http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea Writing a fantasy novel on-line, from first draft to final version Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:20:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The novel I'm reading right now started off promisingly enough. I picked up the first page to see what it was like, and just kept reading. By around a third way through though, I was starting to get a little antsy. I'm half-way through now, and not sure I'll go any ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/152 As you know, we're trying to sell novels here. If you read much about writing on the internet then you will also know that that a lot of agents now accept email submissions. This is great for us down at the bottom end of the world because it saves a ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/151 How different are the names of characters in your novel? Progress on Barrain has come to a standstill at present as I am concentrating on the novel for my critiquing group. I gave Calder the first 30,000 words to read last night. It's a difficult story to write in that I am trying ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/150 Calder asked me, the other day, how I 'saw' what I was writing as I wrote it.  She is very visual. She sees the story almost like a movie as it unfolds in her head, and the hardest part for her is getting that picture down exactly as she sees it, ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/147 Packing to go away seems so much harder than it used to be. Once it was just throw some clothes into a bag and we're ready. Anything we'd forgotten we bought along the way. Nowadays the clothes are the least of my worries. Have I got my mobile phone? Have I packed the ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/146 The critique group I joined is changing the way I write my novel.More story, less spontaneityI am forced to plan out the story more. This is good in that I have a more solid idea of the world, who the people are, and what made them that way earlier than I would ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/145 I love reading about the practicalities in writing fantasy, like how far horses can really travel in a day. Gillian Polack has done a similar thing with food in her guest blog Food is Just Fantasy Without Substance over at Voyager Online. Gillian talks about carrying pots and pans, and what ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/144 This is the third time I have taken Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, the first book in his Wheel of Time series out of the library to read. It will be the third time I return it to the library unread. I try a chapter or two, and ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/143 I am doing more writing, although it is not yet reflected in the word count. A lot of it is putting back story into what has already been written. The writing is clumsy at the moment; phrasing is awkward, with lots of cliches. Where I see them I take them out, but at ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/142 Here's a dilemma I never expected to have. All our books are starting to sound the same. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but I am noticing aspects of one book creeping into other books. Take Barrain, for instance. As part of the rewrite for this draft we introduced a substance called ... http://www.infinitediversity.com.au/anovelidea/archives/141