Fixing Rough Drafts At the time of writing this I am on page 202 of 250 in editing my story. I'd like to share a paragraph and how I improve it. Rough drafts are by nature clunky, repetitious and poor quality but serve the important purpose of laying the bones. Now it's time to flesh them out. " Azalyske unveiled them in the desert bramble but now of withered brown, dry, dead vines. The sun entered the final leg of its daily toil, illuminating the sky in pink and orange. Not a cloud was to be seen. Long shadows began to creep across the thorny vines in eerily shifting nets. The air still burned from the midday sun." Several changes need to be made. "withered brown, dry, dead vines" is redundant and causes the sentence to run on. "illuminating the sky in pink and orange" is well and good but it could be better. A clever metaphor or simile would improve it. "The air still burned from the midday sun" echos the word "sun...
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Designing a Fictional Airship I'm at a point in my book where an airship is needed but at a loss for how it will appear. It's my intent to browse through other fictional airships for inspiration and design my own. Apparently real life airships are lighter than air crafts filled with lifting gas. Helium is preferred as it is nonflammable. We're going to deviate to more fantasy designs which give the freedom to be whimsical and not worry about practicality. When searching on the internet I had to add "fictional" to find what I was after. There are many styles I could go for. From a steam punk machine with gears and smoke to an elegant, colorful machine like the ship used in Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy games frequently feature airships and are a great place to go for inspiration. There are many factors to consider. Is it a grungy weapon of war? Appealing commercial flight? Does it use propellers, balloons or rock...
Science Fantasy Some sci-fi books, shows etc. are strictly creating a scientific fictional environment. Think Ringworld by Larry Niven or Star Trek and I must give kudos to the Trek writers for doing their homework. The show is as close to real science as the concepts can be. But sci-fi and fantasy needn't be separate genres walled off from each other. I prefer some whimsy in my sci-fi. The best examples of this type of hybrid are The Chronicles of Amber book series by Roger Zelazny and Final Fantasy video game series. They combine things like machines with monsters and sword fighting. To make these settings plausible you need some sort of explanation as to how magic works. There's often a scientific one like FFVII's materia. In the future I plan to have my own Signature series. One pet peeve of mine though is why use swords when guns are superior on so many levels? Guns exert more force with less effort, greater range...
The Journey of Personal Growth Remember that rough draft sketch (March 16, 2021)? Here it is filled out: This is Spiral, another guardian dragon. By posting these images I hope to track my growth as an artist. I've come a long way but still feel there is much that can be improved. I'm always growing as a writer too. My book went through two rewrites; each with significant changes. Originally Sayth was not the main character but I found him to be the focus of all the action and changed that. In the second draft he and Spiral had a son but that character did nothing but muddy the water by getting in the way while serving no plot purpose. He was removed but the entire book had to be rewritten. Now Sayth and Spiral are sharing an early romance. It's just as well. My writing has improved significantly since I began in my high school days. I don't know how people can write a novel in a month; mine took ye...
Sketching Original Characters Artistic character creation has its own rough draft stages. It's considerably harder to not work from a model. Like inventing the light bulb, you find many more ways that don't work before discovering the magic formula that does. I'll invest a good amount of time figuring out the pose. Poses are hard, especially action poses. You need the proper proportions and foreshortening alongside an interesting and balanced position. This applies not only to humans but creatures and machines as well. Often times I'll not know what to do with the back arm. Fleshing out and adding interesting clothing can be challenging as well. The face is always the worst so I try to add it first thing after the figure. Inventing new styles of clothing for futuristic and fantasy races involves a lot of knowledge and planning. Are they warriors, merchants, nobles? Are they loose with the rules and have one arm not in...