I have decided that I am going to change around how I do the book reviews, as well. On Goodreads I’ll continue to give my general thoughts and opinions, but here I am going to start analyzing the stories for how well they make use of Setting, Plot, Character, Conflict, and Text (style and word choice). After all, these are the things that John Brown taught me about for creating Zing, so I should be paying closer attention to them.

Of course, this won’t work perfectly for every book I read. I read lots of non-fiction as well, so that should be analyzed differently. From the non-fiction, I hope to get most of the same kinds of Zing, but only indirectly as they give me ideas or research notes.

So, be on the lookout for these new reviews within the next week of any book I finish (after all, I’m in the middle of 10 books right now).

I’ve been enjoying the story itself, but I was also looking at how well Brandon Sanderson choose plot twists and ideas. He definitely did not seem to be pulling from the cliche shelf (of course, I’m not thoroughly versed in Fantasy any more, but I was kept guessing all the time).

I’ve lately been trying to get the Transfer Loss novel going. I did finish NaNoWriMo, but that ended up being mostly just lots of short stories stuck together in one long document. So, I have been trying to plan it out and think it through a little more. But things just weren’t flowing well. I have lots of cool ideas, but I’m just going to put it aside for awhile and focus on something else.

In fact, I have started thinking again about Moon Shadow more seriously. That is the story I wrote as a flash fiction piece and then submitted for Boot Camp. I am working on the beginning. Orson Scott Card was right about it starting in the wrong place. I started a 1000 ideas in an hour session for it, and came up with some really interesting ideas. It was a one idea story at first, so a couple of these things should really make it deeper and more interesting.