Redirect

Hi! This is my last post. All new posts will be at http://5-Rings.com/blog so please update your bookmarks.

(It’s still a little messy over there. Pretty soon I’ll have a post up about what I’ve been doing these past few weeks.)

Prev: 8 Rules to Beginning a Story | Next: http://5-Rings.com/blog

8 Rules to Beginning a Story

As I’ve been writing scenes and posting wordcounts, I’ve gotten away from something important: How did I come up with this stuff, anyway?
After all, wasn’t the whole point of this blog to share the creative writing process?

“Where is your story supposed to start, really?” is one of the toughest questions to answer. Some people try to oversimplify the answer.

Holly Lisle is one of those people. “Beginnings are endings,” she says. She believes that beginnings always present the protagonists with problems they are ill-equipped to handle. The ending should be just like the beginning, only the protagonists should’ve learned over the course of the story how to properly deal with those exact same problems. If that’s not the case, she suggests you might’ve started at the wrong place. Makes sense, right?

But I don’t buy it. My favorite stories usually raise the stakes until the protagonists are faced with much more difficult problems than they could’ve ever imagined at the beginning. Characters change. Emotionally, mentally, and physically.

While they’re travelling, the world around them shouldn’t stay static, either. It changes and grows.

Imagine a story where a boy, who gets kicked around by a bully, stumbles through a portal in his school locker to a magical land where he learns how to fight and stand up for himself. Then, when he returns back to his world all ready to kick some butt, it turns out the bully slipped on soap in the shower and died. lol.

Liar, liar

I sat down and got everything set up to continue writing my short story. And (Wouldn’t you know it?) I couldn’t get my mind off of Five Rings.

Well, one thing lead to another. I ended up with five more scenes for my book. And the experience was orgasmic. The words were flowing from the wellspring of narration, and certain moments exploded off the page. It was like playing one of those massive pipe organs found in vampire movies.

The dizzying world of words

There’s so many words. Sooo many. I come across words I’m not 100% sure of the meaning of every day. It’s kind of pathetic — I pick up a book, I read a few lines, then I have to put down the book in order to look up a word or phrase I wasn’t sure of.

I mean, sure, I might’ve heard these words before, but I can’t rely solely on context clues to define words I might have to use when I write. Guesswork could end up making me look like a total idiot.

Some words are just silly — words that end up making the author sound stupid, like he’s trying too hard to sound scholarly, or like he’s exploiting the built-in thesaurus feature in Microsoft Word. Fortunately, I can tell the difference, and I can do without those.

Scenery

I’m feeling guilty watching people type 50k words in a month, so I wrote a few more scenes. :P

1st – Lhasa joins up with Shanung, Eth, Mourn, Cyronil, and Marrow. They leave Shiira, sneaking out Lhasa who, since he is a nameless, cannot legally cross gates within the gates system, effectively becoming a rat.

2nd – This scene depicts what happened from Cirellio’s point of view within the relic house, and how Nevius died.

3rd – This is the heated argument between Cirellio and Morikel.

Here comes a candybar scene! ^__^

WC: 11,265

Prev: Another emotional hit | Next: The dizzying world of words

Another emotional hit

Wow. I just wrote two very important scenes that ended up changing the lives of Shanung, Mourn, Cyronil, Eth, and Marrow in very profound ways. What’s wonderful is that the event tugs at heartstrings quite a bit. I remember this particular part making me blink out a few tears when it first came to me.

A new character is also introduced, a small ‘nameless’ boy from the 9th satrapy (the wall) who goes by ‘Lhasa’ (which means ‘place of the gods’ in Tibetan).

What’s funny about the name is it immediately reminded “G” of a certain Tibetan dog breed. LOL. Well, hopefully the character will be endearing enough to make readers forget about lhasa apsos. :P

+763
Total: 10,494

Prev: Pinin’ for good writer blogs | Next: Scenery

Pinin’ for good writer blogs

Hi all!
Some news: I took the time last night to get the wordpress.org software working on 5-Rings.com ^__^

So if you’d like to visit the mess or see how things are coming along, just head to http://www.5-Rings.com/wordpress

Also, I’d really, really like it if some of you could share your favorite writer blogs. I hope you don’t mind me asking.

I currently keep up with everything that’s over there on the right far too easily. All honesty, I’d like more to read.

Prev: A pillar of smoke | Next: Another emotional hit

A pillar of smoke

Two more scenes.

In the first, Cauinn is at the Feast of the Eight. She finds herself thinking about Cirellio and, in particular, his unusual Fatalist religion. People dine, music is performed, games are played, drinks are passed, speeches are spoken, the children of the third culture make general asses of themselves, and, later in the night, there’s a commotion about the crowd.

The rooftops

The location page got a hefty update. The characters page got a minor one (I’m going to update that more, soon). Since I came up with a lot of those names on-the-fly, feedback is most definitely welcome. Especially if anything I named there also happens to be the name of a rare foot disease, or whatever.

Anyway, the next scene is when I start to coordinate the groups of characters I’ve introduced.

There’s traditional Shiirati music as a backdrop; heavy rhythmic drum beats echoing through the city due to the festivites.

There’s Cauinn—along with nearly the entire population of the city—at the Feast of the Eight. She still has Cirellio’s lock of hair and is waiting patiently for him.

There’s the guards patrolling every city street.

There’s Cirellio sneaking through the city.  

Happy NaNoWriMo!

I’m sure a lot of you are pounding out words per minute for National Novel Writing Month. This year’s the first year I could’ve joined up (I didn’t even know what NaNoWriMo was, this time last year). I didn’t join up this year, though, because I’m taking my own slower-than-nano pace at Five Rings, but making solid progress none-the-less, and I have a lot of real life going on, too. Excuses, I know. I actually had a NaNo book idea, too…

I suppose I can make any month a NaNo month. If I wanted to be really hardcore, I could use February :D

But anyway, I wish all of you luck racing to 50k words. I’ll be cheering you on here. From the sidelines. Where it’s safe.

And I’ll be working on my 5-Rings.com website.

And I’m going to get my characters and locations pages updated before proceeding with posting more scene summaries. I’ve been putting it off.

Prev: What the letter said | Next: The rooftops

What the letter said

Shanung has a meeting with some of his most trusted members. There’s Mourn, a woman of the ‘third-culture’ (a group of rebellious young Shiirati that dislike the old traditions they were raised on). There’s Cyronil, her boyfriend that she indoctrinated into the third-culture. There’s Eth, an analytical, highly intelligent man who’s only ambition is to study literature abroad. And, of course, there’s Marrow.

Writing dialogue between five people was quite a challenge. In fact, I used to rewrite this particular scene for practice over and over again. So really, this is a very familiar scene to me, and this version is a re-re-re-re-rewrite. It feels almost as polished as my short story.

Letters delivered

I’ve read this before—and I should have suspected it would come naturally like they said—but I felt like an average person looking into some sort of glass room full of untouchable writers each time I’d read it. The idea was a pleasant, comforting thought for me. But it felt too alien, like it was doubtful it would ever come into play. After all, I was merely a beginning writer.

But writing routinely, even just a few times a week (as I have been doing), really does make the words flow more freely. And before too long, you actually start to feel like writing the next part of your book without having to view a cavalcade of motivational posters; You start getting genuinely excited about all the fantastic possibilities that will come from you sitting down in front of that keyboard.

Stars

Cirellio enters Shiira, ties off his horse and gets hydrated. He wanders the city until he finds his target, a building called a ‘relic house’, which is much like a city museum.

Before long, people start flocking south to prepare for the Feast of the Eight, but a woman appears to be following him.

No matter how many turns he takes, she keeps pursuing. When he finally lets her catch up, it turns out her name is Cauinn, a mystic. A Legionnaire.

She can tell he’s a thief right away and disapproves of his lifestyle. He doesn’t think much of mystics, either.

Happy Birthday To Me!!!

Yep, it’s my B-Day. I’m twenty-nine years old now—just one more year ’til I have to start claiming I’m ‘young-at-heart’.

Anyway, G got me a lovely present: http://www.5-Rings.com

There’s nothing there right now. Nothing but liquid-concentrated potential. Am I allowed to squee? ^___^

Prev: The assassin and the guardian angel | Next: Stars

The assassin and the guardian angel

Scene 7 cont’d: Originally I had the last scene and this part merged together as one scene. I was thinking of splitting them, but that’s no good to do this early in the book—this scene is the first real emotional hit and the reader might be like “Okay… so why are we paying attention to these two again? When do we get back to Cirellio?” So this scene needs to weather it through to the hit. As long as I write it quick and interesting, the story shouldn’t lose its footing.

Asyria releases her shielding, opening up the floodgates for the emotions to pass between her and whoever is on the other side of her thread. It turns out to be an older woman, horribly tortured, miserable, panicked, and abused.