Owner: Five Rings URL:http://cirellio.wordpress.com Join Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:43:43 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A high fantasy novel WIP and a journal of the creative writing process. Site statistics:Click here
What time is it? 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Yesterday, I heard an old man say something that caused a few profound thoughts to resonate. It made me realize I had been taking something very dear to me for granted: I typically don’t care what time it is.
We’ve all seen it before, or been a part of it; a group of people so enveloped in some kind of project, [...]
Just an update: 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I wanted to post an overview of what I’m planning in the near-future, because I’m getting antsy (!) and I feel like typing a casual, yet somewhat pertinent post.
Through negotiations with my lovely wife, a Wacom board is officially on its way and
should arrive some time this weekend! I will finally be able to do [...]
Is it okay to offend? 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not a writer should write in such a way that risks offending some of their readers. I know I’ve watched movies or read books where it seemed like the political or moral points were painfully transparent. People often say they are too preachy, trying to shove their [...]
Cartography! 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Lately, I have been writing a lot, and I came to realize the theme for my storyline is “trust”:
To truly believe in something greater than yourself, do you have to surrender to trust?
How can you trust what you see?
How can you ever trust in what you don’t see?
How far can you trust someone you think [...]
Prose & Poetry 0000-00-00 00:00:00 *ahem* Since it’s taking longer than I thought getting around to finishing my cartography project, and since I’m falling behind on my C++ coding, and since nobody has really lambasted my writing as of yet (No news is good news?), I figured I would do something completely random (to take a rest from cursed coding).
So [...] Read more:Poetry
Inventing the rules 0000-00-00 00:00:00 If it wasn’t obvious enough from my previous post, I decided to go with a third-person perspective for my novel. Third-person seems to fit the high fantasy genre almost too well, allowing the writer to write from varying points of view, and even allowing usage of an omniscient voice if the need should ever arise. [...]
Prior to the finer details… 0000-00-00 00:00:00 This is one of the four chapters I mentioned in my previous post. I had written this before I started to iron out a decent timeline with proper motives and villains. I just thought I would post this, since it might give you a better feel for my writing style. Since most of this will [...] Read more:Prior
, details
Writing without rules 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Once you’ve written a little bit of what you feel will be a great story, all kinds of story elements start swimming around in your head.
And with all of those little story elements swimming around in your thoughts all the time, your brain somehow starts to automatically arrange some of them into a cohesive theme.
I [...]
Planning a plan 0000-00-00 00:00:00 For the first time since I was fifteen years old, I had written something!!! It had been thirteen long years, and it felt good to be back.
Reading authoritative books from cover-to-cover on stuff like writing and technique was really just a way of convincing myself I was serious about learning to write a novel. Yet, [...]
A blank, white landscape 0000-00-00 00:00:00 As you may recall, I knew that I wanted to write a high fantasy story about an anti-hero, a thief named Cirellio. And that’s about it.
So … where did I get ‘Cirellio’ in the first place?
Cirellio’s humble beginnings:
2:00 AM. In a cold basement. With friends of the more … geeky persuasion. All of us were [...] Read more:blank
Into the unknown… 0000-00-00 00:00:00 So… What’s next?
Next is coming up with an idea for a ’story worth telling’.
How is that done?
Unfortunately, that’s a tough question. Books on authoring get rather abstract at this point. In fact, things don’t really get back to what I would call … a ’step-by-step’ approach again until they finally start talking about finding an [...]
So, you want to be a writer? -part 2- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Okay…
After most of my personal inner struggles were out of the way and all the dust seemed to settle, I was left with the lucid fact I wanted to write high fantasy. My goal had become ‘to complete a book I could enjoy writing and be proud of - publishers be damned!’ So I pressed [...]
So, you want to be a writer? -part 1- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I guess the first step is to declare that you do. “I want to be a writer.” There. Easy. Well … not so easy. The first thing the authors of most books about ‘becoming a professional writer’ try to do is scare you away from the very idea of becoming reclusive monsters like them, complete [...]
There is a point to all of this… 0000-00-00 00:00:00 When I was little, I used to read and write. Not in the sense of “I could read and I could write”, but more along the lines of “I did read books on a regular basis and wrote original stories, too”. I remember reading serial detective novels all the time, and trying to tackle The [...] Read more:point
Middling 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I am currently in the middle of writing a book. Or ‘middling’ - as it is sometimes called in the writing world. This is the point of the book writing process where you see a nightmarish landscape of jagged, foreboding mountains laid out before you during a swirling storm, and you must traverse all of [...]
Cartography! -part 2- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 For me, this whole process was exciting! Seeing your imagination come to life - turning the world in your head into something more tangible - it felt like a sneak-peek into what it might be like for an author to hold their bound, published book for the first time.
Mapping out a fantasy world:
Step 1: Unceremoniously draw a [...]
A place to belong (and a whole bevy of haikus) 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I’ve read that a great way to learn more about writing quickly is by joining some kind of writer’s circle or critique group. So, I’ve been looking around, and found there’s only one local group around where I live, called “Wordsmiths by Night” (named such because they all have day jobs, and gather together at night after work to write at [...]
The necessity of fantasy 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Why is fantasy
getting so popular all of the sudden?
Discussing it with my wife, she made an interesting observation: Maybe the popularity of fantasy is booming because our culture was getting too saturated with reality TV?
Hm. I read somewhere the more rational the world gets, the more irrational fantasy needs to be.
Fantasy is one of [...]
A poem: ‘Past Away’ 0000-00-00 00:00:00 A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the Camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.
With deities in windows, staring,
We played the Harp of Stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.
Bounce your wits off a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon still, being still.
Tolerate ten-thousand tempos.
Though I thought I was just bore
A fictional timeline, a fantasy world. 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Research and development. More research and development. Day-dreaming about the beginning and end of your story. Brainstorming. Hearing your characters chit-chat with each other in your head (Scary, isn’t it?)…
It turns out there’s an actual term for all this meandering around instead of writing. No, it’s not called ‘writer’s block’. lol
It’s called Read more:fictional
, fantasy
Fantasy worldbuilding questions 0000-00-00 00:00:00 While worldbuilding, I often found myself wondering, “Do I have enough information to continue writing? Too little? How much worldbuilding is too much?” It’s a pretty common worry amongst first-time novel writers. I see similar questions
a lot.
The definitive (read: canned) answer seems to be, “When it hurts the progress of your novel; all the [...]
Closer to the beginning 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Some of what I’m about to say is a reiteration of what I commented a few weeks ago at The Plot Whisperer’s site. (sorry, Martha!)
In my post about the timeline, I stopped writing before I got to the part where I should have talked about adding events closer to the beginning of the story … mainly because I didn’t want to reveal any spoilers. But, [...]
The Five Rings system -part 1- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 The Five Rings
are at the very core of the magic system I developed for the book.
But before we get into that, I want to take a moment to discuss magic in fantasy.
Magic often serves double-duty in high fantasy novels: as utility for characters (ex: cast a ‘fire’ spell to light a campfire) and as [...]
The Five Rings system -part 2- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 The Five Rings
system is an elemental system.
Elemental systems:
Long ago, people viewed everything as being made of some kind of blend of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, and most gods were embodiments of emotions or elements.
The four element system with traditional elementals:
Gnome = Earth
Undine = Water
Sylph = Air
Salamander = Fire
…as seen in Arabian legend, [...]
The Five Rings system -part 3- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 The elemental order:
What appealed most to me about elemental systems is how the idea is possibly as old as storytelling itself, and fortunately, the Five Rings
helped my story come together to make a whole lot more sense.
Analyzing the pseudoscience, I started to wonder if there was any significance to the order of the elements; [...]
Intermission! 0000-00-00 00:00:00 I was hoping someone would take a stab at the meaning behind the elemental order…
First Fire, then Earth, then Water, then Wind, and finally, ‘Ideal‘.
Where do we see this pattern in nature?
Here’s a visual representation I cooked up on Photoshop:
Did these hints help?
Also—-lately, I’ve been fighting a battle with my own dialogue.
There are two parts [...]
The Five Rings system -part 4- 0000-00-00 00:00:00 Okay. Time’s up. Hopefully, I don’t appear to be a total loon after this post. We shall see! :)
If there is enough matter, just like with a rain drop, it forms into the most energy-efficient arrangement possible.
Welcome to the Five Rings
Theory.
The Five Rings is simply recognizing a pattern of energy efficiency.
THE ELEMENTAL ARRANGEMENT: We [...]
Seeing what otherwise cannot be seen 0000-00-00 00:00:00 A little bit about Mystics …
After the Day of Dischord, many people, for the first time, began to ’see what otherwise could not be seen’. Supernatural sightings were far more common, and people who could manipulate energies gravitated to each other, forming groups and, eventually, schools.
Rarity: At the time of the book’s beginning, roughly 1 [...] Read more:Seeing
The 1st Ring: Fire 0000-00-00 00:00:00 The Fire Lizard and the Great Oak Tree
The great oak tree had far outgrown its brethren by coercing the forest animals, one by one, to trust it into climbing within the safe confines of its branches. Once it had earned their trust, it would violently shake them free so they would fall to their death [...]
Meme’d by the Smoky One 0000-00-00 00:00:00 It seems we bloggers sometimes have a civic duty to fulfill here in the blogosphere: to go horribly off-topic in the event that we are tagged with a meme. Not that being tagged is like jury duty or anything…
heheh…
At any rate, this viral meme has spread its way to me thanks to good ol’ wizardsmoke. [...] Read more:Smoky
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