Be Specific!

It's been a while since I've posted, granted, I've been super busy.

Let's see, first there was con, which was overall fun, I would say.  I am very impressed with how my Tifa cosplay turned out.  I tried out a new River Song cosplay, which was also a big hit.  Then I did Kim Possible, which I almost wished I'd done for a longer day, but oh well.  Then there was my Navi cosplay (which I've taken out before) and I got the usual reaction of everyone telling me "Bad Navi! Stop!"  Twas fun.  I wasn't too impressed with the panels, there were a few that were good, but overall meh.  However, a couple of them got me thinking that I want to put up a panel of my own come Tucson Comic Con in November.  That, and I want to be more involved with AZ TARDIS.

But enough about con.  More for my writing!

I've noticed something over the past couple of drafts of my book, things work better when I'm more descriptive!

For example, say one of my characters is straightening her dress.  Well, that's all fine and dandy, but why is this significant? Is she nervous for her upcoming date? Is the dress bewitched to be wrinkly? That little bit of info makes the story so much more real and relatable (and more fun to read).  Another example would be "music playing in the background".  What type of music? Is it good dancing music? Is it loud, screeching music? Is it boring classical? (Not all classical music is boring, but maybe the character thinks it's boring?)  Even adding in little words like "she smoothed her dress nervously" or "upbeat music played in the background" adds another level to the story.

Sure, as an author, I could go more in depth.  "She straightened her dress, knowing it was futile because the dress was bewitched to be wrinkly, but she thought that maybe, just maybe she could get it to be wrinkle-free just this one time."  Or, "Loud music played in the background and the couple felt that it wasn't appropriate for a school dance at all, there wasn't a consistent beat to dance to.  What was the DJ thinking?"

I suppose I should be careful to make sure that I'm not being OVERLY descriptive, for that can lose readers faster than a lack of description.  Too many adjectives in a sentence makes the noun seem really small.  Every word should count.  Every. Single. One. Of. Them.  I was just talking about this with a fellow author, actually.  So, yeah.

Anyway, that's my two-cents for now.

Ciao!

Updates

A couple of things...

Most of them involve me not writing.

I know! Bad author! You should be writing!

Except it's really hard to write when you've got a migraine.  I had a migraine both yesterday and the day before yesterday, which, combined with the amount of things I need to be doing around the house at the moment, seem to be equalling no writing.  Sadness.

I got some writing down yesterday, which, if you follow my tumblr, you know that I was super brain dead.  As brain dead as I would have been if I'd just taken the 6 exams I'd previously written about.  Yep.  Fun times.  Stupid migraine.

Today, got the rest of that chapter finished with semi-new material.  New material to this part of the book.

We have gotten to the point where I'm moving large plot-points to a more logical order.  I think I will talk about that in-depth in another blog post.  But, so far, it's been one part copy-paste, two parts filling in the holes that I leave behind and create anew.  Woo.

This also means it's slower going, which is discouraging for me, who needs to have this done by June 30th, so I have something not-embarrassing to get five free copies out of from CreateSpace.

I also won't be writing for the next several days because of Phoenix Comic Con.  While that will be excellently fun and one of my friends has promised to introduce me to some really nice YA authors, I won't be writing, which is sad.

Sad writer not writing.  Sad.

Le sigh.

However, I am confident with my new timeline, now I just need to write it all out.

Nano Challenge Days 2-5

So... I spent Nano days 2-5 at a con, basically.  My sister, hereby known as rarmaster, came down to Tucson where the con was.  (Tucson Comic-Con.)  Tiny con, but I am part of the group called AZ TARDIS, which was invited to the con and we used the whole thing as a fundraiser for  JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation).  We raised a lot of money for them, which was pretty darn sweet.  (AKA, we sold raffle tickets and raffled off Doctor Who paraphernalia.)  I cosplay as River Song, my boyfriend cosplays as Eleven.  (For you Doctor Who fans out there.)  

Then, combine that with Dungeons and Dragons... I didn't get too much writing done those three days.  I pretty much was drastically under-part.  (And I didn't catch up during that time.)  (I won't say if I'm caught up yet now or not though, because that's another blog post!)

Regardless, I had loads of fun.  

Most of my writing was more along the lines of research and stuff.  I completely came up with different names for the months and days of the week.  My book takes place in a completely different universe, so it makes sense for things like that to have different names.  Yes, I could continue to use things like August and September, Saturday and Monday, but what I came up with is pretty cool.  If you want to know, I can put in a completely separate post as to what I've done.  (I might do that anyway, but it'd still be nice if someone expressed interest...)

I don't often have time to read...

But I've been making an effort to do so this semester.  I read the Hunger Games and they were pretty good.  I read Hugo, also good.

I absolutely ADORED 'Angel's Kiss' (a Doctor Who book).  I read it in just over 24 hours (I had to stop and do things like school and homework and stuff).  But I completely enjoyed it! I even livetumbled all of my favorite lines from it.  (The ones that weren't TOO spoilery.  Though, ALL of the lines were spoilery.  And, considering the fact that it's River we're talking about, EVERYTHING is a spoiler.)  You should read that book, btw, if you like Doctor Who.

Last night, I just finished Divergent.  Good book, written very well.  I'm going to start the sequel after Tucscon Comic Con this weekend.  I'm not going to say too much on it because I'm still processing everything that happened in the last few chapters.  O.O

Erm, that's all I'm going to say for now, I've got class starting in a couple of minutes.