I've been reading a lot about writing advice recently. Ever since I graduated college, I've been revisiting my writing. One of the suggestions that keeps coming up is that you should maintain a theme(s) and a mood for your work.
My first attempt at a novel was bland. The second one was even worse. When I sat down and decided to take another shot at it, a few of my friends convinced me that thinking of a theme / mood would be a good first step.
Theme:
Let's start with theme. How can we choose a theme? Sure, we can think of random phrases that speak to us. "Elephants always eat green onions." Could be a theme. Might even be a good one. But probably isn't. Why? Well, because I'm not convinced it's appropriate. At least not for my work. If it works for you, by all means.
So how do you pick appropriate themes? I have no idea. Still working on that one. I have three that came from the draft, plus a few thoughts on some things I want to change. Another source is genre lists. Still investigating those, haven't found any that jumped out at me as "The list to end all lists." I'm sure they exist. While I read a lot of fantasy, I am horrible at picking out themes in a novel. This is why I'm not an english major.
Mood:
Mood is an interesting beast. When done right, it can send a chill down your spine and send you to tears. When done poorly, you want to throw the book into the trash. Unfortunately I haven't managed to figure out anything about this at all. So I really don't have anything to say.
So while I'm thinking about moods, let's see how it fits into my current projects.
Dragonmage
My first book. Well attempt. As many of you know, I've been working on this story, on and off, since 2002. I just finished the first draft last summer. The story starts out pretty standard, but looses steam and gets pretty confusing. Maybe I'll post a review or something at some point.
I'm currently working on a theme list, for the second draft. Here's what I got so far:
- Order vs Chaos
- Secrets lost in the stream of time
- Magic vs Technology
- Abnormal power must be paid for in blood
That last one was just decided on this morning, and I have yet to figure out what exactly it means. The second one is due to a repurposing of my novel to explore the Atlantis mystery, thanks to Diana Pharaoh Francis' banner on her website.
Phoenixfire
Book 2. I started writing it for NaNoWriMo last year. Total fail, but I kept at it during the summer and finished it right before the start of the semester. At the moment, the plot is a steaming pile of garbage. I know I have a defeatist attitude with respect to my writing, but there are some very serious problems with this. Like the fact that there basically is no plot, just fragments. So currently, the theme is the same as the previous one. Is this appropriate? I don't know. I don't know if they should be the same, or they should be different. I am operating under the assumption that there should at least be some overlap.
Prelude to an Apocalypse
You know, I haven't thought about this piece since I finished writing the first draft. It was a short story (which really should be a novella) for a fiction-writing class. So far, the only pervaling theme is Magic vs Technology. While it might seem to be a common one for me, this one is simply an artifact of what I was trying to do. The prelude is a short novella which takes place in between Phoenixfire and it's unwritten sequel, Chaos Storm. This is why there's overlap on this theme.
The next two items are not novels, but rather RPGs I'm running this semester. If everything goes well, and I think deciding on some themes would go a long way to that, these might both be continued.
Mage: The Awakening
I've been really enjoying White-wolf's Mage setting, and the World of Darkness in general. Due to the large number of requests this semester, I'm running a second game of Mage. Inspired by DaveB's amazing AP threads on RPG.net (Broken Diamond and Soul Cage, Part 2), I'm using Reign of the Exarchs in this setting. Through no fault of my own, my players also selected Washington DC as the setting (same as Broken Diamond). The following themes are what I've selected so far:
- Control - This is the theme of Reign of the Exarchs itself. I'll have to weave my own plot around it and make some changes though.
- Everybody lies
Still working on other ones.
Burning Wheel
This is my main game for the semester, and I have to say I'm stumped. We did a world-building session on sunday. The story of the world is...crazy at best. There are flying humans, sentient fog, snail people, and a huge war between mages and magic-resistant orcs. I have no direction, and tapped out of ideas. No idea what this story will look like.
I think that's all I got in the pipeworks.
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