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Good luck with your revision! And thanks for sharing the link. The site seems really interesting! :)
WIP Wednesday
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The Narrator: I signed up for a revision course with Creative Writing Now, and I’m going to apply what I learn to Narrator. It’s slow going but, as always, I have high hopes!
Shadows, Echoes, and Reflections: You’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but I really think I’m on track this time! Story Engineering is the best writing advice book ever. Developing a structure has really helped me figure out where to take this story from start to finish. I’ve even got some ideas for the rest of the trilogy!
Fragment of the Moon: Also working on structure for this story. Given how much it’s changed since I started, I’m not surprised it still has a lot of holes in it.
Gatekeepers: One idea I’ve commonly tried to implement in my stories is time travel – specifically, a girl from the present going back to the past. I realized yesterday that this would work so well for Gatekeepers, with the Rabbit going back to help the other Zodiacs. I just have to figure out the logistics.
In fifth grade, we had a reading project where we were divided into groups to read one book each of The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce. I fell in love. After I read my group book (the first one, Alanna: The First Adventure), I read the other groups’ books. I went to the library and found her next quartet, The Immortals.
Now, I own all of her books – including her short story anthology, even when I hate short stories – and am happily anticipating her next book, Mastiff. About once a year, I go back and read her entire library.
What keeps me going back after all these years? The characters. The plot. The world-building. The pure inspiration.
To say Ms. Pierce has influenced my writing is a huge understatement. She’s practically driven it. I learned that you don’t have to write in purple prose to write well, that you can have heroes who are silly, and that young adult fiction isn’t just for teens.
If you haven’t read her books yet, get to it. There’s plenty to interest you: woman knights, animal magic, spies, police mysteries.
Treacherous Mistwood
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First, the winner! Unfortunately, only two people submitted their names. So I gave them each a number, according to when they submitted, and:
Congratulations to Abigail! You have won Incarceron! Email me your address and I shall send it to you! (Just to make sure I can find it if it goes to spam, please put A Single Bell or Incarceron or something in the subject line.)
Now for the book review…
A Review of Mistwood, by Leah Cypess
“She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know why, but she was suddenly sure it was a game she knew how to play.”
- on Isabel
The kings of Samorna have an immortal, all-powerful guardian called the Shifter. She is a creature of the Mistwood. Faster and stronger than any human, she can take the shape of human, animal, or mist. When the kings need her, they find her in her woods; and when they are safe, she returns.
When Isabel returns to the castle with Prince Rokan, she encounters several problems. Everyone is lying to her, she can’t remember anything before Rokan fetched her, and her powers aren’t working properly. And with the prince in danger, she doesn’t have much time to sort it all out.
I picked this book up on the recommendation of my favorite author, Tamora Pierce, and I’m so glad I did. Not only was the premise intriguing and the court politics ensnarled, but the story inspired my own imagination.
It had a lot of factors I like in stories: shapeshifting, hidden identities, court politics, legends come to life. To the very end, I was guessing who belonged to which side. And Isabel’s plight of the servant who is both duty-bound and unwilling to serve was an interesting development for me to watch.
The one thing I found lacking? Tension. It didn’t matter if it was a verbal duel or a physical fight – I had trouble sensing any real tension in the story. (Granted, it may have been a creative choice, since the Shifter is supposed to be unemotional and rational.)
Overall, I was highly pleased with the book, and will heartily recommend it to you in turn.
My Rating (out of five stars)
★★★★
My Little Pony RPG
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Less than one day to take the survey and enter for a chance to win Incarceron! This is where I coerce, beg, plead, intimidate, and you know, any other verb that will convince you to participate. I’ll announce the random winner on Friday.
Don’t laugh. Well okay, go ahead. It’s pretty funny. My friends and I watch the latest incarnation of the show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (Yes, even the guys.) The plot’s kind of lame, I must admit, but the characters are the fun part.
So of course, that means we’re going to do a role playing game. I’m running it, and I’ve decided to try a new system called Amber Diceless. As the name says, it doesn’t use dice. Hopefully, it’ll be an easy system to use – and starting with ponies gives us considerably fewer variables. (I mean, how many ponies do you know fight with swords and bows?)
Depending how this goes, I might try to implement some of the system into my [still under construction] Harry Potter RPG system. I’ll let you know!
Writer’s Bane
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The problem with believing writer’s block is just a sign that you’re writing the wrong thing is that sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the right thing is.
Aside from being stuck in an endless cycle of revisions, I’m in an endless cycle of planning. I can’t tell what would be best for my novels.
What game-changing information should I reveal at the midpoint of Narrator? How should I handle the romantic interest of my main character in Shadows, Echoes, and Reflections? How do I twist together the layers of lies and misinformation in Fragment of the Moon?
So I’m thoroughly stuck in a series of ruts right now. Which is why I’ve decided to ask you for help! Anyone have any tips on determining what’s right and what’s not for your novel?
Don’t forget! You only have until Wednesday, 12:59 pm EST to take the survey and enter for a chance to win Incarceron. Remember to post a comment saying you took the survey!
“Write what you know.”
You’re bound to have seen this at least three times since you started your writing career. It’s a favorite of creative writing teachers. Artists draw what they see, authors write what they know.
I’ve always found this to be a stupid piece of advice. I like fantasy. I like fairy tales. I occasionally like aliens. I don’t know any aliens. How can I write about creatures or worlds I have never seen, if I’m supposed to write what I know.
In short, I determined this was the worst advice ever.
It wasn’t until I started following author blogs that I realized there was a different interpretation of the phrase. Writing what you know doesn’t mean you have to only write about what you had a direct experience with. It means applying what you do know to your fiction.
Sound the same? Here’s an example: say you lost your pet. It’s not the same thing as losing a relative or a friend, but you can apply the emotions you had toward the incident toward these others ones, and adapt what you know as necessary. Or say you love medieval castles, and you read every book ever on them, visit them, live in one, etc. You can apply all of that knowledge that you know to your story.
If you don’t, your stories will probably fall flat. Your readers will be thrown out of their suspension of disbelief and think “this author has no clue what she’s talking about.” Obviously, you don’t want that to happen. So you write what you know.
In this context, “write what you know” might possibly be one of the best pieces of writing advice.
Kailani, Part 2
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And we’re back with part 2 of my short story, Kailani of the Single Bell.
Don’t forget to enter the survey for a chance to win Incarceron. I have graciously given you all one more week so that Abigail doesn’t win by default! (I mean come on, what kind of contest is that?)
Her trips to Kwasi for food, water, and supplies produced less and less. There simply weren’t any more useful goods in the wreckage. And with winter on the rise, food in the woods was scarce. There were the crows, but even if she was capable of bringing them down, she wouldn’t dare try. She started giving all of her rations and most of the water to Nookcha, but she couldn’t go much longer without food.
The only improvement in the situation was her leg. She wouldn’t be carrying Nookcha down the mountain soon, but the pain was tolerable. She took comfort in the echoing ching of her anklet as it dogged her every step.
Nookcha’s sores cleared in a few days, but his fever worsened. If he wasn’t asleep, he was delirious. Kailani tried everything she could remember from Master Dorje’s teachings, but not matter what she did he slipped further and further into the Otherworld.
He had just managed to settle into a semblance of sleep after her latest, thinnest version of broth. Kailani huddled on the game path, embracing the protection offered by the large boulders. She still needed to make another trip for water before nightfall, but she didn’t want to stand anymore.
“It is hard to see a good warrior broken.”
Kailani’s head snapped up before she could stop herself. A moon-hazed blur of a man stood on the path. He held a bow loosely in his hand and was watching Nookcha turn uneasily in his sleep. His body was covered in line-thin scars, and his sparse relaxed-elder cloth contrasted sharply with the winter chill. If she turned her head slightly, the man disappeared.
He was one of the hunter spirits who stalked the game path.
“Do you know Nookcha?” she asked the spirit, afraid to speak too loud and break the connection.
She thought he hid his surprise at being addressed by a young living girl. “He is a distant nephew,” he hunter replied. “You are caring for him?”
Kailani nodded slowly.
“You are brave, but it is not enough,” he told her. “I can feel his spirit approaching the Otherworld. You do not have much time.”
“I know,” she admitted, crumbling against the stone. “But I can do nothing more by myself.”
The hunter smiled and clasped her shoulder.
“Then you must ask for help.”
The hunter spirit gave her instructions. He only knew how to begin a shaman’s journey; he did not know what came after. At that point she would have to rely on herself.
On the third night of her fast, she wrapped Nookcha in fresh blankets and hot rocks. She set food and water near enough for him to reach comfortably, if he had the strength to reach at all. She wavered to her feet.
“Hana,” he murmured.
Kailani waited, but he said no more. With a quick prayer, she walked into the forest, her bells chinging softly.
The moon cast enough light for her to slowly make her way deep into the forest. She absorbed the night around her. She was not afraid of attack, from animals or humans.
When her leg began to give out, Kailani sat at the base of a tree and leaned against its reassuring trunk. All she could do now was wait. Her mind drifted half-formed and unthought. Sleep tugged at her like a mountain wind, but every time she pushed it back. It would not do to sleep so close to the Otherworld.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“You are far from home, little one.”
A man stood in front of her. He was taller than any mortal, his hands were like claws, and his head was in the shape of a crow. He watched her silently, but she noticed that his eyes hinted at mockery.
This was the god of trickery and death.
This was Two Crow.
“I have traveled far to speak with you, great one.” The ritual words came shakily, as if from another’s life. “Please, sit, that you may rest from your own journey.” She tried to collect the half-remembered fragments of her lessons; the next part of the ritual demanded that the god decline, and remain standing.
Two Crow inspected her with one bright eye and hacked out a laugh. “Yes, I believe I shall,” he said. He folded himself until he was sitting before her. “Journeys do tend to tire one.”
Kailani cursed her luck. Her first meeting with a god and it had to be the trickster, who had already abandoned ritual. She knew the stories, and she was not experienced enough to come away unscathed. Two Crow had tricked the Chokta’s first chief, the bravest and smartest of the People, into giving up the immortality of the Chokta, then imprisoned the chief himself in the depths of the Otherworld. She could not hope to have better luck than the first chief.
Two Crow turned his head to watch her with the other eye. “So, Kailani of the Single Bell, you have come seeking my help to cure your dying friend.”
“Yes. Can you help?”
“Of course!” he declared. Two Crow reached into a small bag which had not been there a moment ago and withdrew a set of vivid-colored bells. “These bells can heal any wound or cure any disease. They will help your friend.”
Kailani was entranced by the dancing red anklet and the drumming blue bracelet. The chanting green bells glowed with power, and she knew these bells could save Nookcha.
But she was waiting for the trick.
“Why give these powerful bells to me?” she asked. “What do you gain by this?”
Two Crow chuckled. “And so the pebble questions the flight of the bird. There are things at stake here that you cannot comprehend, little mortal. Has it occurred to you that I might want your friend to survive? That he may be the key to restoring my children to their former glory?” He twitched the bells with his claws and they chinged in a cascade.
Kailani frowned. “You are Two Crow. You live to trick others. But I will not be fooled.”
“And so you shan’t,” he agreed with a laugh. “Trust me little one, the trick I play today is much larger than taking one shaman’s life. You are safe from me.” He unfolded himself until he was standing and offered the bells again.
Kailani did not see that she had much choice. She needed to get back to Nookcha before it was too late, and the god had promised her safety. She nodded.
“Good girl.”
She reached out a hand for the bright bells, but he snatched them out of reach.
“A moment. I need your bells in return.”
She stiffened. There was a trick after all.
“Stop glaring. It is impossible for a shaman to have more than one set of bells at the same time. You will not be able to return to your world with them.” Two Crow shrugged his shoulder blades. “What can I say? My brothers were not the cleverest creatures when they created the laws of the worlds.”
She was out of time.
Kailani unclasped her anklet, listening to its ching for the last time. These bells had managed to stay with her until the end, and now they were helping to save Nookcha. She could not ask for a better end for them than that.
She used the tree she had been leaning against to pull herself up. Two Crow began handing her the colorful bells, the yellow, the white, the blue. Her heart raced at the touch. She could feel the power ringing through them. How would she be able to control such powerful objects?
Her fingers jerked, and the red bells slipped from her grasp. They chinged flatly as they struck the forest floor. With a sharp crack, they snapped together into a small red rock. Kailani stared at one of the pieces from the children’s game in the village. How…?
Kailani threw the other bells on the ground. Sharp cracks thundered among the trees, and she was left surrounded by a scattering of bright rocks. “Stones!” she cried bitterly. “A pile of useless stones.”
She turned on Two Crow, tears searing her eyes. “You lied to me!” she shouted. “You said I was safe from your tricks! You said you wanted to help Nookcha!”
“I am surprised you believed me,” he admitted with a dangerous tilt of his crow head. “You were so skeptical for a little girl.”
“I need to save Nookcha!” she screamed.
“And I will not help you,” he said in a tone that sounded like he wanted to snap her neck. She stopped crying.
He began to fade. “I will allow you to return home. But know this Kailani of the Single Bell: at our next meeting, I will not be so generous. I can only hope we meet again very soon.” Two Crow disappeared, his laughter slowly falling away.
When the last echo had faded, Kailani re-clasped her bells around her ankle, gathered up the rocks, and bolted for camp. If she noticed the crows following her in the trees, or heard a hint of laughter on the wind, she kept it to herself.
Kailani never slowed until she reached the large boulders of the camp. She sank to her knees and instantly looked for Nookcha. He had dislodged the now-cold blankets and rocks, and was staring blindly at the highest branches of the pines.
Thinking it fitting, and with nothing else to use, she placed the red rock on his left eyelid and the yellow rock on his right.
She suspected he had passed on while she talked with Two Crow, maybe even before she had asked him for help. Perhaps it had happened when she had taken the fake bells.
She half-carried Nookcha to his village, built him a small pyre, and lit it. She sang the final prayers to guide his spirit to the Otherworld. Her voice quavered, hollow without the deeper voices of the men.
At the edge of her vision, an outline of Nookcha was welcomed by the community. The girl with the dog flung her arms around him. Kailani blinked and they were gone, but she imagined Nookcha turning back, hand raised.
The next village was ten nights away and probably needed help recovering from the warriors’ raids. With a single sigh, Kailani shouldered the remains of her supplies and limped down the mountain path, her shaman bells chinging faintly.
The crows dove at her, insulted her. She let the crows think they were driving her out of their territory. They needed something new to laugh about.
Kailani, Part 1
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We’re going to try something different today, thanks to one of the responses on the survey! (I don’t have that many, so I’m extending the deadline to next Wednesday.)
Reminder: Fill out the survey here to enter for a free copy of Incarceron.
Below is the first part of my short story, Kailani of the Single Bell. Yes, the title did inspire the blog’s name. I’ll post more of the story throughout the week!
The crows were laughing, hacking as the black snow clogged their throats. They were the obsidian remains of the mountain air, looming over the untouched pines and the girl struggling up the path.
The bells on her ankle chinged faintly with each uneven step. She had lost the rest outside her memory. Her coat was too big, taken from a man who no longer needed it. Her woolen skirt, once bright red with dancing, was smeared and heavy.
There was a pause in the crows’ jokes as they watched the girl enter the village. Some of the wooden beams still smoldered, sheltering young fires from the dark snow drifting overhead. The girl ignored the wreckage in the streets. She could not help those who had already entered the Otherworld.
When she turned toward the well, the crows shouted insults at her. Didn’t she know the water was polluted? Who was this strange human, this little girl who did not understand the way of the worlds?
She bowed to the well and whispered words the crows could not hear over their own laughter. She drew out a full bucket of water and poured it into her own. With a sigh – the only emotion she had shown to the crows – she picked up her bucket and chinged her uneven path away from the village. The crows cackled at the sight of her limping through the black snow, hauling a too-heavy bucket of water.
When she could no longer hear the crows’ heckling, Kailani allowed herself a grim smile.
At a far enough distance to respect the village’s spirits of the dead, Kailani lurched onto a game path. She concentrated on her feet; she had no desire to see the spirits of hunters who still stalked this trail. A small outcrop of boulders, the remnants of a distant people, leaned beyond the game path. It was a safe place, from mortals and crows alike. Kailani took a last deep breath, and limped around the far side of the boulders.
A young man, maybe seven years older than her, lay near the fire under the largest scrap of wool she had managed to find. He was sleeping. He was dying.
Kailani set the bucket down under the sparse overhang of rock and slowly knelt. She rubbed her bad leg. Before she could remember the rest of that day, she sent a prayer of good health for her companion to the Otherworld. Maybe Master Dorje would intercept it and –
“Who is Dorje?” The young man began coughing.
Kailani blinked. There was a sickening moment of hesitation where she wondered when she had spoken out loud. Then she was scooping well-water with a half-burnt bowl to help the man to drink.
He leaned out of reach. “W-where did you g-get that?” he asked between weakening coughs.
“It does not matter.” She raised the bowl again, but he turned his head away.
“It is from Kwasi,” he said. “I will not drink it. It has been polluted.”
Kailani’s master would have dumped the water on his head to bring him to his senses, but she had no water to spare. “Water is water. The well in the village is the only water I have been able to find. We need water. Drink.”
“I am unworthy.”
She wilted. “That does not mean you deserve to die,” she said quietly. He refused to look at her. “Nookcha, please. You must drink. You are drying out.” His lips were cracked with fever and had begun to bleed.
“I am unworthy,” Nookcha repeated to the ground.
She watched him for a few moments. She knew they were both Chokta, both of the People, but they were so different. She refused to accept that he would not even try to fight for his own life. The warriors of her village always accepted her help, but this one…The Chokta had lost their homes again and both of them had lost friends and family to these never-ending wars. Why, then, was he treating her as if she could not understand?
She walked her protective circles around the camp. Her dwindling supply of powdered herbs clung to her fingers like children at a mid-winter festival. She hurriedly dusted them off to complete the circle. She added several sticks to the fire and settled against one of the protective stones. She could rest before returning to salvage what she could from the village. The spirits would understand that she and Nookcha needed to survive. She did not need angry spirits punishing her for using death-tainted water. They had to understand.
But for the first time in three days, she felt that the crows were justified in laughing at her.
The next day, Kailani foraged the remains of Kwasi. The enemy warriors had been sloppy; not everything had burned. She found mostly whole clothes, stores of food, and tools. She even managed to find, protected beneath a collapsed roof, a children’s game of bright rocks. She left them untouched, but the crows who had settled in the village snatched them up in their jaws and took them away.
From time to time she would catch a glimpse at the corner of her eye of imposing figures. The crows urged her to greet her friends. She wasn’t fooled, and never turned to look for these Chokta. She could only mutter a prayer of apology for invading their resting ground and continue searching the charred remains.
When Kailani returned to the camp around midday, Nookcha’s body was covered in sores. She ground up a poultice, improvising some of the rarer ingredients, and dabbed it on the brown spots. She prayed to the spirits. She heated rocks and wrapped them in with more blanket-scraps to sweat his fever out. But there was little else she could do besides try to make him drink the well-water. It grew shamefully easier as he grew too weak to protest.
“No,” he always mumbled. “I am unworthy.”
Nookcha’s fever worsened, and by nightfall he slipped into restless dreams. He would thrash, and Kailani kept rewrapping him with newly hot stones. Whenever he called out, she was torn between soothing him and limping as fast as possible down the mountain. No apprentice could handle such healing work alone. Then, ashamed of herself, Kailani would rush over in a clatter of chings and a dripping cloth to cool his forehead.
He awoke near fake dawn, with the sky the color of a dead hearthfire.
“Where is Hana?” he croaked.
Kailani seized the opportunity and tipped a few drops of water down his throat. “She wants you to drink,” she told him. She dipped the bowl in the bucket of well-water. “Ha – Hana says this will make you better.”
Still Nookcha tried to lean away. His fever-bright eyes struggled to face hers. “Where is she? Please. I want to see her.”
Her chest tightened in panic. Master Dorje had not yet taught her to mediate between the two worlds.
He grabbed her arm with all of his remaining strength. “Where is she?”
“In the Otherworld. I am sorry.” She closed her eyes out of respect for his pain, which was all too visible on his face.
He leaned back in defeat. “She was my sister.”
Kailani remembered one of the older girls she had seen from the corner of her eye, the one who had clutched a dog to her side and watched her with pestled eyes. She wondered if this had been Hana.
“I could not…I was sick when they attacked. I was too weak to help, but I could hear – my sister was calling for me. She was close. I-I made it outside, but she…she…” Kailani could not see him, but his trembling echoed through her arm. “I failed her. I should have been stronger, I should have helped…I should have…”
“It is not your fault,” she reminded him. “Hana knows, and wants you to live. After all, the gods have – ”
“How?” he demanded, gripping her arm tighter. “How is Hana’s death not my fault? Explain to me, shaman, how a person with no family can dare tell me what to feel right now.”
A half-memory flitted by, and she was being led away from her mother and father to the sound of flutes and drums and dances declaring her parents to be ordinary members of the village to her. She no longer knew if this was a memory from the truth or her imagination. She had never asked anyone.
“I have no connection to this world save my master and my bells,” she said. “But my master has entered the Otherworld so yes. I know how it feels to lose someone.”
Nookcha watched her. “Your leg. Spear?”
“Club.”
“Do you still smell the smoke?”
She nodded.
“It tastes bitter.”
His grip faltered. Gently, Kailani unhooked his fingers from her arm. When she raised the bowl to his lips again, he drank.
She settled down on her too-thin bedroll, past welcoming sleep. From across the fire she heard Nookcha ask wearily, “Do you hear the crows laughing?” He slept.
Linear vs. Random
Filed Under Age-Old Debates | Leave a Comment
There are basically two schools of thought on how to write a novel. You can start on the first page with “Once upon a time” and end on the last page with “The End.” Or you can write as scenes come to you, no matter where they are in this story.
As long as I have been writing, I have been firmly entrenched in the first camp. How can I write scene 10 if I don’t know what happens in scenes 1 – 9? Even if I outline, I might change my mind in the middle of a scene. So I wrote linearly. Of course, the inevitable writer’s block would kick in, and I’d sit and mumble to myself for a good week or month, put the story aside, and work on something else.
Now, after having read Story Engineering, I’m much more confident about my outlining abilities. Even though I still have trouble mapping out every scene, I know how I want my story to unfold, and which scenes I need to write to make that happen. And I have an idea of where the characters should be on their story arcs throughout the book.
So now, if inspiration strikes for a scene near the end of the story, I’ll write it. And I don’t need to worry about how to make it fit in with the rest of the novel, because I know it does.
Now, I’m not saying that one method is superior to the other. I’ve just finally found one that works for me. When I get stuck, as I usually do, I can move on without any worries. And that makes it much easier to keep writing.
So which school do you belong to? Anyone able to pants the non-linear one? (I’ll be super impressed if you can.)
ASingleBell’s Lovely Survey
Filed Under Blogging | 6 Comments
As promised, I have created a survey for you lovely readers. I want your opinions, especially your constructive criticism, and if I have to buy your love, so be it.
If you answer the survey, you qualify to win this book:
Incarceron, the dystopian story of a 17-year-old prisoner in a world frightened by change of any kind. Win it now!
Okay, not “now” now. Here are the directions:
- Take the survey.
- Post in the comments that you have taken the survey.
- Nervously tap your fingers for one week until the morning of June 15th, when I announce the randomly drawn winner of Incarceron! If my readership is as low as I think it is, you have a very good shot! If it’s not, well, go me!
So you got all that? Survey, post, June 15th. Go!
Welcome
Official Progress
4/21 segments
A narrator hijacks a cliche fantasy story, much to the chagrin of its characters.Status: Second revision
A young noblewoman with strange powers must choose: her king or her soul.1,639/70,000 wordsStatus: First draft
When a girl's heart is stolen, she's plunged into a world of magic and shadows - but can she get her heart back before she loses it completely?1,087/70,000 wordsStatus: First draft
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