College, new book covers and hurricanes... it's been that kind of start to the fall season.
First off, if you are a regular member of the site, you may have noticed the drought of new blog posts the last two months have had. This is not intentional; in the near future I'd like to have something new written every week. however, things have been busy the past six weeks, namely moving and beginning college courses.
And between that and things like the air conditioning being broken for over a week straight, it's been difficult to sit down and read or watch tv, so that's why there haven't been any review blogs. But expect it to pick up again soon with reviews for Amazon's The Rings of Power and more. I'm also thinking about starting a third type of blog post in light of a previous post about the keys to creative writing, to help people who wish to start writing find their footing more easily, and to help established writers remember the vital necessities for good writing, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks!
Unfortunately, with the amount of time I've had to dedicate to other things since the middle of August, I haven't been able to spend much time at all in writing The Aveline Heiress, which in fact might be turning out to be a good thing. Truth be told, it's been something of a nightmare to write. It's obviously something I didn't wish happened, but it's relatively normal for writers to find writing incredibly difficult at times. I don't know exactly why it's turning out to be much more of a pain than it should be, but putting what I'm envisioning in my head into words on the screen is not coming easy. I don't intend to quit, of course, but trying to diagnose what's going awry is a whole can of worms in of itself.
I have my suspicions, though. I never considered writing human characters, especially in our real world, to be my strong suit. I've been much more trained in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, and although humanity and human emotions are sometimes present depending on the franchise, there's a big difference between, say, Star Wars and the James Bond franchise. On top of that, when your main character is the opposite gender as you, everything becomes naturally way more tricky to navigate, particularly when the book has many moments where it's all about the character's thoughts and the decisions she makes based on them, or her attitude towards whatever's going on in her head. The more relatable and realistic I attempt to make her, the more difficult it is to give her the right responses to something.
Realism has been an bigger problem to try and tackle. The Aveline Heiress walks the tightrope between a story meant to have true, realistic emotion and meaning, and a raw action-adventure. The book is supposed to truly be both, but trying to merge the two together in a seamless way is no small task. Considering the book starts off a bit on the slower side naturally, it's been very easy to go sluggish all throughout, and not pick up the pace when it needs to go faster. But it can't go too fast, either; it's not meant to be full of explosions and random problems to blast and shoot your way through, like a summer blockbuster is. Reconciling the story of a girl nearing adulthood, who has an immense struggle with a fate she had no say in, and the story of the prideful utopia under literal attack, is the big one I must tackle, whether by refining the story scenes, writing multiple drafts, or rewriting each written piece until I'm happy.
Nevertheless, despite its many issues at the time of this writing, I'm still very excited to keep working on it until it's finally released. Like with many other crafts, if you want to get better at them, you figure out how to solve problems, not run away from them. I believe The Aveline Heiress will be, in the end, even more to my liking than The Gatekeeper. With TAH, I have a clear, start-to-finish plan I simply need to execute, and instead of letting the story "write itself" I have much more defined goals for each sequence; excellent practice for controlling the flow, along with every other aspect, of the story. A story does tend to want to write itself at times, and while those stories can still be good, to truly write an excellent book that keeps readers hooked and riding every wave, you have to learn to control the pace, the tension, the emotion, the ebb and flow. Whether I'll succeed at that or not remains to be seen, I along with readers will judge it, but walking away from The Aveline Heiress a better writer than I was when I finished The Gatekeeper is the goal here. If I pull it off, the The Aveline Heiress has my seal of full approval. It's not something I give to my stories automatically.
Speaking of The Aveline Heiress and writing progress, I have managed to complete a very special something that I hope you will all enjoy, and may it hold you over until the book is complete:
Created by the phenomenal AI known as Midjourney, The Aveline Heiress finally has cover art. It's still a bit of a work in progress in terms of the text and format, but for $10, I'm pretty happy with it. Future books of mine will still require commissioning a real artist as they are to be a bit more specific and detailed, but besides a lower resolution (in terms of pixels) AI art should do nicely for this one.
A "side effect" if you will, of having not been writing on a consistent basis is that it's given me a lot of time to pause and reflect on where I am as a writer and where I plan to go with my stories. In the past six weeks, I've sort of re-discovered the importance of emotion in storytelling in general. Paying attention to many of the stories that have come out after the pandemic, aka. the time the popular media world shifted to mass-producing tv shows instead of movies, I've found many of them to be sufficient in many ways; but falling short in meaning and connective emotion, the entirety of the production ends of feeling lackluster and you forget about it shortly after its over. It's not an isolated problem. I tend to think it's more of a societal problem. I'm beginning to think, more and more, with all that's going on in our world, people are less capable of feeling and portraying the kind of genuine, pure, good emotions we're accustomed to in a lot of our older favorites books and movies. It's become much more difficult for me to feel the love in a written or acted romantic relationship, for example, or to feel the peril in a moment where a protagonist is losing something they apparently love. In contrast, I've noticed how much time I've spent simply thinking about the ending to a story I loved or a favorite character's personality, and it's always because of the meaning it had or the emotion that went along with it. I've seen the effect anime has had on people; for all the shortcomings of a lot of anime series, there's a certain captivation many of its characters bring. Besides the attractiveness factor, the personalities are often times very magnetic, and their actions mean a lot to the viewers. There's a certain relatability my friends feel to these characters, I've seen. Likewise, I've also observed how some minor characters in books and tv have such a massive following, though the content they appear in comes slowly and you don't actually get to experience their personality often. It's always the attitude the character represents or the relatability factor. The writer needs not produce content often, because fans keep talking and the conversation about the books or tv episodes never dies down.
If most stories are losing the ability to hold audiences like this, then that's what I want to bring back. Back then, there was always a central message to every story. We need more of that today, as least genuinely. There's too many writers and studios out there who write just to tell a story, but keep themselves incredibly distanced from their own work. This is becoming more commonplace all the time, and its another reason why I think some stories are so... lifeless. Find any old-school movie director or writer interview, you'll always hear some form of the phrase "I wanted to do (this) so I did (this)." There's real, authentic ownership there. Writers aren't just supposed to tell a story, but their story. Whenever the story is just a tour through the writer's mind and his honest thoughts and views, you feel more connected to it, and subsequently, you're usually able to appreciate more the dedication and care the writer put into their work. There's a reason we like authors and directors and not just purely the work itself.
All this to say that six weeks has given me a lot to think about in this area and how it relates to my own future stories like The Eldritch Queen and The Fifth Seraph. Defining key themes and messages I want each of them to have has been something I've worked on frequently even though I haven't been outright writing again yet. I already know my thinking affects The Aveline Heiress, but the other two stories I have lined up next were way more intriguing cases I had to think about and tackle. How to add emphasis in an already largely planned story? However, presently, I've pretty much settled how I want both of my next two stories to take shape in that area.
The Eldritch Queen, by design, is more of a dark fantasy tale than anything else. I don't typically enjoy dark fantasy made by others, it's usually too grim, but for this trilogy I'm pretty confident I can balance the darkness and not let it be too overbearing. While I don't want to spoil it, I can say that there will definitely be a contrast between good and evil, or more specifically, innocence and corruption. How does one stay true to themselves in a world that is by nature evil? Is that truth just a self-conceived illusion, like the voices in the dark tell you, and are you really not that different from everyone else around you? When all are deceivers, who should you trust, and if you have the power to save the world, do you save it, if saving means you have to purge it by fire? It's a story with many twists and turns, and I'm looking forward to begin writing it.
The Fifth Seraph is similar in some ways to my dark fantasy story, but think of it as a mixture of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and fantasy... a fallen world, but still a beautiful one. The characters start out with everything, but when they lose it all, what keeps them motivated to fight? I want to analyze and stress the importance of fighting for what is right because anything less than totally giving it your all is not true to who you are, if you have conviction. The world is fallen, yes, but it's still serene... only those who have made things right in their heart can see it and feel at peace. And maybe, just maybe, it becomes the source of courage to bring that peace to all once again. Overall, it's the kind of story that would go well with instrumental post rock music.
If all goes according to plan, you'll be able to feel the kind of impact I write into my stories. At the end of the day, that's kind of why I write. Art and music is a form of expression, and so is writing. You're just expressing yourself, at the end of the day. I intend to start writing again after my first batch of classes end in less than two weeks, and hopefully I'll be able to get to the finish line this time with The Aveline Heiress. Writing is a learning curve, and I think I learned a lot about how to tackle the mental aspect of it these past two months. Stay tuned for more updates and more frequent posts in the future, and until then, have a happy start to the fall season!
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