Writing

Snippet Sunday

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 3 Comments

Snippet Sunday is a writing meme created by Samantha @ Reed’s Reads & Reviews in which you share a snippet of your current writing project. It’s been forever since I’ve done one of these, but today I bring you the “unofficial official” synopsis for my Shaman Novel. This is the blurb that I’ve posted to my Camp NaNoWriMo profile, but it’s subject to change as I continue to edit the story. I hope to have the book ready for beta readers by June, but in reality it’s probably going to be more like August or September…
Since you guys are following my book/writing blog, I’m assuming you’re all readers, writers, or both. That means you probably know a thing or two about books and their blurbs, so please let me know what you think of mine in the comments! Does this synopsis make you want to read my book? Is there anything you don’t like about it? Any and all feedback is appreciated! 😉

Nico Deverow’s entire life is built on secrets, lies, and blood. His family built their fortune in blood money and poisoned their way to a seat on the Royal Mist Council, but Nico doesn’t belong in that life. Ancient murders, restless spirits, and the uncensored truth in everyone’s auras are all revealed to him through residual layers of energy, and no one can ever know about it. The second sight is a shaman power, and a Deverow with a shaman gift would kill his bloodline’s reputation completely. His mask is flawless as his family name decrees, but underneath he’s shattering. With no one to help him contain his powers, the magical drug called Bliss and the raiser sharp blade of a dagger become his only salvation. But when natural born healer Adam Rachadon discovers his abilities, Nico is given a choice: trust a shaman with a secret his family would kill him for, or refuse his offer of help and continue to live a lie.

Writing Up Wednesday #5 | The Craft of Writing–How do you learn?

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 1 Comment

Writing Up Wednesday is a writing link-up created by Lizzy @ The Bent Bookworm. This week’s topic is “The craft of writing,” or more specifically, “How do you learn the craft of writing?”

I honestly don’t make a conscious effort to study the writing craft unless I need to research a specific aspect of it for my story. I don’t plan to take professional writing classes, and I usually don’t go out of my way to read writerly text books. Studying the craft is just something that comes naturally to me through reading a wide range of books, writing book reviews, and connecting with other writers via blogging, youTube, and Twitter. I feel like this is more beneficial than making a conscious effort to study the craft because it allows me to take the advice I like and discard the rest without being boxed in by “professional” rules. Also, by filling my social media feeds with writerly stuff, I can actually justify opening Twitter and youTube! 😉
Here’s a quick list of some people that I’ve learned from:

My Favorite Writerly youTubers

■Shaelin Bishop
■Emma Lederman
■The Y.A. Word Nerds
■Vivien Reis
■Jenna Moreci
■Natalia Leigh
■Burgess Taylor
■Kim Chance
■Coffee Reading Writing

Awesome Writerly Bloggers

■Shaelin Bishop
■Emma Lederman
■A Writer’s Path
■National Novel Writing Month
■Fiction University
■Better Novel Project

Getting the Most Out of Camp NaNoWriMo 2017

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ Leave a comment

Camp NaNoWriMo is here!!!!! If you have no idea what that is, head on over to campnanowrimo.org to learn more! If you’re looking for some last minute advice before you start your journey, stick around!

  1. Make sure that your Camp NaNoWriMo goal is actually achievable! If you set a goal that you’ll never reach due to your schedule in April, you’ll probably give up half way through and end up regretting it later. However, if you set a goal that pushes you a bit but makes sense with your schedule, you might surprise yourself and exceed it! Also, you can now choose to set your goal in pages or hours instead of just words, so there’s really nothing stopping you from setting your goal however you want! My goal is currently 150 hours of editing for my Shaman Novel. That seems pretty small when you do the math and convert it to days, but I know that the last two months of school are going to be a whirlwind of semester projects, therefore I made sure to set my goal according to what I thought I could accomplish. I should definitely be able to hit that, and I can always raise it if I realize I’m going to blow it out of the water.
  2. Organize your outline! Trust me… It is NOT fun to sit down on April 1st and go, “I have no idea where anything is in this Scrivener project!” Even if you don’t use complicated Scrivener templates to organize your projects, make sure that you know the location of all of the information that is necessary for you to write your story!
  3. Decide how you plan to back up your project. You really do NOT want to loose any of your precious writing due to a technological failure or a lost notebook! Personally, I dump all of my Scrivener projects into a Scrivener folder in Dropbox, which backs up everything to the cloud and syncs everything to the Scrivener IOS app. Also, don’t just trust the cloud to keep everything safe for you! Put those precious writing files on a flash drive, an SD card, an external hard drive… whatever you’ve got!
  4. Schedule stuff around your chosen writing time. You need to plan your writing time just like you’d plan anything else because if you don’t, it might not happen! You should either pick a time each day and dedicate it specifically for writing, or pick a day or two out of each week and write like the wind on those days!
  5. Be active on Twitter and in your Camp NaNo cabins! Some of you are probably going, “Being active on Twitter is NOT conducive to a good writing session!” But it is if you follow the right people! Go to the @NaNoWordSprints page! Do NOT scroll through your timeline! Do NOT check your notifications! You WILL get writing done because lots of other people will be on that page writing with you!

Writing Up Wednesday #4: Word Cound Woes

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ Leave a comment

Hello, writerly people! I have not blogged in quite a while because… school/life happened. But today I bring you a Writing Up Wednesday Post!
Writing Up Wednesday is a weekly writing meme created by Lizzy @ The Bent Bookworm! This week’s topic is “Word Count Woes!”

If you’re a serious writer, you probably know that word counts are pretty important. Sometimes the word count of your manuscript can make or brake a publishing opportunity! Because of this some writers obsess over the suggested word count guidelines and stick to them religiously, and some writers tend to ignore it entirely. Personally, I am somewhat in the middle.
I like to make sure I stay kind of in the range of the suggested word count for my genre, but I do not let that number define every single move I make. I do set word count goals before I ever start writing, but I don’t force myself to stick to them. Now… The process I use to determine my prewriting word goal gets kinda nerdy, so be prepared!
I like to loosely mold my writing projects around the four act structure, so I try to pick a word count goal that is sort of close to the suggested range for my genre and is also easily divisible by four! Doing this makes it super easy to figure out how long each chunk of the four act structure needs to be, which gives me a few big milestones to hit!
To give you an example, the prewriting word goal for my “Shaman Novel” was 100000 words. That meant that every 25000 words, I needed to start transitioning to the next act. That being said, I exceeded that goal, and that’s totally fine because the story just wasn’t over at 100000 words! The current word count is 142397 words, but that is still subject to change! I am revising this novel for Camp NaNoWriMo, so I’m sure I’ll add some scenes and chop out some others! I expect the final count to round out somewhere around 150000 words, but that number isn’t set in stone either. My end goal is to tell a good story that feels complete, and I’m not going to let a number of words interfere with that as long as it isn’t completely unreasonable for the genre.

Writing Up Wednesday #3: What’s Your POV?

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 2 Comments

Writing Up Wednesday is a writing link-up created by Lizzy @ The Bent Bookworm. The theme for this week is POV.

When I sit down to write a story, I usually just start typing a scene from my outline and see what happens. Whatever words flow from my fingers are the words that will dictate my narrative POV for the rest of the story. Those first words are usually the most unfiltered by my own mind because they are the foundation for the entire story, and there is nothing that comes before them to dictate what they must make happen. In the case of my “Shaman Novel,” the first words that appeared on the page were in first person present tense and told through the eyes of Niko Deverow, my main character.
Narrative POV is very important to me. The POV has to feel exactly right before I can continue with a story. I see many authors saying that they only feel comfortable writing in a certain point of view, and in my opinion, your story and narrating character should be the deciding factor in your narrative POV and not your writerly comfort zone. The wrong POV can kill a book’s success, just as the right POV can make a story magical. I naturally gravitate towards first person for a lot of things, but I can usually tell if a character voice isn’t working with the narrative. I feel like first person is perfect for this story because it allows you, as the reader, to understand a character who might otherwise be difficult to connect with.

My Favorite Writerly Apps

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 5 Comments

If you’re a newcomer to this blog and you haven’t already figured this out, I’m a self-proclaimed tech nerd as well as a writer and bookworm! I recently cleaned out my iPad, (no one needs 128 apps in their life when they aren’t using 50 of them), and decided to compile a list of the top ten writing apps that got to stay on my home screen. I am using the Mac/IOS versions of everything, but I’m pretty sure some of them have Android and Windows apps as well. Also, if you’re visually impaired, all of these apps are fully accessible with Voiceover! 😉

  1. Scrivener
    Scrivener is literally the best thing that has ever happened to my writing process! It basically lets me have all of the files associated with my WIP right in front of me in the same window! If you’re a writer and you’ve ever had to do a bunch of research for something, you know what it’s like to have multiple Word docs stored in multiple subfolders. It’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world to look at your research info and your writing document at the same time, and when it comes to reorganizing the scenes that you wrote in the wrong order, you’re in for a copy/paste party and lots of scrolling. Scrivener makes all that super easy because you basically get to drag and drop virtual index cards around your screen! It’s kinda hard to explain, but it’s amazing, and you should go download the trial!

  2. Dropbox
    Dropbox keeps your files synced between your phone, tablet, dropbox.com, and the Dropbox folder on your desktop! Also, you can put your Scrivener projects in there, so all your writing syncs with the Scrivener IOS app! If you forced me to pick only two writing apps, Scrivener and Dropbox would be my dream team.

  3. Simplenote
    Simplenote is possibly the easiest text editor I’ve ever used on my phone. All you have to do is open the app, tap the plus button, and start typing. It keeps everything synced in the ever mysterious cloud so you always have it on any device. You can even collaborate on notes by putting someone’s email address in the tag field! It’s kind of like Google Docs, but simpler and way more blind friendly. I put all my random brainstorm notes in Simplenote before I transfer any of them to Scrivener.

  4. Writer Lists
    This app as a list for pretty much anything you could possibly want. I use the name lists all the time, and sometimes I’ll shuffle a random list to get a quick writing prompt. I believe the IOS app costs $3 now, but it is well worth the money!

  5. Write or Die!
    This is for those times when you just really cannot make words happen. It’s for those of you who need some rather… threatening circumstances to get you through writer’s block, and it does its job quite well! I usually don’t need any incentive to write, but it’s super fun to just watch my score climb!

  6. Carrot To-Do
    Have you ever wanted an angry robot to yell at you for not completing items on your to-do list? There’s an app for that! I put all of my tasks into Carrot To-Do, (writing related or otherwise), and I’ve actually been a lot more productive since I bought the app. There’s just something about an angry robot screaming at you that makes you wanna do stuff so she’ll shut up and let you gain a level so you can unlock another function of the app…

  7. Due
    This app lets you create reminders and preset timers. I haven’t used the reminder feature much because I always either yell at Siri to make my reminders or feed them to Carrot, but the preset timer thing is awesome! I do a lot of word sprints, and I also use the Pomodoro method, so that means I set a lot of timers! I don’t always wanna yell at Siri to set a timer, and the little flicky time picker thingy in the IOS clock app gets real old when you change the time length 20 times in a given day, so having a list of timers set for various lengths of time that I can just tap to start is super nice! Also, it has cool sounds!!!

  8. Voice Dream Reader
    This is a text to speech app that was originally developed for the blind and dyslexic. Basically you can give it almost any document, hit play, and it’ll read it in a really good sounding computerized voice. You can also buy several other high quality voices, and some of them make your documents sound almost like a real audio book! I’ve used Voice Dream to read eBooks and convert stuff to blind friendly formats for a while, but I recently got the idea to use it to play some of my writing. I’m currently editing my “shaman novel,” and listening to it with Voice Dream Reader has helped me pick out some rough places, so I thought I’d include it on this list.

  9. Nature Space
    So maybe this isn’t directly related to writing, but I’m the kind of writer who cannot write in silence. When I just need a little background noise, this is my go-to app. It has a ton of super realistic sounding nature sounds, so I can slip on my noise canceling headphones, turn on some ocean waves, and write away!

  10. Spotify
    This isn’t directly writing related either, but I always make a playlist for the plot and characters of whatever I’m working on. I use Spotify to do it because it’s super easy to use, I don’t have to pay $1.29 a song, and it even shows me related content so I can find songs that I myself might never listen to but that fit my characters perfectly!

That concludes my top ten writerly apps! I hope y’all found this helpful, and feel free to ask me any questions about any of these! Also, tell me about your favorite writerly apps in the comments!

Writing Up Wednesday #2: What Genre is Your Novel… or Does it Even Have One?

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 2 Comments

Writing Up Wednesday is a weekly writing link-up created by Lizzy @ The Bent Bookworm. This week the theme is “What genre is your novel… or does it even have one?”

My “shaman novel,” (currently code named flawless Cracked and Broken), is very… complicated. Teens are my target audience, but I think it could appeal to a certain kind of adult as well. My main characters are all between the ages of thirteen and seventeen for the most part, but the story does touch on some heavy issues like mental health and drug addictions, and it gets pretty darn dark in some places!
As far as a specific genre is concerned, I’m gonna call it a weird cross-over between fantasy, paranormal, and SciFi. It’s got magicians, shamans, demons, brownies, (the little pixie-like critters, not the chocolate things), goblins, ghosties, elementals, and all kinds of other things that inhabit the “Unseen”, which makes it super fantastical, but there’s also a giant plot twist that I am not going to tell you about that strays into the realm of SciFi. It’s kind of one of those crazy books that everybody sticks in a different genre but hopefully will appeal to several different audiences!

Beautiful People #1: Couples Edition

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 1 Comment

Beautiful People is a monthly writing meme created by Cait @ Paper Fury. It is designed to help writers get to know their characters, and this week the theme is character couples. Now… Romance actually does not enter my story until the very end because… Well… My MC is kinda struggling with life at the beginning, and lots of people are trying not to die, and I’m sorry but I simply cannot stand that trope where two characters fall in love and it’s all like “We might die if we’re not successful in this mission but I’m gonna stop and kiss you before we do whatever it is that might be our only chance to save the world from disaster!” There’s probably a name for that trope, but obviously I don’t know it, and I don’t wanna google it right now… Anyway… The romance comes in very close to the end of my story, and it’s a kinda major plot point, so I’m not going to actually say the names of the characters involved in order to avoid spoilers. I’ll just code name them Character X and Character Y for now. BTW… These characters come from my “shaman novel” that is currently code named Flawless Cracked and Broken. That title will probably change approximately 52 more times before publication, but tell me what you think of it pretty please? Now, without further rambling, I shall answer these questions!

  1. How and why did they meet?
    Character X and Character Y met after several traumatic events unfolded and they ended up helping each other out. Vague, I know, but so many spoilers abound!

  2. What were their first impressions of each other?
    Character Y thought Character X was just an annoying cheerleader who asked too many questions and smiled too much. Character X thought Character Y was cute but too quiet and probably had just as many secrets as she did herself.

  3. How would they prove their love for each other?
    AAAAAH! You people ask too many loaded questions! Struggles to think of an answer that won’t spoil something big Ok… Here’s another vague answer for ya:
    Something big happens to cause Character Y to face a bunch of ridicule from Character X’s sister, and Character X tells Character Y that she’s sorry about her sister and that she knows what it’s like to have lies spread about you behind your back.

  4. What would be an ideal date?
    Ok so the majority of this is set at Blackthorn Hall, which is a school for shamans. The school is surrounded by woods, and there’s this trail that goes up to the top of a waterfall, and the place above the waterfall kind of becomes their place.

  5. Is there something they emphatically disagree on?
    They absolutely cannot stand each other’s musical tastes! I have this thing where I match my characters with songs, so I’ll share an example from each character’s playlist…
    Character X:

Character Y:

  1. List 5 “food quirks” they know about each other. (Ex: how they take their coffee, if they’re allergic to something, etc….and feel free to mention other non-food quirks!)
    ◦Character X does not function until she’s had her sugar-filled coffee.
    ◦Character Y won’t drink anything containing caffeine or an excessive amount of sugar because it makes him jittery, and he’s jittery enough because of his shaman gift.
    ◦Character X has a strange love for red candy.
    ◦Orange Juice is Character Y’s comfort drink.
    ◦Character Y usually eats yogurt or fruit for breakfast.

  2. What’s one thing they know about each other that no one else does?
    They know all about each other’s family issues and past drug addictions because that’s partially what brought them together.

  3. What’s one thing that they keep a secret from each other?
    Ummm… I can’t answer that… The secret between them is kind of a major turning point in the book, and I want you guys to still have a reason to read this when it gets published, so… Pass!

  4. How would their lives be different without each other?
    They both showed each other that it’s okay to trust, and had they not met, they would both still be hiding their true selves under the mask of their royal bloodlines.

  5. Where do they each see this relationship going?
    Honestly, they aren’t sure at this point. Right now they’re just there for each other, and they’re both willing to see where it goes.

I really hope my answers weren’t annoyingly vague, but I was trying to preserve some mystery because this story is in the edit stages and hopefully will be headed for beta readers soon! Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to check out the other posts in the link-up!

Beautiful Books 2017 Writing Goals

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 10 Comments

Beautiful Books is a writing link up created by Cait @ Paper Fury. Click here for instructions and links to other Beautiful Books blog posts.

  1. What were your writing achievements last year?
    I finished the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel!!!!!!! And now I get to edit it….

  2. What’s on your writerly “to-do list” for 2017?
    ◦Edit this mess of a thing I’m calling a novel.
    ◦Have it ready for beta readers by June.
    ◦Start writing the next book in the series for NaNoWriMo. I really would like to start that in July, but July is going to be crazy busy for me it seems!

  3. Tell us about your top-priority writing projects for this year!
    My absolute top priority project is the “shaman novel” that I wrote for NaNo and have already written a lot about. I’m now referring to it as the “shaman novel” because it’s gone through numerous title changes, and I don’t want to confuse you guys as much as I’ve confused myself. The plot is a total complete mess right now because writing the thing in order the first time would’ve made too much sense, so here’s some basic info that you can apply to the whole book!
    ◦It centers around a bunch of corrupted politicians who call themselves “The High Council.” They pretty much rule the world, and if you’re not royal, you are less than nothing to society.
    ◦Naturally there has to be a “lower class,” and they are the shamans. They practice a different kind of magic than all the royals, and they are very much looked down upon.
    ◦There are various practices of magic in my story world, but the ones that come up the most in this book are natural magic, blood magic, and academic magic.

  4. How do you hope to improve as a writer? Where do you see yourself at the end of 2017?
    This’ll be my first experience editing a project on this scale and sending it out to beta readers that aren’t just friends or family. My end goal for this year is to be querying for publication, so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot and improve my writing in several different ways.

  5. Describe your general editing process.
    Well… Umm… Yeah… Ok… So… Maybe I don’t have a process right now??? I messed up the timeline of this story SO horrifically that I’m still moving index cards around to figure out the order in which stuff needs to happen! After I’ve got my skeleton outline on a bulletin board, I’ll do a read through and put everything in order in Scrivener. After that??? I am seriously considering exporting it from Scrivener, brailling it, and putting it all in binders so I can slap sticky notes all over everything. The flaw in that plan is that I wrote a lot of words, and braille is bigger than print, so that would be a lot of paper, and I’d probably need like five giant binders…. We’ll see if that actually happens! If not, I guess I’ll just put it in a Word doc and leave myself a ton of comments, but oh how I hate using the comment thingy! I don’t know, ok?! Please describe your editing process in the comments below this post…

  6. On a scale of 1-10, how do you think this draft turned out?
    I’m going to put this at a solid 3… I think the story is great, but… See my answer to the previous question!

  7. What aspect of your draft needs the most work?
    Plot and structure! My character development is really good because I created the characters first and then worked the plot around them, but multiple POV characters and a little bit of a dual timeline made for an incoherent mess because my brain just doesn’t write things in order the first time apparently!

  8. What do you like the most about your draft?
    I love my characters! I can’t really explain why because spoilers, but they’re awesome, and I feel like they’re my friends now, and I really hope they’re as awesome as I think they are!

  9. What are your plans for this novel once you finish editing? More edits? Finding beta readers? Querying? Self-publishing? Hiding it in a dark hole forever?
    Beta readers, probably more edits, and hopefully querying by the end of the year!

  10. What’s your top piece of advice for those just finished writing a first draft?
    Are ya sure you want advice from me after reading this? Really?! Ok… If you’re gonna edit the thing, index cards, sticky notes, Scrivener, and coffee are your best friends!

2016 Wrap Up/2017 Goals

~ Cheyenne Raphael ~ 6 Comments

To continue with the theme of scatter-brained posts, I had goals for 2016 to wrap up, but I don’t have them anymore. They were on my MacBook which had to be wiped because of a malware invasion, and apparently the file wasn’t in Dropbox… The fact that I don’t remember most of them is probably a good indication that I failed at most of them, but here’s what I do remember!

  1. I did NOT win my Goodreads challenge, and Goodreads feels the need to remind me of that fact every time I open the app…
  2. I won NaNoWriMo for the second year running!
  3. I finished the first draft of my first novel! insert terrified emoji here It’s a total complete mess, but I finished the thing!
  4. I learned lots of programming stuff that I am not going to get into here because you most likely don’t care, and I don’t wanna explain it… Ok so really that wasn’t an official goal for 2016 until two weeks ago, but I made it my goal over Christmas break, and I accomplished it, so I’m counting it!
  5. Added together, all the writing projects I’ve completed in 2016 total up to 111911 words! I’m pretty sure my goal was 100000, so I’m proud of that!

Goals for 2017:

  1. By June 1st, I hope to have my novel ready for beta readers. If it could be by March 1st, that would be fantastic, but school is probably going to crush that dream.
  2. I’m setting my Goodreads challenge for 30 books because I’m 90% sure I can meet that!
  3. I am going to attempt the A to Z reading challenge, which means I have to read a book starting with each letter of the alphabet. If you know of books starting with R, Q, X, Y, or Z, please leave them in the comments! Those are the only ones I haven’t found yet…
  4. For NaNoWriMo this year, I’m planning to write the second book in this series I have started. We’ll see if that actually happens because I may still be trying to sort out this mess of a thing I’m calling a novel if the unthinkable happens and I epically fail at my first goal.
  5. This is the thing that I really need to do, but don’t wanna do. I’m in the middle of learning Swift and Python, (which are both programming languages), and I have a ton of notes for both all over my phone, iPad, laptop, and two notebooks, and they’re gonna have to be combined and organized before I get much further into this. I was planning to do this over Christmas break, but I just added to the mess instead because I’m a nerd like that!

I feel like I should list my upcoming posts here, but I still have all those that got caught in drafts, and honestly the next couple posts are gonna be embarrassingly late stories for Short Story Society. How did you do on your 2016 goals, (writing or otherwise?) Got anything cool planned for this year? Are you planning to join The HP Writing Cup? Let’s chat in comments!