Fantasy

Dragon Riders of Mirstone – Dreams of the Lost

/ Justin Turpen / Leave a comment

I am excited to announce that my short story, “Dreams of the Lost”, has been accepted into the latest installment of the Mirstone anthology. This anthology is edited by Richard Fierce and is a collection of stories from 13 different authors about the bonds between dragons and their riders.

My contribution is “Dreams of the lost” which is about Clive, an aging Warden in the Eternal Empire, who sets out to find the truth behind children disappearing in the peaceful village of Dali. With his dragon companion and company of Marshals, he must find and rescue the children before it is too late.

You can find more information about the anthology on the kickstarter page here, and if you are interested in picking up a copy you can still pre-order.

Adrift Update #2

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Word Count: 8913

This second draft is starting to shape up. For context, my first draft was 5,814 words in total and was written in first person from the perspective of my main character. I’d never really tried to write a draft in first person and my lack of experience in it was apparent in review. I’ve now returned to a third-person limited viewpoint and am making ample progress toward finishing the draft.

I’m surprised how, even with a first draft, how much about the story has changed. Some conversations and scenes are not recognizable from the first to the second. A few parts of the first draft simply-put, did not work, and I’ve removed or replaced them since. Do this too many times and you’ve got a whole different story. Adding two new characters also contributes to this.

One of my hopes is that the reader will be able to get lost in the story – like I do when I write it. To me this is a usually a result of great characters, conflict, and beautiful prose. As I comb through what I’ve already written in the second draft, I’ve been editing sentence structure and word choice to uplift my writing. The end result, hopefully, being a polished and complete story. I’m projecting that the ending word count will hit somewhere between 15k and 17k words. This throws it up to the border between novelette and novella.

Once I am finished with edits and revisions with this draft I plan to submit it to the Writers of the Future writing contest. If I overshoot the max wordcount of the competition I may reevaluate my plan.

Thanks for reading!

Adrift Update #1

/ Justin Turpen / Leave a comment

Second Draft Word Count: 3199

My favorite part of writing this second draft is having the opportunity to expand and polish the world my characters live in. The simple way of putting it is that I get to retreat into my mind and try to describe the imaginary world I’ve made for myself. It’s so much fun.

I plan to include a few more characters. A father and a sister.

In the first draft I felt that the protagonist, Sara Emoc, needed a stronger reason for following through on her role in the plot. She had originally been motivated by “just wanting to do the right thing”. It didn’t match up with the stakes of the story. I plan to combine her motivation of wanting to do the right thing with also wanting to honor her Father.

I also felt that the first draft lacked conflict at certain times. The conflict that Sara faced in the first draft was mostly exterior and I wanted to give her more to chew on emotionally. Especially in the earlier part of the story – enter the Sister. The late parts of the story are a bit of whirlwind. I’m eager to rewrite them and expand on the climax and ending.

A crazy idea I’ve been playing with would also change the story drastically. I’m considering adding a second protagonist whose story would run parallel to Sara’s and intersect somewhere in the rising action. This would be a major change. I’ve gone back and forth on wanting to include it in this second draft. The main consequence would be doubling the word count. This would take me out of qualification for the competition I was planning to join. Choices.

That’s it for this first update. If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to know about, feel free to chime in on the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Writing as a Hobby

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One of the oldest goals I developed for myself goes all the way back to middle school. I had just found out that books were interesting and dove headlong into J.R.R Tolkein’s the Hobbit, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance series, and Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire series. My love of reading only grew in High school where I set a specific “bucket-list” goal for my life. I decided that I wanted to publish a book.

“… a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” 
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

This pursuit of writing has led to multiple forays into writing novels. At this point I have started at least seven different novels. Ranging from an auto-biography, a sci-fi novel, and multiple fantasy and fiction novels.

Currently, I’m working on a fantasy novel that is inspired by both the city-state system of ancient Greece and the latin language. I’m trying to root the basic plot in contemporary issues that readers may care about. In addition I hope to keep the book grounded in important fundamental human questions. I find that sometimes fantasy and sci-fi authors lean to heavily in the setting and world-building and I think the core of a reader’s experience is their ability to relate or identify with the underlying characters.

My biggest struggle seems to be keeping the discipline to write regularly. I go through fazes of intense focus on writing and then lose it all a few weeks later after I hit a wall in the text or hit a busy season at school. Now that I have finished my master’s degree I hope to pick my most recent novel back up and get the words rolling.

I don’t claim to be an expert at writing and will undoubtably make mistakes as I continue this journey of making this hobby into something more. I plan on documenting my progress and process to achieve this goal primarily to hold myself accountable, but also to see if others are looking to do the same.

Thanks for reading.