A Write on the Dark Side

The other day I finished a packet of material that I received from Dave Farland. I'm going to his Writer's Death Camp next week, and he suggested some reading before we got there. The information I was reading included his 10 steps to outlining a novel. I think it had a much better title than that, but that is the gist.

One of the steps is to take each character through their conflicts within the novel.

I'm still trying to get my head around my YA novel. Like I mentioned, I finished round one a few months ago, but the story was all action and no emotion. Well, the story is an emotional story (or should be) so I decided I needed to go back and revise it.

I realize that writing is all about revising. My brain understands, but my OCD wants to know why I have to do anything more than once. It's a bitter feud that will most likely only be solved after I'm dead. Or rich . . . no, dead.

Distracted again. Sorry about that. Anyway, this article mentioned that you should do the conflict exercise with your antagonist, not just your protagonist. I'd read the same thing before, but never thought to actually try it.

People who know what they're talking about are hard to come by—Mr. Farland must be one of those people, because this exercise, simple as it was, really helped. Not only with the villain and the plot, but with things that the protagonist has to do in order to combat what the villain is trying to accomplish.

The whole thing sounds very simplistic (and I'll be the first to admit that it's the simple things that get me every time) but it was very revealing. Hopefully that put me one step closer to being able to learn awesome things at Death Camp next week.

Oh, and my Star Wars--Visas Marr costume just got accepted to the 501st Legion Alpine Garrison. I guess I'm one of the bad guys. Who'd have thought it?

And my mummy pumpkin (K's idea) won 3rd place at my work Pumpkin Carving Contest. Yay! Go Immie.