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Post by mummifiedstalin on Oct 18, 2011 13:27:56 GMT -5
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Torgo
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Post by Torgo on Oct 18, 2011 14:45:58 GMT -5
That's a good article, and it mirrors a few things I'm going through with this. Except I like to have a plot before I work, because usually it's the beginning and the end that excite me into telling a story. Coming up with the middle is usually the daunting task, because the hook for me is usually in those two.
Definitely not writing a masterpiece, so I'm not feeling the "great American novel" pressure. What I'm doing is more breezy and fun. It's a quirky character piece that has a few dark ideas that get heavier as it goes on. If it turns out as well as I want it to, I'll move on to something stronger and work my way up.
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Torgo
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Post by Torgo on Oct 18, 2011 21:17:14 GMT -5
Today marked an occasion that I've been waiting a while for. One I'm so happy with I'm finally going to reveal the tiniest sliver of information about my book. Not much, but just a sliver.
One of the toughest challenges is creating characters. You can't just create a name and go with it, you have to come up with an entire personality, and in some cases an entire history, otherwise your consistency goes out the window. Each main character in this story took well over a year of planning in order to get right, many aren't even the same characters I had in mind when I first developed it. All except one. While she might not be a main character per say, the creation of the character was an entirely new experience to me.
Initially I had this idea for a sequence in the book in which I needed to add an additional character to the roster for it to play out. Honestly, I didn't really want to bother creating a character for a scene as brief as it was, but I thought it could potentially be the strongest part of the book.
First, I kicked around the idea of a separate character just running into the story whose sole purpose was to lead into that scene, kind of like how Tim Robbins character came out of nowhere in Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds, but I didn't like it. It seemed lazy to me. So I axed that idea.
Then I tried to make it a background character who was just a friend of one of the main people that would pop up every now and then for no reason other than to be there. Seemed boring to me.
What I did next was try and think of a way to incorporate this character with the others in the book, and tried to make the relationship stronger. I asked myself "What if she's this character's sister?" I thought that was a good start. But was there something better? Then the idea came "What if she's a twin sister?"
What happened to me after I asked myself that question is an experience I'll never forget. A wealth of character traits, personality, and history flooded into my brain and within five seconds a woman was standing there in her full glory. She didn't have a name at first, but I grew to call her Izzy.
The bizarre thing is that none of the characters I have are the same ones I've started with, except for Izzy. Nothing about her has changed from her conception to execution. She probably isn't the greatest ever created (that would be Homer Simpson, for those keeping score), but her creation was just so unique that I knew there had to be something there. And as I planned out how she would be weaved into the story, I discovered she was actually making it stronger. She is bringing a few bits of humor, plenty of sly dialogue, and even a bit of character depth to one of the main characters that wasn't there when I had planned the story without her.
Today I wrote the first chapter with Izzy. Was it everything I had hoped for? More so. I have to polish a bit, but I'm tremendously happy with her and what she brings to the table.
Happy birthday, Izzy. Daddy loves you.
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Post by Torgo on Oct 20, 2011 12:14:21 GMT -5
The middle section of a book is usually the point where I lag. I'm good at coming up with a beginning and an end, but if you ask me how to get from point A to point B, I shrug my shoulders. I have an idea, to be sure, but mostly this is a portion where I just wing it and see what happens. So far it feels as if it's working, but I wouldn't be entirely sure until someone else tells me it is.
But there comes a time where I might have to just skip ahead. Yesterday I pondered a few places the characters could go before I reached my third act, because there needs to be a certain amount of time between the opening and closing for the story to work. I have to be careful to try not to bore, so I'm using my sense of humor to try and keep interest going. But I want to be careful with that too, because if I use to much I fear the tone of the book would be confusing.
Yesterday a sequence kind of popped in my head, and I didn't want to lose it so I wrote it out to keep it fresh in my mind. It wouldn't come until much later, and I'm not even certain I'd use it, but when you're in a stage where a vision becomes hazy, jotting down ideas seems like a good idea.
I like it. It's light and it's funny, maybe a little too much, but it also moves the plot in a bit of a unique way. I think I have a good spot for it, and I hope it works. I'll have very little remorse if I need to cut it, though. Though I intend to keep it in my records for my own amusement.
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Post by Torgo on Oct 25, 2011 2:48:52 GMT -5
Unfortunately my alergies have kicked in hard, and when I feel ill I have trouble writing, so it has been slow going.
However, I've tried to make progress no matter how minimal every day, so I've usually been switching out dialogue or adding on.
In keeping in tune with my last entry, I had gotten in the habit of writing sequences while they're fresh in my head. Maybe it's because I was heavy into connect the dots when I was a kid, but writing non-linear has been less of a pain in the ass than writing start to finish. This way I have a goal to reach and I know where I'm going. I'm genuinely happier with what I've been churning out here, though I worry that out of context they work better than they do within. But hopefully with a bit of editing they'll survive in the final product.
Switched things up with the background noise. After burning through a bunch of MST, I've decided to rest my fanhood a bit. Right now, I'm listening to reruns of Hell's Kitchen on Hulu. Call me crazy, but Gordon Ramsay yelling at people is surprisingly soothing.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 6, 2011 12:47:33 GMT -5
Progress, progress, progress.
Nothing much to say when you've got a system down and it's working well. What I'm putting on page is encouraging, if not perfect. It feels like it will never be finished, but I won't stop until it is.
Case in point, I wrote Izzy's big scene. It hit all the right notes, but it needed to be stronger. Expand. Still not enough. Expand some more. Keep going. It still needs a little bit more, but I see the sparkle there so it's time to move on to the next part that needs to be told correctly.
And while I'm constantly tweeking, I'm happy with what is there. I'm happy with who the characters have become compared to how they were concieved. One character was somewhat of a seductress in my head, but turned more compassionate on the page. And it works. It turns her into a person, and not just a two dimensional drawing. It's amazing the potential a character meets when you don't even know it's there.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 7, 2011 23:55:32 GMT -5
Today at work, I was complimented of how well I was doing, something that doesn't happen often.
I take note of this here because it got me thinking of what has changed about my attitude since I began work on my story. I'm feeling something I haven't felt in years. There's a spring in my step, a song in my head, a love for life. I'm feeling something that I had forgotten even existed: Passion.
Is this a sign I'm on a road to what I was born to do? I can't guarantee it. But all I can tell you is what I'm getting out of it. Even if I don't get published, the feeling I've gotten by merely writing this story is indescribable. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Well, maybe a nice juicy advance. I'd get a lot of feeling out of that too.
In the end, not only have I been rushed with ideas for this story, but what I wish to write next. One that's more complex and even more meaningful to me. I don't wish to take away from the story I'm writing at the moment, which I think is going quite well, but I can't deny it's more of an experiment than anything. To see what I can do, how I'd do it, and even what a story told by me would read like. If and when I ask someone to read it, I do wish for it be embraced, though I do have thoughts of doubt running through my head.
But even if nobody else finds something of merit in what I've created, I got what I needed out of it. Life is worth living again. At least for now. We'll see about tomorrow.
Background noise in recent weeks has been the seventh season of the Office, which I picked up a while ago, but didn't get around to popping in until recently...
"I LOVE banter! But I HATE witty banter."
And with the giant wave of James Bond news as Skyfall began filming, I followed that up with some visits from agent 007. Anything more soothing than the sounds of Sean Connery getting laid?
Yeah, me getting laid. But in the wake of a break up, that's not happening for a while.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 12, 2011 14:29:47 GMT -5
Last night, I was working on my files while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (both of them, I can't claim either of them is a full movie, so I have to watch them back to back or not bother) and it struck me that I should write the epilogue to my book. I'm not sure why it occured to me at that moment. The Deathly Hallows epilogue always seemed like a tacked on waste of space to me, both in book form and film. Yes it was nice to see the characters witheir own children, but there was very little about it that seemed like it was a chapter worth reading.
I've had a rough idea of what my epilogue should be for a while now. And I knew the exact moment my story should end. I wasn't sure how it should play out, though. I could have played it very aggressive and left the book on a sour note, and by association the ending might have been disturbing. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I could have played it in a more sypathetic light, one that explains this is what happened and this is just the way things are.
The epilogue is a conversation peice, about two people who have hurt each other finally confronting one another. Do I do this with anger? Do I do this with understanding? I decided to sit down and just see how it plays out.
What I wrote last night turned out to be a mixture of both. It occured to me that an ending needs to be satisfying. If I played it with anger, it would have been an interesting note to go out on but it would have felt abrupt without proper closure. If I played it with understanding, it would have been boring and wouldn't have been worth the time it took to write.
When I was writing it, it became thereputic for the characters, both venting and somber realization. And suddenly as I had wrapped up one character's story, I found there was a moral there that wasn't there before. A character's story seems to have come full circle.
The other's ending had been written in my head for quite some time. I wasn't sure how it would be read until I saw it on the page. I read it at least twenty times, and each time I said to myself "that's it." It was exactly the ending this story needed to have. Will I change it as I edit? I don't want to. I'll try and work my way around it as long as possible. Right now it represents everything I wanted from this story.
It feels every bit as much the anti-Deathly Hallows epilogue. Something that adds to the story instead of being tacked on for sh*ts and giggles. I think I'm going in the right direction.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 17, 2011 2:25:54 GMT -5
Anybody who knows anything about writing knows that there are many ways of telling the story, but that fact really hit me hard in the last two days. As I worked on my piece during my days off, elements of character and story suddenly appeared in front of my eyes that hadn't been there last week. Hell, they weren't even there the day before I found them on the screen in front of me.
It was extremely weird. I had come up with this off-beat sub-sequence featuring the characters just being characters and I decided to build into that. From there things just kind of stemmed.
First of all, as I saw this sequence run its course, there was a moment where a character suddenly became very vulnerable and revealed part of her backstory. Normally, when I think of making backstory for a character, I usually think of JK Rowling and keeping a complete series bible next to you that explains to you exactly who each of these characters are and how they got to where they're sitting at. That's not what happened.
I did come up with a past for these characters, but I kept it vague because while it helped explain why they were what they were, it wasn't entirely relevant to the plot of the book, so if it wasn't there, the loss wouldn't have been staggering. But this snippet of a character's past didn't occur to me until I was writing it down.
If you think I'm exaggerating on that, let me assure you that I am not. Unique experiences that shape your work aren't uncommon when you're attempting something like this for the first time, but this was a whole different level. I'd rank it right up there with the creation of my girl Izzy. As I wrote that puzzle piece, it just kind of flowed out of my fingers with very little fore-planning. As it appeared on the screen, it felt exactly like I was reading a book, and I thought to myself "Oh wow, that's really sad."
Then I shook that feeling off and thought to myself "What am I saying? I wrote that! How the hell did I not know it if I was the one who wrote it down?" I stared at this small character moment and I wondered to myself is this some sort of sign? Not necessarily one from God, but from my subconscious? Is something telling me that I am doing the right thing? If it is, whatever it might be had sent the signal loud and clear, because I've been doing nothing but pushing forward ever since.
In the aftermath, something else grew out this sequence that wasn't there before, a subplot between two characters that I hadn't really associated with each other before. This little sequence brought these two together and it's been having me brainstorm where the characterization of these two could go. It even has impacted the main plot of the book, and has given me ideas of how this small side story drives the main one into taking the turns it does.
What occurred to me just about an hour ago was that one of these characters was Izzy, a character who wasn't even in the original inception of the story. A character who had little impact upon the main plot. A character who was created merely for the sole purpose of really only having one memorable scene in the book. Now she has dozens. It got me thinking, if I hadn't created Izzy that fateful day, would this be the same book? No it wouldn't have.
It feels as if fate is calling out to me. It's letting me know that I have a story here and I should keep telling it. Piece by piece is coming together. Some of it has been planned out for the longest time, but some of it is even a surprise to me. I'm excited. I honestly don't know what's going to happen next, but I'm sure it'll be there. There are even ways these ideas that I have put on the page in the last few days can even effect the book as a whole in ways I've never even dreamed of. I'm interested in seeing how.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 22, 2011 16:52:57 GMT -5
Imagine yourself as an aspiring author who always had ideas in his head that had never put them down on paper before. Now imagine you're finally pushing yourself full force trying to do something with you life. You fly past page 100 in your Word file and portions you've written in advance are starting to connect together into a whole. What finally hits you is the reality of what you were doing.
I took a few minutes to myself to reflect upon what I had just realized. Always been the dreamer and never the doer, you start to question yourself. Is it worth it? Are you really good enough?
I took a deep breath and I remember words I've heard from Clint Eastwood, the director of some of my favorite movies of recent years such as Hereafter and Letters from Iwo Jima. When asked about how he chooses what movie he wants to make next, he responded that he has no idea what the audience wants to see, he just makes a movie that he himself would be interested in seeing. Wise words, methinks. No matter what story you're telling, you're always taking a risk. Even when JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, there was no guarantee that even if the first book was published that she'd even have the opportunity to publish a sequel, let alone six. And then there's something like Warner Brothers' recent attempt at a superhero franchise, Green Lantern. They pumped so much money into it, at first 100% sure they'd have people flocking to it. Then they delivered a turkey and the movie belly flopped, because they were so busy telling people they wanted to see it that they spent too little time making a movie they actually wanted to see.
I looked over a lot of what I had done, and I smiled. I like my characters. I like their relationships with one another and feel they each have the chemistry I need to make others care for them. I've given them a lot of natural charm and humor, and there's even a romance that I somewhat admit was partially inspired by the bland and lazy love triangle of Twilight in an ambition to see if I could achieve something that wasn't total garbage. I, myself, think it's interesting. Will anybody else? I don't have a generic personality-less character like Bella Swan at the center so girls can interchange themselves with her in my book, so I have my doubts. But if one wants a piece of characters just being themselves, I think I fulfill that pretty well.
When I look at the files on my flash drive, I do notice of all the writing projects I've saved from my computer, my book is definitely the largest with the exception of one: My Three Stooges biography. My Three Stooges biography stands at 155 pages and 68,000 words. I'm currently at 100 pages in my book and 48,000 words. It's definitely one of the largest writing projects I've ever done.
I never really thought about how long I wanted this book to be. Ideally I would want at least 300 pages, though the amount of pages in an actual book would vary from the amount on my Word file. I did a word count on a random hardcover book on my shelf and and guesstimated about 300 words per page, which means if I were to publish my unfinished crap today, it would come out to an estimated 160 pages. I'm halfway there!
Of course, I don't want it to be too long. I like my characters, but if I were to go 800 pages with them, I think I'd be testing my audience's patience. So restraint is an important tool of mine. I recall meeting another aspiring author a while ago who told me she was 100 pages into her book and she hasn't even started telling the story yet, claiming her main character was so complex that she needed to take that time to just let the audience know who she is. I'm not one to judge without sampling, but I always found that idea rather odd. I've always found long books somewhat intimidating, unless it's an established series in a world that the reader wants more of. I've assumed that's why the Harry Potter series tripled in size halfway through and why the length of Rick Riordan's stories increased after the success of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. And then there's established authors like Stephen King, who can get away with it because they have a fanbase of their own. But to use a doorstop of a book for a first work? Like I said before, anything is risky, but that's a risk I don't want to take.
With that in mind, I hope to have my first draft done by January. It's shaping up as if I will reach that goal, but I've never done this before, so I'm not sure if it will happen. I hope to have something ready for submission by May. My goals seem realistic now, but I don't like deadlines. Never had, never will. I prefer to just freelance it and see where it takes me.
And what have I been writing to, lately? Well, the last few days I've watched all 8 Harry Potter films in a row, just finishing up today. I've also been popping in the random movie, such as the Expendables and Happy Feet. Don't know where I'm going next. Maybe I'll keep the mood light with some Three Stooges. But as obsessed as I am with them, I'm to afraid that my attention will drift.
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Post by Torgo on Nov 30, 2011 17:13:04 GMT -5
I've been going non-stop for about a month and a half now, and hit this nasty little wall. I'm hesitant to call it writer's block and more along the lines of writer's exhaustion. Time to take a few days to myself, regroup, and collect my thoughts. Everything I need is in my head. I feel it in there rattling about, I just need to shake it loose.
I wrote my last piece to the tune of a Paranormal Activity double feature, and as Katie Featherson broke some cameras and snapped some necks, I unplugged my drive and shut the laptop. Time to mull things over. I still feel like I'm making progress, but of a different kind.
Right now I'm trying to get my crank turning to reruns of House. Keep it pumping long enough and it'll run.
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Post by Torgo on Dec 10, 2011 3:06:21 GMT -5
After ten days to myself, how do I feel?
To be honest, I didn't even want to be away from it as long as I was. I was ready to get back to work about four or five days ago, but unfortunately I was without computer access until just now. I've been starving for progress, which I take it is a good thing. Isn't that what passion is about?
I plug in my file and open her up, and there are my characters looking up and waving, just like old friends. I still love them, and I'm excited to bring them back to life. I've got some new stories to tell and their fresh in my noggin. It's time to get them some exorcise.
Now to figure out what I be groovin' to this week. I just got the tenth season of Smallville, so that would be a fair bet. Some superhero shenanigans sound good right about now.
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Post by Torgo on Dec 25, 2011 4:01:02 GMT -5
Merry Christmas from Torgo, Izzy, and her feisty friends!
Every year I head to my mother's house for a Christmas Eve party. Every year it's a lot of alcohol and gift giving. This year I got the gift that keeps on giving...a Toshiba laptop! This means Torgo is back in full force, and there is nothing holding him back from finishing his first work. I can't wait to see what this puppy can do!
Of course, while I can't wait to get to work, it is Christmas, so work can wait. I have, however, personalized it. First thing's first, loading movies! First movie loaded was X-Men: First Class. I'm following that up with Thor, Cowboys & Aliens, Captain America, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes ASAP. Maybe Green Lantern if I feel like it. The one thing that sucks butt is I have a ton of Digital Copies, yet all of them expired long before I could use them. Oh well, thank god for DVD-ROM.
Once again, let's make this the Swayze-est Christmas of them all!
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Post by Torgo on Jan 4, 2012 23:29:15 GMT -5
SEXY AUTHOR POSE!AKA What a laptop sees. IT'S HIDEOUS! MAKE IT GO AWAY!Can't you just see that on a dust jacket? Because I sure as hell can't. Maybe if I stripped down a bit. Showed some nipple? The bikini shoot is going to be fun. Yeah, I'm just dicking around. Sorry to waste your time.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jan 7, 2012 2:20:00 GMT -5
Col. Kurtz?
On the E-Book dust jacket, the picture should be a video, with you on your back, whispering, "The horror... the horror"
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