Are you sending your protagonist somewhere especially frightening?

MAY IS HOSTED BY WRITING TIPS BY WRITERS, Hand in Hand, DONALD MAASS'  TWEETS ON CREATING THE PERFECT NOVEL ;)  and SECTIONS INSPIRED BY THESE:

Gene Wolfe...with the hardest advice for thedébut novelist to follow.

DONALD MAASS WRITE TIP #89

What’s the place your protagonist must enter at the end? Earlier, make it a place of fear.

“Just dive down, and find the scroll. Once you have it safely in your pouch, you can swim out as fast as your strong arms and legs can pull you," Garra's voice was hard. "A straightforward task. It’s not as if you’ve never swum through the Clar’s watery clasp before."

Versa refused to meet her mother's determined gaze. "I caught my cloak," she said. "No matter how I pulled, it would not tear."

"You were snared in the stony embrace?" The hands that reached for her curled into fists, as Garra moved towards her daughter. "Yet you are here? He let you go."

"He bides, Mother. I left my dignity, with my clothes, in that embrace."

"I recall. But, that was before – before you rescued Heille? You re-entered Clar’s Cavern for her, but you won't retrieve the scroll that proves our entitlement to our ancient lands?"

Versa stared at Garra without expression. "They say, if the Clar claims you for his own, he’s a jealous lover," she said. "I freed myself once. And sneaked round, and away, behind his back the next. If I go to him again, he’ll hold me firm. This time, I fear he’ll make me his.”

Where are you sending your protagonist so they can be really afraid?

METAPHORS - A to Z CHALLENGED

M is for METAPHOR

Each post for the A to Z Challenge is the challenge I set for myself.

If the knight wins, Hal will have to
leave everyone he knows - again.

M is for Metaphors, the magic that creates a mind full of images with a new but relatable construct. Metaphors colour between the lines of text.

HAL LONGLEAT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH

The crusader knight bent back the strange, curved bow. He paused before he shot. Hal’s heart flew long before the arrow thudded into the wood and straw target. His stomach was empty of everything except hot fear. Everyone – his friends – would talk about the day Hal thought he was going to be made something more than them.

Could YOU have been gifted with the ability to identify and eliminate weak and brittle phrases from your work? To the uninitiated, these interlopers look like quality imagery.

CLICHÉ RAIDERS: REWRITE!

•           made of sterner stuff

•           make no bones about it

•           make my day

•           make/making the best of a bad job

•           make/making tracks

•           matter of life and death

•           method in his madness

•           millstone around your neck

•           more haste, less speed

•           more the merrier, the

FOR M, I CHOSE METAPHORS. WHAT IS THE SUBJECT OF YOUR M POST?

TEASER, TWIST AND TIP-TOEING TOWARDS THE UNEXPECTED

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

I got all anti-frey on this book
Then I remembered it was
 written by Pittacus Lore ;)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

THE POWER OF SIX

I wish the author was Pittacus Lore, Lorien's ruling elder. I have no trouble picturing him struggling to surviving on Earth while preparing for the war that will decide the fate of the last handful of free Loriens, and the fate of the people of Earth.

pg 11

We still share that secret, but somewhere along the way Adelina has stopped acknowledging it. Somewhere along the way the plan to bide our time until we felt strong enough and safe enough to leave has been replaced with Adelina's desire to simply stay - or her fear to leave.

As I'm sure you can all appreciate, I've been busy with work and life and writing.

Write-essential 2 - the twist in the plot - has been syphoning off my time lately.

Plot twists are essential. After vibrantly-real characters, the plot twist is the element of the story everyone remembers.

In my wip there’s a boy whose life changes unexpectedly. As one of a group, he learns new skills and gets embroiled in adventures.

There is tension in the group: animosity.

I wanted to hint that among the usual rivalries something was at play - something more extreme.

But I didn’t want to give the reader the plot twist painted in sky-high lettering at some point after chapter 3.

Rachelle Gardner, on her blog, said: "When you foreshadow, the reader usually doesn’t notice it when they initially read it. But later they might have an “aha” moment, remember it, and put two and two together.” A delicate touch is necessary if the reader isn’t consciously pick up on at first. “Often foreshadowing can’t even be detected until someone reads your novel for a second time. It’s that subtle."

My favourite plot twist came in a film. The plot twist at the end of The Sixth Sense - I didn't see it coming.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE TWIST IN FICTION OR IN FILMS?