Writer’s Forum!

So, recently I’ve been noticing a distinct lack of interaction from some of my writer friends on Facebook. I feel quite sad about this because I know that they miss hanging out in the discussions, but various other things bring them down. So, I decided to bring back the forums. It’s taken me a few months to get to a situation where I felt comfortable putting them together and starting a few subjects but they are now online. The forums can be found at ascribedworld.com/forum/ and I must say I’m pretty fond of the color scheme.

I know some of the people I spend a lot of time talking to don’t generally want to have more than one place to go for their writing things but at the same time, they’re also incredibly tired of all of the incredibly hard to avoid political shit on Facebook. I also know that a lot of my writer friends are tired of seeing so much non-writing related stuff in with the writing related posts. The forum allows for writing specific things to go in the writing forums, and the not really writing related things to go into other forums.

I am entirely excited to go ahead and get this forum going, and it technically opens for business on May 12th 2017.

Technical Tuesday 0002

So yesterday I talked about doing things with loads of brightly colored pens. Things like storyboarding and plot outlining. And these are things that each person does differently.

Personally, I start with which ever thing comes to my mind first. Sometimes this is a character, sometimes it’s a scene idea, in one story’s case, it was a line of internal monologue from the main character. Generally, depending on which one comes to mind first tells me where to start.

Over on the Facebook and the Instagram from 9pm to 11pm CST I’ll be sharing images of various WIP projects that utilize each of the main forms of Story Planning that I’ll be discussing below.

These types include:
-story boarding (which I do incredibly rarely)
-something I call ‘discovery writing’
-something I think of as story bubbles but I swear has a different name with every person I’ve ever shown them to, but are useful for thinking out things
-plot lines, which in my actions are less than story boarding but more than general outlining.
-and of course, outlining, which is something that I both do well and don’t do well.

The order in which they go is usually something a bit like this:
1. Discovery writing
2. Story Bubbles
3. Plot Lines
4. Outlining
5. Storyboarding (if I do it at all until the second draft)

This week, I’ll discuss numbers 1 and 2.

First up: DISCOVERY WRITING.

What the hell is discovery writing? For me, this is where I sit down with the idea and just start writing everything that comes to mind on an idea. These thoughts are generally not in any kind of order, they’re the most rough form of writing I do. It’s simply getting as much of the rough idea down that I can. The first sample (from a series of WIPs referred to as Trio) I’ll be showing and discussing tonight has gone through a couple of rewrites and is a little more organized than they usually are. The second sample is still a bare bones discovery write and actually covers two story ideas (cheerfully known as faries and aether academy).

 

Now: STORY BUBBLES.

I *love* story bubbles. Story bubbles are absolutely fantastic fun. Some people refer to them as thought bubbles, some call them thought maps, but when you see them, you’ll remember them from school. I personally love them. They’re a slightly more interesting way to work out all the pieces of a world, and are quite excellent for world building. This is where I’m sitting at a table with a massive sheet of paper and an army of markers. Some of what ends up in bubbles are plot points, character development, language bits, historical distribution of information. Sometimes it’s a breakdown of departments and what they do in the case of my science fiction universe (known as the Aurora Universe). This will be, providing I remembered to bring it with me today, the samples I use for this later this evening.

 

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Next week on Technical Tuesday, I’ll discuss numbers 3 and 4.

Muse Monday 0003

Hey lookie! It’s a little late, but it’s another Muse Monday post!

If you’re just joining the club here today, a quick review: Muse Mondays are days that I post things that inspire the muse and that I’d like to share with all of you!

Today’s Muse Monday is going to be a little different from the previous ones because I want to tell you something I’ve discovered triggers a desire to write. This isn’t something digital today, it’s actually something in the physical world.

It’s WRITING UTENSILS.

Pens, Pencils, Markers, you name it, I *love* them. Everything I comment about here today I’ll list at the end with Amazon links, because why not share the love? The reason I think these things inspire the muse is because it makes it so easy to storyboard and plot and even snowflake out my stories if I have multiple colors available to me. And having all the colors laid out on the desk is so pretty and

Onwards to the Writing Utensils:

I personally prefer Zebra F-301s for my day to day writing (including most work related tasks), and Zebra G-301s for journaling. The steel tubes make them easy to spot down in my dark and overcrowded purses, they’re durable and you can buy ink replacements for them as well. This makes them a very valuable tool for writing in my life.

Next up, we have Papermate Inkjoys. I love the variety of colors in these pens. When I was working as a server – this helped me to keep my tables straight. Each table had a single ticket, but each seat had a specific color that I’d use to make sure I remembered everything that a single person ordered or asked me about. I actually use three versions of this pen, being the normal ballpoints in both the capped and clicky variety as well as the gel pen clickers. These are also fantastic for keeping track of various characters on a storyboard as you’re plotting out your stories. Each character can have a color and trust me when I say that helps.

Onwards to the Sharpie. Those who know me in person know that I love love love sharpies, and almost always have three or four at hand. I use the sharpie pens in many colors to handle my planners. (I use both a bullet journal and a passion planner, and color code things in each.) I use normal sharpies in all the colors for various speed writings that I do to work on plots and storylines. I use the highlighters during editing phases, along with the pens. I also use the highlighters in my physical copies of Writer’s Market that I buy, it allows me to mark the publishers and agents that I think I might want to look into for the possibility of traditional publication.

 

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Zebra F-301:  http://www.amazon.com/Zebra-Stainless-Retractable-Pen-27104/dp/B002VL8H5G

Zebra G-301: http://www.amazon.com/Zebra-Stainless-Retractable-Pen-41312/dp/B002JG7736

Papermate Inkjoy (clicker): http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Mate-Retractable-Ballpoint-Assorted/dp/B00PZ9IR24

Papermate Inkjoy (capped):  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0067Y5KWG

Papermate Inkjoy Gel: http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Mate-Assorted-14-Pack-1951636/dp/B019QBOG3U

Sharpie Pens: http://www.amazon.com/Sanford-Sharpie-Assorted-12-Pack-1802226/dp/B005LU2QAQ

Sharpie Markers: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpie-Fine-Tip-Permanent-24-Pack-Assorted/dp/B0003WN0DO

Sharpie Highlighters: http://www.amazon.com/Sharpie-Fine-Tip-Permanent-24-Pack-Assorted/dp/B0003WN0DO

Truthful Thursdays 0001

Okay, so, TRUTHFUL THURSDAYS.

This week’s Truthful Thursday is going to be about why I was silent for ages. If you’ve been around for a while, or read back in the archives, my TERRIBLE MUNDANE JOB as an old person caretaker was considerably short staffed. And I was expecting them to stay short staffed until at least mid-march. Well here it is, partway through May, and we’re finally staffed correctly. Well, mostly. I had put in a two weeks’ notice of resignation about two weeks ago.

I have been working two jobs nearly daily since the end of March, and am so glad that it’s over. While I will miss some of the people I took care of, I honestly won’t miss the job at all. Most importantly, I’m glad to have a Monday through Friday job where the schedule doesn’t change on a whim. It’s not as much money as I’ve been making, but I expect to be able to get some serious writing done from here on out. (Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my shit in gear and actually get a publishing schedule locked down and going.)

I now have this lovely mundane job that allows me a full 40 hours a week, I can pay my bills and it’s closer to home as it stands now. This awesome mundane job allows me a bit of down time, where I’ve got nothing actually going on during the shift but can’t leave the desk. I’ll be setting up a schedule of how I’m going to be doing things (writing, studying, research, etc) during each of my shifts once I’ve gotten the hang of how the actual shift is going to run. (I’m currently studying French on Duolingo and working through math on Khan Academy – and I’m planning on dedicating at least an hour a day to each once I’m settled.) I’m hoping to be fluent enough in French by the end of the summer to go ahead and purchase and read a couple of books that I’ve wanted for ages and ages.

Remember, for TRUTHFUL THURSDAYS, you can always ask me a question. Put questions in the comments below, send them to me on twitter, comment them on Instagram. I will answer as many questions as I can in 500 words. (This will probably be 2 or 3 questions at a time.)

 

Technical Tuesday 0001

Woo, looks like I’m on track now doesn’t it? (I’ll tell you a secret, I wrote at least two blog posts in a row on Monday.)

So, onwards to TECHNICAL TUESDAY!

Technical Tuesdays are for discussing the actual work of writing. And today, I’m going to tell you what I’m currently learning and finding quite useful.

STORY STRUCTURE.

So far, I’m learning a lot from K.M. Weiland over at https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com, and honestly, what I’ve learned from her is seriously helping me out with my steampunk story (Of Mage Lights and War Machines). In fact, she’s made me realize that it’s quite possible that in order to get everything done, it may need to be more than one book. This is quite seriously news to me, and quite possibly news to the person who’s been my go to person for exercising my brain.

You can find everything that K.M. Weiland says about story structure at this >LINK<. If you’re unsure about her methods, pick up her free podcast series about story structure, and download her free ebook on the subject. Free things don’t hurt your budget, and you never know, you might learn some things in the process.

–NOTE: I HIGHLY SUGGEST HER PODCAST, I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO IT LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW.–