#novelx1 — Public Fediverse posts

#WritersCoffeeClub June 27
Describe your opening scene…
Everyone: What mood does it set?

It’s raining. The place is a mess of mud and water. They are sheltering in the doorway of the marquee watching the JCB spread road stone across the parking area. Behind the marquee, the trench the students opened last year is full of water.

#WritersCoffeeClub #novelx1

#ScribesAndMakers 2 Whatever?

Whatever this reconnaissance was for, it was not about sleeping sheds. One of those sheds had a secret.

#ScribesAndMakers #novelx1 #SixWeeksSummerDig

WordWeavers 11/11
mood of story, colours or sounds

Green, grey brown, orange brown and the sound of falling rain
Black, fluorescent white, loud voices and the sound of running feet
Green, green, green, golden yellow, a blackbird singing
Grey shot through with red, engine hum, station tannoy, the wish-wash of windscreen wipers
Gold and the slamming of doors
Orange, purple, red, yellow and the Schubert octet
A hubbub of voices, birdsong
A phone ringing

#WordWeavers #novelx1 #colours #sound

#WritersCoffeeClub 20
What rôle does death play in your work?

In the natural course of things, death is usually there or thereabouts

Now I look more closely, it seems death is always there or thereabouts

#novelx1: 1. traffic 'accident'
/ 2. suicide

#novelx2: 1. father [MC1]
/ 2. army service in Belfast
/ 3. both parents [MC2]

#novelx3: 1. wife

#novelx4: 1. suicide [ref x1 above]
/ 2. terrorist bomb

#novelx5: 1. Covid19

#death #amWritingFiction
#WritersCoffeeClub

#WordWeavers Aug 16: Who is your most flamboyant character, and is it more visual, behavioural, or something else?

That would have to be Elyssia ... and it is all in the behaviour

Interesting that I don't have any visually flamboyant characters 🤔

#WordWeavers #novelx1 #novelx4 #novelx5 #ElyssiaGadnall

WordWeavers 23
Your MC is lost in a busy city…

Nice question

Novelx1: Broderick Arnot, lean against a wall looking lost until someone offered to help

Novelx2: Theresa, take refuge in a cafe and ask the barista
Tom would never consider himself lost

Novelx3: Andrew Bridge, hail a cab

Novelx4: Elyssia, ask the first person to walk by: “Where the hell am I?”

Novelx5: Jim, phone Gill (his wife) & ask where he’s supposed to be

#WordWeavers 23
#novelx1
#novelx2
#novelx3
#novelx4
#novelx5

WordWeavers 4th June

Describe the mood of the opening paragraph of your story using 3 adjectives

wet wet wet

"It had, apparently, and quite probably, been the wettest June on record. He had read somewhere that, surprisingly, July was often the wettest month of the year (taking the average over the past thirty or forty years) knocking both December and January into a rain-gauge. This year, it was June."

#WordWeavers #novelx1 #amWritingFiction #SmallFinds

#WordWeavers Mar 28
What gives your characters a sense of self-worth or meaning in their life?

#novelx1
Broderick: working with a team; finding signs of (past) life in the soil

#novelx2
Theresa: sailing; helping people

#novelx3
Andrew: fighting climate change (even if it is a hopeless cause)

#novelx4
Elyssia: believing in a better world; the love of the man she loves

#novelx5
Jim: surviving day to day; keeping the Tidal Teashop open

#WordWeavers #amWritingFiction #amEditing

#WritersCoffeeClub - Dec 2. From all your work, who's your favourite character?

Oh, alright! I admit it
It's that annoying-girl-turned-vicar Elyssia Gadnall / Williams

She was the most annoying character in #novelx1 when she kept butting in where she was not wanted but she grew up to become a ... well ... a vicar

#WritersCoffeeClub #amWritingFiction
#novelx1 #novelx4 #novelx5 #ElyssiaGadnall

CW: This is a tough one

#PennedPossibilities 436 — Did your MC ever feel as though their innocence had been lost? What moment in their life could be described as the end of their innocence?

Yes
You’ll have to read the book

Which means I’ll have to publish it
Which means I’ll have to finish it and get it edited and …

Let’s just say, EG was assaulted by someone she knew from school when she was eighteen and gave birth nine months later

#PennedPossibilities #EG1 #EG2 #novelx1 #novelx4

@SJHoodlet

Totally understand. Thanks for the encouragement. I think I've found a group at the local writers' workshop that will read (or hear) some of my stuff and give me feedback. At the very least, you have prompted me to do a thorough re-edit of #novelx1, which can only be a good thing! Onwards and upwards

All the best for your own writing and search for recognition
Keep smiling
😉

Word Weavers 21st December
Have you ever thrown out your first chapter and rewritten it completely?

Constantly
Oh, oh, oh - how often have I rewritten thee, First Chapter?
Especially the first novel. I'm still rewriting the first chapter ten years later

#WordWeavers #novelx1 #amWritingFiction #WritingCommunity

WritingWonders Day 30
Have you ever planned to kill a character and not done it?

The other way round
I planned not to let a character die but she did 😢

Daniella Forrester in my first novel

#WritingWonders #novelx1
#amWritingFiction #EG1 #WritingCommunity

@BranwenOShea

#WritingWonders: 18th July

I wasn't sure how to answer this until I saw your answer

It is the characters, but not always how you expect

My #novelx1 (aka #EG1) was intended to be about the archaeology on a student summer dig in the Cotswolds but Elyssia Gadnall, who lived nearby, kept butting in

My current wip(s) - #novelx4 & #novelx5 (#EG2 & #EG3) - is(are) about her

#novelx2: Tom & Theresa
#novelx3: Dr Andrew Bridges

#amWriting #characters #muse #WritingCommunity

#PennedPossibilities 6
MC: #FirstKiss.

She met him at the shop. It wasn’t her fault. It was an accident. Totally

It's a sunny day & he said: Do you fancy a walk. They walk & talk. Well, she talks. Joshua never says much at the best of times

Singing & dancing, they skip downhill, arms linked behind their backs, not a care in the world, late primroses under the hedge

Watch out!

A dark 4x4 roars down the lane & they fall on the bank with her on top of him ... & she kisses him

#novelx1 #EG1

#wipwednesday

Lying awake at night thinking about the WiP. Decided I need structure

#novelx1 had a structure.
6 week archaeological dig x 7 days. 6x7 = 42 chapters gave a framework to write into

#novelx2: 10 years divided into 3 sections x 4 parts x 5 = 60 ch. It was a bit artificial but it worked fine

#novelx3 was more diffuse and more difficult to write, with no obvious end point

My new scheme for the wip:
6 yrs x 4 seasons x 2, 48 ch

Hmm. We'll see

#novelx4 #EG2
#WritingCommunity

#WritingWonders 9. Do natural calamities play a role in your story?

<struggling to think>

#novelx1, at the beginning, there's a deluge of rain that floods the archaeology dig

#novelx2, there's a storm in which a sailing boat carrying one of the main characters (MC1) is wrecked on a beach in Sussex near to where MC2 lives. (Thereby hangs a tale!)

#novelx3, there's a lot of snow at one point making life difficult

#novelx4, nothing yet as far as I can remember...

#amWritingFiction #weather

#WritingWonders May 30: “What colors do you associate with your WIP, and why?”

Burnt orange, not exactly auburn but it might have something to do with Elyssia's hair colour in certain lights

Grey-blue - shiny, almost metallic - which I associate with Joshua. I have no idea why. Perhaps bc he is some kind of knight in shining armour (?)

Green - the colour of an English summer - although it is mostly not summer in the WiP. This is a hangover from #novelx1 which was

#novelx4 #EG2 #amWriting