Being Peta

Moving along with plotting my nanowrimo novel I suddenly realized that, though i loved what i had so far, I've only enough story for 25,000 words, unless I want to pump it full of filler fluff (eck).  On the other hand i still don't know how I'm going to resolve the main crisis although I'm pretty confident I know how to build up to it.  I'm going to play around with not resolving the crisis but letting it build to even worse things.  (Falling back to one of my old tricks... if you get at a brick wall of creativity then think about what could happen to make things so much worse and then write that.  My only worry is ending up with an apocalypse... lol.)

I'm finally starting to get to know and like my protagonist.  Suxs when you've got some really interesting and fun support characters and your main is just  blah.  I've changed some of his personality traits and interests and he's so much better for it.

In other news I have to work out how to transfer moneys from my bank account to paypal.  never done it b4 and don't know where to start.  Off now to ring my banks customer service.  Wish me luck.

My trolling the net has lead me to rwo pieces of interesting software which I'm going to trial to help me build the stories. 

One is called 'Ywriter' which is a way to break down the story into it's charcater, plot, chapter, scene components.  It's got lots of versatility and an intelligent organisational system.  Google it, it's a tiny download and easy to install, and then jump onto Youtube for a tutorial.  that's all i did to get started with it.  It also seems to have a very comprehensive built in set of instructions..  Going to give it a thourough test run tomorrow with a dummy project after I've done the house cleaning.  I'll let you know how it went.

The second which I've been having fun with for the past hour is a program called 'Freemind', which is basically a fairly straightforward mind mapping software to explore ideas with in a fluid enviroment... it is EXACTLY what i do on paper when I'm planning a story.  Once again I found the download through googling, then Youtubed to find a tutorial.  (After a string of night shifts I need to see and hear and not just read the instructions to learn.)  I've played around with a dummy mindmap on it and had a ball.  my advice is just screw around with it for a couple of hours, it's really quite powerful.

Both of these apps are FREEWARE.

I'm going to do a dummy run of planning a short story on Freemind and then using Ywriter to expand it into a full fledged writing plan.  You can use Ywriter as a word processor and write the whole thing on it, but I'll see how I go.

Gacked from jeriendhal

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble-ish of any pairing/character (with a prompt) of their choosing from me.* In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. Of course, reposting not required!


Need to brush up on my very rusty writing skills and this looks as good a method to do it as ever.

Though i warn you, my fandom knowledge base is very very limited.  If you want any reasonable 'in character' stuff best stick to:

Dr Who  --> (Doctors 4, 5, 9 and 10)
Farscape
Full metal Alchemist
My own characters from Terinu
Tez and Maria from the stories by Royce Day.
Torchwood (At a push... may not be very in character.)

Alternately I'm more then happy (most happy actually) to do your original characters if you give me a good description of their personailty traits and the scenario you want them in.

I'm also pretty relaxed about writing adult content as long as it doesn't involve paedophilia, gore or bodily products not normally associated with vanilla adult content.

I reserve the right to make the piece as long or as short as my muse commands me and there may be a delay before I get around to yours.