Yes, yesterday afternoon I finally finished the first draft of Bite (formerly known under the working title of Lesbian Vampire Highlander, hence the LVH label for it). In the end, the first draft was 62,736 words long, the last of which was 'alive'.
I would offer to share it, but it really needs a second draft, as the story needs a complete page one rewrite. The characters are good, but the plot I originally envisioned isn't the one the story ended up wanting, so it meanders and jumps a lot before getting into the real groove. I've got a definite vision for the second draft and how it will go, but I need to take some time to plan and outline that properly, to get it right. There's also the germ of several other stories in there, either in the form of flashbacks or as sequels, and I do feel like I've created an interesting universe that's a somewhat different take on the vampire tales. More will be explained later, no doubt.
The only issue I have now is what to write to get me to the 100,000 word total for the challenge? Guess it's back to my big list of short story ideas to see what catches my interest...
Showing posts with label vampires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vampires. Show all posts
Friday, 22 March 2013
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
The catch-up
What I forgot to mention in the previous post is that I managed to make my 1000 words yesterday, but just as I was hoping to settle in and get a really good day's writing in, real life intervened and kept me just past the target. I'm still over 1000 ahead of schedule, though - total is now 9,129 and the story keeps flowing well. I've introduced another viewpoint character, and she's come alive, with another take on the plot and a future scene that will help me to drive the main story forward.
(Possibly another blog post needed on my writing without much of a plan needed)
And a link I should have put in the last post, but couldn't find a way to divert it and make it relevant - Charles Stross has written a vampire novel as part of his Laundry series, which should be very interesting. I highly recommend the Laundry books for a very interesting take on the horror genre.
(Possibly another blog post needed on my writing without much of a plan needed)
And a link I should have put in the last post, but couldn't find a way to divert it and make it relevant - Charles Stross has written a vampire novel as part of his Laundry series, which should be very interesting. I highly recommend the Laundry books for a very interesting take on the horror genre.
Thoughts on vampires
When you choose to write about vampires, you realise just how many different types of them there are in modern culture.
Having been doing a little research on the subject - partly to check that I'm not unintentionally ripping more people off than I think - it's been interesting to read about how vampire-esque myths appear in lots of cultures. The 'modern' vampire vampire beliefs that went supernova after Dracula appear to have emerged from Eastern Europe around 1700, but there are lots of similar references to undead people rising from the grave to feed upon the living in other cultures from long before that.
With so many myths and legends around, it's easy to weave a version out of it that suits your story, which is what I've been attempting. (As TV Tropes puts it, Our Vampires Are Different) I've been quite influenced by a couple of TV versions of the myth - British TV's Being Human and Ultraviolet. Both of those treat the vampire as a continuation of the human they were before being turned, and so not necessarily evil by creation, but by choice. Both present the vampire as a being of power, but that power comes from having sacrificed something, which led me to the idea for my central character. What if someone in a universe like this had been turned without choosing it? How would she choose to live after that? From there, I've also brought in a concept that there are a number of ways in which a vampire in this world can choose to live - every one of them has some kind of cost, but the value of that cost depends on the sort of person you are. You're damned by your decisions and your choices, not your nature.
It's been interesting to write so far, and creates some good moral dilemmas to work from. Plus, the characters that have resulted from these thoughts are springing to life and driving the plot along for me, which is always a good thing. Even I'm not completely sure where it's going, which motivates me to write more so I can find out.
Having been doing a little research on the subject - partly to check that I'm not unintentionally ripping more people off than I think - it's been interesting to read about how vampire-esque myths appear in lots of cultures. The 'modern' vampire vampire beliefs that went supernova after Dracula appear to have emerged from Eastern Europe around 1700, but there are lots of similar references to undead people rising from the grave to feed upon the living in other cultures from long before that.
With so many myths and legends around, it's easy to weave a version out of it that suits your story, which is what I've been attempting. (As TV Tropes puts it, Our Vampires Are Different) I've been quite influenced by a couple of TV versions of the myth - British TV's Being Human and Ultraviolet. Both of those treat the vampire as a continuation of the human they were before being turned, and so not necessarily evil by creation, but by choice. Both present the vampire as a being of power, but that power comes from having sacrificed something, which led me to the idea for my central character. What if someone in a universe like this had been turned without choosing it? How would she choose to live after that? From there, I've also brought in a concept that there are a number of ways in which a vampire in this world can choose to live - every one of them has some kind of cost, but the value of that cost depends on the sort of person you are. You're damned by your decisions and your choices, not your nature.
It's been interesting to write so far, and creates some good moral dilemmas to work from. Plus, the characters that have resulted from these thoughts are springing to life and driving the plot along for me, which is always a good thing. Even I'm not completely sure where it's going, which motivates me to write more so I can find out.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Hitting targets
Another day of over 1000 words yesterday, which took me over to a total of 8,029 and completed a week of writing every day. Now if I can just make it over 1000 words today, that'll be a week of doing over 1000 a day, and will also mean I've typed 1000 in this post far too many times.
The story's going well, and I wrote what I think's a good scene yesterday, which is a flashback to the time when our heroine was first turned into a vampire. I think it's an interesting scene, because it's someone going through the transformation against her will and without any of the context to understand what's happening to her. It's happening in fifteenth century England, where I don't believe there were vampire myths in circulation - or, at least, not widely - so there's nothing for her to draw on and know what she's become. Indeed, 8,000 words in and I've not even used the word 'vampire' once, though I don't know if I can pull off the Ultraviolet trick and never mention the word at all.
Now I have a decision to make about another character - do they return and do a bit of exposition, or do they remain disappeared, and likely dead? Such power I have...
The story's going well, and I wrote what I think's a good scene yesterday, which is a flashback to the time when our heroine was first turned into a vampire. I think it's an interesting scene, because it's someone going through the transformation against her will and without any of the context to understand what's happening to her. It's happening in fifteenth century England, where I don't believe there were vampire myths in circulation - or, at least, not widely - so there's nothing for her to draw on and know what she's become. Indeed, 8,000 words in and I've not even used the word 'vampire' once, though I don't know if I can pull off the Ultraviolet trick and never mention the word at all.
Now I have a decision to make about another character - do they return and do a bit of exposition, or do they remain disappeared, and likely dead? Such power I have...
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