The First Draft

It's time to haul that dusty manuscript off the shelf, and start writing again.
When's the last time you even looked at your story? You know you have to finish it, right?
    There are so many ideas bursting in my head right now--I'm actually starting two stories, one story from two character's point of view.
     But ack! I have my Five Glass Slippers story and my Cinderella retelling to finish!

It's time to dig into your love of writing and keep up the good work. I know, it can be tiring to write of the story when you know you have all that editing and things to do.
     Do not go back and edit your story. 
     It's tempting, it really is. Don't even look back on what you've written so far. Today, even, I wanted to do that to my current story, but I'd heard from another author not to.
     I figured out pretty quickly why she said this.
     You'll go back and read what you've written, and you'll get caught up in editing it. There are so many patches that need rewriting. If you don't go back and read it, you won't edit anything. And if you don't edit anything, you won't spend the time rewriting it when you could be writing more.
     Don't stop. Don't look back. Just write.
     Keep the ideas flowing, keep writing them down. Even if it's horrible, just write it down. Finish the first draft.
     It's a first draft. Don't worry about it. Finish the story first. There's a process in writing: The first draft, the rewrite, the editing, and polishing.
     Even if your story really stinks, it's okay. Write and write and write until you hit the end. Then and only then can you even start to think about reading it.
     But here's a tip: When you finish the first draft, maybe even the rewrite, leave it be for a while. Take a month off, forget about the story.
     Then you can come back. Then you'll notice what you have to rewrite (even after the rewrite, rerewrite) and everything that needs editing. It helps so much.
     I have a story from last year's NaNoWriMo I wrote. I didn't finish it, but I came very near to the end (I started late and was new to NaNoWriMo), and you know, I thought it was pretty good. I looked back and editing, and was thinking, "Yeah, this is great."
     Christmas came and I completely forgot about it. I left it for literally months before I remembered it. Actually, it was about three-four months ago that I remembered it.
     That stuff was absolute crud. It needed (needs) major rewriting and I obviously didn't think about some scenes, I just wrote.
     And that's okay.
     That's the stuff you want to see. You need to see what needs fixing--rewriting--and that's how your story becomes better. Things you never noticed before will just pop up.
    
     So basically, the steps.
     1. Write. Do not read what you just wrote. NEVER look back at what you wrote.
     2. Let it be for a month or more.
     3. Read it and be horrified. "What was I THINKING?!"
     4.Rewrite.
     5. Edit.

     I recently got a new writing buddy, and I think that's a great thing to also have. Join a writing group or something. You need views from different people to tell you what they like and don't like.
     You might want to finish writing your story and doing the writing process, and send a little bit of it at a time to a writing buddy, but you can also send it as you go along. It helps!
    
     You can comment your thoughts and we can discuss it, or maybe you have another tip you can share. Feel free to say anything, I'd love to hear it!
      Also, a post by a favorite author and great blogger, Janice Hardy, about First Look at the First Draft. It's great, and I recommend reading it!

 

This is underneath my header and it's just great, so I'll share it again:
     "There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can't get a good story out of it."--Lawrence Watt-Evans.

Tell me your thoughts!

-The Writer

Saturday's Villain

Hello All!
Today is the first Saturday's Villain day! This is where I host a villain guest-post and interview the villain on his day off. (Yes, even villains have days off! Who likes working on a Saturday?)

First, I will introduce the author and her book. The interview will be below.

Author bio:

Rachel Roy is a dental assistant, middle of ten kids, writer, and suffers from AD--ooh, have you read Anne of Green Gables?

  She's been a writer since twelve. She wrote The Castle Bard at 16, and intends to rewrite it someday.

Story Synopsis:

Princess Brianna has never had trouble rejecting suitors. Not, that is, until she meets Arliss, self-proclaimed fearless hero. He's handsome, dashing, and clearly thinks she's gorgeous. What more could a girl want? Not even her best friend the Bard can spoil the romance. After all, he's just jealous.

Until the Bard unmasks Arliss as a liar looking for a lazy life as a prince. And a coward. And not even that handsome, all things considered.

To deal with her heartbreak, she takes up swordplay...and Arliss takes up revenge. It's clearly the Bard's fault that he is no longer the prospective heir-by-marriage, so Arliss and his shady friends come after the Bard.

But they haven't reckoned on Brianna. She's smarting from her embarrassment and itching to try out her new sword skills. Besides, the Bard is her best friend...and maybe something more.

 Villain's Bio:

Arliss was the companion to Prince Eugene and a suitor for the princess's hand...until he ran afoul of the Bard. Since the events of the story, which were certainly not his fault, he has been languishing in the king's prison. Or doing hard labor outside. He prefers languishing. 

And now, the interview with Arliss!

Hey, Arliss! Thanks for doing this with me! So, how did you come around to being hired by Prince Eugene?

I wished to travel, and being paid to travel seemed ideal. Besides, hanging around a fat man can only make me look handsomer!

Oh. That sounds nice.

I learned you had to fight a dragon...because you of a girl you flirted with? Did you really?

 But of course! Allow a member of the fairest sex to suffer danger or injury? That would be despicable!

Eugene may claim there were a few other men with me, but he's making that up.

 After you lost your job with Prince Eugene, how did you meet Tmimons, Mitchell, and McElroy?

They were old friends, actually, from before I worked for Eugene. They were delighted to help me get back on my feet...until that filthy Bard fellow's friends interfered.

I wasn't going to mention a certain someone, but since you already did...

     did you REALLY think your plan to kidnap (and maybe kill??) the Bard would work for very long?

 Of course it would. He was clearly in love with the princess, and the poor misguided girl was equally in love with him. Why else would she give me up? If it hadn't been for those stupid dwarves....!

 I see. So, were you hoping to win back the princess or you just wanted revenge? Do tell.

Both! By getting rid of that pompous idiot, I'd be revenged on him, and she would see me for the infinitely superior man that I am!

 Oh you are superior...but what if the princess got mad after the disposal of her lover? (I mean, he was there first, after all.)

Please. A day in my company, and she would certainly get over that fool.

 
What about when y'all were together? I thought she was over you after that...

 ....Of course not. Temporarily deluded, nothing more.

 Right. Well, that's all the questions I can think of! Thank you so much for doing this with me. :) It's been fun!

Oh, but of course. I am always happy to speak with my fans.

--
Next post is Wednesday Wonder! I was asked to interview someone's character (of course I said YES) so I'll be posting in a week or so.

-The Writer


If you would like your villain to be interviewed, or if your villain asks to be interviewed, you can email me at thewriterofponderings@gmail.com. Don't forget to mention which villain from which story!

Wednesday Wonders

Hello, all! 

Today is the first Wednesday Wonders! (the other Wednesday Wonder wasn't really Wednesday Wonders. It was just a title.) Wednesday Wonders is when I host an interview with someone's Wonder, or Hero. Today, it is from the one and only Hannah Williams!!

     Her Wonder hails from her work-in-progress (which I am eagerly anticipating!!) Moonscript. Before the interview, though...

Author Bio:

Hannah Williams is a seventeen year-old homeschooler living in the lush valleys of Oregon. She doesn’t mind the rain because it gives her an excuse to stay inside and write. She lives on a house on a knoll with her parents, big brother, her grammie, and three dogs, five cats, six chickens, two guinea pigs, and one goat. Her passions are writing and illustrating epic stories of good and evil. She is a geek of all things Tolkien and Stengl. She hopes to one day publish her books and that her stories will bring glory to God.

 And then so you understand who her Wonder is...

 ----

(P.S. Hannah illustrated the cover herself!)

He alone could save the world....but only if he is saved first.

Long ago, the elven king hid away his most precious book, the Moonscript, for only it held the secrets of the unreachable Higher World. Evil has long sought this knowledge…and now the heir to the Moonscript has vanished…

            Such stories should have nothing to do with Tellie.

            Young Tellie is a simple orphan girl with one desire in her heart—to find a family who loves her. But one night, she discovers a mysterious treasure and is suddenly pulled into the outside world.

            Her dreams of family and home are forced aside as Tellie is plunged into an adventure she may not survive. If she is to escape, she must rescue a fellow prisoner, the only person left alive who can keep the Moonscript a secret.

            But which will be harder—rescuing him from dungeons….or from himself?

 ----

And now, the interview with our very own Tellie!!

 
Hey, Tellie! Thanks so much for joining me today. Tell us a little about yourself!
No, thank you, Molly. I’m so amazed that you actually wish to interview me. I saw you’re titling this as a Wednesday Wonder. Oh, I blush at the idea. Me, a wonder? Hardly…though, I’m flattered that you think so. Anyway, about myself. I’m fourteen and an orphan. I worked at an inn for the past few years, but I haven’t been very happy there. But now I’m off on an adventure I never could have imagined!

What are your favorite hobbies?

Er, let’s see. I like to read, though I’m not very good at it, since I got only a sparse education at the Dormandy Orphanage. But I enjoy the outdoors and watching birds. There are so many different kinds of birds, you know. One of my favorites is the black-capped chickadee, and I once had one eating off my hand. That was a while ago though. Most recently, I’ve taken interest in magpies, one in particular…

 So, am I allowed to know how you met the prisoner? Or do I have to wait and see?

Oh, Errance. Well, I can’t give you the details about where and how we met, but I will give you my first impression of him.

I thought he was a criminal!

Hey, it was dark and scary, and I figured he was down in that smelly dungeon for a good reason. Plus, he came across rather rough, even swore a little, for which I scolded him. It came as a total shock to discover he was the elf prince. Who am I, an orphan girl, that I should be chosen to help save an elf prince?

Did you ever think of yourself as an adventurer before your great adventure began?

Probably not. I’m fairly quiet and dreamy, content to stay silent as I soak up the surrounding beauty and dream of…wait a moment, Kelm is laughing at me. He’s…what? Kelm, that’s not true! Errance, don’t you nod your head! Tryss, say something! That’s not true!
…

All right, I’m back. Kelm—sigh—said I was hardly silent. He actually called me bossy, and that I was always speaking my mind. And Errance agreed with him! Well, all right. I do speak things that ought to be said. Anyway, I dreamt of having a family more than waging an adventure. Adventures involve blood and heights and dark and scary things like that. But here I am on an adventure anyway. And to be honest, I have found a family. Errance, Tryss…okay, even Kelm…are like the brothers and sisters I never had.

Where did you grow up?

I lived most of my life in Dormandy, first with my parents, then at the Orphanage. There were many children there and the people were kind…but it wasn’t home. Neither was the inn in the rustic town of Denji. Mr. Norne and Mrs. Norne, the innkeepers, are some of the most unsavory people I’d ever met…though I suppose I’ve met some since then that pale them in comparison.

What is your favorite type of food?

Ooo, I’m not sure. I really enjoy thimbleberry pie! Have you ever tasted thimbleberries? They’re sort of like a raspberry, but better in my opinion. They grow in the forest on stalks rising past their huge leaves. If you pick them, snip them off at the stem like a flower because they squish easy otherwise.

If it’s not too sensitive a subject, what happened to your parents?

It’s all right, I can talk about it. You see, I was five at the time, and I don’t have the sharpest of memories. But I still recall a sweet smile from one bending over me. Unfortunately, I do have one image ingrained in my head. My parents burning with the fever from the plague that swept over Dormandy. And I still remember hearing the woman who picked me up for the orphanage tell a neighbor that if they hadn’t been so busy keeping care of me when I was sick, they wouldn’t have died. That…that still haunts me.

What is your opinion of the Moonscript?

Oh, well, I’m not sure how much Errance would like me to talk about that. But ah…here we go. As you know the Moonscript is an incredible book that can only be read under moonlight by the Ruler of Aselvia. It was a gift from the Celestial Elves of the Higher World. It is said that the Celestial elves wrote great wisdom and knowledge in its pages. What else it says, I’m not sure, and I’ll never find out. Errance will know one day, but I’m hesitant to ask him about it.
It’s a mysterious, beautiful thing, this Moonscript. And I suppose you could say it started this whole adventure. But I suppose it began at the most proper place to start.
The beginning.

--
Thank you so much for this great interview, Tellie! And thank you for being my first interviewed Wonder! This was lots of fun. :) (That thimbleberry pie sounded so yummy...mmmm...)

-The Writer


If you want to have your character interviewed in a Wednesday Wonder, email me! We'll set up a date and I'll interview your Wonder. 
Also, I don't do Wednesday Wonders every Wednesday. Think how frantic that could get! yikes! ;)

Writer's Block!

You know those days when all you want to do is just write? But when you get down to it, nothing comes to mind. You haven't a clue of what to write.
     You should be working on your story and you know it. But you don't want to. You might be sick of it, stuck on it, whatever the reason.

     Today, that was me. I knew I should have been working on my story to finish it before my deadline. But I wanted to go outside before it rained. I shouldn't be on the computer writing. I would like to write, but I don't want to do that particular story that has to be written.
     Whenever I hit this writer's block, (such as today) I get out my notebook and pen and I go sit somewhere outside; either on the porch, or in my special place in the woods. I take up where I left off on the story that needs to be worked on and I write.
     It's weird, but when I'm stuck, I turn off the computer and write it in my notebook, and that's how I push through my writer's block.
  
This has helped me today, but now it's starting to rain. If you're like me in this case, what else helps you to write?
     What do you do when you're stuck?

-The Writer

What about the Villain?

It had been a blissful Wednesday on the boat that day. We had played on the beach and swam a little, then were herded back onto the boat because of the clouds.
     The clouds looked dark and foreboding. I watched them as we boated back home, thinking, Now those are storm clouds!
     Then I had a thought. I lifted up my sunglasses and the clouds were a pearly white. Yes, it was dark right behind the white, a sure sign of a storm, but...

     Would you guess villains are like this? On the first impression, they are dark and foreboding. But wait, you take a closer look at their life and see that they aren't so bad on the inside after all. Something made them bad, it wasn't just them.
     
             Develop your villain.

The story may be interesting--villain kidnaps damsel, hero saves the day. (or heroine saves guy)
     But what about the villain?
     Normally, we learn of what happened in the damsel's life, how she gets kidnapped. We learn of the hero's story, how he met said damsel, and how he's going to rescue his love.
     But in lots of instances (such as a few of my dreadful stories), all we know of the villain/antagonist is that he's a badguy and he kidnapped the damsel.
     That's not always going to satisfy the readers. This is also something I need to work on; I normally get to know my heroine/hero well enough to know their backstory, what led up to meeting their love, blah blah blah.
     But what if I'm the one reading it? What would I like to see?
     I want to know what the villain's past life has been, what caused the storm in his life to come and make him the badguy. Maybe he was raised in a badguy territory, and that's all he's known. Maybe something happened such as his family died and he remained angry for the rest of the life. Maybe he's an Anakin Skywalker and he turned to the Dark Side, but for different reasons.
      I want to know more than just a kidnapping, I want to know why he did the kidnapping.

     Of course, there are instances when the story's perspective comes from the villain themselves. A few stories I've read comes from the villain's perspective and it's really quite neat, but see...they have a story. The author had to develop the story.
     This is something new I've yet to try, but I'm going to take the villain from my book and start a separate story--even a short story will do--all about the villain. His family, his raising, the people in his life--and then I'm going to take this and work it into the story. Not necessarily the entire short story, but enough that the reader gets why he's so evil. The story is to help you understand your own villain so you can help the reader understand.
     
     Gillian Adams is an author who writes funny and helpful posts about writing, too. I recommend reading her Villainy 101 to help you (and it's hilarious, so why not?)


-Le fael, Hannah/Eruanna! I thought the names were funny. I'm going to keep searching for a bit longer before I give a definite decision, though, and I was thinking something with 'Writer' in it somewhere. 'Whimsical Writer'?
Galu!-

-The Writer