I decided to keep working on my WIP after watching 13 hours of fantasy creative writing lectures by Brandon Sanderson. I never have read his work; but, he is a very good teacher. I really have to pick anything free so I found his videos on Youtube. I realized I was committing a lot of new fantasy writer mistakes. Along with the Dunning-Kruger effect, I had a story that did require a lot of rewriting. Now I am more unsure than ever about the playability and readability of my WIP. I added a lot more dialogue and choices. I added immediate action and plot movement. Slow beginnings are out. I took out a character and placed them later in the story. it is now just you and your friend for a bit. I restricted information dumping (this is hard for me). I was really screwing that part up. I am using shorter sentences and less adverbs. I think to someone who has been in the writing community, this is an obvious thing to do. Or perhaps someone who reads a lot of newer books. To me…I really like long sentences; but, I do realize they take more energy to read. This starts to wear out the reader (you all were trying to tell me this). I needed to place myself in the readers shoes more. I even pulled out some favorite books of mine and found they too use short sentences and only have a few characters in the beginning. I even found the major plot points in the first 3 pages or so. Back to Dunning-Kruger…I just didn’t know enough to know enough. And now I just know nothing…that doesn’t feel great either. I also removed 95 percent of the whimsical titles on each page. As it turned out, they were like episode titles. They were distracting. Anyhow, just about every drop of advice, no matter how harsh or disappointing to hear, was fairly accurate. I’m trying to finish-up chapter 2 right now and have hit a wall. I’m constantly worried about whether there are enough meaningful choices. I put in more forked scenes that reveal different parts of the plot. I started to manage the cultural language a bit. It is fair to assume they are not ignorant people if you subscribe to any form of ancient lost civilization theory. But, I am taking out words that don’t fit culturally and putting in phrases that are new and match things they would likely say. I know this all seems elementary to most of you. I am still behind you all. To think I could start-up a writing career in a year or two is silly and naïve. Now I feel burnt out an stuck and sucky. I do have an exciting first chapter that I feel hits all the marks. But, carrying through all those changes to the end will take a lot of careful work. I still feel like maybe I should have just focused on writing an epic novel. I did help a friend get her short story published and she made 80 dollars! I was excited for her. It is so much easier to edit someone else’s work. Anyhow, I have blabbed-on too long. I don’t know if I will make it folks, but I wish you all the very best. This writer sits in quiet pensivity.
