First off I would like to apologize Suzanne van Rooyen and Making Connections Book Tours for my tour stop being posted late.
Please join me in welcoming Suzanne van Rooyen as Guest Host on The Avid Reader today. Suzanne van Rooyen will be telling us about her Writing Process. Thanks Suzanne van Rooyen for visiting today.
Book Title: Dragon's Teeth
Author: Suzanne van Rooyen
Published: November 1st 2011
Publisher: Divertir Publishing
Genre: Cyberpunk
You can never outrun your past...
After years of war ravage the globe and decimate humanity, civilization is revitalized in the city of New Arcadia, a cybernetic playground where longevity treatments promise near immortality.Detective Cyrus, fond of fedoras and narcotics, is hired by Benji MacDowell, heir-apparent to an eugenics empire, to find MacDowell's long-lost biological father.
Employing his network of shady contacts within the underbelly of the city, Cyrus uncovers a murderous web of corporate corruption and political conspiracy with ties to the old Order, a tyrannical organization whose sole intent was perfecting the next generation of genetically engineered soldiers.
Now Cyrus knows too much and finds himself caught in the cross-hairs of super-soldier assassins while the dark secrets of his past snap at his heels, forcing him to confront the truth he's been running from... and discover his own terrifying purpose.
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I never knew my father. It seems, perhaps, that no one did except the woman with whom he joined to give me life. My mother they remember; I’ve heard all the stories. Every version ends the same: her dying as I screamed my way into the world.
Back then, given limited access to medical technology, I guess it wasn’t a surprise that her pregnancy resulted in undiagnosed pre-eclampsia, seizures, death and a child born an orphan. I was born on the back of a truck heading south just as the last snow of winter fell. My mother was fleeing in the chaos and confusion that followed the collapse of her northern nation.
After her death they, her rebel friends, burned her body and scattered her ashes along the road. Another woman in the truck, having birthed a stillborn child, took pity on the mewling babe, alone but alive, and raised me as her own. For that I thank her and I love her, my mimetic mother.
She told me fantastic stories about the uprising, the fear, and the cold. She was only eighteen when she claimed me as her own, but no one could believe it: a woman with black hair and even darker eyes with a child pale, blond and blue-eyed. Later she married a man who took pity on the ghost-like four year old boy without a father and adopted me. He seemed a gentle man. He told me that I was his son now and not to ever worry again. Over the years, I forgot that I wasn’t his son, though gradually I became more aware of my strangeness. I was something other and they no longer looked at me with love, but with something more akin to fear.
When in that tender state on the threshold of manhood, I heard them arguing in their bedroom, their anxious whispers wondering what I was, I knew they had no answers for me.
Gradually, I learned to ignore my oddities, blending in with my peers at school. My parents started to love me again. I often wonder what kind of man my own father might have been, and if he is dead or still alive. Vials of blood can only reveal so much, and there is more to being human than the double helix.
Of the many and varied writing approaches, from the seemingly innocuous Snowflake Method to the more passionate Dramatica, I use none.
I have tried several different approaches to writing, from storyboarding to mind-mapping, snowflaking (one of the most convoluted methods) to following the guidelines of Dramatica theory, from time lines and beat sheets to the most basic of outlines, and I guess I must just suffer from a terminal case of 'pantsing'.
Given that I'm a pantser, I don't have any fixed process when it comes to writing. There are a few things I do before I start any new project. I'm not advocating this as a good approach but it seems to work for me.
Whenever I have a shiny new idea (SNI) I try to capture that idea as quickly as I can on paper, be this long hand in a notebook, or typing into a haphazard word document. I jot down a few notes about scenes, characters and concept – detailing whichever form the SNI happens to take.
I tend to work on characters after that, building the character around a central tenet – a personality point, a specific goal, their developmental arc, a certain physical attribute.
Once I have a character and the basis of my concept, I start thinking in scenes. What would character x do, what would he say etc. This is a fun phase and I just give my imagination full rein. Once I have a few scenes on paper (just sketches), I start working out some kind of plot trajectory, the order of scenes.
This is where I employ basic story structure starting with the inciting incident. I tend to have a notion of where I want the word count to be for each story (since I write YA, somewhere around the 75k mark) so as I write I watch the word count and know that at certain points, something critical should happen. If my story is plot based then I'll know what the inciting incident, first and second plot point and middle-points are going to be, I just won't know how to get there. If my story is more character based, then I'll know how I want my character to develop but not the events that make that happen until I'm actually writing.
With scene and atmosphere in mind, I'll choose the appropriate soundtrack for my novel and start writing. Music is critical to my process! I often start writing with only the vaguest sense of where my story is going as I try to let the characters run with the plot, although this often results in rewriting. Rewriting is ok because by then I have a better understanding of my character and their all important voice.
There is nothing more intimidating than a blank white page. I try to get the first draft done as quickly as possible (not easy when I'm such a perfectionist that I end up editing as I write – not recommended). I love editing, I love having something to work with, some semblance of story to mold into shape during a revision.
My manuscript can go through several revisions as I play around with POV and tense. Dragon's Teeth required a rewrite from first into third person that made for a much better book. My current WiP started in third person past tense and now I've switched to first person present tense because the voice worked better.
I tend to use a beat sheet after the ms is complete just to help me when it comes to editing, adding and changing things so that I don't lose track of the order of discovery.
My one book went through at least ten revisions before being submitted to agents, another book, Obscura Burning, only had two revisions before being accepted for publication. It just depends on the individual book. So that's it, that's my process provided sneaky SNIs don't ambush the current WiP :)
Suzanne grew up in the urban sprawl of Johannesburg, South Africa where she studied music and penned a few angsty poems. After a brief stint in Australia, Suzanne settled in Finland where she completed a Master's degree in music and started writing in earnest.
Suzanne now works as a freelance writer, author and part-time dance teacher. Her short stories have appeared in Golden Visions Magazine, Cast of Wonders, and Earthbound Fiction among others. When not writing she strums away at her guitar and entertains her shiba inu, Lego.
You can find her online in the following places:
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