Wednesday, June 19, 2013

What I'm Currently Working On

I've been working hard on my plots. Changed the focus of the novel and honed it down to one central protagonist with a single main goal to provide some real drive to the story. Thanks to the great recommendation from my current writing teacher, Dennis Foley, I'm using beat sheets to help me outline better and more simply. Foley's Writing The First Novel class is great, by the way. Already into Week 5 of it - excited for even more insights awaiting me in the last half of the course. Beat sheets are the outlining method used in Hollywood (where Foley started his writing career). Just write out each beat that's necessary for moving the plot forward, then go back over it and divide them into scenes/locations. So simple and so useful.

Quote from Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

I really enjoyed Altered Carbon (by Richard Morgan) - delicious cyberpunk detective-noir. The reading by Todd McLaren was excellent as well. Recommended.

From the opening, I knew this was going to be sweet. Here's a short quote from Chapter 1 which I was going to post back when I read the book in May.


“You’re a lucky man, Kovacs.”

Sure. 180 light years from home wearing another man’s body on a six-week rental agreement Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn’t touch with a riot prod. Fail and go back into storage. I felt so lucky I could’ve burst into song as I walked out the door.  - Takeshi Kovacs