Evening, squiders. Last week, with your lovely help (it’s amazing what I can work through as I write things out here on the blog), I decided to leave off the World’s Edge revision until the critique marathon is over and use it like a beta reader, and then come back to the revision in August.
In the meantime, I made a list of things to do:
- Outline at least 5 short stories that take place in the same world as the Trilogy and World’s Edge
- Write said shorts
- Finish the SkillShare class I started in October
- Potentially start a new SkillShare class (or consider their new digital products and 1-on-1 options)
- Catch up on my trip sketchbook
- Outline a rewrite of Broken Mirrors
- Outline the sequel to Drifting
And because it’s the hardest thing on this list, I promptly decided to work on Broken Mirrors.
We talked briefly about BM before I started the World’s Edge revision, as it is the only other YA fantasy project currently floating around in my backlog. I wrote BM a million years ago (like, 2006 or 2007) and I actually queried it back in the 2011-2012 time frame (with some requests) and entered some contests with it (which I think is why I stopped querying, because the contest feedback was pretty brutal).
It has a lot of issues, the biggest of which is that it’s supposed to be YA, but has the complexity and tone of a MG novel. Also, it just doesn’t make sense in some places. There’s incomplete worldbuilding, I wrote it before I started outlining so some things come out of nowhere, and things along those lines. Pacing issues out the wazoo. I’m reading back through it right now, and I’m five chapters in and have already found two chapters that are pacing disasters.
Basically, though, it’s the story of two best friends, a witch and a princess, who are not supposed to be friends at all. There are a lot of things I like about this story, though! Winnie, the witch, is one of my all-time favorite main characters (Kayleigh, the princess, is a tad annoying, though that is perhaps to be expected), and I love her familiar, Igor, who is a cockatiel. Why? Why not?
Also her Great Aunt Gertrude lives in a gingerbread house in the middle of the forest.
BM has a lot of nods to fairy tales (and also the Wizard of Oz, as one of Winnie’s relatives was melted), and I’m not sure I can maintain that if I move it toward more of a YA tone. For some reason, you don’t really get humorous/silly fantasy in the YA sphere. In the MG sphere, absolutely, and again in the adult sphere. Not sure why things for teenagers need to be so serious.
So there’s a lot of work to be done.
- How do we keep the fairy tale references but tone them for YA?
- How do we add complexity into the story so it’s appropriate for a YA audience (I planned a sequel, and I think I might be able to grab the majority of that and put it into this story instead, which will help)
- The worldbuilding is piecemeal and doesn’t make sense, and finalizing that (why are the royal families tied to their lands? how are they? why do some people have magic and how does it work?) will be hugely beneficial toward not only the worldbuilding issues but the plot issues.
Right now I’m reading through the current draft (except I’m not actually sure it is, because I had to pull it out of my email) and making notes, and then the idea is to see if I can’t brainstorm some answers into place. And outline it.
But not write it. We cannot continue to switch novel projects every two months. That way lies madness, and nothing will ever get done.
Should we work on one of the easier projects first? Probably!
But will we?
Apparently not.
Hope your Tuesday is going well! Mine is weirdly chill.
