wolfbreed

Passed 75K on Wolfbreed 2, which means I’m very close to wrapping up the first draft of this novel.  Now all I need is a new title.  (Haven’t we been here before?)

Io9 had a recent blog post about Story vs. Plot, which was interesting (though I’m not sure I buy the argument it posits, but that’s another post for when I’ve had more sleep) and embedded in it is this little bit of commonly accepted wisdom I decided to take issue with:

When people talk about a “plot-driven” science fiction book or movie, they’re usually implying that the characters are as wafer-thin as the exploding mint in Monty Python’s Meaning Of Life.

Yea, the woeful canard of the Plot/Character duality, that has way more currency than it should. I don’t know where it originated, but it rightfully deserves to be stomped. If your story has paper-thin characters that just move around your authorial pinball machine bouncing from plot bumper to plot bumper, you don’t have a plot-driven story. You have a story with rotten characterization. Plot and character are not opposing poles on some creative spectrum, they are not mutually exclusive, any more than setting and narrative, or dialog and exposition, or any of the other ingredients of a full blown work of fiction. If any one of these ingredients, as written, suck, well the suck will affect the story. This applies to the cardboard action hero as much as the deeply introspective antihero in plotless literary porn.

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I’ve learned a few things so far on Wolfbreed #2, a number of which relate to getting the thing done.  As you can see by the rather swift progress I’ve made on the meter below.  I’ve had creative spurts before, but oft-times they’re short-lived affairs that burn out after a Read more…

I’ve been doing ~1500 words a day since the beginning of March, and we have officially passed the 1/3 mark on Wolfbreed II.  Over 33K so far.  Can’t blog much though, got to get back to writing the novel.  Tomorrow I’ll blog about the cool performance I was at on Read more…

If you noticed the counters, I’m off to a fair start on Wolfbreed II.  I’m just short of 14K words as I write this, which is a good thing, because I am up on a deadline here.  The other reason this is a good thing is when I’m writing hot, Read more…

You may remember that, upon selling the first book of the Wolfbreed series to Bantam, I had titled it, simply Wolfbreed. You may also recall that Bantam asked me to change the title. So, after much debate, I came up with Lilly’s Song. We’re all happy. Now, apparently some shifts Read more…