Reconstruction (Revision)

This is a picture of the new intersection by my house. It really looks fantastic. I know, it’s hard to get excited about a road intersection but you have to keep in mind that this busy section of road has been undergoing construction for about a year and it has disrupted all our lives. They expanded the lanes -- completely resurfaced the entire stretch of road and then repainted all of it. It got me thinking how this is a good analogy of building a story. Originally this was a two lane road, with lots of pot holes and patches. Now it is a beautiful multilane road with smooth blacktop surfaces and fresh paint. It looks remarkably different and the traffic flow is substantially better.

Inspirations to Get in Your Character's Head

     In case you missed it, I finished the 1st draft of the WIP.   You get to go on this journey with me as I move to this next phase, the rewriting phase.


     I have two main POV characters, and they are as different as night and day.  For the first pass I've decided that I am going to go back through and stay with one character's story line to the end of the book just to stay in their head and get their voice right and try to tighten up their perspective.  I have a little helper to get me in the right mindset -- it's called music.  =)

More Cowbell!

If you haven’t seen the classic skit on Saturday Night live, here is a link.  I think it’s apropos to what I want to talk about this week.  It’s all about adding the right components to your story as you go along.  Maybe not quite that much cowbell, but definitely more.   It may not be quite as important on the first draft, but it really needs to be paid attention to in the rewrite phases.   If you’re an aspiring writer you really should be listening to Writing Excuses.  They have a real knack for presenting material in a way that is easy to understand and provides some great instruction.   They just added the wonderful Mary Robinette Kowal to their permanent team and this week’s episode was about Internal Motivations.  She is a great add and she has a fascinating take on how to write and is very good at clearly describing how she thinks about it.