Why your Novel changes

Most novels go through many rewrites and after the writer gets past the point where he or she does not make many grammatical mistakes, it comes to the point where the character takes over or the author understands that the character would not do that. Most start using their own experiences and their own personality. So the character is a reflection of you. If you are immature, the character becomes immature, if you hate mussels, the character also hates mussels. If you love to sew, the character is the son or daughter of a weaver. And this leads to the character sometimes doing things that you did not intend to or what makes him look stupid.
Another thing is taking out necessary conversation. One needs not ask how the weather is on the planet Xerion or shake hands with all the relatives, if it is not going to advance the story. So if your ship can only land on Xerion in calm weather or your hero is a spy, and that is the code phrase, you do not need to have that conversation. Consequently unless shaking hands with relatives is a way to discover that one of your relatives was replaced by a serial killer and that serial killer forgot that your aunt had a prominant wart in her right palm, it is no need to go through the "hi Bill," et cetera.
One that seems to be is making a preview, a story before the main story that gives the back ground of the story.
Another thing is practicality. If you plan for the hero to get back by Christmas at Vancouver, and you had your character be stuck in the LaGuardia airport on Christmas Eve, then you had better change his home location to Rochester, New York rather than Vancouver, Washington.

Now these are reasons why often the novel at the last draft is not the same as when it started. Usually when you first start, you record all the conversations instead of the ones necessary for the plot. You also have the characters talk long monologues without taking a breath ——at least i do, and have a character suddenly appear as by magic, or leave and then he is in the scene the next chapter, when he is up north somewhere or dead. Then there is the way his name is spelled.

By the time, the last drafts appear, you are finally getting things right and then you start cutting out unnecessary words and cutting out the extra sentences, and finding that the butler's name is not Hey you. By then, the fun starts and now you have to look for an agent, or if you have lots of money, publish it yourself.

The Slow Way to increase your writing time

After much turmoil, I decided that I had better increase my writing time. I had tried so many words, but without success, tried a certain time of a day but found that not all days are the same, and sometimes things go wrong. I thought of printing out my old draft and go over it, but that would not work, because I have one of those cheaper printers that are only suitable for article writing and short stories. - very short stories. So one day, I turned on my timer and wrote as much as I could without getting tired and wrote past that ten minute mark where the words start making sense.
The next day, I set the timer for one minute past that mark, and since then, every day except for Sunday, I started one minute later than the previous.
It is a slow way to increase my writing time, but it worked. I have tried to find the best time, and right now I am writing on my novel at one in the afternoon. However, I do not know what will happen when the snow melts and I want to go for a walk. I may have to go to bed early so that I am refreshed enough to write in the morning. Stores do not open until ten here, unless you count Walmart and Staples.

Fan Fiction a good way to write without worrying about First Rights

All right, you may think, well only teenagers write fan fiction. Once you get to be a woman of a certain age, forget about it. You are too old and dignified unless you are writing a Murder She Wrote fan fiction. Well I love to write fan fiction, I would love to write a story about NCIS, but have no idea whether Tony will fall in love, since I did write one about Law and Order: Criminal Intent and they did not follow my romantic inclinations, so I stick with shows that have been canceled or have not been around for some time.
I find in Fan fiction (I love crossovers) that if there are villains or space aliens, the Homo Dominants in Prey, that people love to even the playing field. Great, I watch a show and I see the people have no chance against these shape shifting aliens, so why suddenly make the aliens not being able to stand sunlight or all you have to do is to push them outside? Another thing I notice, that if in the story, the girl or boy who was raised by evil people, and then later on reforms and turns out to be nice, the reason was not that he or she came to his or her senses or someone convinced her that shooting everybody was wrong, but that she is really not the daughter of that evil person, but in reality the daughter of the handsome prince or the good doctor.
Now how do you make Crossovers? You have a connection. In some cases as in a future episode, the CSI team or rather Grissom has to go to New York to cooperate with the Without a Trace Team and even if it is not shown, or the show was canceled, you can use parts of each show to make the Crossover natural. For instance, I connected The Pretender with Prey, with two episode, Jarod jumping off a boat and swimming to shore, and jumping off a building onto Broot's car. Normally he would have died from that distance. In the same way, you can connect, since House is in Boston and since Boston Law is in Boston, if there is an episode where a lawyer has a sudden attack and taken to the hospital.
Now the good thing about Fan Fiction is that you can show your talent and practice on it. You do not have to worry that you are losing your first rights, unless you are given a contract to write a Star Trek or a Buffy, etc. story. You do have to tell everyone that the characters, other than the ones you made up, belong to the owners, the original writers, and to what station they gave them to, but that is all.
So get writing about your favorite Movie or TV characters in those spare moments and when you are not working on your novel and or short story.

Why OneTime a Day is Not Enough

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Now playing: 15-Elizabeth Harwood Quando m'en vo'
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: 13-Regine Crespin Un bel di vedremi
via FoxyTunes I am the type of person that if I stare at the computer too long, I get hypnotized by the monitor and soon I am falling asleep or at least, doing a facsimile thereof. I have tried the time thing, and found it did not work, nor did the word limit work. For one thing, sometimes I rush things so that at least I have the appearance of something being done, and another thing with the word limit, I might not have enough time. So I decided to do a little compromise
I call it the two period writing. The first one is I decide to write for an hour or so, just putting in the next two or more paragraphs and then go over them and check for those terrible reversal errors or passive sentences. Then in the afternoon or at night, I go over these paragraphs and try to make it much better.
Sometimes the second forty-five minutes becomes an hour, well because I am fussy. I am now more than half way through my novel and guess what, I found a better name for one of my characters, so the next revision I have to go through and change his name once again.

I find this much easier than writing all in the morning and then finding that I have not gone far enough because I spend a good deal time on one paragraph when I could be writing a whole page. So now I write a whole page (well not the 1000 word, but that will come back) and do a little correction, since I also have the page from my former draft and I am copying that plus also inserting and changing it around. In the evening, I have not had my former draft, so I can work on revising and correcting what I wrote that morning.

That is much better, but that does not sometimes work. I mean if I write in the morning, and there is something going on, then I find I have not written as much as I like. So I often wind up keeping the page open all day, and add a bit here and there. Then I check the word count to see if I get past my goal that right now is 500 words a day. That is what writing is like. You just cannot time it. Now if only I had a lap top, then I could write whenever I felt like it, not have to go to the computer room.

Fiction Writing:Confirming your ideas

I just got back from a trip across Canada to P.E.I. and through the States. Now while I was in Prince Edward Island, we went to visit the old forts that were now covered with sod, and read the plaque about the first French citizens who became the first permanent settlers of the Island. It was quite hilly and quite steep as we went from one top of the hidden fort to reach another top and it reminded me of the shows on England about the areas where the Britons had their defenses which now are covered with pasture and farmland, but if you are in a plane above can still see the outlines.

Well I did not see the outlines, us being on ground, but I am writing a novel about a man going into a strange land, and getting a feel how his legs and his heart felt as he went from one area to another, depending not on a car, but on his own transportation, be it horse or foot.

Now most research is done before the story starts. You go to a bakery and learn how they make bread, and then you incorporate a bakery in your story, but sometimes one can get understand how people's bodies reacted by later going through the same thing yourself or as much as you can take. And it also shows that you may not have been far wrong in telling, "how his heart almost burst and his shoulders ached as he climbed the crevice."

Fiction Writing: My Take on Critiques

I spent about half an hour looking for my Stephen King book on writing. I suppose he said something about critiquing, but I have no idea what it was. Anyway, my views are that for a beginner it is good, but as you get on, you become more selective as to who is to critique your novel. Unfortunately the ones whom you want is usually too busy.

You see, I was told you need to have a critique group to look at your work, but except for a nice author who gave me good suggestions about distances,, times and places and how to write a good first chapter, most of my critiques were crap. They made me disappointed, but I felt I had to have them, and for a time, I sent my work in and then I got On Writing by Stephen King and surprise! He did not like critiquing either. He did talk about creative writing classes, and if one could not take any, to get books on writing and study hard.

So now I go over a chapter at a time, and think does this move the story and it is much better than worrying about someone else's idea, because if I am not satisfied, neither is anyone else.

Fiction Writing: The Dialogue Thing

When I first started writing, the characters were engaged in some rather interesting conversations, interspersed with dialogs that moved the plot. However, most of it consisted of "hi, haven't seen you since last November," and "I think I feel a cold coming on," along with long monologues about their mission, whatever it was. I see the same thing on fan fiction stories where Jarod and Miss Parker have a long conversation, insulting each other. I was told that this was wrong, and wondered why. Surely character one does greet character two, and they do talk about the weather and stuff like that.

Instead I found that when you are writing a story, you are allowed so many pages and when this happens, you only put in the conversation that makes the plot go forward, also known as the dialog. So what you have is character one say, "Are all things in readiness for the invasion?" and character two replying, "Yes sir. The humans will not be expecting us. Hail Zerhx, our leader!"

So what does happen to the conversation they really would have? Well I suppose it goes into the description like this; Xery greeted Xerwe, his twin pod, speaking much about the weather on the planet Zerrx, the war with the Insect people of Wry, and the mating rituals that occurred in the month Qwer, the only time their race was fertile.

So in short, this is the difference between real life and fiction. In the latter, much of the conversation goes unsaid unless it is of earthshaking importance.