June 2024 Writing Update

This was a busy month for me because I had multiple work deadlines, one of which I’m still working to meet. The self imposed ones I’m okay with not completing if I can’t meet them. There were a couple that I had to get done no matter what. They were my priority. I can tell that this upcoming week could be very busy, but I’m still going to try to fit my writing in so that I can finish the first ten percent of this draft.

I’ve reached the point where I only need to write a few more scenes and I will be done this part of my novel. I know roughly what will happen in these scenes so its just a matter of sitting down and writing them. These scenes include an event that the others scenes have been building up to, and the inciting force. My story is a bit of a portal fantasy and these are the scenes that the portalling takes place in.

I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve been wanting too expand on the different side characters. I was going to make other scenes that will have my protagonist interacting with them. The thing is that I don’t want to pad out my story too much. Besides I am focusing on scenes that are required to complete not only my protagonists, but also the character my B-plot is centered around.

It’s interesting because apparantly B-plots are commonly romantic subplots, at least according to the save the cat write ups I’ve read through as a guide for my pacing. I’m going to go in a different direction. This is a platonic love subplot and I hope I can do it some justice.

As I’m reaching the end of this part I’ve found my self considering adding interludes into my novel. In both my first chapter and my earlier attempts at writing this story, I had more than two point of view characters. I’ve since cut that down to only two. Most of these side plots were so short that I didn’t need to spread them out so much. I could include them still, but instead of making them into side plots followed by side characters, I can focus on my protagonist and the B-plot while having the side story be told in short interlude chapters showing the impact of my characters on the world.

I can put one interlude chapter between each of the parts I’ve split my novel into. Each part is a manageable part of the novel that follows my two main characters within one or more locations. There are several parts that I’ve outlined and between them there is a bit of space for other stories to be told to give a bit of a breather before the next part starts.

If I have time this week I’ll definitely be writing the first interlude of my novel. Now that I think of it, the interlude I’m thinking of would fit better at the end of part two. The “interlude” after part one will be my introduction to the B-plot and my second perspective character, and I don’t think introducing more than one perpective at once is a good idea for this novel. I can still write the interlude I had in mind of course. I will label them as interludes in Scrivener so I can move them around.

Now next week is going to be the first week of a short fiction month and I’m already planning on submitting even more fiction to different places. I didn’t end up submitting more fiction this month just because of how the month went, however since I heard back about a couple of my pieces of fiction that means that technically I have more stories I could potentially send out. By the way, I’ve gotten rejections back from most of the stories I submitted in May. I still need to update Scrivener to reflect those rejections, but I’ll do that next week.

I really want to push my fiction writing this upcoming month. Because it’s now summer and my schedule is clearing up a bit, I can go to my little place down by the waterfront and just write for an hour or two. I will try to write an entire short story draft at once since I do need some more short stories to revise. I’ll try to do that multiple times. All the fiction I write away from home is either a new story or a story that I’m completely rewriting from scratch. Actual revision will get done at home.

Now a little bit of a blog update. Because I started posting my book reviews here last week, I guess that means that this blog is now a five blog post a week blog. These additional two posts a week don’t give me that much more work since I was already writing them for my local newspaper. The one I post on Wednesday will always be a book review that was published weeks ago in the newspaper (with some minor edits), and the one I post on Saturday will always be a book review I decided to hold back for whatever reason (mostly nerdy reasons). On Saturday I can also post reviews about other things if I feel like it. I could write about video games or movies or even comics and manga. I’m free to do what I want.

I’m still behind on blog renovations, but this summer seems like a nice time to push that ahead. Don’t be surprised if you come here and suddenly there are changes all over the place. That’s what I want. I want this blog to both be readable and pleasing to look at.

And that is it for my writing update. If I didn’t mention a project it’s because I didn’t really work on it this month. I’ll probably work on it when I’m a bit less busy.

Now until next month (or technically tomorrow when my next post will be published),

-Cristyn Hart