Mark Lord’s Writing

Stupor or Not?

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I’m on the cusp of a potentially big decision here. I am seriously contemplating just going back to the Stupor Mundi novel project rather than continuing with short stories. I think I have developed and learnt as a writer in the last few months, and this could help me with the novel length project I would really like to do. 

The things I fear though are the degree of research and preparation required. My biggest phobia for this project seems to be that I have committed myself to do research in some areas that are almost impossible at the moment. The reason being that the sources are in languages that I don’t speak, read or write with any fluency. 
Should this be a barrier? As the story is fiction and quite fantastical in nature does a truly well-researched approach matter? Yes and no I think. I would like to know more to help me with providing some better character detail, but the difficulties might outweigh the benefits. 
I have started looking at the plot again for Stupor and had some good ideas to develop it, so we’ll see how these get on. Meanwhile I’m trying to guage what research is really necessary and how difficult this might be regarding the language of the source material.
Mark Lord’s Writing

Breathless Assassin: starting to plan

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I was going to start on War Veteran again now that I have done the first draft of the Easy River to Success revision. I like to wait a few days before going back to the whole story and reading it through. But when I sat down I really started to feel conscious that there was something missing from my preparation. The story is a satire on the common fantasy tropes. So far the main satire I have found is the Michael Swanwick book, Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which I haven’t read. I think I ought to first.

So instead I went back to another story that I started planning just shortly before War Veteran. It’s called Breathless Assassin and its about a character who can see the future or read people’s minds and believes that he can stop assassinations of people who might be of benefit to mankind. I must have sat at my desk this morning for thirty minutes before things started to click into place. I started thinking more about the character and why he would be in the situation he’s in – he’s been invited on the inaugral voyage of a spacecruiser – this is not a scifi story by the way, and I had to think why this might be the case. 
So I’m looking forward today to doing a bit more research on surrealist art, mental health and also coming up with some basic information about the other passengers of the spacecruiser and the crew. Should be fun?
Mark Lord’s Writing

Todays Plan: 15th December. Finish Easy River?

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I didn’t do an update yesterday, but I did manage a bit of planning – again regarding the cult of Arax. This was all on paper, so didn’t even turn the PC on to do. Sometimes this works better, and I don’t even feel the need to commit it to an electronic document.

This morning I started into fleshing out the detailed synopsis for the last scene. It worked quite well and I’m about half way through. So I should finish it today. Also I need to check whether my other stories are all with markets and what the status of these are. I have a strong suspicion that there are some gaps!
Mark Lord’s Writing

Update: 13th December. Brief Storm

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Quite a lot to do on the home front today, and now its the evening I doubt I’ll do anymore today. However, in the half hour I did have I brainstormed some ideas for how Arax’s religion works and I think I have a few basics. He’s going to be the God of False Promies. Anyone who’s ever had their hopes dashed and their ambitions ruined can pray to Arax, and he’ll take vengeance on whatever caused the hopes to be dashed.

Mark Lord’s Writing

Update: 12 December 2008. Synopsis for last scene of Easy River

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The use of the synopsis in planning was discussed at the writers’ circle meeting on Wednesday. I thought I would try this to help me get the rest of Easy River to Success writen. I’ve done this today. Did about 300 words, which I hope to turn into about 1000+ words for the last scene, to leave me with a story just under 5000 in total. The process seemed to work quite well. It can help you work through what you need to cover in the story and where you bring in different bits of information. Also showed me where I need to flesh out some more detail of the setting before actually writing the narrative. 

The test now is whether this makes actually writing it easier. 
I still have the problem of coming up with the details of how the nascent religion of Arax actually works. I haven’t had too much inspiration here yet!
Mark Lord’s Writing

Writers Circle Feedback

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I attended an informal session of the writers’ circle I belong to last night: Verulam Writers’ Circle.  I received some feedback on the first scene of my story Bird Talk. The feedback seemed to be positive, which was pleasing, and the other writers in the group seemed to be interested in the content as well as the style of the story.

What surprised me was that they thought I should turn it into a longer piece. Maybe a novella, as I had started out as if it was going to be a longer story, building up the characters, setting the scene etc.  I thought this was a fair point as it is quite a long story, over 8000 words.

I think I may do this, however, the story’s with a magazine at the moment, so I’ll wait to see what their feedback is first. Suggestions were that I could develop the social conflict/political side of the story, with the magical element running through it. Also some allusions could be made between medieval and modern times regarding the use of belief to control people and the hysteria of the witch-trial, like in the Crucible.

This does give me a dilemma about my writing strategy, as it seems I naturally want to write longer pieces, flesh out the characters, but I feel I only have time for short stories. So what to do?

The easier option maybe to actually try to get better at short stories, and this may need some further studies of good stories to see how I should be doing this.

UPDATE

“Bird Talk” has been published in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #33

“Bird Talk” is also now available to purchase as a separate story via Smashwordsand Amazon.

Mark Lord’s Writing

Daily Summary: 9th December. Scene finished for Easy River

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I am assuming that I won’t be doing any more today. I managed to get 811 words done this lunchtime that took me to the end of the scene where Benetus meets Arax. I’m fairly happy with how it has turned out. A couple of surprises. I found that Arax has to tell Benetus a bit about who he is. I think I tend to develop back story, but then never explain it to the reader.

Next steps are too look at the proto-Arax religion and provide some details of this, and also decide if I need some more foreshadowing of Arax earlier in the story. I’m not sure how this will all work yet in the story as a whole. I hope it will!
Mark Lord’s Writing

8th December: Update on Easy River

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Nothing done yesterday as I was feeling ill, and then sadly one of our pets was very ill and ended up passing away in the night. I had to bury a small brown guinea pig this morning. 

Lunchtime saw me reviewing the current scene of Easy River to Success and adding another 412 words. When I start off writing I always think I have so much to do and its going to take ages, but then things start to click given time. Also I realised that the scene doesn’t get too complicated, which is nice as I can concentrate on making the Arax character more interesting and the writing more dynamic rather than worrying about how to move the plot along. That’s one of the benefits of having the plot action of the scene sketched out beforehand. 
Mark Lord’s Writing

Update: 6th December 2008. 672 Words of Easy River revision completed

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Just started on the revision for Easy River to Success. I managed 672 words of the scene where Benetus meets Arax. So far I have got Benetus to where he is just about to meet Arax, that is he is about to end up in the quagmire. 

I’m fairly happy, I think, with what I wrote today. I think maybe I need to be more specific or clearer about the previous spirits Benetus has visited on the spirit-river, and what his hopes were for this visit. I could think about another place or manner in which to introduce this element. 
I might do a little bit now on putting together some of the content for my profile website. 
Mark Lord’s Writing

Update: 5th December, Last Scene for Easy River now Planned

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At last I’ve got a plan for the last scenes of this story! I was struggling I think because some of the ideas I was coming up with were too complex and would have required quite a bit of explanation. The trouble would have been making the story too long just to explain properly what had happened, but without seeming too forced. In fact the idea probably were a bit forced. Nice ideas at the time, but they wouldn’t really have worked. For instance at one stage I was googling silted harbours and seeing how Benetus could be made to cause the silting up of the capital’s harbour as a result of Arax’s mischief. But really would anyone believe that could happen overnight, and how could Arax make Benetus do such as thing. 

So the final idea, I hope, is much simpler and should work better. But, I still have to write it, so we’ll see how that pans out over the next few days. If I don’t start on this tonight for a bit, I’ll definitely be doing some tomorrow. 
And then, and then!! I can get back to War Veteran again, which I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth into. The thing I love about that story idea is that it has a bit of politics in it, a bit of sociology, which is quite different for me and I hope something that might intrigue some readers and hopefully an editor into accepting. We’ll see. Back to work now.