Good Progress

On November 21st, I posted here that I had 29 scenes left to write and that I would be happy with completing two of them per week. Well, it's been about a month and I've been very pleased with my pace. I've done five per week.

First, my 29 scenes grew to 31. Out of those 31, I have finished 20 of them. So just 11 to go. So at that pace, I should be done in just over two weeks. However, here we are at Christmas and New Year's, so I'm sure I'll slow down a bit. Right now, my goal is to be finished by the end of January.

Of course, "finished" is a relative term. It still needs to be copy edited for errors, I've got to design and format the book, develop or acquire artwork for the cover and interiors, navigate the binding and publishing process, acquire an ISBN number and.... probably a couple dozen other details I'm not even aware of, yet.

But by "finished", I mean I can start writing the second book in the series while all this other editing/formatting/publishing stuff gets worked out. I hope it will go quickly. We'll see.

Character Sketch: Lucas Griffon

Lucas Griffon is the younger brother of Galen. As the story begins, he is sixteen years old and resentful towards what he perceives as Galen's preferred status.


Lucas never knew his father. His mother was widowed while she carried Lucas in her womb. He has grown up in Galen's shadow and is eager to earn the same accolades that seem to come to his brother so easily.


I am really pleased with this drawing, I think it came out very well. I had been drawing sketches of Galen for years, but had never given a lot of thought to a look for Lucas. Then one day I drew this with a ballpoint on the back of some computer paper and I fell in love with it. I think I really nailed the definitive look for Lucas with this illustration.


I scanned it in, cleaned it up and colored it. I knew I wanted a darker palette than what I used for Galen, yet I wanted enough similarity to provide symmetry as the novel follows the stories of both brothers. I hope you enjoy it, you can click on the images to see larger version.

Character Sketch: Galen Griffon

Here is a first look at the hero of my story. You can click on each image to see a much larger version. 

Galen Griffon is a twenty-five year old serving as a soldier in King Geoffrey's army. His father died when he was nine years old, leaving Galen and his younger brother to be raised on the family farm by their widowed mother.

Galen repeatedly earns praise for his heroic service but he's plagued by self-doubt. He feels unworthy of the attention and knows he is no true hero.

I have been doodling on character designs for Galen for a while and I think I have finally found a look that works. I have included both the black and white scan of my artwork along with the colored version that I finished in Photoshop. I did this by coloring everything in flat tones then using the Dodge and Burn tools to create gradients, highlights and shadows. The red piping around the shoulders was added in the computer, I didn't have them in my original drawing. But I liked the way the red popped out around the hem so I added it to the shoulders, as well.

Write right, Wright p2: The Business of Business

I minored in Drama at the University of Georgia. One of the things I learned in my acting classes was the idea of character business. Typically, business is whatever the characters happen to be doing in a dialogue scene to keep the actors from having to just stand there. It might consist of pouring a cup of coffee or straightening up a desk.

Character business can help bring a scene to life, grounding it in believability. I have found myself recalling this lesson as I construct scenes in my novel. I have also found that good use of business can provide insight or commentary on a character. If you are a writer, find ways to do this. A lot can be conveyed this way, perhaps saving you from long passages of description or clunky dialogue.

You should also extend character business to the overall direction and blocking of a scene (to borrow terms a film director would use). A creative juxtaposition of words and actions can do wonders in terms of heightening the dramatic tension of a scene.

I have three examples from scenes I've written this year.

For Scene A, I needed to portray the inner conflict of a character stuck in a situation for which he could no longer feel any excitement. Essentially, all I had on my notecard for the scene called for him to sit there and think about stuff. If it was going to be an interesting scene, it needed a lot of help. It came to life when I found a way to metaphorically represent the same conflict in an external way. That was the hook that kept the scene alive. At the same time it allows the reader insight to the character's attitude by the way he reacts to the external conflict.

For Scene B, I ended up writing two scenes in one. It needed to be a dialogue scene between the protagonist and a bad girl-type with whom he shouldn't have been alone. The dialogue was important to the plot but just the fact these two were alone in the same room needed to provide tension. I accomplished it completely through character business. The business throughout the scene provides information that is completely independent from the plot stuff going on in the dialogue. Each action (the proximity of the characters, the offering and refusal of a glass of wine, the posture, etc.) tells you something about the characters and, all the while, they are talking about something else entirely. In my opinion, that juxtaposition really cranked the tension of the scene way up.

Scene C started out as two different scenes and they both would have been boring. In one scene, the protagonist was to sit down over a meal and agonize internally over the idea of turning to the bad girl for help. It would end with him deciding to do it and the next scene had to show him making his way to her and asking. Wow, that would have been boring. My solution was to combine the scenes so that he is agonizing over his decision (internal dialogue) as he makes his way to her chambers (action). Hopefully, this provides a sense of tension as he needs to hurry up and make up his mind before he gets there. 

That's about it for this post. Just remember you can layer not only conflict but information through contrasting words and actions. This business of business can help bring characters and scenes to life.