Posts Tagged ‘novel’

Writing A Sex Scene

Posted: December 4, 2012 in Novel, Reflections, Writing
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Please use this photo to show people you are not up to anything salacious.

The following blog post may or may not contain sexual elements that are not suitable for younger readers. If you are a younger reader, please consult your parents before reading this blog post. If someone walks in on you reading this, please scroll up to the picture above to make it seem like you’re not some pervert. If you are ready to read this post, please make sure to look left and right with your eyes so as to make sure nobody is watching you read this post. Thank you, and have a nice day.

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I just finished writing Chapter 76 of Snake. And as you can guess from the title, it has a sex scene in it.

A long, graphic sex scene. Which takes up about ten pages total and 2775 words, making this chapter the longest (pun totally intended) and most uncomfortable chapter I’ve written for this novel yet.

But you know what the worst part of it was? Not the fact that I’d written a sex scene and wondered what people would think of me once they read it, though that did cross my mind as a close second. No, it was the fear that what I’d written wasn’t well-written. You see, I’m no E.L. James, though I’d learned a thing or two about sex scenes from reading the works of some of those who’d come before her, namely Anne Rice and Jean Auel. Even with this sort of training, it’s not easy: men are visual thinkers who are stimulated by pictures, which is why Hugh Hefner is one of the richest guys in this nation and worldwide. However, women are more stimulated by the written word, which is why E.L. James and those torrid romance novels you see in the supermarkets sell so well. (And if you don’t believe me on this, ask any psychologist, they’ll tell you it’s true.) So with all that in mind, could I write a decent sex scene?

Well, I’m not sure. I wrote one for practice years ago, which I’ve now misplaced, and I wrote one for Reborn City‘s initial draft, but I cut it out during the edits of the second draft because it didn’t fit with the rest of the story (though when I get to the sequel, there will be sex scenes that do fit with the story). With both of those, I never had anyone look at them, never had anyone to critique them or to tell me that I didn’t know how to write erotic scenes or that something in the story was unrealistic. The only time I ever even told anyone I’d written a sex scene was when my mother was passing by while I was writng the RC sex scene and she asked how the writing was going (“Great Mom, but this sex scene is so awkward to write.” “Doesn’t surprise me at all.” I swear the conversation went something like that)!

So how does my sex scene compare with James, Rice, or Auel? Probably doesn’t compare at all.

But is it well-written? I’m probably not the best judge of that, which is why I hope that when I edit Snake, not only will I be a better writer, but I’ll also have someone very knowledgeable about thrillers looking over the chapters with me and giving me feedback. Until then, I’ve got what I’ve got and I’ll leave it at that.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go take a cold shower and then sit down and watch The Dark Knight Rises, which I couldn’t watch after I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight the other day because TDKR hadn’t been released to DVD yet and because it has hardly any sexual elements whatsoever.

I Can’t Wait To Self-Publish

Posted: December 2, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Writing
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My dad called me last night and told me to get my hands on a copy of the latest issue of TIME magazine, saying there was an article that ran 5-6 pages on the ever-growing industry of self-publishing. I asked a friend of mine in my dorm if I could borrow his copy, and this evening I sat down to read it. What I saw encouraged me; there were so many stories of authors who had found success in the self-publishing industry, and even those who’d sold only a few hundred copies or less were finding ways to increase sales. It made me think: I hope that when Reborn City comes out, it’s a success.

Of course, I’m a bit far away from that at this point. I’ve only gotten three chapters finalized, and I’m waiting for the next one. At this rate I’ll probably be finished sometime between March and June. But I’m already gedtting ready, spreading the word as much as I can. Soon I’ll start up my own Facebook page as a writer, and see about creating a fan page for RC. I’m also getting a lot of work on Snake done and I hope to have that done by the end of the year, God-willing, and then I’ll start planning publishing that (and seeing if there’s someone who can look at it and give me an opinion before I put it out). And if I have the energy, I may just put out a small collection of horror short stories. With the power of e-publishing and the author as the marketer, the possibilites are endless.

So let’s hope I can get RC soon. If I can sell 1000 copies of RC, I’ll consider this all a success.

By the way, question for the other self-publishers who read this blog: how are your books doing? And what’re you doing to increase your sales and exposure (besides blogging a lot, of course).

Snake & Black Dogs

Posted: November 27, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, it’s been an interesting day for me, and I’m going to end it by watching NCIS and writing during the commercial breaks. I’ll start with the first chapter of Part IV of Snake (wasn’t that a small break?). This part is where the Snake is offered help from a powerful sponsor in his goal to bring down the mafia family he hates so much (why does he hate it? You’ll have to read the novel once it comes out).  This section is much smaller than Part III, with only sixteen chapters, but what sixteen chapters they are! The Snake doesn’t just meet allies: the family he’s fighting calls on its biggest and baddest hitman; someone comes dangerously close to the Snake’s true identity; the Snake has an episode; and there’s a sex scene. Yes, you read that right. A sex scene. It’ll be awkward to write.

WOOF!

As for the “Black Dogs” part of that title up there, I got another idea for a short story. Or perhaps the beginning of an idea for a short story. Black dogs are more than just cute; in folklore, particularly Celtic and English folklore, the black dog is a portent of death and a messenger of the underowrld. Occasionally they also double as benevolent spirits that watch over children and traverlers, but more often they are not something you want to run into on a dark, lonely night. So I’m going to write a short story based on the idea of a black dog spirit. First I’ve got to think of a context for it that’ll be exciting and not relatively used. Nothing’s come to mind yet, but I’ll come up with something; I did with the dybbuk idea.

You know, now that I think about it, this’ll make 13 short story ideas on my tackboard. What do you think? Should I create a collection of short stories and put it on the Internet as an e-book? I could write several of them over winter break. Let me know what you think.

Snake: Part III Done

Posted: November 25, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Part III: Search and Rescue was the longest part of Snake I’ve written yet, a whopping twenty-nine chapters. I am happy to say that after I finished my homework this evening, I worked on the last two chapters for this section, and I finished it up! Can I just say, woo-hoo! There are eight parts of Snake, including the prologue and epilogue, and therefore with Part III marks the halfway point for the parts (but then again, the Parts are just for organizational purposes, so they’re no indicators of length left to go; the chapters do a better job of that, truthfully). A the end of this part, the Snake has finally gotten back what he sought out to get back when he started hunting mafioso, so he’s now got to fight to keep it, and he’ll be getting a little help along the way.

However, I think I’ll take a small break before I start Part IV: Alliance. Maybe I’ll edit a short story or two. It is about time I take a second look at Animal Child. Or maybe I’ll sit back an read a book. It’s all up to me, at any rate.

So before you click away from this post, I’d like to update you on word and page counts, like I’ve been doing after I’ve finished the previous parts (and when I say “page counts”, I mean when the pages are 8.5″ x 11″ paper, double spaced, and 12-point Times New Roman font, so take that into account before making a loud whistle). The page and word count for the prologue was fourteen pages and 3,979 words. From Part I, forty-one pages and 10,177 words. From Part II, ninety-six pages and 23,801 words. And from Part III (cue drum roll)…one-hundred and twenty-six pages and 30,733 words. In total, this leads to two-hundred and seventy-seven pages and 68,690 words.

So not yet as long as Reborn City, but it’s getting there, isn’t it? And if I’d stayed in NaNoWriMo, I’d have done an excellent first try for Part III alone.

I’ll keep everyone updated on my progress. Please continue to support me, and I’ll let you know what’s what with both RC and Snake.

Snake: Halfway Done!!!

Posted: November 21, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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With the first draft, that is!

This evening, while waiting for the laundry to finish, I was working on Snake. Much later than I should’ve been, actually. But what does that matter, because I got three chapters out of the way. And one of them was Chapter 52. Multiply by two, and you get the number of chapters in Snake, at least in this first draft.

So yeah, I’m halfway through, and I’m happy as hell! This chapter was actually kind of difficutl to write, to tell you the truth. This chapter was the first time in several chapters that a character had appeared, and I wanted to do an update on what she’d been doing during that time. However when I was editing Reborn City, I’d been told that doesn’t always work very well, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t work here, so I had to go back and rewrite what I’d written (thanks again, Matt; it’s good to have your counsel in so many ways). In the end, I used dialogue and a really creepy mafioso to explain what had happened to that character, which made for a much more interesting way of telling this story.

In a way, I wish I could show you this chapter, but not only does it reveal one or two plot details I wish to keep concealed, it’s a little too disturbing for some audiences. What can I say? I write creepy stuff, but I know not everyone wants to read it. They prefer other stuff found here on my blog.

So I’m halfway done, and I’ve still got fifty-two more chapters to do. But hey, if I can get from chapter thirty-five to chapter fifty-two in twenty days (with a ton of schoolwork and whatever getting in the way), I can probably tackle the rest in that amount of time. Who knows? I might be done by New Years, God willing!

Wish me luck. I’m going to bed.

Snake: Longest Chapter Yet

Posted: November 19, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Someone’s been a glutton!

Okay, so I just finished chapter forty-seven of Snake, and so far, it’s the longest chapter I’ve written of Snake, a whopping ten pages (double spaced and 12-point font Times New Roman) and 2,424 words, beating out the 2nd longest chapter by about seventy words. This chapte is important to the plot, because this is a point where the Snake really starts moving toward his ultimate goal (what that is, I can’t say, but more people are going to die for it). I guess that’s a pretty good excuse for it to be very long, though I can tell you that the chapter afterwards will be relatively short.

At this point, I’ve got about nineteen chapters in Part III of Snake left before I finish this part, and I’m also very close to the halfway point in the book. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to blog about finishing Part III and taking a little break, maybe just to write a short story or watch a movie or even play video games because I don’t usually play them! I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll let you know when I’m there.

NaNoWriMo Is For Those Who Can Devote Time To It

Posted: November 18, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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And unfortunately, I can’t devote my time to it. I’d like to though; I’d like to be able to spend hours each and every day just typing away on my computer, pushing out word after word to create an awesome story that people will want to read. The only time I would stop writing is if I was hungry and wanted to make something to eat; or if I had to run an errand; or if I wanted to work out; or if it was just too late in the day, so let’s forget work and just play.

Sadly, I cannot live that sort of lifestyle right now. Instead, I spend more than ten hours a week in classes, and close to that amount at a part-time job. In addition to that, I spend several hours over the week working on homework, reading books and writing papers and doing projects, and that’s especially so in the last 3-4 weeks of class before finals. Add into that meals, sleep (essential, even in college), errands, and just finding time to relax, there’s only so much time to write.

So I’m going to have to drop out of the National Novel Writing Month challenge. It’s just too much at the moment to try and get out fifty-thousand words in thirty days with the workload I have. I’ll still work on writing Snake and editing Reborn City, but I won’t do it with the focus of just getting 50K words written.  Instead, I’ll work on them with the hope that eventually I’ll get them done and share them with everyone.

Am I sad that I can’t finish the challenge? Yes I am; I was getting so much done at the beginning of the month, I thought that if I couldn’t get 50K words, I’d get very close to 30K. Not so at this point. But hey, look on the bright side: I managed to write twelve chapters of Snake and type out 12,329 words. Not bad for my first time, right? That’s more than your average short story.

Maybe next year, if I don’t have that much of a workload, I’ll try again at NaNoWriMo. In the meantime, I’m off to work on chapter forty-seven of Snake. Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo Day 4: Progressing on the Snake

Posted: November 4, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Yes, it’s a gruesome image, but it works so well with what’s happening right now in the story.

I just finished a chapter on Snake, so I thought I’d discuss some of what’s going on in the world of Snake and in my life. First, I’d like to discuss how I’m doing so far in my first NaNoWriMo. So fat, about as well as I could hope. With classes, homework, and the need to relax and sleep (and not always at the same time), I’ve gotten about 4 chapters done, or one a day. Of course, these chapters are all less than six pages, so it’s not something to go wild about. However, I did add a chapter to Part I of the story, and I’ve gotten the first three chapters of Part III finished.

Actually, make that two chapters. I usually look over a chapter again after I finish it, and so far I haven’t looked over Chapter 38 yet. But I don’t think I’ll be changing that much; it’s pretty good as I wrote it.

So, I probably won’t finish Snake by November 30. I probably won’t write 50,000 words either. But hey, I’m getting a lot done, and I’ve gotten to a very important part in the story, one where the Snake’s brutal attacks on the mafia family he’s been stalking is starting to have its consequences.

And none of these consequences necessarily affect the Snake.

So I’ll let you know if I happen to finish Part III earlier than expected. In the meantime, I hope you all are having a good time with NaNoWriMo, and good luck to each and every one of you.

A Snake Conundrum

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Oh, I hope this Snake unties itself like my problem did.

This evening I was working on Snake, and I had my titular character pull out his phone and check his location using his phone’s GPS. As I was typing that out, I stopped and thought to myself, Wait a minute. Something doesn’t sit right here. And then two things hit me:

1. I don’t have a smartphone that can connect to the internet or has apps. I don’t even text on my phone. How do phones and internet connections work exactly?

2. The Snake uses a burner phone so he can’t be traced if he makes phone calls. Can burner phones ever be smartphones?

Well, the first question could be answered with a simple Google search, but I heard voices out in the hallway and I thought I’d ask my neighbors if they could make it easy for me to understand. Thankfully they did, explaining to me in full detail and in terms I understood how a phone connects to the Internet and how it isn’t dependent on wireless access, only on bars and how much allotted data space you have, so a GPS app would work in the situation I have planned.

Now that answered my first question. When I voiced the second question, my neighbor said that you can jack an iPhone and reconfigure it to become a burner. Tempting, but I don’t think the Snake would waste his time like that.

So I did some digging on Google. Apparently there’s an app for iPhones and Androids that allows you to temporarily turn your phone into a burner phone, which is handy if you’re a telemarketer or you want to pull a phone prank. The brilliant part is that if you’re suspected of something but you don’t have a burner phone, the police can only connect you to the crime if you have this app and you’ve used it around the time of the crime (DISCLAIMER: I’m not encouraging anyone commit a crime from reading this. If you get the idea from me, I’m not liable, it’s all on your head for breaking the law and potentially ruining the lives of who knows how many people).

So that little conundrum is fixed. Back to the writing. I want to see if I can get the full 50K words novelists try to write during NaNoWriMo. So far I have a little over a thousand. 40k more to go!

It’s NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth!!!

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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And yet for some reason, it’s celebrated in other countries too. Shouldn’t it be INternational NOvel WRIting MOnth (InNoWriMo)? On second thought, maybe not. That abbreviation sounds worse than NaNoWriMo, actually.

Right, onto the reason we’re reading this post. It’s National Novel Writing Month, when writers buckle down and really put their hearts into their novels. Some decide that this is the time to start what they hope will be the Next Great (insert country here) Novel. Others try to write a novel in only 30 days, doing all the research, writing, and editing in that amount of time. And some, like me, will put their all into their works in progress and edit their on-the-way-to-being-published projects…after they’ve done all their homework.

As you can already tell from this post, I’m already in the novel-writing mode. I had fun in a haunted house last night during Halloween (one of my favorite times of the year), so I’m ready to write scary stuff. I’ve also got a short story coming out on Monday, so that’s sure to be a boost. Yes, there’s a short story of mine coming out on Monday. It’s called Ripple, it’s a science-fiction story about a war with aliens, and I hope you read it and give me some feedback.

I’ll be primarily focusing on my serial killer thriller Snake, trying to write as many chapters as possible (and possibly adding one, if I think it’s appropriate). I’ll also work on my science-fiction novel Reborn City when my friend who’s helping me edit the story gets back to me with chapters (thank you Matt! You’ll show up in the Acknowledgements section in the book when it comes out). I don’t think I’ll owrk on any short stories–except the ones for class and the ones I finished prior to November. Basically, I’ll be doing a lot of work…when I’m not at work or doing school work.

So wish me luck. To all other writers taking part in NaNoWriMo, good luck on your various creative works. Let’s get writing.

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