NASA have just announced that Mars once had a vast ocean covering a large part of the northern hemisphere. In fact, oceans may once have covered 20% of Mars, up to a mile deep, meaning that abundant water would have been around for plenty of time for life to have evolved (certainly longer than it took for life to evolve on Earth). Here’s the video explaining it:
For me, this is utterly, totally cool, because, of course, my book Secrets of the Dragon Tomb is set on a Mars where there are oceans, animals, and of course all sorts of alien weirdness. In fact, the map I made (adapted from Google Mars) has oceans in similar places. Here’s my map:
My personal map of Mars adapted from Google Mars.
My map doesn’t show most of the ocean areas, because that’s not where the story takes place, but there’s some it showing.
I love it when things like this turn up and make me all excited for my novel. Now I really can imagine that there were pterodactyls flying through the sky, strange clockwork machines, and ancient dragon tombs. Because if I was right about the oceans… :D
Yesterday I said I was going to blog my way back into writing, because I’d been distracted by life things and then fallen into procrastination. Yeah, I do see the irony in this…
Anyway, yesterday’s target was to go through my notebook and figure out what to start working on next. Well, I managed to get a bit of time in the early afternoon, and then some more time in the early evening while Mr D was at his first ever Drama Class (which he absolutely loved).
I think I’ve pinned down a story (possibly chapter book, possibly young middle grade) to do some work on, and so that’s what I’m going to be doing more of today. Just jotting down ideas, structures, maybe trying to get started on pinning down a voice.
Sequels are what happens as an aftermath to a scene.
I realised that I’d never really thought about sequels before. I write them, but I’ve never consciously thought about them. In fact, most books on writing focus exclusively on scenes, and sometimes I’ve found myself trying to force sequels into the structure of a scene, and that’s not been good for them, because they’re not scenes.
Here’s what Butcher says is the structure of a ‘sequel’, as opposed to a scene:
Here’s the basic structure to a sequel. It’s another little worksheet you can fill out when you’re thinking about it ahead of time:
It’s an interesting blog post, and I’m not going to try to justice to it here, but take a look. It’s certainly making me more conscious of what may be a slightly neglected part of my own writing.
Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot of Butcher’s stuff (his books as well as blog), and although I was initially skeptical (don’t know why; maybe I just tend to react instinctively against popular stuff, often to my disadvantage and later regret), but I’ve come to admire how well he does his stuff.
A couple more links, while we’re at it:
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