Category: Writing

Emotions are hard.

G. Derek Adams10 Comments
Catbus dislikes your prose.

My beloved gave me some constructive criticism on my writing recently, and of course I handled it maturely.

Which is to say, I was dismissive, hurt -and jerked my knee REAL HARD. Rejecting what she said out of hand, and refusing to accept any remote validity to her statement.

Fifteen minutes later I realized she had a point.

Then I pouted for a day or so.

Then the crying.

And now that I’ve processed, I’m ready to obliquely admit that she had a point, a small point.

[Read: She was completely right.]

Her criticism was:

Since you write in third person exclusively, you have a tendency to not show character’s emotions. I understand that you’re trying to “show, not tell” — but I’d like to get more inside the character’s heads, and get a sense of their emotions. [Heavily paraphrased, she’s the one with the eidetic memory.]

I read back through a few pieces, and I can totally agree with this assessment. And while I’m always going to err on the side of allowing my audience to make their own conclusions about characters — I feel this is a tool I need to be able to master, because it can be extremely effective.

So, my question is: How do I do this, without my stuff sounding like a Harlequin romance?

I can’t just write “The mage was sad. Her sadness was strong, and full of more sadness.”

Can I?

Opinions, suggestions, and examples if you got ’em!

Worldbuilders: Auctions for Professional Critiques

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

One of my nerd-crushes, Pat Rothfuss, runs an excellent charity every year –raising money for Heifer International. Here’s the homepage for the Worldbuilders charity itself.

As I’m sure you all know, Pat wrote Name of the Wind and smells like cinnamon rolls at all times. He does a lot of work collecting donations from lots of published authors, and putting them up for lottery and auction via his blog — SHOW OFF.

However, one of the tastiest set of auctions every year is a brace of actual, honest-to-goodness professional critiques. All of the reviewers [including Pat himself] are industry legit – and I know there are probably several people here on WP who would be interested, and could benefit from an opportunity like this.

Remember, it’s all for charity — and if I had some scratch and a metric ton of more confidence in my unfinished manuscript of That Thing, I’d be jumping in on this hardcore.

Here’s the link: Auctions for Professional Critique.

 

Fanfiction under Duress

G. Derek Adams7 Comments

They were warriors.

Gods of battle.

Heroes of legends forgotten.

Their hands were formed for the hilt of a sword, their eyes had seen red blood flow.

Demons of night, and unending legions of evil had fallen before them.

But tonight, no conflict had prepared them – no sword was sharp enough for this challenge.

Mooglesitting.

—–

The three men stood around the ornate brass crib, and stared at each other.

One was blonde, with sharp features — he grasped the brass bar tightly and tried to think of anything that would delay the inevitable.

The older man straightened his dark sunglasses, and grunted.

The final man pushed his long, dark hair out of his face and casually thumped the delicate blue stars that hung above the crib — the mobile spun, emitting a light jingle in protest.

“Well, I guess we should…”he began, making an indistinct gesture towards the crib’s occupant.

“…should…what?” the blonde man replied.

The older man said nothing.

“You know—“the dark haired man continued, repeating the same vague gesture.

“No — absolutely not.” the blonde man said firmly.

“We have to, it’s our duty.” the dark haired young man insisted.

“Is that some kind…of joke?” the blonde man said.

The two younger men locked eyes, then shifted their gaze to the older man wearing sunglasses.

The older man said nothing.

“Kupo.” the moogle chirped, rolling over onto it’s stomach.

The dark haired man shrugged, and pulled off his jacket. The collar was a fluffy mane of white fur. He laid it carefully on the floor, and rolled up his sleeves.

“So, you’re going to do it then?” the blonde man said hopefully.

“Can’t be too bad – I mean, look how cute they are…probably has cute…you know…” he stopped, his hands hovering over the crib.

“I guess.” the blonde man said.

The older man, straightened his sunglasses and pointed down into the crib.

“Baby’s crying. Our time is now.” he said.

The baby moogle sobbed. “Kupoooooooooo0-po-pooo.”

The three men leapt – the call of battle overcame all their hesitation. Each burned with a golden light,  their eyes gleamed with purpose.

The dark haired youth took off the soiled diaper.

The blonde man wiped.

The older man with sunglasses put on the new diaper.

“Kupo!” the infant moogle cooed, hanging on to the older man’s finger. It snuggled in, and quickly fell asleep.

The older man pulled his bottle with the other hand, and took a long swallow. He passed it wordlessly to the other men.

“We shall never speak of this.” he said quietly. “Ever. This is not our story.”

The other two nodded, and tiptoed quietly from the room.

 

Rough Writing Day

G. Derek Adams3 Comments

I see you, blank page.

Getting cocky — acting like you’re all that. AND A BAG OF CHIPS.

Well, guess what?

I’m about to soldier on – I’m going to write anyway.

I’m going to fill you with TERRIBLE PROSE.

Yeah, deal with that.

I might even put in some CLOUD DESCRIPTIONS and ADVERBS.

I’m crazy like that.

 

Setting Goals

G. Derek Adams13 Comments
VOLTRON?!?!?

I’ve set myself a writing schedule for the new year, where I need to complete five pages of my first draft each week. That may not seem super-ambitious, but I write when I have free moments at work, or a spare hour I can snatch at random. My live is not conducive to a set writing time each day — so five pages a week is a good stable amount that I can keep up. Just enough pressure to keep me working, but not so steep that I feel overwhelmed.

It’s been going well, honestly — I’ve stayed a couple of pages ahead, and haven’t had any difficulty staying on track. For example, this week my goal is 65 pages — and I’m sitting on 63 already. Next week the goal is 70 pages, the week after that 75.

My question is this: Should I stick to my writing schedule as-is, OR simply add five to whatever my page total is at the end of each week? So, if I finish this week at 67 pages, the next week’s goal is 72 pages.

What do you think? What works best for you?

Third Person Perspective Omega Gold – Championship Edition

G. Derek Adams5 Comments

In working on the rough draft of That Thing, I’m realizing more and more that I’m using the Third Person-Omniscient Perspective extensively AND I’m switching between two characters. I’m only doing it at natural breaks in the action, but I realize I’m quickly treading into the realm of FORBIDDEN FICTION.

I’m not going to stress out about it too much at the moment — if I hate it/think it’s confusing, I’ll restructure when I edit.

But — BUT. Anyone got some input on whether I’m freaking out about nothing, or if I should take this more seriously?

Get your grammar straight, son.

Botanists fight dirty.

G. Derek Adams5 Comments

Her overcoat was stiff with congealed agar and the shattered glass of a dozen Erlenmeyer flasks. She slid her battered arms into the sleeves, and tried to ignore the bullet wound in her leg.  A pair of pipettes were still lodged in the right sleeve of the jacket, as well as some tissue cultures from the family Malvaceae.  The battered gumshoe shook the detritus from her coat sleeve, and reached into her pockets — finding her two best friends right where they belonged.

A pair of ugly Colt revolvers, with worn pearl handles.  Watson and Crick — the only partners she’d ever needed in this dirty job.

It had been quite a dust-up in the back offices of ECO-RICH, the multi-national botany conglomerate. She’d been called in on the case, when a pair of their top researchers had turned to whistleblowers–setting up interviews with dozens of prominent science and home gardening blogs. Then they’d turned up dead. Both researchers had simultaneous heart-attacks during a purported sex romp in a jury-rigged jacuzzi powered by eighteen Bunsen burners.

But then the autopsy reports had come back: Baby carrots.

Baby carrots lodged in their aortas.

A contact on the force, Overstreet, had sent her the tip — and she’d made her way down to the offices of ECO-RICH to do a little snooping.

A brace of white-coat goons had been working late, and before she could spool up an alibi — things had gotten frisky.

An ethno-biologist with arms like a steel trap got the drop on her, grabbing her from behind and pinning her arms to the side. Without hesitation she kicked off hard from the face of an approaching zoologist, propelling  her captor into a nearby Spectrograph. A weasely ginger had pulled a snub-nose out of his pocket protector and gotten a shot off, grazing her leg — while the other researchers tossed Petri dishes and glassware like a tipsy housewife when she finds a collar with the wrong lipstick in the wash.

Crossing through the test tube hailstorm, she’d headbutted the ginger sap — the sound of his nasal cartilage snapping was sweet music, and a pair of electron microscopes ripped off a nearby table helped her finish the symphony on the rest of the jolly green thugs.

The gumshoe reached down, and riffled through the pockets of the closest researcher.  She pulled open their Twitter account, and banged out a warning.

— Just got the chloroform forcibly removed from my cell wall’s chloroplasts by a punitive ass-kicking. #ECO-RICH #MURDER #SCIENCE SLEUTH #WATCHOUT

She tossed the device aside, and walked back out into the late night rain.

She was on the case, and had a very promising beginning to the data field required for the x-axis of her perspective bar graph.

A bar graph of justice, and a chart of pain.

[For Jargon Journalist. Take some time and go fondle her comment section.]

 

 

Disappointment.

G. Derek Adams6 Comments
Mr. Chan is displeased.

 

I’ve been feeling a little guilty — I promised some fresh, blog-only content in the new year — and I absolutely have not delivered. I’ve been writing a bunch for Lodestar and That Thing, but nothing fresh for here.

So, the first person who yells at me in the comments gets to pick a topic/genre/main character’s name. Give me a crazy ass writing prompt!

The Mountain

G. Derek AdamsLeave a comment

We all write in the shadow of the mountain.  At the peak — success. Whatever you think of as the goal of your writing — but I imagine most of us here on WP are all thinking along similar lines.

Writing as day job. Paying the bills with your writing, and your stupid, silly ideas.

Having someone read your writing — and say, “This stuff? This stuff right here? This is good stuff. The best stuff. I want to give up some space in my brain, and put your stuff in it.”

You know what I mean — they way that all of us make room in our heads for other creator’s characters, places, and ideas. For me, there can be no higher honor.

If you just think about the base of the mountain, it’s kind of exciting. There are many simple, easy, satisfying things you can do to prepare yourself for the climb.  Like starting a blog, or making a writing schedule, or trying out different styles of writing, or just finding a really comfortable pencil.

And the simple magic of putting your head down and just writing.

But, sometimes you accidentally glance up — and take a long look towards the summit.

“How the hell am I going to get up there?”

There are so many pilgrims battling their way up the slopes, many never reaching the peak despite skill, luck and endless determination. And, let’s face it, there are many successful writers up on the peak who certainly don’t deserve it.

It’s freaking daunting, is what I’m saying.

As a logical, sane human you have to accept that even if you finish your work, even if it’s really, really good — there are still so many pitfalls, crevasses, and awful things that can happen in between that and reaching the peak.

So,  yeah — this is the part where I’m supposed to have some advice, or say something supportive.

How about this?

Those moments you’re looking up at the top of the mountain, and feeling small, depressed and defeated — look over to the left, where I’m sitting. You can look at me, and I’ll look at you — and then I’ll shrug, and make a farty noise.

It’s not much, but it’s on the table.

And accept that the doubt is part of the gig, and get back to climbing. No use to worrying about the trolls in the heights, until you’ve made your way out of base camp.