Bettina's Books: An Amazon Scorned Update

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

An Amazon Scorned Update

Remember the modern-day Amazon story I started talking about 2 days ago? The working title is "An Amazon Scorned", and now I'm at more than 126,000 (aka 277 pages).

I'm trying to get to the end of this project, but it's tricky. I need to wrap up most of the loose ends, set up for the sequel, and do it all without slipping into the fatal trap of exposition.

As a result, what should have been a day's work of writing a few scenes has turned into a few weeks of agonizing over the nuances of those few scenes.

On the positive side, my writing style has remained relatively constant throughout this project, and the quality isn't suffering... the only casualty is my self-imposed deadline of finishing by tomorrow.

There's still hope that I can finish tomorrow, as I've set aside a few hours solely for writing. Either way, I'll post tomorrow night about my progress.

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Writing Prompts: Traditional and Bookends

This section contains traditional prompts--those that inspire writers to start a short story or novel. It also contains a type of prompt that I created: the Bookend Prompts.

For the Traditional Prompts, take my suggestions and start writing! Feel free to tweak, alter, or completely reinvent the prompts to suit whatever story you want to write.

Traditional Prompt:
"I always knew that jumping jacks were dangerous. Now, I had proof..."

Bookend Prompts: Use the pair of prompts listed below as the beginning and end of your writing. A bit more challenging, but I know you can do it!

Bookend Prompts

1a. Why me?

1b. When he heard the sizzling of meat on the grill, he knew he was home.

For more writing prompts, check back regularly in the main blog (center column). I'll post more as I think of them!

Fanfiction Links

Even with a solid grasp of writing basics, it can still be intimidating to create an entire world of your own in which to write. Has this setting been done before? Are the plot twists too predictable? Are the characters no more than stock cut-outs, or are they so original that a reader won't know how to empathize with them?

To avoid those pitfalls, I suggest starting with fanfiction. You can't make money off of it, because the characters and settings have already been taken by established writers, but you can practice emulating writing styles, character descriptions, and plot twists until you're confident enough to use these elements in your own writing.

There are sites online that will host your fanfiction, but be sure to add a disclaimer at the beginning of these stories, so that it's apparent you aren't trying to horn in on another author or screenwriter's meal ticket. At these links you will find several (okay, so it's a few dozen) of my fanfiction attempts. These are Supernatural and Magnificent Seven fictions, sometimes crossed with other shows or characters, such as Highlander, The Pretender, and Boondock Saints.

Standard disclaimer for stories in this section: These characters aren't mine, and I'm writing for fun, not profit. No copyright infringement intended.