Young Writers Society

Is this a story or just an update on what is going on with your book?

Just an update.

If you want to find the story, I have a link to chapter 1 in my signature.

Update:

I actually wrote some of Tears today! I was very happy with myself. I really hate the beginning of Tears right now - it moves so slow, but I have promised myself not to go back and revise until I finish it. Therefore, I'm moving on. I'm placing my characters in the roles they should have achieved by now and moving forward - I'll have to lead them up to that when revising. *deep breath*

As for Flames, my editing of chatper 7 is coming along nicely. When I finish the next scene (which is going to be a blast!), I will post the beginning on YWS. I haven't gotte any comments on chapter 6 yet, but hopefully the presence of chapter 7 will prompt some and I haven't posted in a long time. I am debating between the chapter titles Kilandin and Black Chains for the chapter. Kilandin is a more practical name; whereas, Black Chains is more symbolic. However, chapter 6 had a very symbolic name: Cold, so I'm wondering if I should use a practical chapter name for chapter 7 as not to be overly symbolic.

I don't know. I'll let people read it and then have them give me some ideas. My favorite part of chapter 7 must be:

Strick sighed defeatedly and approached the innkeeper, digging in his cloak for any coins. “I apologize in advance for any inconveniences.”

“Oh, no! He’s no… inconvenience!” The innkeeper stuttered with a shake of his head, his eyes wide and unfocused.

Strick smiled. “Save your flattery. Trust me, he will be.”

Still in rough draft form, but it's fun.

*spoiler warning*

I think I mentioned this in the Parental Issues thread, but I am having a hard time deciding on some of my future plans for Tears. Some of them are not very 'clean', in a sense. They are not extremely explicit or anything, but there are some very disturbing moments and frightening themes. And I'm not sure how it will affect the readers I do get. I don't feel like my plans are necessarily 'wrong', just perturbing.

The new antagonist, Hiajan, is a very twisted man and he is rather 'obsessed' with Lusien to say the least. His goal in life is to hurt her the most he can in order to repay her for the blows she dealt him many years ago. At one point, she gets furious with the main group and I know Hiajan intercepts her when she runs away, but I don't know how far I should take him hurting her. Partly because I don't want to terrify any readers away. And party because I don't know how much she can take before she breaks. And partly because I am rather afraid to deal with such serious issues.

I have yet to decide

I think I have read too much Shakespeare lately.

And I have found my new favorite quote:

"Are you blind, Gietan? Whatever I adore I manage to spurn. Whatever I love I sentence to death. Whatever I touch I destroy! Were it not for my aching heart, I would choose not to love and then mayhap my life would rise from its shambles. For if I had chosen simply not to love, he would have lived,” she cried.

By the way, do I need commas after the 'whatever I blanks'?

Mmm...well, what I tend to do is, when I'm not sure where there should be commas or semi-colans, I read it to myself and remember where I, if I were reading it outloud, stopped to breathe. So for this...

"Are you blind, Gietan? Whatever I adore I manage to spurn. Whatever I love I sentence to death. Whatever I touch I destroy! Were it not for my aching heart, I would choose not to love and then mayhap my life would rise from its shambles. For if I had chosen simply not to love, he would have lived,” she cried.

I would probably turn that in to something like this:

Are you blind, Gietan? Whatever I adore, I manage to spurn; whatever I love, I sentence to death. Whatever I touch[*,] I destroy! Were not for my aching heart, I would choose not to love and then[*,] mayhap[*,] my life would rise from its shambles. (For) (I)if I had chosen simply not to love, he would have lived," she cried.

*I wasn't sure whether or not you'd want the commas there, or whether or not you'd want to change it around (like getting rid of the "for") the way I did. o.O Does that help any?

Writersdomain wrote:I think I have read too much Shakespeare lately.

And I have found my new favorite quote:

"Are you blind, Gietan? Whatever I adore I manage to spurn. Whatever I love I sentence to death. Whatever I touch I destroy! Were it not for my aching heart, I would choose not to love and then mayhap my life would rise from its shambles. For if I had chosen simply not to love, he would have lived,” she cried.

By the way, do I need commas after the 'whatever I blanks'?

From experience (with no basis in quoted grammar books, I'm afraid), I'd not use the commas. They would be comma-happy punctuation; stilt the flow of the thing.

(Ha, but the Shakespeare influence is in evidence. ^_^ ...though not painfully so.)


IMP

UPDATE!

Tears: I reached the turning point. Excerpt:

He cleared his throat. Setting his jaw in determination, Larckes stared down at the figure and announced in a deep voice. “I would ask a favor of you.”

The figure lifted his head and two eyes penetrated the shadows that lingered in the corners of the house. Frigid, swirling, they flashed with subtle recognition and a soft, mordant voice spoke out of the thick darkness. “You would ask a favor of a dead man?”

Still very rough as it had undergone absolutely no editing, but that's the end of the turning point in essence. ^_^

Flames: I'm having my Creative Writing teacher next year read Flames over the summer, so I have brought it upon myself to make it easier for her and divide Flames into better chapters as well as name the chapters. S, here is the product of my work:
(and there are no spoilers here as the only chapter name that pertains literally to the chapter is 'Rescue')

1.Sray-Valom
2.A Ruined Courtyard
3.Arillo (Copper Moon?)
4.How Far
5.The Speaking Stones of Syldameth
6.Cold
7.Kilandin/Black Chains
8.The Queen
9.Fairy Tales
10.Hiarnim
11.Shattered Walls
12.Brighter in the Light
13.Rescue
14.A Hopeless Cause
15.Sophie Pierce
16.Traitors in Disguise
17.Sisters
18.Hid
19.Eszrevel
20.Dance of Fire
21.Little One
22.Promises
23.Angels in the Shadows
24.Fool’s Plan
25.Heirs of Lecräesa
26.Embel
27.By Betrayal
28.Nightmares
29.To Run
30.Chivalrous Bandit
31.The Flames of Lecräesa
32.A Life Devoid of Pity
33.Violet Lines
34.What is Buried
35.Cutting New Flowers
36.Beautiful Shame
37.Lake Stone
38.Waters of Helplessness
39.Raining Arrows
40.This Triumph
41.Oceanstone
42.Red Water
43.Thorns and Roses
44.Blood Red
45.The Last Stricken Eszröv
46.The Nature of Mercy
47.Endings
48.Dare to Hope
49.Beads

My favorite name is Beautiful Shame. Any concern about any of the names?

Holy bejesus, that's cool. I swear, since I am no longer undead I will be scanning in all that goodly Lecraesa stuff, plus printing out the chapters I don't have.

Ooo, asking favors from dead men sounds like fun. Regan wants to try. Or maybe she already has.

Cal.

I cannot thank you enough, Cal. ^_^ You gotta love those dead men.

I feel the need to rant.

Writing Tears today I realized how extremely helpful telling yourself the situation of your story is; I was beginning the scene after that 'dead men' scene. I tend to use lots of conversation to develop characters, but my characters are very awkward around each other at the moment and there is a lot of tension, so none of the dialogue flowed and it was just bad.

So I scrapped the scene and decided to start over with a new idea. I wasn't sure what it would be, so I began 'talking to myself' in essence, telling myself which characters needed the most development still and who needed to be delved into. It really, really, really helped, and here is what I came up with.

*spoiler warning*

So, while Gietan and Nalien needed the most development, I ended up deciding on a Markus scene (or more a scene about Markus from Creiha's POV). In Flames, you see Markus a lot and get some glimpses into something beneath his optimism, but you never really understand why in the world he is putting himself through all this trouble and following Strick around, helping out. You have no idea why he cares one bit about the cause.

Well, in a sense, Markus wants to avenge his family. His family was killed by the Kalinth royalty, and while he does have other motives, avenging their deaths is a primary one which I am hoping will come into directy conflict with the motives of other characters in the future (that sounded cruel, didn't it?). Anyways, Markus's father was a librarian and Markus's house basically is/was a library. Well, in Tears, Markus's house gets sacked for the third time and this time I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity and reveal to the reader some bits about Markus's past, as well as establish a growing friendship between Creiha and Markus.

Wish me luck - I'll need it.

I just realized that Markus reminds me a helluva lot of Much from Robin Hood (The BBC Series). Which is a hoot because I love the guy.

Aww... Creiha and Markus. How cute.



Much luck, buena suerte, bonne chance...
Cal.

"The Last Stricken Eszrov"...I love the word 'stricken'. "Beautiful Shame" is an excellent one, as well.

Ooh, ood luck. Characters with fun pasts are the best for write for, but they're not very fun to deal with. Good results, toiling process...

I love the word stricken too.

Today was very taxing. After a week of no writing during finals, I wrote about 15 pages today. I definitely bit off too big of a chunk of material in the scene I wrote. It was the reunion between all but four or five of the main characters (Creiha, Lusien, Gietan, Markus and Nalien reunited with Sophie, Liehne and Coglia), and there were so many reactions to cover, it was overwhelming. Writing it from Creiha's rather objective point of view may or may not have been a good idea.

Nevertheless, I got some good planning done today - wrote a brief outline, and a few more ideas. I'm creating less time until Strick rejoins the group - the main group is so unmotivated without him. I don't know he managed to keep them from killing each other in Flames. *sighs*

UPDATE:

Current Tears word count: 124, 593

It's going rather well. The characters are beginning to cooperate. Coglia's presence is smoothing over some heavy tensions, and Liehne is starting to speak for herself. I've begun to think about how I should divide Tears chapters, and the first chapter of Tears is officially named Chimed. Yay!

*Spoiler warning*

So, Strick is back in the story, which makes things so much easier. He won't rejoin with the rest of the characters for a while yet, but his very presence in the story is encouraging. It's such a relief. It'll be even better when he rejoins the group. I've begun planning some dialogue and scenes as we near the end of Tears, thought I'm still trying to hash through a few technical things. I hate travelling time with a passion - having some problems with warping the passage of time.

*end of spoilers*

At some point, I'll start rewriting Chapter 8 of Flames: The Queen (where you meet my antagonist for the first time!), but right now I am focusing on Tears, so I apologize to those of you who are awaiting the next chapter of Flames.

Flames was massive. I have a feeling that Tears is going to be a monster when finished. Rewriting the entire beginning may change that, but right now it looks like it may be longer than Flames which ended at 214, 920 words.

Damn, honey, I wish I had your work ethic. Mine seems to have run off on me, yet again. Yay, for Strick. We love Strick! The passage of time either loves me or hates my guts when I try to write it, lately it's listing heavily to the latter.

Now, I have this urge to type up some Guttersnipe. Thanks!



Ta,
Cal.