Draft #3 began this week. It's what I should have been writing all along. I know it is.
I'm finally moving past the critiques, folks! No more updates on that front. Don't need them. Don't want them. I'm moving on.
Draft #3 began this week. It's what I should have been writing all along. I know it is.
0 Comments
Tension. It's what propels your story. You can have awesome characters, a setting filled with marvels, backstory up the wazzoo, actual visions of your favorite scenes. But, without tension, you have nothing.
Believe me. I've tried. It's Monday morning. I've had two critiques back for nearly a week. A third critique has been given to me in piecemeal fashion, chapter by chapter. That one was rather nice, getting to see just what that reviewer's reading experience has been.
I'm in the Thinker stage now, looking toward the Rewriting. I am thoroughly into the Red Pen stage. I have both of my two critiques back and, while I'm not angry about all the things my reviewers think is wrong with my story, I am somewhat depressed by it. So I suppose I am in the Crying part of the Red Pen stage.
I have done hardly any work on the story in the last week since sending it out for critique. I only sent Part 1 of the 3 parts as that was a sizeable chunk for reviewers to tell me about character, plot, etc. etc. Tell me they did and now I can't help but wonder why I'm doing this. Actually, that was yesterday. So far this morning, in the 40 minutes since I woke up, I've done alright. Still depressed about the story, but it's not quite as bad as yesterday. Maybe that's because I entered the Talking stage and replied to one of my reviewers with my thoughts on the critique and asked some follow-up questions. No response just yet, but that's ok as my email was longer than I wanted when I first sat down and I didn't send it until just before I crawled into bed last night. So, waiting again. That's how it goes. There is a general order to the steps of getting a critique but, sometimes, you skip around in the later stages once you've gotten your story back. For the moment I will continue to work on the next parts of the story as much as I am able. I had wanted to post about my experiences with outlining and the such but, for the moment, I think I will hold off on those so as to record my current experiences with this critique. I hope everyone else's day is going better than mine! Yay, I've gotten my story back!
Last night one of my reviewers emailed me back her thoughts. The story itself was included in an attachment while the email itself has her answers to the specific questions I had regarding my story. I've read her answers but have yet to open the story to see all its red marks. This is due to time factors though, I'll admit, I'm a bit scared of what I'll see, too. Yep, I'm definitely in the Reply phase that I talked about earlier. Ok, deep breaths. Deep breaths. Giving a critique is hard. Ask any writer and they'll all agree. Looking over someone else's work is hard. It's even harder when said writer giving said critique is in a writers' group or workshop with the author of the said work. As the reviewer giving the critique you can't help but let your emotions in. If you know the author, then you know how much time they've put into their story, how much love and affection they have for the characters, for this particular line of dialogue or exchange between characters. And you know, too, how much they have struggled in writing the story. You try to be subjective but, in the end, you still end up apologizing for what you've said.
However, that's a discussion for another time. For now, I want to talk about getting a critique because, at this moment, this a thing very near and dear to my heart. For you see, I am currently being critiqued. There is something to be said for staying up late. Sometimes when your mind starts going foggy, and limbs start to ache and your sight blurs a little at the edges, that's when you get the truly great epiphanies.
I know, he's sleep deprived. Everything sounds either hilarious or like pure genius to him right now. Er, sorry to disappoint but, no, I'm not there just yet. Where I am at is the point where I just figured out my characters central motivations. April, April, what can I say about April? Well, it was quite a bit better than March in some ways and, in others, not as good.
|
AuthorI'm a twenty-something, wannabe author who's been writing Fantasy stories for the last decade, working hard to perfect my craft. Archives
September 2015
Categories
All
|