Plots and Seams

I finished the third draft of Dark Fire book 1 a month ago, so for the past several weeks I have been busy working on my costume. But I'm not going to talk anymore in this intro thing,  I'm just going to jump ahead to the pictures. They're the fun part anyway  ;) I heated the foam with an embossing gun and bent it to the desired shape. The tutorial I looked at said that you could use a stove burner or a heat gun. I decided to use an embossing gun. It seemed safer. The arm guards.  I had already heated and shaped the bottom one, but I still had to do the top one. I glued material to the inside of the foam as a reinforcement.  Then I cut the extra material from around the foam.  I sprayed a sealant onto the foam before using the spray paint. So shiny :) I weathered the armour with silver and black paint, sometimes mixed with water, other times dry-brushed on. The left armour had been...

I finished writing Dark Fire book 2 last week! This week I worked on reading through book 1 again and making basic notes of what needs to be changed. It needs a lot of work!! I've also discovered how short it really is! 30,000 words is not very long. I definitely want to lengthen it. Maybe take it up to 35,000 words or so. I think that sometimes we writers pressure ourselves too much. Well, I know for myself that sometimes I stress about making my first draft good. I want the scenes to be right and I want it to be well written. But that's why I edit. The first draft is just to get the main story idea out. It is one of the hardest parts of writing for me. Just getting my jumbled thoughts out in concise words. So, I'm taking a break next week because I'm getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow. Then, I will work on editing!  I hope to get draft 3 of Dark Fire book 1 done in May! ~CH~

Sorry that I haven't written a post in a while. Life has been busy. I've been writing and doing science. I've also applied to and been accepted at Heritage college & seminary. So, I will most likely be going there in the fall. I've also started to work on another costume. I might be going to Fan Expo in September and I've been trying to figure out which costume to make. I thought it would be cool to make armor, so I have finally decided to try my hand at making an elf costume. One of the ones that goes to Helm's Deep in the Two Towers. There are many different ways of making armor but I decided to try using craft foam. It's pretty cheap and seems easy to work with. I found  this tutorial pretty helpful though there are a few times when I had to guess and tweak my pattern.  I printed out the pattern from the tutorial. The pieces were very small, not at all to scale. So I had to trace the correct size onto the Bristol board. Once...

Happy New Year everyone!! A couple days ago I finished writing the second draft of Dark Fire book 1!! Now I need to finish the first draft of book 2. I have written about 14,000 words out of 35,000.  But I really don't feel like finishing it right now. Writing is hard and I'm lazy! I especially find the middle of the book hard to write because it's not the excitement of starting nor does it contain the conflict and conclusion of the ending. I know stuff needs to happen, but I don't know what! Anyway, here's a few writing quotes for encouragement: When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone...