Hello, everybody. Time for some pain. I'm almost done with Camp Nano and I thought I'd write one more blog post about revision before the month is over. I was going to title this "Killing Your Babies" but I didn't want to get in trouble with anyone (people just willfully misunderstand writers, don't they?). No, I'm not talking about killing your characters, though that can be part of the process too. Your darlings can be anything about your story that you particularly like--scenes, descriptions, witty dialogue, a clever allusion--anything, in fact, that you particularly DON'T want to get rid of. |
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This is a ghost post by Phillip Callaway, a friend from my helpful army of ghost writers. (Very fitting that she chose to write about death, isn't it?) Thanks, Phil!
First of all, this is my first blog post, so it might be kind of disjointed and messed up. Secondly, I’m not very good at staying on track when I’m writing, so this might go a lot of places and contain a lot of random info. Thirdly, I hope you enjoy!
We’ve all been there. Some character -- the hero, the hero’s best friend, or just some random dude we were really fond of -- is suddenly and epically (or not, in the really tragic case) killed off by the ruthless author. It happens all the time. But, as much as we miss him, if you think about it, the story probably wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable if the author had seen fit to save him. If you’re anything like me, you can think of a movie, book or TV show where one of the characters died and then turns up later, saying, ‘Lol, Jk.’ It’s, quite frankly, annoying. Like you decided that the author didn’t want a ton of fans (or not) showing up at his door and trying to commit homicide.
Since I'm revising a story this month for Camp Nano, I thought it was time for a post about the revision process. So when revising your story, here's the number 1 thing to remember.
Since I'm revising my space travel story, I decided to put together a space travel adventure kit--everything you need to have a truly spacey adventure out in the galaxy.
You can use my ideas if you want to create your own kit, or you can do what I did--ransack your dad's junk drawer and the kitchen cabinets for interesting items. What does this have to do with writing? Inspiration, of course! If you've tried doing Nanowrimo you're very familiar with the feeling of being sucked dry of ideas and still needing 1,000 words to make your word count for the day. This is one fun way to immerse yourself in your story world. I had so much fun with this that I'll probably do more in future. I can foresee an essential pirate's kit and spy's kit, for instance...
In Camp Nano this month, there's a bit of friendly rivalry over which "camp" is the best: Camp Plot, Camp Setting, or Camp Character. I thought at first choosing would be easy, but after a bit of reflection I'm not so sure.
Camp Character Here's where I started. After all, a story's only as strong as its characters, right? Who wants to read a story--no matter how good--if you don't care what's going to happen to the people it's about? Yes, characters are important. I love the Jeeves and Wooster stories even though the plots, while fun, do tend to be a bit predictable. The beauty of those books is that it doesn't matter how many times Wooster gets into a scrape and Jeeves has to pull him out of it, I never get tired of hearing about those two. And don't forget Gussie Finknottle, Honoria Glossop, Aunt Agatha, and the rest of the grisly gang.
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AuthorA. M. Potter Some other great blogs...
Chasing Daisies Go Teen Writers Helping Writers Become Authors To the Barricade! Life of Lily Archives
November 2017
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