Writing Tips – Page 51 – Marie Alice Writes & Reads

Diary of a writing project. Day 49: too many secrets

Word count goal for this week: 47 500 words
Word count today: 31 567 words

I have a very strong tendency to reveal very slowly, almost reluctantly a beta-reader told me once, key details and key elements.
I rely too much on the effect of surprise, when I should work on building up tension, suspense.
Unberable, just-one-page suspense.

A lack of a well balanced sense of tension and built-up leads to poor pacing and a less engaging story.

I’ll fix it better in the re-write, because for now, I’m simply taking notes and moving on with drafting.

Words feel good again. Characters’ voices are getting much clearer, much more distinct from one another as the story progresses.
Another good thing happening is the sub-plots. It really links to the main plots while giving the opportunity to explore the character’s personality.

One thing I’m growing concerned about is the narration. It’s third person past, but I have some instances where I switch and I use other characters point of view.
Not in a confusing way. But in a way that might not be well perceived. There’s an expression for it, but I cannot find the article in which I learned the term.

Now, on those questions marks, I will say goodnight, dear writer friends…

Diary of a writing project. Day 48: Writing through doubt

Word count goal of the week: 47 500 words
Word count goal today: 30 139 words

Every week, I feel like it’s gonna be THE week.

The week where I write 3 000 words every day and finally, finally catch up on my weekly writing goals.
It would be great to be able to hope I could meet my crazy deadline this time around.

Hope is blowing with the strong winds we’ve been having the past few days.

Again, today, I read an interview with a literary agent. And doubt instantly hop on. A very hard-to-shake doubt.

I’m taking a bit of a gamble with that novel. Set in the recent past, it’s a story about a popular teenager, a lost friendship and the meaning of love. Plus a very bad ghost.

How to pitch it to attract a literary agent with a story that meets the Book Market flavour of the next few months while being very different, inspired both by recents novels AND old movies?

I tell myself I need to write another elevator pitch, then a synopsis, and then, tweak it until I can make it work.
A second later, I tell myself I made a mistake in the first place, writing a novel on the edge of many genres, in a more literate, but fun and relax, style.

The only thing I can do right now is believe in the project, go back to the roots of it and re-discovered all the good reasons why I started it in the first place.

I’ll go ahead and do that… tomorrow morning. For now, I’m gonna go to bed.

Here’s hoping for 4 hours of sleep in a row. Fingers cross!

Until next time, dear writer friends…