Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational prompt 19

I’ll be taking the next few weeks off from blogging. The last post of 2015 is an inspirational prompt with an image I consider related to The Darkening.

Though I’ve never watched the show Ripper Street, from which the image is taken, I can not but feel captivated by that look on the girl’s face. Also, notice the body language, how tense she appears.

In The Darkening, my protagonist John Piscus, is a deranged survivor of an apocalyptic event. I envisioned John having this same expression on his face each time he looked inside him and his life, and of what he was capable of doing to carry on; of what lines he was willing to cross.

So, have you ever tried writing a story from the POV of a person like that? How would you tackle it? What POV would you use and why? Does it inspire you to write something?

Until the next time (sometime in January 2016), I wish you all a happy festive season, and a happy New Year!

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Update

I got most of the beta’s feedback and I’m currently into heavy editing mode. I mean I was in heavy editing mode ever since I finished drafting it and decided to re-write The Darkening (twice, mind you), but now I’m really into HEAVY editing mode. I feel like this, this new round of edits is the real deal, the “make me or break me,” kind of thing. This is when I will actually WRITE the book. After all, writing is editing. And while I should be more than excited, not only for getting constructive feedback (every one of my betas pointed out things I had missed completely and they all reached to the same conclusions), but for finally being a few steps away from the final stretch (of this round, of course), alas I lack the motivation to do it. It’s as if I flipped a switch at some point in my head and I considered the work done and done, even though I consciously reminded myself time and again that it was only the beginning. The funny thing is that I’m at the point where I have to read the whole book and do only yet very important two things: reduce the excessive explanations (aka overwriting) and tame some of the descriptions. Once I hurdle over these two things, it’s the minor, though even more important, details I have to fine tune. I already managed to condense the first 7 chapters into 4, and I reduced the total word count by 6K+ words (and every writer knows how hard it is to have to murder our darlings). And I did it with no problem or hesitation, only to find myself unmotivated to cut back on the unnecessary fluff. The fluff! Sometimes I really hate the way my mind behaves. I’m telling you, if I hadn’t developed a daily writing/editing routine by now, I would have abandoned and shelved the Darkening (shame on you, Chris, for even thinking about it!).

No, I can’t do that. It’s my baby, my firstborn. I want to see it reach perfection 🙂

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational prompt 18

Here’s another image to set you creativity gears in motion. What do you think happened? Accident or something deliberate? WAs someone dear to the girl in the picture lost or is it just a reaction to the loss of worldly possessions? What if the character you create is more selfish and cries not over the ashes and the destruction, but because now she won’t be able to fulfil some self-centred whim? What if she was misguided into doing something that resulted in the fire.

There are a lot of stories you can come up with this one. Try one 🙂

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Page changes and other news

I have added a new contact form in case any of you, devoted readers, wanted a more immediate method of communication. I know the comment system is not very convenient for some of you. You can find the contact link at the top of the page.

Also, I decided to have a go at twitter and now I have an account there as well. You can follow me, or even better you can help me figure out how twitter works, ’cause quite frankly, I can’t understand it. Now, before you point your finger and roll on the floor in a fit of side-clenching laughter, let me assure you that there was a time when no program or electronic device hid its secrets long enough from me. And by long, I mean I had mastered it within a day. And, no, I’m not referring to a bygone decade when I still had hair on my head (haha, funny you who thought of pointing that out, haha… NOT). I’m talking current stuff. But this twitter thing is… is… an infernal and alien machine designed to drive me nuts! I’m trying to follow a simple # thingy (tags or whatever they’re called), which is why I joined in the first place. #Pitmad (or #Pitchmad) will start in a couple of weeks and I was thinking of participating. Alas, I can’t save or follow said tags. I have to type a query and do a search every time I want to see if something new is happening related to it. For the record, I did check their help page; I might as well have tried creating energy out of nothing. It only left me with more question marks dancing mockingly around my head. I have figured out how to make lists, but that’s not what I was looking for. I also found out how to comment publicly mentioning someone else (the use of the @ symbol). But I knew that from Facebook, so… I just want to be able to follow a # tag. Is it even possible?!
Anyway, if you want to follow me on twitter there’s a link to the right of the page. Hope to hear from you.

In other news, outlining the next story has proven to be harder than expected. I thought I had everything, the main story, the characters, their background stories etc, but I can’t shake the feeling the story is too short, that the plot is somehow insufficient. I have about 30 scenes, but when it comes to chapters, I fear I will have around 20. Now, of course the number of scenes or chapters has nothing to do with whether a story is the right size or not. The problem is I keep feeling the plot moves too fast. I thought about introducing a second POV character, one that already had a somewhat significant role in the story, an investigator. I figured I could have him relating information, through his investigation, to the reader, information the main POV character wouldn’t know. The investigator was originally supposed to attempt to apprehend the protagonist, so why not allow the investigator some space to grow and show his side of the story? It makes sense in a way, but when I sit down and try to write some scenes about him, it’s like I’m slamming my head on a concrete wall. With spikes. Which could mean the idea of introducing a new POV is wrong, or that I’m not fully convinced, and my gut feeling is telling me to stop. Perhaps it’s because I’m meddling with a genre I’m not very familiar (mystery).

Here’s a question for you: do you think it’s structurally acceptable to have a second POV character if that character is not the protagonist (or one of them) and his/her chapters are not equal in number to the main character?

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.