General Writing

[Fluffernuff]

"copypasta! to the scrap folder with ye!!!

...ill find SOME use for you. i think. just sit there and be an idea. k? k."


thats actually kinda clever. you never know when a scrapped idea you bothered to save will rear its ugly head and offer some inspiration. or mutate into something truly epic.

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Maxine MagicFox]

Also, hoping someone can help me out here, does anyone know a good writing guide with tips and strategy for writing fighting scenes in fantasy?

I need a lot of work on this portion and I sometimes wonder if I'm missing something. :\ I'm going to open up a few books of mine and go through them, but this is definitely my pitfall at the moment.

[Maxine MagicFox]

And I am done. My final draft. At 124,364 words. Now... the long road of editing awaits.

I'm not worried about the word count (remember, for my story it needs to be between 80,000-120,000 words for anyone to even consider it for a first time writer). I have a lot of editing and cleaning and things are going to be tightened. I have whole sections of pure dialogue that need to be deleted and modified and scenes to be rewritten and there's a few chapters that I'm going to condense.

It will get there. :3 I'm actually pretty impressed with how close I am to the mark. My average chapter length is 4k words. So this is just over by one chapter. ^_^ I'm rather pleased with myself.

But that... I'm DONE. Writing the story. That I have a book from beginning to end sitting in front of me, completed. Not in my head, but actually down on paper. Apart from one fight scene (which I am purposely leaving as edit-only because it's that story-plot trigger that a lot of other scenes ride on and I want to get the scenes in place so I know how the fight needs to go - but it shouldn't add more than 2k words) everything is written.

*Phew* Deep breath! I'm excited. :3 I'm like all tingly inside. Nervous, yes, and feeling daunted with the task ahead, but excited. I've been doing this stuff since I was in 2nd grade. It feels like it's all come down to this moment.

[zamisk]

Go Maxine! *waves pom-poms*

[Trifkin]

[Maxine MagicFox]

Alright, it's unedited but in case anyone feels like reading, a little info to let me know general opinions would be nice. I'm going to start editing this thing and I want to know as much as I can about any mistakes that I might not be picking up on. If the pacing is off, not enough character dev, etc. It's only the first two chapters, but be honest and tell me: would you continue reading this if you picked it up off a shelf?

Keep my goal in mind. This is not just a simple fan fiction story I'm writing for fun. I would like to sell this and actually get it published by a well renowned publisher. I'm going to be seeking out agents and writing query letters.

And please: I'm not looking for grammar errors and misspellings. Don't waste your time pointing them out. I'm going to be going over this with a fine tooth comb. Those are obvious and will get fixed. That's not what I'm looking for.

http://maxine-magicfox.livejournal.com/285976.html

[Maxine MagicFox]

[CD-Man2021]

[Maxine MagicFox]

My editing is coming along. It's hard. So far: 1 whole character destroyed and 1 whole city. Eradicated from the story. The city still exists and will play a small part in books to come but it just no longer features in this book. That was hard. Harder than the character.

BUT! the story must continue on... I'll tuck them away into my little bag of goodies for the next novels to come. Can't wait for the major edits to be removed out so I can get down to the polishing stage so I can start sending it out for agents to read. Exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time.

[zamisk]

Which is a better title... Maxine the vampire slayer, or Maxine, destroyer of cities?

[Maxine MagicFox]

XD

The city slayer thing is especially amusing considering that my character is named Maxine and that's exactly what she does in chapter 4. I got a charge out of that.

^_^ I'll take the City Slayer if only because of that. Aww, me and my character have something in common. ~

[Starfe]

My brother posted the following on his tumblr about an incident he remembers from when we were very young in Ireland. The memory was spurred by looking through our old neighborhood on Google Street view. My response follows.



This post is very interesting, as we very rarely get insight into the mind and memory of people with whom our lives have been closely intertwined. I vaguely remember this event as well, though with little attention to the moment my fingers and hands almost went down the drain like so much motor oil. This memory of life with my brother is obscured because I don’t view this as a serious pivot point in my life where my interaction with my brother very seriously altered my existence, even though a slight change in events might have changed things considerably.

Now, when I start my day listening to Misfits in my classroom, I credit my brothers ability to be excited and outgoing about his interests when I was 10 and he was 14.

Now, when my interest in comic books and anime is something I can connect with my students over, I think about how my brother took my to Clark College week after week to watch anime, no matter how annoying I must have been.

Now, when I have my students read the intro to A Clockwork Orange in class, I think of how my brother recklessly watched all manners of cult films in the living room as I lurked in the back on my computer.

Now, when I teach students about the installation of operating systems, I remember the day my brother and I spent all day trying to repair a Win98 computer with a missing explorer.exe, only to find that our mother had tidied away the system disc. But I learned so much in the process.

Now, when I see kids struggling to read grade level material, I see the privilege I lived with in sharing a room with someone 4 years my senior for more than a decade. I read Fight Club in middle school, I read Geeks when it was most effective.

Now, when people my age describe their first concert being some arena show for some miserable shit, I remember how my brother loaned me clothes and took me to a Diablotones show at a seedy venue in Portland.

Now, when I think of what life was like when I was a teenager, the immediate thought that comes to mind is the image of sitting in the passenger seat of a shitty car, on the backroads of Hazel Dell, trying to get to the comic shop in the dark of a Washington winter.

While Pat might fixate on the things or events that might have made me less capable or, in his mind, less successful, I prefer to see it differently. My older brother, for all his flaws and self professed misgivings, helped shape who I am today. And hell, he probably did it without noticing.

An accident, like dropping a sewer grate.

[Starfe]

Double post because procrastination!

My good friend wrote this and I provided some editing assistance on it. Clever readers may be able to spot additions I made, but I hope it comes off mostly as my friends work. In any case, I really enjoyed this, and enjoyed editing it, so I thought I'd post it here.

http://hoppedupgaming.com/post/99376992 ... -of-lonely

[Maxine MagicFox]

Doing NaNoWriMo this year to relax and get my mind off of my main novel but I haven't picked my story yet (and it's only a week away!)

I'm torn between two: a fantasy story involving a fairy and a human girl who he has enslaved, or an anthropomorphic story involving a three legged cat named Trio at a farm-like fostering home.

Obviously the second one is kiddish ^_^ 10+ I've never done an anthropomorphic story before and it's going to be very 'realistic' based - as realistic as it can be... with some creative license attached - IT'S FOR KIDS.

The 50,000 word limit makes most sense for the kiddish novel which that's about the appropriate length.
Aww but the fantasy story sounds good, too~
But... KITTY!! ...

Neither one has a well fleshed out story. Just bits and scenes. ... *sigh*