Greetings everyone! I hope your week has seen you well so far. I had an interview yesterday and another one today, so let's see how that goes. I hope you all had a chance to check out 'The Light Rises' using the coupon code AW99C so you can get it 75% off! That coupon runs until May 30th, so tell your friends!
After going over in my brain what to talk about today, I have decided to look at preparation. Now you may wonder why that gets its own post, since many people think preparation is a two step process, that being; Get an idea for a book, followed by, write that book. While those are important steps they aren't really anything prep-wise, they're essentially what you're doing.
No, the first step in preparation is simply getting the idea. Once you have that idea you need to take it apart and figure out if it's something that you are able to build and expand enough to make a cohesive story. That goes for both short and full-length stories. Your idea can be anything from a boy walking his dog to the park to a group of resistance fighters trying to stop the spread of an alien invasion that's working with the government in order to take over the world. If you can't expand on that enough to make the story compelling and make sense, then it either needs to be shelved for now or worked on further before going to paper. (Or computer, if that is your preferred medium)
As I mentioned before, once you get your basic plot idea, then it's time to get some characters in there. Since I've gone into this before, I won't elaborate too much on that step. Just remember your characters need to fit in and also expand the plot; if they don't seem to fit right nothing's going to feel natural in the scenes with that particular character.
Something that must also be considered is how far you want to take, not just the characters, but the overall plot. Is this a one-shot story? If it is, are you planning on making a sequel with the same characters again later? What sort of loose-ends are you going to leave the reader asking questions about so the sequel doesn't feel forced? Something that I have found is one of the hardest questions to answer is the one asking 'how much time has passed between these books', since you will also need to advance the entire world by that. Now, to be fair this does work easier in stories that are sent in the real world, since you already know how, for the most part, how technology advanced and such. If you've created your own, things become a bit more difficult because you have to rip everything from your own head to decide how far things have advanced and changed.
If you are planning on writing a series, you also need to decide how many books there are going to be. You can do a three book trilogy, or a seven book epic, or anything in between. What's important at that point is to make sure the characters are growing with the times as well, and also with the reader, since it's not like people in the real world are stuck in non-progressive time (right?). If you write an eight book series and a whole two weeks have passed from book one to book eight, not only is that a little hard for a reader to believe, but, depending on what's happening in them by the fourth book at least one of the characters has to have some kind of breakdown because obviously they're living in some 24-like universe where something terrible happens every single day, and not everyone is Jack Bower.
I appreciate everyone stopping by again! Please come back on Friday for the weekly review. If there are any questions/comments/emotional outbursts, please contact me or put them in the comments. I'd be more than happy to see some! Have a good week!
No comments:
Post a Comment