Foreshadowing

Word Count: 126384

I have finished the posts that will go up automatically during the summer. They will, hopefully, appear once a week on Monday. The posts won't include my progress in writing as I will not be touching this blog until I return. This summer is to have fun and take a break from my book. Instead, as I previously mentioned, I will concentrate on writing short stories. 

Unfortunately while I was finishing the posts for this summer, I accidentally deleted a post that I had been working on entitled "World building". I had finished the first draft of it and I don't know when I will get around to rewriting it. It was very frustrating when I couldn't recover it so I think I will revisit it in a few months once I have gotten over my anger. At the moment the thought of having to redo it is too much to handle.

Due to my habit of writing random scenes ahead of where I am currently writing, now that I have reached that part there are passages that no longer fit. They weren't bad but they don't fit the character development. I am sad that I have to delete so much but since it is for the better of my story I can do it.

The fact that I'm able to delete almost five thousand words without hesitation comforts me because now I can be confident in the fact that my story is getting better. I have no problem deleting superfluous writing if it isn't necessary to my story. Since my book is getting so long I like knowing that most of it will be used in my final draft. Published authors are always telling aspiring authors that they shouldn't be afraid of deleting previous work and this proves that I can.

Also, the other day I was watching a Youtube video called Vlogger's Choice: Life as a Full Time Writer and I decided to follow an idea that she proposed. Whenever she starts writing she will read a poem first to train herself to be in the right mindset. Almost like Pavlov. So now before every writing session I will read a poem from my book of modern American and British poetry. Hopefully I can train myself to become more on task as Youtube has a habit of distracting me. 

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It is impossible to foreshadow anything without knowing a future event or idea. Whether you are hinting at a plot twist or giving a character a weapon so they have something to fight the villain with later on, it is needed so that the building blocks are set and the reader doesn't feel cheated. There is nothing worse than a plot twist that had no hints leading up to it so you feel as though the author threw it in last minute.

I'm sorry to digress, but I want to mention how frustrated I get when authors seem to forget a detail. Like, if the hero found a scroll and then had to go through a thousand obstacles before finally arriving at headquarters to hand over the scroll to their friends. The whole time I am thinking, where is the scroll? Did he leave it behind? Did he drop it? Where is he hiding it? This is not a video game where weapons magically disappear into a "stash" or whatever it is (I don't play video games so I apologize for my lack of knowledge) and then it suddenly reappears when the hero wants it to. Instead, the author could have the hero discover a really nifty pocket sown into his clothing that would hide an object a couple chapters earlier so when he needs a place to stash it then we can come to the same conclusion as the character that the pocket is the best place. I am probably being nit picky but the entire time I was worried that the character had left it behind because there is no mention of it.

So there is no magic solution to this. There is no way you can magically create foreshadowing without knowing important things later on. If you are outlining you can always work backwards so that if in the fifth chapter the character needs to know something, someone is telling them the information in chapter two so the reader can also be aware of it. Or, if you write without any type of outline, don't worry about foreshadowing until you've finished your first draft and you know how your story is going to end. 

Nifty pockets and information are some types of foreshadowing you can do, but there are also many other ways to use it as well. You can foreshadow themes or secrets by having heavy irony that no one will catch until the second reading. I love books where there are things you didn't notice the first time that add depth to the characters and overall story on a reread. 

If you still don't know where to start, here is an example. Let's say that character A has been hiding from character B that they still haven't read a book that they promised they would read. Instead they skimmed through a summary online. Now, if we are in character B's perspective and we don't know that character A has done this, there can still be hints thrown in by having character A acting guilty or changing the subject whenever the book is brought up in conversation. The subtlety can be varied to blatantly obvious and barely noticeable.

I have researched other people's techniques on how to foreshadow but I have never been satisfied with their answers. I have come to the conclusion that every story is different and the way you have to foreshadow that book is going to vary. Trying to establish rules surrounding this device will be useless because it will only apply to a handful of books. 

Therefore we have to practice how to do it on our own. Perhaps we'll come up with a new technique that will be revolutionary because of the way our book is structured. But no matter what, I always link irony and foreshadowing together because I view it as giving the reader just enough information to make them suspicious, but hiding enough that they won't know the answer until you are ready to give it to them. 

Some of the best foreshadowing I have ever seen are in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Sometimes the foreshadowing doesn't have to pay off until the second or third book, which is the case in this trilogy. It has been so tightly written that every chapter, every paragraph, serves a purpose. 

Exposition

Word Count: 121823

I have managed to keep up the pace of writing every day. Now that school is over, for the most part, I hope to write a lot more in the next few weeks. I am leaving soon for my biking trip but I have a spot in my story in mind that I want to reach before I go. I'm guessing that will be about five to ten thousand more words but often I completely over or underestimate these things so it's not set in stone.

I am also very excited because Brandon Sanderson is coming out with more videos on his writing classes. He had some posted from before but he is now re-filming them. He explains more on this in his blog post. I hope to be able to watch them so that I can edit and develop my story with his advice since I am at a point where many things can still be changed. His books are fantastic so this can only help my story.

Lately I have been mulling over the other companion books that I want in my series. I have often thought about having these companions also be standalone books, but when they are all read it develops a larger story line. This is assuming that my first book is received well enough that I can write all of them.

But before I get to the final stages of this book, Kingdom of Sand, I want to have a rough outline from those books completed so that I can weave in important information that can foreshadow later events. I never properly outlined this book before I started writing it, I kind of had events that I wanted to happen and I invented the rest along the way so I am excited to try my hand at true, detailed outlining.

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There seems to be an unwritten rule that all books must start in "medias res" or in the middle of the action. Every action movie always begins with the main character finishing an important mission or in a chase scene. This draws in the reader and makes them want to keep going. It's a great hook. 

But eventually the action sequence will end and now the writer has to give some sort of exposition. I'm not talking about info dumping. You have to pick and choose what is important for the plot to move the story along. There is nothing more boring than reading a full chapter on the history of the town or something else just as dry. 

Every book is going to have varying degrees of learning while reading. Some books, mostly contemporary, require very little extra knowledge on the reader's part whereas a fantasy will require them to remember many more names and terms. In each genre there can also be varying levels of difficulty. For example, one of the most well known fantasy books for being difficult to read is Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. I have read it and I can confirm that he does not hesitate to throw you into an ongoing war and force you to scramble your way to understanding what is going on. It can be frustrating, but also more satisfying when it all finally clicks in your head. 

This can also be a turn off for most readers. They are there to read a fun story that takes them away from real life. They don't want to have to learn pages upon pages of backstory before they are finally allowed to read the story. This isn't history class. Older books tend to have these long descriptions at the beginning detailing how the class structure came to be or the different species across the land. A culprit of this is Fellowship of the Ring. While it is an amazing book, the long expositonal prologue at the beginning was dry. I have to admit that I skipped over it because I just wanted to read the book and I didn't feel like it took away from my experience at all. 

I personally try to find a balance between the two. I don't like reading paragraphs of exposition so I don't write that. Neither do I like being too confused as to what is happening so I like to drop hints along the way so that it is always clear what the main characters are up to. While the setting is not fully revealed, the main character's motivations are clearly displayed. 

If there absolutely needs to be some information relayed to the reader and there doesn't seem to be a good way of doing it, the easiest trick is to put it into dialogue. That does not mean have one character tell another character everything there is to know in huge chunks of dialogue. Neither does it mean that you have two characters fighting "like they have done a million times before" where they tell each other the exact conflict there is between them and how it came to be. But there are ways to slip it in by using humour. Perhaps one character is making fun of another character's obsession or a previous incident. The idea is to be subtle.

Another example is if the main character's mother died when they were younger, never to be seen again. Perhaps they take a moment to remember her every morning as part of their routine. Give the reader just enough information that they understand the situation but don't bog down the story with info dumps. 

A trick I found online to see if there is too much exposition, is to highlight on every page of the manuscript the sections that are description, narrative, dialogue, exposition, etc. and then you can easily identify if there is too much of one thing or too little of another. I'm never really worried about that kind of stuff (and I haven't started to thoroughly edit my story) so I haven't had a chance to use this tip. But it seemed like a good idea so I wanted to pass it along. 

Writer's Block

Word Count:115747

Good news! I have been writing a lot since I last posted. It turns out that I needed to read more. I haven't had much time to do that lately so when I finally gave it the chance, since my writing wasn't going so well, I was immediately inspired to write more. I couldn't help but think to myself that if the author could do it then so could I. There has to be millions of people who have written books and I want to one of them so I have to get my butt into gear and keep going. Though I could say that I have plenty of time in my future to write, what is the point in delaying?

I have come to the conclusion that I need to write the entire first draft before I can go back and edit. Every time I sit down to try to fix things I've done I can only think about the things still to come and how excited I am for that. Therefore I am going to do what feels good in the moment and that is to continue writing my first draft.

The only thing I hope for is not losing my momentum. I am the type of person to work really hard at something for an intensely short period of time before I move on but I can't have this happen to me every week so I need to find a balance that will let me stay focused in the long run. I'm going to try setting goals like finishing the second part of my story before Christmas. Then the third part of my story before next summer. Then next summer I will do an overhaul and really edit my story. That's my vague plan right now but a million things could happen before then and I could be behind schedule or even ahead of schedule.

During my writing I hit a really cool writing milestone and took a picture so I could share it.

I will keep writing and reading and I hope to be able to do as well next week as I have done this week.

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Writer's block can be a funny thing because no other profession can claim to have a "block" and therefore cannot perform their job. But sometimes it feels as if all the creativity has been tapped out and the words aren't flowing. Many people say to just keep writing. This is one hundred percent true, you have to push through it. But sometimes that just doesn't seem to be enough. 

One of the first things I consider when I get into one of these slumps is whether it is my writing that I am having trouble with, or my excitement for my story. Oftentimes it is my story that is the culprit. I'll find that I will have no trouble writing a short story or an essay for school. I actually tend to find those more fun when I am having writer's block because I do need an outlet for my writing or else it just builds up inside me. These things feel fresh and new which revives my excitement for writing.

Oftentimes I will give myself time and space to take a break from my story so that way when I come back to it I can give it all my energy and not feel resentful towards giving my time up for writing. Of course, if I were ever to be published this would not be a viable option. There would be deadlines to be met. Therefore I have come up with some more ideas for future me to turn to. These are things that work for me or I have heard other people mention. 

Try to take a different spin on your story. I am not saying that you should change the story, but concentrate on a different aspect of it. Instead of being so concerned about making the love interest as awesome as possible, make a really funny subplot or develop a really cool setting. You could concentrate on establishing a different theme into your story and weave it into dialogue and action. 

There is nothing more inspiring and motivating than to see other people's creativity. This includes books, movies, pictures, music, anything you can think of. I have recently joined Pinterest and I find looking up pictures that fit my story to be very exciting. I probably spend more time doing than that actual writing. That's an exaggeration but I do spend more time on it than I probably should. But having a visual to go along with what is going on inside your head is really cool to piece together. 

Of course, there is the option of skipping ahead in the story to a scene that you are really interested in writing. Then, once that is done, you can return to where you picked off before and see if you are getting anywhere. If you do this a couple times and you find where you previously left off to be dull and uninspiring, whatever you do end up writing for it will probably end up being dull and uninspiring for the reader to read as well. So find a way to add tension, or mood, or humour. Or anything else to liven it up. Have a random, sassy person come into play who turns the entire plan into a mess. Just do something. Usually if its boring for you, its boring to read.

Writing Habits

Word Count: 110037

At this point I seem to have given up on pursuing the editing of the first part of my book. Instead I am going to focus on finishing my first draft. I'm not sure what to do right now. Everything is up in the air with school and I am constantly stressed so I can't concentrate enough to write properly. I know that all advice for writer's block is to push through it but I don't think it will work this time. I  need to wait it out. The most I could do was push myself to getting to the 110000 word mark which I am very proud of. I will try to continue writing this coming weekend as the rest of the week is hectic to say the least.

I did write a short story last weekend. I went on a biking trip with my dad to prepare for this summer and I brought my new notebook with me. I wanted to test out how I planned to do it during the summer. I typed it up on my computer yesterday and I want to spend the next week tinkering with it. I am nervous that it doesn't feel like a short story. It comes across more as a vignette of something bigger. I have never really done them before so we'll see how this goes as I continue to edit.

As you can tell from how many topics I am touching base on, I really have no idea what's happening right now. But as long as I am getting words down on a page I am not going to worry. All the advice that I find online points to writing everyday so that's what I am going to do.

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I thought it might be fun to talk about my writing habits. I prefer writing on the computer as I can type faster than I can write. I also like being able to go back and change things, which is harder when writing on paper. A lot of my first drafts is straight dialogue so being able to add in description and character actions afterwards is helpful. I am always searching for a better word to use, or a more impactful way of saying something so having to erase my writing on a piece of paper would drive me crazy. 

Microsoft Word is my favourite program to use. I attempted to use Scrivener  not so long ago. I quickly gave up on it. Having all those gadgets are cool at first but they are also distracting and I never felt comfortable with the layout of that program. All other reviews that I have seen are positive so it might just be me. There are features like being able to split a manuscript into chapters that I really enjoyed about it, but it's not enough to convince me that I need to switch permanently.

I never have any snacks while I am writing. Food distracts me. I will have water by my desk as well but, honestly, whenever I get into the true "zone" of writing I tune out everything around me and only concentrate on my characters and my setting so I never actually reach for it. I might reward myself when I have really fun treats. Every couple hundred words and I get a candy. Typing it out feels weird because it sounds like I am rewarding a dog, not myself.

It's still on my to do list to write with photos also on the screen or music in the background. I have started to create a folder (I don't know if that's the right word) on Pinterest which I will link here if you want to check it out, but I haven't yet found the time to use them. I can't deny that they are gorgeous though. I have some celtic music that I was listening to over March Break that I thought might be good to use, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I thought that it might be better to have that going while I edit instead of writing my first draft. 

Writing in short chunks like ten or twenty minutes never works for me. Like I said before, I have to really get into the story before I start coming up with any good material so by the time that I am concentrated, five or ten minutes have already elapsed. I like knowing that I can take as much time as I want. An hour or two is the perfect balance between enough time and not too much that I lose concentration. 

I prefer to write in the mornings and the evenings because they always seem more peaceful. During the day my mind is whirring at a million miles an hour. When I write in the morning before school it starts my day off with a feeling of accomplishment because I did something useful with my time. At night I have the luxury of writing however late I want. Though when I say late, think a lot earlier than you would expect. I am an early riser and, other than a short period a few years ago, I like to go to sleep fairly early as well. That means I stop writing at ten thirty or eleven at the absolute latest because my mind needs half an hour to calm down before I can get to sleep. 

By the way, I have made a list of a bunch of topics I want to talk about in my blog posts, but if you have any suggestions of something you would like for me to touch on, feel free to let me know down below in the comments. I am aware that you might have to have an account to leave comments, but you can also message me on Goodreads or Pinterest (though I don't know whether you can send someone a message over Pinterest as I have never done it before). I have also recently joined a book forum called Love Books? Talk Books! so if you are a member I would love to be your friend on that platform. Currently I am still a little lost with the site but there seem to be many welcoming people there. 

Interconnected Universes

Word Count: 108674

I am really disappointed by how much I have written in the past few weeks. I put off writing a blog post for a couple days because I told myself that I would write a bunch more before so that way I could be positive about how things were going. But with my final exams for school coming up it will only become harder to write. After they are done I have a one week window when I am free of school and commitments so I hope to cram in as much as I can then.

But July 4th I'm leaving on a biking trip and I won't be back until mid-August so there won't be any time to write. We will be camping the entire time, and while the some campsites do have wifi I won't be bringing by laptop with me and I don't want to write on my phone.

I still want to post on this blog. I haven't fully tested it yet but I think this website allows me to post in advance and set a date for when I want it to publish so I will try to have a bunch of those set up so that they will take care of themselves automatically. They will be posts fully on advice that will most likely post once a week if everything goes according to plan.

That is not to say that I won't stop writing completely. While I don't believe that I will be in the right mindset to write my book because the scope and concentration for that is more than I can deal with, I thought I would try my hand at short stories. I am planning on buying a notebook and writing stories the old fashioned way. Currently I am faster at typing than at writing so it will be nice to get back to basics.

There really is not much else to say because I haven't done much writing.

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When I'm talking about interconnected universes I'm referring to books that are all focused in one world and shares minor characters or setting even though each book is a different story. I happen to love them. One of the most popular examples of this are the Marvel movies. Each superhero has their own movies but every once in a while they will come together in a team up movie. The world becomes rich and intricate because suddenly your eyes are opened to so many stories happening either simultaneously or in different locations. 

In novels, Brandon Sanderson has an interconnected universe called the Cosmere. He has established this universe over multiple books. He has many hints sprinkled throughout each of his books that relate to how the universe is created. Unfortunately I don't catch many of them but I read online forums and I get caught up pretty quickly. The best part is that the magic system for each planet is different but they all have similarities because they came from the same place. I highly recommend checking it out.

I have attempted something similar in my book. Kingdom of Sand will essentially become a standalone book but I have planned other books to come later that will exist in the same world which will also be standalone books. But if all of them are read in order than a larger plot line will emerge. This way I can try to get this one published without having to bog down the literary agent with promises of a series which could potentially turn them off if they don't trust me to follow through for multiple books. But it also allows me to potentially create a series where I can uncover new characters for each book, each dealing with vastly different obstacles. 

This is all years down the road. For now I have to concentrate on this one and making it as amazing as possible. 

What series do you know that exists in an interconnected universe? I would love to hear any recommendations whether it is from books, movies, tv shows, etc.

Naming

Word Count: 106023

I have not written since my last post. I meant to write a thousand words a day but there has been no time. There is no time because I haven't been making it a priority. I am doing everything I can not to have to write because it doesn't feel very appealing anymore.

I am not enjoying Scrivener, even with my limited approach at using the bare minimum of its gadgets. Since I have been doing so well before using it I am going to stop and see if that helps. This way of editing is not working for me. Having all these special features is only distracting me and I need to focus on what is really important for me. Others have found this program very useful but I need comfort and ease when I am writing and this program feels foreign and different.

Instead I am making a chart with Word and I will write a short synopsis for each chapter in it and what I need to change. Essentially any notes I need to view later while I am editing. I will see how this turns out. Hopefully it will get me to really look at my story and make me more excited to keep writing.

I am also not going to set myself writing goals. I thought that making a deadline would improve my dedication but instead it only makes me more nervous when I haven't met them. I was able to write perfectly fine before so I'm going to try that again.

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I find naming characters and places in my book to be the most challenging thing in the entire process. Well, that isn't entirely true but it is definitely up there in difficulty. The first thing that readers are going to see is the title and the names of the characters on the inside flap. Not only do they have to sound bad ass and gripping, but also plausible and easy to pronounce.

In fantasy I have to invent names for everything. When I first started I was so tempted to just write them all as "character 1", "character 2", etc. but as soon as there gets to be more than four characters it really starts to get confusing. I had to find another solution. 

Thankfully there are many online baby name generators. I drew a lot of my inspiration for my setting from Scotland so I searched Scottish baby names. Sometimes I combine the first syllable of one name with the last syllable of another to come up with something different. I try to make all the characters' names start with different letters because I don't need another reason to confuse them. 

Titles will always be the bane of my existence. I hate them. They are hard. But putting off naming it will only make it harder in the long run because suddenly nothing sounds perfect anymore and you will always wonder whether there was something better that could have come along. Instead I prefer sticking with something that makes sense and changing it later on if I come up with something better.

I came up with the title Kingdom of Sand because so many fantasy novels have the word "King", "Queen", "Hero", or some variation of it and why would I want to stand out from the crowd? I considered at one point making my main character's name the title but somehow "Saehan" just doesn't pack the same punch. It might also be hard to remember or spell.

So I just took a bunch of words that corresponded with my novel, they can be physical attributes, things that happen, or themes, and just paired them up with each other until I found something that sounded interesting and went with that. Also, I searched online any potential title I had to make sure that there wasn't already a book by the same name, or a movie. If there is, it will be difficult for readers to find my book when it is published so coming up with something unique will make it more accessible.

Inspiration (Part 2)

Word Count: 106023

I haven't gotten very much writing done in the past couple days. Honestly, I haven't done any. With the end of school things are becoming busier and I'm starting to understand how difficult writing every day will be. But from today onward I will force myself to do some writing even if it's only for ten or fifteen minutes. Who needs to study for school when you are writing stories? Am I right?

I've finished, for the most part, the first part of my story. There are a few extra scenes I wanted to add when I looked at it in retrospect but now that it's done I really want to concentrate on perfecting that before going on to write more. So my word count might not be rising very quickly in the next month because I am going to be editing, not writing.

The first part is around 80000 words but I'm sure that will only go up as I edit it because there are many sections where I neglected to write description. This only makes it harder to decide if I should split it up into two or three books but I have decided that I won't make the decision until I have finished the entire thing so I have a while still.

Since I would be concentrating on editing for a while I decided to download the free trial of Scrivener so that all my chapters would be separated and I could organize them better. While I am not entirely a visual person, it can be daunting for me to edit a huge word document because I can barely remember the order everything happened in and which sections need the most work.

I haven't been very successful with Scrivener yet. Since I haven't been able to spend much time writing, there hasn't been much  time to learn the program either. I am impatient with these sorts of things so I doubt I'll ever get to learning more than what I already know which is split the document into chapters. I don't want to waste time learning a program when I could be doing more writing or editing. I've procrastinated enough in the past and now it's time to get to work.

Since I get thirty days of free trial, not consecutive, I will try to get as much editing done within the next month. I want to fill all the gaps like finishing description, and making sure that the actions of the characters make sense and then I'm going to import it into a word document and go through the entire draft for the smaller edits like word changes and the like. 

While I know that I won't be getting to much writing in the next few days I am hoping to be at 110000 by Monday which is four days away. I can write a thousand words a day.

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Other than piggybacking on other people's enthusiasm for inspiration, I find ideas and concepts for stories in movies, books, nature, and life. A few years ago I found it very difficult to think of ideas that felt original. It was as though all my creativity was gone. I was taking a creative writing course at the time, and you can imagine how difficult it is to have to write story after story with no ideas for what to write about. Thankfully (or maybe unthankfully?) many people have this problem. 

What eventually got me through this time was writing in a notebook. You can jot down ideas for stories, a line of dialogue, a description, a quote that you like, essentially anything. It was arduously slow at first because if I couldn't think of one story idea, how was I supposed to fill a notebook with them? But even when my thoughts were cliche and boring I still wrote them down. I found that eventually, like any muscle in your body, it needs to be used daily. If you are making an effort to think of ideas (and coming up with them no matter how horrible they may seem) eventually they will be flooding in. 

Now I am constantly coming up with new ideas for plots and characters that I am tempted to stop the story I am currently writing to pursue them. But I manage to hold myself back because I have been down the road of never finishing anything, and it is not a good path to follow. 

A lot of people say that writing prompts are the best solution. I have never found them particularly useful. They always remind me of movies or books that I  have seen and never lead to anything original. Which defeats the purpose. But they might work for you. There are plenty of sites out there that provide them.

When I said that I get inspiration from books and movies, I don't mean that I see a plot line and I immediately want to write my own version. It is more that I see a type of conflict between two friends and I imagine it under different circumstances and boom, I have an idea for a story. I love watching Planet Earth episodes because the landscape is so beautiful and it makes me want to write a description that can capture how magnificent it is. I can never achieve it but it's fun nonetheless.

The best place to find inspiration is from history. (I put it last because last is always most important.) In history books there are so many unique conflicts and situations that can be adapted for a fantasy book, a hisotrical book (obviously), or even science fiction. George RR Martin wrote an entire fantasy series based on the War of the Roses. 

What sources do you use for inspiration? It doesn't necessarily have to be for writing. It can be the desire to pursue a sport or a job. Everyone needs inspiration in their lives.