Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I see some real problems with some of my current works. One is probably not too difficult to solve in edits and the other is much harder to deal with.

I have a habit of picking undereducated protagonists. Luc in Blood Red Roulette, Nine in a currently unnamed fantasy, Kaleo in Behind Blue Eyes, Strange in Project Fierce and even Sverre in Voluntary Nightmare. All of them have spotty education or in the case of Nine, none. Here's my problem, speech patterns. I have trouble making them sound undereducated. In reality it isn't hard to fix when I'm editing it, but the other problem is, I never like how they sound when I do it. I'm not really sure what to do other than mentally slap myself the next time I see myself trying to write an undereducated character (suggests always welcome).

The more intense and difficult issue has to do with Sverre's story. I really want to write it but I'm struggling with it. It came to me last night why. It is slightly dystopic (well it's more your typical country being oppressed, you know look around and we see it today) AND it's shaping up to be one of those big battle epics with one major difference. It's dieselpunk era with magic. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm so over that sort of thing. Politics bore me. So how in the world did I start writing something that involves a mad king, an army scapegoat and the beginning of the destruction of an entire way of life (and am pretty sure needs to have two books to do it in)? I used to love this sort of thing but something in my head has shifted.

I'm wondering if there is any way to nudge this closer to the Fullmetal Alchemist mold. If you think about it, FMA had many of the same elements BUT we didn't see too much of the political manuevering and the huge battle scene was mostly at the end. It's a weird place to be with characters you love in a story you're not sure is something you can do any more. I'm not sure I can see the forest for the trees with this one.

In other news, evil_little_dog and I might be working on something together again (though I would like to see us fix Red Skies and edit Ties). It's been years since we've tried so it'll be interesting.


Yearly word count -

1702 / 100000
(1.7%)

Standing Among Stones - Submitted

Project Fierce - editing

If Two of Them are Dead - awaiting edits from DSP

Splinters & Soldiers - didn't touch. Bad CoM, shame on you.