Chapter 31 is going a bit weird, but then maybe it's a good weird. Another character might die (but I'm not sure he should, maybe badly injured). Still didn't take the time to flow in Chapter 30 so I haven't updated the counter.
Ever wanted to know what to call a bunch of ghosts? Wonder no longer. Wondermark with an excellent table of Supernatural Collective Nouns. Probably not gospel, but certainly good for a laugh. Although I personally like "a rage of orcs" and "a flurry of yeti." Although "an exigency of wendigoes" is growing on me. (Grokked from Jay Lake).
Writing Excuses releases their podcast on How to Write Without Twists. One of the things I had planned on with this book was a fairly straight plot. We may swerve from side to side, but it's a fairly straight "we start here, and end over there" concept. So, food for thought. I'm going for the "watch the interesting character grow/progress" and "watching people who are good at something doing it" (the satisfaction argument).
Mer Haskell talks about collaging here book. This is obviously a thing people do, not that I was aware of it. I don't know, to me (and it may be my degree talking here) it feels a little too much cat waxing (me, I'd do 500 thumbnail sketches, but that's me). But you know what, if it helps you (and it seems to have helped Mer) it's definitely worth it. I know people who create whole notebooks filled with images for their novel. They include images of the characters, pictures of what they'd wear (includes catalog descriptions), pictures of their ideal living space, where they've vacationed (or liked to), all sorts of things. That might have helped me, I don't know.
World Fantasy San Jose is over which means it's time to get my membership for World Fantasy Columbus. That's just down the road from us. Also, according to their website, registration goes up soon. An extra $25 will pay for some books, or at least a dinner out with friends. The year after that WF goes back to California. Hopefully I'll have a book to flog and can justify the expense. (Oh, and to the Columbus committee, hey, San Diego has their theme, would be nice if you posted yours already)
2 comments:
The blog for the creators of Leverage, they call the satisfaction argument "competence porn." How strange that watching people good at what they do is equated with sexually stimulating media.
Thanks for the linkies, we were discussing collective nouns at debate practice tonight.
How to Write Without Twists would be counter-intuitive for me: this year's NaNo novel is about con artists. Twists are required.
Cassie
Cassie, well my time at VP opened my eyes to the various levels of plot twists. Most of the noir books I've read have a straight forward progression. There's deceptions and all that, but there aren't the convolutions that are normal now.
And there's something about "competence porn" that people tend to like. Just like people like reading about jobs, they also like reading about competent people. A mutual blog host we both read had a fairly decent book that involved an overly competent protag. The detective genre is lousy with them. Now the other books I have on tap have some twists and churns.
And glad I could help out with the collective nouns.
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