Bradel Bookwork – Sanderson Update (and Other Stuff) · 3:58am Apr 11th, 2013

Oh, bah. Meant to post this earlier.

It turns out that Wednesday is a very bad day for me to be scheduling regular blog posts this quarter, so I'm going to move this to Fridays. If you're interested in continuing along on these videos with me and discussing writing, though, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at them beforehand. Here are the three Lesson Two videos I'm most interested in discussing (though the ones on writing for YA and writing for adult markets are definitely interesting and worthwhile).

What makes a good plot:

Plots by outlining:

Plots by discovery:

In other news, "Purple Prose" earned the (dubious?) distinction this week of being, apparently, only the second story ever to be featured on both Equestria Daily and Equestria After Dark (The first being Vimbert's "Distorted Perspective"). It is perhaps unsurprising that a fair amount of the EqD comments amounted to something like, "How dare you post stories like this on our pristine, beautiful site!?" Ah well. The EqD boost was enough to turn it into my most successful story to date, though, and I tossed on a postscript (as some readers had been requesting) to celebrate. The new ending has been generally well-received, though it is in no way meant to signify the likelihood of a continuation. It was hard enough keeping that thing out of clop territory for 5500 words. I don't think I'm up to the task of following on from that without getting a lot more graphic than I'd be comfortable getting.

Oh, incidentally, for any of you who might want to game the Fimfiction system, it looks like the only route into the Feature Box is by publishing a new story / chapter and having lots of people visit your story immediately afterward. Getting near the top of the "What's Hot" list without a new chapter doesn't seem to cut it, nor does being near the top of the "What's Hot" list when a new chapter gets published and staying hot.

Not that I'd stoop to base scheming for viewership, of course. No-sirree. 'course not. And never mind that I just got done with a risque TwiLuna comedy story. My motives were purely artistic, I swear!

In other other news, I decided to take a stab at dramatic readings. Yes, as if being a fanfic writer wasn't enough of a fandom ghetto for me, now I go on Youtube and read fanfiction! But at least it's really, really good fanfiction. I just finished doing readings for PoweredByTea's "The Wrong Fork" and GhostOfHeraclitus's "A Canterlot Carol", both of which can be found below. Sadly, I'm doing this on nothing but a laptop mic, so the sound quality could be better. It's not awful, mind you, but it's certainly not professional calibre, which is what I like to shoot for in all my work. Anyway, they're great stories by great authors, and I'm happy to have made them happy. If you want to give them a listen, see below.

It turns out this reading thing is a pretty serious time commitment, so I don't know when I'll get the next one(s) out. I also have to decide which authors to ask if they'd like one of their stories read. (Please, don't offer suggestions. It's troublesome enough figuring it out myself. It'd be much, much worse if I had to worry about disappointing people by not taking their suggestions.)

The Wrong Fork: