It begins in four hours.

Are you ready?

~ Sophia-Rose

Closer and closer...

NaNo starts in two days! Are you excited? Nervous? Maybe some of both? Since this is my first NaNo, I'm mostly nervous right now, although there's some excitement, too. (This happens to be my just-before-it-starts post, but I'm posting it today since tomorrow will probably be too busy.)

We're probably all doing this for a reason. Whether it's to improve our writing, have fun, or just keep busy, there's an underlying reason for undertaking this crazy task. So, why are you doing NaNo? What (if anything) do you want to accomplish? Here's my list. (Yes, I know most of my posts on here lately have included lists.)

• Learn to stop procrastinating.
• Actually finish something that's somewhat long.
• Try not to use parenthetical remarks anywhere in the novel. (For me, that's really hard!)
• Learn to create more interesting dialogue and give characters unique voices.
• Improve descriptions.
• Learn how to describe things in more detail and write chapters that are more than two pages long. This has already been partly accomplished with the Greatest Treasure, but I'd like to keep working on it.
• Have lots of writing practice!
• Most of all, have fun!

Okay. I just proved to myself that I'm not completely insane. What about you?

~ Sophia-Rose

Story Must-Haves

Hello again. Guess what? I'm not dead. Hooray for that. As NaNo draws ever nearer, most of us are either frantically finishing their plot and character sheets, desperately hoping they can wing their novel in April, or sitting back in their chairs, all done with their planning and relieved that they get a few days of peace before it begins. I'm now among the latter. Hooray for that, too!

To return to the title of the post, there are some things I just can't seem to write a novel without. They are by no means required for a good story, but for me, writing becomes exceedingly boring without some or all of the below. Laugh if you want. I have weird tastes sometimes. For me, a story should preferably have:

• A morbid prophecy. Do I ever love morbid prophecies! Not only is it terribly fun to prophesy doom and destruction for your characters, they're pretty easy to write and help set the tone as well. I'll take a morbid prophecy over a love poem or rhyming legend any day. (However, it isn't possible at the moment to include one of these prophecies in Legends of Light, so I'm settling for the rhyming legend.)
• A funny character. Many of the stories I write have some dark themes and plots to them, and they'd be just plain depressing without this essential element. Everybody loves reading witty dialogue or the hilarious antics of their favorite trickster, and they're also great fun to write!
• A creepy ambush scene. I don't know about you, but I like to write confrontations that will send chills up the reader's back! And nothing says chills like a container of ice cream creepy ambush. Have your characters get shocked by their mortal enemy's sudden appearance. Not only does it give you a great start to an intense fight scene, it acts as the perfect hook so your readers just can't stop reading!
• Two characters who hate each other. This makes the perfect subplot to add several thousand words to your story without having to insert fluff. It's also so much more interesting to have two characters on the same side despise each other than get along perfectly. Bonus points if they still don't like each other by the end. MORE bonus points if they do without a cheesy I-suddenly-like-you scene!
• A magical creature of some sort. Unicorns work fine. Elves are good. Dragons are even better! (This is my own personal preference. Despite being a theurgist at heart, dragons are hands down the best fantasy creatures ever. Sorry, unicorns.)

What are your story "must-haves"?

~ Sophia-Rose

Not burned out yet

So, it's been awhile (sort of) since I've posted. The reality is I probably won't be posting every day until it starts, but I'll be trying to post more often. I haven't been neglecting my writing work over the past few days, though. Oh, no! Here's what I've done just this evening:

• Made a change to a certain scene: it now takes place at midnight rather than dawn.
• Decided that a whole legend would be told in rhyme rather than prose. After all, there's no morbid prophecy in this story.
• Fleshed out the plans for some intense and crucial action scenes.
• Made lots of decisions regarding just how the characters discover their new powers.
• Filled in some gaping holes involving important scenes.
• JUST ABOUT FINISHED MY STORY OUTLINE!

But I'm not done planning. Oh, definitely not. I still need to finish my character sheets. Those are quick, easy, and fun, so they shouldn't pose a problem. But after that I need to write a complete list of all the scenes in my novel. Uh-oh. I guess I can handle it. And I suppose it's worth it. Wouldn't want to leave something out, right?

To be honest, I'm surprised I made it this far without getting burnout, especially considering I've never seriously plotted a novel before. I think it's going quite well. Hopefully I'll be able to power through, dig 50K words out of it, and finish in a month.

~ Sophia-Rose

Legends of Light - Final Cover

Here you go. I think it looks pretty good. I'm now going to add it to the page on here and on the NaNo website.

Oh, and by the way: in case you were curious, S. B. Forrest is my "author" name. That's what I put on my book covers and such.

~ Sophia-Rose

Legends of Light Covers

Hello again! I've decided that for the rest of the month, most of the posts will be about NaNo itself rather than writing.

I made eight potential covers for Legends of Light, and all this afternoon. However, there are really only three different designs, and the rest are slight variants, so altogether they took about two hours to make. I'd like your input on which one you like the best (although stating multiple favorites is helpful, too.) Ready? Here are the covers based on the Dragon Template:

Without background text

With background text

Here are the covers based on the Legend Template:

With background text and sparkles

Without background text, with sparkles

With background text, without sparkles

Without background text or sparkles

And now, the ones with the Simple Template:

Without background text

With background text

So, which one's your favorite?

~ Sophia-Rose

I've been busy...

...and having some trouble thinking of more topics. Any ideas? I'm hoping to have another post ready tonight, but it may not happen. Sorry about this.

~ Sophia-Rose

The Riddle Game

What is the question that's hidden in rhymes

Sometimes brand new, or from ancient times

The answer that's simple, but so hard to see

This is my essence. Can you define me?

(The above is a completely original riddle written by me.)

It's a riddle! Well, you might be thinking, do you mean the answer is a riddle or the poem itself is a riddle, or...forget it. Those of you who participated in my Mission: Mansion contest on my other blog will already have experience with my riddles. Believe it or not, riddles are actually fairly easy to write once you get the hang of them, and the above took me about two minutes to write. By now, you're probably wondering what my secret is. I'm ready to tell you now. Whenever you need that little riddle for a gate password, a test of intelligence, or just a mystical inscription, this is your handy little two-minute riddle-writing guide to refer back to. 

Here are the 5 steps to riddle making!

1. Decide what you want the answer to be. I'd recommend something relatively simple, but it has to be at least somewhat interesting to make your task easier. For example: "pencil" or "shoelace" would be bad answers to a riddle.

2. Write down (or just think of) different meanings/interpretations/aspects of the answer. Take the riddle above. I'd write rhymes, simple, ancient, question, etc. Think of as many as you can without going overboard. If you don't use all of them in the final product, that's okay. While doing this, consider the difficulty of your riddle. Choose more obscure words/phrases for harder difficulty. For example: the riddle above was designed to be guessed immediately, while many of the riddles from my contest were written to be challenging.

3. Play with your notes from step 2. Arrange them into sentences. Decide which order to put them in. Think about how you could express them poetically. Decide how you could phrase them so that they rhyme. 

4. Construct the poem. Insert your ideas, likely altering a few of them to fit, or maybe adding something last-minute if you discover you need to. This is absolutely okay, and I often do this. 

5. Make edits if you need to, rewrite it from start to finish if need be. You may not even need to do this step. Congratulations! You now have a complete riddle. 

Don't be disappointed if you can't write riddles in two minutes at first. These take practice. The steps above are designed as a starting point, and lately I've been able to decide on a solution and difficulty and write the riddle from start to finish. With enough practice, you should be able to do this eventually, too. Good luck! 

What captures the mind, ensnares it a trap?

What acts as a guide or a path or a map?

What takes you on journeys in magical lands?

What is all these things, given the correct hands?

~ Sophia-Rose

7 Easy-ish Steps to a Good Character

Characters are lots of fun, and can be one of the most interesting aspects of a story - IF (and that's a big if) you do them right. Nobody wants to read something like this:

"Esmeralda was a beautiful princess. She had long, golden blond hair and sparkly blue eyes. She was so kind and perfect that everyone loved her and did anything she asked. She also had magical powers that let her transform into anything or save anyone if the need arose. Not only did she have epic, unbeatable powers, but she was a natural at sword-fighting and could even defeat the king's finest knights."

I don't know about you, but that sort of description makes me want murder that character. Honestly. On the other end of the character scale, we have this, which nobody wants, either:

"Jane was terrible at everything. She had messy, black hair and ugly bloodshot eyes. She was depressed and moody, and nobody ever wanted to be around her and mostly left her alone. She failed every subject in school, was lazy and rebellious, and never tried to please anyone. She was very clumsy, always broke the most valuable objects, and was always the worst at sports as well."

Okay, so where's a good spot in the middle of all that? Although it's fairly easy (and somewhat funny) to write a character like either of the above examples, you need to write a character that takes a little more effort. For example, I'm going to give you a very rough outline of one of my favorite characters, then give you steps to help organize your character.

"Peregrine was an eager magic apprentice. He had vivid red hair and bright green eyes. He was ambitious, eager to please, and a little reckless. He was training in transformation magic and was still somewhat of a beginner, but could do basic transformations without too much trouble - and bigger ones that went horribly wrong. After some of his reckless actions had terrible consequences, he learned to think before acting."

(In case you're wondering, Peregrine is nine years old.) That seems a little better, right? Here's how to make a balanced, middle-of-the-road type of character.

1. Give your character a name. (See my earlier post: Naming Characters - What and What Not to Do.) For example: My character is named Peregrine.
2. Decide your character's role in the story. Are they a main character? Do they only show up for a few chapters? Do you ever write from their point of view? How will they forward the story? For example: Peregrine is a major supporting character that's in approximately half the story, probably a little more. Although I'll never write from his point of view, he's crucial to the plot and sets up a major conflict that is absolutely necessary for the "big idea" of the series.
3. Decide your character's other basic information. Age, physical appearance, temperament, all that sort of thing. Write it down, either into a narrative, as above, or a list of traits. For example: the first three sentences of the above narrative.
4. Now it's time to decide your character's strengths and weaknesses. In general, I like to have one major weakness for every two strengths. To continue with the Peregrine example, he is ambitious and pleasant to be around but reckless, funny and daring but a little naive, etc.
5. Set up the types of things your character does, or their powers, and have they mastered them? For example: the fourth sentence of the above narrative.
6. Now for what is arguably the most important step: designing the character arc. How will your character change throughout the book? What events cause these changes? Is it a gradual change, or is there one major turning point? If so, what is it? For example: In Legends of Light, Peregrine learns to be less reckless and to think before acting, mostly because running off by himself has drastic consequences for most of the major characters. Most of the changes happen in the course of two hours or so, the most important turning point for him being when... (Sorry, I can't tell you. It's a big spoiler, you see.)
7. Arrange this information in an organized fashion. Make a character sheet, put all your character arcs into one file, whatever works for you. Have fun!

(By the way...what do you think of Peregrine? He's one of my favorite characters so far.)

~ Sophia-Rose

Roses are red, violets are blue...

...poetry's good in stories, too!

Okay, it would take a little more than a "roses are red..." poem to be good enough for a story, but you get the idea. Used correctly, poetry can be a great tool for a writer. Used incorrectly (or just bad or random poetry) and it's a heavy blow to your story. Take, for example, the below poem, used with the author's permission:

Apple, bear, snake

Carrot, pie, cake

Jump in the lake

Happy milkshake

Learn how to bake

Then eat a rake

Step on the brake

Blue pepper steak!

                                                 ~ Elizabeth GoldenThistle

That isn't by any means her best poetry, but it makes a great example. However, bad poetry can be funny in the right circumstances, like the below example from my Wizard101 fanfiction:

There once was a fiery old scarecrow

He could knock out a wizard in one blow

His name was “Harvest Lord”

But he must’ve been bored

Because he had nowhere to go.

                                                                         ~ Emma IceCrafter, the Greatest Treasure

In most cases, though, bad poetry is a daring move that doesn't always have good consequences. Good, serious poetry can be used in many ways: a song, an ancient inscription, a morbid prophecy...Oh, by the way, anyone who's read enough of my work knows that I LOVE morbid prophecies. They really set the tone for the story, adding a lot of great atmosphere to it. Take, for example, one of my favorites, from my recent contest:

Intruder who is not of death

Wait and watch your doom befall

For you will fade to a mere breath

Because death is master of them all.

A cold will come, chilling your bones

As death pervades your body and mind

You'll join the ghosts in silent moans

It was a mistake to come, you'll find.

But if you are of death, rejoice!

For you are noble, shrewd, and clever

You'll help us to complete our choice

To end the other schools forever.

                                                 ~ Mission: Mansion, Task 5

And then there's the riddles, which deserve, and will get, a whole other post of their own.

Whichever way you choose to use your poetry, have fun with it! And remember: go beyond roses are red, violets are blue.

~ Sophia-Rose

Naming Characters - What and What Not to Do

(This is yesterday's post again. Expect another sometime today.)

Wardiloth isn't my top choice for a world name. If I could, I'd rename it to something more epic. However, there are three reasons why I don't really want to.
1. I've had it for too long. It's been a good two weeks since I've chosen it, and now that it's there, I can't possibly think of my world as anything else. Period.
2. Naming fantasy things is HARD. Try it. You'll see. It took me a solid half hour to come up with Wardiloth, which is, in my opinion, a sub-par name. Coming up with a really great one would probably take hours, an amount of time I just don't want to spend on a name.
3. It doesn't matter. Read that again. It. Doesn't. Matter. The bottom line is: if your story is good enough, and the name doesn't come up in the story too much, your readers won't care very much what your world is named. Anything short of Ding-Ding (or something similar) is fine.

Characters, on the other hand, are a different story. Name your character something that took you ten minutes to come up with that you aren't pleased with and your readers will either cringe or laugh at you. Here are some dos and don'ts of naming a regular earth character with a regular human name:
- DO take your time and find a good fit if you can. Baby name websites are good for this. Search names that have meanings that match your character's personality. For example: Sophia could be a good name for a character that's very smart. (Sophia means wisdom.)
- If that fails, DO keep looking. Try to find a good list of first names. Believe it or not, I use the Wizard101 name list for this. If I can't find anything I like on there, I move to Pirate101, which has a greater variety. You should be able to find something.
- DO remember your character's name! Nothing during this process is more frustrating than finding the perfect name, then forgetting what it was.
- DON'T pick the first name off the top of your head. Chances are, it's either really boring, really common, a really bad fit, or some or all of the above.
- DON'T settle for less than great. Keep trying, even if it's hard. Trust me, it's no fun to write a character that has a horrible name.

Now, fantasy characters are tougher. Here are more dos and donts.
- Again, DO take your time. These are hard, and bad names will sound absolutely ridiculous.
- DO try to create your own name first. Go to a translation website and translate words that describe your character into Latin or some other language. Combine the words until you get a combination that sounds like a good name.
- Unfortunately, the above method is extremely difficult, so if that fails: DO keep trying. The above is really the only way to get a high-quality original name, so if you're all tired out after attempting it, you can adapt a name from an online fantasy name generator to suit your purposes. This is what I do for most of my names. :P
- If you don't want to do that, DO experiment with combining syllables in your head. Try several combinations until you find one that works well. I've done this for a few of my names.
- DO remember that simple isn't always bad. Sometimes, a plain one or two syllable name can work well, not to mention it's easy to remember and pronounce!
- DON'T ever slap together random sounds into a two or three syllable name that's completely random. It will probably sound horrible.
- DON'T ever, EVER copy someone else's fantasy character's name. These are much less common than regular people names and many people will probably be able to figure out that you copied.
- DON'T forget to save your character's name somewhere! These are even easier to forget than regular people names.

So, I hope those helped you. Good luck naming!

~ Sophia-Rose

Camp in the Arctic

And that just about describes what it looks like outside right now - minus the tent and freezing cold writer. I mean, a snowstorm just started last night and it's supposed to keep up until 10 PM tonight. Yay. The picture above is actually an understatement about just how snowy it is, but I didn't want to keep adding snowflakes for an hour. Let's hope it all melts by the time April begins. I would NOT want to go camping in a foot of snow with sub-zero temperatures. (Actually, it's only just below freezing right now, but whatever.) Wish me luck, I suppose. I'm going to go snowflake. (Oh, the irony!)

~ Sophia-Rose

An information dump is okay...

...as long as it stays inside your head. Trust me, nobody likes reading extensive monologues or explanations about the Elvish Wars of 1142 if your story occurs 75 years later. As a general rule, information dumps aren't very much fun for the reader, as enjoyable as they may be to create for the author. As the needs of the reader must come first, please: Don't put one in your story. That said...

Having lots of background information and history about your world helps enrich the reading experience and makes your world seem so much more real - even if the information mostly stays out of the story! And guess what? If you find your characters suddenly need a diversion to add words or for some other reason, exploring the ruins of ____ will work just fine!

This is, in short, what I did today. It's going to be very tempting not to put most of it in the story, but I need to restrain myself. It was mostly the past 100 years of history, largely made up of conflicts between the humans and the elves. Not only did it give me a large chunk of background information to use whenever I find myself in need of it, but it was great fun to write and also gave me a good idea of the types of people the elves are. For example: Did you know that the old human capital, Pyrondeloth, was destroyed by elves? Did you know that there was a fight over the mountains in 1154, Wardiloth time (WT)? Did you know...

~ Sophia-Rose

Map of Wardiloth

(Note: This is yesterday's post. I will be posting again later today, probably this evening.)
I made a cheesy MS Paint map of my fantasy world, Wardiloth!

Click to enlarge!

Yes, it's not the best map ever. Here's the key:
Blue = water
Zig-zag things = mountains
Green = land
Black circle = city/fort
Brown = road

I also liked writing the names of places in English and then the "translation" in elvish runes. I thought that was cool. I think sometime I'm going to make a better map on paper, and learn the runic alphabet, too! Anyway, I just thought you might want to see what types of things I've been doing lately.

~ Sophia-Rose

It Begins!

Camp NaNoWriMo opens today! Go type your novel info in! :D

How many words are you going for? I suppose I'm just doing 50K since that's what I was planning on in the first place. What about you?

See you later. I've got to go plan my novel...

~ Sophia-Rose

Legends of Light Blurb

The blurb for LoL (isn't that an unfortunate acronym?) is finished! You can find it on the Legends of Light page, but here it is for your convenience:

"Gabby Nelson is sure she’s going insane. She finds what looks like fairy dust in her school’s hallways, and not one, but TWO of her teachers want to take her to a magical land. It’s not until she follows one through a portal that she learns the truth. Wardiloth, land of villagers, elves, and dragons, is in serious trouble. After a devastating plague, the dragons are weakened considerably, and war with the forest elves seems to be coming. With the help of a city guard, a wizard, and his vivacious apprentice, can Gabby retrieve the artifact that may save everything?"

And if you buy now, you get it for only $3.99! No, I'm not making you pay to read my book. You will have to wait, though, likely until early September.

~ Sophia-Rose

The Writer's Bane

The greatest fear of every author is not grammar errors. It's not plot holes. It's not even accidental file deletion! We've almost definitely all suffered from it at some point, and I'm sure we all hate it. It's the Writer's Bane.

The Writer's Bane strangles your imagination, chokes your determination, and stifles every ounce of your desire to write. When it hits me, I usually close the laptop, leave the story, and sometimes don't come back for weeks - or even want to. A severe case means certain death for your story. 

What is it? It's best known as Writer's Block. That's a drastic understatement. Writer's Wall. Writer's Mountain. In every form, it has plagued authors for years, and will continue to do so - IF it remains unchecked. 

It's not enough to climb over or walk around the Block. We, as writers, must explode it: with dynamite, a magic spell, your choice. As difficult as it may sound, there is a way to obtain imaginary dynamite that may even destroy a Mountain. It's called outlining. 

Even a basic, bare-bones skeleton of an outline can help. A thorough, ten-page outline will definitely prepare you for whatever Mountain ranges lie ahead. Some people like to do both, with every level of detail in between. I'm trying this. The Snowflake Method seems very reliable based on what I've heard about it, and it seems just about in the middle of the above two extremes. I'm currently on Step 2 and I can't wait to see whether it has enough firepower to demolish the Wall. (On another note: the name of the method seems very appropriate based on the weather outside. Ugh.)

Now get out there and DESTROY! 

~ Sophia-Rose

Building a World

I love reading fantasy. Correction: I love reading GOOD fantasy. And almost nothing makes a fantasy stop seeming good as much as an inconsistent/underdeveloped world. For your information, magic definitely qualifies as part of the world, and in my opinion, making the magic element inconsistent is the most prominent fantasy world mistake an author can make.

For example: the magical land of Enthrold. In Enthrold, wizards can teleport to other wizards as needed. The main character, Zatris, who happens to be a wizard, teleports to one of her wizard classmates, Belrak. She barely knows him but does it out of convenience. Later, Zatris gets captured by evil goblins, along with her non-magical friend, Nikita. Nikita knows that there was a wizard back in the village named Mogbel only because she's seen him being shouted at by his mother. She asks Zatris to teleport to Mogbel. Zatris says she can't because she hasn't formed a special "teleportation bond" with him. Wait...what? Earlier she teleported to Belrak, who she barely knew!

This type of inconsistency makes me, and I'm sure many others, stop believing in the story. This completely halts the flow and makes the story much less interesting. Sadly, I've seen this used quite often. Character A is in a tight spot. Character A has awesome magical powers that could be used to painlessly escape from said tight spot. Then, we discover that the magical power has some strange restriction that we've never heard about before and usually makes no sense. Although I understand the motivations behind this action (to make a more interesting scene) the price is too high. I'll admit, I've done this a few times and it's a very easy trap to fall into.

The best way to solve this problem? Plan your world and speculative element BEFORE you write the story. That way, you can avoid any potential inconsistencies while still creating scenes that will keep your readers engaged. I'm doing this for the first time. I'm using this website (that was a link) to do this. It's actually designed for the month before NaNo, so it's very appropriate.

Sorry if I rambled. I will be back tomorrow, with a piece about the Writer's Bane!

~ Sophia-Rose

Welcome!

Hello! If you haven't already read the sign on the door, I'm Sophia-Rose (not really), and this is my treehouse (aka writing blog.) If you're here, you're probably from either my Wizard101 blog, the Artsy Theurgist, or my NaNo profile (SophiaRose580.) Either way, welcome! I recommend that you look at the About Me page first. Warning: it's quite long-winded, though it's supposed to be funny.

I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo in April, so if you're reading this, feel free to request me for a Writing Buddy or Cabin or something. (Or maybe both!)

Anyway, Stories of the Past is a funny page about what I wrote when I was younger, and the others are links to stories I've written/in progress. The Greatest Treasure, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is a Wizard101 fanfiction, and the tab links off-site. None of the stories currently linked are done, so be prepared to wait.

Sorry, I tend to ramble. Come on in and look around!

~ Sophia-Rose