Good morning, Sara and I know it was yesterday, but Happy Mother's Day (belated) to your mother and hope you had a nice weekend writing or editing draft 7 of DE. Have a lovely day and happy editing. ❤

So, how much cash did you get so far, and did it help soothe the disappointment?

😂😂😂 for me it is flying cars, warp drive, and lightsabers but yes.

It's not GOT but I'm now reading When the Moon Hatched.

Ikr. 😂

Do not feel discouraged, I also feel like I have no idea of what I'm doing when I'm editing/making sense of this in any novel. This is the part no one talks about in writting a novel. Outlines help, but there is a lot of work that happens organically and it sucks when you feel you have no idea what is going on. You got this!

😆😆😆 Priorities 😆😆😆💐🍃🌱🌾🪴🎍

Ive never even attempted writing multiple povs in like over my 5 years of hobby writing. This sounds too complicated. Lol.😅. Of course i don't know your story but on the chapter that needed to be earlier but couldn't put earlier maybe you could've started it with "x 'insert time period' earlier"

extremely informative, and encouraging to boot!

Good afternoon, Sara and I enjoyed watching the vlog, I always do. I'm glad that you figured out the chapters in this video based on your story. I've been going over and rewriting some of the chapters in my second story that I'm working on. But I hope you're able to figure out the chapters with the characters. Have a lovely day, happy editing draft 7, and goodnight. ❤

Absolutely make a spreadsheet

Resorting to a spreadsheet has happened to me many, many times. There's a fun to it if you're working on a bigger book series or a play cycle or something for TV. Where you are, though, I get the exasperation. That arboretum is such a pickup in mood, even secondhand with you showing us. 12:38 I immediately went "aww da happy squirrels" and now I forgot exactly why I got out of bed angry. It must've not been important.

Love the video! It's not quite the same thing but I think I know how you feel. I have a simulation that I've been spending evenings and weekends on since January. When something goes wrong I have to do a lot of forensics and look at the timeline to figure out which property was happening when and where the conflict might arise. It is really hard to wrap your brain around something when you have multiple moving parts across time!

I feel this so video so badly!! Currently doing a first draft of my second novel (fantasy) and I am so bad at intros, I had to go back and rework the draft or my brain just would not allow me to go forward (what I thought was the inciting incident should actually come after it, hence I had no catalyst for my characters lmao). one more chapter to go and I'm free! Wishing you luck!!

I think something like Aeon Timeline is what you needed here, for future reference!

PD James, cozy mystery writer, said she mapped out a timeline chart for every 10 minutes for every character in her story. She said this helped her ensure the plot timeline was solid and that people were where they were supposed to be or it could be proven they were lying.

Wow that was a good video you have to eat content

I feel you in this one! Reorganizing chapters and putting them in the right order is hard. For my past novels I wrote the scenes that came to my mind and that usually wasn't in chronological order. Visualizing where the chapters need to go definitely helps. What helps me most is the Save the Cat Beats in which the scenes/chapters are playing and the character arcs. That way even when I write not in chronological order I know where chapters need to go based on the beats and the characters development :) Wishing you a wonderful day and sending you love and creative vibes <3 P.S. I sent you a dm on Instagram :)

Hello, Sara! I don't usually comment, but considering you posted this merely 2 minutes ago, I must claim my first early card!

DE definitely sounds fun 😮 These lines are gorgeous!

I find this advice equally applicable to me as a programmer by trade. I'm particularly the type that needs to be reminded of the Steve Jobs quote: "Real artists ship." Left to my own advices, I'm not the type absent creative ideas but overflowing with them. My vicious tendency is to work on something for a whole day, week, sometimes even month, only to generate more and more ideas midway, throw everything out, and start over again. I keep wanting to reset my progress as I keep discovering new and radically different things I want to try, and it's difficult for me to even start trying anything in the first place since I keep second-guessing my ideas and keep coming up with new ones. In my field working professionally, I have looming deadlines and project managers breathing down my neck to keep my habitual tendencies from veering off the rails (I maximally appreciate the strictest managers and tightest deadlines since I doubt I'd get anything ready to ship absent them). Yet my personal projects outside of my work are a complete mess: endless analogues of half-finished gardens overgrown with weeds from neglect as I keep ditching project after project to try something new.

I love, "The man was mortal. And he would die." Yet I'm dying as a mortal to pick your brain a bit on why you chose to write things this way. It's contradictory to some of the introductory advice I'm receiving on creative writing. A lot of the advice I'm receiving might want to -- as a first iteration -- simply combine the two clauses to: "The man was mortal and he would die." Yet a lot of the dramatic effect, absent the abruptness of the period, seems lost to me that way; the combined sentence seems more matter of fact (logical) and not nearly as emotional or rhetorical as opposed to your version which uses the harsh period and corresponding pause as a dramatic wedge between the two clauses over the smoother, less dramatic version in the period's absence. Furthermore, the advice I'm receiving might encourage elimination of the second independent clause towards simply, "The man was mortal," on the account that "he would die" is redundant with his mortality. Still, I find such repetition often useful to hammer in points. As a former CompSci professor, I often utilized repetition (careful to repeat the same ideas in new ways for variety) very useful to emphasize key ideas that I particularly wanted my students to learn, especially remembering how I would sometimes get distracted as a student even for the briefest of moments and miss a key statement in ways that threw me off for the entire lecture. Or even if I wasn't distracted, I loved repetition of key points stated in varied ways to maximize the probability that the students particularly understood this one point. That's how I'm interpreting your use of the repetitious inclusion, "he would die," beyond its dramatic effect. Anyway, I love that line but I'm also very curious as to why you chose to write it that way! If you could take a moment to teach about your rationale, I would be so grateful. It resonates with something I find I repeatedly want to do in my own attempts at writing.

Thanks very much for the advice! I've always struggled with verbosity throughout my life. Even among my scientific and engineering colleagues (who already tend to be quite long-winded), I'm among the most verbose in writing in ways that often generate both compliments (among those who appreciate meticulous detail such as my project manager who appreciates the unusual lengthiness of my technical reports, complete with footnotes and sub-notes within footnotes) and "TL;DR" complaints. If I may have a moment of your time (or anyone else with some exposure to creative writing), something I'm very curious about is when words -- which don't add to the literal meaning of a sentence -- become entirely superfluous. As an example, I am often tempted to write verbosely like this: >> [...] for my own mother shed tears at my cruelty [...] ... as opposed to this shorter form: >> [...] for my mother wept at my cruelty [...] Is there ever a reason to prefer the longer version, perhaps with relation to emphasis and rhythm/flow? I'm so habitually inclined to favor the longer version for reasons I can't articulate very well (it just seems to flow more naturally from my voice when I speak and fingertips when I type). It sounds more natural to me to place emphasis on "my mother" as a subject by using "my [own] mother" and to draw out "wept at my cruelty" with "shed tears at my cruelty". Yet that might merely be a reflection of my own long-winded speech patterns; I like to read the longer version out loud by placing vocalized emphasis on "own", and drawing out "wept" by replacing it with "shed tears" actually helps me to avoid getting tongue-tied (I seem to get tongue-tied more easily with shorter sentences than longer ones in certain contexts). I suspect even my natural speech patterns might need some work since the most powerful public speakers often seem to favor much shorter, commanding sentences and rhetorical pauses in between, while I tend to be a very improvisational and reflective chatterbox who literally thinks out loud, pausing only to think for a moment before I spill out a slew of words, sentences, and paragraphs rolled together to try to explain what I'm thinking. This might even be why I favor arguably superfluous words; they become my way of pausing to recollect my thoughts for a moment as I think and try to explain my thoughts out loud.

You are glowing girl

OMG, you look like a mermaid in the thumbnail of this video! XP My favorite quote was the one about the queen's white cloak.

This is hilarious. This made me laugh. 😂

ahh!! this was awesome!! Ty for sharing!

Maybe it’s just because I’m hungry but my favorite was #87 about the fried fish and maple pots 🤤 😂 all of the lines were so good though!

That was so fun! Thanks for sharing these with us :) Cannot wait to read your novel and understand the context behind all the lines you've read to us <3 Do you have any ideas already for Book 2? Sending you lots of love and creative vibes <3

Sounds like a very interesting book from the variety of circumstances it must have some great depth.

Wow these lines get me so excited to read your book when it comes out!!!

So what IS DE About?

So cool to hear 333 get read out! I adore the alliteration, you definitely have a writing style I would mesh with well as a reader

"Like a hickey of the damned." is my favorite line out of these. That's so cool.

There’s nothing quite like hearing a fellow writer read lines from their book to get you pumped to write your own! I can already tell so many people are going to adore your writing from what I’m seeing in these lines. Good luck for when you start querying!

I love this video concept so much!! Such beautiful lines :) Can’t wait to read DE one day!!

Hi Sara, love your vids! I think I got a good first sense of your writing-style, thanks! I watched the video again a few times but without sound, so as if I was really reading lines from your book! You certainly seem to love expansive sentences! (Now your bloated word-count starts to make sense! 😀) You certainly seem to have a style of your own, word-wise. Can I/we perhaps push you to read a bit aloud? Like from a page here and there? Good luck!

Fried fish and maple?? Now I'm hungry.

Love the line from page 52 about "long brewing, icy anger"!

Your book sounds great! I love the way you write 😃

Pitch... when will we get the pitch! 😩😩😍

Omg I can’t wait to buy the book and highlight all the quotes 🤩

7:57 this reminds me of what Shaelin talks about constantly: specificity in developing the setting/plot.

i don't even need to wait to see if i "go on to enjoy this video", i come to your page bc i know i'm going to like it, because you're one of my favorites. y'all with the views and comments rn.. GO LIKE IT, YOU WON'T REGRET IT <3

Hunters stringing up witches? Loved all the lines and page 7’s got me hooked

I love the idea of this video!! So excited for you.

The line about the drumming sound of the hunters coming was my favorite. You did a great job building suspense in this video. I can't wait to read it!

Love your style & quotes, Sara! 💚 Looking forward to reading your book 📖 😊

Wooo Lucky Number 13! Loved all these lines, each of them was so evocative

Can't remember if I suggested 17 or 19 (those are my favorite numbers!), but I'm glad you chose lines for both! This video was such a cool idea and I am so excited for DE! 💙