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Ever wish you could dabble in another profession...just for a little while? For kicks? Wouldn't be cool to be the guy who took a chance on publishing Harry Potter?


For those of you who've emailed me about it, yes the story is coming back soon. It takes a while to write quality stuff and since I'm not the one doing the lion share of the work, I don't press it. I posted what I had for about an hour last night but decided to take it back down. I'm told there are 3 stages to writing a book and that section was only in stage 1.

A lot of writers use a 3 step approach to story telling while other just start putting pen to paper (or start typing in this era). As I understand the 3 step method, you first created a detail outline of have you want the story to progress determining where your major events need to occur to keep to reading going forward and energized. You spend some time considering the various characters mindset and motivations. Maybe write a couple of practice "background" stories to help you better understand them in your mind. Often, the more renowned authors will only need to submit this much information to get a contract.

The second step is a quick role through the story adding dialog and detail to the outline. Core movements are established and character's are fleshed out. You spend a lot of time focusing on who said what, where, and when but leave the minutia alone...for now. This will sometimes be the version send to an editor for a first look at the overall effect of the story. I'm really summarizing here.

The third is when you work the dialog into a smooth flow, fix problems, add for shadowing (if not done earlier), describe character and location appearances and nuances. This is the goldenmaster, the final candidate that is still likely to be cut up by the publisher. I understand a good editor makes or breaks young writer's careers.

So basically what I will be posting is a stage 2 type story that has some stage 3 type elements worked in. If you like, please feel free to comment. The first 2 chapters really were those writing exercises I mentioned above to help understand the characters.

Please be patient as we convert the detailed outline into a story you hopefully will enjoy.

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