him. Maybe he had something important to show me. “Did you find my phone?” No answer. He stopped and pointed to a worn path barely visible between the trees and undergrowth. He held his arm up an awkwardly long time, pointing down the path and stared at me. I guess it was time for me to go.