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Inspiration prompt 17

“Hey, don’t worry,” the dog said. “We’ll find your master. I have a nose for these things, you know.”

The horse whinnied and shook its mane. “You said that the last time we were here. We ‘ve been going in circles for two hours now.” It paused, glanced to its left, then to the right. “I don’t think you’re as good with your nose as you think you are.”

What do you think? Are these two animals friends? Are they lost? Perhaps looking for something? Have you ever tried writing a story from the POV of an animal or an object? How would you tackle it? What stories can you come up with this image?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Getting Beta Reader Feedback – The Right Way

While I’m waiting for my betas’ comments on The Darkening, I figured I should share some of the information I found online regarding beta reading. If you are about to finish your manuscript or have already completed it, and are looking for betas and ways to structure your thoughts, take a look at the following post. I found a lot of interesting questions, and a nice way to divide them in my head into categories. It’s a very helpful post, especially if you are worried how to structure a questionnaire for your betas. Shape it according to the needs of your story first though. I ended up sending 81 questions in an excel sheet, AND a critique sheet that covers the same topics (characterisation, grammar, plot, pacing, point of view, etc), but expecting a thorougher analysis.

In case anyone is interested, my questionnaire looked like this:

NOVEL QUESTIONNAIRE

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

It’s time for the beta readers

Well, the MS has spread its wings and is now away from the nest. Cliche metaphor, I know, but it’s true. It’s in the hands of the beta readers now (thank you all so much for helping out). So far, one of my betas has finished it and raised some valid questions (not to mention the typos that still made their way into the MS, even after all the editing). This is the first time since I started working on it that someone other than me is reading it, an exciting and scary notion. I sent my beta readers a rather long questionnaire to fill (if any of you is reading this, I’m really sorry, but it had to be done) with some 80-90 questions, with YES and NO, and ratings from 1-5, and “other comments” they wanted to add, AND on top of that a critique sheet for those who wanted to say more than a mere comment. I don’t know how they put up with me.

So, now I’m doing my best not to eat my fingernails to their roots, and the best way to do that is to plot the next novel-length story. It’s a sci-fi/cyberpunk story with some mystery elements. I’ve never tried something like that before, so I’m trying to figure things out from a very early stage and save myself all the trouble I had to go through with The Darkening (you may remember I rewrote the book twice after the first draft). I’m working on background stories for everything and everyone, and I’m often working as if I was “reverse engineering” things. Basically I start with where the situation is at the time of the story as well as where will end up by the end of the book, and work backwards in a logical way (e.g. Company Conglomerates own the government. How did this happen? Companies bailed the governments out. Why? Governments went bankrupt. Why? and so on). That’s all world-building, which is fine. My problem is dealing with the mystery element, since I have never tried something similar. I need to insert certain key clues for the main character to find at regular intervals, and their revelation has to come in the most natural way, instead of giving the impression I forced the character to a conclusion. I’m also concerned whether or not the story I have come up with so far is long enough for a novel, AND to make things worse, I also have no ending. I have no idea how the book will end.

What I do know, is that I like this story a lot, and I feel it has potential. I think I even have a title for it. It’s the mystery aspect I’m not sure how to handle correctly.

In other news, I’m collecting a fair amount of rejections for my short stories, so I guess it’s business as usual.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational prompt 16

She stood on the building’s entrance and spared a passing glance at the drenched and hunched figure that jumped gracelessly over the puddle of water, his coat flapping briefly behind him, one hand holding on to his wet fedora. She drew one last puff from her cigarette, flicked in the rain, and opened her umbrella. Well, the meeting could have gone better. If only she had pushed him more. She turned her collar to the damp breeze that found a way under her coat and forced the small hairs at the nape of her neck to attention.

Well, that’s my take on the picture. Have a go, see where it leads you 🙂

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Lessons learned in a writing journey

I have finished editing (yeah!!!), and now am about to go on to the next thing on the list, which is to write up some questions for the betas on a spreadsheet to help me get a better understanding of their comments. As I said last time, I’m intimidated by the thought other people will get to read it. Fingers crossed, I should have the questionnaire ready within the week, and from there on, I’ll take 2 days off, then I’ll start sending some of my short stories to magazines, and start outlining the next novel.

In lieu of this last round of edits (at least for this stage), I thought the following article by Jacqui Murray may be useful to some of you. Some of the words mentioned there are in my list as well. Some, I never thought of as problematic (yikes!).