How She Writes

Alright, everybody, it's time to look behind the scenes of The Girl from Vakril . Today we'll discuss how I got the idea, and just how many false starts I made before I hit on a successful version.  Just like last time, this post will contain spoilers. If you want to read the story first, you can find it  here . This is one of the stories that I have been trying to write for several years now. It started in September of 2016 when I was reading through a book called Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine. At the end of a chapter, it had a writing prompt that asked you to write about a girl who wants to be a scout in the war against the Dwarfs of Akero. I wrote about a page and a half about a girl named Elinor Flake before I couldn't come up with anything else to write.  Since then, I have come back to it over and over, trying to find a way to make it work. I thought through reasons the King might have turned her away.  Maybe he didn't have the money, maybe there wa...

As promised, here are the rest of the stereotypes I found. Some of them are wrong, others are relatively accurate.  Here we go: 1. Writers write by compulsion The rumor that writers just can't help but write was actually spread by writers. this is a very romanticized view of writing. Unfortunately, I have yet to find this to be true. From my experience, it's much more common to force yourself to remove all distractions so you have nothing better to do than to put words on paper. 2. Writers always know where a story is going Rarely. I usually start with a somewhat vague outline before I start writing. By the time I've hit the end, I usually realize that a scene would work better somewhere else, that my main character needs to struggle more, that the character who I thought was the antagonist is clearly not the antagonist and now I don't know who it is any more than my readers do. Besides, one of the best parts of writing fiction is making a mistake that turns o...

Today, we're going to do something a little different, and I'm so excited. We're going to discuss some of the most common writer stereotypes, and see how accurate they really are. First one: 1. All writers are caffeine addicts This is one of the few stereotypes that's a stereotype for a reason. Many writers do rely heavily on caffeine. The stereotype isn't all encompassing though. There are plenty of writers, like me, that only consume a small amount of caffeine, as well as those that never consume caffeine. 2. Writers are flighty, absentminded, and impractical While it is true that writers, especially fiction writers, spend a lot of time in worlds of their own invention, the image of the absentminded daydreamer doesn't fit all writers. I, like other writers, prefer things (including writing) to be practical and organized. 3. Writers have great grammar I don't know who started that rumor, but it's absolutely not true. It helps to have a good ...

Morgan crouched low to the ground and followed her target with her eyes. He trampled the underbrush underfoot with a confident stride, not bothering to step carefully or cover his tracks. Convenient, but incredibly foolish. Any lingering doubt as to his identity was extinguished when he sauntered into the camp and exchanged his plain cotton jacket, for a navy blue coat with medals down the front. Randall Mahoney, Colonel of the Vakril army, kept up a brisk pace as he strolled through the camp, and ducked into a large tent. Morgan scaled a tree and observed the goings on carefully from the safety of her perch. This particular end of the camp was mostly empty, or it would be if it weren’t for the guards circling the perimeter looking for intruders. Intruders like her. A distraction was clearly in order. She pulled a small stone from her pocket and waited until only one guard was in sight before throwing it as hard as she could into the trees. When the guard stopped t...