IWSG: Your Plans

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

As always, a big domo amarigato to Ninja Alex-Sensei for this group. Stop by his blog here to read his insecurities this month, as well as view the list of the other members.

So, plans. Last night, I planned to start this blog post early so I wouldn't have to do it today. HA!

But seriously, 10 years ago today, I graduated from Dover High School not having applied to any college because I had decided that I would make my way to Florida and become a big pop star. I wish I were joking. I wanted to be the black Britney Spears. I could at least sing better, but I'm an awkward dancer and really have 0 stage presence, but I didn't give up on that dream for about 6 months. I ended up staying home, unable to get a job, and playing Final Fantasy 9 and 10. My mom, feeling sorry for me, often paid me to do odd jobs around the house while I slowly came to my senses.

This year 10 years ago (somewhere) was also when I had the weird being-chased-by-black-robots-in-a-room-made-of-wicker dream that soon became my current fantasy WIP and got me into the Writing for Film/TV program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Back then, I had planned to finish it, publish it, and be working on the screenplay around, well this time. Another HA!

I told one of my coworkers the other day (because his son also wants to be a writer and can't be told he isn't great) that the problem with us folks in small-cities Delaware is that we don't realize we're not the cream of the crop until we LEAVE Delaware. It took me the next 6 years to finish my WIP (I edit as I go, too, and studying did often come first), and even then I had to learn that what I'd finished was a first draft. I'd even printed my first draft AND my second, thinking I had arrived. Needless to say, as I'm revising again, I haven't arrived.

I say all of this to say don't plan too hard. haha Or if you do, know that you will need a Plan B through D (at least). I'd also planned to be married with one child by now, and well, that's an IWSG post I've already done.

Logic

I'm not the most logical person to begin with, so when I started this story way back when (2003, almost 10 years ago, yikes), I wrote what came to me how it came to me. There was no stopping to think, "Does this make sense?"

So, when my sister read the very first draft of the 1st part of the book, she pointed out to me that Ghuli tells Laris she's okay, even though he and Cyan, who are supposed to be watching her, left her, and she almost got killed. My sister was probably appalled, even. haha

(Sidenote that's completely off topic: logic would also dictate that when you put soda into a soda machine, if you put in Mountain Dew, don't leave the little picture that says it's Sprite. Same with the Sprite saying Dr. Pepper. The soda machine guy is a jerk.)

Back to MY troubles with logic, I revised the scene a little so that her watchman come save her from certain death, but even that still didn't make sense, as another critiquer noted: Why'd they leave her in the first place if they're supposed to be watching her?  So my (fingers crossed) last revision, they're with her the entire time and face the certain death alongside her. A good thing about this as well is that readers will get to see who Laris and Cyan are and how they interact with Ghuli right off the bat instead of 3-6 pages later, where I initially had them.

This edit-time around, I will be looking for notes of logic and also reduce "info-dumping" as all the critiquers called it. We don't need to know where everyone came from in the first 10 pages, and at least I know where that information can be slipped in.

Also, readers can't see what I see in my head if I don't describe it clearly, so I have to embrace, if not the most, one of the most annoying notes: "Show, don't tell".

In other news, I have gotten under 108k words now. I had started at about 120k. I think I can get to 107...We'll see.