In my last post I explained briefly what my Script Frenzy project is about, but I realized that just like my actual SF writing, the post got derailed. Therefore I figured it was appropriate to give a little more time to DHM.
Deus Hex Machina is set in a future Orange County where the old bones of what we know as landmarks in the OC are still visible underneath new construction. Irvine, I imagine, will remained a planned community for centuries to come, and exploring what that sort of regimented village system will look like in 200 years is kind of fascinating.
The project started with a URL, strangely enough. My husband loves collecting website names for future use. When he stumbled upon deushexmachina.com and realized it wasn't taken, he snatched it up and put it in his virtual back pocket for later use. Around that time I was trying to find my new Makhaira, that project that would sit by itself as a pure, whole story. I wanted something equally as moving, but there's something about lightning and bottles and the fallibility of corks. So I began thinking about what this story would be like, did some searches to see if anyone had written a story using that name, and realized that the sum of its parts really told what it was about.
Deus: God -- This tells me that this is a religious story, at least in some form.
Hex: Magic -- This immediately brings up interesting ideas about magic in our real world and its consequences.
Machina: Machines -- This was the part of the name that told me I was dealing with a futuristic story, and would be heading back to my Sci-Fi roots instead of staying in my Fantasy comfort zone.
Discussing this all with my husband (AKA Mr Sounding Board), he ended up writing a phrase up in the white board in our office: "God enchants the machine." While it wasn't the ultimate direction I was going to take with the project, it did give me a focus from which to start.
The first log line went something like this: What if a girl who worships technology finds evidence of magic in a future version of Orange County? It was a great jumping off point, and as MSB had suggested that I write Sci-Fi from a religious perspective since spirituality is so important to me, I started with the idea that magic was not only foreign to the protagonist, but heretical. If magic is heretical, the religion must be based on something that represents the opposite of magic, and makes sense that would be technology.
At this point I had a basic idea of who I was dealing with and the problem she was going to have to face. Around this time I also came up with the idea that the name would also represent the literal tropes in the story as well: There would be a god, there would be a Hex and there would be a Machina. I didn't want these concepts to be completely verbatim, but I did kind of like the idea of riffing off the name in this way. So I thought, what would be so heretical about magic to a technology-based religion? What does it mean to talk about God to someone who only worships the mechanical? And how would they interact with someone from outside their religion who is actively seeking the heretical?
The core of the themes were laid out from these lines of reasoning, and the story began to take shape. Take a girl who spends her life as a sanctioned Hexer (hacker on a fully immersive version of the Internet), send her out to investigate a magical occurance, add in a Machina (mech) rider who's out to make a name for himself and wrap it in the context of religion. Simple enough.
My hexer is Isidore RAM, who has spent her life in a monastery built under Aliso Viejo worshipping The Circuit and policing The Grid and keeping it free from contamination. She's going on a journey, and she's not sure where she'll end up, but along the way she's going to find the true meaning of spirituality, what it means to be human, and how precious life can be.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Script Frenzy has turned into fiction Frenzy
I started this month out like I did last year, planning on writing a graphic novel script for Script Frenzy. The interesting thing is though, that while progress is being made on the current SF project -- a sci-fi exploration of futuristic orange county and technologies influence on religion -- I have also gotten the urge to work on other projects. And so I let myself.
Each day I spend some time on the couch with my laptop, usually watching some movie or other on Netflix. Depending on what I watch, I usually get inspired to start writing in one of five different projects. Yesterday, for instance, I planned out the missing chapter for Makhaira (last year's Script Frency project -- I know, it only took me 12 months to get around to it), and then inspired by the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawn after watched Bright Star, I wrote a romance scene (or half of one really) for Shadow of the Dragon. I'm still trying to find the core of SotD, since I don't feel that the protagonist has a voice of her own yet. Being tossed about as flotsam on the sea of circumstance was okay for Mylena's journey through Shadow of the Owl, but now we're both older women, women who no longer can stand to sit passively by while life happens to us. I know I wouldn't take it, and neither would she.
So I have to find her center, that reason that she needs to be in the Dark Plains. Every protagonist needs to be vitally important to the world they exist in, and although she was vitally important to Shadowhaven, now that she's transported into a new world, there seems little reason to have her there other than as a romantic interest for the Rogue Knight.
That's a big problem, and one I have to fix before I can consider continuing the story. Trouble is, as my husband points out, there's a lot of great stuff in the current incarnation of the manuscript, and to drastically change the story, to for instance, perhaps remove the current main PoV character so that Mylena can get into the spotlight, makes most of what has been written obsolete. But Mylena needs to be the star of her own story, she deserves that much for all that I've put her through.
I think the problem is that ultimately Mylena's story is my own. As a young girl she has very little say in how her life turns out, and now that she's older she needs to take charge of life although she doesn't know how. I recently went to a writer's conference here in Irvine, where a couple female authors talked about what true feminine strength is. That feminine strength comes from having a strong support system and relying on them to help you through the challenges you face. I've never had that support system myself, so I don't have a frame of reference for that particular brand of strength. I guess Mylena suffers from that too, in that I don't know how to give her healthy coping mechanisms. I can only give her what I know. Hopefully a flawed heroine who has to deal without a support system, who doesn't know how to go about getting one even, is interesting enough to read about. But I'm sure I will get flack from these writers for a solitary woman trying to work her way in the world without friends to rely on.
That's my current dilemma. I think I need to do more research, read some more female protagonists in fantasy settings, and think about what makes her vital to the Dark Plains. Until I know that, all I can do is write the love story -- although that's pretty fun on its own. I've been craving really well written romance stories of late, and those that I have found have hardly been satisfying. I realized then that what I needed to do was to build my own -- when you find a need in the market, fill it yourself. The romance between Mylena and Arturis will therefore be one of open communication, deep passion, and a (spoiler alert) happy ending. I know, it's so gauche of me to want an epic romance to end in something other than tragic death but it's my story, and these are the things that I have been craving for years now. So why not give them to Mylena?
I think it's time to curl up with the laptop and see which story gets some love. Sort of exciting really. I can't wait.
Each day I spend some time on the couch with my laptop, usually watching some movie or other on Netflix. Depending on what I watch, I usually get inspired to start writing in one of five different projects. Yesterday, for instance, I planned out the missing chapter for Makhaira (last year's Script Frency project -- I know, it only took me 12 months to get around to it), and then inspired by the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawn after watched Bright Star, I wrote a romance scene (or half of one really) for Shadow of the Dragon. I'm still trying to find the core of SotD, since I don't feel that the protagonist has a voice of her own yet. Being tossed about as flotsam on the sea of circumstance was okay for Mylena's journey through Shadow of the Owl, but now we're both older women, women who no longer can stand to sit passively by while life happens to us. I know I wouldn't take it, and neither would she.
So I have to find her center, that reason that she needs to be in the Dark Plains. Every protagonist needs to be vitally important to the world they exist in, and although she was vitally important to Shadowhaven, now that she's transported into a new world, there seems little reason to have her there other than as a romantic interest for the Rogue Knight.
That's a big problem, and one I have to fix before I can consider continuing the story. Trouble is, as my husband points out, there's a lot of great stuff in the current incarnation of the manuscript, and to drastically change the story, to for instance, perhaps remove the current main PoV character so that Mylena can get into the spotlight, makes most of what has been written obsolete. But Mylena needs to be the star of her own story, she deserves that much for all that I've put her through.
I think the problem is that ultimately Mylena's story is my own. As a young girl she has very little say in how her life turns out, and now that she's older she needs to take charge of life although she doesn't know how. I recently went to a writer's conference here in Irvine, where a couple female authors talked about what true feminine strength is. That feminine strength comes from having a strong support system and relying on them to help you through the challenges you face. I've never had that support system myself, so I don't have a frame of reference for that particular brand of strength. I guess Mylena suffers from that too, in that I don't know how to give her healthy coping mechanisms. I can only give her what I know. Hopefully a flawed heroine who has to deal without a support system, who doesn't know how to go about getting one even, is interesting enough to read about. But I'm sure I will get flack from these writers for a solitary woman trying to work her way in the world without friends to rely on.
That's my current dilemma. I think I need to do more research, read some more female protagonists in fantasy settings, and think about what makes her vital to the Dark Plains. Until I know that, all I can do is write the love story -- although that's pretty fun on its own. I've been craving really well written romance stories of late, and those that I have found have hardly been satisfying. I realized then that what I needed to do was to build my own -- when you find a need in the market, fill it yourself. The romance between Mylena and Arturis will therefore be one of open communication, deep passion, and a (spoiler alert) happy ending. I know, it's so gauche of me to want an epic romance to end in something other than tragic death but it's my story, and these are the things that I have been craving for years now. So why not give them to Mylena?
I think it's time to curl up with the laptop and see which story gets some love. Sort of exciting really. I can't wait.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Planning for Athan's Song
I'm trying my hand at a fan fiction contest, something I'm not entirely good at. Short fiction daunts me, perhaps because I never bothered to learn the ins and outs of a quality short story.
I figured it would be best to do some character studies, plan out who these people are, in hopes that that will inform how they react to the situations they are in.
Here's Athan Morse:
My father built the heard from stock stolen from bandits in Duskwood, long before the war when sunlight still shone upon that blighted land. He told me stories of waiting for them along the roadways and the coasts, catching them off guard as they prayed on the innocent. Justice he called it, with a smile that set his long angled face alight. Because the horses came from such wild lands though, his stock was always ran hot-blooded, and more than a little dangerous. Breaking in a yearling would take weeks instead of days, weeks filled with long hours and endless bruises and scrapes. I was always sure that they would break him instead, but every time it would be him riding them through the hills and not the other way around.
He was a quiet man, preferring to fill his days with silence. In some ways I could see why he preferred the company of the herd. A horse doesn’t talk back, a horse can’t argue, can’t disappoint you. She’s just four legs and a heart of fire. Seeing how he looked at the horses as they circled the paddock, I could see why Mother left. He had only one true love, and none would be able to claim his heart the way the herd had.
In a way, I imagine she was once as wild as the horses, but that was one filly he could never truly tame. She came into his life, loved him fiercely, and left when he showed her no love in return. I never knew her, only the scent that remained on her clothes in the attic. Cinnamon and exotic perfumes from across the sea clung to a shawl and a pair of leather gloves. They were all I had left of her, well that and my dark eyes.
From the time that I was small I knew that one day the herd would be mine. At first I was proud, like any son would be, knowing that their father intended for them to carry on the family tradition. But once I was older, I felt strangely disquieted about the whole thing. It was as if the herd were my father’s concubine, and I expected to take her in when he could no longer hold her close. No child should stand in his father’s shadow and feel such discomfort. Still, the horses were all I’d known. Every year we would drive down a section of the best stock for sale in Moonbrook, and I would marvel at how wide and flat and desolate the rest of Westfall really was. I’d chafe realizing there were no protective hills surrounding me, and would only again feel comfortable when were again up in the Dagger Hills heading home.
The herd was my father’s life, and they were also the death of him. I was sixteen when Van Cleef’s men arrived on our doorstep. Had they demanded anything else, money, food, even me, my father would have given it them without a whimper. But they asked for horses, specimens strong enough to haul wagons with Light knows what in them, and he refused. He refused and they beat him for it, beat him to death right there in the paddock, with his beloved horses whinnying in fear around him. They beat me too for trying to defend him, and cast my unconscious body into the nearby brook. Had I not been facing up I most definitely would have drowned. When I awoke, I found myself bruised and battered, with the right side of my face slashed. I buried my father there on the hillside, and when they came the next time, I allowed them to take any of the horses they wanted.
I figured it would be best to do some character studies, plan out who these people are, in hopes that that will inform how they react to the situations they are in.
Here's Athan Morse:
My father built the heard from stock stolen from bandits in Duskwood, long before the war when sunlight still shone upon that blighted land. He told me stories of waiting for them along the roadways and the coasts, catching them off guard as they prayed on the innocent. Justice he called it, with a smile that set his long angled face alight. Because the horses came from such wild lands though, his stock was always ran hot-blooded, and more than a little dangerous. Breaking in a yearling would take weeks instead of days, weeks filled with long hours and endless bruises and scrapes. I was always sure that they would break him instead, but every time it would be him riding them through the hills and not the other way around.
He was a quiet man, preferring to fill his days with silence. In some ways I could see why he preferred the company of the herd. A horse doesn’t talk back, a horse can’t argue, can’t disappoint you. She’s just four legs and a heart of fire. Seeing how he looked at the horses as they circled the paddock, I could see why Mother left. He had only one true love, and none would be able to claim his heart the way the herd had.
In a way, I imagine she was once as wild as the horses, but that was one filly he could never truly tame. She came into his life, loved him fiercely, and left when he showed her no love in return. I never knew her, only the scent that remained on her clothes in the attic. Cinnamon and exotic perfumes from across the sea clung to a shawl and a pair of leather gloves. They were all I had left of her, well that and my dark eyes.
From the time that I was small I knew that one day the herd would be mine. At first I was proud, like any son would be, knowing that their father intended for them to carry on the family tradition. But once I was older, I felt strangely disquieted about the whole thing. It was as if the herd were my father’s concubine, and I expected to take her in when he could no longer hold her close. No child should stand in his father’s shadow and feel such discomfort. Still, the horses were all I’d known. Every year we would drive down a section of the best stock for sale in Moonbrook, and I would marvel at how wide and flat and desolate the rest of Westfall really was. I’d chafe realizing there were no protective hills surrounding me, and would only again feel comfortable when were again up in the Dagger Hills heading home.
The herd was my father’s life, and they were also the death of him. I was sixteen when Van Cleef’s men arrived on our doorstep. Had they demanded anything else, money, food, even me, my father would have given it them without a whimper. But they asked for horses, specimens strong enough to haul wagons with Light knows what in them, and he refused. He refused and they beat him for it, beat him to death right there in the paddock, with his beloved horses whinnying in fear around him. They beat me too for trying to defend him, and cast my unconscious body into the nearby brook. Had I not been facing up I most definitely would have drowned. When I awoke, I found myself bruised and battered, with the right side of my face slashed. I buried my father there on the hillside, and when they came the next time, I allowed them to take any of the horses they wanted.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Three Hundred and Sixty Five
White satin
Blue roses and forever I do
I forgot my veil
You forgot your frown
Under the gazebo
Before your family and friends
A kiss – and the journey began
Not love’s journey, exactly
That began long ago
But a partnership
A calling
A binding together
Permanence within the ephemeral
Calm within the storm
I close my eyes and I can hear
The whispering of the waterfall
The beating of your heart
The beginning of our family
The beginning of eternity
Calling me home
Lead and I will follow
Leap and I will soar
A year passed like a day
And safe within your arms
A day seems as a year
- for Arthur, I love you
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Second draft complete
I've finished the last missing scene in Shadow of the Owl, and am finishing up the formatting of the manuscript. Man, was I misguided when I formatted this thing back in 2007! No wonder the agents I sent it to sent me instant rejections.
At this point in the game, I'm starting the real edit. The first two edits I went through were far from thorough. Initially I polished up the first chapter or so in preparation for the radio broadcast, and then I went through it filling in actual missing pieces. Now I need to dig through the thing, come out the other side and know what needs to be improved.
No, it's not an easy task, but luckily I've collected around me a bevvy of helpful books. I've been reading with interest Line by Line, The First Five Pages, and How to Get a Literary Agent. It's amazing how little I knew about the publishing industry as a whole. Whether or not I'm successful at publishing my book, it's been wonderful to learn the ins and outs of this world I'm attempting to become a part of.
Format waits for no man(die), so I need to get back to it. Let's hope this time I can at least get a request for a full before I get rejected. One can only hope.
At this point in the game, I'm starting the real edit. The first two edits I went through were far from thorough. Initially I polished up the first chapter or so in preparation for the radio broadcast, and then I went through it filling in actual missing pieces. Now I need to dig through the thing, come out the other side and know what needs to be improved.
No, it's not an easy task, but luckily I've collected around me a bevvy of helpful books. I've been reading with interest Line by Line, The First Five Pages, and How to Get a Literary Agent. It's amazing how little I knew about the publishing industry as a whole. Whether or not I'm successful at publishing my book, it's been wonderful to learn the ins and outs of this world I'm attempting to become a part of.
Format waits for no man(die), so I need to get back to it. Let's hope this time I can at least get a request for a full before I get rejected. One can only hope.
Friday, June 25, 2010
My new job
Yesterday I spent the day scavenging the Interwebs for literary agents that specialize in Fantasy works. It turns out, to my delight, that there are a few out there. This is great news, since my husband has tasked me with finishing SotO in prep for publishing rather than finishing other projects that are not nearly as complete. I am one scene away from completing the first draft, which sounds impressive until you realize I wrote the manuscript in 2007. Yeah, not so impressive after all. But I'm getting there.
I started, per Husband's suggestion, by outlining the story in bullet points, scene by scene. This gave me a great roadmap to see the story as an overall piece. It also gave me the chance to skim through the whole story, which I haven't really done, and I found plenty of parts I fell in love with all over again. I also found two scenes I really felt needed to be in the script before I could call it finished. I wrote one of those scenes a couple of days ago, and time willing will write the other today.
Which leads me to yesterday. Yesterday I was talking with one of my bloggers (I run a blog to pay the bills, or at least to try and help pay the bills), and in that conversation he gave me the name of his agent. Thankfully I ran over to her site and read through her sales, her desired submissions, and her suggestions for writers looking to publish. I've done this sort of research before, but never have I been this close before to being ready. Yes, I know I still have two huge edits in front of me. But I also have a nearly completed manuscript that I thoroughly enjoy reading, and think others will too. And so I research. I found that my blogger's agent wouldn't be the right one for me, but the links on her page led me great places, and so I bookmarked her blog for future reference.
I realize now, that this needs to be my job. I need to make it a job to work on this book until it's on a bookshelf, hopefully the bookshelf of the Borders down the street. This won't be one of those jobs that actually pays, since I figure it will cost money to travel to conferences to flog my work. But it if I want to call myself a novelist I have to do two things: I have to write novels, plural, and I have to publish them.
So there it is, progress, and, interestingly enough, my new job. I hired myself, gave myself the statement of work, and am already on the way toward reaching my goal. It's a job that works on a project basis, so that means I have to continue to generate projects so that I can keep my job. Fortunately, once I manage to get the first novel published, the second will be easier. Right? Right?
I started, per Husband's suggestion, by outlining the story in bullet points, scene by scene. This gave me a great roadmap to see the story as an overall piece. It also gave me the chance to skim through the whole story, which I haven't really done, and I found plenty of parts I fell in love with all over again. I also found two scenes I really felt needed to be in the script before I could call it finished. I wrote one of those scenes a couple of days ago, and time willing will write the other today.
Which leads me to yesterday. Yesterday I was talking with one of my bloggers (I run a blog to pay the bills, or at least to try and help pay the bills), and in that conversation he gave me the name of his agent. Thankfully I ran over to her site and read through her sales, her desired submissions, and her suggestions for writers looking to publish. I've done this sort of research before, but never have I been this close before to being ready. Yes, I know I still have two huge edits in front of me. But I also have a nearly completed manuscript that I thoroughly enjoy reading, and think others will too. And so I research. I found that my blogger's agent wouldn't be the right one for me, but the links on her page led me great places, and so I bookmarked her blog for future reference.
I realize now, that this needs to be my job. I need to make it a job to work on this book until it's on a bookshelf, hopefully the bookshelf of the Borders down the street. This won't be one of those jobs that actually pays, since I figure it will cost money to travel to conferences to flog my work. But it if I want to call myself a novelist I have to do two things: I have to write novels, plural, and I have to publish them.
So there it is, progress, and, interestingly enough, my new job. I hired myself, gave myself the statement of work, and am already on the way toward reaching my goal. It's a job that works on a project basis, so that means I have to continue to generate projects so that I can keep my job. Fortunately, once I manage to get the first novel published, the second will be easier. Right? Right?
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Loss (a cinquain)
Writing came so easily
But now I stumble and I start
The spark is gone, and within me
a buzzing silence floats 'tween brain and heart
keeping them from speaking, keeping them apart
But now I stumble and I start
The spark is gone, and within me
a buzzing silence floats 'tween brain and heart
keeping them from speaking, keeping them apart
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