Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Weekly Rants: December 12, 2012



Greetings Fellow Readers! Welcome to another round of random ranting. This week is the final week on my 'Thoughts on Writing' Facebook posts. I hope my thoughts back in early 2012 were insightful and helpful. Also today I am going to address 'Arcana Magi Universe'.

Thoughts on Writing
[Writing Experimentation: 

       One of the things I'll start with is my use of the " and ' in Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.1 and a few others. One of the things I thought when I wrote dialog was how sentences would go something like this; "What about me?" She said. "I want to come to." and the quotations looked more like finishing a dialog rather than continuing. So I tried this; "What about me?' She said. 'I want to come to." The single quotation had a more soft pause rather than an abrupt end, denoting more dialog and a consistent flow when reading characters statements.

        It was interesting at first. That was until I came across two problems. One, was that sometimes I had to write a narrative beyond the phrase 'She said.' and could sometime go for more than two lines. Even though it gave the denotation that there was more dialog, it came off as looking off and inconsistent. Two, contractions in the follow up dialog; "What a minute?' She said. 'Isn't that wrong?" Having two ' in such short spaces started throwing me off during writing, especially it's. While it made for an interesting experiment, I went back to using " for the beginning and end of all dialog as seen in last years 'Arcana Magi' and 'Beyond Logic'.

        Another experiment became very logical. Using ***. Ever since I started writing on Fictionaut, the problem I had was always that page sandbox where all my writing get copy pasted in. It would be an endless wall of text with no breaks. Since this the internet and not a paperback trade, I've learn that reading would be difficult. I tried to look for different ways to remedy that from writing small for each chapter, which disrupted my writing pace to separating every line, which is not very presentable.

         That's when I started using this *** at the end of each scenario. I felt this would help reader take their time reading the story with being overwhelmed by a endless wall of text. This also actually helped me improve my writing and gave me a new technique to approach with each chapter. I know use *** for each scene in my stories, treating each scene as it own sub-chapter. This allows me to attempt a beginning, middle, and end in between each *** while maintaining the overall story. It helped me really work in the plot and sub-plot seamlessly, and it helped me transition from scene to scene avoiding writing needless words showing characters travel from point a to point b. Most importantly, *** made sure something was always happening in the story with each scene.

         Lastly, one of the things I tried was writing narrative without dialog. As I have explained in part 1, the reason why I left out dialog in First Person writing was because the narrator is talking to you directly and we don't say "He is going to the bathroom" John said in real conversation. But what about third person. As you may have noticed, starting with 'Arcana Magi' I dedicated an entire chapter telling a story without dialog. I'm not sure how it worked for the reader, but I thought it would be interesting to try. I applied this in my 'Duality of Horror' short 'Feral' given who the protagonist was.

          I found writing this way is very interesting and will continue to write this way without dialog in Third Person, from time to time. I understand the need for dialog, because of character development and connecting with personality, but I believe if done right, no dialog writing can be just as effective as dialog itself. If done right.

Final Thoughts: 
    
          So that's pretty much what I to say about writing. It is a wonderful experience as I have said many times. I will keep experimenting in writing. There will be many pratfalls with the successes as try different things, but this is something I won't give up on. Now that I have Kindle Publishing along side Fictionaut posting, I have plenty of options on where to write and allow me to approach each work professionally. There are a lot more stories to come, and I thank you all for accompanying me for the ride.]

 Arcana Magi Universe:

So we've reached the last chapter of 'Arcana Magi Universe' 2012 season. A lot than last year's, but I had fun writing them and I hope you had fun reading the adventure. Which begs the question 'Where to go from here?' Well, this would be the part where I would wait until October next year to start 2013 season, giving everyone a chance to read everything 'Arcana Magi', but having seen the traffic every week this year, and especially last year, I feel I'm losing the audience when October comes around due to a year long wait. So I decided that I will write up another 'Arcana Magi' story sometime between February and March. When I don't know so stay tuned. I will be using the Christmas and January break to sort everything out.

I am also thinking about compiling some of the 'Arcana Magi' stories together for Kindle release, making it convenient for anybody interested in not sitting in front of their computer to read an endless wall of text. Doing this may also bring a quick edit to polish up the stories. Again I have not decided anything in stone yet, I'm not even sure which 'Arcana Magi' to continue with. I still need to write new Original stories for Kindle exclusively and continue current brands I started earlier this year like 'Beyond Logic', 'Chain + Fate', and 'De x Maquina'.

Basically I want 2013 to be a big year between Fictionaut and Kindle, but it's going to take time. Writin' ain't easy. ;)

Next Week I'll have something for 'Thoughts on Writing' so I'll see you all then.

Until Next Time...
See ya.

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