In this excerpt, I attempted to write an engaging scene based almost solely on dialogue.
As always, feel free to let me know what you think — in the comments, in person, on Facebook, by carrier pigeon (okay, not that last one).
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My thoughts on the craft and profession of writing
Brandon Sanderson
In my journey delving deeper into the craft of writing, I become more and more impressed with Brandon Sanderson: not just with his skill as a writer, but with his breadth of activity with writing as business.
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Business Plan Overview
Will this post help you with the business side of writing?
Despite my oh-so-limited time to spend on anything writing related, I am treating my writing as a business. I’ve had a business plan from the beginning. Not a professional, capture-venture-capital kind of business plan, but a comprehensive guide to my own efforts to be successful. It’s an ever-evolving document as I flesh out details.
This is the first in a series of posts about my business plan. Hope it helps!
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May Writing Status
Work continues on Salvage, Book 1, Part 2. I’m writing new scenes and expanding skeletal scenes to more robust ones. I’m not worrying too much about critiques, either outgoing or incoming, this month.
Salvage Scene 1: Original vs. Now
The first main scene of Salvage has been polished from the initial rough draft several times. See what you think of the first few paragraphs.
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Writing a Novel and Writing Code Share…
…an astounding ambiguity with terminology. You’d think, as long as writing has been around, those in the publishing industry would have agreed to standard definitions, a standard vocabulary. Not so.
And, surprisingly, neither has the software industry. Software being considered more of a science, one would expect practitioners to have agreed on common terms. Yet, even what title you call one who codes, develops, and engineers software varies: software engineer, programmer, software developer, systems engineer, systems analyst, and many more.
So, with those who read a book in draft form one can have critiquers, alpha-readers, beta-readers, writing partners, mentors, development editors, line-by-line editors, and more.
One might argue that each of these titles connotes a different flavor of responsibility, but the lines are definitely blurred.
April Writing Status
The draft of Part 1 of Salvage received more tinkering. It’s a good way for me to warm up my writing brain.
I don’t want to go overboard tweaking the first part of Salvage endlessly — and I haven’t. Drafting of Part 2 is coming along.
I’ve also formed some thoughts on an essay on Christian music lyrics as well as an article about Amazon’s Echo. It’s been a change of pace from my fiction work, rather refreshing mentally.
I’m also building relationships with other writers, swapping critiques, and I’m nailing down alpha readers for polished drafts of Salvage.
Deliberations continue about meeting other writers face-to-face. Conferences? I’m not quite ready yet. However, the bigger city an hour away has writer meetups. I may check them out in June.
That’s all for this month.
March Writing News
Work continues on the Salvage project. I’ve leveled up (so to speak) in my writing, and I feel like I’m actually adding layers to Part 1 that add depth and, interestingly enough, streamline the story flow some. Work on Part 2 continues, sketching scenes in terms of dialogue and some action.
Meanwhile, I’m branching out with ideas about an article for Christian homeschoolers and an essay about Christan contemporary music’s lyrics as a reflection of society.