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Welcome to this week's Novel Support Group. Anyone can join. If you're new, tell us a bit about who you are and what project you are working on. Feel free to update the NSG Work in Progress thread with your current projects. Although we can report on any number of things, here is a list of suggestions (suggestions welcomed).


What were your goals last week and did you accomplish them?
Describe what you worked on.
Set goals for next week.
Did you learn something during this week?

Here is a list of things that you can do each week as we work on our novels (suggestions welcomed).


Writing on a novel
Characterization
World Building
Relevant research

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As for me:

Last Week's Goals:

DUAL MAGICS SERIES (THE SHAMAN'S CURSE, THE VOICE OF PROPHECY, BEYOND THE PROPHECY,and WAR OF MAGIC): Promote the group promotion for fantasy audiobooks.
Yes. And, in case you're interested. Here it is: http://audiobookaccess.com/FantasyG

Wide Distribution Project: Wait for Amazon to resolve its issue. Everything but the short stories/novella are done otherwise. Consider which of the shorts, if any, I want to publish beyond Amazon.
Still waiting for Amazon to figure it out.

BECOME: BROTHERS: Promote on social media.
Some.

BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Keep on writing.
Yes!

MAGE STORM: Probably nothing this week.
Good call.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
Three times, actually. One to announce the audiobook giveaway.

Next Week's Goals:

DUAL MAGICS SERIES (THE SHAMAN'S CURSE, THE VOICE OF PROPHECY, BEYOND THE PROPHECY,and WAR OF MAGIC):
Promote the group promotion for fantasy audiobooks.

Wide Distribution Project:
Wait for Amazon to resolve its issue. Everything but the short stories/novella are done otherwise. Consider which of the shorts, if any, I want to publish beyond Amazon.

BECOME: BROTHERS:
Promote on social media.

BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING:
Keep on writing.

MAGE STORM:
Probably nothing this week.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
 

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Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
From a long study this year, at last realized start crisis criteria for reader engagement purposes. Curious that the greater realization parameters came from the concept "news cycle," how a news coverage begins with an event that incites an event sequence, with that first event the start, then a middle event sequence, and, at last then, an unequivocal and irrevocable event end.

Some news cycles are more or less once and done news covered for a few minutes, some middles last for days, weeks, months, even years, meantime, other news events might take up the focus and await a conclusion, though a few never end, or at the least never come to a timely conclusion end. I guess, some malefactors depend on delayed realization to get away with "murder," or maybe lessened public outrage to diminish their criminal culpability.

Nor, per se, does a crisis realization of necessity require the high magnitudes of reportable crimes to develop into news cycles. Any one can be of a high enough magnitude for dramatic start purposes yet not be a news cycle spectacle sensation. Probably less of a melodrama challenge if not newsworthy and higher appeal potentials therefore.

The "Lock in" from David Smith's "Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction" as well fits this aspect; that is:

"Lock in (to). A character is locked in to a situation when he cannot escape from its conflict, usually because the stakes are high enough, and the consequences of non-participation so onerous, that trying and failing to [is] better than doing nothing. For example, Robinson Crusoe is locked in; he must survive. Usually there is an irrevocable action, early in the story, which locks the character into his problem."

Plus locked in to a main complication's want-problem persuasions. Smith and most of prose culture conflate complication into conflict -- Robinson Crusoe's conflict is life and death; his main complication is want to survive being stranded on a deserted island, which entails the main problem, too, of the complication.

As well as an event's high magnitude drama, that milieu and attendant setting and characters be of a high enough dramatic magnitude to suit the action. Crusoe's milieu setting: a deserted tropical island. His "civilized," religious character is apt and a high magnitude dramatic contrast to the "uncivilized," godless characters with whom he, at times, aligns and more so contends.

The main crisis realization is overt, that he is a castaway stranded. However, the novel starts with a shipwreck Crusoe survives; the next voyage later he is captured by pirates and gets free, before he is finally stranded. Huh, three events. Vladimir Propp's law of three refusals, the last unavoidable -- locked in.

Assorted interpretations of the Daniel Defoe novel claim it is an allegory for civilization development, for imperialism development, colonialism development, and cultural relativism. Others claim the novel is among the first, if not the first, English novel in the mien of first ever modern dramatic novel, and of the energetic type, in which moral truth discovery transpires. And it is among the Realism vanguard, if not the novel at which reality imitation mimesis departs from Romanticism's impressionist summarization diegesis.

Crusoe got "back on the horse" after being thrown three times, eventually, never to sail again. The crisis realization relates to the hazards and rewards of maritime culture, and not fully realized until the end. Crusoe's initial want, though, is to forge his independent identity, fame, and fortune on the high seas. The novel fits firmly into the cult of independent manhood genre, like Ernest Hemingway's work does, which is, at its kernel, the true moral truth crisis realization, contest, and discovery of the novel.
 

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Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
 
Been busy on other stuff,

but did work a tiny bit on that dragon punk, steampunk thingie.

And still waiting on the Courier

And gotten maybe over three fourths of the way done with the revising of Journey. If it wasn't for RL I may have had it almost done.
 

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