Tag: Writing

Whipping Your Words, a guest post from Katy-Rose Hötker

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Blogging, Other Writers, Writing

Today’s guest post comes from my lifelong friend, Katy-Rose. We have been on parallel life-paths since the time we met; both five years old and instant friends. Katy-Rose is building her writing dream and running Faery Allure, a small jewellery business, in between the exciting experience of first-time motherhood, and starting The Hidden Grove organic produce farm with her husband. Thank you for the guest post, and all these shared years, Katy-Rose!
~A

I could never write short fiction, at least, I always found it difficult. I’ve more often than not been guilty of letting my words run away with me. They can be so beautiful and meaningful, how do you let go? Why would anyone want to reign in their language? The answer to that question is, to achieve better potency! Our words are more memorable and our stories more succinct when we whip them into shape.

I was raised on epic high traditional fantasy. I devoured it in my teenage years. Hungry for its rich detail and lush world building! It’s a genre that affords a fair amount of verbosity and flowery description. However, as the years have passed, my taste in fiction has expanded. I’ve started reading Young Adult fantasy. And YA fiction is a different creature entirely!

The wording of a novel aimed at a vastly teenage readership is a lot snappier I’ve found, in comparison. You must immediately engaged your audience. You must grab them by the shirt collar and pull them through the worm hole! There’s no time for long-winded explanatory prologues, epilogues and appendices. Your intended reader must be sucked in and not want to put that book down. It must be like a quick fix, full of excitement. The stakes must be high. Your audience wants to feel involved.

From my journey through these genres and my current life circumstances, (think newborn and a fledgling business) I decided to put my novels on the shelf, bad pun intended, and began seeking out fiction that would sate my love of an epic snappy story, with body and heart, without the 60-300k word count. It was at this time I found a new respect and love of short stories, and the new kid on the block, flash fiction. These formats allowed my imagination to run wild, but on the clock. I could continue to fit reading and writing into my day.

I began to try my hand at flash fiction myself and found, much to my genuine surprise, that it was easy. It flowed without obstruction from my mind to the page! I couldn’t believe it, I still can’t. For the longest time, shorter fiction, let alone a form of micro fiction, was a ‘no go’ zone for me. It was all or nothing. I was going to write and read epic traditional high fantasy my whole life. Needless to say, I’m glad my taste in fiction has widened. Variety is the spice of life!

So the key to writing shorter stories in my experience, is to write a tale that you would enjoy immersing yourself in, on a limited time budget. Instead of that fifteen minute bus ride to work being a great sullen bore, why not forget reality for that time and enjoy a quick story? Write that story and others will want to read it. We are all escapists at our core. We all dream great dreams and imagine the seemingly implausible. But sometimes big dreams and lengthy tales have to be put on hold, and this is where our smaller, every day dreams step into the limelight and it’s when short fiction shines. It fills an otherwise unoccupied niche in the reader market.

Whip your words into shape and not only will you have an engaged and entertained audience, but also a very satisfied one. One that will possibly commit your name to memory and look out for longer works of fiction by you in the future when you eventually get the time!

You can find some of Katy-Rose’s flash fiction in these upcoming publications!
“Lunar Cry” in Daily Frights 2012: 366 Days of Frightening Flash Fiction (Leap Year Edition) from Pill Hill Press.
“Midnight Allure” in Daily Flash 2012: 366 Days of Flash Fiction (Leap Year Edition) from Pill Hill Press.
“Sweet Delirium” in Short Sips: Coffee House Flash Fiction Collection (Volume 2) from Wicked East Press

How do you edit?

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Writing

With only three chapters remaining until I’ve completed my second draft of TDM, I’m getting that niggling feeling I might be missing something, or going about this all wrong. I don’t know where these thoughts come from! I can’t explain the irrational doubts which enter my mind. I’ll be working away merrily, then BAM. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”. The answer to that is a resounding no, but we can all agree that none of anyone knows what they’re doing, so it’s all okay.

But to sate my curiosity, and my innate need to compare, I thought I’d just put it out there: how do you go about editing a manuscript?

I started out by reading the whole story. At least, I think I did. There’s a very good chance I got half way (or less) through it before I started making changes. I’ve been trying to work methodically, start to finish. At the beginning of a session, I will go back a scene or two and refresh my memory and get into the groove of the story before I edit further.

There have been many instances where I’ve changed something, and had to go back to much earlier in the story to modify something small for accuracy. Or worse, browse through the previous chapters to figure out what I already wrote, sometimes because I just need to verify my own memory, and sometimes because I can’t recall exactly what I changed.

It feels like a whole lot of back-and-forth. Am I doing something wrong? Is this the normal way to edit? Am I just terribly neurotic? (Yes.) Will this all get easier with practice, or am I going to be stuck with this method forever?

I’ve mentioned in another post how I love to collect and save words of wisdom and inspiration (Just half of a fully forgotten memory). One of the gems in my collection comes from INTERN’s NaNoReVisMo (another alternate to InSecDraMo). I can take a lot of comfort in seeing what INTERN deems vital during editing, because I can compare notes and see that I’m doing a whole lot of what she’s mentioned. That’s important! My feelings are being validated! I might almost be on the right track!

But let me know what you get up to when it’s time to polish your story.

~A

Half way points

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Writing

In the spirit of InSecDraMo, I thought I’d stop in today and give you all a mid-November update!

Okay, to be fair, I (re)started editing TDM on October 27th, so I got five days headstart on the ol’ month of writerly work, but that goes a little way toward off-setting the problem of Halloween a couple of days later, then my wedding anniversary and birthday falling in this month and taking me away from work (rightfully so, I suppose). For November itself, I’ve missed four days. I’ve added over 3,500 words to my manuscript, and cut or changed innumerable more (meaning I have no way of keeping track of exactly what I’ve cut, re-written, or replaced).

In terms of actual editing, I am more than half way through the book. There’s no accurate measurement for editing-to-word ratio, since I know for a fact that I will be adding in certain scenes further in the story, thus upping the final count. As far as current word count goes, I’ve edited up to the 57% point. That is a VERY good feeling.

For InSecDraMo, that would mean I’m ahead of schedule, and doing a mighty fine job of it! I admit, I’m struggling a little at the moment, and that’s a big part of why I’ve missed days. This chapter is amazing and totally awesome, but still desperately needed a hard edit. There were things I’d decided I needed to change, no question about it, and it’s just hard to add those elements in when it temporarily mangles an otherwise epic scene.

The story will still need work later on, but it’s definitely getting somewhere. I am still so in love with these characters, and the situations they are getting into make me some kind of gleeful maniac. It’s all a little mean, but an author has to do these things to the ones we love best! Right now, I think I have an excellent chance at reaching my editing goal and have it ready for my betas to read at the end of the month. Exciting! I know at least one of them is eagerly awaiting this story.

~A

A step into the past

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Writing

Revealing character insights is a very complicated business.

I come to a “flashback”-style moment in my book, I don’t know if I want it. Is there a better way to integrate that information? Can I make it more seamless? Or is it fine to just have the main character narrate their reminiscing? I don’t know, because I’m too close to it, I don’t have an objective opinion when I’m so deep into editing. No one else will know the answer without reading the story, but I don’t want to give it to my betas yet. It’s not ready for that read-through.

I already know that a very clever author will provide insights like the one I am debating, in a way that doesn’t disrupt the momentum of the scene. Does this flashback take too long? Does it disrupt the flow? I can’t figure it out. It seems to sit well enough, and it’s not totally unique in its delivery.

The degree and speed of which I wish to divulge information is one of those tricky things. I don’t want to dump all the character’s knowledge and feelings at the beginning of the book; there are more natural, poignant moments to reveal certain elements. But I also don’t want to take too long to establish the early motives of these characters. I don’t want it to be one of those books that someone else reads, wondering, “Why would these people do this?”. I’ve experienced that with other people’s stories, and I know I want to avoid it in mine.

I can try re-writing, or I can carry on. This won’t be the only edit the story sees, so it isn’t completely essential to figure it out right now. But it gets me all tangled.

~A

The colour for writing

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Blogging, Other Writers, Thoughts

Books. Books need those classic creamy white pages, with dark text and maybe embellishments of colour here and there. I have plenty of plans for my page layouts, including the delightful little swirls and highlights I would love to see. The reading experience will not be infringed upon, but the page itself should be considered through the eyes of an artist. Some of my favourite books contain unique designs, often around the page number, or across the chapter name.

I’ve been hunting down some new blogs to read*, and it occurred to me with shocking suddenness: I hadn’t been paying any attention to the colours most people are using. I only realised this when one of the blogs had a header with the same colour scheme as my own blog, and I consciously acknowledged that it caught my eye and made me loiter at the page longer than usual. I admit, I sometimes have a very short attention span.

So I cycled through my most-read blogs. White, white, white, white. Some of them have a coloured background, which displays as a tidy little border around the large, white text table. Most have a coloured header, or a nice, full header image, but the main content is black and white.

There’s nothing wrong with that! Goodness knows, it made no difference until I was intentionally looking for it. There are the small selection of blogs I read which have other colour themes. Black, red, purple and grey feature predominantly, though that just shows the kinds of people I hang out with – we’re a grim, brooding and dark kind of bunch, often enough. Horror and dark fantasy, eh?

When I decided I was going to actually write a blog, and be serious about it, I spent a very long time finding a layout I was happy with. This was to become my online “home”, one which reflected upon me personally. The green tones, and the gear-like, yet nature-inspired designs on my current layout are kind of perfect. A melding of ideas, something graceful without being overly feminine, compact, subtly textured, with a left-oriented side bar (which I have always preferred), plus the Theme is named “Thirteen”, and I kind of like that.

*If you have a favourite read, please recommend the blog to me!

~A

While everyone else is busy writing

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Other Writers, Writing

It’s NaNoWriMo time, after all, and most of my writerly friends are charging ahead with their writing abandon. You’re all doing so great, too! I can’t wait to hear about your progress throughout the month.

I piked on NaNo this year; I’ve been way too caught up editing TDM, and since the original deadline I set myself was to have a solid second edit finished by late November, I decided it was time to get down to business.

Cue InSecDraMo! Barb Riley of Written Not With Ink blogged about her November plans, coining InSecDraMo, or Individual Second Draft Month.

I already had my blog post all written out for today, too, but Barb inspired me. It’s pretty exciting to see others hitting the second draft with me this month, so I figured I should spread the word. As I commented on her blog, I have been trying very hard to edit in proper order, start to finish, but it’s just not happening. Every day, I start reading from a chapter earlier, to make sure the edits flow on correctly. Every few scenes, I cross-reference something earlier in the story. This is a really intensive edit, but I am loving it.

Something interesting I noted: I’m also adding a huge amount of words. Normally, my edits cut, cut, cut. Sure, I’m doing plenty of that still, but I am writing a phenomenal amount on top of those cuts. I think it has a lot to do with how ridiculously fast I churned out the first draft of TDM. It just flew out of me in five short weeks, and now that I’m into a complicated edit, I’m adding in all the delicious, necessary details that fill in for the reader what my brain already knew during drafting. So far, I’ve bumped the word count by 1,000 words per chapter. Wow.

All this talk of editing is getting me super excited to get back into it! That has to be a good sign. Honestly, I love this story so much, I can’t even tell you.

Good luck to all NaNo-ers, and especially to my fellow InSecDraMo-ers, too!

~A