I should be back in a couple of weeks! Sorry for being a posting failure recently... real life is keeping me busy. =)
The group was founded by a number of Star Trek fans who started a petition to have the next Star Trek movie include a romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock. (I'll admit, I would love to see that myself!) Their efforts began to grow beyond that though as the group did. Now they just want to have LGBT characters and relationships in the mainstream media. LGBT people make up a large part of the population, and they deserve to have a part of the media.
They are still focusing their efforts on Star Trek, but they have mostly abandoned the idea of Kirk and Spock getting together. Instead, they are pushing for one or more of the main characters to be gay. (It's all well and good to have minor gay characters, but they just don't have as much of an impact on people as main characters do.) The original creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, actively supported having gay characters brought onto the show, but he died before he could introduce any. Star Trek has been a groundbreaking show since it first started. Having minorities on a television show doing important things was big back then! The show also included the first televised interracial kiss (between Kirk and Uhura). So now they want Star Trek to break some new barriers, and I fully support this.
If you are interested in the project, check out the Social Equality Effort website to read more about what they are doing and how you can help. (Spread the word and sign the petition!)
PS This post is not meant to offend anybody or to coerce them into doing something they don't want to do. I am very pro-gay and am willing to stick by my opinions, but I don't expect everyone to share them. I just wanted to pass on the information about this group to those who may find it relevant. =)
So, I proceeded to mope about the house and avoid contact with anyone so I wouldn't have to admit that I failed because I couldn't park the car in the darn cones.
But then I took the test again today. And I passed! Hooray! So now, at the ripe old age of nineteen, after taking the driving test three times (I tried once before when I was seventeen), I am licensed to drive.
I also have a car! A 2001 Ford Windstar minivan to be exact. It is just like the one pictured here. Isn't it fabulous?I love it. My parents both have Windstars and I love driving them, so when I found a Windstar in nice shape, I snatched it up. In fact, I bought the car five weeks ago. Five weeks before I got my drivers license. lol!
But it's in very good shape, doesn't have a ton of miles, and is a pretty gold color. It's also my very first car, that I bought with my very own money. It's my baby!
Anyway, now that I am no longer sulking due to failing, I'm here to say that I am back! At least until I have to leave for college in a few weeks. lol!
BROTHER: I have another binky! You will never get it. Bwahahahahaha!
ME: *bursts into laughter*
BROTHER: *wanders over* What are you doing?
ME: *snatches binky*
BROTHER: *pouts*
Sorry kid, but you can't outwit me! Bwahahahahahaha! (Yeah, he gets the evil laugh from me. Sadly, it sounds more evil from a four-year-old than from a nineteen-year-old. Sigh.)
Another fun conversation I had was with my three-year-old cousin yesterday. I accompanied my aunt and her partner to their sonogram appointment. My aunt's partner is 12-weeks pregnant with twins through in vitro. I got to watch the babies on the sonogram--so awesome! (You can see the little hands and feet now. The one baby even stuck its tongue out at us, lol!) Then I went and sat with my cousin in the lobby while my aunt and her partner talked to the doctor.
I decided to see what my cousin wanted to name the babies. We don't know the gender yet, so I suggested boys' and girls' names. Jenny, Genevive, Mark, Matthew, Tom, Bob, Melissa, and Mary were all vetoed. I started getting desperate.
ME: Fine, what about Apple?
COUSIN: I like Apple!
ME: ...the babies won't be named Apple.
COUSIN: *pouts* I like Apple.
ME: What about Sally?
COUSIN: Apple.
ME: ...Lucy?
COUSIN: Apple.
ME: ...Jim?
COUSIN: Apple.
ME: ...Ned?
COUSIN: Apple.
ME: Fine. What about French Fry?
COUSIN: I like French Fry!
ME: *facepalm* Great. We can name one of the babies French Fry, and the other Chicken Nugget, I suppose.
COUSIN: Chicken Nugget is the boy. *nods*
ME: *giant facepalm*
In the end, Chicken Nugget and French Fry remained the top contenders for names, and Apple and Milkshake were the runners up, regardless of how many normal names I proposed. lol!
Vampires, werewolves, witches, shapeshifters -- they live among us without our knowledge. Night World is their secret society, a secret society with very strict rules. And falling in love breaks all the laws of the Night World.
Summaries:
The Night World is a place that no human can know about. If a member of the Night World tells a human about it, both of them are put to death. The Night World is hidden in our cities. Its members walk among us. But something is happening. The human world and the Night World are beginning to lose their boundaries.
Secret Vampire
Poppy is a tiny girl with a huge addiction to trance music and her best friend James. When she is diagnosed terminal cancer and given only weeks to live, she thinks her life is going to be over forever.
Then James steps forward and reveals something to her. James is a vampire in the secret Night World, and he can make her immortal, but this immortality comes with a cost.
Daughters of Darkness
Three vampire sisters born and raised in a vampire community have decided to stake out a new life in a rural community of humans. Their brother doesn't agree with their decision and arrives in town to haul them home. All of the siblings plans are derailed when their next door neighbors, a brother and a sister, stumble their way into the vampire's secrets.
A rogue werewolf, a dead vampire, and a mystery with a surprise twist may keep them from ever reaching their dreams.
Spellbinder
Blaise is the boy magnet. Thea is the animal lover. They are two cousins with nothing in common but their origins; they are both witches. When both of them set their sights on one boy, it doesn't seem like anything new to either of them. They each set out to win him using magic. Then the magic goes wrong.
Now Blaise and Thea must work together to save everyone. It's a battle between black magic and white magic.
The Night World trilogy is a re-release of a series of books written by L.J. Smith in the 90's. Each book in the three volume series contains three complete novels. Night World No. 1 includes, Secret Vampire, Daughters of Darkness, and Spellbinder.
Review:
I'll admit, I picked up this book at Walmart because I'm a sucker for thick books that don't cost much. I didn't expect much out of this book and ended up being very pleasantly surprised.
The stories, while containing exceedingly dark subject matters, all had a touch of intrigue and humor in them. Each story stood alone, but the overarching plot of the Night World and the human world slowly growing closer bound them together well. Recurrent characters made me flip through the pages as quickly as possible, hoping to see more about the characters I had already met and loved even as I got to know new characters. Almost all of the characters were incredibly faceted, and I adored the fact that the "villain" of the first story was redeemed in the second story.
Each story stands alone but is made much richer by the stories before it. I'm glad the publisher decided to re-release the books in this format because it really reinforces that fact. The plots are interesting on their own, and the overarching plot drew me in more and more in each story. I absolutely enjoyed reading each new story and seeing where the background story was headed. I cannot wait to finish the series!
The only quibble I had with this book was that it went by too fast! Even though it had 752 pages, I read it in a day and immediately wanted to go buy the next book in the series. (I still haven't picked it up yet, but I will as soon as I can!)
I heartily recommend this book and give it a 5 out of 5! Be sure and pick it up at your local library or bookstore as soon as you get a chance!
This was a great explanation about head hopping:
"When the point of view shifts to a different character in the midst of a scene, this is called head-hopping because the reader feels as if he is hopped from one character’s head into another."
And I loved the point she makes in this paragraph:
"However, as an unpublished writer trying to break into the industry, writers should avoid these point of view switches in order to appear more professional to the editor or agent reading the manuscript. The adage is, “Better safe than sorry.” A writer would not want an editor to reject a manuscript because it looks unprofessional due to the head-hopping or point of view switches. Don’t give an editor or agent an unprofessional reason to reject your manuscript."
That is one of the best explanations I've ever read for why authors shouldn't head hop. And now you should go read the article and find out more about how not to head hop!
What I mean is, I'd like to be an writer who has money. There are so many books on writing I'd love to buy, writing workshops I'd love to take, and writing contests I'd like to enter. All of this costs money though, and it's money I don't have.
As a broke college student, I'm always amazed when I find out people spend upwards of $500 to get their book edited. Now, that really isn't much in terms of editing (which can run in the thousands) but it's a whole lot of money for me. (I spend less than $40 a week on groceries, so that's over three months of food for me!) And there are also writing conferences, costing hundreds of dollars, and website design that can run in the thousands and so much more.
Having that much money to spend on my future career as a writer would be amazing. There are so many things I would love to do to improve my writing. And that is why I'd like to be a rich writer.
However, I'm currently a budget writer. I do my own editing (to the best of my abilities and with help from fabulous betas). I do my own website design (currently this only applies to blogs, but I know enough HTML that I will eventually build my own site). I check books on writing out from the library and scour the internet for free information on writing and publishing. And you know what? I'm still a pretty good writer, even without the workshops, conferences, and professional editing.
(And while I don't need any of those expensive things to help my writing, I still wouldn't mind being a rich writer... especially when my laptop cord breaks for the second time in a month! That's why last weeks posts were missing. Sorry!)
Summary:Avery is a dull boy. Or at least, he'd like to be, but he's developed superpowers that keep him from being the average kid he used to be. He can't play sports because he's afraid he'll hurt someone. He can't tell anyone about his powers, not even his parents, for fear that he'll be sent to a scientist's lab and dissected and studied. He can't even wash his clothes without breaking the washing machine! (All right, that one was completely his fault. It wasn't like he MEANT to drop the machine while he was juggling it and the dryer though.)
But just as Avery's friends are beginning to abandon him, he meets a group of kids like himself. They aren't dull at all. Darla's a genius, Sophie is a super-sticky costume addict, Nicholas hides the hole in his stomach with his trench coat, and Catherine protects her secrets with sharp claws and a sharper attitude. And when a frigid lady named Cherchette shows up, Avery's going to need his friends to figure out exactly what's up with this ice queen.
Review:
This debut novel by Sarah Cross was really intriguing. Superhero novels aren't very common and it's always interesting to see the tropes of one storytelling medium applied to another medium. I almost put the book down after the first few chapters though. I had just watched Sky High, a Disney movie about superheros, and had to frown at the fact that Avery has the same powers (flight and super strength) as the main character in Sky High.
I stuck around though, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by the novel. I love all of the characters, especially Catherine. None of them have overly unique powers, but their powers do affect them in interesting ways. The backstory of how they got their powers was very unique (to my non-comic book reader mind) and I loved that not everyone got perfect powers. I think that the strongest part of this novel was the characterizations.
As for the plot, it was a little cliche and it wrapped up a little too nicely in the epilogue (while still leaving room for a sequel). The book also meandered a bit in the middle. The plot could have been tighter, but it was still interesting.
I give the book a 4 out of 5 and I'm hoping there's a sequel on the horizon! Pick up this book if you see it at your local library or bookstore. =)
(Here's the book on Amazon or IndieBound.)
No matter whether you are a plotter or a pantser, you will spend some of your time writing determining things about your setting and characters. Regardless of how much planning you do, you’ll never be able to plan for all the incidentals of your story. Here are two methods that can help you devise and remember character and setting details.
Free Writing
If you are a panster (or a plotter who didn’t do enough plotting!), you’ll probably come to a point in your story where you will have to create a new aspect of your character or setting. Maybe this is character backstory or setting history or maybe it’s just character or setting appearance. In any case, don’t let this impede the flow of your writing. Instead of getting stuck on that piece of information and just skipping over it, trying to flub it, or spending hours trying to think it through, try free writing. Free writing might be just the thing you need to get past a block, solve a problem, or define some details. You can start with something completely unrelated to the problem you’re having, or you can start with the very beginnings of the problem.
For example, if I was trying to determine whether the government of my setting should be a monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, I would first determine how I’d like the majority of my characters to act. In this case, I’m free writing to determine how some details affect other details.
If I want a lot of characters who are strong willed and willing to fight for what they believe in, I would probably lean towards creating a democracy, a society in which independence is coveted. On the other hand, if I wanted my main character to be a leader in a society of followers, I might create the country as a monarchy. And if I wanted some strong willed characters and some meeker characters, I might create an aristocracy, a society into which a person with enough money or ambition could become powerful but also a society where the lower classes stay low. Or, I could mix things up to create a society undergoing trauma and change, such as a monarchy being overthrown by a cast of ambitious characters.
I started with the basis of my problem: the government. Then I chose one aspect of how government affects people: how they act under that government. From there, I simply extrapolated how each kind of government would affect my characters and thus my story. I could then have easily picked the one that worked best with my story as it had already been written. (And it only took me about three minutes to figure all that out!)
But maybe you try starting with the problem and you get nowhere. In that case, you can free write in the true sense of the word. Just write anything that comes to your mind, whether it is about your story or something completely different.
And sometimes free writing is just thinking aloud. Just type. Ignore every censor in your head. Use run-on sentences and comma splices. Just write.
I have a character and I don’t know whether I want her to be a girl, a boy cross-dressing as a girl without anyone knowing, or a boy trying to cross-dress as a girl but failing, so everyone knows he’s a boy. Let’s see… his love interest is definitely a guy. I kind of really want to try writing a gay love story in this novel, especially with the social background being what it is and the characters having the political backgrounds that they do. On the other hand, it would be easier to write a straight love story. Which echoes the theme better? I think that if I let everyone know he is a boy from the start and cross-dressing, it will be easier and harder to do a big reveal and have him come to power. On the other hand, I think it’d be funny to have him be so obviously a boy that he can’t even cross-dress. Plus, I think it would disgust the love interest a bit, making it so much easier to keep them apart longer. But on the other hand, if he is cross-dressing and the love interest doesn’t know, that sense of betrayal could also keep them apart. I like the idea of the love interest knowing and becoming friends with him though, even if it means the love interest is a little freaked out by it. The bff angle will work best in the plot, I think. But, I don’t want my book to be too humorous once these characters show up… it will destroy the tone! Ugh. I dunno. Think, think, think, think. AHA! I just solved my problem. I’m going to go with… (sorry, can’t tell! It’d be a spoiler!)
Now, to tell you the truth, I honestly did not know which of the three options (girl, obvious boy, or hidden boy) I would go with before I did the free writing. I just let everything I know about what I wanted from the story flow out of me, and I found my answer. It took a little more than five minutes for me to solve a problem I’ve had for nearly three months (I hadn’t taken the time to free write before because I was still only in the plotting stage for this character, but I’ll be writing him within the next few days, so I used this as an excuse to figure out my problem!). Try free writing the next time you get stuck on a problem and need to develop some details!
Running Notes
One of the most important things about incorporating details into your draft while you are writing it is keeping all of your details straight! One of the easiest ways to do this is to keep running notes. You can keep running notes on your computer or by hand.
If you are going to keep them on your computer, there are a variety of ways to organize them. (And you’ll want to organize them, otherwise you’ll spend three hours trying to find where you wrote down your protagonist’s eye color!) One way is to keep different documents for each character, the setting, and the plot. This is great for organization but is unwieldy because it means keeping multiple documents open and slowing down your computer.
Another way to do this is to keep one document of notes but to separate the notes into sections (such as “Characters”, “Plot”, “Things to Fix”, etc.). This can lead to a huge document though, and it may take a while to find the section and information you need.
Personally, I use a combination of the above. I have one document with all of my notes in it and a separate document for notes I use more often, such as physical character traits, which I use for quick reference. The first document is very long (thousands of words!) and the second is very short (a little over a single typed page). The combination works well for me.
You can also keep running notes by hand. If you choose to do it this way, I recommend getting a spiral-bound notebook or a binder that you can add pages to. (The binder would be my top-choice because you can then move pages around, add more, and throw away things you don’t need.) I would separate the notebook/binder into sections for characters, setting, plot, etc. and then keep one page per sub-topic (e.g. In “Characters” I would have at least one page per character for notes and maybe a couple pages for notes on character interactions.)
By using a system such as this for keeping track of details, you can be certain your heroine won’t have blue eyes on page three, brown ones on page fifty and gray ones on page one hundred and nineteen! Keeping track of details can also highlight plot holes, flat characterization, and missing motivations.
How to Incorporate Details into Your Writing at this Point
Incorporating details into your writing at this point is going to be difficult because it’s time-consuming to develop details, hard to remember them, and difficult to balance them with the plot. However, this is also the time to throw them in because they will make the story come alive and the more alive your story is, the more likely it is that you will enjoy writing it.
To incorporate details during writing, just write them! And don’t worry too much about them. I know, I know, you want the story to be the best it is on the first go around. However, you don’t want to waste time on details if it means you’ll never finish the story. Write as you normally would and keep details in mind as you write, throwing in mentions of character and setting description whenever you can. Use the above techniques to develop and track your details. Then, during revision, you can strengthen the details even more. The most important thing at this point is to get the story down!
I loved her discussion on how UK and US book covers vary in the YA market.
Here are Sarah's book covers for an example! (UK on the left, US on the right.)
She pointed out that the US favors real people and/or icons on our covers, and the UK favors red and black and/or illustrated covers. Looking at the selection, I do (for the most part) favor US book covers, so I suppose the cover designers know what they are talking about!
Sarah also linked to a fabulous book giveaway in the post, so do click and read to find out more!
And when you're done, come back and let me know if you prefer UK or US cover design (and where you are from! It'll be interesting to see if tastes actually match location.)
Here's a question: can you name the two male actors in the picture? The girl is a random person, but both of the men are Hollywood actors and one is BIG.
You probably won't be able to because I changed the shapes of their eyes, noses, mouths, and faces. lol! Even the girl got a nose job to make her look more like my image of my character. See, I just can't deal with a "close" picture of my character. I have to have a picture of THEM. And now these three characters are (almost) perfect. (I didn't want facial hair on the middle man, plus he looks too old for the character, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a nice shot of a youngish black man without facial hair that is large enough to edit? I spent four times longer looking for him than I did looking for the girl and other man put together! And I wanted the girl and guy to look Latino, but I couldn't find images that looked anything liked I wanted, so I compromised on the girl and changed the guy to a different character who I could find a base pic for. Sigh. Why do people disregard minorities? SO not cool.)
Anyway, now that I've gone completely off topic and had my rant, what I wanted to talk about today was my writing. I was absolutely thrilled to have a breakthrough in my writing Saturday night. I wrote an absolutely gorgeous passage that had a touch of my voice, a touch of the characters voice, and a touch of the book's voice (Most people call the book's voice the "tone", but I find that thinking of it as a voice makes it easier to also distinguish character voice and my own voice!)
This breakthrough means I'm going to have to spend DAYS revising the book to make what I've already written as pretty as what I just wrote, but it is SO going to be worth it!
Better writing + pretty pictures = happy me! =D
I loved this one because it made it extremely obvious how CREEPY Edwards actions are. Truthfully? If I were Bella, I would have had my daddy set a restraining order on Edward!
I'll admit that this one is my favorite though. I wish the actual Bella Swan rocked this hard!
So tell me, which one made you laugh harder?
Don't worry though... next week's book review will lead to good things! =P
If you are a plotter, a good portion of your time may be spent on creating/researching your characters and world. There are many ways to do this, and you might even discover your own, but here are two methods that can help you spark ideas for setting and character creation.
Charts
Creating character charts and setting charts might be just what you need to make your details accessible. Write down all the details about your character you will think you’ll use. This may include the characters full name, a physical description, the character’s favorite things, where the character grew up, how the character did in school, what the characters family is like, what the character enjoys doing, what pets the character has, how dating has gone for the character, what the character wants in the story (motivation), what keeps the character from getting what they want in the story (conflict), and character personality traits and quirks.
A setting chart might detail what building materials are used in your setting, what objects are found in typical bedrooms/kitchens/bedrooms/closets/etc. in your setting, what jobs are available in your setting, what people do for fun in your setting, the geographic location/description of your setting, the climate of your setting, the plant life in your setting, the animal life in your setting, the politics in your setting, the religions in your setting, etc. Consider everything you need to know to write a complete story and put it on your setting chart.
Charts aren’t for everyone. Only the most fearsome of plotters will create a super in-depth chart and use it on every project. If that works for you, go for it! As for me, I’ve got just a bit of a pantser in me, and I prefer to use abbreviated character charts and (Gasp!) write my setting out as I go. Do mix and match methods to find the writing style that works for you!
Doodles
For those of you who are more visual than I, perhaps doodling is the best way to create your characters and setting. You can scribble a map of your setting, be it a planet, country, city, town, village, house, closet, etc. The smaller the area the map covers, the more detailed you can be to create more realistic settings. If you are drawing a planet, you’ll probably want to stick to land masses and, perhaps, landforms. If you are drawing a bedroom, label all the furniture, note which books are on the bookshelf, and decide where the character hides their special things from their siblings.
You can also doodle a drawing of your character, deciding on hair color and clothing style and body type. All of these things are likely to tell you something about the characters characteristics. Scribble that information next to the picture. Use details you draw to build the characters personality and back story. If she is wearing a locket, who is the locket from? What does it mean to her? Why does she wear it? When does she wear it? Add details to the picture like a background (does she spend most of her time at school or at home?), pets, favorite objects, family members, etc. The picture doesn’t have to be pretty, as long as it tells you what you need to know!
Since I am not visually inclined, I can’t offer any personal advice on how to go about doing this doodling. In the case of setting doodling though, you can find a fabulous “world building through mapping” workshop on Holly Lisle’s site.
How to Incorporate Details into Your Writing at this Point
If you are a plotter, you’re lucky in some aspects and unlucky in others. You’ve designed your characters and setting prior to writing them, which means all you have to do is include the details about them in your story to create a sense of realism. On the other hand, you’ve probably created many more details than you’ll ever be able to include in your story. For you, incorporating details into your story is as simple as including them as you write!
Your challenge will be to include the details you’ve created without bogging down the story with extraneous details. Start by writing the story with as much detail as you feel comfortable with. You can always go back and cut details out where you don’t need them or add them where you do.
This paragraph in particular really caught my attention.
The bulk of our artistic expression is being stored and transmitted in the form of 1’s and 0’s, and I’m cool with that, mostly, because it decreases costs and increases choice. But nuances and subtlety are lost and the “ragged edges” either become straight lines or have to be intentionally pixelated. Digital music lacks the tone and fuzz of vinyl records, the discerning eye is drawn to photographs shot with real film, and we sure had a lot of good times with our old analog “rabbit ears” TV.
What do you think? Do you prefer blurry edges or straight lines? Why?
And from now on, I have a new posting schedule. Here it is!
Monday - Mumbles
Just me, mumbling away.
Tuesday - Link of the Week
The best link I found this week. (Sometimes more than one!)
Wednesday - Writing
I talk about how to write and how to write better!
Thursday - Review
Book review!
Friday - Fun!
Something fun: a cool link, a funny video, a giveaway!
I'll see you all tomorrow with a link! =D
I'll be back with another giveaway soon, so stay tuned! It will hopefully be within the next two weeks but will mostly depend on when I get a charger for my laptop.
(Also, I've got a nasty stomach bug, hence why it took me so long to post this. Sorry! Please send good, healing thoughts my way. I hate being sick. =P)
I'm just upset that my wordcount is going to suffer. =/ Hopefully I can find a way to get on the computer long enough to write...
Settings people remember are similar to places they’ve been, but also infinitely unique. I’ll admit, I don’t remember many of the settings from books I’ve read. The few that I do were quirky. One character lived in a subway station. Another book took place on a horse ranch in Ireland where the character kept falling into fairy holes. Yet another took place primarily in a castle with moving staircases, moving rooms, moving pictures, and ghosts. (Anyone guess that last one? It’s Hogwarts! I will forever remember Harry Potter’s school as a unique and quirky place.)
Make your setting stand out, as much as possible, but being as quirky as possible. A Regency is somewhat stunted for development of quirks, but perhaps the house in which the Heroine lives is completely blue. Inside and outside. It’s painted blue. The furniture is blue. The dishes are blue, the bedding is blue, and the Heroine is blue because she hates blue. When she tears the rooms apart, repainting all of them different colors, this quirk can even be a sign that she’s taking charge of her life. (Or that she’s gone mad!)
Fantasy and Sci Fi writers have a little more leniency. You can create your setting almost exactly as your wish it (without defying the laws of nature, at least). Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter. Tortall, the creation of Tamora Pierce. Melissa Marr’s world of faery that is invisible to the human eye. Holly Black’s fairy courts in the Tithe series. The Old Kingdom of Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series. These are worlds I will never forget.
And they all have their quirks. Hogwarts Castle rearranges itself at whim. Tortall is much like medieval Europe… if you add in magic and change everything to fit how magic would change medieval Europe (she had magical birth control! What a quirky detail!). Marr’s fairy world contains fairies that are grotesques and horrible even in their beauty, which differs from the perfect beauty of most mentioned fairies. Black’s fairy world can be found near modern cities and towns and is quite traditional, based on all the folklore—but she also created a drug that gives humans fairy powers. One of the best quirks ever, in my opinion! And Nix’s Old Kingdom was a terribly dangerous place where the dead rose at necromancers will. It was less the descriptions of the Old Kingdom that I won’t forget and more his descriptions of what comes after death: a world that is multi-layered and a bit Dante-ish, but utterly quirky and amazing.
What can you do to make your setting unique? Make your ranch in Texas the only ranch that keeps ducks. Give your little town a couple of ghost stories or the most unique diner in the state, complete with neon pink booths. Give your medieval-based fantasy world magical equivalents for modern day things or funky creatures that have never before existed. Build your Sci Fi world on a planet with green soil and brown grass. Make your setting quirky, unique, and most of all, fun!
Think about all the things you see and do in your daily life. You have television, newspapers, and the internet to provide you with news. You get companionship from friends, family, and pets. You enjoy reading, writing, surfing, swimming, etc. When it comes to your setting, create it intuitively by considering all of the things that you do in your daily life and how these things can be brought into your story. This doesn’t have to be a planned process. Simply dropping a mention of a cat into the story because you see your neighbor’s cat outside can bring it to life.
What will you do to provide the characters with news? Who will they get companionship from? What will they do for fun? What other things can you intuit that they will need? I know one! Bathrooms. How rare is it to see someone mention bathrooms in a book? And everyone has to pee at some point! (Unless you are writing Sci-Fi. Some of those aliens are odd.)
One way to do this is to put yourself in your setting for a day. You can either do this in a freewriting exercise, or you can actually spend your day pretending you are in your setting. When you get up in the morning, what do you do first? How would this change/stay the same in your setting? What do you do next? How would you do this in your setting? Either free write how your normal day would be changed if you lived in your setting or take notes on how your day goes and how you would have to do things differently in your setting. Now, when you’ve finished your exercise, take a look at what you have written. In your notes are a plethora of real life details. Use them!
Make your book come to life by making your setting intuitive. Not only can you intuit how your setting works, but you can also make your setting intuitive. Base it off your experiences or the experiences of those around you. Make the setting a little predictable and very understandable. This is a personal preference, but the settings I like the most are the ones based off cultures I’ve studied or places similar to where I live. Your alien house can be made out of diamonds and shaped like an oval, but if you give it a kitchen, living room, and bedrooms (and maybe even that bathroom!) you’ll find that it’s easier for people to intuit how the setting works or what it looks like. Anything that makes your world more understandable makes it easier for your readers to identify with!
Anyway, the first book I will be giving away is Stacey Jay's You are so Undead to Me. I reviewed it here and have included a summary below.
Q: HOW MANY ZOMBIES DOES IT TAKE TO RUIN A SOCIAL LIFE?
A: NOT MANY.
Megan Berry is a Zombie Settler by birth, which means she's part-time shrink to a whole bunch of semi-dead people with killer issues. All Megan really wants is to go to homecoming, but when you're trailed by a bunch of slobbering corpses whenever you leave the house, it's kinda hard to score a date. Let's just say Megan's love life could use some major resuscitation.
Megan's convinced her life can't get any worse - until someone in school starts using black magic to turn average, angsty Undead into scary, hardcore flesh-eating Zombies. Now it's up to Megan to stop the Zombie apocalypse. Her life - and more importantly, the homecoming dance - depends on it. ~summary from Amazon.com product description
It's easy to enter to win this book. I'll be giving away one copy. The contest will run from today through June 2, one week. The winner will be announced at midnight EST on June 3.
How does this work?
1. Comment on this post. This gets you entered into the drawing one time. Be sure to include your email address or sign into the site and have contact info in your profile. If I can't track you down, I can't send you the book!
2. If you'd like, post a link to this contest on your blog or twitter, then comment with a link to your post on this site. You can get a total of one extra entry in the drawing if you comment with a link. (In other words, you can't spam your six blogs with a link to this post to get six extra entries. It's a max of two per person.) Having the extra entry improves your chances of winning!
3. I wait until midnight EST June 3rd, print off a list of the names/aliases of people who entered, cut them up in little slips of paper, and draw a name out of the hat. The winner will then be announced.
Rules:
1. You must live in the United States to win. Sorry, but I can't afford international shipping costs!
2. You can gain two entries into the drawing by: 1) commenting and 2)posting about this on your site/blog/twitter and commenting with the link. (You can just comment once with your link, if you like, and I'll note that you get two entries. You don't actually have to comment twice.)
3. You must include a way to contact you in your comment. This can be an email address, or you can just sign in and comment if you have contact info in your profile. I can also contact people by commenting on their blog if a link to the blog is given. Once the winner is announced, I will attempt to contact them. If they cannot be contacted within a week, they forfeit the prize and the book will be given to someone else.
3. The contest will run from now until 11:59PM June 2. The winner will be announced around 12:00AM June 3. If the winner has left contact information, I will contact them to let them know. If not, they will have a week to claim their prize. If the prize is not claimed, I will give it to someone else, who will have a week to claim the prize. This will continue until someone claims the prize!
What are you waiting for? Go comment!
(The contest can also be found on my blogger blog if you have a profile there and want to sign in to enter the contest.)
PS: I will be giving books away every two or three weeks. Be sure to follow me if you'd like more chances to win!
Summary:In the book You are so Undead to Me by Stacey Jay, Megan Berry is a Zombie Settler. An in-born trait that she got from her mom, Megan attracts zombies (politely known as the unsettled) and has to send them back to the grave after finding out why they cannot rest in peace. She lost the ability as a child, after a traumatic settling of a reanimated corpse (a zombie brought back to life with dark magic), only to regain it on the day that she has a big date with the hottest guy in town.
Cue arrival of an old friend she forgot when she lost her powers. Ethan, who had been her childhood crush, is cute, sweet, and a Zombie Settler too. After a few mishaps, Ethan is assigned as her babysitter. Monica, another old Settler friend and a current "rival", gets pulled into the mix. Things are happening in Megan's town, and they aren't good. Reanimated corpses are attacking Megan and the people around her. It's up to Megan, Ethan, and Monica to find out why and stop the perpetrator(s) before homecoming is ruined.
Review:
This book was absolutely awesome in some ways, and not so awesome in others. THIS REVIEW DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS, but they've been kept to the minimum possible. ( But they are still spoilers, so read at your own risk! )
When you create a world, you need to make it realistic. That means that you need to know details about it. While you may not need to know the name of every city within a fifty mile radius of the place where your story will take place, knowing the names of a couple big cities can let you toss them in as details (“My friend Lindsay lives in Timbuktu as well! She says it’s quite pleasant there. Have you ever met her?”). Knowing the kinds of careers your characters can have, the building materials used for houses and businesses, the type of entertainment available for your characters, etc. lets you drop these details in as necessary to create a realistic world.
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to know each and every tiny little detail about your setting. Figure out what you need to know and learn/develop only those bits. Maybe knowing the careers available to women in Regency times will be beneficial but knowing the types of entertainment available won’t. In that case, don’t learn about the entertainment! Spend more time researching available jobs.
The point I want to make is to know everything you can know about your setting and know it well, but only about the bits that you need to write about. As a fantasy author you decide to create a world where griffins and dragons roam free. You should know all the ways your character can protect themselves from these creatures. Why? Because instead of simply grabbing a sword, you’ll be able to let your character pick out the perfect weapon. It’s more realistic to say that dragons are better killed with arrows and griffins with swords than to have a generic weapon for all creatures (even if it’s likely that griffins are better killed with swords as well). You probably won’t need to know all the styles of footwear available to your characters though, so feel free to ignore that! (Unless the detail becomes necessary, in which case you should… learn more about your world than your readers ever will!)
Knowing more about your world than your readers ever will lets you choose what choices to give your characters, what details to include, and what details to leave out. Even if the only weapon your character ever uses is a sword, having them choose that sword from a pile of weapons creates detail and realism. Know more about your world than your readers so that you can entrance them into reading more in the hopes that they will discover those bits about your world.
Now, building your setting if often difficult in some ways and easy in others. If you are writing a Regency romance, your setting has been given to you. That’s the easy part. The hard part is researching the setting and writing about it in a historically correct fashion. If you are writing a fantasy or sci-fi novel, chances are that the setting will be at least partially made up. That’s the easy part because it means you won’t have to research! The hard part? Well, making it up!
And if you are writing a historical romance with paranormal elements… well, I’m not sure you get an easy part…
To make your setting realistic, you need to build it on a real background. If you are writing a Regency, research the era well and learn all that you can. Include some interesting factoids that will give depth to the setting and avoid any anachronisms, like having an English Earl in 1856 say “Okay!” If you are writing a high fantasy novel set in a country that relies mostly on farming and is run by a monarchy, base your setting off of almost any European country prior to the Industrial Revolution. If you are writing a futuristic sci-fi novel set in America, base it off of our current culture and electronics and then extrapolate what would have if a certain type of technology was developed or if America went from a democracy to a monarchy or socialism.
By giving your setting a basis in reality, either past or present, you give readers a chance to really understand and fall in love with your world. (It also gives you a base on which to build your setting, and really, as writers, doesn’t any kind of a shortcut help?)
You’ll still need to build your world from the ground up though. You’ll need to know everything you can about your setting, including the actual setting (city, town, village, forest, plain, desert, etc.), the time frame (either Earth based time or a fictional time), what the buildings look like/are made from, what jobs are available for your characters, what pastimes are available for your characters, what the government of the country/world is like, how men/women/intersexed individuals/transgender individuals/alien genders/etc. are treated like in your world, how heterosexuality/bisexuality/homosexualit
Now, all of this doesn’t have to be determined up front, but if you can include little elements like what a bathroom looks like or what kind of plants are found in a specific forest into your descriptions, you’ll be creating a much richer world. You can identify how each of these aspects looks in your story as you go, only thinking about things on a need to know basis, and your story will come out fine. The basic idea is to start with a basis in reality, build onto it with solid details, and make it seem like the world has always existed.
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marissamiranda- Marissa Miranda
Weekly Posting Schedule
Monday - Mumbles
Just me, mumbling away.
Tuesday - Link of the Week
The best link I found this week. (Sometimes more than one!)
Wednesday - Writing
I talk about how to write and how to write better!
Thursday - Review
Book review!
Friday - Fun!
Something fun: a cool link, a funny video, a giveaway!
Just me, mumbling away.
Tuesday - Link of the Week
The best link I found this week. (Sometimes more than one!)
Wednesday - Writing
I talk about how to write and how to write better!
Thursday - Review
Book review!
Friday - Fun!
Something fun: a cool link, a funny video, a giveaway!
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