The Case of the Missing Writer

Hello, there!

Miss me?

I know, I went from being pretty prolific in my social media to being a veritable ghost!  Unfortunately, I kind of expected that when I knew I had to go back to a day job.

I mean, I’ve balanced my work life, home life, and writing life before, but it was always a delicate balance, and being a neurodivergent person, a lot of my (limited) success in that arena depended on things being stable amongst all three.

Life has been anything but stable.  For a long time.  And now that I’ve started not just a new job, but a new career, one of those three things has obviously been upended.  Plus, my home life has been out of balance for a long time, due to having to move frequently (thank you Denver Metro for having a horrific housing/rental market…)

So what does that mean for the future?  Am I back on social media starting today?

No.  :(

The New Career

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I started a new career as a technical writer!  Well, it’s actually a bit more than just that.  Officially my title is “Business Process Analyst” which I’ve learned basically translates to “Technical Writer+”.

I generally keep my job separate from social media, but given that my job involves writing, I did want to touch on it just a bit, in a very general and vague sense.

Technical writing is a very different beast from creative writing, as you might imagine.  However, I was already semi-familiar with it, because as a computer sys admin, a big part of what I did was document processes and procedures for everything I did, quite meticulously.  And I was also a bit of an outsider in doing so – sys admins generally aren’t good writers.  They generally don’t like writing.  Every job I ever worked had a dearth of documentation, and I usually spent a considerable amount of time and effort fixing that.

My bosses loved me for that.  (In fact, my current manager hired me in this new career because he remembered how diligent I was with documentation!)  People who took over after I’ve left a job loved the documentation!  It is something that’s very much needed in the technical field, and yet is so very often ignored or overlooked.

But becoming a Technical Writer, let alone a Technical Writer+ (err, I mean, a BPA), it’s a whole other bag of worms!  Because I’m not just learning how to manage my system and then writing procedures as I figure it out for myself.  I’m not even just focusing on one system.

I’m focusing on an entire program!

Things that I previously ‘let other people deal with,’ like program management, suddenly is front-and-center for me.  Policies, processes, procedures, for all aspects of a technical program, are now my business.  I have to learn it all, so that I can write about it all.

So the past two months have been a bit of an information overload.  That, more than anything, is why I’ve not been on social media.  Why I haven’t been writing, or editing, or really doing much of anything creative-writing-related.  Because when I get home, I’m exhausted.

However, there is one good thing about all of this – I’m SO much happier where I’m at, doing what I’m doing!  Before now, I went from one toxic work environment to another.  But finally, I’m in what finally feels like a good-quality work environment with coworkers who actually care (about their work AND about their coworkers).  My manager is encouraging and helpful, and I’m not frustrated every single day!

And I’m not stressing out over keeping computers operational.  Instead, it’s now my job to help enable the people responsible for keeping systems operational.  Basically, I’m more of a support person now.  And my stress levels are ever-so-grateful for that!

When Is My Next Book Coming Out?

So with my writing life being impacted so heavily by my new career, when is my next novel coming out?

Believe it or not, that’s not being impacted by this at all, not yet (and hopefully not at all).  Project Sirius 2 is still coming out this year!

Unfortunately, there’s a move coming up for us soon.  We live in a really ratty, stressful apartment complex right now, and so we’re gonna move soon.

Once that move is done, I’m gonna give myself some time to unwind and relax and live life.

So, my current plan?  Project Sirius 2 should be out this Fall.  That’s my goal.

The Awakening came out in September, but I don’t think I’ll make the one-year mark on book 2.  Instead, I’m thinking closer to the end of October.

What comes after that?  I still have to write the Sword of Dragons 5.  2 chapters are written, and that’s all.  I fully intend to use NaNoWriMo this year to make a huge dent in it, but I’d be shocked if I finished the entire novel in that single month.  Then again, I’ve shocked myself before.  And if home life gets better (IE: our new apartment is less stressful to live in), who knows, I could find myself with another major creative outpouring :)

But for 2024, only a single novel is expected to be published.  My goal for Sword of Dragons 5 is sometime in 2025.

I wish I could write more.  I wish I could do what I did in 2020 and get 4 novels written!  But as long as I have a day job and don’t make enough on writing…that’s just not possible.

Speaking of my writing career and how it’s doing!

Surging Popularity of the Sword of Dragons!

I’m pleased to report that the Sword of Dragons saga is enjoying more attention than ever before!  For the first time ever, book, eBook, and Kindle reads are consistently happening!  I mean, as consistent as can be.

Let me put it to you this way – in years past, there were times where I’d only get a single sale in a month, and then a surge of four or five, then something more middling, then nothing at all.  KENP reads came in spurts.  A single person would apparently read book 1, then 2, maybe 3, and then possibly 4.  I could almost always track when a new person found the books because there was never any evidence that more than one person was reading at the same time.

Now?  Now I’m getting multiple orders of at least book one every month, often leading to sales of the other books in the series!  Usually it’s either book 1, and then a little while later, books 2, 3, and 4 all at once, or sometimes, all 4 books at once (and at least a handful of times, The Orc War Campaigns!)  And KENP reads?  I’m often seeing every single book being read a little bit at a time every single day!  Which means at least 4 people are reading at the same time!

“Oh woopey, 4 people at the same time!  That’s not impressive.”  Oh, yes it is.  For an author who, as I said before, saw maybe one person per month reading, a sudden uptick like this, that has lasted for months, is FREAKING AMAZING!

This is the biggest step forward I’ve ever seen in my writing career!

What’s the source?  Well, it started with a marketing boon.  I finally found a video (click here to see it) that explained the Amazon advertising algorithm, and how to navigate it, in a way that I could understand (previous videos or help documents just didn’t click in my ADHD brain).  So I changed how I managed my ads, and within the first month of that change, I started seeing surges in new readership!

Following that, only a month later, I drastically had to (once again) reduce my advertising budget, killing off all advertising for some titles (Project Sirius :( ) so that I could keep the momentum going for Sword of Dragons.  But it’s still paying off, and in fact I’m seeing momentum building for Sword of Dragons despite not changing how much I’m spending on ads!

Another part of it – with the surge of new readers has come more ratings, and largely good ratings!  (Plus a new, glowing review on Amazon for Rise of the Forgotten!)  I think as my ratings numbers increase, and RotF stays above the 4-stars mark (which it so far has easily done), I might continue to see this momentum building!

In short, it’s a really, really good sign :D  And once things settle with my new career, I intend to take what I learned for advertising with Sword of Dragons, and apply it to Project Sirius to try to get interest in that series going, especially after book 2 comes out!

How You Can Help

I am immensely grateful for each and every one of you who reads my novels!  I know there’s been a slight uptick in new readers to this blog, too, and I’m so glad you’re here!  I hope you’re willing to show me some patience over the coming months as my life undergoes various changes – that’s the first way you can help (showing patience with me) ;)

The other way?  The biggest way you can help?  Please leave ratings for any of my books that you’ve read on Amazon, as well as anywhere else you’re willing to leave a rating on!

Better still, on top of those ratings, please leave a written review!  Something as simple as “I liked it” or “I thought it was okay” is good, but if you have the time and want to go into a little bit more detail, you’d be helping not just me, but you’d be helping future readers decide if they want to give my book a chance!

In fact, that’s one of the best things about reviews – you’re not just helping the author, you’re helping your fellow readers find the right books for them (by steering those with similar taste in the right direction!)

Beyond that, you can like, comment on, and share my social media posts, like this one!

Thank you for reading! :)
-Jon Wasik

Juggling Different Creative Efforts

Hello, there!

Welcome to 2024!  Let’s hope it’s a better year than the previous four!

I thought I’d kick things off by just letting you all know what I’m working on these days, and where I’m at with them.  So let’s dive in, starting with my next audiobook!

Burning Skies Audiobook Coming Soon

Earlier this week, I finished recording Burning Skies!  That doesn’t mean it’s ready to go, not by a long shot, but it is a huge milestone!

What’s next?  Well, editing primarily.  Throughout the process of recording, I occasionally took days off from voice work and did editing, so I’m not starting from scratch on it, but I do still have about 3/4’s of the book audio files to edit, so it’s still a long ways to go!

I also know for a fact that there are some dialogue sections I’ll need to re-record.  Especially for the crystalline entities known as the Navitas – I started off voicing them one way in one chapter, and then later changed my mind and voiced them different, so I’ll need to re-record those earlier dialogue sections.  Not a huge deal, and shouldn’t slow me down much.

After that, I’ll need to ‘listen to it in the wild,’ taking the MP3 files and listening to them while driving, exercising, etc, to see how it sounds and if anything needs additional work.

Project Sirius Book 2 Will Be Out This Year

I finished writing Project Sirius Book 2 (title still undecided) last year, so the hardest part is already done ;)  Today, taking a break from, well, everything else, I started another round of proofreading on it.

Once that’s finished, I’m hoping to start working on the publication package.  I’m…well, sad that I haven’t gotten further feedback from beta readers.  But I can’t wait forever, so I’m going to move forward on this one.

Right now, due to the whole job furlough situation, I can’t afford to engage the cover artist, but that situation will probably be resolved soonish.  (More on that further down.)

I already know what I want for the cover, and should be able to communicate it very easily to the artist, so I expect work on the cover to go fast :)

The Sword of Dragons Book 5 Stalled

Unfortunately, writing book 5 of the Sword of Dragons has…stalled.

And I can’t really point to just one reason for it.  Part of it is…struggling with stress and anxiety, so creativity is hard to come by.  (That whole job furlough thing.)  Also, due to the delays to audiobook recording, I focused heavily on that lately, and that left little time for any other creative efforts.

Will I start it up again soon?  That’s the plan!  Though it’s a bit frustrating, because I really want to write Project Sirius Book 3!!!!!

Anything Else On The Side?  Why, Yes!

Long-time readers of this blog know – I’m a gamer.  It’s one of the ways I decompress.  But when I game, I often find myself playing survival games that allow building structures, ships, etc.  I’ve loved building starships on Starfield, for instance!

But a big project that I’ve collaborated with my wife and my best friend on is getting closer to completion, and I’m excited to share it with folks soon!  In the video game 7 Days to Die, we’ve recreated the Raccoon City Police Station from Resident Evil 2 Remake!  It’s taken months, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on it, but most of that now is detail work :D

Back To Work?

Speaking of my job furlough earlier, I’ve reluctantly acknowledged that, for now, I cannot yet make a living off of voice acting.  As a beginner, the most I could expect is maybe $1k/month, depending on the projects I could get outside of recording my own books (and those pay considerably less ;) ).

That’s not enough, by a long shot, to live off of.  Hence why I always intended to try to segue into it part-time at first.  As does happen frequently in my life, those plans are always shoved aside.

So I’m going to start actively looking for a new day job.

I don’t really have a choice.

My novels are selling better than ever, but still fall far short of ever becoming sustainable, my voice acting isn’t even close yet either, and there has been zero interest in my Patreon :(

What does that mean for creative stuff?  It means the output frequency is going to drastically decline.  Who knows when I’ll finish writing my next novel.  Who knows when I’ll finish my next audiobook.

I’m back to square one.

But I gotta do what I’ve gotta do to survive.

On the bright side, I acknowledge that a lot of my resistance to day job work has been toxic managers or work environments at the last couple jobs I’ve worked.  So I’m going to try to be a bit more discerning with whom I apply to and accept a job from.  I recall from past experiences that I absolutely loved I.T. work when I was with companies and had coworkers that I loved!

True, I might not have a choice at first, I might have to take whatever comes my way right away.  But I’ll definitely try for better.

Anywho, that’s all I’ve got for today.  Thanks for reading!  And if you feel like helping out a poor, starving writer/voice actor, tell your friends and family about my work, like my posts, subscribe anywhere you can, and especially to my Patreon page!

-Jon Wasik

The Creative Urge To Be And Do More

Hello, there!

I honestly am not sure how to start this post…it’s just something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I felt the need to write about it.  As you might imagine from that opening, this is going to be a little bit more personal than my usual blog posts ;)

I find myself perpetually frustrated with life, and that frustration grows day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year, and it feels like it’s reaching a crescendo.

You see…I want to do more.  More creative work.

But the most frustrating aspect isn’t that I want to do more of one thing – I mean, I DO want to write, more than anything else – but I want to do more of so many different creative things!

I’ve started and then had to stop so many creative endeavors outside of writing, not because I’ve lost interest, but because I’ve had to prioritize my endeavors.  I hate that I have to prioritize them.  I loath that I can’t be creative all the time.

Those are some strong words.  I don’t use them lightly.  Like I said, I feel like the frustration is reaching a crescendo right now.

What I’d Do With $10 Million Dollars

Most everyone dreams of winning the lottery jackpot, and in this day and age, with skyrocketing inflation, that desire is probably stronger than ever for everyone.

There’s a part of me that wishes we lived in an era of patrons again.  I don’t know if I could actually merit a patron or not, but I’d like to think my creative endeavors have attracted some fans (there’s at least a handful of you who regularly like my blog posts here, and I am ever so grateful for that!)  I wish an interested (and, obviously, rich) patron would just be like, “I like all the things you do, so here, live off of my dime and do what you do best!”  But I’m not sure what’s more wishful thinking, that desire or the desire to win the jackpot ;)

And I know that Patreon would net me very little – I don’t know how to market myself, so getting enough people to subscribe when I’m not actually constantly delivering stuff on a month-to-month basis?  Not at all likely to ever happen.

But what would I do if money were no object, or less of an issue?  What have I done in the past, what have I been forced to give up just to make ends meet?

You all know the first answer to that question – I’d write, more.  I’d write more stories more often, much faster.  Instead of having one or two novels in the pipeline at any given time, I’d have many.  I’d finish the Sword of Dragons saga in a matter of maybe two years.  I’d write more Project Sirius.  I’d write that Cyberpunk/Dystopian series I’ve been building in my head.  I’d even go back and try to salvage Chronicles of the Sentinels with new novels!

But what about endeavors outside of writing?

Let’s start with the most recent, the thing that has disheartened me the most to give up (for now).  Voice acting.

I had a plan to transition from my I.T. career to that, slowly, carefully.  I’m not one to dive into new things and hope I land on my feet, I don’t have the courage and I couldn’t forgive myself if I failed and sent my wife and I into destitution.

But that plan was thwarted, by a major shakeup at work that has left me burned out and with no visible way forward with the voice acting, not yet anyway.  I’ve had to postpone it, and I’ve no idea for how long.  There’s too much uncertainty now, too much chaos.

I want to narrate my books.  I want to narrate other books.  I love doing voices, and the more classes I took, the more I fell in love with voice acting!  So I’ll come back to this someday.  Once I reconfigure my plans again and figure out a path forward.  As soon as I can find a path forward.

Yes, I made this, using Unreal Engine 5!

But that’s not all I want to do more of.  Last year, I became obsessed with Unreal Engine 5, as a way to fulfill so many aspects of my creativeness!  It helped fulfill my itch to make art, for one, while engaging my technical and engineering side.  I’d spent years learning 3D Graphic Design and Animation as a hobby during my college days, but hadn’t exercised that muscle much until UE5.  I loved it, I obsessed over it, and followed so many tutorials to create an incredible scene!

On top of that, my desire to build a shareable environment of my own creation grew, and I had dreams to use UE5 to build out the world of the Sword of Dragons, for starters.  Something I’d once done before using Minecraft, but the limitations of which frustrated me and, for now, I have paused.  UE5 could have and still could be a way to build that world out.  I even had the idea of using UE5 to make new covers for the Sword of Dragons novels.

Except…when my frustrations with my career and inability to work on creative stuff more frequently reached a certain level, I had to find a way out, a way forward.  That’s when I decided to pursue voice acting, and that meant setting UE5 aside for a time.  I’ve forgotten so much about how to use UE5 that I’d have to go through all of the tutorials all over again (though probably a lot faster, as muscle memory kicked in).

Another creative endeavor?  Once upon a time, I started learning how to do leather working.  I even made a belt and a few rudimentary bracers.  But a combination of time, money, medical issues, and living situation made it impossible to follow that dream.  And my leather tools sit mostly unused for now (Beck has used them more than I have!)

I Love To Build.  I Need To Build.

It all boils down to a need in my soul to build worlds.  Fictional worlds.  I write them.  I design them before I write them.  I draw them on paper.  I build them in video games.  I build them in 3D art.  And even my interest in leather working came from a desire to cosplay as my own characters.

I need to see my worlds built, and I need to share them with others!  It isn’t a want, it is an absolute need.

So every setback, every instance of being held back and being denied the time, money, and energy to create drives me nuts!

And today, more than any other day so far, I feel like I’m being held down and forced to endure torture, leaving all of my needs unfulfilled, juuuust out of reach.  If only there was more time.  More money.  More freedom.

I am a creative who isn’t allowed to create.

The Bigger, The Better? Increasing Book Length In A YA Series

Hello, there!

Progress continues on Project Sirius book 2, and as of this week, I have written chapter 36!

Additionally, chapter 36 marks the conclusion of part 2 of 3!

Chapter 36 also brings the overall manuscript word count to 94,600!

Why am I throwing all of these numbers at you?

Well for starters, The Awakening is 36 chapters in its entirety, and sits at juuuust under 90,000 words.

By this measurement, it’s likely that book 2 will be one and a half times longer than The Awakening.  That’s quite a jump!  But is it too big?

I’ve talked before about when to stick to genre norms and when to break them, and why I chose to adhere to them for The Awakening.  I’ve also noted that it’s okay to break from genre norms, especially in a series of escalating complexity.

But how big is too big?  And does it being a YA series make a difference?

Escalating Size – The Harry Potter Saga

Alright, before I get into this, if seeing the name “Harry Potter” has triggered a visceral reaction, I want to be absolutely clear about something – I do NOT support Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric.  I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.

But Harry Potter as a series, as a story, holds a special place in a lot of hearts, including amongst the LGBTQ+ community.  And after decades of becoming such a moving and visceral work of art in our hearts and minds, it’s impossible to discount it as something worth analyzing, and its success speaks for itself.  Additionally, we live in an era where it is entirely possible to be a Harry Potter fan without being a fan of or supporting JK Rowling.  Used book stores, for instance (trust me, as a published author, I can tell you that we get zero royalties from used book sales), or purchasing themed merchandise from conventions (which also results in zero royalties going to the author, unless it is an officially licensed vendor).

You also can’t deny that the Harry Potter series is surprisingly well-written, and is a good example of stories written for younger audiences that don’t talk down to them or treat them in a patronizing manner.  This, in turn, has made the series accessible to readers of all ages.

And that part about not ‘talking down’ to your audience?  That’s the big deal.  That’s huge.  I myself have a lot of fond memories of reading books (and watching shows and movies) that were definitely geared towards adults that I absolutely loved as a child (immediate examples I can think of: Alien and Predator movies).

It’s also why I think breaking age-range genre tropes is okay.

So, back to Harry Potter.  Recently (as in this past weekend), while my wife and I discussed the likelihood of Sirius 2 being 1.5 times the length of The Awakening, we thought to look at Harry Potter and how well known it is for having longer and longer books as the series progressed.

For one of my birthdays, many years ago, I was gifted a box set of books 1 through 6 as hardbacks, and then later bought book 7 in the same format, so they are all printed with the same paper thickness, same font, etc.  This allowed for a far more accurate accounting of page count changes from book to book (since Amazon’s page counts of each book seems to make zero sense).

Looking at those, the page count came out as the following:

Book 1 – 309
Book 2 – 341
Book 3 – 435
Book 4 – 734
Book 5 – 870
Book 6 – 652
Book 7 – 759

You can see a relatively slow progression at first, and then sudden leaps with books 4 and 5 (and then a decrease for 6 and 7).

One of the reasons Rowling has cited for this increase is a desire for the stories to grow up with the kids, but even if you remove that motivation, you can see that the stories become more and more complex, nuanced, and frankly, interesting with each volume.

This also isn’t the only series out there with increasing page counts, but it’s the best and most well-known example.  (Another that comes to mind – the Ender’s Game series.)

And even my own Sword of Dragons saga saw books 2 and 3 coming out longer and longer, with book 4 tapering back just a bit from 3.

It seems as though longer books as a series goes on is, well, normal.  Even expected, and that’s including among YA or, in the case of Harry Potter’s initial books, Middle Grade stories.

Where does Project Sirius fall in this progression?  Book 1, in its print format, comes to 272 pages in length.  If you multiply that by the expected 1.5x, I expect book 2 to come out to just over 400 pages.

That’s a bigger jump than HP did from books 1 to 2, and even from 2 to 3, but it definitely falls short of the jump from 3 to 4.

As you can probably tell, this jump in size has been on my mind a lot lately, and I have worried about it.  But I’m telling the story that needs to be told, in all of its nuances and with all of its peaks and valleys.  Plus, looking at how much books have grown in other series, I feel a lot better about it.

It’s too early to tell right now, but so far, I think I like book 2 better than The Awakening.  Of course, what I like and what readers like isn’t always the same, but for now, I’m confident that if you fall in love with The Awakening, what you’ll get from book 2 will be even more to love :)

Anywho, thanks for reading my ramblings on the topic!  I hope you enjoyed reading, and if you have any thoughts or comments about all of this, I’d love to hear them!  Just drop a note in the comments section below :D

Thanks!
-Jon Wasik

Facing Down Writer’s Block

Hello, there!

What is “Writer’s Block”?  Is it the inability to write a single word?  Is it that everything you write feels like trash, and you feel more and more disheartened?  Is it when you stare at your screen, blankly, writing a sentence, deleting it, writing another, staring at it, revising it, deleting it again?

The answer is “Yes.”  It’s all of those things.

It’s also one of the most disheartening things any writer will ever face.  Worse than a rejection letter from an agent or editor.  Perhaps the only thing worse is dismal ratings and reviews on a new publication.

I wish that I could say I’d never endured it, but the fact is, I’m no stranger to Writer’s Block.  There was a time after college where I went 4 years in which I wrote only two chapters, and nothing more.

And last week, it struck me again, but this time it was a different kind from the previous blocks.  It wasn’t the ‘can’t write anything, stare at the screen blankly’ kind, it was the ‘what I’ve written doesn’t work at all, doesn’t feel right, and I have to fix this before I can move on’ type.

What does that mean?  It means I’m stuck with the story for Project Sirius 2.

Even The Best Laid Plans…

I wrote recently how I’m no longer a plotter, but I’m more of a hybrid plotter/pantser.  In other words, I plan the basics of the story, but otherwise I write the overall manuscript ‘by the seat of my pants.’  For four novels, that worked out really, really well.

But similar to what happened when I wrote Secrets of the Cronal, I hit a plot wall when I wrote chapters 30 and 31 last week.  Neither of those chapters felt right.  Neither of them seemed to match the feel or the theme of the novel I’d written so far, even though what happens in them was more or less part of the plan.

Writing chapter 30 went okay, but I knew then that something was off.  When I wrote chapter 31, I was unenthusiastic about it.  It felt…well, lame.  Yeah, I know, I’m aging myself by using that word :p  But really, it felt like the characters were just going through the motions, and there was a lot more exposition than I wanted in that part of the story.

I mean, sometimes exposition is unavoidable, but it’s important to minimize it, because readers (or at least, when I’m reading) don’t really like info dumps.  Readers usually want a story.  Readers want movement, motion, action, progression.  In chapter 31, I had Mika and some others literally sitting down in a school-like setting listening to someone explain the situation to her.

And I realized my plan for the third act of the novel just…didn’t work at all.

The problem?  I don’t quite know how to correct it yet.  All I know is I need to scrap chapters 30 and 31, and rewrite part of chapter 29 once I figure out where to take the story.

So, this is my block.  My original plan for the third act was flawed.  I don’t know how to move the story forward.

What do I do?

I go back to the basics, that’s what.

I need to remind myself what the overall story in book 2 is supposed to be about, what the themes are.  Granted, my original plan for book 2’s third act was all about the theme I intended for the novel.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of writing, it’s that the story often takes on a life of its own, and the writer’s original intent could change as writing progresses.

So my plan, starting this week, is to read what I’ve written.

I know, this almost flies in the face of everything I’ve ever said about how to write a novel.  I always say, “Keep writing the next chapter!  Don’t go back until you’ve finished the manuscript, so that you don’t lose your momentum!”  But I’ve already lost my momentum.  I need to reset.

There’s always exceptions to the rules, and those exceptions always have good reasons.  (Or at least, they should.  “Just because” is never a good enough reason for either a rule or an exception to a rule.)

Dealing With The Emotional Fallout of Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block is hard.  It’s depressing.  Sometimes it’s the cause of depression, sometimes it’s caused by depression.  Often it’s a vicious cycle feeding one on the other.

I don’t know about other writers, but it’s easy for me to think I’m a worthless writer if I can’t even figure out the basics of my own plot.  I feel like a failure when I can’t write even a single good word.

But here’s the thing – it happens to all of us.  I promise you, there isn’t a writer out there who hasn’t run into Writer’s Block, and if any of them ever tell you they haven’t, then they’re either still inexperienced or they’re lying.  Writer’s Block happens.  It’s part of writing.  It’s why this job isn’t easy and why it can’t  be done by just anyone.

Okay, it’s one of the reasons, but you get my point :p

So, what to do?  First, forgive yourself.  Hell, not even that, there’s nothing to forgive – allow yourself to be imperfect.  Allow yourself to acknowledge the problem, to accept it as part of writing, and then you can move on.

Moving on will look different for every writer, and for every Writer’s Block.  Moving on from my 4-year block meant literally moving to another city and starting my life over.  Moving along this time will be far less drastic, I hope!

But try to find a way to move forward.  Even if moving forward means resetting.  Reset the story.  Reset your frame of mind.  Go on a vacation.  Go on a walk.  Take a hot bath.  Re-read what you’ve written so far.  Find another novel that inspires you and read it.  Read new stories.

Beating down Writer’s Block doesn’t always involve more writing.

But eventually, you’ve gotta get back to it.  Let yourself reset, and then, the instant inspiration strikes, pounce and go with it!  It’ll happen, sooner or later, as long as you’re dedicated to writing.

I may not always believe in myself, but I believe in you.

-Jon Wasik

10 Year Anniversary – Completing the First Sword of Dragons Novel

Hello, there!

Cover by Christian Michael

This month marks the 10 year anniversary for when I finished writing what would become my first published novel, The Sword of Dragons (later rebranded as Rise of the Forgotten, The Sword of Dragons book 1)!

While the novel wouldn’t see publication for a further 2 years, it still was a remarkable accomplishment!  Since then, a lot has happened, and a lot has changed.  One of the more notable changes is how I write novels today compared to how I wrote them back then.

I once wrote about my method for developing and writing novels, but I think the time has come to revisit that, and discuss how that has changed.

Back Then – Planning Every Chapter

Ask any novelist about plotters vs pansters, and they’ll probably probably state which they are, why, and maybe what they think about the other type of writer.

Back in 2013, I was through-and-through a plotter.  I developed chapter-by-chapter outlines for every novel I wrote, starting with the Sword of Dragons book 1.

I’d start with an idea for a story, write those ideas down, and start to develop a plot.  Once I felt I had enough ideas and themes figured out, I’d write down what I called the “general plot progression,” telling a basic version of the story from beginning to end.

Once that was done, I’d then go back, and start writing the basics of what would happen in each and every chapter, going into as much or as little detail as I felt was necessary to remind myself what should happen in each chapter.

After that, I’d begin writing the actual manuscript.  I’d usually have two word documents up on my screen, the chapter I was writing, and the chapter-by-chapter outline, so I could constantly refer back to my notes.  I generally tried to stick with my notes, and was really just ‘filling in the details’ as I wrote.  Sometimes new ideas would come to me, and I’d go a little off course, but I didn’t want to stray too far.  I didn’t want to have to re-develop the rest of the story.

How had I come up with this method?  In a way, it stemmed from how I developed my old fan fiction, Star Trek Dragon.  Starting around season 3, I had a general idea for the entire series, and a more specific idea for the season.  To help ensure there were no plot holes or ‘wasteful’ filler episodes, I plotted each episode out, ensuring that every episode contributed to the overall story.

This served my very well for developing a series.  When the first iteration of the Sword of Dragons failed to impress anyone, and I decided to rewrite it from scratch, I adopted this process.  Aside from a horrific 4-year writer’s block about 1/3rd of the way into book 1, it kept me on-task, and helped me write the story you all know today.

Because of how successful I perceived that method to be, I kept it up.  I developed Burning Skies with the same method, kept the momentum going, and then continued with Secrets of the Cronal.  Back when I wrote the first version of Legacy, Chronicles of the Sentinels book 1, I likewise wrote a chapter-by-chapter outline.

I felt like this method worked very well for me.  There were only a few times where it didn’t, like in Burning Skies when I added about 4 new chapters that I hadn’t originally planned while I wrote it, but all in all, it worked!

Except…

There was one problem.  And the first time it ever reared its ugly head was when I wrote Secrets of the Cronal.  I had a very solid plan for how things would go in it, including at the end when Reis was meant to betray Cardin and the others and steal the Sword of Dragons.

If you’ve read Secrets of the Cronal, you’ll know that didn’t actually happen.

It was the first time where a character so viscerally refused my plans for them.  This wasn’t who Reis was.  The actions I planned for him were so against his character that it broke the story.  And because so much of the plot I’d developed, chapter-by-chapter, depended on this happening, when I got to that point and realized it couldn’t happen…writing came to a full-on stop.  I not only had to re-write that chapter, but I had to figure out how the rest of the novel would play out, not to mention the rest of the series.

I felt shackled by the plan I had come up with.  So, finally, I said, “Hell with it,” and I threw the rest of the plan out the window, and I just ‘went with it.’  I wrote whatever came out.

Later, going through revisions and proofreads, I had a lot of cleanup and adjustment to do.  Secrets of the Cronal had one of the longest production and post-production times for any of my novels back then.

And it got me thinking – maybe plotting every single chapter wasn’t the best way to go.  It kept me from letting the story evolve in the direction it needed to.

Then, in 2019, everything changed.

Neither Plotter nor Pantser – The Hybrid Approach

In 2019, I had an idea to revive Legacy, and it involved a complete re-write.  At the time, I’d been reading the Dresden Files, and I liked the approach Jim Butcher used – a single character’s point of view, rather than a myriad.  I had been thinking of how to make Chris Tatsu a more interesting character, and the story overall more interesting, and then it came to me – it needed to be a more personal story for Chris, and the single POV would facilitate that.

I also knew that some of my original plot ideas wouldn’t work with this new, limited POV, plus some of the plot elements just…didn’t make sense or weren’t interesting.

Fresh off of writing Secrets of the Cronal, I decided that instead of going back to the drawing board, so-to-speak, and writing down a new chapter-by-chapter outline, I’d just…wing it.  And Let the story go in whatever direction it needed.  Sure, this might introduce inconsistencies and errors, but those could be cleaned up and corrected in editing and revision.

With that freedom, I flew through the first draft!  I was so enthusiastic about it that I couldn’t stop writing!  When pandemic hit and my day job came to a virtual stand-still, this only made it easier, and before I knew it, Legacy was completed.

I capitalized on that, and after developing the basic plot for book 2, I wrote Retribution, and then once again, after spending some time developing the plot for book 3, I wrote Champions without a chapter outline.

I’d never written so much, so quickly, and I was proud of the work I’d created!  I was so happy with this new method of half-plotting (IE developing the general story) and then half-pantsing (writing the story without outlines, letting it take me wherever it needed to go) that I adopted the exact same method for writing Advent Darkness.

Now, those of you who don’t like Chronicles of the Sentinels might point to that series as an example of why this new, hybrid method is a mistake.  However, Advent Darkness has been lauded as my best-written work so far, and kicked off a resurgence in popularity for the Sword of Dragons saga!  So, while I still don’t really understand the relative failure of Sentinels, clearly Advent Darkness is proof that this method works, and works damn well.

It’s how I wrote The Awakening, as well.  I’ve shared The Awakening with more beta readers than any previous novel, and responses to it have been highly encouraging!

Of course, how a story is written obviously isn’t the only reason for a story’s success or failure.  But I do feel like this method helps me develop and write better stories.

The Future – Will I Change What I’m Doing?

As a writer, I’m going to continue to evolve and change.  Any writer worth their salt should.  To say, “I’ve found my method, I’m never changing it,” makes you unable to adapt to a changing world and to changing stories.

For now, this method very much suits me, and at this point, I’ve written more novels in this method than the plotter method.  But who knows what might happen tomorrow.

All I can promise is that I won’t stop writing.  :)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

Dividing A Novel Into Parts – Project Sirius Book 2

Hello, there!

What’s this?  I only just got The Awakening out on pre-order, and I’m already talking about book 2 in the series???

That is the nature of the beast – book 1 is written, edited, and ready for release, so while I spend time marketing book 1, it’s also time to write the next novel.  In fact, I’m 19 chapters into book 2!

How does chapter 19 begin?  With the words “Part 2.”

I’ve seen this done in other novels before, the most recent that I’ve read being the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (highly recommend reading them!)  Each novel was divided into four parts.

Having said that, I never actually thought I’d need to use that narrative structure.  So far, all of the main-series Sword of Dragons novels tell stories that are pretty linear and straightforward, and the same was true for the Chronicles of the Sentinels novels.  Probably the closest I’ve come was The Orc War Campaigns, a single narrative divided into nine distinct parts (with the final part further divided into two parts).

Artwork by Vuk Kostic.

But let’s take a look at that for a second…why nine parts for The Orc War Campaigns?  Why couldn’t the entire story be told as one, chapter-divided saga?

Never mind for the moment that I originally wrote it like a series, with episodes released once a month (with a sizeable break between episodes 5 and 6).  I could have easily retooled it into a single, chapter novel when I turned it into a print and eBook compilation, right?

Except that each episode, while continuing a larger, overall story line, had independent stories with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends.  That right there calls for something more than just chapter breaks.  There are both significant time gaps between the episodes, and narrative shifts.

In essence, it’s an extreme example of where placing part separations is appropriate.

So what about Project Sirius 2?

The Longer, More Complex Story

I’ve mentioned it in a couple of previous posts, but Project Sirius 2 is already turning out to be a vastly longer and more complex story than The Awakening.  This isn’t something I’m doing arbitrarily, but rather is what the story and the characters require, and as I wrote about before, since this is the 2nd novel in a series, I’m more willing to break genre norms for length.

Of course, I don’t want to spoil The Awakening, so what I can and can’t talk about here is somewhat limiting, but I wanted to explore the topic while I was actively working on it.

My original plan for book 2 is progressing in the direction I always intended it, with a decent chunk of story starting on the Sirius, but then more would take place off of the ship, on another planet.  As for the why, well, that’s not a spoiler for book 1, but definitely would be for book 2 ;)

However, when I started writing book 2, it very, very quickly became apparent to me that I left a lot unresolved in The Awakening.  Stuff I always knew I would resolve in book 2 and beyond, but I realized that some of this would require considerable more ‘screen time’ than I first thought.

So I’m 19 chapters in, and they haven’t left the Sirius yet.

Woops!

But I am so happy with how the story has turned out so far!  I love the journey that Mika has taken, the discoveries she’s made, and the hardships she’s endured.

And it all will directly inform everything that happens in part 2.

As for whether or not part 2 is the last part, or if it’ll have to be subdivided into part 3, well…I’ll let that work itself out as I go :)

The question, however, remains – why make a part 1 and part 2 to begin with?

For part 1, it largely deals with the consequences of what happens in The Awakening.  That’s not all that happens, but that is a large portion of it.  Part 2, while continuing on from those consequences, will largely focus on the journey off-ship.

To me, that makes for a very definitive break.  Unlike The Orc War Campaigns, parts 1 and 2 are not complete stories in and of themselves, and are part of one overall narrative, but a lot of the setting and action change locations, and there is a significant culture shift between parts 1 and 2…

But I don’t want to say more.  As the good Professor Song used to say, “Spoilers!”

In the mean time, don’t forget to pre-order your copy of The Awakening today!  And for those who don’t want to go through Amazon, you can now pre-order the print edition through Barnes & Noble!  :D  Use whichever link below you wish to pre-order from!

Print Edition – Barnes & Noble

Print Edition – Amazon

Kindle Edition

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

Wordcount Rules – When To Break Genre Norms

Hello, there!

One of the things that’s often discussed in writer circles are, “What’s a typical word count for a novel in a certain genre?”  And you might be wondering…why does that matter?

To be honest…I’m not 100% sure.

I do know that publishers and agents put a lot of weight behind it.  The likelihood of being picked up by a publisher or agent may depend heavily upon whether your manuscript’s word count falls within the ‘norm’ for the genre you’ve chosen.

But ask typical readers out there?  Or many self-published authors?  They might reply with, “doesn’t matter.  What matters is that a complete story is told, and it takes however many words it takes.”

I even went so far as to ask in my personal Facebook page for thoughts and opinions, and the consensus agreed that it really doesn’t matter (granted that was a consensus of only a handful of respondents).

So is the “books in this genre must be in this length range, no more, no less” solely for the sake of trade publishing?  Or is there wisdom in it?

Honestly, I’m not gonna try to answer that definitively here.  That’d take a lot more research than I’m able to commit to right now.

What I will cover is my approach to those rules.

Good To Start With, But Made To Be Broken

When I was a sophomore in high school, my English class was given the assignment to write a short story.  My instructor gave us clear rules – double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font.  Minimum 3 pages.

I was the only person in the class to ask, “Is there a page limit?”  Apparently I was the first student to ever ask my English teacher that question.

In my opinion, the rules are good rules to start with, and for first books in any series I write, I try to stick to those rules.  Why?  Because while the rules may have been partially arbitrary based on cost of print runs, they do reflect what is generally accepted by readers in each genre.

For instance, YA Sci-Fi, which Project Sirius is, generally doesn’t run more than 90,000 words (and that’s longer than other YA novels).  Whereas Adult Fantasy/Adventure generally caps at 150,000 words.  Those numbers are, in theory, supposed to reflect what most readers of those genres, IE the target audience, expects and accepts.

Artwork by Vuk Kostic

I recall reading advice that for first-time authors, they should stick closer to 110,000 for adult Fantasy/Adventure, and Rise of the Forgotten, my first published novel, sits at around 105,000.

Burning Skies?  A bit more.  Secrets of the Cronal?  A LOT more (173,000).

But that first book in the series told a complete story, introduced the characters, and set the Universe up for the reader.  It was an enticement.  And if readers were willing to get through that and wanted more, then I wanted to give it to them.

More than that, however…as the stories grew, new characters were introduced, and events panned out, the story simply demanded longer books.

For Project Sirius book 1, it sits at the high end of the cap for YA Sci-Fi at about 89,000 words.  But book 2 is already shaping up to be considerably longer, the story more involved.

Why do I do that?  Why do I stick to ‘the rules’ in the beginning, and then break them after?

Because as much as I’m a writer, I’m also a reader, and when I’m a reader looking for a new series and/or a new author to read, well…my time is limited.  If I’m going to give a series I don’t know a chance, and especially if I don’t know for sure if I’ll like it or not, I don’t want to have to commit to an extremely long read.  I rarely give up on a novel when I start it, no matter who bad, so I’m very picky about what I read.

So as a reader, I appreciate ‘first in a series’ not breaking genre norms on maximum length.

But if I finish book 1 and have fallen in love with it?  You can bet your bottom I want more in book 2 and beyond.  I’ll want more time with the characters, more time with the story.  Give me all the details (within reason – it still needs to contribute to the narrative).

Since that’s how I think and feel as a reader, then that’s how I write.  Book 1 is an intro.  A test.  “Do you like this Universe, these characters, and this story-telling method?  If so, more is coming!  If it isn’t your cup of tea, then at least your first taste was just a cup of tea, and not a gallon jug!”

Anywho, that’s my stance on it…what’s yours?  Are you aware of genre ‘norms’ for word count, and do you think it matters if a writer follows those norms or not?

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

The Importance of Characters You Can Connect With

Hello, there!

Last week, in a quick side discussion about Project Sirius book 1, one of my beta readers relayed something her fiance (who is also beta reading it) said to her: that the protagonist, Mika, sounded just like her.

It was a quick, in-passing kind of remark, but it made me smile.  It also reminded me of the importance of writing characters that people can relate to, characters your readers can connect with.

And if you’ve ever wondered why representation matters in artistic endeavors such as novels, movies, or TV shows, then this article is for you.

Connecting With Characters

Think about some of your favorite stories.  Think about some of your favorite characters.  What is it you like about them?  Is it their courage?  Is it their sarcasm or wit?  Maybe the way they defuse every situation with humor, or the way they roll their eyes at every Dad joke they hear (or, maybe like Ellie in The Last of Us, they love Dad jokes!)

Chances are good that at least some, if not all of your favorites, are characters you connect with on some level.  And before you say, “this favorite character of mine is nothing like me!”, that’s not what I mean.  Connection doesn’t necessarily mean, “I see myself in them,” although those are powerful connections in themselves, perhaps the most powerful.  But also characters who remind you of others, in some way.

After all, you probably aren’t going to see yourself in every character in a single story – that would make for a very narrow-cast set of characters, and probably would be boring.  Diversity is important not just because it broadens who can relate to the story, but it also makes it more interesting.  It makes it more real and believable.  Because we live in a diverse world.

But while you might see yourself in one or two characters, and you might see parts of yourself in others, you might also see a parent in another, and a best friend in another, and your significant other in yet another character.  When that happens, those characters can come alive on the page far easier than if you didn’t connect to them on some level.  It helps fill in the gaps, the details and histories that aren’t written on the page.  You see them as people, not as arbitrarily crafted entities.

The best fiction stories are those that you forget are fiction, at least in the moment.

Us and Them, or All Of Us

So why is diversity and representation important?  Why, for instance, is it a good thing that the Motion Picture Academy is requiring diversity to be considered for Best Picture?

Because if you’re in an industry like writing novels, movies, or TV episodes, you’re in a position of influence on society.  Maybe your influence is extremely minimal.  Or maybe you’re writing for a big TV show or a summer blockbuster.  Either way, you help shape the vision of where society was, is, and will be.

Not a good enough reason?  Then don’t forget the financial aspect.  When you leave out under-represented groups of people, you’re basically saying, “I don’t want them to buy and read my material,” which basically equates to, “I don’t want their money.”  And yes, it really does make a difference.  If you don’t believe that, then check out how well the MCU movie Black Panther did in the box office.

But let’s say for a moment that money isn’t your only motivator.  And let’s face it, if you’re a novelist, chances are you aren’t doing it for the money.  (Really.  This profession doesn’t pay well, unless you’re one of the lucky very few.)  Let’s say you write stories because you are truly passionate about your art and the affect it has on readers.  So why does it matter?

For one, people who are used to never seeing themselves or their friends and family in stories suddenly find one in which they do.  In my experience, that creates a wellspring of giddy, happy feelings in a person, and they’re way more likely to fall in love with your novels.

Plus, in the larger picture, it helps demolish the “Us and Them” syndrome that pervades our society.  If you’re a writer or a reader, chances are you have a powerful imagination, so imagine this with me for a second: you live in a society where all of the popular media, including movies, TV shows, books, advertisements, everything, shows people who look or think nothing like you.  Since art is meant to imitate life, you might start to wonder, “Am I an outsider?  Do I not count?  Do I not matter?”  Over time, you might start to see “us,” meaning people like you, and “Them,” the people who, apparently, matter.

Now imagine after decades of this feeling, a major motion picture comes out, and the leading star is just like you.

How much is that going to blow your mind?  How happy do you think you’d feel?

If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced that, you know exactly what I mean.  If you’re reading this and you haven’t experienced it, just imagine it.  Just imagine something you’ve wanted all of your life but thought would never happen suddenly is there one day.  How happy would it make you?

And if you saw that new blockbuster movie and it was awesome and you fell in love with the character, wouldn’t you want to go out and tell all of your friends and family how great it was, and they should go see it right now?

Now, still in this imaginary world, fast forward to a time when every single story you see has people just like you in them, working and living and adventuring side by side with people from all kinds of races, creeds, and orientations.  Suddenly the world goes from, “Us vs Them” to “All Of Us Together.”

The utopian Earth we see in Star Trek suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched when that happens.

Humanity doesn’t seem so reprehensible and hopeless.

LGBTQ+ in Project Sirius, and More

This is why Mika was always meant to be LGBT.  This is why she isn’t the only one.  This is why, as the story unfolds over the course of multiple books, there’ll be multiple queer, as well as straight, characters.

This is also why The Sword of Dragons introduced an openly LGBT character in Advent Darkness (although there were hints to LGBT as early as The Orc War Campaigns).  This is why there was a non-binary character in Chronicles of the Sentinels.

Like reality, not all of my characters will be queer.  My cast will always be diverse.  But as someone who isn’t “normal,” I look for characters like me in other stories, and I love when I find them.  It makes me feel validated as a human being.  It makes me feel seen.  And I want to give that same feeling to others.

Are there risks to doing this?  Absolutely.  Ultra-conservatives have bandied the phrase, “Go woke, go broke,” around lately (and then complain about “cancel culture” like they aren’t doing that very same thing).

But I again point to incredible successes like Black Panther and say that if you include people from all walks of life, chances are you’ll do alright.  And along the way, you’ll help make the world a brighter, better place, for everyone.

Thanks for reading, everyone!
-Jon Wasik

Think About The Future – World-Building For Dystopian Sci-Fi

Hello, there!

One of my favorite parts about developing an entirely new story is world-building!  I know it isn’t every author’s cup of tea, but for me, it’s a large chunk of why I write.

However, this year I’m building a world I’ve never built before – a dystopian future on Earth.

Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi vs. Dystopian World-Building

The first fictional world I ever truly built and fleshed out was for the Sword of Dragons, a fantasy-adventure saga that’s still on-going, and may even be the reason you’ve found yourself here!  Building such a world took years and years, and it continues to be built with each new novel I write.

It started with a map – I drew up a basic map of Halarite, all four continents, and a detailed map of the central continent, Edilas.  From there, I established the kingdoms, where the orcs resided, and more, and with that as a basis, I was able to start fleshing out the cultures and history.

Combining that map with a fleshed-out central religion (The Order of the Ages) and the magic system, it gave me a very solid foundation to build the stories and characters on, and in fact informed every aspect of the novels written today!

It was a world 100% of my own making, borrowing from real history and mythologies while making up its own rules.

When I started working on Chronicles of the Sentinels, well that was an entirely different exercise.  As a story that starts in the here-and-now (actually I wrote it to be around 2024 or 2025), it required an entirely different kind of world-building.  I didn’t have to build up our current-day world, but I did have to establish how magic worked, why it worked the way it did, and how it existed throughout the Universe beyond Earth.

A really fun part about it was looking into history and ancient legends, and figuring out how those worked into the new reality I had built up for the story.  Especially Babylonian mythology.  Combining ancient history with ancient myths, I turned Marduk into a god-like magic being, his son Nabu into a demigod, and was able to explain the more ‘magic-like’ stories and legends of human history over the past four thousand years.

It was a lot of fun, and was such a fresh world-building exercise that it made me use completely different skill sets!

More recently, I’ve looked to the future, starting with Project Sirius, the YA Sci-Fi that’s currently in the hands of round 2 of beta readers :D  Instead of building an original world or researching history, I looked to the far-flung future of humanity, with a bit of optimism that we would eventually get the heck off of this poor, exhausted rock and start colonizing our own star system, followed by the star systems immediately surrounding us.

Again, this took a completely different skill set.  But I still had to look into both history and present-day knowledge.  Why?  Well, for starters, how do we get to the future without know where we are now and how we got here?

Artwork by Samuel Nordius

But also is the idea of a self-sustaining society on a giant ship in space.  I had to research things like “how big does a self-contained population need to be while still ensuring genetic diversity?”  When I had the answer to that, the next question was, “how much land is needed for farming to feed a population of 5,000?”  When that proved to be an ungodly number, I started looking into things like, “advances in crop efficiency,” and the future possibilities of farming.  With a little sci-fi “magic” thrown in there, I was able to pare the size of the ship down considerably.

All of that research, all of those questions that I found answers to, informed how the society aboard the Sirius would be built.  What laws there might be to ensure continued genetic diversity without changing population, etc.  It let me build the self-contained society while also informing me what the society that built the Sirius in the first place must be like.

And that brings us to my latest story, a dystopian sci-fi set around 100 years from now, give or take.  A less-than-optimistic look at our future, this story will be about a self-contained city in a future ravaged by climate change.  I was able to use some of the research I’d done for Project Sirius to figure some of it out, but for this, I was able to do a little more down-to-Earth world-building.

Once again, it took more reading.  More learning.  More investigating.  Where might said-city be built someday?  Why?  By whom?  How did the governments of the world react to this city’s construction?  What happened to make the city close its doors?  How have recent worldwide disasters, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic, affected the culture of the society within its walls?  (Think Demolition Man and you might come up with the answer to that question yourself ;) )

I had to take a look at where we’re at as a society right now, dealing with increasing world-wide disasters, many of which are caused by climate change, and figure out how we might respond to an ever-increasingly-disastrous climate change and unstable society.

Inevitably, the question of cybernetics came up.  And what I’ve learned about cybernetics in the real world over the past ten years of hungrily reading about advances in it, and people’s reactions to it, it greatly informed my vision of this less-than-ideal future city and society.

Thus, this new project, currently dubbed Living Remnant, has actually become a Dystopian Sci-Fi with Cyberpunk elements.

World-Building Informs Your Story

The lesson I’ve taken away from this?  Well, actually, there’s a lot!  However, one big one is that every single one of my stories, and the characters inhabiting them, have been built upon a foundation of world-building.

However, in some cases, such as with Living Remnant, it’s a two-way street.  It began with a plot idea, the thought of how a mind-upload to a computer might actually work.  From there, I created the character of Alys.  Once I had the very basics of who she was and what the plot would revolve around, I started world-building, which affected what Alys did for a living, and why she was the way she was.

Including prejudices and flaws (remember that last post about making sure you don’t make a character too flawed?) as well as strengths.

Hmm…makes me wonder if there’s another blog in my future, discussing writing very different kinds of characters, and the reading and investigating I’ve had to do for them!  Cardin Kataar was a warrior all of his life, so stepping up to fight evil is part-and-parcel for him!  But all of the characters in the other stories I’ve written or am writing?  Not so much.

How does a computer tech, for instance, learn to fight the bad guys?

Well, for starters, Alys isn’t just a tech.  In order to make it believable that she can defend herself (even if not expertly,) she’s trained in martial arts as a hobby, something I did myself once upon a time.  Mika Kai in Project Sirius has an obsession with archery.  And Chris in Chronicles of the Sentinels…well, he struggled at first.  A lot!  But that’s why he received training between books 1 and 2 :)

Anywho, enough of my inane ramblings from one day, yeah?  ;)  I hope you enjoyed reading, and getting this little insight into my next writing project!

And don’t worry – I’m still working on the plot for the next Sword of Dragons novel!  Unfortunately, it’s just not quite ready for writing to begin.  You might even say that the story is still in the fermentation process, not yet ready for distillation ;)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik