update and story resources

Hello everyone!

I've had a nice busy summer and now I'm back to updating regularly, I promise! I went on a cruise to Alaska, I've been learning lots of new stuff at my job, and I have lots of writing things to share.  ha

First of all, I successfully completed another Camp Nanowrimo in July! My friends kept me nice and competitive so that I had no choice. I've added another 50k words to my draft of Runeless, which has reached the whopping size of 110k words. 220 pages. I'm not even at the halfway point. Someone stop me. It's turning out so good though and I'm super excited to finish it. Even if it is reaching Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings length and might kill me.

I also have a lot of great Youtube channels that I want to put out there for people who want to listen to writing advice. They're basically podcasts, analyzing story and film, and here are some of my favorites:

Hello Future Me- A really interesting Youtube channel that focuses mainly on story and worldbuilding and how they interact. He uses examples from film, like Avatar: The Last Airbender (lots of Avatar, which makes sense, it's a perfect show-) and Game of Thrones, and from books like Lord of the Rings. Most of them are about ten or twenty minutes, which make them good quick watches. I especially like the ones on religion and dragons, which should surprise no one.

Lessons from the Screenplay- This one, like you can guess from the name, focuses on film, but the emphasis is on the work behind the scenes. If you are a screenwriter, or if you want to write novels that feel like movies, it's so helpful to see the analysis and really see the genius behind it. I love looking at how the movies treat plot, character, symbolism, and scenes- all useful for a writer and have been so helpful. Most of these, again, are less than twenty minutes long, but he packs so much analysis into it that they go by in no time at all. My favorites are the ones about book adaptations, like Gone Girl.

Pop Culture Detective- This channel focuses mainly on tropes, which can be interesting to dissect mostly in what you're reading and watching. These are a little longer, with tons and tons of examples for each trope, but he really digs into the movies and shows and makes it very interesting to watch. A lot of them are about masculinity and toxic masculinity in particular, including ones that people don't really think about, and it's fascinating to learn about them and think about the tropes in my own stories.

I hope you check these out and let me know what you think, and I'll update soon and let you know what's in the works for my writing!