DISCLAIMER: I don’t mind you guys sharing my thoughts about the mentorship with others. However, if you don’t see the art or writing bits up at SongofExile.com, that means I’d prefer you keep it between us! Enjoy!:)
My mentorship went on a brief hiatus for a week where I caught up on a ton of sleep, played Witcher 3, and took a much needed load off. The 4th week resumed this past week and we were right back to the revision game! I finished up my book 1 synopsis and defined the skeleton of my book trailer/pitch.
I ended up tapping my writer friend so hard for edits that I hired her professionally for all of the late nights of brainstorming and revisions we had been doing together. This was the best move I made to really bring the polish to my story that I needed. The mentorship teachers only have so much time in and outside of class to critique our art AND writing. Once my mentorship ends, I hope to continue the working relationship with my new content editor into the future and I’m so excited to see how my story will improve because of it!
The Importance of Revision
It seems all I’ve been saying this entire time has been REVISION, REVISION, REVISION! But it really is so important to the narrative process, not only for writing, but for art as well. There are times I’ve stared too long at the same painting or too long at my synopsis during this mentorship that I just couldn’t see what was wrong anymore. Getting a second set of eyes on my work has improved my work so much faster in a shorter time than banging my head against the wall trying to solve the problems myself. I really can’t recommend a good critique group for art and a good content editor for writing enough!
Grand Total of Revisions Thus Far
Synopsis – 8 revision
Pitch – 2 revisions (with more to come)
MOAR Pitching!
When it comes to pitching, I’ve had another chance this past week to pitch my story to a story director over at Riot Games. Talk about nerve-wracking! I got some great feedback, however, and I get to update my pitch now with even more pointed feedback that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had continued pitching to people who already know my story really well. It’s more proof that getting an outside opinion is so very important when you’re working on a narrative product!
This Week’s Art
I’m still working on trying to get the thumbnails for my illustrations sorted out. They keep changing as my pitch evolves and I take some away and add others. I’m excited to be working with a set of images for a single narrative! It’s not something I get to do often.
Read about the rest of my journey with the IP Development Mentorship here:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Final Week
Final Critique