quote: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: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING/BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Promote through social media. I really need to find a way to become more effective at this. I really have to get back to that marketing book. Also, I do have an ad for this scheduled for this week. Some. Plus the ad.
MAGE STORM: Work on this rewrite. Not as much as I should have this week, but some.
DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this.
BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING/BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Promote through social media. Also, I do have an ad for this scheduled for this week. I now have two books on social media marketing. So . . . I need to read them.
List of published books just to remind me of all the things I should be paying at least some attention to:
Blood Will Tell (Chimeria #1) Blood Is Thicker (Chimeria #2) Fire and Earth The Bard's Gift Daughter of the Disgraced King The Shaman's Curse (Dual Magics #1) The Voice of Prophecy (Dual Magics #2) Beyond the Prophecy (Dual Magics #3) War of Magic (Dual Magics #4) Become: To Catch the Lighting (Become #1) Become: To Ride the Storm (Become #2)
Ad for Become: To Ride the Storm this week. (1/2)
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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Hi there. New to this section of the forum. Just posted my new project on the NSG Work in Progress pages (which seem a bit dormant, but I figured I'd follow instructions ).
Working title: The Book of Dreams
Projected length: 90 000-100 000 words.
Will post updates as they occur - aiming for at least monthly, probably more often. Busy working on outline and characters at the moment - and will probably continue to do that through January.
My main interest in posting here is for some sense of accountability. And - if and when I get stuck - perhaps some advice from more experienced writers. Starting a first novel after 40 feels like an audacious thing to do. Also feels a bit 'now-or-never' though. We shall see.
Thanks for keeping this thread open!
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2018
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quote:Originally posted by WarrenB: Hi there. New to this section of the forum. Just posted my new project on the NSG Work in Progress pages (which seem a bit dormant, but I figured I'd follow instructions ).
Welcome. Yeah, even I haven't kept the NSG Work in Progress up to date on what I'm working on. Really should fix that.
quote: My main interest in posting here is for some sense of accountability. And - if and when I get stuck - perhaps some advice from more experienced writers. Starting a first novel after 40 feels like an audacious thing to do. Also feels a bit 'now-or-never' though. We shall see.
Accountability is part of the point. And I have no idea why age should matter at all. [/qb][/quote]
quote:Thanks for keeping this thread open!
Could be I need accountability, too. But you're welcome.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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I did not accomplish much of what I would have liked this past week. Damn medication has me oscillating between obsessive cleaning/cooking/recipe development and wanting to write. Food and cleanliness seem to be winning at the moment. But only just. So, what’s what?
The Everyman Protocol:
Still waiting for inspiration. This is something I’m actually used to, and accept. A problem/conundrum sits and percolates in the back of my subconscious until some trigger produces a solution. It can take hours, days, weeks or months, but it will happen; patience is the key.
Ascent of a Man:
I submitted the ‘Preliminary Draft’ of the opening and was happy with the responses, one in particular. The problems pointed out were ones I expected from those offering the critique. I’ve been here long enough to get an idea of the inherent biases of most members. I accept them, utilise them were appropriate and thank the members, but ignore their given advice if I can’t use it.
Anyway, this week I intended to work on Jonas’ Fall. He’s died, and now he falls to Hell. My problem with this part is that at this moment I need him to feel utter despair about his future. I’m not good at writing a despairing, whining sook of a character. I’m not sure I can. But I have to try.
Any advice in this area would be helpful.
Maybe, with some luck, I can get past this little roadblock and get to Satan’s grand entrance and Jonas’ plaintive question, “Why am I here?” Except it isn’t phrased that poorly; it has a little archaic flair.
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A very quick (not deeply considered) thought about despair... which I know you'll take for what it's worth. I imagine despair would be difficult to write (haven't tried to do so in a sustained way myself) because it is often wordless - it's not a hyper-articulate thing. Past whining or self-pity, it's a black pit, without light, hope, God, movement. It might be worth digging into some of the Catholic lit on despair (and hell) - some of the descriptions there might be helpful for sparking your own ideas/framings. My guess it is has to be shown rather than spoken about for it to 'land'. May the force we with you!
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2018
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Despair is from the Old French despeir or the Latin desperare, meaning to be without hope. It is, in my one-off experience of despair a long time ago, a purely internal emotional response to a bad situation you can't see any way out of. The feeling is purely subjective which is why despair tends to drive people into social isolation: "No one understands what's happening to me."
Showing this on the page, rather than just 'reporting' what's going on is the struggle. I'm doing my best, but.
quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: Maybe, with some luck, I can get past this little roadblock and get to Satan’s grand entrance and Jonas’ plaintive question, “Why am I here?” Except it isn’t phrased that poorly; it has a little archaic flair.
Or. you could jump past the roadblock and write that grand entrance and so forth now, then work on the roadblock later.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Good point. It might even be that the grand entrance is the place to start, because it's the place that will hook your readers.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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The emotion of despair is often shown through setting circumstances, akin to foreshadows, like weather or ambience descriptions.
A 2015 Colum McCann short story, "Sh'khol" shows despair through those and the circumstances at front, albeit tension developed and built from the start and through an incitement pivot's setup circumstances and delayed relief until the end. Diction sets the tenor, and what external sensation motifs are described yet in close thought, and few speech. The viewpoint persona is a translator and translates "Sh'khol" from a Hebrew novel as "bereaved" the first occasion and "shadow" the final one.
The Hell-bound descent looks, sounds, feels tactile, smells or tastes, like or is what?
Though I favor congruent opposites for word economy and confident concision of expression. Exquisite irony about despair within this:
"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away'".
Edgar Allan Poe's poetry is equally edgy shadows of despair.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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I sort of pre-empted your advice, kdw and Meredith. As this is simply a preliminary draft, (kind of like the first layer a renderer lays down on a wall in order to give the render a suitable surface to stick to) this draft is a device I use to give me a structure to stimulate specific creative ideas--and thought for each phase of a story.
I’ve drafted Jonas’ fall to hell and his despair as he realises where he’s going. In sketching this out I’ve come to a number of conclusions:
Choice of words is paramount, for instance, he weeps instead of cries, or instead of having tears streaking down his face. He wants someone to save him, not help him, and so on.
This is one of the rare occasions where I will use a speech modifier, specifically, he cried out. I will not tack on in despair in order to pre-empt the reader’s interpretation. That’s too gauche.
I need some means of tracking the passage of time which isn’t absolute. I was originally using heartbeats without specifying their length, but, hey, he’s dead, so I’ve chosen the tolling of a bell. My only worry is that a significant number of people may not know what a tolling bell signifies.
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A bell's toll, of clock bells, for one, is a regular and not too often trite type of time passage and deadline metaphor. Freshness of the metaphor's aural sensation would be, for me, a priority. Sound distortion? Psychedelic reverb, backward sequenced, clapper clap last, yodel-like echo?
Or another sensation instead? Jonas is the bell and the clapper claps his head ever downward? Hah! Tactile. The old brain box as a bell of wrung pain and despair reverberations?
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Ah,dear. An eloquent example of misunderstanding the term toll. It's a corruption of tell, where a bell is rung long and slowly at a funeral. A specific sound unlike the normal ringing of a bell. Sometimes, half the clapper is muffled with leather.
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If by tell is meant count the strokes of a bell, okay, or a bell begins to tell alarm, time's passage, a summons to a place, okay, a bell's tell then. Otherwise, 15th century coin for the strokes of a bell from toil alteration.
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I've toiled a church bell to tell the congregation to mass, swung manually. Twelve peels begun a quarter of for a noon service . . . Served more than a few masses, funerals, weddings, baptisms, too. Loathe those church loudspeaker bell simulators that play seasonal "tunes."
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Cliche? Is this because of Hemingway or John Donne? I'm not really talking of a bell tolling in either terms, I'm talking of the original meaning, and sound, of a method for ringing a bell called tolling. It was most commonly used to call people to a burial; hence John Donne's use of it in his sermon that begins: "No man is an island . . .." The point being the loss of one of us is a loss to all of us; not the message in my story, BTW.
I've tried finding a sound file of a 'tolling' bell, but to no avail. I need to talk to a Campanologist, a bell ringer.
I was really getting into using the subsonics of a bell to mark time. Might just have to risk it.
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I have heard, do hear the sound intended. A difficult challenge to describe and not bog dramatic movement. Onomatopoeia?
Bong Ba-ang Click Thud Thump Etc.
Other than a bell, too?
The sound of a metal halyard slapped against an aluminum flag pole? Or rope halyard? Both or other "bell" and "clapper"? A cymbal pair? Mixed bass drum and cymbal? An iron kettle and ceramic vase? "Clapped" by wood, metal, or other striker?
Military drill includes a slow-time march for funerals and memorial honors. Sixty paces per minute, the spoken command is "Half time, March," a two-beat cadence in quick time's one hundred twenty paces per minute. Metaphor if other than direct aural sensation description, or and?
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
As a writer, if I'm going to try and translate a physical sound, and it's attending vibrations, I should actually experience it.
I have located contact details for the Australian and New Zealand Association of Bell Ringers. Now I have to see if a few beers or a nice pinot might prompt some of them to give me a demonstration. I doubt it's a commonplace ring, so some effort on their part may be required.
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