Shawna is Indecisive

The New Thing
The only thing I can really update writing-wise is on this new thing, which is in the bare bones phase. Normally, I wouldn't even talk about it but I've already come out with it so, I thought I'd keep you updated.

To answer some comment questions, it is in some ways a sequel to Blessed Hearts. Now, if you remember in that serial all the characters died and Soul and Rin were reincarnated. This story may/or may not explore that. But, mostly may not. But also will. Welcome to my nightmares.

I've written about 200 words and I have  a plot outline...I just need to give my characters names.  I struggled with whether to change their names or give them new ones, but I decided to give them new ones. But I'm not sold on it. I mean if it weren't for Soul this would be an easier decision. Either way, I'm super excited to start getting in to this world and becoming comfortable with it.

It also has a title, but I tend to change the titles (as you'll see) so I'll keep it under lock and key for now. When I'm 4 chapters deep I'll probably do some posting.


Vice
Well, Vice is still going along swimmingly. I've actually had to rearrange pieces because some chapters were too long. I admit, from TDOLL I know there are some parts I should strike through, but I have my reasons.

I have all of Vice  all plotted out and I do think it will be more than one part. In thinking about Vice I would love to write something small and concise, but then I look at big sprawling series and think, sure, why not ? I could do so much in this world.

Oh, speaking of names, don't be surprised if I start changing the name. I'm just not sure it fits anymore.


Vice Chapter 3
Here we are. The chapter where things really change and get different. Forget everything you know. Also, I do a thing with the font.

-1- Smoke Signals by Houses
-2- Yesterday We Had All Of Us by Fink (Don't look too much into this song, although it's my new fave)

Alan's been drugged for the second time this serial, but where does he wake up ?

Mini-Gif Post

So, I have a TDOSH ready, but nothing to blog about ! So here is a mini-gif update.

What I want from Lile after seeing all of her hilarious TDOLL posts and amazing novellas and just loving her work.

In fact, I've pretty much been watching LiLe's blog like this

 I've also been working on Vice and changing characters more with each chapter

Speaking of Vice, it been going like this recently  (surprisingly)

But still most days are

As for this new serial. Well, the plotting is going like this:

Well, this is probably more accurate:

One More

Okay, one more TDOSH. I did a section featuring Rhett and I discovered something kind of...interesting. There are a lot of lines from Veritas in this particular section of United Light. Which is odd because at this point Veritas was 3 serials away....

Did  just plagiarize myself ?

TDOSH !

 This post got long.....




Baby M
So, I don't blog much about myself, but things have changed ! I will say, I don't see it changing my writing much. Since I am at home full time I find myself writing a lot more and since my mother and MIL and SIL tell me I should let the baby get used to noise, I've been typing away. Because of  the work that DH and I do, it's safe to say she'll hear a lot of typing....unless we all start writing on iPads.
Although, interesting fact, DH writes all his first drafts by hand.

I'm between calling the baby either, Baby M or Little Lamb on the blog...I'm calling my husband DH because I think it's fun I get to use it !

Character or Plot ?
Okay, I'm about to be a bit politically incorrect (blame it on the hormones) but I'm a bit of a character-whore. I mean it, I love creating characters. I usually always write character sketches and keep them handy, most of my serials have come to me through characters.

Which is where I am struggling with this new thing (this will be the last mention of it, I promise). I was drafting plot ideas and I was like and then...government shutdown ?

 Anyway, based on a comment in the last post, I thought I'd do a role call:

United Light - Plot First
This one was plot first. I wanted to write both an updated version of Guy Maupassant's The Necklace and also write about cults. I knew I was going to have the characters start our clean and innocent and then lose themselves to payback this enormous debt...and ultimately fall in love, but then Elisa came in the picture and that didn't work out.

Rose Garland and Golden Stars - Character (obviously)
I just wanted to write a backstory for Rhett...I had no inclinations for UL2 at this point and I wanted him to have some depth. Then I got swallowed away in Coast Guard Academy life, that I decided to write a whole new thing.

Ivy Brothers - Character
 As many of you know Darcy' and Nick's POV were originally flash fictions I wrote for a magazine. So even though they had no real ending, I knew in my mind the minute I wrote him  Darcy was going to die. Then I imagined Elias and Slate. As you can tell from the serial itself I had NO idea what to do with these characters...I couldn't write them meeting because that was already established by Nick and Slate''s POV, so I wrote them breaking up.

Veritas - Setting/Character
I have a very vivid memory of how I got this one, it's in two parts. First, I wanted to write about someone with Stockholm Syndrome...blame MSNBC again. I wanted it to be a girl who started to identify with her captors.

 Secondly, Lauren was spending the night and listening to one of the Twilight soundtracks and that song " Eyes on Fire" got stuck in my head. It was stuck in my  head while I was watching coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake aftemath and something about the stories made me imagine a world that was wrecked and how people resurrect from that. This idea of wandering a desolate landscape. Obviously it evolved, but that was the genesis. Not sure how I got on cyberpunk.

Then of course Sara came to me as the "star" followed by the Dorys.  I'm not sure when Alan formed.

Hidden - I HAD TO
I have honestly no idea. I think I wanted to recycle ideas I originally had for Veritas. I liked my characters but I had NO plot for them. Plus I had to deal with Minnow's death...and I wanted to bring her back.

Sundays - Character
With Sundays, there is two hands to this. On one hand, I wanted to write a somewhat "sexually charged" but not explicit romance between an officer and a prisoner because I figure with so much testoserone in one place there has to be some UST. Also,I may have been reading a lot of Supernatural fanfiction....and they made it seem so normal.

But also, I wanted to write Haley as a character who is a foil to Alan. He gets taken to prison for something he didn't do, he goes through a lot, people are mean to him, but he doesn't turn bitter and awful. He actually makes a better life for himself by enlisting and still holding to his beliefs.

Mimic-Character
I just really wanted to timeskip and write these characters as adults through another person's lens. I was trying to end it in a way I could live with.

Blessed Hearts- Story
At this point, I knew I struggled with story, so I wanted to write something based on an already told story as sort of an exercise. I had an idea for Rin and Dark and for the setting of where they lived, but the execution of taking an anecdote and stretching it proved to be difficult. This is  one I have NO recollection of writing.

On Higher Ground - Character/Story
I didn't want to do this one, but fine. I just wanted to dig into that kmart realism, but also I wanted to write something about Hurricane Katrina...I just never quite got that far.

 Actually the starting point for this serial is a scene I never wrote. I saw a scene where Julianna, Rhett, Zane Brooks (who is mentioned in chapter 1 but never seen) and Cody are at a community pool by themselves during Memorial's Day. And Zane (who is in the Marines) bad talks the Coast Guard and they have this lighthearted conversation and  then  it kind of echoes  back later because  the Coast Guardsmen who save a  lot of people during the Hurricane...guys I watched so many Coast Guard documentaries on YouTube/Hulu/Netflix.

I also wanted this survival story of Julianna, her SIL, MIL and Grandmother trying to get away from the Hurricane.

I also had this scene between Rhett and his sister, Savannah...guys, I see some novellas coming.

Vice
I'd say this time around it is ALL about the characters and I'm now concentrating more on story goals than acutal plot; What is the goal of each character and how do I get them there and what do they have to give up to get there.


TDOSH !
Well, that post was longer than I intended. Who is ready for some Cortland TDOSH ? Now, incidentally this chapter has a bit of Sawyer too.

Cortland as an orderly, I go all editor and horse metaphors...

Shawna is Unoriginal

The Place They Call The End of The World
Well, I wanted to give Lile some official respect. Her novella  blew me away, it was so perfect ! I read it multiple times just to get every bit  of awesome out of  it.

I do have to make one exception.  Jean throws knives at one point and that strikes me as really out of character. While within the Veritas realm we don't actually see Jean fight to much, in my head he wouldn't throw the knives, he would like to keep his pain infliction personal. Other than that, it is perfection and has all the feel I want for Vice. Serious kudos, Lile. . . it only took like 3 years.

I Did A Thing
So, the Vice thing is going.....s-l-o-w-l-y (update ! I actually got an outline going that I want to keep). I'm have an outline-ish thing together, but I'm probably going to throw it out pretty soon and start free falling. Anyway, something sort of happened to me...I got an idea for a new serial. Like it out of the blue has been following me around and it kind of meshes with the idea I had for doing more with Blessed Hearts. I'm still waiting for it to fully materialize, but i have some clear character sketches in my head. They just need a plot and things to do. *To TVtropes*

Shawna is Unoriginal
I am loving this T-Doll action and I decided to do some of my own. Now, it would take me forever to slosh through everything I have done so I decided to TDOLL style a few chapters from UL. More specifically, I did a chapter that represents Julianna's relationship with the three boys in her life

And you know what ?

I learned a lot about these characters and about my serials in the process. I also TDOLL-ed  the Veritas Reboot chapter to explain the changes, but that's going to come later.

I was going to post them all at once, but each chapter is about 8,000 words so I decided to put them separate. 

I've hopefully provided enough context that you don't need to re-read anything.

Kirsten Stewart, Lack of Subtlety and Why the CIA may come after me one day...Chapter 11 of UL.

Well This is Awkward

"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it--wholeheartedly--and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."

- Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 

 

Okay, well this is awkward...this whole thing has gone through a lot of phases since I posted my first "remixed" chapter. The thing is when I posted that snippet, I didn't mean to post chapter one, so in this post you will see the post that was supposed to go with chapter one and some new stuff. I have to admit, I wasn't sure I was ready to even do this again, but what can I say...I'm keeping up with LiLe again now. So here goes. (;

Something....
So, one of the things that really bothers me about chapter 1 being put up is I didn't get to use the playlist. The only song I really think you need to listen to is "Something" by The Beatles. It's the song that plays when Allison and Alan are dancing outside of the party. I'll embed a YouTube link to it, since the original song is hard to find.  As for the other songs...I'll probably keep them and use them at a different time.


Everybody Hates a Remix (old post)
So, the more I think about it, the more I realize it might be kind of strange that I am re-mixing one of my serials and I want to explain how I got to this point. It's actually two things that brought me here.

Do any of you remember En Moritas ?  I hope not. It was a series of flash fiction I was writing about how all the characters died. Some of the deaths were metaphorical and many of them actually took place several years into the characters life. I was going to name each short after a painting (one was called The Persistence of Time) and it was going fine. I actually went back to one several times.

Anyway while struggling to write one, all I could think about was how much I didn't like Veritas. I'm okay with Hidden and I'm partial to Mimic, but I didn't like Veritas because it got so out of control

So, I decided to re-write. Also, out of the En Moritas stories, I started thinking of more plot points. So many new plot points.

The second thing that happened was a little thing called On Higher Ground. I hit a big brick wall hard with that one. It just didn't give me the same excitement Veritas had given me. So, with all this in mind I went back.

In other news, working on the reboot has actually re-sparked United Light for me. But don't count on a reboot because I recently read through the whole thing and I wouldn't even know how to being to distill that story.

How To Write A Remix ? (This is new !)
I have to admit, learning how to remix was a task for me. I wanted to try something different. As many of you may know...I'm a pantser. A huge one and it has worked for me, like Rhett's role in UL came out of nowehere. Heck, Rhett came out of nowhere. But with this remix I actually outlined a bit and wrote mini character bios.

Then I decided to take another Lile-esque approach. I made a list of scenes I'd like to see and I intended to write them, but I only got around to one. Still it helped me orient the story. Then  I started experimenting some as well, I'd pick random songs of my playlist and write a scene to them.

And of course research. I've been reading some cyberpunk short stories from the 80's. I've been focusing a lot on cyberpunk writer Michael Swanwick (as opposed to the more well known William Gibson), because he writes in first person like I've been doing. He is a lot more sci-fi-ish and does a lot of thing with time travel, which is amazing, but not something I see myself doing.

Speaking of POV, one of the first things I did to this story was put it in present tense. My first instinct to make it in past tense, like Alan was relaying the story and then have it catch back up, but I liked the immediacy of present and changed it. I wanted everything to be "realtime" I even considered taking out 'said' but decided against it. Hopefully I caught all the "-ed" but if I didn't bear with me.

As you can see It's been a process and I believe I can successfully remix this story, I just don't know how long it will take, but it will be one word at a time.

Pinterest
Oh, here is that Pinterest I mentioned. I don't have much on it now, it is mostly things I found that go with the chapters. Mostly character inspirations and their clothing. Hopefully I can make it more robust later.


CHAPTER TWO....
In the process of this remix , I changed chapters 1-3 about four times. I'd have an idea and then I'd have to re-align previous chapters to go with this new concept. With that in mind I wanted to be atleast 5 chapters ahead of my posts, so I wouldn't write into a corner, but what can I say....I'm ready to post early.

A lot of this chapter is the same, but also has a few more significant changes to backstory and dialogue. The further we go along, I think you'll see this is not the same story. Like AT ALL.

CHAPTER TWO
The Playlist:


 

No Day But Today

Well, this was entirely unplanned.

It just kind of felt right to post something today. And I really didn't want to wait until 2014. So here is a preview of chapter 1 of Vices. I've been sitting on this for...a while. I'm not posting the entire thing because I am in the process of (slowly) changing bits and don't want to mess up continuity.

Playlist
Playlist.com is pretty much dead to me now ): They don't allow embeds anymore, so I need to find a good substitute because I love my playlists! I used YouTube today  since there are only two.

-1- Shake it Out by Florence + The Machine
-2-Have it All by Jeremy Kay

Chapter 1 Snippet ! 

1. Shake it Out by Florence + The Machine

2. Have it All by Jeremy Kay 

Because 50 Shades of Gray was already taken...

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Little story, I went to a title generator and while nothing was usable one of the tiles it gave me was The Living Fear. I liked it, but it doesn't fit the story I'm telling. After some time I decided to just stick with the name Veritas, but in the throws of research I came up with Vice. So, here we are.

See you around !