Project #1 Overview: Reboot

So...I'm still getting back into the swing of things. And I forgot to post, well, anything yesterday. But here's my overview for our first project assignment of the reboot. The hardest part for me was picking a piece to rewrite, because there were so many to choose from. I figured the important consideration was to rewrite a piece that meant something important to a project I already had going, and I figured a little Dagaz wouldn't hurt, since I fully intend to finish that story (one day). Most of my revisions were minor, but they were to cut down on some of my bad habits, like too-long sentences. I also battened down the point of view so it was a little tighter, and that helped. Some aspects of the plot itself needed to change, like Asia's reaction to discovering young James had never been kissed. Here's to the reboot!

Overview #87: Secrets

So I was a bit spotty on writing this week. Did my best, but it wasn't much. I was pleased at the way I managed to throw some interesting depth into the mix that is Asia and James. I love the new James as a character, and I'm excited to see what happens. I was pleasantly surprised to see Riley developing as the secret-keeping character. In every group of friends, in every romantic comedy plot, there's one poor, sweet, put-upon person who has to keep everyone else's secrets, and either the keeping or divulging of those secrets makes or beaks the plot. Here's to a bit more consistency next week.

Overview #86: Proverbs

I think I did all right as far as using proverbs. Thing is, I sort of wove them into the dialogue without giving them the weight they deserved. They came off as clever quips or perhaps lines of poetry but without much in the way of real depth. Sometimes that was deliberate, as a given character was unaware of proverbs being used, and other times I think I was too busy doing what I do best - dialogue - and not giving ancient wisdom the respect it deserves.

I missed out on a few days due to sheer exhaustion, and right now I think I'm learning about my writing weaknesses more than anything, but so far I'm surviving. Here's to doing better next week.

Overview #85: Allusions

I had fun with this. One songfic, one mad Bible reference, and some movie references. I wasn't as steady as I wanted to be with posting this week, but I had fun, and I got to explore the ways in which we communicate in shorthand - namely, with allusions. The new job is out to kill me, but I'm always glad to get in the writing I did. I'm getting the feel of the Seraph-verse boys and girls more. When I first started out, I thought I'd like Kyle the best, but maybe I do kind of like Cody. A lot. I didn't think much of Marsh as a character, but readers seemed to like him. I need to do more work with Agent Sam Samuels, but I think I'm getting the hang of her, and I'm liking the way the angels themselves are developing personalities.

Of course, I know the boys of Sector Five the best, and I was really pleased at what came out with their conversation. Here's to having more energy to post regularly next week.

Overview #84: Deadlines

So...I was pretty dissatisfied with my work earlier in the week. I'm getting the hang of the Seraph-verse kids and their Angels, which makes me happy, but it seemed like I wasn't doing anything too unique with the prompts. And then on the last two days I just failed altogether, so there's that to take into consideration too. In the end the post I liked most was the Dagaz one, probably because I went back to my roots where the words were a prompt and not the theme, which likely deviated from the assignment, but I went with it. Still, considering I started a new job this week, I think I did all right.

Overview #83: Raise a character

So...I spent a bit too much time on his childhood and then skipped straight to his death. I guess, in my head, the full novel would cover his adolescence, which is pretty much why I skipped it. I hadn't intended to make Cody a super-genius (in my head he was always smart, but Kyle was meant to be the special one) and I really didn't intend for Cody to die (but it looks like Elise died too), but in the end it worked, and I'm okay with it. So...now I at least have the hang of Cody.

Poor Cody.

I killed him.

Overview #82: Books

I started out this week all right, except I totally bailed on feedback, for which I apologize. I was excited about this challenge, because I hadn't really thought about the literariness of my characters. It would be stereotypical to have Cody be really well-read, and obviously Angel and Asia would be incredibly well-read. As DJ is an artist, surely he would read graphic novels. I tried to shake it up a bit, pick books that made sense but were also a twist, and I think I did the best with Angel, but everyone else...yeah. I was pretty proud of what I did with Marsh, because he's the seraph-verse character I know the least, and I liked what happened with him.

In the end, I've been watching too much MI-5 and I picked too many books that I like (although it would be difficult for me to pick books I don't like, as I don't remember them and can't give them to characters as a result), and I welched on feedback, so this week was a posting success but otherwise kind of a bust.

Also, it feels like I still have writer's block.

Overview # 81 Musical Instruments

I tried to get a feel for what instruments my boys would play. And I think the most difficult was writing Stephens Beat Box piece. How do you render those sounds into writing...?

I have to say I partially failed this week because my sister gave birth and so it kinda didn't happen.

I enjoyed writing Mark and Joe's pieces.

Overview #81: Musical Instruments

So...this week was all right. I learned some new things about the boys and girls in Seraph-verse. The cheap thing about the boys in the Dagaz is that they all play instruments (except maybe Angel) and they all play bloody well. I'd given Tobias an instrument from his first life, and I think he's the only one who inherently has two, so I gave Keith another one out of national pride, but...I don't know that I really did anything new with them having musical instruments. In typical me fashion, what started off as an exploration of music itself turned into an exploration of character with music as a sort of foil or entry point.

Who knows. As long as I'm learning new things about my characters, I'm glad, but I'm not entirely sure I grew as a writer this week.

On the other hand...this week Madness wins! Because she wrote her own song lyrics for a piece. That's artistic integrity and dedication, friends. So...fandom of your choice, 1000 words or less!

Overview # 80 - Poetry

Okay. So I turned out a few this week that I was proud of, but I got sick with a terrible cold so my posting slacked off. I did have several more ideas, most of them were of the fever induced variety and they didn't stick around for very long. Plus my internet connection has been driving me up the wall this week! It will randomly stop working. So I hope to be forgiven.

Most of my work this week didn't rhyme; which is kind of a departure for me, but I rather liked it.

Overview #80: Open-form poetry

.....And I wrote poetry for the first time in almost a year. Most of it was whimsical and centered around a single image, a metaphor, and was really prose with line breaks, the kind of prose you can't get away with in the middle of a fictional narrative but that works okay with line breaks. Only one poem had even a vaguest notion of a story. The rest of it was emotional.

I noticed there was a lot of emotional poetry this week. I'm my imagistic self, sticking to concrete images and trying to avoid abstractions (not that they didn't tumble off of my fingertips all over the place). I need to learn a new trick or angle, I think, and maybe my poetry will be better.

Overview #79: Travel

Okay ready for my epic fail to be over with! I only got out one piece and it was rather pathetic. So I will scrub this week and do better next week. The winner was Nagi so you can pick your prize!

Overview #79: Travel

So I didn't make it every day this week. I've decided that rather than backdate posts I miss, I'll take the days I get and lose the days I don't. I tried to stick with the Seraph-verse and Dagaz as much as possible, because the choirboys and girls deserve love, and the Dagaz will likely be around until I die. I spent most of my focus on trying out the characters in different modes of travel, partially to see what those were like, but in the end it all came back to how traveling affected the characters, how they interacted, whether they liked traveling in a given fashion at all. It was enlightening, about the choirboys and girls. I even got a bit songfic at the end. Not a perfect week, but a decent one all the same.

And...since I was the only one who played steadily this week (I know Xylas is having internet woes in Afghanistan) there's no good reason to pick a winner. Let there be competition next week!

Overview #78: Songfics

So it's official, I kinda slacked off this week. In my defense, I was out of town and my access to internet was spotty at best, so I did what I could when I could. I love Songfics, and I guess I'm kind of a traditionalist when it comes to them - I like to weave the lyrics of a song into a piece. At least, that's what I like with The Script because I love the lyrics of their songs. If I'd chosen a band for the music instead of the lyrics, it would be a whole different story (which means I have to try some Eternal Melody stuff when this challenge comes around again), but this week I think I did all right, turning the lyrics into dialogue. I think my first entry was my favorite, because I love that song and I've been meaning to write that story (or one like it) to that song for a while. I think my last entry was the best as far as weaving in the lyrics more subtly. Still, I could have done better, and I felt like a cheat for defaulting to the boys of The Dagaz, but this was a pretty awesome exercise. Better luck next week.

Overview #77 - New Character

This week I fell a little behind, but I created a few characters that I'm a little proud of and who might be fun to play with in the future.

Many thanks to my fellow writers for the constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement. AS always Nagi thank you for being my grammar police. It really does help me. I think the long time in between writing really made me rusty again and the things that I was starting to get a grasp on sort of slipped away.

Overview #77: New Characters in 100 (redux)

First of all...\o/ Yay! We're back! We've made it through a full week of the game, we have new players, and it looks like we're getting back on our feet. This makes me decidedly excited, and I'm hoping we stay in the loop and pick up the pace so that by the end of this year we will all be noticeably better writers.

So...this week I kind of cheated. A little. Instead of cooking up all new characters I went back and resurrected characters from a 'verse I worked in briefly and gave them some more depth, studied them some more. I've always wanted to give urban fantasy a genuine shot, and I think this might be my chance. I got to know the characters better, fleshed them out some more, and then at the end I introduced two genuinely new characters to throw into the universe for good measure. I learned lots from my fellow writers as well, about how to balance physical description with temporal existence, personality, and small details. 100 words isn't a lot, but I learned that a good writer will make every word count.

Since I issued last week's challenge, it's my honor and privilege to pick the winner, and this week it is...

XYLAS!

That's right. You won. Because you wrote well, and best of all, you left really great constructive feedback. So...request your prize!

For a refresher on how prizes work, check here.

Overview #75: Supernatural Iconoclast

I had a super-awesome blast with this. Coming up with new weird characters was fun! The fairy bodyguard and the tech support wizard were probably two of my favourites. I got a little behind and had to scramble to catch up, but this was good, an exercise in understanding stereotypes and also breaking them without going overboard, creating Mary Sues, or otherwise falling into writerly traps. Maybe one day I'll take up with some of them again, and it was good times. Half of this was mixing stereotypes, taking one person and stereotyping him or her as something else, like Ranolph the werewolf actor: take away his being a werewolf, and he was a stereotypical drama boy. Same with the soccer witch, the hot surfer boy. I think the fairy bodyguard and the vampire family were probably the most original, and I had oodles of fun with them.

NOTE: no challenge this next week. It's Thanksgiving! Spend it with friends and family.

Overview #74: Critical Scenes

This was tough, to try to capture all the momentum of an entire plot line in a single scene barely 500 words long. It was hard to resist the urge to throw down background details, and I'm pretty sure sometimes I failed, but it was fun to dive in and see which scenes would matter most. It was hard to make the characters real without the plot-building that makes things awesome, but I made a good run of it, and I think I learned something about characters. Also names. It was hard to come up with names on the fly that didn't all sound the same, because when I'm writing I work with a set of given characters until their time in my mental menagerie is done, and all their names through their various incarnations are just riffs off of each other, and I couldn't do that here lest I risked basically reiterating the same plots and characters. It was interesting to see how the last scene started off with a UK name and turned the setting UK without me thinking about it.

Still, a fun exercise in feeding plot bunnies. Here's to not falling so behind next week.

Overview #73: Plot Bunnies

So this week I winged it solo. That's fine. It was a little soul-baring, to throw out some of my stupidest but most well-loved plot kinks and unwritten plot bunnies, but it was also fun remembering them and thinking about how much I want to write them or even read someone else's take on them. They're the stories that I write in my head to fall asleep at night, and even though I don't know the details, I know how reading them would make me feel, and I want to make someone else feel the same thing. I had fun, though, being a giddy teenage girl again and throwing all my crazy novel fantasies out in the open. I'm hoping, one day, I'll have the time to come back and give some of these stories the lives they deserve.

Overview #71: New Characters

I totally had fun writing in first person POV this week. IT was interesting the difference in the immediacy of the scene when writing from that POV rather than another.

I started the week not really knowing what to write about, and then a situation popped into my head. A man in the hospital with no memory of who he was or how he got there.

And since I enjoyed writing the first person POV so much, I created Sarah. I wanted to challenge myself to write a scene in which a sense was missing, but have it not be so noticeable.

I was a little stuck with what to write next, but I looked around and spotted my renaissance dress and that gave me the idea for Anne and Jane. it was interesting that I had originally thought to have the scene more about Anne, but it shifted to focus on little Jane. It was also interesting to write two new characters in a scene and try to make each of them distinct from the first person POV. I like how Anne focused on Jane.

I also liked the help I got in the re-write of the additional post for Sarah and Chris.