The A to Z Book Diary: "B" is for Bring on the Bad guys

There's nothing like a good Bad Guy to get your story on track. It's the old yin-yang principle: to have light, you need dark; they balance each other out, and act as counterpoints to drive each other's motivations and development within the story.

And from the writing perspective, let's face it... bad guys are just so much fun to dive into and bring to life. They're just so interesting. And I mean this in the least twisted way possible.

Along that train of thought, an update on the progress of my writing New Years Resolution: so far, so good! I've actually been sticking to it (wonders never cease), and have cheerfully plowed through scrawling out (yes, by hand - I'm old fashioned that way... I have an odd fondness for getting ink stains on my fingers) four pages of brainstorming where I laid out pretty well every main aspect of the plot (which is definitely going to be a trilogy), and about six pages of the story. I scrapped the beginning I'd written ages ago, and tackled it from scratch.

And... *drum roll*... it's working - I'm almost in a state of shock, after metaphorically beating my head against a wall more often than not for years. It's amazing what I'm getting done, now that I've decided to flick that annoying inner-brain "is my writing/story good enough? what if it's not??" switch firmly to the 'OFF' position. HA!

But, I digress - Bad Guys. Heh, what a good time. A real and delicious puzzle.

Writing the Good Guys is for the most part straight forward; obviously, they still have their flaws (they'd be one-dimensional cardboard cutouts without them), but largely they have some sort of recognizable moral compass that is universally accepted and makes them relate-able and the ones that people root for. But the Bad Guys... their compass is the warped antithesis of the Good Guys', and the writer (and the reader, down the line) is left with all sorts of great questions: what's "right", and what's right in this guy's head? How far would he go? Why? What wouldn't they do? Do they have a line? What happens when they cross it? Oooh, the possibilities for moral complexities and everything that goes with them are endless. I'm still in the outlining stages for my principle Evil Doer, which the main hero has yet to meet, and this guy is shaping up to be downright elemental... in some ways literally. But I won't spoil it by giving too much away :)


And all this rambling about it has my creative brain revving its engines - if I have any hope of focusing on schoolwork (exams... right... I need to study for those, don't I?... meh, debatable), I'll need to go pour out my page for the day. 

Now where's my pen...

Image courtesy of artur84/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The A to Z Book Diary: "A" is for Avast ye, Apprehensions

Ahhh. 'Tis the season for Christmas lights, hot chocolate, carols, turkey dinners... and end-of-semester hair-pulling and insomnia over pre-holiday assignments and exams -- it's a good thing I'm geared more towards looking on the bright side, otherwise being a student would absolutely ruin my holiday spirit every year, especially since the city I'm living in for university never seems to get a decent snowfall, and what little snow it does get melts within a week. Hmf.

Anyway, on that brighter side, I've dug myself out from the most recent avalanche of schoolwork and procrastination on schoolwork, and have decided most diplomatically to further procrastinate in the area of studying for my exams next week in order to start another posting thread on this little blog 'o mine: The A to Z Book Diary, which will serve as a sideline for keeping track of progress on getting my first novel written... partially for commiserating purposes if any other writers happen to stumble this way, but mostly to guilt myself into keeping consistent with working on said novel. We've all got to have our ways to actually get things done - hopefully things like this will get me from "aspiring" to "published", sometime before I hit my golden retirement years.

Heh, here's hoping.

As always, if anyone reading feels so inclined pop by in the comments and share some rants of your own - the more the merrier XD.

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So I've re-realized an old revelation that every writer-in-progress gets to time and time again: in the area of progressing on a potentially marketable work of fiction, I am my own worst enemy. Coming up with story ideas... not an issue. Ideas bubble up from all over the place (which is why very little homework gets done in advance of the night before due dates). Sticking with one idea consistently enough to make a novel out of it, on the other hand... yikes. 

I'm not sure if this is an apprehension that goes away once you've gotten those first couple of novels out there and gained some sort of readership, but no idea seems quite good enough to be "The One" - that is, the one that feels like it's got what it takes to maybe turn into that golden goose that will get you noticed as a writer, rather than shuffled off to the bargain bin after a few months of gathering dust. And I've found that the more time goes by, the worse these apprehensions get, until rather than the creative half of my brain happily feeling like this...

Image courtesy of SalvatoreVuono/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

...it ends up feeling more like this...

Image courtesy of BoazYiftach/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In short: no good shall come of this, young grasshopper. Ouch.

But I've made my New Year's resolution early this year, and hopefully posting it here will make me keep to it. I have picked one idea for my starter-upper (one which lends itself to a potential trilogy-ish structure), and come hell or high water, I'm sticking with this one from beginning to end. Obviously wouldn't be too bright to detail the whole thing online, but in the broad sense, it's a modern fantasy-type thing, semi sci-fi-y, and falling in the Young Adult (YA) genre.

The official Resolution: this *bleeping* thing is getting written. Rants and generalized brainstorming will be posted here periodically to keep my brain from imploding in the process, and from here on in, it's going to be a page per day at minimum; screw the apprehensions - do you hear me?? I'm done with you all!! HA!!!

Anyway. To Be Continued... Stay Tuned... o_0