Hello all of my wonderful friends, followers, and readers!
Sorry that I have been basically MIA here on Tumblr, I’ve been trying to settle into a routine here at home and trying to balance not only COVID quarantine, but also some new factors that were added to my life just before. Not all of which are bad! Some are good! I was just trying - am just trying - to work through it all.
I feel like I have gotten back into a steady rhythm, and am slowly coming back to you all here in the Writeblr community.
Thank you to all who have tagged me in things while I have been away, I am going to be catching up on those and hopefully get back to you all who have been in contact with me.
You all mean so much to me!
As for an update on Darkness Reborn:
I had a huge revelation last week and basically scrapped most of my 2.0 outline. (Oof. Why do I do this to myself?) A lot is staying the same. All the characters, and the general plot are all going to be the same as 2.0, but there are going to be some changing of Parts 2 and 3 of book 1 - at the very least.
I haven’t gotten as far as to explicitly plot out outlines for the following books, but the Huge Revelation™ will drastically change the ending of the series and all of my Deep Lore that I have been building up over the last couple of months.
So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past week and a half. Rebuilding my Deep Lore.
It’s coming along a lot better than the original, which is really nice! But it means a complete dissection of the world and the magic and the origin that I had built, and I’m still not sure how the transplant of new lore is going to affect the Darkness Reborn 3.0 outline and plot.
But! Huge Revelation™ is really exciting! And I am so pumped how my view of my work has shifted and fallen into place at once.
I want to give you all explicit information of where I am in the writing stages, even if it is just for me and my bookkeeping, to see my progress.
My plan is to write 2 outlines for each main character’s story line.
The first is a general, paragraph format of different chunks of the story that I am arbitrarily calling ‘arcs’. They’re smaller than ‘Parts’ because until all the outlines are done, I don’t know which characters’ arcs go in which ‘Part’.
The second is a chapter by chapter summary. What is going to happen in each chapter? Who are the major players? How does this chapter build towards the climax of book 1? How does it contribute to the series’ climax? How does it contribute to the world that I have built? How are the hints that I am dropping throughout the novel play into this chapter?
I’m going to finish all Outline 1′s before I start Outline 2′s, just so I can reflect on all of the tiny little threads and make sure they all are weaving together nicely.
So, from here on out:
I am working on my Lore, and I’m in the trenches of the worldbuilding stage, and I promise to give you all updates on how that’s going! (I don’t really have a percentage for this one, but I’d be in the <5% range)
Titania: Outline 1 - 60% complete
Edana: Outline 1 - 0%
Gael: Outline 1 - 0%
Skai: Outline 1 - 0%
Rhonan: Outline 1 - 0%
Eanrin: Outline 1 - 0%
Aven: Outline 1 - 0%
The Hand: Outline 1 - 0%
Novel and Life Updates, I’ll try to do one every Tuesday (because, honestly, what else am I doing with my life right now?). I need the structure of a due date every week for things to be motivated, and you all watching my progress makes me want to do more to see my work progress.
Also with each new outline, I am going to continue to give you all character introductions. I know you guys only know who three of these folks are and that’s really not fair. I also hope, in the future as I write the Outline 2′s, to give you introductions for minor characters too. There are some really cool ones.
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Thank you guys so much for bearing with me! I hope that you like the things I have to share with you!
Hi All! It’s Tuesday, and I promised that I would try to post regular updates on my life and on my writing progress every week!
I am getting my school work under control at the moment. We are ramping up to the final couple of weeks of college and I have a few looming deadlines. I took an exam yesterday, and felt super good about it, so that was super awesome!
And, instead of labs for Organic Chemistry, our professor has asked us to write a research paper on Synthesis. It’s due next Monday. Have I started it? Nope. But that is this week’s project and I am determined to do well. 1) It is chemistry and 2) It’s writing - so, like, my two favorite subjects coming together. But forced research? And for a paper? Not my favorite.
There will probably be very little activity this upcoming week as I try to pump out this paper. Or, there might be too much activity as I procrastinate ... eesh yeah, probably the latter.
But honestly, I’m so ready to be done. This online schooling thing is a beast, and I have no willpower to get anything done. Even opening my school email is a reason for celebration these days. All I really want to do is either write or laze around and watch Youtube or Bones or something.
WIP - Darkness Reborn:
As for Darkness Reborn, there has been some really nice progress.
I did very little with Titania’s first outline this week, but that was because up until that point I had completely forgot about Rhonan’s plot. Except for the very beginning, he was not in any of her story line.
This is massively different than any of the other drafts and outlines that I have written thus far. Rhonan’s entire purpose when I created him was to be the silent protector of a clueless character so that she didn’t get into too much trouble. He was also a way for me to explain the world I had built both to her and to the readers - who were both experiencing it for the first time. He has been alive since before the Age before, and was there when the humans took over. His job was to bridge the gap in between the past and the present.
I don’t need him to do that for me anymore. I don’t need him to really do either of those things - as could be seen by his absence from Titania’s plot line that has been developing, and by the fact that I am actually writing Gael’s story into the book.
But I put Titania’s Outline 1 on hold for a second so I could work through Rhonan’s - just to be sure.
I spent a lot of the week mind mapping where his plot could go, what his options were, and where I could possibly have need of him. I really, really didn’t want to cut him out of the book completely.
On Sunday I hit a breakthrough.
I’ve brainstormed nearly his entire Book 1 plot, and some of his future books’ plot as well. I haven’t written it out in Outline form yet, or broken it up into acts or anything, but I am happy about where his journey is going to take him and the way he is going to grow. Survivor’s Guilt and stepping out into being his own person has always been his character arc, but this way - this way - is so much stronger, so much better articulated, and so much more focused on him as a character.
Rhonan feels so much more 3D now, and I am so so happy.
If I can get enough of my school work done in a day, expect a Character Introduction of his very very soon. I’m excited to share him with you all.
Also
I have been focusing, again, on world building and the creation “myths” of how the world began and how it is running. So while in my progress report below you see very little movement, know that a lot of my progress is in the back end of things that you don’t get to see in a progress bar because I can never know when I am finished with world building and Deep Lore.
But yeah, I got a lot of that done this week too! (Stuff I don’t want to say in case it spoils some really cool things for you guys...)
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Titania: Outline 1 - 60% complete
Edana: Outline 1 - 0%
Gael: Outline 1 - 0%
Skai: Outline 1 - 0%
Rhonan: Outline 1 - <5% (with most of the skeleton work done and ready to be outlined - will be done soon)
