Tag: Author

Ermagerd!

thestuartsadler

Yesterday afternoon whilst sat at work (I work from home), looking forward to the end of the week and intermittently refreshing the competition page of the site I had been shortlisted for recently, I was impatiently waiting for the winner to be announced.

As I had not heard anything further and as the results were due, I figured it likely that the winner and two runners up had been notified by now. I was looking forward to reading the winning stories, and had decided that to be shortlisted was a great achievement for my first ever writing competition.

My phone began to ring and in all honesty I thought it was my mum calling to tell me it was cold or something. I answered.

An unfamiliar voice asked if they were speaking to Stuart Sadler. I told them they were indeed and a few words later the conversation became a bit of a blur of excited gibberish on my part because I had in fact won the bloomin’ competition!

I still can’t quite believe it, but I thought I should probably blog about it!

If you’re at all interested, the website is WriteStars and (for now at least) you should see the competition update in the top right, or you can click here to go directly to the story.

It’s A Kind of Magic

thestuartsadler

Hello again! I thought it was about time I wrote a post on my novel writing which, as mentioned previously, took a bit of a backward step a while ago when I decided that I had gone a bit overboard with background ideas that I quite literally lost the plot!

This weekend though I reached Chapter 40 in my outlining which I’m pleased with, and another positive is that I know its going somewhere and is close to a resolution! About ten chapters ago I started to wonder whether I would just end up planning chapter after chapter in a subconscious bid to avoid actually writing the novel, so it’s good to know that my brain is working with me on this one and that things are heading in a very definite direction!

Now, I think I made it clear in my initial post that I’m writing a fantasy novel, and in case I didn’t mention it, there’s going to be magic involved!

I knew there would be a few things to think about when developing magic within my story. I’d already decided I didn’t want spells, incantations and potions for example, preferring my characters to have a more innate ability than one that requires use of an object or words etc.

Still, that has not stopped me from obsessing over the details from time to time.

And it is precisely my obsession over something like magic that has me worrying I’m lacking in the imagination department too much to be a decent writer. You see, I’ve spent far too much time in all trying to figure out the actual physical possibilities of how my characters would perform magic. Magic! I’ve literally sat and questioned how they might produce light using magic. Literally how they might do it, how the magic would work, how the light would exist and what would be required to sustain it. And half the time when I respond to myself with ‘it’s magic, Stuart, that’s the whole point. It’s magic, and magic isn’t real which is why you can’t do it in real life so stop trying to figure out how and just make it interesting.’ the rest of me is thinking ‘Hmm I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason.’

It makes you wonder why I love fantasy so much, and why I would choose to write a genre that requires such suspension of belief and in the laws of physics and nature, and yet here I am! It just seems to be my default. Every idea I have cries out for an element of otherworldliness, of things beyond the human experience, so for now at least I’m just going with it!

I have my basic idea down as to how my magic exists, but I need to think a little harder on the cost and limitations my magic users might suffer so as to avoid any ‘deus ex machina’ level issues. I just need to make sure I don’t overthink it to the point where I make the magic either pointless, or too powerful!

So yes, another thing to add to the list of ‘gosh isn’t writing a story harder than it sounds?!’

Finally, I would love to hear from anyone else who has written magic into their story and the processes they went through to try to ensure they retained a level of realism that kept things interesting!

An update

thestuartsadler

Whoops! It’s been quite a while since I last wrote anything on this blog so my apologies if you have been kept waiting. Work has been busy, life has been fairly busy and I have at least been writing a thing or two, which is why I’m back here tonight. I wanted to do some writing but am too tired to focus on my story so I thought I’d write a blog post instead!

So I’ve done a quick check and the last time I was here I was talking about short stories and my novel somewhat getting away from me to the point where I needed to take a step back. That was a while ago, so here’s the latest!

That first short story was successfully entered and the result (or more accurately a shortlist) is due to be revealed this evening! I have been waiting and refreshing the page several times an hour all evening but alas at the time of writing there is no news yet! I’m not overly confident I’ll make the cut, but you never know! I wouldn’t have entered if I didn’t like my story so we shall see! It’ll be a nice surprise, but I’m not holding my breath!

The second short story (on the theme ‘Dark Matters’) was also finished and sent off, and I was pleased with that too! Unfortunately results aren’t due until January so you may have to remind me to check that one in the new year!

I drafted a third short story just the other night (an open themed competition for a story of ‘exactly 100 words’) which came out of nowhere and isn’t the kind of thing I would normally write so I’m quite pleased with that! After a couple more times staring at it making sure there’s no way I can make it any better (an extremely difficult task when knowing any changes must retain the exact word count!) I’ll be sending that off too! This competition is open till the end of January though so it’ll be a while for that one!

As for the novel, well I went back to basics for sure! I decided I needed more structure and a better idea where I was going, if only to keep myself in check as I write! So I have been chapter outlining. I’m up to about 35 chapters planned so far which I’m pleased with and it’s helped me cement my ideas and the story I want to tell. Of course when it comes time to actually write it (which I’m hoping will be relatively soon as I’m already starting to feel like a part of my brain is just sat in the back saying ‘Yeah, this is progress! Just keep outlining! Keep telling yourself you’re writing a novel, that’s it! Outline 100 chapters if you have to, it’s all progress!’ Which of course it is, and it isn’t. I am fully aware that I am still not writinga novel so yeah, needs work!) I will be happy for the characters to take me in unexpected directions etc. but the main thing is that I have a thread to follow and keep me grounded at least a little.

I’m hoping to write some more blog posts too though. In fact I’m hoping to just do more writing in general!

It’s all progress! 😉

Battling The Tide of Change

thestuartsadler

Hello again and my apologies for being somewhat on the quiet side recently! Unfortunately I am not in a position to write as and when I please, having committed myself to working one of those pesky things we call a job, in order to earn money to pay off the inordinate amount of debt I have accumulated since deciding that we did in fact want to live in a house we could call our own. That job has been somewhat hectic as of late, and a lot of the rest of my free time has been taken up with other things.

Still, here is what I have done in the world of writing since last we met.

  • I entered my first short story competition! A 250 word ‘Supernatural’ flash fiction under the prompt ‘otherworldliness’. 
  • I’ve also a near final draft for another short story competition which I will be sending off in the next few days, under the prompt ‘Dark Matters’ (can you sense a theme to the way my mind works??)
  • Finally I have been up and down and round and about with my bloody novel… which is what this blog post is really about.

I really hope I’m not the only one who fixates on details of their story to the point of self sabotage?! Please say I’m not.

Here’s how I seem to work:

  1. Have idea
  2. Start writing
  3. Feel pleased
  4. Write more
  5. Hit a plot point that needs examination/explanation
  6. Come up with an amazing back story to explain the plot point
  7. Realise the back story negates some of what I’ve written, but decide it’s worth pursuing
  8. Go back to 2.

After a few iterations of this I realised the following: that I was now miles away from my original idea (but kept telling myself this is what being creative is like and everyone probably does it), that I was basically writing myself in an outward spiral, creating ever more complex threads, and that every time I came up with a new idea it conflicted with someone else I’d set up which either required changing or scrapping.

Yesterday I decided enough was enough. Coming up with an amazing back story I’m NOT going to write, does not help me with a  novel I AM going to write! I’ve realised that I need to stop having ‘ideas’ and focus on the story I first wanted to write. Yes, I’ll still make a few changes, but I think I let myself get carried away and was making things far too complicated for myself.

So, I’m going to do two things. The first is that I’m going to go back to basics and make sure I know where I’m going this time. The second is that I’m going to scrap the pen and paper and write on my iPad. I’ve realised that the paper option for me is feeling too much like ‘notes’ as it’s harder to keep track of what I’ve actually written. I think the urge to edit while typing will be less of an issue that constantly changing my mind which is what I have been doing!

I’ve still got a few things to iron out in my ‘back to the original idea’ plan, but I already feel like it’s a more coherent story idea than the wild and wonderful things my brain was coming up with, without bothering to check how they would fit in with what I already had!

If you’re a writer and you’ve experienced this (particularly in Fantasy where you really can go off the deep end!) I would love to hear how you’ve dealt with it!

Until next time… wish me luck!

Losing the Plot

thestuartsadler

Something I have struggled with recently is the feeling that I am constantly second guessing myself. That no matter what idea I can come up with, there is a better one lurking around the corner. This has seriously hindered my writing progress.

Most recently, I was trying to work through a couple of logical gaps in my story. Ideas I had had that needed just a bit more work to mould them into useable threads. I spent a long time just sitting and thinking and came up with a few things to explain the ideas I wanted to use. This was great. I was really pleased with what I’d come up with. The problem was that if I had chosen to follow through with them, it meant I was 40,000 words into my second book, with not a single word of the first written anywhere. This was a rather daunting prospect.

So I did some more thinking, talked to my wife a bit about it and came up with some alternatives which I’m now happy with. The problem now is that having stalled with the writing a little, I’m now suffering the dreaded conviction that my entire story is a boring pile of crap. Which brings me all the way back to second guessing myself on the whole thing.

I keep telling myself ‘a finished draft is better than a perfect draft’ and to give me credit, I’m planning to do some writing this weekend, but I wonder how often other writers do this? Do they constantly criticise their plot before even giving it the courtesy of getting it down on paper? 

I’m sure I’m not alone, so I’ll just keep repeating that mantra ‘finished is better than perfect’!