Articles from February 2009

I think I’ve worked out who my baddie is now in the Roger Draper story. It’s an amoral monk who acts as a necromancer for hire to the highest bidder. It has taken a bit of time to arrive at who the main evil character/antagonist in my story should be – who is actually doing [...]

So far so good, I think. I’ve got to stage 3 of the snowflake method without too much drama and found out a lot of solid information about the story and the characters. Stage 3 is to work through important information about each major character: motivation, conflict, resolution, and also a paragraph on the story [...]

With Roger Draper I have now got to the stage where I feel there needs to be some order brought to the chaos. I need to work out what I should be doing to plan this novel and in what order. Especially as I know that with previous projects I have come unstuck because I [...]

Editing Bisclavert again and again and again it seems! Received some useful feedback on the story at VWC, which confirmed my suspicions about the first third being a little dull. So I have shortened it drastically. I’m planning to post a revised version on the VWC message board and see what people think before then [...]

I got a nice rejection for my story “Bisclavert” yesterday from a Fly in Amber, a more mainstream magazine than I am used to submitting too. The rejection was nice because they gave me some good feedback. I was  a bit confused too. They basically said they would have published it if it had been [...]

It’s funny how sometimes I have my best ideas first thing in the morning. Must have something to do with the subconscious mind pondering things while I sleep. Anyway, this has meant that this morning rather than doing some research (I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do on the story this morning), I [...]

I always set off with high hopes of being able to pump a search term into Google and getting back some high quality information from amateur websites. In particular when researching for a novel it always seems easier if you can get some information from reading a screen and type up some notes in your [...]

I have now finished reading the historical surveys about St Albans and it’s abbey. This has given me plenty of ideas for developing my fictional town. This is the part I really enjoy, but which also makes me sligthly nervous with excitement. Why nervous? Well I think it’s because I worry that the decisions I [...]

I did about 30 rough html docs and may do some more today while watching the rugby – which should be a walkover for England, but you never know, could be embarrassing! Getting the first version of the outline done for the Agincourt gamebook was quite exhausting, and I have been yearning to get back [...]

I have now completed the initial plan for the Agincourt gamebook. I decided to keep things simple by only doing the writing for the initial historical deployment and actions of Henry V’s army – so they will start with the same formation and advance towards the French. I have started planning out alternatives to these [...]