Much, much thanks to Gabrielle Faust at Eternal Vigilance for awarding me the Excellent Blog Award!If you haven't checked out Gabrielle's blog yet, you have no idea what you're missing! Some great author interviews, news from the horror realm and lots of other fun stuff!

This is my first Award and I'm happily surprised to have received it. I'm very glad that others are finding my ramblings helpful or insightful or at least amusing!

In the spirit of "pay it forward"ness, I'd like to pass this award on to the following ten bloggers, who I believe are doing a fantastic job in creating great content out here in the blogosphere!

Randomice
Bebo Author
A Time and Place
EavesdropWriter
OffendedBlogger
Lord Likely - 18+
In My Heels
My Radical Blogs
The Anatomy of Construction
Writer's Roundabout

Most are writing blogs, but some are just plain old fun blogs to read. Please check them out! :)

 

Someone give Mother Nature a message for me? A little bit of sunshine tomorrow would be welcome! I want to ride my motorcycle! ;)

I'm currently out of town, so no more updates for this weekend. I'll be back on Monday sometime, so look for more after that! I think I'll do some link love, or maybe the first "Steps in the Journey" post. That'll essentially be the writing book of the week post.

I'm still slogging through chapter 6 of Soul Cavern. It's kind of slow going because I'm completely changing a scene, so we're talking major rewrite. Whee. :)

Anyway, so look for more content on Monday or Tuesday!

On first glance, one would think that the third of the Story Elements we're looking at, Objective, is as simple as the previous, Situation. However, being obvious doesn't always mean being simple.

Objective is, of course, any end result that is desired by the character. You'll notice that I didn't say main character, or protagonist. The reason this Story Element is complex is because every character has at least one objective important to the story, and usually main characters have at least two. The protagonist's objective is usually the overall Objective of the story. The tricky part here is that your protag will probably have more than one Objective: external and internal, and they may not always coincide. Romance stories illustrate this example very well. Most often, the main character in a romance is the woman and her internal Objective is usually some variant of falling in love, which is the entire undercurrent of the genre, of course. This Objective may be conscious or sub-conscious, but it's a strong theme throughout the story. At the same time, however, there's something else going on. Something very dramatic, often dangerous, and having very high personal and/or public stakes. Perhaps the bank is trying to foreclose on the family farm, or her sister has disappeared and she must go on an adventure to find her, or she is a cop trying to find a serial killer. Internal/external objectives. Speaking of serial killers, let's look at your antagonist. You might guess that, just like your protag, a good well-rounded antagonist will also have internal and external Objectives. Perhaps the external objective of the serial killer is to taunt the police without being caught. Perhaps the internal one is the megalomaniacal need to be recognized and admired as something bigger than he feels. Perhaps he's acting on feelings leftover from his childhood. Perhaps he has a deep need to be accepted for something. Anything. Your antagonist's objectives are just as important as the protagonist's, they just aren't usually as obvious to the reader. But you must know them and you must know them well. In addition to those main characters, you also have secondary characters with their own Objectives. These may help or hinder the main character. These sideline Objectives add tension to your story because they represent the stray bullet that can't be predicted. The cop's boss may not like her handling of the case because it puts heat on someone higher up, so he pulls her from it. His Objective is to keep his job, keep the brass happy, and yet it sets the protag several steps back in reaching her own Objective. Objectives can be fun to add unexpected turns to your story. If you can be true to your characters, all of them, and learn what they each want or need, you'll be able to see the different directions your story can take; you can find all the hidden twists which will stun and delight your readers. Watch for the next installment of Story Elements, where we'll be talking about villains! Love a good talk about the bad guys! Missed some of the What I've Learn series? Find all the WIL posts!

I'd like to add my well wishes to all the others that are out here in the blogosphere for a happy, glorious, beautiful day today! Whether in a relationship or single, notice your blessings and the things that make you happy in this life!

I don't have anything more profound than that. So I'm going to leave you with this:

 

EVOL, a short piece about "love in a backwards world," was done by Chris Vincze. It's a wonderful film shot in an incredibly creative way! Enjoy!

I know, I promised you the WIL: Story Elements III post tonight! I'm a bad, bad blogger! Actually, I'd forgotten that tonight I had a mandatory chat session for SHU, and that was the part of the evening I'd set aside for finishing up that post. It's started, just not ready for the public eye yet (it's shy).

On a happy-happy note, I was finally able to get my feed working properly on my BlogCatalog account, with the help of Daniel, programmer extra-ordinaire! So now my posts are being updated on my BC profile.

So, my lads and lasses, tomorrow will be the unveiling of the next WIL! I know you are giddy with... antici...wait for it... wait for it... pation!

Okay, I think it's pretty much time to head to bed. I'm channeling Frankenfurter. Apologies to Tim Curry ;)

Yes, today is The Writing Journey's one month blogoversary! I'm really very proud of how the blog is shaping up and I think the caliber of people who have been stopping in and saying hello are top notch!

What We're Doing

Right now, we've got the What I've Learned series going pretty strong. There have been three posts (what? You missed the first one?) and I'm going to put up a fourth this  tomorrow evening, I believe. The Technorati Authority rating hit 6 7 today, so that's yay! And we've got 16 RSS subscriptions! I can't tell you how pleased I am! :D And I anticipate things getting even better!

What We're Going To Do

I've got more plans for the site, of course! From a content perspective, I'm going to start a new feature in one of the sidebars called "Steps on the Journey." We will feature one writing book each week to help hone our craft as well as learn the business so our incredible, riveting, heart-stopping stories don't collect dust in our bottom drawers! Or under the bed. Or in the third drawer of the dresser, behind the unmentionables! I'm also going to be posting more about markets and contests. One of the things I've always enjoyed is researching different markets, finding new and interesting places to submit stories. So that's in the works. From a techie perspective, I've got a couple more plug-ins I want to get installed on my WP platform. The one I'm especially interested in getting on here is You Comment | I Follow, which removes the nofollow tag from comments, so that they won't be ignored by search engines. I'm inspired to add this by Lenky's Blog, Because Linking Matters. I also want to get the Forms plug-in I have working properly, so I can create a contact page. I haven't had time to really get into figuring it out. So far I've only gotten frustrated with it! But that's okay. It'll work out. So that's it, thus far! Thanks for learning with me. I think it's going to be a great year! VG

Tomorrow is this blog's one month birthday! Yay! Along with gobs of other new bloggers who are looking for an audience, I've been doing a lot of networking and social bookmarking looking for people who want to read what I have to say. I'm slowly building up and that works for me. I'm more interested in people who will read me regularly than just getting hits on my pages. But I do recognize the importance of getting a lot of hits. It's a numbers game. If 10% of people are interested in your content and will stay, you'll get more people to stay by getting 1000 hits (100 people hooked) than by getting 100 hits (10 people hooked). So, I'm constantly trying to improve my traffic swarms while keeping my content good and relevant. Here are a few interesting things I've discovered:

Today's Interesting Stuff

In the last 24 hours, I've discovered two new sites which might prove effective for social bookmarking and getting traffic. First, Qassia.com: This new site is still in beta testing (you can use my link to sign up, if interested-you must have an invite of this sort). It's a different kind of site that promises free backlinks for participating in its "intel" program. As far as I can tell, intel is simply posting stuff you know. It seems as though some people post actual articles and some people just post a paragraph or two. They're rated by the community before being published. For each thing you do on Qassia.com, you get Q$, which I assume users will be able to use to purchase backlinks or other beneficial items for websites and blogs. I'm not sure how this will work out, but it seems interesting. And getting in on the ground floor on something like this might end up being very worthwhile! Next, I've run across a site called SocialMarker.com. It allows you to post an article or story to 32 different social bookmarking sites in a matter of 10-15 minutes. You have to be a member of each site, of course, and the registration for that many sites takes quite awhile. Included are many of the big names: Digg, Tecnorati, StumbleUpon, etc. But there are also smaller sites, like RawSugar, Propeller, and one I found really interesting called NewsVine, which allows you to have something that resembles your own newspaper. I can't vouch for how much traffic these additional venues might bring you, as I've only just started using them today. If you've had experience with any of them, drop a comment and let me know your thoughts!

I got this from Shelley Adina on an e-mail group we're on together for SHU. Thanks Shelley! Harlequin is looking for manuscripts for a new e-Book imprint they're launching called Nocturne Bites. The unique part? They want shorter fiction between 10k and 15k words! Here's the details: Nocturne Bites Length: 10,000 15,000 words Editorial Director: Tara Gavin Associate Senior Editor: Ann Leslie Tuttle Assistant Editor: Sean Mackiewicz Silhouette Nocturne is looking to acquire paranormal editorial with strong sexual, fantasy and danger elements for its new eBook program, Nocturne Bites. We¹re looking for fast-paced novellas that hook the reader early by establishing a paranormal world and its conflicts. We are looking for stories of vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves, psychic powers, etc. set in contemporary times. Many of the elements that make a successful Silhouette Nocturne remain true for Nocturne Bites. Stories should deliver a dark, highly sensual read that will entertain readers and take them from everyday life to an atmospheric, complex world filled with characters struggling with life and death issues. A strong alpha hero is of the utmost importance he should be powerful, mysterious and totally attractive to the heroine. While action-packed and mission-oriented, the scope of these stories should be more contained, with more focus turned to character development. All stories should be capable of standing alone; all loose ends need to be tied up, and the relationship between hero and heroine should resolve itself in a satisfying manner. For published authors, this line is a great way to build their miniseries at Harlequin and Silhouette. Unpublished authors are welcome as well. Only complete manuscripts submitted electronically will be considered from unpublished authors; no partials or queries, please. Submissions should be sent as a Word-compatible attachment. Submissions should also follow standard formatting guidelines, double-spaced and written in a clear, legible font on numbered pages. Author name and title should appear as a header or footer on each page. Nocturne Bites E-mail address: nocturnebites@harlequin.ca