d1/38,000 words

I am revising some secondary features of my world that I feel overlap too much with other works. It is a strange thing, when I came up with these ideas 5 years ago, I thought they were quite original. However, I recently re-read a few books I had enjoyed many (many) years ago, and I was shocked to see some of the themes there have made their way into my work without enough creative differences to justify themselves. At first I was panicked, but stepping back, the overlaps are with non-essential filler in the world-building, so I am removing them.

Goodbye ‘Deimos’.

d1/26,000 words

Although I have a decent chunk of words on paper right now, most of my effort so far has been outlining. I wrote some discovery scenes and backstory scenes, to get the hang of the characters, and I jumped ahead and wrote a couple of the scenes I am excited about. Other than that, I am going through the mechanical process of dividing the action into chapters, assigning POVs, and checking the logistics (scene-sequel, and motivation-reaction units) to make sure when I write out these scenes, they work. And they go somewhere.

It sounds boring and technical I am sure, but I am actually loving it. I create a possible story vector, then just pull it this way and that, add characters, twist, what-if, until I end up with something cool. Then I break down that something cool into its distinct parts, making note of where each character is in their arc, and try to figure out exactly what part to show in a given chapter.

One thing this process has clarified for me is the difference between an epic fantasy, and a single novel. I am writing the latter, but my original outline was meant for the former. 6 POVs is too much. WAY too much. So I’ve narrowed it down to just two: alternating between Nick and Evaya. I’ve also trimmed the plot arc from 4 parts to just 3. I have part 1 outlined in detail, and part 2 and 3 outlined in general. Time to start writing these out.

d1/15,000 words

To help me visualize my characters, I used a girl on fiverr.com to draw them out based on my general descriptions of clothing, build, skin/eye color, etc. I LOVE the results! It is so cool to see them rendered. As a novice writer, it makes it so much easier for me to write with these visuals. I’ve posted the artwork on the homepage.

d1/0 words

Ok, it is time. I am doing this. So I had this screenplay — a shitty screenplay — that sat on my desk for a couple years. Then I tried to make it into a game with my buddy, but that fell by the wayside. All told, it is about 5 years since I did the worldbuilding on this thing, but I still want to make something out of it.

So here I go. I bought Scrivener today, and loaded it up with my notes and maps and character bios and location deascriptions. I am starting to outline my story arc and character arcs, drawing from the screenplay, but with massive restructuring. I’ll post updates here as I go!