Hello again everyone. Today will officially mark the beginning of summer, apparently at 4:09pm PST (I'm assuming it'll be at 4:09 whatever timezone you're in, but I want to be sure.) and my only wish is that the weather finally decides what it wants to do and is consistent for more than a couple days. Things going back and forth are not good for allergies and even if I'd rather it get to 72 degrees and stay that way, something that I know isn't going to happen, things staying the same for maybe a week would be nice too, just to get things to even out.
I wish I had a better topic to bring up today, but I with things winding down at the center, my focus has been elsewhere. So I have decided to simply talk about practicing today. Now, I know you're probably asking, "But if I'm writing a book, that's technically practicing, right?" The answer is that you are technically correct (which is the best kind of correct, so good job) however, if you use your book as your medium for practice, it's going to be fairly obvious that's what you did during your read through, which means editing is going to be an even more massive job than it already is. Though if you want to do that, be my guest!
My idea of practice is to just write small things, short stories or something similar. Use them to work on things that you find challenging so that when you go to put it into your actual book, it won't feel clunky and broken. For example, if writing action sequences are not your forte, but you want to put a lot of them in your novel because explosions are awesome (which they are), go work on a short story about some people needing to get out of a building in less than five minutes or else it will explode with them in it. This will help you work on building tension, action, maybe some fight scenes because there have to be minions trying to stop them, and also description because you want to make sure that them jumping out of the building just as it explodes is as dramatic and awesome as possible.
This really goes for anything that could possibly be in a novel; romantic scenes, dramatic, character interaction, action, what have you. If there's anything that you know you're struggling at, for one reason or anything, and yet you want to have those scenes happen in your book because they fit and you want things to feel that way, then you need to practice. For myself, I have been working on character interaction to make the times when people are together seem more fluid. I've been doing this by adding in more body language queues, some pauses if one of the people are particularly shy, and just taking examples from watching my friends interact. People don't all act the same, but and everyone has something different they do during different times of stress, so having your characters all act the same wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.
Thanks everyone for stopping by, I hope my advice will at least be a little helpful. Come back on Friday to see what I put up for the weekly review. Remember next week I will be working a normal person's schedule, 8 - 5, so the posts will either be later in the day or stupidly early in the morning. It will really depend on how awake I am in the end. Either way the posts will likely be entertaining because I'll either be half asleep or so wired on caffeine I should be institutionalized. Anyway, I'll see you all back here on Friday! Have a good rest of the week!
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