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Writing The Winnower
The blog of an unpublished teen fantasy writer in his quest to publish a trilogy.
Infinite Name Generator July 19, 2007
Posted by Andy in Writing Resources.10 comments
I just got back from a 2-week trip in Philmont, New Mexico. It’s a Scout camp where you hike in the wilderness for 2 weeks with a 45-pound pack on your back. It was fun, actually, and a nice way to get away from everything and let ideas build up.
So I brought a notebook, and when I got back yesterday I set to work making the Infinite Name Generator! It’s a java program that spits out random names based on the criteria you give it by stringing random lettesr together. It’s supposed to be an easy way for writers to get a name to use, and it was really exciting to finish.
Carraka already pointed out that it will sometimes return ridiculously…weird names, especially ones longer than 6 letters long. 😀 It’s not perfect, but I hope to improve it with future versions.
So any thoughts or comments would be really appreciated! 😉
Crap by Critiques June 11, 2007
Posted by Andy in AK's Writing Life, The Winnower, Book 1.4 comments
This really sucks.
This summer, my main goal is to finish my novel. Meaning, have all its chapters the way I want them in terms of plot and characters, but not necessarily be the final draft. Right now it’s a complete mess. Scenes need to be added and completely rewritten, some characters are being considered for total deletion, there are plot holes that need filling…This means there’s going to be a lot less time for critiquing.
This is the problem. Up until now, I’ve been editing chapters right before they’ve been sent in for critques at CC. In addition, it’s the very first draft which is being edited. The idea was that they would all get a final touching-up before getting critiqued. Bad, bad decision.
It’s happened several times now that I’ve made a big change in the story’s plot while editing which I thought necessary. Unfortunately, many times this ends up causing an inconsistency, because the change will require changes in the chapters which have already been sent in for critiquing.
Thus, the critiquers end up confused, or something doesn’t make sense. They point it out, and i feel like crap because it was my fault, and I knew about it beforehand.
I tried touching up the chapter without making any big changes in order to be consistent, but that didn’t work, either. How would you feel about editing a scene as good as you could, knowing in advance you would delete most of it soon afterwards? How would you feel getting critiques for something you know will be deleted? You probably wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about it, right? Same here.
Third option was to warn everyone in the story notes that something wouldn’t make sense, or to ignore certain parts and accept that there are flaws, but that was crummy also. It takes a lot of effort to critique a story, and it would be unfair to make everyone’s job harder.
Additionally, it takes a lot of time for stuff to get through the CC queue. It takes on average 2-3 weeks for a single chapter to get through. It would be impossible for the entire 38-chapter story to get through before summer’s end. Thus, I feel like the story should endure a long brutal round of editing before it gets any more critiques at CC. It would be a summer better spent, as opposed to rush-editing stuff right before it gets submitted. It can’t work like that. The story should have received a lot more editing before it ever set foot at CC.
I want to keep critiquing Lindsey’s story, Nikara, because exchanging chapter critiques by e-mailcan take as little as a single day. She’s critiquing a more-recent version of the story with less problems because of the critiques it already got at CC, and since I had months to play around with chapters 1-10 and read its critiques before she started it, it’s less of a problem.
Lucan, Marti, sorry about this entire mess. I want to keep reading and critiquing your stuff, but there won’t be any more of my story on there for a long time, at which point it will probably start over with the prologue. Shaun, sorry to you as well. I’d love to participate in the critique group, but my stuff just isn’t ready for it. This is all my fault that I didn’t foresee this problem. It won’t happen again.
Drawing! June 2, 2007
Posted by Andy in Drawing.2 comments
A couple of days ago, I wandered through a thread at TW concerning drawing, and I thought it would be neat if I could draw some of the characters in my story. Since summer is here, as well as an increase in free time due to lack of education, it was a good time to try.
One of the members, Stirlinggown, provided this link, so I clicked it and fetched a scrap of paper. Complete ugliness ensued! 😀 The first attempt looked 90 years older than it should have been. In case anyone asks, no, you’re not going to see it. 😛 After a few days of trying they looked liked this:
That’s supposed to be Calamire, a character in my story who likes to annoy and amuse other people with his bow magic. Hence the grin. Two earlier drawings I posted at TW got critiqued, of all things. Seems like errors found by art critiques are a lot easier to follow than ones in writing critiques. Art critiques are also much shorter. 🙂
And there are books about stuff like this, so the libraries are all the more awesome now!
Graduation is *checks calendar* tomorrow. Yay! That means no more high school, ever. They’re also going to be giving out a bunch of awards for service and sports and academics. Probably a few just for fun, like one for the class clown. Seems like it’s always the same group of 6 people who win all of them. Sigh…
SMOG Readability Calculator May 27, 2007
Posted by Andy in The Winnower, Book 1, Writing Resources.6 comments
I think I’m getting sick. I’ve been sneezing a lot and have this weird taste in my throat, and I don’t think it’s just allergies anymore. I’m allergic to grass, which is fun, although it means my brother gets to mow the lawn instead of me. The senior prom is Tuesday. And being sick during that would be a sad way to end my high school years. 🙂
I think I have the prologue and chapter 1 right where I want them. Since both of them offer very isolated views of the world, they can endure a whole lot of changes without changing the world much. The isolation changes at chapter 2, which means it will require a lot more careful editing. I’m still adding stuff to the timeline document, and working on ideas for short stories and fantasy creatures so that the world will be a lot more fleshed out. Ever since Tolkien, that kind of thing is almost necessary.
And onto the main point of this post: this is an online readability calculator which uses the SMOG formula (there are others) for determining the reading level required for a passage of text. It’s good to know what kind of people will be able to understand your book. If its language is so complicated that only college-level students willl be able to read it, that could be a problem.
So far, this is the only free online readability test I’ve found:
https://www.harrymclaughlin.com/SMOG.htm
Just type in a short passage and click the button. It will return all sorts of statistics, including the grade level.
The only problem is that it accepts a maximum of 2000 words, and that some passages will score a higher ranking than others. It’s best to run as many words as you can through it so you get results that are more indicative of more of your writing. The Winnower scored from 7-8, which is around junior high school level. To raise or lower the grade, you can change the complexity of the words you use, or change your sentences’ lengths.
Meme of Eight, Five Things To Write May 23, 2007
Posted by Andy in Taggings.4 comments
SMD tagged me again, twice, to the point where all the taggings are starting to make me feel sick. 😀 So here are:
Le Rulez for the Meme of Eight:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their 8 things and post these rules.
3. At the end choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog.
1: I sleep with all the lights off, even the one directly outside my room. And I close the door to combat other people snoring. Otherwise it will be a long time before I fall asleep. This is a complete turnaround from 8 years ago, where I couldn’t sleep unless there was a bright light shining into my room.
2: I used to take ballet. But first grade, and that was it. There was only one other boy in the class (the other dozen were girls) and after he quit I started to feel alone and awkward, so I quit as well. Unfortunately, one of the girls in my 8th grade class noticed a picture of me (7 years younger) in that dance studio’s yearbook, and soon the entire grade knew. Apparently you can’t make fun of girls for taking ballet, but you can make fun of boys. I didn’t like her anyway. She was always a brat. In fact, she will now get killed in my story. 😀
3: I like squirrels and other kinds of cute rodents, including guinea pigs, hamsters, chipmunks, pikas and chinchillas. Mice and rats are excluded from that list because of their hairless tails for some reason. Not as cute, probably. And I have no idea how this interest began.
4: There are now no less than 6 people in my school who I think resemble characters in my book. And it creeps me out whenever I see them. At least I’ll never see them again now. 🙂
5: I procrastinate a lot.
6: I hate tomatoes, period. And I don’t like onions on my burgers. Pepperoni is only good on the pizzas at school, otherwise it’s usually too spicy for me.
7: I have more videos on my iPod than songs, and more pictures than videos. Most videos are episodes of TV shows, and some are videos downloaded from Youtube and such. A lot are fantasy/sci-fi-related. There’s even two Narnia trailers on there. But none of the videos are pointless.
8: Whenever I watch a Disney sequel (with a few exceptions, such as Pirates), I spend most of the movie pointing out various dumb things and clichés. My brother does the same, and we have a good time making our own entertainment. We also do this with other movies that we deem “lame” after the first ten minutes. 😀
Five Things I Want to Write
This is the second meme. It’s self-explanatory, I hope.
1. Finish The Winnower. Get it published.
2. Finish The Winnower trilogy.Get it published.
3. Finish second trilogy. Then finish third trilogy.Get them published.
4. Then write a book decidated to the entire history of the Winnower, especially stuff before the 9 books. That’s 10. Get it published.
5. Finish the Squirrel satire story I’m working on at TW. Not publish it.
Nobody gets tagged this time. Enjoy the break.
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