Vince Rockston writes historical fiction addressing contemporary spiritual themes
Intro As an author of a mere half of a book, I feel greatly honoured to have been invited by the enterprising Tiffani Burnett-Velez to participate in her Historical Novel Blog Tour, mingling with such illustrious writers as Meara Platt, Douglas Hawkins, A. David Singh, Claudia Long, Greg Michaels, Barbara Eppich Struna, Eleanor Parker Sapia. Thanks for the privilege. Who you are,…
Many aspects form a novel – plot, pace, voice, character arc, setting, backstory, etc. But a novel wouldn’t be anything without characters. And readers want to get to know the main players. Among other things, they want to discover what they look like. And that, in turn, means they want to see their faces. I’m not good…
I’ve come to a point in my story where Silvanus engages in heart-searching exchanges with his wise old mentor, Cerbonius. They don’t do much. They talk. This, I realize, can quickly become boring for the reader, who is hoping for more excitement. What’s the solution?
I’ve already mentioned how I like to use Google Drive for writing the chapters of my book. I can think of three good reasons why (or four):
As an aspiring author, I’ve read several books on the art and craft of writing. They confused me. I didn’t even understand the terminology, let alone the principles they advocated. There’s nothing better than jumping in the deep end and getting feedback from more experienced authors. My hesitant attempts at posting individual chapters of my…
Every author stresses how important revision is. The trouble is, one easily overlooks one’s own weak points, omissions and errors. The solution sounds easy: Get a good Critique Partner for reciprocal manuscript correction. But how? There aren’t that many budding English-speaking authors in Oberlunkhofen!
I doubt that Silvanus saw many motor boats from his hillside home on Elba. But he certainly watched the birds and shipping. And dreamed of adventure in the big, wide world.
“Look around where you are right now. Describe this setting – but do so in the words your viewpoint character would use.” This was the exercise I was set in the book I’m currently reading. So I tried, in the words and from the point of view of a 6th century peasant boy from Elba!
Don’t you sometimes make a major change to a chapter – delete a whole section and rearrange the sequence of events – only to have a nagging thought that perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea and in a week or two you’ll want to revert to the old version?
I woke up the other morning to find this little fellow threatening me with his lightsaber! I had thought he was a wee harmless angel, who just sat there, minding his own business. Had he come to life? What made him so unfriendly, all of a sudden? Or was it, perhaps just me, imagining things?
