Wednesday World Building!

I'll add a picture later :P

My story building is partially affected by High School History teacher who was convinced that geography affected history. I tended to like this concept.

All of my stories start as maps. My knowledge of geography is rudimentary...

Mountains follow faults, which may/may not be near a continental shelf...some distance from shoreline. Too many mountains produce desert on the opposite side do to the rain shadow effect. There is more percipitation at higher altitudes which lead to the formation of rivers. Where water pools, lakes can be found. Trees follow water. Rivers dump into ocean.

And natural barriers (mountains, rivers and forests) produce national boundaries.

Technique Tuesday: Methodology

So I fussed with templates yesterday, worked and went to class. And didn't post :( Sorry! As you can see--no change yet. It probably won't happen till Thursday. And then Thursday, Friday, and next week, I might try out a few different looks--so input would be helpful! I'm having such a hard time making up my mind :(

Anyhow! Tuesdays will be dedicated to the the hows and whys of technique--sentence, structure, word choice, because I believe that finding a conscious voice is the discovery of your own unique methodology.

What do I mean?

Voice is how you structure your style. But style is not an unconscious thing, it is honed through craft. Which, generally, requires years of revising and adjusting.

Like anything in our lives, we have to know why we write as we do. What do we consider affective and why? I want to exploit the thought processes that lead to the common "young writer" issues with sentence structure, plot and character composition by determining how we confuse poor writing for good writing and why.

Then through rethinking, re-approaching and rewriting we can fix drafts without wholly abandoning them. But then, I'm stubborn, and my methodology will likely be apparent in these posts.

My order:

Write--have reader/writer group examine the "big stuff" plot, character, etc...
Make changes when draft is complete and has sat for a month.
Take adjusted version to critique group for more thorough analysis, and let the critiques sit till 2nd draft is complete.
Let 2nd draft sit for a month-ish, and then apply adjustments identified by critique group members.
Send 3rd draft to final readers, who look for grammar, punctuation, etc. Fix that stuff last, and prepare to submit!

My methodology allows me to process what my critique group says into a manageable form. Some critiques are so detailed, I find it hard to know where to start implementing the changes. But I don't want to use everything. So concentrating big-to-small issues will help me know what I'm doing.

That will be the structure of these entries, too. I will start with plot, character, setting, and so forth then work down to sentence structure and word choice.

It might be a little too much of an insight to my thoughts :P And that *could* be scary, but let's go with it!

On the Quest for a Blog-Makeover

A few months back, I started to realize that I wanted a new look for this blog. I also want to tackle things a little more regularly...and consistently. However the quest seemed to take up my blogging time...so I'm posting even though I do not have the perfect new template installed.

What's gonna be new:

I am going to have daily posts on the following topics:

Media Mondays
Technique Tuesdays
Wednesday World Building
Theme Thursdays
Fiction Fridays


On Mondays I'll talk television, movies, books, etc.

Tuesday and Wednesday are pretty self-explanatory.

Thursday's themes will deal with academic ideas, and how to implement them consciously, or recognize them in your writing or in books you are reading. The first I'm going to address is Anthropology because i know it best :P Not to sat that a BA makes me an expert--far from it, but i am more familiar with Anthropological discourse than--oh, say--Philosophy or Psychology.

Fiction Fridays--fiction that will be blog only, based on the world that I am developing on Wednesdays.

So I hope to get the new template set up tomorrow :P

Here goes!