Fourth draft done!

 Just finished the fourth draft of my first novel! At 77k, it's still a fairly short novel, but way better than the ~50k of draft 1.

Also, I'm really starting to like the book.

Audio/Video Story Teasers #2: The PAEAN Project

 

Here's the second video in my series of short audio/video teasers, this one for my historical fiction journal story, The Paean Project. I really liked the slow escalation of tension and worsening conditions that go through this story.

This excerpt is from the middle of the story and happens after one of the astronauts has some kind of heart attack. The mission is still slated to slingshot around the moon, but right before they lose radio contact...

Check it out on YouTube!

What is The Derelict Project?

Image by Karsten Winegeart, via Unsplash

As my first novel nears completion, I thought it would be fun to talk a little about what I call "The Derelict Project" and what I like about it.

Back when I was in the darkest days of grad school, I was spending 8-10 hours a day flailing hopelessly at a broken experiment and wasn't sure whether I was going to end up with anything after seven years in grad school.

In those dark days, I wanted something positive, maybe even hopeful, to spend a little of my time on. Something that I had always wanted to try, but never really put any time into: writing fiction. Specifically, science fiction, and, even more specifically, science fiction about people in a future, when spaceflight becomes common, dealing with search, rescue, and exploration of craft that had lost their way for one reason or another.

Audio/Video Story Teasers #1: The Fifth

 

In my earlier post, A New(-ish) Way to Plug, I said I was making some short teaser videos featuring excerpts from some of my short stories, and my initial idea was to throw these on Twitter or use them to make Facebook ads.

Well, I've completed a few of them, and here's what I've learned:

Weight (flash fiction, about 650 words)

This little piece was something I tried for the same writing forum flash fiction contest a month after "A Hell of an Anticlimax." You can see that I tried a lot harder to keep the plot and action simple and minimal, to give myself more space for what I thought was really important.

Weight

The streaks hanging across the dyed-pink, sunset sky were grim proof of the situation. They stood out in sharp contrast to the gently rolling fields that splayed out in all directions from the base.

An Unexpected Side-Effect of Editing

Image courtesy Patrick Fore, via Unsplash

Editing a novel is an extremely time-consuming process, I'm learning. I guess I could go faster, but I feel like if I did, I would miss things and be in too much of a hurry.

I've been tracking the word count of the novel through each step of the editing process, and I thought it would be worth making a little point about the length of written works.

Don't worry too much if things seem a bit short on your first draft. As you read through and redraft, you'll find places to add material--character reactions, atmospheric details, etc.

A Hell of an Anticlimax (about 650 words)

Image courtesy Peter Herrmann, via Unsplash

 I wrote this for a flash fiction contest in the middle of last year, and never posted it anywhere else. Unfortunately, that contest had a maximum of 650 words, I think? And my first draft came out at nearly three times that. So, this little piece is a good example of what happens when you try to bite off more than you can chew, and also what happens when you try to gut a too-long story to meet an arbitrary length limit.

I remember quite vividly the moment that I accidentally saved over my first draft at around 1800 words after cutting about half of the story.

I present this to you as a bit of a cautionary tale...

A Hell of an Anticlimax

My friend Sam flips houses, and he always drags me along. Last year, it was a little cottage by a river. Today, a stately mansion behind a rusty iron fence.

“You've got to see inside!” he said, leaping out of the car. It was three stories of filthy brick. The windows were crusty gray. Inside, the floors were damaged hardwood. The walls were discolored and peeling. I could see pipes through holes, and nasty water stains.

“It's a... fixer-upper,” was all I could muster.

“It has potential!” He practically sang it.

Potential energy maybe. To fall on us.