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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Fang Set

I'm still working on my vampire story, but I'll have the first draft done before I go to bed tonight. I started it last Thursday, and my goal was to have it finished by Sunday night, but I trashed everything I wrote before Saturday multiple times and that put me behind where I'd hoped to be.

The experience of writing a short piece has been interesting. There isn't a lot of room to let everything unfold the way there is in a full book, but I discovered this is a fun length to work with. Of course, I haven't sent the first draft to my writing buddies yet either, so maybe the entire thing sucks (no pun intended) and then I won't be thinking it's that much fun after all. :-)

Because of the length, I did a couple of things. First, my hero and heroine have a past relationship, and though they didn't stay together, they're both still in love with each other. That allowed me (I think) to have a believable romance going on in the story. The second thing I did was keep the plot very simple and Seere and Isobel will be able to resolve it more quickly than any of my heroes and heroines get to do in my longer stories. I hardly even tortured them either unless you count the time they've spent apart.

I did surprise myself a little, though. I hadn't planned on doing any world building. Because of how short it is, I thought I'd just go with standard vampire lore, but that isn't the way it worked. Isobel gave me a ton of information on her people. I doubt that any of it is earth shatteringly different, but it isn't the standard Hollywood vampire background either. There's also very little of this in the story--just enough for things to make sense--but I think it adds a richness to what is there because I know so many more facts and details.

The weird thing is that I never wanted to write vampires because I didn't feel as if I had anything new to say, but after this story, I've become really interested in the world and I would like to explore it more. Of course, now vampires have been done to death and I've got other story ideas that are more unique I'd like to write, too, so I think it ends here. I'm glad, though, that I agreed to do this and spend time in this world with this h/h.