Yzabel / November 10, 2005

Of Noticing Details When Not Supposed To

This thought hit me yesterday, while watching an episode of Monk, and this is probably why I’m going to link this to mystery novels and other kinds of “investigation” stories. How noticeable is a detail for an untrained person? To which extent can we consider that our characters are able to notice certain types of details more than other types? Of course, there’s a difference to be made here between knowledge learnt from books/school, knowledge learnt from experience/training/practice, and knowledge that one can happen to have because they stumbled upon it at some point in their lives, without their career and social/familial situation explaining it. The latter is always the one that is the trickiest for me: what is acceptable, and what is just a deus ex machina mechanism chosen by the author as a convenient solution?Read More

Yzabel / November 7, 2005

Storyright – Story Planner

It’s only today that I’ve discovered this site, which is still in it beta version, but looks pretty interesting all the same: Storyright. From what I’ve seen of it, it’s a story planner that lets you write about your story, its themes, its plots and subplots, as well as fill out “character sheets” (the latter including various data fields: physical description, role in the story, education, likes&dislikes, etc). I’ve signed up for an account, although I haven’t toyed with all the functions yet, but all in all, this seems like a nice and free alternative to the expensive software out there such as Power Writer (which is good in my opinion, but I really don’t have 190$ to shell out for a planning software right now). Story outlines can also be exported as Word documents, so that your work isn’t totally dependent on the state of the server on which the site is hosted.So far, what bothers me with it is that it only seems to work as intended under IE, and that, well, you need to have an Internet connection to use it. For the rest, I haven’t tested it enough to tell. It looks like it refreshes fast, at the least.outline, planning, story, storyright, writing

Yzabel / November 6, 2005

Outlining, planning, writing

I probably mentioned this in passing a few times here: shall I go on with writing “depending on my inspiration”, or adopting a more thorough way of planning? I was never sure of what method would be best for me. Would I need to plan carefully, or just run with the inspiration? After a few weeks of trying to change my ways of doing, I’ve started to wonder if, in this like in many other aspects of my life and work, it’s not the middle ground that would work best. And recently, it occurred to me that the problem for me exists in two forms: I don’t need outlining for a short story, but I sure do for a novel.Read More

Yzabel / November 4, 2005

He Said, She Gasped, They Ejaculated: Dialogue Expletives

Ah, the sweet sound of dialogue, and of the many methods to present it in a lively fashion… What is it, then, that I see on the horizon? Is this the fear of using “said” too often, perhaps? Shall I replace it by more varied expletives?Although this is something I haven’t done too often when writing in French, I must admit that a few years ago, when I started to use English on the Web instead of only limiting myself to lessons and homework, I thought that all these expletives were great, that they added variety and flair to my dialogues. The simple “said” and “asked” words seemed too bland to my liking, and I was convinced that they could become boring way too soon, and should be replaced whenever possible.I think I was wrong.Read More

Yzabel / November 2, 2005

World-Detailing in Science-Fiction and Fantasy Stories

Due to having gotten up way too early for my own sake this morning, yet not being fresh enough to properly work on my NaNovel, I was sifting through my “How to…” book by Orson Scott Card again, and this is when I realized that he had at some point written something that sounded true: in works of sci-fi and fantasy, the way many authors depict the worlds they have created isn’t the same as the way an author in other kinds of fiction would do. Or, should I say, us readers don’t interpret it the classical way, and tend to read between the lines, perhaps.Read More

Yzabel / October 31, 2005

November Is At Our Door… What With The Blog?

I thought I’d make an entry about this. Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo starts, and you can expect me to be busy enough during the upcoming month. However, I’m not sure of how often I’ll keep the blog updated (and my other blogs as well; it all goes in the same basket). I’m not going to make a “will update on such-and-such days only, blah-blah” disclaimer, because I’m pretty sure I will have the opportunity to update more regularly than I thought, or less often, or at different times than I normally do… Not going to make a fool out of myself with a false statement. If I update, it means that I had the time, if I don’t, it means I didn’t have it.What is sure is that:

  • I’ll do my best to keep things updated more than only once every two weeks.
  • I can be a damn fast writer when I need to, trust me. I may actually end up becoming a power engine with words shooting out of my fingers at light-speed. The downside is that I’ll probably not edit, nor even re-read anything, so expect typos.
  • I may go the road of short posts, instead of long essays. These will likely resume in December.
  • Long live the laptop, the WiFi and the 20m CAT 5 cable that allows me to write wherever I want to in the house, including the cellar, and bathroom, and even in front of a movie. No, I won’t be asocial, only multi-tasking!

This said, good luck to every NaNo participant. Thanks goodness November 1st is a national holiday here, this way I can start like a rocket.blogging, NaNoWriMo, posts, updating

Yzabel / October 30, 2005

The NaNo Playlist Is Here

Time to change the radio’s contents again. These are a few of the songs and instrumental pieces I’ve gathered to keep me inspired not only during November, but also while preparing the outline, working on the characters, etc.The novel’s genre is sci-fi with a healthy dose of cyberpunk, so let’s not be too surprised at the choice of songs (even though not all of them will suit fast-paced scenes: I have a few quiet moments in it, too).Read More

Yzabel / October 29, 2005

In The Pursuit Of A RSS Reader

I’m posting this entry from Flock, just to test the blog function in it. Believe it or not, I hadn’t done that yet (although I’d say the only real interest with it for the moment would be to get the WordPress.com account, if there’s still someone around who hasn’t gotten one). So far, things seem to work well, except that… “where are my categories?!” I wonder if I’ll be able to pick one later on. Hmm.

The other new of the moment is that I think I’ve finally set on a non-web RSS feeds reader. To be honest, SharpReader and FeedDemon, as hyped as they are, don’t cut it for me. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s a question of looks, of “feeling” with them. A software can be extremely powerful, if I don’t have the right feeling with it (and this has nothing to do with “looking like an OS X interface” or anything of the same kind), I won’t be at ease with it. Alright, I also didn’t want to settle down with something I needed to pay, I admit; there are way enough pieces of software I’ve paid for, and I’m starting to grow broke.

Thus, I’ve been using RSS Reader since the beginning of the week, and it seems to do the job well enough for me (BottomFeeder was nice, but getting on my nerves, with some new posts it’d pick ten times a day and crashing every hour or so). It’s also been able to read feeds that BottomFeeder couldn’t; don’t ask me why, I just know it couldn’t. The only not-so-funny thing is that there hasn’t been any newer version in the past months. However, I don’t know if this is really a problem per se.

I think I’ve pretty much toured enough readers as of now. I’ll still keep an eye open, though.

EDIT: Indeed, no way of choosing categories. Argh.blogging, flock, rss, rss+reader

Yzabel / October 28, 2005

Yet Another Blog Idea…

Somehow, I must be crazy, masochistic and liking to juggle many tasks, because it’s been days I’ve been toying with an idea for a blog about vector artists. Not as a community, not as a place to submit works, simply as a page where I could present these artists I find on the Web, whether professionals or not. (Alright, no kidding, I wouldn’t start running a whole community; this is WAY too time-consuming to my liking, and from past experiences, it’s really not that gratifying at all in the end. I don’t like burning out.)

You’d think such ideas would come to me when I have really plenty of time, but noooo, of course, it has to hit me right before NaNo starts and I’m seriously revising the whole outline for my sci-fi/science-fantasy/fantasy-that-isn’t-fantasy-anymore big story (now that Kittin has said she wanted in, a lot of things deserve the reworking). I both love and hate being like this, my mind bubbling with ideas, because I know I’ll absolutely want to put them to use yet will end up despising myself for taking on yet another project.

What do you want… I have such a soft spot for vector art and blogging…

Yzabel / October 27, 2005

Character Conversations – I

Where the author meets two of her lead protagonists face to face to discuss their future…Damn characters who can never stay quiet, and always need to rant, argue, and demand me to take them to other directions than planned at first! Alright, so this is the product of a late-night writing session, after a fiery battle with myself to rework certain parts of the story. Both of them were involved, so the following dialogue is sort of what got out of it.(Their language isn’t especially well-mannered, nor is mine, for that matter. Not when I argue with my characters.)Read More