Website!

Whoops, I guess it's been a while since I last checked this.  I now have a website, which I update and have quite a bit more content for.  You can find it here: writr.nevets.net

Basically, I've been keeping really busy with school, so no luck on a publisher for Mutation, and not a whole lot in the way of short stories, either.  I do try to keep up with ad, book, and video game reviews, though. :)

Mutation Complete: Let the Editing Commence

      Well, as you might be able to tell from the title, Mutation is once again complete.  I say "again" because I finished it last summer, however since I was unable to find a publishing agent/company, I decided to revamp it this summer and flesh the plotline out so that it would flow into the future novels.
      While I'm not going to actually go back and work on editing until after I get back from Chicago in early August, I have been going through it again and comparing it to my first write.  In total, I am very happy with this version: the story seems more realistic (well, as realistic as you can get with an infection that turns people into monsters :P), the plots flow, and Gideon's plotline adds a ton more depth.  Additionally, I like how I built Rose up to actually become the main character of the sequence, whereas before she didn't really seem all that important.  There's a lot of grammatical errors and some typos I've already fixed just in my brief readthrough, but thankfully it doesn't seem like I did that bad of a job writing it this time around.  I guess I'm actually learning how to write a good story in addition to writing well grammatically (woot!).
      So, hopefully I will be able to find a publisher or an agent by the end of this upcoming fall semester; that would be awesome and amazing and make me feel super-super happy.  From now on I won't be talking about the plot or the characters for Mutation too much; for the most part I will be talking about either random stuff going on in my life that seems vaguely important or noting my progress on finding either an agent or an actual publisher.
      That does not mean, however, that I will not be writing even during this process.  Once I've finished editing (which probably won't take very long; I absolutely hate editing xD) I'm going to start outlining for Maturity and Pa'jagat.  While I had finished Pa'jagat before, I have some big plans for it that might be too much for me to handle, but I think I'll have fun working on it with these new plans, and if it turns out like I want it to, it will be absolutely epic.  Or so I think. ;)

Anyways, until next time, (every)one.  Writr, out.

Story Progression

One thing I've come to realize about Mutation is that the story never really felt like it was actually progressing.  The characters remained mostly the same throughout the entire story, either being regular normal mortals or superpowered mutants.  And that makes the story stale; if your characters, especially the main protagonists, never change throughout the course of a story, then the story is boring and doesn't really flow.  Your characters are just doing things but never changing because of the events that happen to them.

The reason I mention this at all is because I've been re-reading the Harry Potter novels.  Yes, I fell to the Harry Potter craze again.  Whatever.  The point is that JK Rowling did a good job of progressing the story as a series.  Nothing moved too fast.  In the first 3 novels the events that happened were relatively safe; you weren't thrust into the second war automatically.  Even in Books 4 and 5 that didn't happen with Voldemort back, because you had the ministry not accepting his return and Voldemort for the most part remaining on the down-low.  Only in books 6 and 7 did you have the real war going on, and as a result those stories were longer, more "epic" per se, and dealt more with simply trying to fight Voldemort.
Additionally, the characters progressed.  They grew up.  They learned new spells and tricks, new ways to combat the problems they were facing.  And they were limited in their abilities, too; they couldn't just do whatever the heck they wanted to from the get-go.  And that's what made Harry Potter great; it was always developing, the characters were always developing, and you felt as if they were real people.

I'll admit, Mutation still doesn't a lot of that kind of progression, which comes with how the story works anyways.  But I think that, by making Rose sort of become the central character of the story, with her trying to learn who she is and what the limits to her powers are, will help to have at least a little bit of that.  Because, after all, you can't have characters with unlimited powers, which is how I had things going before.
With luck, Mutation will set the foundation for the series of others to come.  I can only hope.

Until next time, (every)one.  Writr, out.

Part 3 Development - 2

I've come to realize that my perception of the connection between Mutation and Pa'Jagat has changed a lot.  Whereas before I was simply making slight hints at a connection between the two, now the connection is far more obvious and has a major role in the plot.
If I do it right, this will make the stories loads more epic.  If I don't do it right, well... let's just not think about that. :P

I think it'll turn out pretty well, because it adds a lot more depth to the story of Mutation where there was little depth before.

Part 3 Development - 1

Part 3 is basically the part that builds for everything that will come after Mutation.  It goes into the story of Rose, her past, her present, and her future.  It goes into Roku, and Pa'jagat.  Gideon's story becomes much more developed, preparing for big things to come in Maturity and Mutiny.
Here are just a few of the things I hope will turn out well in Part 3:

Rose: While you may not see it at first, she is the central character of this trilogy.  She's the heroine, the big kahuna, the person you root for on the sidelines.  She will prove herself to be a powerful, fiesty individual and show that she has honor and dignity to go along with all her power, too.  She's strong enough to make Voldemort, Ganondorf, and every single Lannister cry themselves to sleep.  Or at least, that's what I'm aiming for; undoubtedly I'll at least succeed in that, given how Part 3 focuses solely on her.

Gideon: For Gideon's part, things are going to start moving fast.  New characters will pop up, a central villain will appear, and the actual goal for his story will be revealed.  Additionally, I want to capture the sure devastation that occurs in the city, and the systematic approach the villain takes to achieving that goal.  I've been paying a lot of attention to Crysis 2 and Half-Life 2 as far as how the city should appear and react to the events that are going on, and I think it will be a suprisingly fun challenge to create this atmosphere of sheer devastation, because I'm going to have to make the reader actually try to understand what has happened, and how terrible things have become in words, rather than flashy graphics.

Thirteen: While Thirteen has ended up taking a back seat in this re-write compared to the initial version, his development, per se, is still crucial to the story.  I guess development isn't quite the right word so much as the perception the reader gains as they learn more about him; for the most part Thirteen remains exactly the same throughout the story.

Devastation of War: Part 3 is the part of war.  The part where the battles take place.  There is death.  Murder.  Sacrifice.  My goal is to show how the city has become ravaged by the infected, and how the infected are banding together and actually planning, that they are more cunning creatures than they were in the original version.  The goal is also to show how smart plans can overcome the most powerful of enemies, both on the good side and the bad side, and showcasing how Rose has a natural military instinct that the others simply don't.

Part 4 may be the conclusion to Mutation, but Part 3 is the climax, and in my opinion the climax should be incredibly important - if not more so - compared to the ending.  With a little bit of luck, it'll turn out to be absolutely epic.

Until next time, (every)one.  Writr, out.

P.S. To my few audience members (I think there's two of you at the moment), if you wouldn't mind commenting on this or something, it would make me feel like I'm actually doing this for a reason. :P  If only everything came with a "like" button.