The Wayhaven Chronicles—Update+ 13/May/2022 (Patreon)

Ohhh! So much to tell you this week! :D

Ok, so I know you guys are probably sick of me talking about the retreat by now, but it was SO amazing! I learnt an absolute ton, and it was so awesome to have someone explain it to you right there. 

Reading writing advice in a book or online is fantastic, but it really does make a difference when you can have someone there explaining how you could adapt that into your own style of writing!

We did a class on character introductions, which was very timely as I was writing that at the time. But one piece of advice—about how your reader is more likely to remember a side character if they have at least a paragraph of interaction with them—made me rethink how I was writing it. So I went back this week and redid that, and now I LOVE it! 

Not only will it help with that, but I got the chance to show a bit more of these new characters' personalities in those moments because of that extended interaction (each of them got a choice set for the MC to choose from on how to introduce themself).

But one of the biggest things I had fun with there was one task we had where we had to do reversals. We had to take our love interest (I had to pick one) and take our antagonist (again, I had to pick just one, lol!) and flip them. 

The love interest became the baddy, and the antagonist became the love interest.

It was...very interesting! Especially as I have been writing the characters for over half of my life, and these good guys have always been good guys, hehe! 

I chose Adam/Ava, and I turned their past and their 'trying to always choose the logical choice' as their main traits to twist.

For the antagonist...well, that would be spoilery, hehe! I chose a baddy who is a bigger player later in the series.

But oh my word! We all remarked how disturbingly easy it was was to flip the traits around and make them baddies! But the class leader was saying that was kind of the point. Characters should always have that balance to them. If it was difficult to flip them, then you've made them unbalanced, and it's a great way of seeing how to fix that.

I got Nai to read it, and I was seriously thrilled at how surprised she was that Adam/Ava still read like Adam/Ava. She was expecting them to be all baddy, but they were still them just scarily the baddy. If that makes sense? :D

And with it being social media days this week, I typed up that scenario (minus a few super spoilery bits!) and have that scheduled as the Monthly Bonus Content #2 for you guys on Patreon later this month. 

Hope you enjoy Adam/Ava in all their villainous glory, hehe! :D

But yeah, I was super keen to get back to writing with all this new info in my head! So after social media days, I was back into like you wouldn't believe! I'm actually going to finish two of the three split scene sections for this chapter by tomorrow! 

Which means I might just be able to finish Chapter 12 next week!!! 

Phew! That was a lot of blabbering in the update this week :D I'm just still buzzing about the retreat and how well I've done this week!

EDIT: Totally just finished those two scenes already, so I'm already onto the final split scene (which I should finish by tomorrow), then it's just the ending bit to go!!!!

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For Update+ this week, a fun little line from one of the new characters (she's quite a big player in the supernatural world!)...

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Rogan leans forward with a wide-toothed grin and wags a finger at me as though I'm a naughty child. "You've been spilling secrets, human."

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Hope you all have the most amazing weekend! We'll be offline as usual, so I'll talk to you next week! <3