Month: April 2018

Rewriting Part 1

Standard

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on rewriting, as this is my first project to be rewritten, but bear with me, my friends, and we’ll get through this thing together.

The first thing I had to do was reread the original novella. It didn’t take long, as it was only 26k words. It was interesting in some ways, because it was almost like reading something that someone else had written. It’s been so long, that I’d forgotten some of the details, and it was like reading it anew.

The next step for me was to decide what I wanted to keep. I made a sort of list in order to make sure I didn’t forget. It went like this:

  1. Characters. Almost all of them, obviously my two main characters, plus Mai-hua (my main character’s foster sister), her brother Jie-kang, the Emperor, Elder Breena, the Huo-long prince, etc.
  2. Premise. The two nations of the Shui-long and the Ceffyl Dwr are at war. Mai-hua wants to put an end to the war.
  3. World-building. What I had, I decided to keep. Both the Shui-long and the Ceffyl Dwr are somewhat amphibious beings that live on both land and water. There are five dragon nations.
  4. Tone/mood
  5. Some scenes from the original story.

Then, I decided what I wanted to revise. Another list. Can you tell that I like lists? I’m generally not a very organized person, so lists are good for me.

  1. Character roles: In the original story, Xin-jian didn’t know Mai-hua’s plans to make peace with the Ceffyl Dwr and only found out when she nearly died. In this story, I made them both a part of the plot, and made it so that Jie-kang’s entrance into the story is also rewritten, because in the original, he is only very briefly mentioned.
  2. Narrative arc: the whole story changes, with the exception of a few scenes that I think I will keep. Some scenes I want to keep, but am not sure how to fit them in to the new narrative arc.
  3. World-building: needs a vast amount of improvement. The original had a facade of world-building, but wouldn’t hold up under pressure or a more detailed examination.
  4. Length: this story needs much more room. It will probably span at least two novels.

There you have it. As I go on, I will definitely let you know more of what’s happening with that. Also, if I finally finish my dev edits, you will be the second to know (the first being my publishers/editors).

Thanks for tuning in!

Across Borders Take Two

Standard

THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S DAY JOKE

Hello all,

I have yet to finish my dev edits. Such is my shame. However, I am starting yet another project, which some of you may have already read about in previous posts.

I am going to do a complete rewrite of Across Borders, which is the first novella that I ever wrote for Less Than Three Press as part of The Bestiary collection. It’s since gone out of print, and I thought it would be cool to revamp it and resub it to the same publisher. For some reason, it was a fairly popular novella, even if it didn’t get the same ratings as some of my other work. 

Here’s what it looked like on its first go around:

bestiary4across

This cover was done back in 2012. Back then (in the olden days), Less Than Three Press didn’t do separate covers for every novella, so every novella in The Bestiary volume 4 had the same cover. Some of you probably remember, even! I was fresh out of my BA, and was ready for anything. Ah, my youthful idealism. 

Anyway. That’s the first cover art I ever received, and I can tell you that I was thrilled with it. Nowadays, LT3 has all sorts of lovely cover art and talented artists. We’re spoiled, really. But as a newbie author, I was happy with it. You can even see the little kelpie symbol in the top corners. 

I still do like my first published work, the original Across Borders, which was a romance between warriors of two warring states, but it is, admittedly, a juvenile work. One thing I can improve on in the story I want to write is world-building as well as narrative story arc. I’m looking forward to it.

These are my characters Xin-jian and Tiernan. The art was done by V. Rios for the 2012 publication.

across borders

My characters from Across Borders

As you can see, the two of them are shifters, one is a Chinese dragon shifter, and the other a kelpie. As a few of you probably realize, Celtic Ireland/Wales/Scotland is pretty far away from China. I also didn’t really think of time periods/historical accuracy. I just wanted to tell the story of two people who are from vastly different cultures falling in love. I think it’s the love story that carried it, because the story-telling needed improvement.

Not to say that I wasn’t a good writer in 2012. My action scenes are pretty epic, and continue to be one of my stronger points to this day. 

The long and the short of it is that I think the story I want to tell needs to be fleshed out more. I’ve already outlined what is probably going to be two novels, and it’s turning out a lot different than the first one. But the core remains, that is, the love story between two cultures is still there.

I will keep you all updated! I’m doing the first rewrite I’ll ever do, and it should be a fun journey for me. I’ll probably release another blog post on rewrites soon!

Until then!