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Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

Clevenger and I had ideas that we shared with one another about how best to plan, organize, and write our story. Then, knowing we had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, we went online and started doing Google searches and YouTube browsing, looking for advice. It was funny, but probably 75 percent of what we were finding online was just confirming what we had already said among ourselves. At least, this was true in the “new writer mistakes” videos and articles. We quickly had to move up to more specialized articles.

One of the first things we stumbled upon was the topic of our last set of posts, that of tropes. It had never occurred to us to frame our story in terms of tropes, even though it quickly hit us over the head that there were so many we would be touching on. We immediately had to what we should avoid, which we would have to work with, and which we should embrace wholeheartedly, either through creative use or subversion. And when it comes to those tropes, Clevenger hit up on a good observation. He naturally tries to find ways to creatively incorporate the needed tropes, focusing on how to keep them fresh, or at least entertaining. My mind, however, goes instantly to attempting to subvert the tropes, attempting to develop a twist to them that surprises the reader, catching them off guard. In fact, there are two major world building premises that are built around twisting a trope into a subversion. I’m pretty proud of them.

From Merphy Napier and Daniel Greene we picked up a lot of advice on going back to some classic fantasy staples, but with a modern writing voice. We listened to both of them talk about things that they missed from modern fantasy, that they wished would make a comeback. We noted what items they were bringing up that we had already planned to incorporate in our world, and debated what we were doing right, what we might want to increase, and what we agreed with, but that didn’t quite fit with the story we were telling. Some of the bigger ones that we really touched on was a magic system that made sense and stuck to its own rules, not changing and suddenly finding a “loophole” whenever the plot needed it, telling a story where the fantasy elements were actually incorporated into the story rather than being a backdrop, and by all that is holy, bringing back the idea of non-human fantasy races running around. We have a funny story about this one, but I am going to let Clevenger tell it.

We came across Jenna Moreci and then later Meg LaTorre, and we began learning bits and pieces of the publication process. When we first started, we actually had almost no intention of publishing. We were planning to finish writing what turned out to be the rough draft, then go to a print-on-demand company and buy a copy for each of us to put up on our book shelf, so that we could point to them and say “we wrote that”. If we felt super confident, we might throw the PDF out there on Amazon or someplace that wouldn’t charge us to have it available online. That was it. But listening to these two BookTubers, and then fact checking what they were saying on other sources, we started to realize that we could put in the honest work and produce a polished, sell-able product. For a moment fame and glory flashed before our eyes, but we were quickly able to settle down and put together reasonable, realistic plans and goals.

Then we discovered The Quotidian Writer, Diane Callahan. Her videos are so refreshing. She uses wonderful imagery, her voice is so soothing and engaging, and she uses the most wonderful and easy to follow examples to make her points. Each of her videos covers a specific topic, she stays on point, and she explains in such simple ways without ever talking down to you. It is all writing advice, from basic to expert, teaching you not just how to write, but why you should write that way. She always stresses that there is no one correct way to write, but instead to find your own voice. And she has the most encouraging sign off tagline, “Whatever you do, keep writing”.

So that’s what I have for now on some of the best advice I took away from many of the BookTubers that we came across. I could go on, but I want to try and leave something for Clevenger to touch upon. So until next time.

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham