Stories of the Week for August 28, 2013

I should have a new Author Interview to post early next week, as I sat down for a very fun chat recently with Claire C Riley, a lovely and talented writer from England. She's the author of the vampire novel, Limerence, as well as the author of the soon-to-be-released anthology, Life Ever After. She's also written Odium, a zombie novel, which will be released this October.

As for myself, I finally finished the first draft of my environmental horror story yesterday. Turns out, I was right near the end, and had already written most of the ending down in note form. I just had to write out a few sentences to join everything together and wrap it all up with a scary little bow.

And I'm happy to say I've managed to keep my 5 pages a day streak intact for the Middle Grade novel I'm working on, as well. I'm currently on page 79 and still trucking along.

I can't say much about it yet, but as a hint, here's one of the things I researched yesterday: 

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/london-st-pauls-cathedral

 

There are some great pictures of the church here, and learning about places like this is one of the things that I like the most about doing research. 

A Cold Reception for New Young Adult Properties?

It's interesting and slightly surprising to see the rather chilly reception that Young Adult properties seem to be getting at the movie theaters lately. Is the bubble bursting? Was there ever a bubble to begin with?

Is it too much to expect for every YA property to rake in 70 mil in its opening weekend?  Well...Probably.

According to Bloomberg.com, the latest YA film, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, came in 3^rd at the box office in its opening week, behind a movie in its second week of release (Lee Daniels' The Butler), as well as a movie in its third week of release (We're the Millers). The top movie of the weekend only took in 16.5 million. You might think that would be easy competition.

With how The Host underperformed (26 million domestic, according to Box Office Mojo), and how Beautiful Creatures did (only 19 million), it makes me wonder if studios will start to be a bit more gun shy about investing their money into YA adaptations.

The only successful YA films I can think of off the top of my head have been Twilight and The Hunger Games (I think Harry Potter and Percy Jackson were geared more toward the Middle Grade audience), though I'm probably forgetting a few.

Divergence is still coming up, and it will be interesting to see how that does.

Stories of the Week for August 21, 2013

The photo I chose for this week is a picture from a petting zoo. I think it's a calf, but it might as well be a puppy dog, since it's so adorable.

Anyway, on to the writing update. I've been completely monogamous with my writing this week, as one project has consumed most of my spare time.

I mentioned it a few weeks ago in a previous update. It's a Middle Grade book which sprung up from a twist on a concept in Neil Gaiman's Stardust, as well as with the issue of apartheid. Turns out, the story did change a lot from the original idea, as I ended up dropping the Stardust thing entirely (I'll probably use it for a future story, though, as I really like the twist I came up with on it). The apartheid idea is still in play, but in a scaled down form.

Last Wednesday, I was on page 2 of the book. Today, I'm on page 44. I'm not sure how fast most writers work, but for me, that's a heck of a lot of pages in one week.

The goal is 5 pages a day, which I've managed to stick to for now. I've also written up a full outline for the book, which I find helps keep my word count from getting too out of control, and also keeps me from running out of ideas later on.

I almost always have to write a couple of different outlines as I go, as concepts evolve and the characters change once you get to know them. I always used to write by the seat of my pants, having little to no idea where the story's going.  It helped the story feel organic, but I often ended up hitting a wall when I did that, and stopping somewhere in the second act, not knowing how to wrap up the plot. With an outline, you have more of a vision of the overall story, and you can work within and adapt that vision much easier, I find. 

The Movie of the Week for this week is Lawless, starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, and Jessica Chastain.  For something based on a true story, it did stretch the limits of plausibility at times for me, but I highly recommend this movie.  I love the setting (it's about Prohibition-era bootleggers), most of the characters, and thought it had some excellent performances, particularly Tom Hardy's gruff but strangely lovable Forrest Bondurant.  Jack's romance subplot was one of the weaker parts of the movie for me, and Jessica Chastain's character could have used more screen time, but I found myself getting really drawn into this world and its characters.  

Arbitrary rating: 5 stars.