It might no longer be November, but that certainly isn't going to stop me from writing. So after printing off Katherine and express posting her to the other side of the country in time to enter the novella competition, I started planning out my next WiP. The working title of this one is Walls, and it's going to be a Young Adult/Dystopian. As I struggled along with the planning, I felt the need to take a break and write something... so I cranked out what would be the prologue, except that I know it's just a huge stupid info-dump that I'll end up deleting in the very first revision.
That said, JeffO from The Doubting Writer tagged me in the LOOK Meme, the idea of which is to find the first use of the word 'look' in your WiP and share it along with with some of its surrounding text. I decide to search the measly 796 words I'd written to see if I'd used it, and sure enough, word 357...
In Lani’s absence, Mildred leaned into her brother again. “Jonah, what if they don’t let us through?”“They have to, Mil,” he said, rubbing her arm. “We’re good people looking for safety. They have to help us.” Their small family was processed along with every other family without identification. Jonah had to let her go to put an arm around their mother when she started weeping. “It’s okay, Mum. We’re safe here.” Mildred knew as well as her brother that his words would not console her. Their father was the only one who ever could when she lost her grip, and he had left The South before them to help keep the peace elsewhere.
Yeah, yeah, I know it sucks. Like I said; I already know I'm going to end up deleting what I have so far... most likely anyway.
Tagging time:
1. Giora who always shares so much info about his book's setting, but who I would love to see an except from.
2. EJ, my fellow Aussie who recently mentioned that she needed a spark to get her back into writing. It would be awesome to see someone else who writes with Australianisms (mum instead of mom, colour instead of color, etc.) even if there's none in the excerpt.
3. Fiona, who's current WiP I believe is called Erase. I'd love to see a little snippet from you as you hurtle towards the finish-line.
Of course, I'd love to see something from EVERYONE, so feel free to participate anyway, and let me know so that I can check it out! And of course, if those tagged didn't want to share anything, that's okay too.
- Bonnee.
Posts
Welcome back and thanks for playing along! Hope you enjoyed your holiday. Good deal on getting Katherine off to the contest. Now for the fun part: waiting.
ReplyDeleteAs for your excerpt, it doesn't suck. It's intriguing. Just out of curiosity, a couple of months ago you posted a snippet from a piece you were working on - is this related to that at all? I remember there being walls in that one; I'll presume, based on the title, that there are in this one, too.
Waiting... fun... right... ha :)
DeleteI'm glad you thought this excerpt intriguing. And yes, it is related to the snippet I posted a few months earlier when I asked for help with work-shopping.
*notices post on dashboard*
ReplyDelete*heads to blog*
*realizes this blog has somehow been consistently updating without noticing*
How could I have missed so many updates? This is baffling and aggravating; I'll have to keep a closer eye on this blog, I think. If nothing else, we writers have to stick together.
But back on topic. I decided to give my own WIP a look (har de har har) and it seems like I've got a "look" at word 608. That sounds about right, I guess; still, now I can't help but wonder how many times the word appears. The word count says 20k, so hopefully there's a fairly even distribution. And if not...well, I'll have to make better use of my thesaurus, I suppose.
Haha that's happened to me before. Actually, there's this one blog that keeps disappearing completely from my dashboard. So annoying!
DeleteLet's hope for an even distribution of most words in a WIP. :) Haha I love using a thesaurus. They're so helpful!
Many American literary agents posted that they don't like prologues. They advice authors to divide the prologue into parts and insert them inside the story, or to make the prologue as chapter 1. I find the passage you posted to be interesting and like to read more. Please continue with this story. It's actually new to YA Dystopians. Here you have all the family going somewhere together. In most YA Dystopians it's mostly just about the teens. I'll email you an excerpt.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that I haven't read very many books with a prologue, that was the impression I'd gotten from agents. Having said that, I did mention that I'd probably be getting rid of this 'prologue' as it is an info-dump. Also, it has clearly given the wrong impression if you thought the story must be about the whole family going somewhere together. The focus will definitely be on the character of Mildred in her teen years. I intend on weaving the information here into the actual story, where it will be more relevant. Thanks for all of your advice :)
Deletemy bit is on my blog in my latest post :D
ReplyDelete:) Cool cool, I'll come check it out in a sec!
Delete
ReplyDeleteI will be looking forward to your next post. Thank you
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