Thursday, November 10, 2011

Writing Expectations and other Woes: ie. I'VE FIGURED OUT GRACIE MARTIN!

Yes Sandy, please stop gloating. You offered what has proved to be a wise suggestion. I am honored to be your grasshopper.

I was writing for myself. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to write the next Percy Jackson series. I wanted to craft words into sentences and sentences into pictures all in the hopes that one day, some when, someone would come up to me as a fan of my work. It's selfish, but I still want it. I want to turn Gracie Martin into a household name and lately, I've spent so much time dreaming about it, I've spent little time actually working on it.

Hopefully, I'm back on track now. Gracie has started developing wildly. She's almost level with Keil in how much time I spend talking to her each day. Steven, Monica, Jared and Clementine have been developing themselves at a rate I haven't experienced before in non-mcs. I'm caught up in this story. I seriously dreamed the whole thing last night. Sure, it was a little more random than a true story would be and it focused a bit more on Gracie than my normal stories would... but who knew. Who knew she'd ever duct taped a teacher to a desk and gotten away with it? Who knew she had a secret rock collection that all had names.

And now she's going to kill me. I'm loving Gracie right now. Character development is... I don't know. Fun. And the whole Gracie Martin Saga is just this theory on how people handle personal failure and how humility can affect people. It's a giant character study and it's fun. I get to play with messed up characters. Monica and Evan are twisted. Everyone from Steven's class is, that's why it's fun. In the dream I mentioned, one of the scenes was Gracie, Monica and the others were all playing Mafia during one of their class periods. Eleven mentally troubled teenagers playing Mafia together? This story is so much fun!

For people who I haven't gone on for hours about this story, GM is a little bit of everything. The first book is like so many other fantasies that mix fantasy with the modern world. But... it ends dramatically, in a way most people wouldn't expect to come from a teen writer in a teen fantasy story. Hehehe. Insert the mad scientist laugh here. The second book is pure Heroic Quest, outlined nearly exactly along Daniel Schwaubauer's suggestions. The third book deals with no fantasy at all, and rather how people interact with and support each other. The fourth book tests the bonds the hero has made in the fantasy world and in the real world, dealing with how to effectively mess and live in two separate worlds; another Heroic Quest-ish story. And the fifth book... the fifth book is a test. It's a test in failure. It's a test in determination. It's a test in overcoming grief.

There's so many things I love about Gracie Martin. Sticky notes. Gracie. Steven. Books 1-5. Monica. Keys. The list could go on for awhile. But I'm aware it's still very much in the developmental process. I've never written a series before, and the problems of I've had with Ashley and Ashleigh spooked me about sequels. But the GM books aren't sequels to each other. They're integral books in the same plot and I'm jsut loving this. I will say, however, I will hate this story before I finish it. I always do. It's one of the things I write about.

So now I'm gonna go work on GM, instead of just ranting about it. Yay stories. Yay writing for stories. Boo writing for self. YAY GRACIE.

1 comment:

  1. -bounces- This is so cool. -hugs Gracie- She's going to be my adopted charrie.

    I'm jealous of this story and the way you develop characters -_- If I haven't said it enough times already.

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