Pernell Rogers – Writer

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Hi all! I’m working on a new mystery inspired by my friends, and I swear, this one is so hard. It took me two day just to write 500 words, then I discovered I used the wrong POV. It took another two days to write 500 different words for the right POV.

The hard part is envisioning the scene, and the dialogue simultaneously. Sometimes I can picture the setting, but the dialogue doesn’t match, and finding compromises sometimes mean abandoning one or the other, or both. If it’s the later, I have to start over. The only good thing about my quandary is that I’m getting in a lot of steps for my pedometer. That’s all for now.

Hi all! Learning how to write stories is something that never ends. There’s so much support and suggestions to choose from, and that’s where some of my difficulty lies.

My entire life has been focused around science and logic, trying to make sense of the world around me by observations and hypotheses. While in college, I chose to take Philosophy instead of Psychology. At that time in my life, I wasn’t concerned with how people act, or the motivations behind their actions. To my eventual horror as I began writing, I discovered that telling stories is more than a short limerick. It involves how people act when faced with a difficult subject or decision, and the motivation for that act can come from anyone or anything.

Another difficulty is most of my life has lacked drama, which I find very pleasing and feel very fortunate. However, the stories I develop always includes some type of drama. Some drama is easy to understand, but others are out of my experience, and it’s difficult to put myself in my character’s shoes. I can only guess how they may react, which deep down, is the way I would react. That lack of drama means I’m not very emotional, and I have a feeling my stories reflect that.

However, my beta readers and editors state that I still lack immersion in my stories. That’s what I’m working on now. I’ve mentioned beats in writing in past posts, but I just discovered there are different types of beats: emotional and physical. Some are better used alone while others would benefit from both. I’ve gone through my stories again, performing rewrites to add those beats so a reader will feel like they’re inside my stories. At least that’s my hope. Well, that’s all for now. Take care!

Hi all! I received a developmental edit of my first mystery, and I’m so glad I went that route. There were a lot of holes, but because this story is a police procedural, I completely screwed up their procedures, and I know why. When developing the story, I was more focused on structuring the mystery itself and left all details of police procedures behind. I have two other completed mysteries that contain police procedures, and I already know I’ll have to make some major revisions on one of them.

It was good lesson to learn, but something else that lacked was my characterizations. I didn’t go in-depth enough. I thought I knew who each one was, but I was wrong. Finally, I lacked creating the tension needed for specific scenes.

With all that in mind, I’ve buried myself in revising the story for the last 20 days, with 1 day off. The story grew from 37K words to 53K words, which took me by surprise. Restructuring chapters, adding timestamps, giving my character beats to show action and stop me from explaining, or telling, readers the actions.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so focused. Now it’s time to leave it alone for 3-4 months before I reread it. Right now, I don’t want to see it anymore. Now, I can look at the outline of my newest story. I have a lot work to do, but I’ll try to post more as I make progress. Thankx!

Hi all! I’ve been concentrating on my mystery stories recently. My first mystery has been through 3 beta readers, and in March, I’m sending it to my editor. I’ve also sent my second mystery to one of the beta readers who gave my some awesome insight. I’ve had other editors tell me same thing when it comes to specific scenes I tend to gloss over.

I’ve been studying why I unknowingly do this, and I think I’ve found the reason. Those scenes tend to be toward the end of the story, when I’m ready to wrap it up. I’m rushing. But when they occur in the beginning or middle of the story, I’ve discovered those scenes tend to be very emotional, forcing me to get very deep into the psyche of that character. I’ve actually experienced some of those emotions, and must admit, I don’t like tears flowing while I type. First, I can’t see a damn thing through that water! Second, those emotions hurt me, physically, even if they belong to my characters. Often, I take long breaks after such scenes to rediscover myself. If you’ve read any of my early work, you already know that some of my characters are not quite right in the head (LOL!). It’s necessary for me to place them at a distance. Well, I guess that’s all for now.

Take care!

Hi all! It’s been a busy 2nd half of the year. I finally regained access my Facebook account and fixed my Amazon KDP account. With those two methods of communication fixed, I’ve already sent and received my first mystery story from beta readers. Just recently, I’ve sent my second mystery to a beta reader.

This is my first time using beta readers, and I wish I would have used them in my earlier writing. All of them found items I often overlooked, and by bringing them back into focus, I can use the tools I already have. One comment that really hit was that I was telling instead of showing. The particular phrase the beta reader referred to ‘having a confused expression.’ It does sound okay, but there is a way to show confusion. The best tool I have for this task it the Emotion Thesaurus I purchased a while back. I’d forgotten all about, but now, I keep it open constantly.

I’m still getting used to working with Draft2Digital. They do have nice offerings, but there is a learning curve. It shouldn’t take me long to get used to it. I guess that’s all for now. Take care!

Hi all! I was forced to take a hiatus when my email provider suddenly switched. In doing so, I lost access to my Facebook accounts. And of course, that took place right before my birthday. I haven’t created a new Facebook account yet, because I’m trying to discover how I want to present myself for a second time. (Update: Looks like I’m permanently locked out of Facebook).

However, I’ve been busy. The story I was developing previously fell apart. The timing of the events could not match. Therefore, that story is on the back burner. Instead, I’ve just completed the first draft of my fourth mystery. I always try to stop writing for a while, but boredom forces me to create more stories.

And that’s the reason for this post. I’ve been going on for a long time about publishing the many stories I’ve developed. It seems like forever to me! But, I just sent one of those stories to my editor yesterday. My hope is to send her a story every other month, but it also depends on my editor’s schedule. As each story comes back from my editor, I can go through it a final time, then plan my marketing approach. I’ll need to get some reviews, which takes time, so I’m hoping to publish by early next year, unless something wonderful happens, and I can publish later this year. It’s time to empty my chest of stories. Take care!

Hi all! I’ve started a new story after two months of racking my brain. I had to pull this story out, and there are still some fuzzy places, but it feels good to write again. This story is my first attempt at using first person, and I think that’s why it’s so hard to solidify. I run through very specific scenes in my head, but they’re not in sequence. They pop up out of nowhere, and it drives me nuts, but I’ll get a handle of it after a while.

In my last post, I mentioned the Lore podcast. What I’m discovering as I listen to his various stories is how we, as humans, fill in the blanks whenever we’re unsure, when there’s no evidence, and that’s what I did recently.

I was awakened by a rapid knock on a wall Sunday morning. I figured it was a woodpecker and stayed in bed. I heard it again, but this was much, much louder. I arose and started going around the second floor. Nothing.

Awake now, I went downstairs. While sipping coffee, I heard the rapid knocks again, and it was close. Then there was scratching and some pecking, and it came from the wall in the hallway. I placed my ear near and heard the scratching. An animal was stuck between the hallway wall and my laundry room! But what was it?

I called a company to remove it, but they couldn’t do it until Tuesday. That meant I had to live with that thing. I was unsure, so I filled in the blanks with scenarios I conjured up. Was it a bird, a roof rat, some other animal I don’t know about? How did it get in? Can it get out and enter my home? Being unsure brings out our fears, and many times moves us to react. As Sunday progressed, I could hear the thing moving toward the floor. There is a small opening in my laundry room where I almost lost my ferret one year. Could it escape and enter my home? I turned on the laundry room light and closed the door. It was trapped. Later, I saw fuzzy shadows pass in front of the light very fast. It was easy to remove some items I used to fill in the blanks. I was pretty sure it was a bird, but how big? What type of bird? A few hours later, the light in the laundry room was off, to my surprise. Did it break the bulb? The power to that light was still on. Could it spark a fire? That was on my mind as I went to bed that night. I’d filled in the blanks and examined possibilities right before sleeping.

My little story ends well. On Monday, someone came out, who had to call someone else. The three of us caught the unknown object. It was a small wren, which has skinny, sharp beaks. Somehow, it had entered my dryer vent outside and traveled down through the dryer tube until it reached the back of my dryer. Once there, it pecked a hole in the aluminum tube and started flying around my laundry room. The light was off because while flying around, and must have hit the light switch while trying to escape. It was released back into the wild, and I had to clean up my laundry room. It had knocked quite a few things over. Luckily, there wasn’t much bird poop.

I look back on that experience and watched how I filled in the blanks whenever I was unsure. Instead of exploring the possibility of the bird running into the light switch, I rushed to the conclusion that the bird somehow broke the light. I had filled in the blanks. A terrible assumption which led to me get less than 4 hours of sleep that night! It’s those fears, which may lead to unforeseen reactions, that make us human and keep us alive. Take care!

Hi all! Attached to this post is a link to a short story I wrote for a contest. I’ve used an AI-generated voice for this story as an experiment. Feel free to listen to it.

Today, I think I have the ingredients to begin another story. I believe this will be a supernatural mystery. I’m not sure how that’s going to work, and it may change once I start developing individual scenes, but it’s been about a month since I’ve written anything. However, all that time has not been wasted.

I discovered an Amazon series called Lore, and I love it. Now, I’m listening to the Lore podcasts on iHeart. Most of my stories revolve around lore, and creating lore can be difficult if it’s to be realistic, in a way. Some of the stories Aaron Manke delivers are amazing, and many have given me ideas to develop my ‘own’ lore for stories. His podcasts do the research on historical facts, and I can use those historical facts to create my ‘own’ lore for my stories. Gotta say I’m hooked on them. Check them out if you have the chance. It’s the only podcast I listen to. Take care!

Hello all! I’ve been very quiet this year, contemplating my marketing strategy for my current and future stories. There was an error in the timing of my latest release. Reviews came in much later than the publishing date, and my book didn’t get the exposure I desired. I must rethink my strategy. I discovered a website that uses AI voices to create audio from text. I used it to introduce the beginnings of my short stories, similar to Amazon’s ‘read a sample’ option. The voices still sound robotic, to me, but the inflections and voice variability are much better.

Also, Smashwords has been bought by Draft2Digital, and there is a learning curve to use it. Their website has extra capabilities that I may explore. They have the ability to create audiobooks using either AI or human narrators. I’ll play with those later.

Currently, I have no stories in my head, which feels strange. A few ideas are floating around, but nothing concrete has come forward. In the meantime, I’ve been re-editing the 11 stories I still have to publish. ProWritingAid, has included some outstanding tools in their latest release. Probably the most interesting the Inspiration option. With it, the software examines 4000 words at a time, and looks for improvements in dialogue, atmosphere, plot twists, symbolism, etc. I used it for the first time yesterday to check the atmosphere of my first mystery. Its suggestions were eye opening. Must say I was impressed.

That’s all for now. Take care!

Hello all! Yesterday, I posted a comment about the difficulty I ran into with my latest mystery. The story came to such an abrupt halt. I had to shake it off, but my mind kept returning to it when I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Other possible stories came to mind, but no matter what, my last mystery clung on for dear life.

Well, 12,000 steps later, I had an eureka moment! The only way to keep the story’s secrets concealed was to scrutinize the timeline and locations of each main character, which was quite difficult. The six timelines overlapped and collided with one another while each character’s location changed. I had to perform some mental gymnastics to separate each timeline so they fit each location, but when I fixed two timelines, the other four wouldn’t work.

After examining the relationships between the six characters, I had to make one character move to a new location much later than I’d planned. Making that single change allowed me to re-examine the timelines, and conflicts. That’s when I discovered everything else fell into place, and all the words I’d written so far didn’t have to be modified.

Personally, that’s what I find exciting about writing. I’ve hit many walls since I started creating fictional stories. It’s easier to create a monster than it is to examine the intrapersonal relationships among characters. The realism of the story lies with those characters. Take care!