I've posted a nice long scene on Space Explorations, the last for most of two weeks. I'll be out of reach of the computer, probably for the duration. This scene introduces several new characters. I'd be curious to know if you can tell which ones we'll be seeing more of throughout the book. (Several we'll see a little more of, some more than others). Also, are the descriptions sufficiently clear? It didn't seem appropriate to go into great depth with so many characters being introduced at once, but brief intros aren't usually my thing and picking the right bits always the challenge in brevity.

Some of you may have noticed my attempts at a Technocrati listing. Still didn't work. I know its not my site, though their automated software says it is: if it were my site, then wouldn't be able to show a thumbnail of my site successfully, but they do and it is clearly the right site, but it still can't figure it out. I thought with their site fixing, it might work, but then I had the impression that there might be people doing the checking and not automated software, too. Software doesn't constitute a "we" in my book, but maybe I'm just old fashioned. Anyway, I think I've given up. It was, afterall, just one more way for people to be able to find my site if it has what they are looking for. I'll just have to try more alternatives. suggestions welcome.

EKZ54AS9KVHH

really not my sort of thing but i can play along for awhile.

I'm trying yet again to get the site registered. Technocrati claims to have improved their functions (it sounds like they un-automated it) so maybe it will actually work this time. We'll see. Not sure what it will actually do, but it's supposed to help people find the site when they are looking for blogs with my topics.

VRENMGYPUHTA

More on Qiri has been posted on on the Space Explorations page, several short scenes this time, of Qiri interacting with people on Conclave. Readers can tell a lot about a person by the people who surround them, but I sometimes find myself waffling about how much to include: is character development enough reason to include a scene about side characters? Can it, should it, add something more to the story than that, can it advance the story in a more concrete way?

Those are the kinds of questions that I ask myself on revision but they are rarely if ever part of my first draft. The first draft, it's just a side character, a bit of the culture, an idea that I'm trying to capture. In the process of building the many first draft scenes, I often try several ways to capture and present some idea that I consider important to the story, the character, the world. That, too, gets fixed in revision, especially when I read aloud. that's when it becomes more clear to me that I have successfully and sufficiently presented the idea, maybe too often, and if the scene doesn't do anything else, it is likely to be deleted or the remnants merged with another scene to make it more complete after the redundancies have been removed.

I've added and removed several of the scenes on Conclave. The people there, with a few rare exceptions, don't play big roles. Some don't appear again, but I think it important that they and her life there are sufficiently clear to provide the contrast with her life elsewhere and the non-normal circumstances of her life.

That's probably one of the advantages of contemporary science fiction--no need to show the other side of life, because it isn't intended to be much different than the reader's life. With aliens and distant worlds and times, the normal needs to be shown, directly or indirectly, as well as the new and abnormal, the change that makes the meat of the story.

Well, I can see I'm babbling, so I'll close with tha a writer's challenge:

Write a scene where your protagonist is encountering one or more of the people that are part of their normal life, then start the same scene with a side character that the protagonist has just met. Can the scene follow the same course? What else changed along the way?

Comment RE: Curse of the Spider King blog tour

name: Wayne Thomas Batson

comment: Hi, Emmalyn! Thanks for three wonderful days of Spider King hoopla! It was very kind and skillful of you to post such interesting stuff.

URL: www,enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com


--Always a delight to hear from the author! Thank you for following up on the tour! With many blogs posting commentary, I know it must be quite a challenge to post comments! --EnE

I started to draft a blog on salt and its use in our family and it became an essay on ways to reduce salt intake for our health so I posted it with my food essays on the Homeworld tab. It was so odd. Usually I have to set out to do an essay piece on purpose, and haven't bothered much lately as my attempts have rather fizzled. I'm not used to it just spilling out--imperfect to be sure, but still, an essay structure and substances rather than the chatty bit I expected. I suppose partly because its a topic I am well familiar with. I've tried a wide range of diets and regardless of the purpose (health, green/organic, weight), they all say reduce salt. Some suggested ways and means, others just why, but either way, a long lits of odd tidbits cluttering my brain were ready to hand once I started writing on the topic. I guess that's where the "write what you know" comes in.

The hard part of that sage advice is knowing what you know. Until I started writing, I never considered salt a topic I was notably knowledgeable about. And how does anyone know anything about distance times and far flung worlds? It only when I start to describe/invent some element of that alien life that I realize I know a fair amount about some elements, not enough about others. Qiri's bureaucracy, for example. It's simplified, of course, but elements of it and her role within it are based on briefly studying Byzantium's extensive bureaucracy, and nineteenth century Russia's, where most of the educated of the country worked for the government, and presented their real intellectual work through journal articles, their opinions through book reviews that nothing like the tame reviews of today.

I guess you just never know what will be useful tidbits.

Writer's challenge: Read a chapter of some book, any book. consider which of your stories might benefit from a little more on that topic, or write a scene where that bit of information might play a role.