Mayhem in Relation to Writing

Yep, it's Mayhem March as promised and for the first post I thought it good to discuss a general topic of what constitutes as "mayhem" and how that relates or can be used in writing.

 Image Link

Check out the image link, it's a fun sounding game full of mayhem, lol.


What is Mayhem?

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, there are two main definitions.
1. willful and permanent crippling, mutilation, or disfigurement of any part of the body. Also worded as, willful and permanent deprivation of a bodily member resulting in the impairment of a person's fighting ability.
2. needless or willful damage or violence.


Definition 2 is the one I'd imagine most of us, or at least it was for me, know. It is in relation to chaos, and in story writing can be used in order to keep from boring the reader/writer. In fact, one tip for writers when they are starting to get bored with their story is to throw in a little mayhem to get the ball rolling again. Boring is something we want to avoid, and it's really bad if the writer is bored by their own writing.

Mayhem can come in many forms.

The common known factor is the bomb (or any explosion). In a boring part of the novel, characters talking in a coffee shop but not much interesting going on yet they need to be there to move on to the next bit of action/suspense? Have a sudden explosion and see how they react. 

While a bomb/explosion is an obvious more visible sense of adding mayhem, it's not the only approach. I know a few writers who like to toss their characters in almost impossible situations and enjoys working on how they fight their way out. 

Some genres are better geared towards the adding of mayhem. Action/Adventure for example can easily add in an explosion (for example) and have it make sense within the story line. Whereas, a random literal bomb in a romance will most likely raise a lot of questioning eyebrows. Some Fantasy and Science Fiction are better suited for mayhem than others. 

While mayhem is known for not having a rhyme or reason in different situations, throwing something at random in a story without any form of connection has consequences, but we'll worry about that later.


That is Mayhem.

Anyone ever use definition 1?
What is Mayhem to you?

Mayhem in March

I considered calling the post March Madness but... I know enough about sports to know better. Don't want to get the writing post confused with a basketball tournament. So, I have been pondering a month topic and I think I found a fun one to start things off.

Mayhem!
also related to - mhuahahahahaha


Yes, mayhem, madness, bedlam, *looks in thesaurus*, chaos, tumult, turmoil, pandemonium, havoc, maelstrom... and you get the basic idea. I'm going to post a few different entries during march about the crazy bad things that can happen in stories, those dark moments that intensify the plot and drive the story plummeting forward.

Sounds fun right? I hope so. Nothing like a good month of madness and bedlam to drive this blog forward. hehehe


Do you have moments of madness, chaos or turmoil in your stories?
What device do you use to increase the mayhem?
Any topic you'd like to see in March for this?

Pondering Change and Direction

Yep, my little silent blog needs some sprucing up. I can tell. After a few years of blogging on writing in general, I am seeing that I need some direction in order to get more posts on a regular basis. So, I am thinking of options and will be adding a little direction to the blog in the very near future.


One thing I'm reconsidering is the month topics, but doing the same topics each year. Like Nonfiction January, or Horror/Scary February, or Romance August. Something like that. Or maybe Character March, Plot October, and the like so that 3 months a year are genre specific and the other months have other topics.

But I'm still here and hope to get a couple posts in this month. I look forward to blogging more.

Writing Lessons from Anime

I've recently started watching a few anime shows online and they are proving to be quite entertaining. But also, what I've been able to notice while watching these shows is the character development that occurs. Also, with how certain characters balance each other out. While things do get exaggerated to a degree in anime, I think there is something we can learn from it as writers.

 (cause Black Butler is awesome and should be watched)

Character Development and Dynamics
 Part of what helps with anime and manga is there is a visual element, so it's a little different than writing novels in that we don't have pictures to go along with our words. But at the same time, it's kind of nice because readers can imagine the characters their own way since a common complaint when a book becomes a movie is the one playing the character doesn't look how they pictured in their own minds. We can describe to a certain degree but also choose how more or how little to give the reader. However, having a keen eye on the characters, their interactions and why those characters were chosen together for the story is one that can help us all as writers. Because who makes it into the ensemble/cast/etc does make a difference.

Romantic Pairings - Romance can be in any type of novel, not just romance books. Even epic fantasy will have some romance subplots and the pairings are important because couples forced tend to annoy readers. We have to consider what makes a couple work and how they balance each other out. Junjou Romantica is interesting, especially the main couple because it's a boy who is like 18 and a guy who is 28, which might seem creepy but they have a good balance and enough to create conflict in their story to keep things going. Pairings have similarities but also differences that counter each other. The arrogant with the lacking in confidence, the childish with the not old enough to have that maturity that age brings, etc. It's in their depth that the compatibility is created.

Ensemble Casting - Each character not only holds its own individual role but there are also dynamics that come out between each character and they should combine in ways that help the story. I recommend looking at Monochrome Factor when considering this because if you look at the group that forms, it really shows a lot and helps drive the story forward at the same time. The ensemble also comes out in Black Butler first season more towards the end, though in the beginning the ones around him don't seem all that special but man do things change later on and we get to see the truth of the characters and their roles. The main point is, consider each role when casting characters in a story, especially the ones with more stage/page time.

Creating Questions
Another things I've noticed with anime is that the stories do a good job creating questions in the watcher's mind. There is always a number of questions brought up with each episode. A little puzzle, almost like with mysteries only some differences too, that the person watching wants to find out. Some are for the single episode and others are for the full season or show. Having someone wander something in a story is a good thing, as long as you can deliver an answer later because questions are what people remember. I had a friend read the first terrible draft of my YA mutant novel, he doesn't remember anything really, none of the character names, the story as he read the less than 23,000 words like over 4 years ago when it wasn't even finished really. But he does remember one question he had for a part near the end that I hadn't finished. That one question still is there, which shows how strong a simple moment can be in a story.

Answering Those Questions
This is one thing anime isn't always good at, nor are tv shows in general that I've noticed. While they answer the main questions there are times when an episode poses a question but the answer never gets exposed. Try not to do that when writing.

If you reveal a character has a dark secret... then let us know what it is. Yes, Monochrome Factor, I'm looking at you with this. Don't say the main character has a big secret that none of the friends know but they pretend to know to exploit him to do what they want then never in the rest of the series show what the secret the character worked so hard to keep from having exposed. People want to know his secret. And if it's not what I think it is, umm too bad, I'm going to make fanfiction (and I don't ever write fanfiction) and pretend like it was whatever I'm thinking cause you won't tell me.

I get that tv shows can't go back to every bit they ever run but if you really look at series and some of the episodes you find will just bring up a big issue and we never hear about it again. Two and a Half Men, you do this all the time and it bugs me.

So, for novels, try not to do that if you can. Plus, you never know all the work in a series you are putting yourself into when creating many threads that have to be tied up by the end. I can imagine that Brandon Sanderson had his work cut out tying things up with the Wheel of Times series because all those massive books created so many story threads it was literally like that thread thing they talk about in the story, ironically enough.


Conclusion
If you have never watched anime before, try out a couple episodes. You might learn something. If you already watch anime, now you have an excuse because you can call it research. ;-)


Do you watch anime? 
If so, which ones?
Do you know of anything else a writer can learn from anime?

Editing is Tedious

Okay, this is just another way for saying slow but the word is fitting. Tedious.


I've spent a good part of today working off and on editing and only managed to get almost half a chapter done. I'm still on chapter 1.  I think this blog needs fun images. Almost wish I had a blog on tumblr... almost. lol

(image link)

But I'm liking the progress. Since I did those months of highlighting in order to know what to edit, I'm able to see the progress in an easy way. The parts that need editing can be overwhelming at times though, with all the different colors. But it's satisfying to go from colorful section to a section without highlights. A very visible form of progress and I'm liking that. I took a couple of screen shots to show you all what I mean.

Here is the tedious feeling, full of colors example:

And now an edited section:

See? Progress! But this is taking a really long time. Going to take at least two months per novel I'm guessing. We'll see how I feel after it's done. But I have work to do. Just fixing things one small problem at a time. Hope to have a beta approachable product by the end.

December Approacheth

With December around the corner, Saturday, and that marking the end of the epic 2012 National Novel Writing Month, I feel now is a good time to post what December will bring for me. I may post this on both blogs (so sorry if you follow both and try to see the new content only to find you read the same thing twice). This year has been a pretty epic year for me with nanowrimo because the novel I thought was one book turned out to be 2 so the end word count is going to be over 150k by the time I have the very rough first draft done. And most of it will have been written in November. Crazy sounding, I know.

So, after such a large word count and spending so long on the one novel, what happens next for me? The answer is a resounding: Edit!

*pauses for dramatic effect* or is it affect, bah, either, it's nanowrimo still and I don't care which is right. ;-) lol

Okay, now you can breathe a heavy sigh of relief. When I say edit, I don't mean I'm going to be editing the novel I may or may have not finished yet from NaNoWriMo 2012. In fact, I'm not even editing/rewriting the novels from 2011 or 2010 NaNoWriMo.

Nope, I'm going to edit a novel I started writing during NaNoWriMo 2007 since I've rewritten it before. Okay, that one might be a rewrite as opposed to an edit because I need to change it from present tense to past tense, but bleh, I'm calling it an edit because I'm not changing content really. I'm just changing from "he sees the new boy" to "he saw the new boy". Same stuff minor, time consuming change.

I'm also going to edit the novel I write 65k of during March in 2010. It hasn't had a heavy rewrite as the other one because the novel ended up at 90k and the main content I'm happy with enough that I'm going to not change much in what happens, just work on polishing it. I will be focusing on things like showing instead of telling (I am really bad at this), taking out some of the passive voice, and fixing minor details (like changing one of the minor character's names because I have a Michael and a Mitchel, tsk).

So, in an unofficial sense, December will be my novel editing month because the only reason I let myself start another new novel (I still have like 5 I'm in the middle of writing) was that all first drafts would be put aside as soon as November ended so I could devote time to editing.

I have to admit, I'm a bit nervous about this edit because it's a new stage for me. Even though I have been working on writing for about 7 years, I've edited for newspaper and for a small publisher, I have never done a full edit on one of my own novels. I've editing some scenes and short stories, edited chapters to submit for critique to a group, but I have not done a novel edit. Course, it took a while to get a novel that was not only rewritten but ready for edits and I kept starting new ones but that's besides the point. This marks a new stage because ideally, as soon as I'm done with edits I will have something I can have a reader check out. I won't send it to agents right away even though my dad thinks I'm stalling with this edit (*waves hi in case family members see this post*) but I will be a big step closer. A giant step even. Because soon as I've worked out the edits, had readers check it out, then do another pass after a minor break where I can work on finishing one of those already started novels, then I can try to submit to agents.

My goal is to have the query sent out some time in 2013, so I have my work cut out for me. I figure, if I can write 150k in a month of hectic mess, I can managed to spend a few months getting the edits on more prepared novels. And to be honest, I need a timeline. So, hmm... What the heck. I turn 29 near the end of August. Sounds like a good goal, 9 months from now in fact.

Now I have a timeline and a goal. I want to have at least one of the mutant novels ready to send out queries by my birthday. And now you all know and I will have to work hard to follow through on my goals. Yay for incentive!

So, that is my plan. And yes, I promise to also try and post a few times a month at least, because I do have more to say on writing and on my writing, so there will be more blog posts in the near future. And there will be book reviews done too because my new plan also includes putting together a weekly schedule and I'm putting in reading time on the list. I need to read and I shall, along with writing and editing. So much to do, I can't wait to start.

What are your plans for December 1st?
How did November go?

Why I Take Part in NaNoWriMo

Thanks Sam

Okay, so I totally had the intention to do this epic "Why I do NaNoWriMo" post and to have it scheduled to post on day one of National Novel Writing Month. Yeah ummm *points to date of this post* if you hadn't figured it out by umm knowing what the calendar looks like right now, I will out right state: Epic Fail!

Not only did I not get this post written in time, but I didn't even get it done before I reached 50,000 words. Yeah, I won NaNo already and I haven't written the post on why I take part in the activity in the first place as I had planned. I really did intend to have it written, I promise but well, here we are on day 12 and I'm just now writing it and for the sole purpose of taking part in a half hour sprint when the section of my novel (yeah, i'm still writing after 52k in 10 days) didn't have a section at the moment that was sprint worthy. But that's okay, right? Right. Cause I say so.

But back to the promise I made to myself that none of you knew about but I'm pretending you knew about in order to make my hopefully 2k words in 30 minutes make sense and to get that word count somehow anyways even though it won't count towards my nanowrimo count.... Yeah, I admit that made no sense. The promise! I did start a blog post for my Why I Write for NaNoWriMo topic. I really did. I put in the title, a greeting and a picture of a fish and well, that is as far as I got before November 1st when I started writing.

And for those that wonder why there is a fish at the top of this picture, well it's because of the awesomeness that is Dory from Finding Nemo. She has a saying that goes "just keep swimming" so a close friend of mine gave me the idea that I needed an image with the phrase "just keep writing" and one of my other friends actually made the image for me. Thanks Sam! even though you never read my blog, I'm thanking you twice in this post anyways. So, yeah, now my signature when I do posts on Writing.Com in relation to NaNoWriMo, I have this picture of Dory that says Just Keep Writing and I love it. (just keep swiming, Dory montage) This is another fun thing to look at. I like the picture in part because it says to write but also in part because of her expression. Poor Dory looks so lost and confused but she's encouraging no matter what. So, I look at that picture and say to myself, just keep writing. It must be working because I'm at around 58k right now, and will have 60k before I go to bed tonight.

Now, after that long ramble, back to the topic and maybe even though it seems a little obvious at this point, I will give you all who may or may not even be curious about the answer to the big question of today's post.

Why do I, Dawn Embers, take part in National Novel Writing Month?

Because it's Awesome! and.... because I'm crazy.

That is pretty much the basics of the answer. I love national novel writing month and the strange challenge to try and write 50,000 words in one month even though I do honestly write off and on all year long. There is something great about a community geared event where a large number of writers in combined force get together and reach towards the same goal of writing a novel (well novella but honestly novella writing month just doesn't have the oomph of novel writing month) all at the same time during November. I like that. I come from a small town where if there are 3 people who are writing and willing to admit it out loud, that is saying a lot. Granted it's a little different now that I'm living near Portland which has one big artsy writerly community, but the small town world is what I spent most of my life in and being anti-social, I get most of my socialization from writing outlets like Writing.com and the NaNoWriMo Site. So, I think it's great.

And well, let's be honest. Anyone who tries to write 50,000 words in a month is a tad crazy. The ones that do it in 15 days are a bit nuts, and well, I'm flat out insane. Last year I did it in 11 days and since I got off to a good start this year even though I'm writing a freaking young adult novel (see vent elsewhere) I managed to keep a steady pace of 5,000 words plus or minus a thousand words a day. Which, is what led me to my 52,000 words in 10 days for 2012. I have no problem admitting that this is completely insane but I will also point out that my goal is to write the whole novel in one month and since my novel is a fantasy (even though it's also young adult) the novel wasn't going to be under 80k. In fact, it was supposed to be 80k but now I'm guessing the end result will be over 120k so I had better keep writing once I get this blog post done.

The real question may be why do I try to take part in it almost every year, with crazy writing goals like 100k or so. Why do I try to write new novels when I have 5 novels that are in first draft stage? Why do I start new ones when I need to edit the novels I wrote the years before? Will I ever do anything with those novels? How can they be any good if I write them within a single month?

Wow, talk about question overload. My apologies for this blog being so long (but hey, 2k words yay!) Okay, I will answer them in sections because I asked the questions and even if only one person cares about the answers, oh well. That's what happens when you follow a blog about writing, especially the one dedicated to my person writing only. hahaha I mean, thank you!

Why do I try to write new novels when I have others going?

Well, I think this is another question where the simple answer is this: I'm just that crazy! Yes, I like to multi-task and I'm used to having many ideas in my head because even when I'm writing one idea, I am often thinking about all my other ideas in my head. When I'm not writing, then I'm daydreaming about all of my ideas, though usually one at a time, in order to keep them fresh and the ones I think about the most, that draw my attention the most are the ones that get written. But those are never single novels, there are several ideas that I think are so great that I want to write them. I don't have a single one idea that I think about the most in comparison to some of the others. I don't have one novel that screams out to me "I'm the one!" Nope. I have several ideas that I love, that I want to be writing, so during most of the year, I work on more than one at a time. Only during these crazy mad dash months (national novel writing month, march novel writing challenge, even a couple failed camp nanowrimo attempts) do I even bother trying to write on a single novel at a time, and even then it doesn't always happen. Last year, for example, while I wrote 125k for the month, I was actually working on more than one novel for that count. I am just that kind of writer. I need more than one story to work on or else I struggle. It's just how I function. Sure, I wish I could be the one that dedicates all their time to a single novel and is able to get the book out and edited within 3 years, but that's not me at this point. Instead, I will continue to work on several novels and get them done some day.

Next question: Why start a new novel when I have so many going?

Besides looking at the above answer, I will admit this is not always the case. Well, for nanowrimo I have a tendency to start a new novel because the "rules" require it be a new novel. However, I do have a group on Writing.com that is dedicated to people who want to be rebels and maybe write on novels they had already started or that want to write towards a different word count (like 20k in a month, or 30k, or maybe even editing instead of writing that month) and that group is year around. However, for like the March writing challenge I have attempted a few different years, I haven't always started new novels. In fact, the year that I first wrote 50k in less than 30 days was in 2010 when I worked on a novel I was already 15k into before the month started. I had planned to write 25000 words for the month, so that seemed reasonable as it wasn't nanowrimo. But then by the end of day 12 I discovered I was already at 35k and if I wrote 15k in three days, then I would be able to say that I had written 50k in 15 days. So I did. That month I ended up writing 65k total and that novel ended up being my first novel that was long enough, ending at about 90k. I'm going to be editing that novel in December after I finish this crazy version of young adult fantasy that I have going on right now. So, there are times when I don't go crazy and start yet another new novel. I do use month challenges throughout the year to try and get an already started draft done.

Why do new ones instead of editing?

This answer question is a little different than the ones above because I can't be fun and play crazy. The truth is editing is hard and it represents a new stage for me. While I have worked as an editor for a small publishing company and for a college newspaper, and I have edited my writing to a small degree like fixing the glaring typos (which I do during nanowrimo too, I even delete and fix things when I do these silly writing sprints. I'd be so much further if I didn't use that delete button but it would be so much worse too). I have never actually edited a full novel before and as much as I hate to admit it, the thought intimidates me a little but that will end soon. I spent part of this year, in february and beyond getting my edit notes ready for 2 of my novels. The only reason I let myself start writing a new novel this year was on the sole idea that I would get it done and then in December I would not be allowed to work on any new first drafts. That's right, after national novel writing month ends this year, I will not be working on a first draft until 2013, assuming the world doesn't end before then. I am going into editing mode as of December 1st. I will edit my 2 novels, I will make the writing something that is readable for my beta readers and I will start to get ready for the next stage in this crazy writing life. I am going to get something ready to submit to agents. Granted I started one of the novels back in 2007 so it has taken me a really long time but that is one thing that I have found nanowrimo has also helped with. It has proven something to me and that is this one fact:

I can write.

Sure, it's not the greatest thing in the world but I know not to submit my first drafts and hopefully soon I will be able to say this:

I can rewrite.

I can edit.

I can submit.

And I hope you all are still here to cheer me on.

(And yes, if you are curious: When I wrote this blog post using write or die, I managed to write 2k in 30 minutes.)