Writing Excuses Master Class - Q&A on Ideas

I am a bad blogger who didn't blog last week (or most of this week) - shame!  I will have to work on that.  At any rate, I'm planning to skip the Writing Excuses writing prompts on the "wildcard" weeks, at least as far as the blogs are concerned, and will only be focusing on the master class ideas.  I've also gotten my writers' group at work started on them, which makes me happy.  This week's prompt ties into some of the things I do with character development, so I'm excited to see how this turns out:

Take one of the ideas you're excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role in that story. Make sure they're all different from each other.

I'll be focusing on the camera shop of horrors, and I'll be auditioning for the role of the keeper of the portal, who is forcing the employees of the camera shop to keep the portal open for nefarious reasons.

ENTER Dennis - Caucasian male, looks late-twenties but is actually much older, handsome as the devil, tall but not intimidatingly so, with piercing blue eyes.  He strolls onto the stage and sits casually in the folding chair, crossing one Armani-clad leg over the other and straightening his jacket collar.  He smiling winningly.

AUTHOR:  Dennis, tell me why you want to control a time portal, and what you'll do to keep that control.

DENNIS:  (with a throaty laugh)  Why wouldn't I want to control a "time portal", as you so charmingly put it?  A window into the distant past that allows one to travel to and fro on a whim, learning from the mistakes of one's forefathers and finding new and exciting ways to exploit them?  It's a dream come true!  And once one is in control of such a find, why, there's no reason to allow anyone else to even know about my little secret, much less defend against it.  So long as it stays well-hidden, there's no need to fight.  And the best way to keep something hidden is to keep it to oneself.  After all, the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.

AUTHOR:  OK, that veered into creepy.  Next!

ENTER Alyss - African-American female, early twenties, with a perpetually worried look on her face and her eyes hidden by large glasses.  She clutches a tablet in her hand, scrolling through a page and doesn't even look up as she passes Dennis.  She sits on the edge of the vacated seat, leaning forward to rest her elbows on denim-covered knees, and remains absorbed in whatever is on her tablet.

AUTHOR:  Alyss, same question.

ALYSS:  Huh?  (blinks owlishly at the author, then sets the tablet on her lap as she comes back around to the real world)  Oh, right!  Well, a time portal could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in historical research!  Just think, we could go back in time and actually find out some of the biggest mysteries in the world!  We could actually watch Kennedy's assassination, and how the moon landing was faked, and how 9/11 was really the result of a years-long conspiracy amongst the top tiers of the government!  The only people who wouldn't want to have this information out in the world would be the liberal media, with their bias and their determination to hide all of the parts of history that don't fit into their neat little narrative.  But we'd show them!  We'd show them all!

AUTHOR:  Oooookay then.  NEXT!

I think I'm going to stop things here, as I'm having a really difficult time coming up with different characters for this.  I may come back to it, though, because the exercise itself is really cool.

National Readathon - Wrap Up

Well, I survived.  There's still about 60 pages left in the book, and I'm going to finish it, if for no other reason than to see if anything actually bloody happens.  A solid two-thirds of this book could have been handled with a single training montage.  There are so many characters floating around that it's hard to keep them straight, or to really care about any of them.  However, considering that it's more of a world-building and intro-to-magic style of book, I can kind of understand why there are so many books in the series - it's easy to keep going that way.

At any rate, I feel like my first Readathon was a success.  Thanks to all who stopped by!

National Readathon - Halfway Point

Current book - still A Modern Witch
Current tea - Honey Ginseng Green
Current snack - none (too many M&Ms)

Well, I admit to being impressed at the turn the romance angle took.  It's still a little too pat and "love at first sight" (literally) for my taste, but it is interesting to see how love at first sight works for a witch with precognition.  I'm just waiting for things to, you know, HAPPEN- I'm 171 pages into this thing, and other than the initial reveal, there's not much action going on.

Onwards!

National Readathon - Hour 1 check in

Current book - A Modern Witch
Current tea - Trader Joe's Spiced Chai
Current snack - plain M&Ms

The book is almost disappointing in that it's not as awful as I expected it to be.  It's not good, don't get me wrong - there are many ways of blending modern technology with magic, and I don't think this author has hit on any of them in a way that makes a lot of sense - but it's not hilariously horrible.  There is an awful lot of head-hopping, though - nearly every page has a different POV character, and I had to go back a couple of times to determine which person this one was, which takes me out of the story.  Otherwise, it continues apace.

National Readathon - the set-up

Here's my set up for the several hours of reading ahead.  Pardon the mess - the library isn't quite ready for prime time yet.  Ramses, in the window, is ready to watch any and all action closely - at least, until he falls asleep.  The Kindle is charged up, the laptop is on hand for updates and music, and the current tea (Trader Joe's Spiced Chai) is brewing.  Let's do this.

National Readathon this Saturday

On Saturday, I will be taking part in the National Book Foundation’s National Readathon Day.  The goal is to raise money for some of the programs run by the National Book Foundation, including programs that help encourage kids to continue reading for fun as they get older.  Seeing as I spent the majority of my childhood buried in a book (or three), I'm hoping to help some other kids learn to ignore the world with a good book.

I’m planning to read at least one utterly ridiculous book (current front-runner is A Modern Witch, though I’m open to suggestions) between noon and 4pm PST tomorrow.  If you’d like to donate, my page is here.  I'm also planning to update this blog with the occasional reactions and progress updates, so you can keep it here to see how long I last with the Modern Witch.

Thanks, all, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Writing Excuses Master Class - What do you do with a story idea?

Round two of the Writing Excuses Master Class - now that you have story ideas, what do you do with them?  This week's writing prompt may be a little more difficult for me, because my original ideas weren't all that fleshed out:

Using last week's five story ideas (or five new ones):

• Take two of them and combine them into one story.
• Take one and change the genre underneath it.
• Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it
• Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice.

Starting from the top:

• Combining two, we've got the villain press conference and sense-jamming, because who wouldn't be pleased with villains who could jam the heroes' senses?  It's a new technology, and the League of Heroes has to deal with the consequences.
• Change the genre: the camera shop is a shop of horrors, and the employees are forced to keep the portal open or risk the wrath of their keeper, who maintains the portal in order to keep his power and his youth.
• Change the age/gender: originally I had thought of the person seeking the love currency as a young-ish man, but now I see it as an elderly woman who's lost the love of her life, and she's searching for enough love currency to keep herself going (love currency ties directly to vitality).
• Make the opposite choice: "honey blood" is now something people are actively trying to avoid, as people force the potion into others to make them into "spare part" donors, and the rich keep them around to allow themselves to have the kinds of bodies they had when they were young.