The SFF Writing Check-in Corner

Woollybear

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:) LOL WM, I always forget to check in here but your conversation is delightful. Black Prince--That's lovely! Hope you found your stone.


Elsewhere in the accountability section I've been giving updates on my 'write every day' efforts. My mind is ragged atm, too many write-every-days in a row, which are actually rewrites/edits/polishes/revisions (not sure where this second draft falls). So today might be a brain rest day. Or a blog day. Yeah. A blog post. That's easy enough, and a break from the novel, should be done now and then to keep the blog from dying completely.

Hmmm. What else. I'm in a new critique group and am seeing a lot of turnover in the existing ones, with all the meetings now on zoom. This new one is a good fit for me. The old ones are still good as well, but this new one is exactly right for what I need at this point in this draft.

I love outlines, WM, though yeah, they're not much fun. I don't really find any part of this endeavor fun, from outline to publish, but I do find it satisfying to 'build' something I'm proud of.
 

Woollybear

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OOOhhhhh.

I tried to follow along, promise. Sorry for dropping the ball.
 

Woollybear

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It seems that one way to make a story more chewy (make the prose less simplistic, which is something I struggle with) is to take each line of a short paragraph and turn it into its own paragraph that digs in to the nitty gritty, be that a physical detail or an emotional response or a mulling/decision making process or another action or a contextualization or some other.

I realized this while reading The Vampire Lestat.

I turned my eyes to the large wooden chest that was partially hidden at the head of the coffin. It wasn't locked. Its rotted wooden lid fell almost off the hinges when I opened it.

And though the old master had said he was leaving me his treasure, I was flabbergasted by what I saw here. The chest was crammed with gems and gold and silver. There were countless jeweled rings, diamond necklaces, ropes of pearl, plate and coins and hundreds upon hundreds of miscellaneous valuables.

(continues in this vein.)

It's lush and imagined. Details but also the actions Lestat takes and his emotional perspective on it, told. I think a similar passage in my writing would start out as:

I opened the chest, and in shock found it full of treasure.

So, I'm reworking a chapter today trying to nudge some of my too-simple phrasings into something more richly and deeply drawn.
 
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WriteMinded

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@ Patty. You are describing some of my own struggles. Emotional responses I write heavily, maybe too heavily. Places and things, get little attention. Sparse, says my writer friend. I plump up the description in endless rewrites. Sigh.
 

RebekahP

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Howdy WM. I'm new to the site but I'll engage! esp bc I tried pantsing my novel & got to 35k where it died. I'm planning to give outlining a go this week. May I ask, how do you approach your outlining? What have you found effective? (and how's it going?)
 

The Black Prince

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Outlining - or planning as I call it - is simply writing out the story in bullet points to get the whole journey clear in your mind before wasting too much time guessing.

You will still pants along the way - that just happens and keeps the whole thing fresh. But writing (for me) is so much easier when I have a roadmap already laid out.
 

armgrab

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Right now, I'm working on editing my current manuscript. The latest version is at 104K words and I'm trying to get it down below 100K. I'm pleased to report that I managed to eliminate ~1500 words today. Seems like a weird thing to brag about, but putting words on page has never been an issue for me. Making those words sound good, on the other hand...
 

WriteMinded

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Outlining? Haha. Well, I don't usually do that. This time, however, I'm giving it a try. I use an old writing program that makes it easy to roughly outline. Chapter, Plot Points, and then I just type in what is supposed to happen in a given scene. My problem is that I am not used to the planning. I always know how a book starts and how it ends. Getting from start to finish has always been a mystery that is solved, albeit slowly and painfully, along the way.
 

WriteMinded

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Struggling with a chapter after struggling with the previous chapter. Seems that is what I do best, unless you count avoiding the wip. I do that really well too.
 

khanwong

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At 22,948 words on the wip I started at the beginning of August! A little behind my goal, but getting there.
 

litdawg

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Revving up my work on a sequel that's stalled at 24k. I've grown it a bit by revising my way through it. I'm at the point where I need to forge new territory and am considering a critique partner. I need something to help me maximize the scraps of time I can give to writing in between two jobs, four kids, and a pandemic.
 

Astropolis

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I write classical hard SF with possible technology. I've self published two novels and I'm working on a third.
 

sandree

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I’m beginning to outline my third book as I just self published Book 2. For the first two books, I wrote scenes as they came to me and worried about the structure of the story later. It was a slow process. Cobbling the scenes together with transitions and figuring out the timeline were a bit of a hot mess. So this time, I’m attempting to visualize the whole story before I start writing. I’ll have to see if my subconscious will cooperate with this approach.
 

Gatteau

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I’m trying some serious world-building for the first time, in service of the project I plan to work on in November for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I usually just jump in at the beginning and have only a vague idea of what will constitute the middle and a minuscule glimpse of the end, but since this one will be time-travel focused, and the “present” will be at least 50 years in the future, I thought it best to actually sort out the timelines and various rules which I will force myself to adhere to before I start. Hopefully that will keep me focused in the long run, and avoid some of the logic traps inherent to time-travel.

But I’ve now sat here all day doing a whole lot of nothing. Sigh. Turns out it’s kinda hard to fully visualize a whole society and technology that doesn’t exist yet. Who knew?
 

WriteMinded

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Revving up my work on a sequel that's stalled at 24k. I've grown it a bit by revising my way through it. I'm at the point where I need to forge new territory and am considering a critique partner. I need something to help me maximize the scraps of time I can give to writing in between two jobs, four kids, and a pandemic.
I'm surprised you have time to sneeze . . . or do you?

I’m beginning to outline my third book as I just self published Book 2. For the first two books, I wrote scenes as they came to me and worried about the structure of the story later. It was a slow process. Cobbling the scenes together with transitions and figuring out the timeline were a bit of a hot mess. So this time, I’m attempting to visualize the whole story before I start writing. I’ll have to see if my subconscious will cooperate with this approach.
The ol' pantser vs outliner game. I've always had difficulty outlining so I just didn't do it, and I always run into the problems you've noted. Once the first draft is done it's a nightmare fixing the timeline.

I’m trying some serious world-building for the first time, in service of the project I plan to work on in November for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I usually just jump in at the beginning and have only a vague idea of what will constitute the middle and a minuscule glimpse of the end, but since this one will be time-travel focused, and the “present” will be at least 50 years in the future, I thought it best to actually sort out the timelines and various rules which I will force myself to adhere to before I start. Hopefully that will keep me focused in the long run, and avoid some of the logic traps inherent to time-travel.

But I’ve now sat here all day doing a whole lot of nothing. Sigh. Turns out it’s kinda hard to fully visualize a whole society and technology that doesn’t exist yet. Who knew?
I know what you mean. I haven't had to do that yet, but the next book in my series calls for it. Already I'm worrying. The setting is not a problem. I see it clearly. The people are not a problem. The social structure is the bugaboo.

My series has, thus far, one time-travel event, but it is a big jump from current times to 5th century. There may be more in the future, but - haha - I'm a pantser so who knows?

@ Astropolis, sandree, Gatteau: You might want to add links below your signature to where your books can be purchased.
 

MB DeGeorge

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I'm on book 3 of my first SF series! The first was written late last year, then book two was finished end of April, and now I'm about 60k into the 1st draft. Planning six (maybe 7) in the series. I'm taking a huge swallow of air before I jump back into writing again tonight.
 

greendragon

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It seems that one way to make a story more chewy (make the prose less simplistic, which is something I struggle with) is to take each line of a short paragraph and turn it into its own paragraph that digs in to the nitty gritty, be that a physical detail or an emotional response or a mulling/decision making process or another action or a contextualization or some other.

I realized this while reading The Vampire Lestat.



It's lush and imagined. Details but also the actions Lestat takes and his emotional perspective on it, told. I think a similar passage in my writing would start out as:

I opened the chest, and in shock found it full of treasure.

So, I'm reworking a chapter today trying to nudge some of my too-simple phrasings into something more richly and deeply drawn.
Hey! I recognize that book cover! :) (waves) Can't wait until book two comes out. I really enjoyed betareading it!

I've got several projects going on. Too many for my tastes.

I have a 9-book historical fantasy series with a small press publisher. Each book is on a 5 year contract. As the first one came due last year, I had to fight to get the rights back. My publisher did NOT want to have one book self-published and the rest published with her. She insisted that I buy back the rights to all the books at once (about $2500). I insisted there was no such clause in any of the contracts, and had no interest in doing that. ($2500 would have been more than I've made in royalties on the entire series since inception). Finally, I had to pull in the mediators at SFWA, who looked over all the contracts, and agreed with me. She finally backed down and gave me what I originally asked for - as each book comes up for reversion, I can re-publish with new covers, new edits, etc. I'm also doing print and audio versions (she only ever did print on the first one and never did audio). So far, it's doing well, and book two is on pre-order to be released August 8th. Book three is due to come back to me in January, so that's on deck for revision soon.

I'm also working on an urban fantasy trilogy. Book one is in the latter stages of editing (Taming of the Few). Book two is just finished with the first draft (Much Ado About Dying). Book three is a glimmer in my NaNoWriMo eyes (All's Fae that Ends Fae). Still waffling about the series name. I'd settled on The Hidden Gods Series (the folks with magic are called the Unhidden and Irish Gods show up as characters at some point). However, I'm toying with a more Shakespearean name. Love's Labor's Found Series? A Midsummer God's Dream Series? The Winter's Gods Series? Don't know. Bleh.

And I'm in the editing stage of my Extreme Planning for Authors Workbook series. I'm breaking it into three workbooks at about 15K words each. Pre-writing, writing, and post-writing stages. It's all written, going through critique group, and then more editing.

I usually work on two to three projects at a time in various stages. I've got four right now and it's officially too many. Since Legacy of Truth (book 2 of my histfantasy series above) is on pre-order, that's MOSTLY done and done. I want to get closer to finishing another project before I start a new one.
 
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Morgan Morrow

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I currently have two works in progress, one is a story I've been struggling to write for more than a year and the other is the rough draft I wrote during NaNoWriMo and promised I would set aside for at least a month before I looked at it again.

I had a bit of an epiphany on WIP #1, but I'm having trouble actually adding the scenes and making the needed changes. I'm not sure if I need a few days of rest, or just some caffeine and a boost of motivation.
 

Capn_Lee

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I've got a few WIP projects going right now. The first is a short sci-fi story centring on ownvoice disabled experiences that I hope to submit to an anthology in January.

My other high priority project is a noneurocentric high fantasy novella that I started way back in 2016. It sat untouched on my computer for about 4 years before I decided to pick it up again this past NaNo. The first draft is about 3/4 finished, and I can’t wait to get it done and move on to editing (am I weird that I find editing exciting?).

My last ongoing WIP is a self-indulgent urban fantasy that I'm writing simply for my own enjoyment in-between other projects. I doubt I'll ever try to publish or even share this one. I'm writing it for an audience of me. XD
 
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DigitalScript

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Just finished the fourth draft of my first hard sci-fi novel! It's a cross between cyberpunk and political thriller. Now, I am waiting for feedback from some beta readers, but it is going slow. As a result, I started planning the second book, and wondering if I'm going to self-publish or try finding a publisher. Not sure yet which.
 

jjmacdonald

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I've had a story starting to take shape in my head. It's Sci-fi but has a very strong romance with a large dose of horror element mixed in.

I was wondering if anyone has experience with blending romance with horror? Not sure of the pacing/timing I would need between the two, if any. I'm not looking for a jump scare, but a slow creepy feel that comes and goes. I want to use the fear and tension it creates as conflict and something the characters need to overcome.

So just wondering where I'd look to do some research and get ideas.
Thanks
John