AetherScribe

     Hmm, an interesting question. Lucky for you, I have two answers depending on certain criteria!

     First of all, how important are these events that lie between September and March? Are they game-changing? Do they contain highly important details or plot points? Are they possible introductions to characters? If this is the case, then my advice to you would be to start off with one of these events rather than starting off in March. It can be jarring to hear anybody suggest you start a story in any place other than where you planned but sometimes, it’s necessary.     I know it’s not slice of life but it pretty much serves to say the same thing - take Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope as an example. The story could easily have started with Luke Skywalker being a whiny teenage space-farmer and stumbling across the droids. However, something more important happened beforehand - the space battle where Princess Leia jettisoned the Death Star Plans towards his planet along with those very droids. You could start your story somewhere, but if there is an important point before that time, consider whether it’s worth starting with that instead. You might be surprised with how smoothly it goes!

     However, you are in control of your own novel. If there aren’t any points to use instead or you are adamant in starting in March, no worries! Instead, you want a Prologue! Now these things have been slammed once or twice over the years for being too expository, but there’s a trick to them. They are there to administer the theme and pace of your book and to help set it up. If you have a slice of life/romance/sports story with events to be mentioned, perhaps they could be told by your protagonist in the form of a prologue?     A decent on-hand example of a monologue-style prologue that comes to my mind is the very first few minutes of the first episode of Gravity Falls, where the main protagonist Dipper Pines spends time explaining to the audience why he and his sister are driving in a golf cart away from a terrifying monster and what circumstances put them there. It can come off as entertaining and humorous, as well as informative without being too much of an info-dump.

     I hope this answer was helpful to you! If you have anymore questions or need further aid, please do not hesitate to ask! If this answer was helpful, please consider Buying Me a Coffee! Happy writing!

     Hi there! Thanks for yourquestion! :D

     To get in on the answer tothis question nice and sharply - yes, changing your setting andscenes that many times is too much. The reason for this is becausewhen you change the scene about ten times in a single chapter, thereader tends to either become too confused or not become attached toyour scenes enough. Although there are no strict rules to how manychanges of setting you should have in a single chapter, you’reprobably safe with two changes or perhaps three if you’re feelingparticularly ambitious, and whilst it’s wise not to treat your readers like idiots, ten times is a little hard to get away with.

     Worry not, however! This wasan easy question to answer because the solution is just as easy -Detail! When you write, you’re trying to project a scene from yourhead to the person reading it, and that scene needs to be good anddetailed in order for the reader to truly picture what the reader isseeing. Unless your scene is ridiculously snappy, it shouldn’t capat 100 or 200 words. The amount of words to a scene varies, but awell-detailed scene really should come closer to 800-1000 words.    The more words you have, the more believable a scenemight be to the reader. If you have trouble knowing what to say,establish where the scene takes place and at what time. Tell us whatthe weather is like and who else is there. Do the characters involvedwant to be here or are they just here out of necessity or even byaccident? What do they experience here? Explore the senses, and tellus what sights they see, what smells they detect, what noises theyhear, what feelings they perceive and even what taste is left ontheir tongue. Allow characters to hold fleshed-out conversations and try not to rush a scene. Your stories will feel a lot more streamlined for it!

     I hope this was helpful! If anybody Has any questions for me, please do not hesitate to ask! If this answer was helpful, please consider Buying Me a Coffee! Happy writing!

Me, Writer Who Plans to Kill Said Character:

   You have no idea how good this feels. Sure, I love my story and all the characters therein, but mothers also love their own children, and spending too much time with one child can leave you feeling like you’ve just given a lump of rock a massage with your face. Finishing the first draft feels like somebody just gave me an cool pack and a glass of ice cold lemonade.

   Hi there! We’ve all been there, myself included! What do we do when we’re literally forcing ourselves to write and as a result, our work is suffering for it? Allow me to direct you to my favourite method which I have labelled the Bradbury Technique.

   This is named after Ray Bradbury, a particularly iconic science fiction novelist known for works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. He was an odd one, as when he was asked how he dealt with writer’s block or any similar problem such as this to do with writing, he answered by comparing trying getting motivation to trying to get a cat.

                                                     Hear me out for a minute.

   Getting his motivation or inspiration to write was like trying to pick up a cat - they will only ever let you pick them up when they want you to. If you try too hard to pick it up, it’ll run away cautiously from you. So what did good old Ray do? He ignored it and did something else entirely. If there’s one thing that cats dislike more than anything, then it’s being ignored.   Ray would see his wife, watch TV, do anything other than write. The cat, annoyed that it is being annoyed, would come closer to Ray and want to know why it was being ignored. Only when the cat least expected it would Ray turn upon it and snatch the little blighter up there and then.

   What all this esoteric nonsense about cats means is that when Ray was stumped for ideas or motivations, he wouldn’t try to stubbornly chase after it. Instead, he would relax and let that motivation come to him when it was ready to be picked up by him. Forcing yourself to write is bad for your health, your writing and your social life and you need to take care of yourself. Writers often forget that they are more important than their work.

   I hope this little parable was helpful! If you want to ask me more questions, please do not hesitate to ask! If this was helpful to you, please consider Buying Me a Coffee! Relax, enjoy and let that pesky motivation cat come to you! Happy writing!

   Now then, seeing as I’ve introduced the function of these weekly updates, I might as well start by giving a proper one!

Perspectives

   I had the hope to finish my current WIP by the end of last year. Unfortunately, because the story is a fantasy novel, this ended up taking a LOT longer than originally intended. But that wasn’t even the problem, because I found myself drifting away from the story and, despite not making this any easier for myself, I stubbornly refused to let my mind wander onto another story until I had finished this one. My problem, it would seem, was that I had too many Perspective Characters.    My protagonist is a young individual who grew up in a city which not only hates magic but eliminates anything that resembles it. As a result, when he shows magical development, he ends up getting imprisoned, breaking out then legging it from home as fast as he can. This character, Shan, is incompetent when it comes to magic but his hopes of unwilling magical ignorance are seen to when he ends up at a magical academy. These places are always FULL of cool characters.    The moment I got here, I wanted to do scenes from the perspectives of about five other characters who already knew way more than Shan did. The problem is that whenever I came back to Shan, my main character, he always seemed really weak because that was the point, but giving perspective to other far more powerful students always seemed to hint to me that there were far more interesting characters to follow than Shan.    This broke the reason and intentions of Shan himself and therefore, I became bored. Because I noticed this, I have now decided that I need to just get past this dull bit and keep the perspective on Shan. Then during editing, to remove some of the other perspectives. This doesn’t mean their stories will be lost, it just means that we’ll discover them at the same rate and pace as Shan does, as was intended.    Morale of the story - if you’re making your main character to be the “exploring a new world” type, keep the perspective upon them and them alone. Sure, give perspective to another secondary character occasionally or even the antagonist to see what he’s up to, but never more than that. Learn from my mistake because trust me, it will save you a tonne of stress in the long run.

History and Classics

   This is where I want to mention two resources that I seem to be constantly going back to whenever they update. A few weeks ago, I mentioned @talefoundry but these two are also YouTube channels, one I’ve been watching for about a year now, another that I’ve recently become obsessed with - Extra Credits and Overly Sarcastic Productions.

Extra Credits

   Extra Credits (@extracreditsblog) started off by making tutorial videos about how to make and develop games, but they’ve really expanded since. They started up another series called Extra History, which basically covers historical figures and events in highly appealing and entertaining ways. If any of you out there are having trouble coming up with a story or are looking for past events to look to for story ideas, then history is a good place to start, and there are worse history reviewers than these guys!    Plus, they have very recently started a third series called Extra Sci-Fi, which covers the origins, tropes and history of Science Fiction. Whether you love Sci-Fi or not, the facts they bring up in these episodes are invaluable to those seeking to create a grand tale! I highly recommend checking them out!

Extra Credits on YouTube

Overly Sarcastic Productions

   These guys function on pretty much the same way as Extra Credits, only much more refined. Not only are they absolutely hilarious to listen to but they focus in on either Red (right) covering videos about classic literature, mythology and even plot tropes, and Blue (left) often covering historical factions and other subjects. The best part is that they compile them down into incredibly fun and easy-to-understand summaries to get the spirit of it across. Of course, occasionally they’ll both team up to simply make a funny video.    Unfortunately, OSP do not have a tumblr page as of yet, but I can give you a link to go check them out, they are really useful to help understand and inspire creativity and the construction of a good story!

Overly Sarcastic Productions of YouTube

   Well, that does it for my first real weekly update! Hopefully they won;t be this long in the future! Happy writing!