Writing Update: Graphic Novel?

In October of last year, I wrote a post on this blog talking about my most recent story. I talked about how it was a major change for me, genre-wise, because, you know, it’s a historical sci-fi (in other news, I’ve decided it’s in the year 1954 exactly).

But I had no idea how big of a step it would be.

Because…

Well, because I’m writing it as a graphic novel.

I understand this might be disappointing for all y’all who aren’t into graphic novels–to tell you the truth, I don’t really read graphic novels, either, but this story is demanding to be told in a much more visual way than my other stories.

Currently I’m working through sketching out all the characters, outlining, and scripting. Since I’m doing this for Camp this year, I have a lot to do before April.

Which is in nine days.

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my process

I’ve been low-key developing this story since… I’d say June last year, on and off, and it’s been a very different experience than any other story I’ve worked on. For one thing, I knew the ending before I knew the beginning. For another thing… I’ve been able to visualize several scenes… but they haven’t come to me in order.

Which is why I’m now using yWriter to organize the scenes, so I can write out descriptions in any order, and then drag them to a different place.

scripting

I’m new at this. And since it’s not going to be published this way, it’s just to help with drawing the graphic novel, I’m doing it in an odd style.

Basically I’m roleplaying with myself. 😉 I have yet to really figure out what I’m doing, so maybe when I finish the scripts, I’ll publish another post about my revised process.

sketching

I’m currently designing all the characters. These are my initial sketches for Lesley… And, yes. I know they don’t look like quite the same person. xP

I’m having trouble sketching Sylvester, so I think I’m going to skip to sketching Chareh. Once I’ve settled on a design, I’ll draw sheets with different angles and expressions, for each of the main characters. Also for a few of the main supporting characters, like Lesley’s dad, and the editor of the New Hasting’s Herald newspaper.

I’ve also sketched out a few pages of the main story. They won’t actually be like I have them (I’ve even changed dialogue in a bunch of places), but it helps me visualize what it’ll look like.

What, you mean you want to see a sample?

… Okay.

If you click the image, it’ll bring you to a bigger version.

This isn’t how the final draft will look, certainly, but it’s what I drew when I was first trying to decide whether to do the story as a graphic novel. I’m going to have a similar layout, I think, but the style will be much less… Sketchy… 😂

Also, young Sylvester will have a face.

Just sayin’.

And that strange sentence will bring us to a close, but I have a request for y’all. I’m trying to come up with a new title for this story, as I was never really happy with the one I had—and it also sounds too similar to a different story’s title.

If you’re new to this blog and/or story, I still have the back-cover teaser on my “Works In Progress” page, so you can check it out there. But I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for a new title.

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What’s your experience with graphic novels? Do you have any suggestions for titles? And last but not least, are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo? Comment below!

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Beautiful Books: From Stranger Worlds

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Last year, I did this tag with Won’t Feel a Thing, and it was pretty cool, so I figured, why not do it again?

For those of you who don’t know, Beautiful Books is a tag hosted by Paper Fury and Further Up and Further In.  It’s a NaNoWriMo-themed variation on their normal monthly tag, Beautiful People. Instead of asking questions of your character, Beautiful Books gives you a list of questions to answer about your NaNoWriMo story, or just any WIP. Make sure to click the graphic to read some other participating blogs.

Without any further intro (because I have a tendency to ramble in these…), here’s stuff about my novel, From Stranger Worlds!

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Whoo, this question has a long answer. There wasn’t any one thing that gave me the idea for FSW, it was more like a collection of events, so I’ll just go with the first one (that way you won’t be reading this through next week).

I and my siblings were watching one of the old superman movies, where the Kryptonian general, Zod, came in and wreaked havoc, then went to the President of the United States, walked right in, and gave his terms (which, incidentally, were “I’m in charge, na-nanny-boo-boo!”). That was then when I thought, “What if aliens came and quietly approached an Earth world leader to negotiate land for them to settle?” Then I got to thinking what kind of terms there would be if the leader agreed.

The story has changed a lot since then, but that was where the first idea came from.

I just happen to have an official (if a little rough) teaser for you.

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Sylvester Lee met an alien when he was twelve years old.

The problem was, no one believed him, and the only other witness had a strange lapse of memory.

It’s been nine years since that day, and Sylvester is now an investigative reporter with one goal in mind: the aliens are living among us, and he intends to prove it.

This presents quite a problem for Leslie Hughes, his cheerful, but dreadfully nervous intern. Because what Sylvester doesn’t know is that Leslie is the alien that he met in the alley that night. Half alien, half human, all secrets, she’s monitering Sylvester to prevent him from revealing the aliens’ presence.

And she’ll do just about anything to keep her people safe.

Things are going along smoothly until they encounter Chareh, a young alien living among the humans, the girl who holds the secret that will make both worlds violently collide.

From Stranger Worlds will take you on a thrilling tour through the world of 50’s America—but it may not be the world you know.

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For more, click the picture to visit the Pinterest board where all these came from.

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An ambitious reporter who is nineteen, cheerful, and also half alien.

 

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Another, even more ambitious reporter, who is twenty-two, and is convinced that the aliens are here—and he intends to prove it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A small, relatively weak fifteen-year-old alien who has been studied by humans for two years. She carries a deadly secret, but no one else knows she’s the one who has it.

 

 

 

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Well, with my last novel (Until the Stars Fall), I basically brainstormed and wrote out, on paper in a binder, what was going to happen, “and then this person would do this, and this would happen, ect.,” and for the one before that (Won’t Feel a Thing), I did basically the same thing, more erratically, on a smaller scale, and on the computer. But I really don’t know how to prepare for From Stranger Worlds. The story has a very different feel than my previous novels. I’m kind of winging it.

I dunno, I’m looking forward to a lot… This is a hard choice. I can only say one thing I’m looking forward to?

Well, I have to say I’m looking forward to the setting the most. I grew up on 50’s stories, from Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and The Adventures of Superman, to Singin’ in the Rain, to The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and The Patty Duke Show.

The 50’s has to be the golden age of stories (and they’re clean!), and I’ve had a partiality to the decade for a while.

Also, I really like designing other cultures and cities, and combining the 50’s with the alien people that I’ve constructed is just really fun. 😀

I’m just going to go with random things. xD Because I can.

Welcome to the underwater city Tehsischi! It’s a place little known by humans, but in the story, it’s hidden off the coast of Northern California, far beneath the Ocean. The huge sub-sea structure houses nearly the entire Kehrib (alien) population on Earth, and is a thriving metropolis that’s been there for generations, seen by very few humans.

It’s a bit like a cat, and a bit like a weasel. The Kehrib brought them here to Earth, and somehow a few got out into New Hastings, the coastal human city. So while they’re cute, and the household pet of many Kehrib families, they’ve also become a great pest.

A segment (albeit a small one) of Kehrib are very superstitious, and to ward against demons and other nasty things that humans carry around, they wear charms made of bronze, clipped to bracelets and belts.

And, yes. She has multicolored hair. Their hair shows their emotions, and she’s got quite a wealth of them at this moment (you can click the picture for more information).

In a way, Lesley and Sylvester are in direct opposition. Sylvester wants to prove what he saw all those years ago, and Lesley wants her people to be safe. To do that, she has to keep the secret from being revealed.

Now, Chareh… Well, she’s got a secret that will blast both those goals out of the water and present a much more pressing problem.

What she wants is to not have to bear the secret any more. She wants to not be under constant pressure. And she wants to be strong.

Well, now, that would be a spoiler, wouldn’t it?

… Actually, I don’t know. I’m less prepared for this NaNo than I have been in a long time.

Themes. Heh. Yeah…

So, I usually don’t figure out the theme until about halfway through the first draft. Sooo… I don’t know. I think it’ll have something to do with identity.

(Note: Last Beautiful books, I made a guess at the theme, and it did come out pretty strongly, so I guess from now on, I should just trust my guesses. 😛 What I guess is usually what a main character is working through.)

Beautiful Books: Won’t Feel a Thing

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Yes, NaNoWriMo is coming. We all know it, and, frankly, most of us aren’t sure whether to be excitedly waiting November 1st, or dreading it.

But, yes, as I pretty much always do, I am participating this year, with my most recent novel, Won’t Feel a Thing.

So! To get y’all acquainted with my novel (and because it looked cool) I’m participating (as you can see by the header) in Beautiful Books, a link-up which is a spin-off of Beautiful People, hosted by Paper Fury and Further Up and Further In. I don’t have answers for all of the questions, but I’ve answered what I can. xP

I encourage you to check out the other bloggers who are participating: just click the image above ^ and it’ll take you to a blog post with all of them listed.

Without further ado, the post!

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Interesting story here. I was actually inspired to write this story in a way that’s odd for me… I dreamed it.

Now, of course, it wasn’t exactly the same as the book (it included zombies?), but it’s where it all started.

The dream fascinated me, and when I mentioned it to my sister Athelas (three cheers for her, eh?), she said, “write it.”

After a lot of thinking, and then a ton of colorful markers and brainstorming… Harper Scott had her own story. Boom.

Erm… Probably… I dunno, actually… A couple of months or so. I didn’t keep track of the day I had the dream.

Oooorrrr you could read this handy-dandy blurb/teaser that I have!

Harper’s job as the doctors’ cyborg assistant is fairly simple.

Deliver and retrieve packages (probably illegal), oversee shipments (definitely illegal), and on the latest mission, escort Dr. Mitchel to his contact (no doubt here).

The simpleness, however, seems to have fled. All systems were supposed to be functioning correctly, but when Harper’s mission goes dangerously wrong… something breaks.

She’s not sure what it is, but these flashes of strange memories can’t be programmed.

As segments of a past life she didn’t know she had unfold in her mind, she becomes wary of the doctors… And they aren’t the only threat. Someone, some group, is out there—and they want her dead.

And the very worst part is this unusual phenomena called “emotions.”

Neat, huh? I’m not sure I’m happy with it… It’s the best teaser ever. *nods*

Pictures from Pinterest

I’m only going to do the two main-est main characters, ’cause I don’t have pictures for anyone else. xP

Harper is probably a nineteen year old girl. She may, however, be a machine.

In fact, she’s not sure what she is, because Dr. Mitchel gets weird and nervous every time she brings it up, and the splitting headaches, flashes of memory, and gut-twisting emotions are only raising more questions. 

She could be a girl, could be a rebel, or could be a machine designed for illegal activities— but one thing’s for sure: she’s hunted.

Axton Vischer is a twenty year old high-city boy proud to think of himself as a rebel. A rebel rising steadily in the ranks of the resistance.

But in a chance meeting, Axton discovers something his enemies (and perhaps his so-called comrades) don’t want him to know.

Harper Scott is alive, after all this time.

He doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t want to imagine why, but he’s determined to track down his former team leader, with or without help.

And if she’s a prisoner, he’ll risk his life to have her safe, as she once did for him.

But if she’s turned traitor… He’ll kill her himself.

Okey-dokey. Y’all get to see my “Plantster” method. (And look—NaNo got a Planster badge: )

Okay. So when I get an idea, generally, I’ll let it sit. Usually for a couple of months (Ahem… until a NaNo… Because who writes any other month?).

If I let it sit in my brain for long enough (usually after scribbling down the bare bones), I’ll generally come up with something that makes me want to write it, which is the most important thing here, really.

Then when I decide to write it (do you have any idea how many teeeeny ideas I have that never go anywhere?), I’ll open up a document (recently a notebook, actually…) and write down everything that I know.

By this time I usually have a couple scene ideas, usually a beginning, and barely any plot. So after I write down backstory (why is that so much easier than plot?), I’ll write down, in note-style, the beginning (“She’ll do ‘this’, and when ‘this’ happens,  he’ll do ‘this’.)

And before I know it, I’ve “outlined” the beginning of my novel. I usually run out of the planned portion the first week of NaNo, though. xP

And, of course, Pinterest. Really. I’ve spent more time on Pinterest in the past month than I have in the past three months before that.

And then I wind up pantsing most of the novel, and occasionally re-brainstorming like I did before I started it.

So. Yes. I have no plot. But I have a beginning!

The same thing that made me want to write it in the first place.

The most interesting past about the dream that I had was the fact that, in the dream, while filling Harper’s position of emotionless cyborg, I thought differently. It fascinated me, which is why the dream stuck with me for so long and mutated into a novel concept.

I’m really excited to write that. Yeah, it’s a weird thing to look forward to, but… It works!

  Back alleys

Ah, the city. Glowing bright on the outside, with a whole network underground.

  Cyborgs

  Space

Actually, space travel is not a huge part of the story, since it takes place largely on one planet, but it is a part of the setting. There is a great deal of interplanetary trade that goes on through the city Krey.

Really? Really? You think I would tell you that even if I knew? 😛

I… Still haven’t been able to figure out how to intentionally work themes into a story? Loyalty might end up being one, though.

So! Readers! What do you think? Is this book worth being written? (I hope so…)

Speaking of writing, NaNoWriMo is in TWO HOURS! Are you ready? (Me: Nooooo!)

Break for NaNoWriMo

So, y’all all know I don’t post very much, but I’m here to tell you that will change. I’m going to stop posting… Period. Until December, there will be no posts, because of NaNoWriMo.

So… Just thought I’d let you know. Tally ho, mellons!