Ava Jae

Obsessive writer. Insatiable reader. OCD Artist.

lbardugo:

ocularcuriosity:

This spec trailer was inspired by Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling novel Shadow and Bone. Ocular Curiosity is a collective of filmmakers and artists working and living in Los Angeles. In making this trailer we wanted to create a fun concept that featured Leigh’s mysterious and seductive character, the Darkling. We hope you enjoy it!

DARKNESS NEVER DIES

Trailer by Ocular Curiosity

www.OcularCuriosity.com

Credits:

Produced and Directed by: Rachel Tejada, Austin Wilkin, Raymond Tejada

Director of Photography: Rob Naples

Graphics: Taku Hazeyama and Mo Stoebe

Editor: Rachel Tejada

Sound Mix: Pat Lydon

Music: Zack Hemsey*

__________________________

Thank you everyone for the positive feedback on our trailer! We had so much fun making it.

In anticipation for “Siege and Storm” coming out next week on June 4th, we’re re-posting the trailer.

We can’t wait for the Grisha Trilogy to continue…and the Darkling to be in our lives once more!

image

I think this trailer may be an always reblog for me <3 

LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Erm… and I like that gif!

You guys. YOU GUYS. 

(Source: airows, via quote-book)

Writability: Why I Keep Track of My Word Count Progress

I am a methodical writer. Despite previous pantsing trysts, I’ve found that I write a lot faster (and more confidently) when I know where I’m going, and I keep a daily and weekly writing goal that I work hard to try to meet.

That being said, it’s likely little surprise to hear that I often keep track of my word count progress.

I’ll admit that it’s a practice I fell out of after using it for a couple WIPs, but after participating in NaNoWriMo last year, I remembered why I’d starting keeping track in the first place—and it wasn’t just to make the analytical side of me happy.

You see, it’s easy to forget what you’ve accomplished when you’re deep in the trenches of a first draft. The elusive words of “The End” seem impossibly far away, and the day after day slog can quickly become exhausting.

Keeping track of your progress, then, serves two purposes:

  • It shows you just how much you’ve written. Seeing your progress on paper can be really encouraging when you’re halfway through your WIP and it feels like reaching the end will be impossible. It can serve as a great reminder of how a little each day can add up to something fantastic, and for me, at least, it’s proven to be a great motivator.
  • Progress is progress. Writing down your progress every day serves a second purpose too—it encourages you to make daily progress. Even if you only write a few hundred words that day, the numbers prove that even small progress is progress.
During NaNoWriMo you get this really awesome chart thingie that shows your progress on an axis like this, that I completely love. As of yet, I haven’t found something to replicate that (except for doing it by hand in Excel), but you can try a widget like this one to keep track of your total progress.

(NOTE: If anyone knows where to find a NaNoWriMo-like replication of the progress chart, you will make me a very happy writer).

In addition to little bar graphs like the one above, spreadsheets are a fantastic way to not only keep track of your total word progress, but of your daily and weekly progress as well, which I highly recommend. But all in all, the important thing is to just keep track.

Do you record your daily or weekly word count progress? Why or why not? 
  • writer: let's get this minor character some screentime
  • writer: let's show them how lovable he is
  • writer: okay, is everybody in love? right
  • writer: now let's kill him

Waiting on query responses

title2come:

image

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

—Madeleine L’Engle (via bookporn)

(via prettybooks)

stoleamadman:

celticlove1995:

Dr. Who Sold Here

What if these were actually stained glass windows in a house?

I want these in my future house.

(via bethrevis)

Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of “us” staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.

—Chuck Wendig (via easyreadingisdamnhardwriting)

(via writeworld)

bethrevis:

Writers: if you’re working on character development, you need to see this.

fishingboatproceeds:


sealprinceling:

“Actual conversations with my 2 year old daughter, as re-enacted by me and another full grown man - Episode 1”

Oh my GOD

This is very true to my experience. 

I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.

—Neil Gaiman; The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones (via wordpainting)

She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you’re swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water’s deeper than you think and there’s nothing there.

—

Julia Gregson (via lacynical)

(Source: quote-book)

Writability: How to Write a Great Twitter Pitch

It’s that time again! We are just days away from yet another fantastic Twitter pitch contest, this one on May 28 from 8AM to 8PM EDT. You can find all the details, rules and extra tidbits here, as well as a post on why you should enter pitch contests here.

That out of the way, on to the real meat of the post: Twitter pitches.

Your goal behind putting together a Twitter pitch should be to sum up or give the essence your novel in a way that’s intriguing—all within 140 characters. Simple, right? (Right, let’s go with that).

By the end of your Twitter pitch, readers should know a few key things about your novel: 

  • Who your MC is. 
  • What’s at stake. 
  • Essence of plot. 
  • Genre. 
  • Bonus: What makes your story unique. 
  • Bonus: Conveying the voice. 
That seems like a lot to fit into 140 characters, and it is. But if done correctly, you may just catch the eye of a publishing professional. As an added bonus, a well-crafted Twitter pitch can be turned into a fantastic log line, which is useful in several stages of the publishing process.

Because it would be unfair for me to talk about Twitter pitches without giving examples, I’ll let you tear mine apart. Here’s a variation of what I’ll be using next week:
Cade is unaware a secret society has been watching since he killed his gf w/ a kiss—now an assassin isn’t his biggest problem #PitMad YAPar 
It isn’t a perfect example by any means, but it hits the main points: you know who the MC is and what’s at stake, the essence of the plot comes across, and there’s the genre tag at the end. You also may have noticed that you need to fit the hashtag into the Twitter pitch. So you don’t really have 140 characters at your disposal, sorry.

For examples of some Twitter pitches that got requests in March’s Pitch Madness, check out this fantastic roundup from Carissa Taylor.

Finally, I’d like to do something a little different here at Writability in anticipation of the upcoming #PitMad contest—I’m hosting a pitch critique session at the blog in the comments from right now (May 24) until Monday, May 27th at midnight EDT. 
I’m going to do my very best to try to critique every pitch that’s posted, but I encourage you guys to lurk around and critique each others pitches as well—not only is it nice to interact with each other and make friends (we like making friends, yes?), but it’s actually fantastic practice. If someone other than myself critiques your pitch, it would be very nice for you to return the favor. As I’ve said before, you can learn just as much from critiquing each other as you can from getting a critique.

Also, if you’d like to critique mine while you’re at it, you’re more than welcome to. It’s not a requirement, but I do enjoy trading critiques, and it might be fun for you guys to have the opportunity to tear my stuff apart. Maybe. If you like that kind of stuff.

Note: If you do critique each other, please be courteous. I may have a thick skin, but not everyone does. Treat others the way you’d like to be treated and all that. Ok.

Anyway, so let’s get to it, shall we? Click here and post your Twitter pitches in the comments at the blog and let’s have some fun.

How I feel about my manuscript most days

title2come:

image

Writability: Writing Tool: WorkFlowy

So about a week ago, I came across this blog post on YA Stands about A Cool Way to Outline Your Novel. The post was a recommendation for a free online tool called WorkFlowy, and it sounded interesting so I decided to check it out.


The basic idea behind WorkFlowy is to imitate our thought process—you start off with one bullet point, then build off from it to create more points, and before you know it you have several sub-lists with their own sub-lists and so on and so forth. It’s a clean, minimalistic layout and it allows you to open up and collapse your lists and sublists and create a nice, organized, outline-like list. 

Here’s a video that can explain it a lot better than I can: 


You guys may or may not remember my post from forever ago about how I’m a list person, and that has not changed since writing that post. I still enjoy working with lists, and when I begin my initial brainstorming, I do so with (surprise!) long, bulleted lists. I usually start this brainstorming with a pencil and paper, but there was always the issue of my bullets starting to not line up (straight lines? Who can actually draw straight lines?) and not really being able to add to the previous part of the list, and it can get a little messy on paper. 

You can imagine, then, that hearing about WorkFlowy made me a pretty happy writer. And trying it out made me even happier. 

The great thing about WorkFlowy is that it makes brainstorming ridiculously easy. The bullets work off of each other beautifully, you can move things around and add and delete points effortlessly, and when you’re done, you can export the list into whatever format or document you’d like and continue writing from there. The only downside is that while it is free, the free version only gives you 500 items a month, which seems like a lot, but if you fall in love with it as quickly as I did, you will use those items up faster than you’d think. Nevertheless, it’s still a great tool for brainstorming. 

So if you’re a list person like me, or would like to try brainstorming with lists, I highly recommend WorkFlowy as a wonderful writing tool. It’s easy to use, intuitive, and it makes what can be a very messy part of the writing process simple and organized. 

Have you ever used WorkFlowy or something of the like? Do you brainstorm with lists, or use another method? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

How one writer uses the free tool WorkFlowy to make brainstorming easy. (Click to tweet) 

Have you tried this writing tool for your brainstorming and outlining needs? (Click to tweet)