Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational prompt 35

Let’s see what paths this takes you 🙂 Lots of things to play with here. Characters, setting, backstory, conflict. Take your pick.

———

“Go on, open the umbrella, Richard. Now’s a good a time as any.”
“No.”
“Open it.”
“I said, no.”
“open the umbrella, or I’ll smack you in the head with it, you old geezer.”
Henry puffed and huffed and rolled his eyes. “Who you’re calling old, you, you, you overripe prune? Your senility makes you forget I’m the youngest. Four moon turns. Y-O-U-N-G-E-S-T. Youngest.
“You’re older than me. Four moon turns OLDER! Father mixed us up at first, remember? I’m the youngest.”
Richard harrumphed and turned his back, one leg over the other, foot bouncing up and down irritably.
Henry rolled his eyes and kept drumming his thigh with his fingers.
“Open the umbrella.”
“Huh-uh.”
“You stubborn old fool. He’ll die with everyone else in less than five minutes. What difference does it make if we claim him now? Open the damn umbrella.”
“Oh, no. I’m not getting the blame again for another early reset.”

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational Prompt 34

sara

Today’s prompt will be short but, hopefully, sweet.

Left by the side of the bed of room 321 of Pineview Hotel, folded neatly, police officers found the following note in a flowing and elegant handwriting:
Dear humans,

I don’t know how you do it, but I’ve had enough pretending to be like you.
Officer Wallace was the first the wall sucked in.

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 6 Comments

How long does it take to publish a book?

For the past few weeks I’ve been posting things about the publishing industry, things I found interesting. And since the internet is vast (maybe not as vast as the universe) and things tend to be quite hard to find sometimes, I figured I might help another fellow writer by reblogging some of the little treasures I have found.

So a few years back, when I started writing, and decided I didn’t want to write just for myself, I found an infographic called Book’s Life Cycle. I don’t mean how long a book stays a book before it’s turned into pulp, but what are the steps between an idea sparked in our brains and the end result; a published story (traditionally or electronically), comfortably resting in a reader’s hands.

At the time, wet behind the ears as I was, I googled “How to write a book.” After sieving through the hundreds of results there, I found this infographic

lifecycle-of-a-book

You can find the original source from http://publishingtrendsetter.com/life-cycle-book/

You see, back then all I knew was that if I wanted to get traditionally published, all I had to do was get an agent, and then voilà! The magic wand would do its magic and I’d have a book on a bookstore’s shelf. Yay me! I draw your attention to where the step with the agent is on that image. That’s right; way up there. Right after the step where the writer actually writes and edits. And where’s publication? Waaaay down, with several other steps in between.

I’m not going to lie to you; there was a moment where I thought to myself, “what have I gotten myself into?!”

So, for all of you new writers like me, take a good look at this image. Don’t ever assume your story is ready, or wonder why your favourite authors takes so long to publish the next book (I can think of at least once I’ve foolishly complained about it. Hint: It’s a he, wears glasses, currently writes Dark Fantasy, allegedly indulged in pizza crawl at least once, and likes to kill almost all his characters… Yeah, him!). Look at all the steps between the writer writing up the book, and it actually hitting the shelves. Granted, for big-shot writers like the one I vaguely outlined, the time the process takes is sped up, BUT the fact remains: LOOK AT ALL THE STEPS!

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Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Inspirational Prompt 31

I think most of you must have heard of the story of the pied piper. How about you attempt to retell the story? Perhaps a kid wants to save kitties (from someone or something) and lures them to safety, or maybe the child heard of the folk tale and wanted to do the same, but only managed to lure one cat (a neighbour’s cat or from someone who needed the cat; you can expand on that and create conflict).

Or the flute is magical and is the only way for the two of them to communicate. Perhaps the cat (or any other animal you choose) understands the child needs her and guides him to the flute.

You can go any way with this one, I think.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Character building and setting

I’ve been going over my second novel (provisional title: Through Stranger Eyes) and in particular trying to make sure I have created a fully fledged main character. In doing so, I came across C. S. Lakin‘s post on Live Write Thrive where she suggests we ask our characters twelve questions related to the setting to present and create them in the most realistic way. As she says in the beginning of her post, “When choosing settings for your scenes, you want to think about the kinds of places that will allow the emotions, needs, dreams, and fears of your characters to come out.”

In my second novel, the setting is an important element of the story and goes hand in hand with the plot for a reason. In cyberpunk worlds (such as in Through Stranger Eyes), the fall of moral and social values alongside the disproportionate rise of technology that makes life easier for very few, could easily have its roots in the socio-economic structure of today. In that case, the setting can (and in my mind, should) be something not only to set up tone and mood for a story, but to also create awareness in the subtlest way possible.

Of course, no one expects a fiction writer to go that deep into sociology and philosophy just to tell a good story. But we are expected to create well-rounded characters, with their hopes, fears, and memories, and at the same time flesh out worlds for them that could easily be real, regardless of the genre. Hopefully, these questions will help all of you in this pursuit.