writing or possibly not writing

The story writes itself, I just watch. Sometimes I have to wait a long time between seasons and sometimes my theories are wrong

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

Welcome to my writing blog!

This is Katie @myfairkatiecat on a sideblog dedicated to me rambling about my original stories. If the url look's similar to the url of a dear friend of mine's writing blog... don't worry about it!

I have three main universes I'll talk about here, which I'll organize in these main tags:

#things to fix refers to the main project I'm working on at the moment, which is about a high school girl who ruins all her relationships when she realizes she's going to have to move, learns they aren't moving anymore, and has to struggle through putting her life back together

#inside my own mind refers to my original work where a middle school girl is thrown into a poorly developed world she wrote about and is tasked with fixing things there.

#human refers to a universe I haven't much developed yet where a human and a fantasy creature were switched at birth. The story follows the human who thought she was a fantasy creature, who is suddenly thrown into the human world to be among her own species and doesn't know what she's doing.

I hope you enjoy this silly writing blog!

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

In the middle of the third chapter of this novel I suddenly realized I needed Lily to be narrating in first person! and now I'm changing EVERYTHING I have written so far! wahooooo.

[firedragon1321]

I was gonna write a novel in third person once (my usual tense) and my MC Leo hijacked the whole thing before I penned a single word. Sentence one was first person and I'm still not sure why. Apparently it needed to be because his narration is funny as hell.

That being said... I'm lucky he didn't do that in Chapter 3. That sounds like it sucks. I hate throwing out chapters.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

I literally went back and changed the tense of everything but it sounds odd now so I may have to just rewrite. yayyyy

[firedragon1321]

Yeah that's the trick. It's gotta be in your character's voice- not just a swap of "she" for "I".

Here's one of Leo's paragraphs (context- he lives at a special school for people with magical powers, he hates it there, and has never met his parents).

"I don't even plan on meeting [my parents] once I finally dig my way out. And that won't be at age fucking eighteen. The school library is full of books on gardening. The real library can teach me how to build and hunt. I'll build a boat, gather my friends, and go to some uncharted island in the Pacific. The books will teach us how to get food. The drooling morons can look for us. They won't have any luck."

This is Leo's goal from his perspective. Compared to a dry narration which might be like "he aimed to gather books and will use them to survive, and the teachers will not find them".

TL;DR- You'll unfortunately have to rewrite the old chapters if you want to stick to first person. Which sucks. You could shift to third person if you want to save those chapters. But ultimately it's your choice. Depends how much you like those chapters.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

It has to be first, unfortunately. Lily demands it. I’m probably going to need to rewrite the first three chapters but since I’m on the first draft I’m going to finish the whole thing before I get nitpicky with what needs rewriting and reworking. But yeahhhh those first three don’t have her voice there so that’ll end up being a problem

[firedragon1321]

"Lily demands it"- I know that feeling, lol.

Good luck. If you wanna talk about writing, my inbox is open.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

I may. Writing this stupid story has taken over my life ever since I decided it deserved to be written 😭

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

In the middle of the third chapter of this novel I suddenly realized I needed Lily to be narrating in first person! and now I'm changing EVERYTHING I have written so far! wahooooo.

[firedragon1321]

I was gonna write a novel in third person once (my usual tense) and my MC Leo hijacked the whole thing before I penned a single word. Sentence one was first person and I'm still not sure why. Apparently it needed to be because his narration is funny as hell.

That being said... I'm lucky he didn't do that in Chapter 3. That sounds like it sucks. I hate throwing out chapters.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

I literally went back and changed the tense of everything but it sounds odd now so I may have to just rewrite. yayyyy

[firedragon1321]

Yeah that's the trick. It's gotta be in your character's voice- not just a swap of "she" for "I".

Here's one of Leo's paragraphs (context- he lives at a special school for people with magical powers, he hates it there, and has never met his parents).

"I don't even plan on meeting [my parents] once I finally dig my way out. And that won't be at age fucking eighteen. The school library is full of books on gardening. The real library can teach me how to build and hunt. I'll build a boat, gather my friends, and go to some uncharted island in the Pacific. The books will teach us how to get food. The drooling morons can look for us. They won't have any luck."

This is Leo's goal from his perspective. Compared to a dry narration which might be like "he aimed to gather books and will use them to survive, and the teachers will not find them".

TL;DR- You'll unfortunately have to rewrite the old chapters if you want to stick to first person. Which sucks. You could shift to third person if you want to save those chapters. But ultimately it's your choice. Depends how much you like those chapters.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

It has to be first, unfortunately. Lily demands it. I’m probably going to need to rewrite the first three chapters but since I’m on the first draft I’m going to finish the whole thing before I get nitpicky with what needs rewriting and reworking. But yeahhhh those first three don’t have her voice there so that’ll end up being a problem

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

In the middle of the third chapter of this novel I suddenly realized I needed Lily to be narrating in first person! and now I'm changing EVERYTHING I have written so far! wahooooo.

[firedragon1321]

I was gonna write a novel in third person once (my usual tense) and my MC Leo hijacked the whole thing before I penned a single word. Sentence one was first person and I'm still not sure why. Apparently it needed to be because his narration is funny as hell.

That being said... I'm lucky he didn't do that in Chapter 3. That sounds like it sucks. I hate throwing out chapters.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

I literally went back and changed the tense of everything but it sounds odd now so I may have to just rewrite. yayyyy

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

In the middle of the third chapter of this novel I suddenly realized I needed Lily to be narrating in first person! and now I'm changing EVERYTHING I have written so far! wahooooo.

[tahbhie]

How many drafts should you go through before deciding your novel is ready?

There's no specific (official) number, but to create a foundation that ensures you don't burn out quickly, overwork yourself, and get tired of your work, I'll say four. It's the same number I use for my students since most of them have other engagements outside writing that take up a copious amount of their time.

1. Initial or Zero Draft:

This draft is also called the 'just write' draft. Focus on putting that idea down. As the creative juices flow, let it all out. Don't worry about perfection or coherence; the goal is to capture your raw ideas and get the story out of your head and onto the page.

2. Second Draft:

This is the plot draft. Read through what you have written to see if every detail you added was meant to be. Here, you focus on the structure of your story. Ensure that the plot makes sense, the pacing is right, and there are no major plot holes. This is where you might add, remove, or rearrange scenes to improve the overall flow of the narrative.

3. Third Draft:

Character development draft. In this stage, you look deeper into your characters. Make sure their motivations, backgrounds, and arcs are well-defined and consistent. Flesh out their personalities and relationships, ensuring they are compelling and believable. This is also a good time to refine dialogue and make sure it sounds natural and true to each character. That's for this drafting stage.

4. Fourth Draft:

Grammar and punctuation draft. This is the polishing stage. Focus on correcting grammatical errors, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. Pay attention to sentence structure, word choice, and overall readability. This draft is about making your manuscript as clean and professional as possible.

Keep in mind that the goal is to define what completion means for each draft. Once you reach the goal, take a break and return to it for the next drafting stage.

Some writers pay people to carry out some of the drafting stages for them, so if you fall into that category, you might have fewer drafting stages to handle yourself!

Reblog to save for later 😉

Thank you all for the support 💜!

[trench-knife]

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

Lily's life is getting turned upside down and the only thing she can worry about is whether life is inside or outside in that metaphor (is everything falling up to a cieling or into the sky? these are the important questions! to Lily)

[glassfrogforest]

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

why won't the transition between these two scenes just write itself

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

Trying to get the inciting incident of this story to happen should not be this hard.

I know what it is and I know what needs to happen before then. So why is all the other stuff taking SO LONG (literally am only on the second chapter)

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

Realest thing I ever wrote Lily doing is stressing over how to write an email. An email to someone she doesn't even need to like her!

She's literally going "I need to completely burn the bridge back to this club and the teacher who leads it... how do I do so in a respectful and socially appropriate manner?"

[writing-rambles-by-isa]

writing is awful because what I really want is to be in the fandom for my story and write the fanfiction while reading some myself. I want to see the fan art and the angst posting and I CAN'T CAUSE IT'S IN MY HEAD AHHHHH

[writing-rambles-by-katie]

It will never not be funny that I made Lily Hayes Catholic for one reason only. No, that reason is not because it's relevant to the story at all or even comes up more than once. It's so this scene could happen at the climax:

Selena: Don't you think Aiden should be with another church-going woman? Like me?

Lily: I'm literally Catholic!

Selena: Exactly! He deserves so much better!

(As a Catholic who used to be Protestant I consider myself the best person to make this joke. I can't help but make fun of my own religion every now and then)