Let us see your characters and plot progression

I love Doctor Who, but is has been boring lately (Except for last night's episode, which I loved!!!) and lately I've been thinking about why. The answer comes down to two things:

1. A lack of character development.
2. A lack of plot progression.

Let's take an in depth look at those shall we (And if you're not a whovian, stick around! This applies to everyone!)

• A lack of character development.

 If we aren't given a reason to care, then guess what? People won't care! In my current book, I have a bit of an antagonist in that I've put her there solely to cause problems for the MC. BUT I want people to feel for her, so I've given her motivations deep down, that once the reader sees them will make them hopefully feel... Something for her. Hopefully pity. If, however, I keep her forever in a state of "OMG, this character is so mean, I hate her." Then I'll never get to challenge how the reader feels about her, which is what I want.

• A lack of progression in the plot.

If your story doesn't move forward, people will get bored. I mean, how long do you stick with a book if you get bored? For me, less than twenty pages. That means you have better keep the plot moving, and FAST. If you slow it down, you had better have a good reason. Like character development for example. :)

I mean, in the case of Doctor Who, I get the feeling they're slowing down character/plot progression so they can withhold the good stuff for the series/season finale and/or the 50th anniversary. 

But they're only limiting themselves as writers. What they SHOULD  be doing is revealing the good stuff now and giving us MORE good stuff... See Downton Abbey for an example of this. 

Have a great day guys. 

Trunking Ensnare

AKA the book I've been writing for eighteen months. It was not an easy moment. I'm sure I'll still have desperate moments when I still think "I can still revise this!" But I've tried seven times. That's enough.

Here is a fake cover I made back when I was thinking about pen names earlier this year. And no, I don't plan on publishing under "Leah Pointer." You can laugh at the cheesiness. This is why I want to be traditionally published.

Basically, the main reason I decided to truck was because the whole time I tried to make this book into something... There was never a story arc. It was never build to anything. It was just "Scenario happens, crap ensues!"

But there needs to be something deeper at work in a book, at least to me. You need to know what you are building towards and I never did. So unless I can find a way to do that, it's staying shelved. 

But what do I mean by, building towards? Here is what I mean:

I should have an idea of where this book is going if I want it to be salvageable .. It's like SPOILERS from Doctor Who and Harry Potter, one of which I'm hoping you're watched/read: (highlight to read)

• From Doctor Who: In the first season of Doctor Who, the Doctor and Rose keeping seeing the words "Bad Wolf" everywhere. At the end of the season, Rose realizes that "Bad Wolf" was a message she left for herself in order to save the Doctor, it was a paradox, which she fulfills to save the Doctor. 
• From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Harry goes to a vault with Hagrid to collect a tiny little package, that eventually ends up being the Sorcerer's Stone, that Harry has to stop Voldemort from stealing. 

Get what I mean? I didn't have a story or anything to foreshadow towards. Do I regret this book I spend so much work on? No! Because I feel like I learned so so so much from it.

Drafting/Revison Fatigue

You know how you can be deep, deep in a draft and just want to be DONE? That was me on Friday. I probably would have rushed the ending if someone hadn't given me great advice:

This is my dog. Her eyes aren't normally that red and scary. :P

Take a break.

If you feel like your work will be suffering from working on something, take a day off. I did. You will come back feeling like your work is a lot better than it would have been!
*Don't use this post to take a day off school and make your teachers (or boss) mad. This mainly refers to writing. :P

Things I've learned lately as a writer

Okay, guys, I'd like to first say I'm sorry for this blog going... Kinda crazy! But it's now back to being my writing blog, which is how it should be. *hugs blog* I've missed it! 
Here are some things I've learned lately about writing:

• Get betas. They can help you solve those weird problems you don't know how to fix. 
• Follow that little voice. You know, the smart alec that says "That shouldn't be happening yet!" 
• Your main character is not supposed to act fully like a human being. That may seem weird, but I forgot my MC is supposed to double as a narrator, too. Which means that sometimes, she has to pause and explain things to the reader.

Like so. Gif from tumblr.

• Use dialogue tags sometimes.
• Don't fully take the advice of one writing blog. Get writing advice from many places and take each's advice with a bit of salt. Especially when they contradict each other.
• Throw out the rules when they appear to be strangling your writing, but only consciously do so. 
• If you think something's wrong, and a beta reader agrees with you, it's wrong.
• Did I mention get betas? :P I've learned so much about writing in the ... Eh, four days I've had one? And not just people to cheer you on, people who can say "hey, you need to slow down and give the reader backstory/worldbuilding;" "this is telling;" "your characters are OOC," etc. And so on. Because as it turns out, I don't know everything. :P

Changes... Again

So I ditched this blog thinking I could find a better writing blog out there.... Well I couldn't! (Shocker!) Writing about horses doesn't interest me like I thought it would, so I'll be taking those down and putting some of my favorite writing posts up again, and resuming this as a writing blog. Sorry for being so wishy-washy guys! I'll probably change my url at some point, but I'm not sure what to.

Fantasy/Scifi and Real Life Commentary.

It has always annoyed me when people say that Harry Potter is just a children's series. Maybe I'm being a bit of a fangirl here, but there is SO much real life stuff hidden in the pages! (FYI, this is a post mostly for scifi/fantasy writers, though maybe other genres can benefit, too?) I'm using mostly HP and Doctor Who as examples of real life found in fantasy/scifi.

HP either is anti or has metaphors representing:

1. Torture.
2. Genocide.
3. Prejudice.
4. Bullying.
5. Alcoholism/addiction (Winky)
6. AIDS (Lupin being a werewolf is supposed to be a metaphor for a person with AIDS.)
7. Date rape. (Think poor Tom Sr.)
8. Newspapers that print lies.
9. Crappy political leaders.

DW has commentary on:

1. Plastic surgery. (Cassandra.)
2. Suicide.(Van Gogh)
3. Family. (Rose and her parents.)
4. Confidence. (Donna)
5. Change and repentance (think of when Rose wanted to show the Dalek mercy.)
6. Genocide.
7. Being forced to be a parent. (When Ten had his DNA used without consent to make Jenny could be seen as a metaphor for surprise parenthood.)
8. PTS (Nine and the Time War. One of my favorite bits of character development on Doctor Who ever was watching Nine fight his PTS over the war and what he did. *sigh* I miss Nine.)
9. Love, and gaining it and losing it. (Rose! And River! And the Ponds!)
10. Knowing when to walk away from a bad relationship. (Martha.)

And my own work in progress so far has a metaphor for cloning. So, fantasy/scifi writers, you want to make your book more real? Pick up a newspaper and ask yourself what you could do to make metaphors of real life. :)

PS

Yes, I realize that this isn't a Myers-Briggs post. Next Sunday. ;) And yes, I know that today isn't Sunday, but my time it's only 44 minutes to Sunday, so I think it counts!

What Not Writing can Teach you about Writing

Biggest contradiction ever, right? Well, not writing can teach you plenty about writing. Let me tell you a little about my writing life for the past eleven months.

• I get into writing so much I pretty much lived and breathed it.
• Hardly take a break or think about anything else for nine months.
• Finally take a break in September/October this year. Read some books. Watched a lot of Doctor Who:

Source as far back as I can trace it. Including this because blog posts without pictures are weird, and Doctor/Rose is a great pairing. :)

• Start writing again in tiny bits.Marvel at the improval in my writing because of the break.

Okay, first. Making my life writingwritingwriting was kind of unhealthy. Well, okay, not just kind of, more like a lot. It caused me to put so much pressure on myself that I started to hate writing. (Not to mention, my prose sounded really repetitive.)

And hating writing's not right, because I love writing. 

Anyway, I took a break for a month and half and, as I said above, doing stuff like reading books and watching TV had really helped my prose. For starters, watching TV gave me a good idea how people react to stuff in ways other than "she smiled" "he laughed"  etc. And reading? It's given me even more ways to fix up that stale prose. Like, I forgot that when describing something, you could compare something to something else. Like "Professor McGonagall gave Harry a hawk-like look." (Not a quote from HP that I am aware, I just made it up on the spot, lol. If there is a quote like that in HP, then my subconscious is channeling Jo, apparently.) Rather than my usual description of a stern gaze, which is "She narrowed her eyes." Saying that a gaze is hawk-like is far more interesting.

Anyway, hope you guys liked the post! Soon I may do a post on Myers-Briggs tests and writing. Also, I just noticed that I have 29 followers. That feels like a huge milestone. Thanks guys!
Also, I don't like making commits for fear of breaking things, but I want to at least try to update this once a week. We'll see if that happens. What do you guys think of me updating the blog every Sunday?