Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Writing Tip: Beware of Self-Indulgence
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Damn Those Weasel Words!
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain
Monday, July 9, 2012
Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand, of Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel
Okay, folks. Here's "Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand" of the novel Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel.
If you haven't read Chapter Three: The Secret Police State, it's here.
If you haven't read any of the preceding chapters, start with Chapter One: The Stash House.
I finished the first draft about an hour ago. Whew. That was a slog. There's still a lot that needs to be done. I know of one scene that I'm going to cut, and at least two scenes to add, but I wrote what will probably be the last sentence. Yea!
The fact that I finished the first draft means that I'll be posting these a lot more frequently. I was always worried that I was going to catch up to myself.
This chapter includes the First Pinch, which is where we see who the Antagonist is and begin to see what they can do. We see in what ways he opposes our Protagonist and some of his weapons. In this case, the Antagonist has a really big gun.
At the First Pinch, things start to get very serious for the Protagonist, our sniper chick Angel Day, and the casualties begin.
As I said, I'm done with the first draft, and there appear to be nine major chapters plus inter-scenes, like the Prologue: Swan Dive that I posted a while ago.
Thanks for reading!
If you haven't read Chapter Three: The Secret Police State, it's here.
If you haven't read any of the preceding chapters, start with Chapter One: The Stash House.
I finished the first draft about an hour ago. Whew. That was a slog. There's still a lot that needs to be done. I know of one scene that I'm going to cut, and at least two scenes to add, but I wrote what will probably be the last sentence. Yea!
The fact that I finished the first draft means that I'll be posting these a lot more frequently. I was always worried that I was going to catch up to myself.
This chapter includes the First Pinch, which is where we see who the Antagonist is and begin to see what they can do. We see in what ways he opposes our Protagonist and some of his weapons. In this case, the Antagonist has a really big gun.
At the First Pinch, things start to get very serious for the Protagonist, our sniper chick Angel Day, and the casualties begin.
As I said, I'm done with the first draft, and there appear to be nine major chapters plus inter-scenes, like the Prologue: Swan Dive that I posted a while ago.
Thanks for reading!
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Random Name Generators
I've mentioned a couple of times on Twitter lately that, if you know you're going to have to mass murder a bunch of characters, start with a lot of characters so you have some to choose from and some left over afterward.
But how do you name lots of characters?
Random name generators!
Some reasons to use random name generators:
Some of my favorites:
Behind The Name : One of my favorites. Includes first. middle, and last names, plus you can restrict the search by gender, by many, many ethnicities (Maori, Catalan, Provencal, Galician, Breten, Frisian, Czech, and Slovak, to name a few), and/or by other categories. Other categories include Goth (excellent for vampyres,) Greek myth, Hinduism, Ancient Celtic, Biblical, Literary, Kreatyve, Hillbilly, Hippy, and Transformer. Includes Native American names that are real names, not like "Little Foot Redfeather" or "Dances With Wolves." Does not have a Mexican ethnicity, which is odd. Also only gives you one name at a time.
Ultimate Random Name Generator : Another favorite. Can restrict search by gender and a list of some ethnicities, including Mexican. Gives you a long list of names rather than one at a time.
Let's face it, you don't have to carefully craft the names of minor characters, especially when they're just going to all die horribly in Chapter 7.
TK Kenyon
But how do you name lots of characters?
Random name generators!
Some reasons to use random name generators:
- Easier on your brain.
- Kinda fun.
- Easy to deliberately populate your book with a good mix of ethnicities and backgrounds.
- Hides your "naming tics," like some authors without knowing it name their characters only sweeping, romantic names, or names that only begin with the letters A-G, etc.
Some of my favorites:
Behind The Name : One of my favorites. Includes first. middle, and last names, plus you can restrict the search by gender, by many, many ethnicities (Maori, Catalan, Provencal, Galician, Breten, Frisian, Czech, and Slovak, to name a few), and/or by other categories. Other categories include Goth (excellent for vampyres,) Greek myth, Hinduism, Ancient Celtic, Biblical, Literary, Kreatyve, Hillbilly, Hippy, and Transformer. Includes Native American names that are real names, not like "Little Foot Redfeather" or "Dances With Wolves." Does not have a Mexican ethnicity, which is odd. Also only gives you one name at a time.
Ultimate Random Name Generator : Another favorite. Can restrict search by gender and a list of some ethnicities, including Mexican. Gives you a long list of names rather than one at a time.
Let's face it, you don't have to carefully craft the names of minor characters, especially when they're just going to all die horribly in Chapter 7.
TK Kenyon
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Selling Handcuffs, An Angel Day Novel. Chapter Three The Secret Police Stat
This is the third chapter, after the Background/SetUp chapter, which is Chapter Two: The Bat Cave. If you haven't read that one yet, I'll leave it up a little while longer.
If you haven't read Chapter One, an Ice Monster! scene, you can click here to read it now. It'll be posted for one more week, but then it will go away.
As always, these blog posts are rough drafts. I appreciate your comments a lot but, just so you know, this is pretty much how the novel comes out of my head, although I do clean up the commas. This prose will go through another very rigorous draft plus polishing before it sees the light of day.
If you haven't read Chapter One, an Ice Monster! scene, you can click here to read it now. It'll be posted for one more week, but then it will go away.
As always, these blog posts are rough drafts. I appreciate your comments a lot but, just so you know, this is pretty much how the novel comes out of my head, although I do clean up the commas. This prose will go through another very rigorous draft plus polishing before it sees the light of day.
The first 25% of your novel or story should set up your main character and show them as they are, with all their flaws and all their virtues. It should show the relationships that they have in place and introduce many of the major characters.
This chapter includes the start of the Big Plotline that will stretch over several of the novels in this series, as well as the start of this novel's Plotline. So far, this is a routine call-out for Angel, but that will change in the next couple of chapters. I'll probably have to shorten this chapter, mainly by line-edits, to get to the meat sooner.
Also, Angel convinces Tony of a lot of stuff during their conversation. I think she'll probably have to do more badly in this scene, because she still relies on violence to solve her problems. She's too logical and negotiates too much, now. She should do this badly, perhaps even make the situation worse, and she should consider all the violent ways that she could solve this problem, none of which will work, of course. This will probably be a major change in the second draft.
I will probably need to add some more characters to Bravo Team, the Phoenix PD's sniper team, and Alpha Team, the Phoenix PD's assault team, but I don't want to overwhelm the reader with 30 minor characters right at the beginning, either. A tip to other authors: when you're writing a book with a high body count, start with a lot of characters so you still have some left after the bloodbath.
This chapter includes the start of the Big Plotline that will stretch over several of the novels in this series, as well as the start of this novel's Plotline. So far, this is a routine call-out for Angel, but that will change in the next couple of chapters. I'll probably have to shorten this chapter, mainly by line-edits, to get to the meat sooner.
Also, Angel convinces Tony of a lot of stuff during their conversation. I think she'll probably have to do more badly in this scene, because she still relies on violence to solve her problems. She's too logical and negotiates too much, now. She should do this badly, perhaps even make the situation worse, and she should consider all the violent ways that she could solve this problem, none of which will work, of course. This will probably be a major change in the second draft.
I will probably need to add some more characters to Bravo Team, the Phoenix PD's sniper team, and Alpha Team, the Phoenix PD's assault team, but I don't want to overwhelm the reader with 30 minor characters right at the beginning, either. A tip to other authors: when you're writing a book with a high body count, start with a lot of characters so you still have some left after the bloodbath.
If you sign up for email updates (over there on the right side bar), you'll get an update when I post Chapter Four: Blood on the Sand.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Carl Sagan on Reading and the Freedom of the Mind
“Frederick Douglas taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”―Carl Sagan
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Quick Writing Tip: If You Have A Day When You Can't Write
Writing tip: If you don't have time to write for a day, at least read the last 1-2 scenes and do a light edit. Keeps your head in the game.
Today, The Kid was home from school for his first day of summer break. He didn't want to go to camp on his first day off. He wanted to stay home. Okay, I get that.
So we went to the library and a local bookstore. We got him The Adventures of Tintin at the library, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 at the bookstore. He reads the Diary and Big Nate books over and over, so they're worth the buy.
Then we came home, ate lunch, played chess, I exercised, then more chess, other stuff, supper, getting ready for bed, and he went to bed at about 9:30pm, which is late as all dickens for him.
During that time, I got some semi-private time, like while I was sitting next to him while he played his 17 minutes of Wii time. I'm not a total wuss about my writing environment, but sitting next to a Kid who is fighting his enemies with a virtual lightsabre is not conducive to writing first draft prose.
So, I edited. It kept my head in the game. I'm still inside the novel. This novel.
You do what you can.
TK
Today, The Kid was home from school for his first day of summer break. He didn't want to go to camp on his first day off. He wanted to stay home. Okay, I get that.
So we went to the library and a local bookstore. We got him The Adventures of Tintin at the library, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 at the bookstore. He reads the Diary and Big Nate books over and over, so they're worth the buy.
Then we came home, ate lunch, played chess, I exercised, then more chess, other stuff, supper, getting ready for bed, and he went to bed at about 9:30pm, which is late as all dickens for him.
During that time, I got some semi-private time, like while I was sitting next to him while he played his 17 minutes of Wii time. I'm not a total wuss about my writing environment, but sitting next to a Kid who is fighting his enemies with a virtual lightsabre is not conducive to writing first draft prose.
So, I edited. It kept my head in the game. I'm still inside the novel. This novel.
You do what you can.
TK
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