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Tag: Rooglewood Press

Beautiful People – Valentine’s Edition – Will + Emi

Tracey Dyck 32 Comments

We interrupt the regular broadcast of Lovely Books
with another round of Beautiful People…

Valentine’s Day has come and gone, but it’s still not too late to join in with this month’s edition of Beautiful People! Our wizardly hosts Cait and Sky have mixed up a love potion series of questions aimed at character couples. If you’re a writer, and you haven’t yet checked out this linkup, dash off and do that now! BP has been such a fun and helpful tool for me, a way to get to know my characters better and give others a chance to meet them.



Sort of how Will looks.
Usually I like to feature characters from whatever I happen to be working on at the moment, but seeing as I’m not actively writing anything this month (it’s research and plans and quite a lot of thinking about research and plans right now . . .), I elected to dust off one of my favorite romantic pairs. Today you get to meet Will and Emi!
Long ago, in the distant history of 2014, before Adventure Awaits was born, I wrote a novella-sized retelling of Beauty and the Beast for the Rooglewood Press contest. Blood Rose is the tale of how Emi, a young scientist, finds herself stranded in the countryside, where the only refuge is an ancient manor belonging to the mysterious and charming William Thornburgh. Events conspire to keep her there, but with each passing day, Will’s behavior grows stranger. Secrets lurk in the manor’s dark corners. In desperate need of Emi’s knowledge and skill, Will locks her up. Escape is not an option. Can she fulfill his seemingly impossible demands? And can a broken, beastly man ever be made whole again?

Sort of how Will looks when a particularly beastly
side of him surfaces…



Kind of how I imagine Emi. (There’s too many sort
ofs and kind ofs when it comes to character models!)

I had such a blast writing this novella, so I’m excited to give you a glimpse of the protagonists! If I go crazy with snippets, I apologize.

1. How did they first meet?
Emi, recently graduated from university, was driving to her hometown in search of a meaningful job, when her car broke down.
Forty miles from the nearest hint of civilization.
Right in front of a creepy old manor.

That creepy old manor happened to be the home of Will, a reclusive but nonetheless well-mannered young man. (Well, he looks young, anyway.) He offered to give her a place to spend the night, which she warily declined, choosing to sleep in her car rather than in the house of some stranger. But then, you know, the next day she ends up injuring herself. With a twisted ankle and slight concussion, she has no choice but to let Will care for her.

As he stepped through the doorway, Emi turned her head toward him. “Will?”

He looked over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“Why did you run out into the woods?”

Although his gaze never wavered, layers of shadows seemed to shift in his eyes. “Lost something.” He gave her a slight smile, clapped a hand against the doorframe, and walked on.

Emi stared at the spot where he’d stood and listened to his footsteps fade down the hall.

2. What were their first impressions of each other?

He scared the living daylights out of her, but after that initial shock, she found him strange. Oddly dressed (old-fashioned breeches and a billowy shirt), for one thing. Rather kind and gentlemanly, for another. All this is shaded by her wariness, of course, because as a lone female miles from civilization, she’s in a vulnerable position. But Will’s actions seem to indicate he is entirely noble.

Will sees her as a beautiful young lady, deserving of respect, but a certain desperation reminds him that she may be just what he needs. It’s not long before he also realizes how smart and kind-hearted she is. There’s a lot of conflicting emotions on his part.

3. How long have they been a couple?
I never know how to answer this kind of question. What timeline am I supposed to use? At the beginning of the story, they’re not a couple at all. That doesn’t happen until the very end of the story. It’s hard to see your captor in a romantic light when he’s already come close to killing you. (Heh. Spoiler alert.)

4. How committed/loyal are they to each other? Would they break up over a secret or a disagreement? Could stress drive them apart? Would they die for each other?

Loaded question! And very spoilery, too, I might add! Their relationship is rife with secrets, particularly on Will’s part. Stress? There’s a whole whackload of that too. But commitment and loyalty do slowly grow between them. (I refuse to answer that last question about death. One day you may get a chance to read Blood Rose, and then you can see for yourself.)

5. List 5 “food quirks” they know about each other. (Ex: how they take their coffee, if they’re allergic to something, etc….and feel free to mention other non-food quirks!)
Will knows that she glows when she’s excited. He knows her well enough to realize at a certain point in the story that when she stops wearing the old-fashioned gowns he provided her, and instead wears the jeans and sweater in which she arrived, that she’s planning to leave. He’s good at reading her emotions and the underlying thoughts behind them. One thing he does not know is that she prefers her fried eggs hard, not runny.
Emi knows that he eats a lot. As she gets to know him better, she starts to read between the lines, picking up on the hurt and the secrets he doesn’t express. And as the story progresses, she learns the warning signs–the clues that he’s about to turn beastly.
I know that’s not five for either of them, but that’s all I could recall from their story at this point.

[source]
6. Does anyone disapprove of their relationship?
There’s not really anyone around to disapprove. Emi is very much a loner, with practically no close friends. Her parents died in a fire. Will is a complete hermit, and his parents have passed away as well.
7. What would be an ideal date?
I’ll answer this one from the perspective of what happens after The End, because as I said earlier, they’re not a couple until then. An ideal date would be a long stroll through the woods, where Emi is far from her books and projects. Afterwards, they’d make a simple meal at home and cuddle by the fireplace.

8. What are their personality dynamics? Similar? Contrasting? Do they fight a lot or mesh perfectly?
Both are very intense people, but it manifests in different ways. Will is deeply loyal to those closest to him–though that includes very few. He carries the weight of past mistakes, and it is a heavy burden indeed. Emi is the kind of person who grasps at stars, a person who lives poised on the line between hope and discouragement. She is driven, but kind. She sees beauty where others see only ugly brokenness.

They have a number of fights–some actual, physical fights and some merely verbal–but I have a feeling that further down the road, their relationship will be largely peaceful. They will eventually mesh well, with Emi giving grace to Will, and Will helping Emi to relax and just be.

9. What have been their best and worst moments together as a couple?
To answer that definitively would be to spoil the entire story, but I will let these two snippets speak for themselves.

Here’s a good moment (not the best, mind you):

Will was grinning at her, shaking his head slowly.

She grinned back uncertainly. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just—you glow when you are excited.”

Emi touched her warm cheeks. Drat, I’m blushing.

His smile softened, and he reached over to clasp her wrist. “There is no need to feel embarrassed. I think your ideas are brilliant. You have much to offer the world.”

Sitting there in the old kitchen, with crisp autumn air filtering through the barely open window and a low fire crackling at her back, Emi laid aside her doubts for the moment and simply let the next breath be her focus. “Thank you,” she said softly.



And a bad moment, though not the very worst:

He cut her off with a sweep of his hand. “Quiet!” he bellowed. “Ever since you arrived, you have defied me and stirred up things of which you have no part.”

Emi backed against the wall, putting as much space between her and Will’s hulking frame as possible. “You want me to keep my nose out of things? Fine, I’m leaving anyway. See?” She lifted the potato sack. “Now open those doors.”

Will’s dark eyes pinned her to the wall as effectively as manacles. “You will not leave,” he said between tight lips.

She uttered a short, incredulous laugh. “What?”

“You stay here until your purpose is accomplished.”

“Purpose? What purpose?” Emi swallowed, more acutely aware of her vulnerability now than she’d been on day one.

Will leaned in until his face was only inches from hers. He opened his mouth to speak, but winced instead as if struck. He clenched his eyes shut. When they opened, his dark brown irises flickered with red light. “You stay,” he growled, “as long as I need you.”


10. Where do they see themselves and their relationship in the next few years?
Will and Emi, as of the time of Blood Rose, wouldn’t really have an answer to this question. I would like to see them happily married, working together to advance medical science and heal people. In fact, I wanted to see that so much, that I once wrote a little piece of ‘fanfiction’ to get a glimpse of their lives a couple years down the road. (Can you write fanfiction of your own stories??)

Thanks for taking the time to meet my beastly Will and beautiful Emi!

What are your thoughts on Beauty and the Beast? Have you entered any of the Rooglewood Press contests? Speaking of which, the announcement of the winners is now two weeks away! *cue inner screaming*
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Beautiful People – 2016 plans

Tracey Dyck 32 Comments
It’s time for Beautiful People! I’ve missed doing these link-ups. I skipped the last three months, partially due to the Nano focus of the questions, but at last I’m participating again.

This round of questions is about writing plans and goals, which is perfectly timed. On my way home from the city earlier this week, I was talking out loud to myself and making plans for this year’s writing. (What? You guys don’t talk to yourself when you’re driving alone?) They’re rather ambitious, and I have to wonder if it’s insane to ask so much of myself, especially when 2016 is full of so many unknowns. But I want to aim high, and if Life has other ideas, so be it. Contrary to my usual thinking, goals can be adjusted.

Hosted by the lively gals Cait & Sky!


What were your writing achievements last year?

I finished up a couple rounds of edits on book 1. I read over book 2, outlined a new version of it, and had way too much fun masterminding stuff about the series as a whole. I completed a novella-sized retelling of Sleeping Beauty and entered it in the Five Magic Spindles writing contest. I also helped both my brother and a friend of mine edit their entries.

Tell us about your top priority writing project for this year.

I have three, actually! And now’s as good a time as any to whip out my 2016 Writing Goals.

January: Finish editing book 1.

February: Begin querying agents for book 1. (Yipes!) Review the outline of book 2 and do some research.
March-May: Draft book 2.
June: Draft Rooglewood entry.
July: Edit Rooglewood entry and send it off. (I’d like to be much more on the ball this year, so I’m going to try finishing it in two months. Two and a half, tops.)
August-December: Finish drafting book 2, and if I’ve actually managed to meet my monthly goals, I’d like to do a round or two of edits on it as well.
So to directly answer the question, my writing priorities are books 1 & 2 plus a fairy tale novella. Because these plans must be balanced with things called Work and (very hopefully) School, I’m trying to remember to take my own advice and have grace for myself if circumstances change and crowd out writing.
List 5 areas you’d like to work the hardest to improve this year.

Efficiency. I’d like to write more often, and write better when I do write. Even if all I can do is a little bit here and there, I want to be more consistent.

Moving forward. I’d like book 1 to be ready for the next phase.

Writing first drafts that aren’t littered with dragon-sized plot holes. It’s been about four-ish years since I’ve actually written a first draft for my fantasy series, and the most recent was possibly one of my worst. But I’ve grown since then, and I know a lot more about my fantasy world, so maybe the new book 2’s first draft will be more structurally sound. We can hope.


Continuing to cultivate my writing craft in general. One should never stop growing, after all.

Poetry. I wrote only seven poems last year, but I’d like to do more this year. Stretch my poet muscles. Try new techniques.
Are you participating in any writing challenges?
Only if you count the annual Rooglewood Press contest. Nano might be a possibility this year, but I’m not putting any expectations on myself.
What’s your critique partner/beta reader situation like and do you have plans to expand this year?
I stumbled into a wonderful Pack of writer gals online a year and a half ago, and have since had the pleasure of beta reading a number of their stories. Some of the girls have been betas for me too, which is heaps of fun. (My goodness, that sounds British: heaps of fun.) I’m quite content with my current situation, so no, I don’t have expansion plans.
Do you have plans to read any writer-related books this year? Or are there specific books you want to read for research?
Finish Gail Carson Levine’s “Writer to Writer,” which I started last year. I’ve heard that “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon is good, so maybe that too? I don’t have many specific titles in mind. I’ll probably look for some good books on mental illness (specifically delusion-related stuff, though there’s probably a nicer word for that). I have a character whose parents believe he’s crazy, resulting in psychologist appointments. I’d like to at least sound like I know what I’m talking about.
Pick one character you want to get to know better, and how are you going to achieve this?

Basically my entire supporting cast of book 2! Aileen’s and Josiah’s family members. The Shifters, a group of five elementals. Rex Nelson, the pilot. Yeah. Basically everyone. I’ll get to know them better by writing their story and doing character sketches.
Do you plan to edit or query, and what’s your plan of attack?
Some of both. See question #2. As for a plan of attack . . . with editing, it’ll be the usual process. With querying–well, that’s a whole new arena for me. So I have no idea!
Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  What are the books that you want to see more of, and what “holes” do you think need filling in the literary world?
More clean, excellent fantasy. Whether it’s Christian or not is almost besides the point. I want to see good fantasy–without all the foul language and sleazy content so many of them seem to carry.
More steampunk, because the genre is awesome and quite underrated.
And I don’t know if this is a hole, exactly . . . But I want to see an off-kilter story that plays with mind. One part crazed humor, one part creepy, and one part deeply hidden meaning. I have something like this cooking in my brain, but it’ll be a while before it’s ready to be written.
What do you hope to have achieved by the end of 2016?
I hope to have book 1 actually, for real complete–and if all goes well, I want to either have an agent or at least be actively querying. I hope to have another fairy-tale novella completed, and I also want to have book 2 drafted. Somewhat edited too, if I have the time. Like I said before, it really depends on how these next several months pan out.
If nothing else, I want to be able to look back on 2016 and say that I made good use of the writing time I had. (But if I’m honest, I’d really, really like that whole querying thing to . . . you know, be a thing.)
What do you think? Insane or doable? (Wait . . . don’t answer that.) What are your writing plans for the year?
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The Brightest Thread Playlist

Tracey Dyck 17 Comments

I sent The Brightest Thread off to the contest this week! Is it just me, or do you feel that little twinge of apprehension when your cursor hovers over the send button? And then click—you hit it, and suddenly the story is out of your hands. Strangely enough, I feel the most confident about this contest. Or perhaps there’s a little . . . I don’t want to say indifference, because I am excited . . . maybe peacefulness? Because I’d honestly be happy with whatever results. Winning = being published. Losing = not really losing at all, because I’m left with a story I love, a story that I would then be free to re-expand. (Yes, after all that cutting!)

Anyhoozens.

To celebrate, I’m posting a playlist I put together for TBT. Some pieces are instrumental, others lyrical. They all fit an element of the story. Because some of those pieces overlap, putting the songs in chronological order wasn’t a straightforward ordeal, but here they are. (Links to follow.)

Flight of the Silverbird – Two Steps from Hell – The whole story’s theme.

The Sun is Rising – Britt Nicole

A Thousand Years – Christina Perri – The most perfect theme for the story’s romance. Change thousand to hundred, and it’s like the song was written for this tale.

Lucy – Hanne Hukkelberg

Star Sky – Two Steps from Hell – When you listen, scroll down to one of the first YouTube comments. It contains the lyrics, which I would post here if I wasn’t concerned about copyright issues.

Calypso – At World’s End soundtrack

A Thousand Years – The Piano Guys (cover)

I would add more notes about each song and why they matter to the story, but . . .

Heard any of these pieces before? Do you ever make playlists for your writing? What’s your method of selecting songs? Feel free one or two (or ten)!
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Unraveling a Mess of Threads

Tracey Dyck 15 Comments
Alternate Title: How I Survived the Editing Axe
As many of you may know, my writing time over the past couple months has been all-consumed by editing The Brightest Thread, my Five Magic Spindles entry. (You can learn more about the contest HERE. I’ve also posted snippets, as well as featured my heroine and villainess for Beautiful People.)
 
 
But I’ve yet to regale you with how the actual process went, aside from brief mentions here and there.

 
First things first: I finished!!!!! At long last, fueled by sheer grit and determination and Two Steps From Hell music (pardon the name), I cut my entry down to exactly 20,000 words. Excuse me while I collapse in relief. Actually no, I can’t collapse. I have a post to share with you. Ahem.

 
I could go into all kinds of detail about how I finally came up with the idea for the story, how I read the Grimm and Perault originals, how I considered various genres before circling back to fantasy . . . But that would take too long. And if there’s one thing this contest has taught me, it’s conciseness.

 
So we’ll skip the beginning stages of my writing process, and simply say that I decided to pants this thing (as in, write by the seat of my pants, with little to no plan), which is not my usual method. What an adventure! Half the time I hadn’t a clue where things were going, and the other half of the time, I had only the most basic directions to follow.
Maybe that’s why the first draft ended up at 29,934 words. A huge problem, considering that the contest rules state 20k is the limit.
I should’ve seen it coming. My first chapter was 3k. THREE THOUSAND WORDS. Practically a seventh of the story! By the time Prince Hadrian entered the scene, I was halfway to the word limit. By the time he was anywhere close to rescuing Luci, my goodness, I had long since waved goodbye to 20k.
About two months after starting, I finished the first draft in a rush of glory and panic, ecstatic over the story I’d just unspooled . . . and freaking out over the task before me. How in the world could I amputate a third of the story? How would the tale survive? How would I survive?
I let my obese novella sit for a week and half, during which time I bemoaned my existence and wished I could pluck Aleida’s wand from the pages and use it to increase the word limit. Even 25k would be a relief!
But alas, it was not to be. And my complaining, which I’m sorry to say continued into the editing process, did nothing to help. Heh. Let that be a lesson to all of you!
 

Anyway, on September 8th, I sat down at my desk, opened the document, steeled myself, and commenced editing.
Now, here is another lesson. Do not try editing anything before reading over it first. Yes, you just wrote the thing. Yes, those words came from your brain. But you do not know them that well. You have been busy planting trees, but before you can prune them you must step back and see the forest, the big picture. I know this. A read-over has always been my first pre-editing step. Until The Brightest Thread. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why I even dreamed of skipping this step. Things may have gone more smoothly if I hadn’t.
So as I said, I jumped right into editing with high ambitions. I hefted my sharpened axe and attacked chapter 1.
And snipped off a teensy tiny few hundred words. “Well,” I said to myself. “That’s because this first chapter includes so much important setup. Surely the following chapters carry more fluff I can cull.”
Ha. Wrong.
In the name of conciseness again, I shall sum up that first miserable editing pass like this: my efforts only managed to get rid of about 3k words. Oh joy, oh bliss.
I then decided to lay down that ineffective axe and read over my existing material, something I should have done in the first place. Getting a bird’s-eye view of the story was helpful, but my next pass was still hard. I worked on it in a nonlinear fashion, combing over and over and over certain parts that I absolutely knew had the potential to shrink. I skipped from one spot to the other, targeting the easiest areas first and working my way to the grit-my-teeth-and-sacrifice-the-gorgeous-words areas. And when I thought I’d trimmed off all I could, I went back and shaved off more.
My techniques? Why, I’m so glad you asked! See, I’m not just rambling on about myself here. I really do want to offer you some nuggets of wisdom so that you have some tools next time your work falls under the knife.
  • Streamline. Streamline everything. Get that conversation right to the point. Put the characters where they need to be so that you don’t spend paragraphs moving them there. Every single scene must carry its weight.
  • Speaking of conversations (ha, see what I did there? No? Just me? Okay, never mind) . . . Ahem. Speaking of conversations, take a giant machete to your dialogue. Brevity is the soul of wit. Your dialogue might sparkle. It might amuse. It might snap with fiery spirit. But if it’s not serving to move the story along, it’s baggage. You can also use less speaker tags in favor of better action beats if that helps.
  • Attack the descriptions. You’d be surprised how many blanks a reader will fill in his or her imagination. Instead of spending a long paragraph describing the weather or a room or a person, pick one description that will pack a punch. Choose the most vivid, or the most necessary. All else must go.
  • Make a list of your scenes if you haven’t already. Having every piece of the story laid out made it much easier to see what was on the table, like having a map on which to mark out a battle plan. I even went so far as to write down the purpose of each scene. This helped me center each one around it’s reason for existence, thus trimming extra fluff.
  • Minor characters. Which ones are actually necessary? I needed that guard because he provided an important revelation for Luci, my heroine. But I didn’t need that oblivious elderly maid. She no longer exists. Poor Meris. Or another example: I needed at least one minor character to illustrate an important change in Luci’s circumstances, but the scene held two or three. I shortened the laughs (it was an amusing scene, and one of my favorites) by keeping it down to one minor character. You can also combine characters if possible. I did this once.
  • Subplots. Again, what can you afford to cut? Yes, they may be delicious twists, but if you can simplify or get rid of them, it goes a long way. I sacrificed at least one subplot concerning the villainess.
  • Enter your scene late and leave it early. Does the scene take half a page to get to the meat, the really interesting part? Start right there. Forget the intro. And make sure you end off sooner rather than later, at a place that will make the reader want to keep going. This piece of advice was huge for me!
  • Look for unnecessary words and banish them to the abyss. There’s nothing wrong with adverbs, but when every word counts, a punchier verb is often the better choice. “Whispered” is shorter than “said softly.” “Trembling” is shorter than “nervously twitching.” I Googled lists of unnecessary words and searched my manuscript for them. I was able to sluice off hundreds in one afternoon. Some examples of unneeded words or phrases are: could, start/started to, began/began to, that, then, somewhat, somehow, really, completely, very, say, all, just.

Some of this I simply realized myself. The point about starting late and leaving early I picked up from an article on Go Teen Writers. The entire post was helpful. And a couple more were given me by Rachel Heffington @ The Inkpen Authoress. (I discovered that her entry for Five Glass Slippers two years ago had been about as oversized as mine to begin with . . . yet she managed to trim it down, AND she won a place in the collection. Inspired by her success, I emailed her asking for advice, which she graciously offered. The advice about dialogue and description were largely from her.)

Because graphs are fun, and because graphs relating to wordcount data are even more fun, I made some!

This one displays my first draft wordcount as it went up to almost 30k.

And this one displays my cutting progress, as I shaved 10k excess down to zero. It was pretty intense at the end there. The last week or two, on every spare day or half-day off, I holed up in my room to work on cutting. Some days I put in as many hours as a full shift at work, emerging bleary eyed to update my family on progress.

I suppose that saying I went at it with an axe is inaccurate, because as hard as I tried to cut away entire scenes . . . I guess I’m too good at pacing? Most of the scenes were actually necessary. And trust me, I reassessed and reassessed many times to be sure. So I compressed like crazy. I think I vacuum-packed the story. I didn’t hack; I whittled. Oh, and I wasn’t just cutting: I edited too. Some of the corrections required adding words rather than subtracting.

Now I hope that what’s left is a pithy story, rich despite its brevity–not a sack of story bones with no meat left on them. I really hope I haven’t sucked it dry.

You can see how crazy the final sprint was: on October 26th, I started with 899 excess words remaining, and shrank it 54 excess words. Only 54! I would’ve wrapped it up right then and there, but at that point it was late, and I needed to sleep for work the next day. Oh, did that bite! I wanted so badly to be done. But I woke up early and managed to finish before heading out. Woohoo!

And now . . . Now the cutting is finished. I succeeded. I can hardly believe it. Every other step of the way was full of doubt. I even considered not entering the contest at all, for the sake of preserving my story. But I still have the old drafts, and if I don’t win this year, I’ll be more than happy to re-expand The Brightest Thread. There’s so much I didn’t get to explore, even in the chubby first draft.

For now, though, all that’s left is to read it over a few times to make sure it’s polished to the best of my ability, and then it gets sent to the judges!

But questers! My faithful blogglings! I FINISHED! Hallelujah!

And you have finished reading this lengthy post. So much for being concise, eh? Go on: share your own tips for shrinking stories. I’d love to hear them!

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