Interesting and rather fun weekend. Fluffy got her blackbelt which was just incredible. She was so worried, but I wasn't. Had to force myself to yell encouragements, mainly because I knew she would succeed. Plus, hearing some of the parents repeating everything the black belts said as if it was their own ideas just kind of annoyed me. As in wishing they would just shut up type of annoyed me.

While we were waiting through the endless rounds of children reading essays their parents wrote, I did the bad thing and got to talking to my friends who I haven't seen in a while. One of the topics that came up was writing. In specific, Wind, Bear, and Moon. Its missing something, but I haven't really gotten my finger on the exact thing I'm missing to make it a best selling novel. *snort* Okay, there is something missing.

Something we puzzled through was interest. My characters are rather, um, bland in that book. While I can create some really interesting characters, I need a quirk. Same thing with gaming. I have boring characters and characters I just click with. One of the things that makes a character for me in quirks. I need something interesting about the character. Tween: the terror of cats and the whole mirror things. Slurp, the "sleep is like death" thing that led into the character refusing to let the rest of the party sleep for three adventures in a Short Circuit-inspired emotional response.

Characters in the book? Not really. They are interesting, but they don't jump up and scream for me to stay away trying to figure out what they do. I think with the last round of edits, I started to give Welf a quirk (the mechanical aptitude), but I didn't really develop it. Dyfan has one, of course, but I don't think I really take advantage of it as well as I could.

Sonja needs something, but I think its going to develop with this round of editing. I decided that I needed to develop the world just a bit more and I'm going to start the novel about fifteen years earlier. :) Just a chapter to help introduce Vorath (Welf's father) and set the tone for the novel. Plus, to space out the introductions so the entire book isn't introduced in the first three chapters. That will lead into about three chapters to bring in the other characters, show their parents and maybe help make the characters more emotionally interesting. Plus, showing a tiny little Dyfan (he's just over a meter in height in this book, even at sixteen) as a three year old afraid to make noise seems like it would really explain why silence is so damn important. Of course, that means the main characters aren't really introduced until the fourth chapters, which probably violates some other rules of writing.

I know other authors go through these troubles when they write, but they all make it look so damn easy. You hear next to nothing until *splat* they hit #9 on one of those important lists to writers. Which is cool, but doesn't help when I'm trying to figure out how to make my story "not fail."

If you can't tell, this is a gear-switching week. The contest entry is tonight, which kind of depresses me for many different reasons, and then I'm going to relax for a few days before starting up Wind, Bear, and Moon again.