Writing Prompts

In order to get myself to post more, I'm giving myself assignments!  I'm choosing prompts with I will post the first week of each month and will be writing to them over the course of the month.  As today is the 7th, I'm starting at the tail end of the week, but hey--it's a start.

Why prompts?  I love writing exercises. They push me a little bit, get me out of my standard train of thought, but I don't feel that I need to write anything more than a snippet at a time.  If they lead to a short story, good.  If they don't--so what?  They're fun, they can help work out knots in one's main WIP, develop a skill that needs a little work, and I never feel my time is wasted on them.

So there are three more weeks in February.
Here are 9 prompts:

1. A character out of place, new to a city/town/time/planet
2. Describe, in detail, a single room in a manner that conveys the emotional state of the POV character.
3. Enemies, alone, trapped in a situation where neither can kill each other or do one another any real harm--what happens?
4. Construct a scene with dialogue alone, that still gives a sense of setting/place.
5. Action scene with an unskilled main character, out of depth
6. Escape from a magical institution (temple, school, estate) by a non-magical character
7. Best friends learn something about each other that could change the nature of their relationship, and cannot tell each other what they know, while in a situation forced to interact socially (either privately, or in public).
8. Magical being loses ability and is forced to live among humans--but telling the story from the perspective from an unsuspecting human.
9. Princess in a tower: refuses to believe she deserves the imprisonment, but she does (the POV of a villain! hard for me).

If you like any of these and want to use them, feel free! I just came up with them, so there's no site to quote or anything.  But, if you do, I'd love to read them, so be sure to let me know.

I will also be open to any prompts you might have for me for March.

Thinking about Nano

Nano is a little ways off.  But I thought it'd be good to start thinking about it.  So... I am.


What happened last time I tried Nano?

1) I loved it

2) The story got really weird by the time I was hitting the end, and that made me stall.

3) I chose something off of my main world, and as such, I think the characters had even more control than usual.

So what am I thinking of doing differently?

Rewriting an old story.  Ten years ago I finished the rough draft of my first novel.  While the writing and storyline eventually led the thing to live on a shelf, I've kind of built up a history for Don-Yin.  Recently, that history has changed. I see it as one long story--something that each book, series, short story and vignette plays a part in exploring.

When one element changes along the way, I hit dominoes through the preset timeline.  It breathes new life into old ideas, and lets a story that went stale 10 years ago return as something completely different.

So I think I'm going to let Arrelle have another try at it. I will certainly plan thin gs out this time. Though, to be fair, much of it already is.

Her story and my current WIP is headed for a collision course, so I don't think working on both at the same time will be too much.

New Project Just For this Site!

All right, so awhile back I wanted to revamp my blog. I've gone through a load of different things I wanted to do with this page. Then, finally when I decided what I wanted to do: stress hit.

I am now working 3 part time jobs, and still writing. Unfortunately my writing is increasingly limited to non-fiction because that is what I can be paid for. Not that I'm currently making much, but it helps in the overall scheme of things. Also, even if it's product description s and web content it feels awfully good to get a few bucks for my writing.

A few months ago, before stress-out-craziness stole my life, I decided to do a fiction project for Writing Worlds. I had it all set, and then my map went vanishing into the chaotic swirl of paper piles on my desk.

So, I've rebooted. I have another project along the same lines. I am going to walk through the world-creation and then the writing. If I alternate between the two from post-to-post, forgive me. However, this will be my process, pure and simple.

NaNoWriMo

I did it. I signed up. I have been shifting back and forth between my epic fantasy and urban fantasy...with little progress on either. But because the latter has a simpler plot, I'm choosing it for my NaNoWriMo project.

No More False Starts

I've seriously had plenty of these in the last year. but over the course of the past week, I've begun gearing up. After all, in order to make a novel-in-a-month possible, there's a lot of prep work to do. Because I've chosen something I've been kicking around, I have relatively less world building than normal.

What I'm Doing Differently

I generally spend time thinking of characters. I go through false starts, world-building short stories that end up in various of incompletion, but advance my knowledge of world/characters and the many players in the plot.

Right now, I'm composing written character outlines/backgrounds. Usually this bit evolves with the writing process. But in attacking a novel in a month, I have to have all my cards out. If feels like I'm composing a cheat sheet. When the whole novel comes together over the next few weeks, it'll be more akin to arranging puzzle pieces than my usual creative flow. Feels a lot more practical, I'll give it that :P

If you want to see the character cheat sheets, I can post them :) Let me know if you're curious.

Who else is doing NaNoWriMo? If so...how is the novel prep process for the event different from your usual prep experience?

Drawing Board

Ok, not entirely going back to the drawing board. But I started Novel One with a dramatically detailed world. I thought I had everything planned to the enth degree. but there's nothing like work on a revision and fresh eyes to make me say to myself: "Woa! Hold up! What do I need here?"

I think I need more research. I need to figure out a few key things that will bring the background of the world to life, and I need to color the whole bit with magic. My process is going to be: read, read, read. I don't want my world to be a spot-on medieval world, so I think the technology and architecture and such that I wish to study will be a range of periods, pieced together on Don-Yin as needed.

First step will be to compose lists: first references and then of precise things I wish to impliment. Next will come the ways in which the cultural/socio-economic/magical components of the world influence the details. Then I back up and integrate the new and improved detail into the story.

Hopefully the logistics will be improved this way :(

I also have to world build for New Project... though that research will be geared toward mytth and history, more than technology and architecture ...

Well, hey... it's something!