Drawing On Experiences

We're always told to do it in our writing and deep down we all know that it'll make our work better. Yet some of us still struggle with it, saying things like: "my life has been too boring" or "no-one's interested in what's happened to me".
That. Doesn't. Matter.
Maybe not everything in our lives is book-worthy, but that doesn't mean none of it is. Something as simple as experiencing a failed relationship or losing a pet can be drawn from and used in the story. Not necessarily every detail (that would be a bit too much personal info), but the emotions would be the same: the pain or the grief, and could be drawn from.

This is where us younger writers have a slight disadvantage to older ones: we just haven't lived as much as they have. They have a whole encyclopedia to draw from whereas we only have a notebook or two (in most cases anyway).
But even these little things can be usable, and we can always use those wonderful things: our imaginations! Just think of the situation you want, and imagine how you'd feel in the place of your character and hey presto!

Okay, maybe it won't be that easy, but it's a way to get started. Most of us - if we pay attention to things around us - will have an idea of how people will react to certain things. All we have to do is tailor that reaction to our character.

For example: I was bullied for chunks of my childhood; not in the physical way, but certainly emotionally, and it's only in the last few years that I've managed to get out of my shell a bit more.
Well, my main character is a bit excluded from the majority of her society; so I'm drawing on some of my feelings of isolation and emptiness, to make it more effective and realistic. I'm not using everything, but just enough to make it believable.

Your book doesn't have to be your life story. But if you can't use real emotions, you're going to find the writing proccess a whole lot harder.


On slighty different note: thank you RaeAnn for being my first follower and commenter!
It's good to know someone out there is actually reading my blog :D

Hope you liked this post
W-O

Naming Minor Characters

Once again a long gap between posts. I feel my apologies are getting repetitive.
But a belated Merry Christmas is due as well :)

Writing has been going ahead steadily over the past couple of week and I now have one chapter completed and five more on the go - not all in chronological order. I seem to be adopting the technique of writing what comes to me at the time, rather than doing all the chapters in order; but this way seems to get stuff done for me (it's the method I also adopt with schoolwork - though it doesn't always work).


The topic I've picked for today is the naming of secondary and tertiary characters; the ones who aren't as essential to the plot. These for me are those that I need to fulfil a certain role eg. the one who steps in to fill a place on a sports team or the owner of a shop.
Most of my main characters so far have been named after family and friends, just a few have been completely made up, but this - for me - is slightly harder to do with less major characters; as I like to have names that fit the people, but for the background characters I haven't really had chance to develop enough to know what names would fit. This has led to me leaving blanks for names which I really do not like, as a chapter that would otherwise have been complete now looks like bits are missing.
So far I've been fairly lucky and only had a few of these problems with names; meaning I feel I can leave them for now as they aren't piling up, but I know that the further I progress with writing the more these things will crop up.

I have therefore decided to come up with something to tackle this:
As of today I will be keeping a list of all my family and friends' names that I have not yet used. This means that if I cannot easily come up with a name myself, I simply need to flick through the list: to find one that isn't taken and that fits the person I've created so far - I can always change it later if I change my mind.
I know this approach will be far from fool-proof, but I know it will solve at least part of the problem.

Let's just hope that all these people I've pinched names from don't end up objecting later on, eh?
Well if they do... tough!
Haha!
Hope you enjoyed this xxx

Your 'Writing Voice'

Again, apologies for the long gap between posts: life is not giving me much free time at the moment and I'm not one for stealing (unless from my sister).

Back to my topic of the day.
As anyone who's been looking to become a writer will know - or if you didn't you'll definitely find out some time - having your own voice is essential for keeping the reader interested and stopping them abandoning you due to boredom. This is different for every writer and it takes time to find it, lots of practising and lots of changing styles. I think, now, that I have found mine and believe me it is very different from how I first started out.

Here's a short tale of how my writing voice has developed and changed:
I started off like everyone does as a child. The usual:

One day Dave got out of bed and looked out of the window. It was raining outside.
"Well," Dave said; "I'll have to wear my coat to work today, then."

In other words truly awfully, with no personality at all.

Then I started reading more, reading real books with plots and well developed characters and I started being more descriptive in my writing:

Hannah stared blankly out of the window at the pouring rain, that was running down the glass pane from a leaking drainpipe above and showed no sign off stopping any time soon.
"I hate rain." sighed Hannah.

Not much better but a lot more interesting than Dave and his coat. However, still no real personality to it.

A few more years and books passed, and with each my writing got better. Then, finally, I read the first book in my favourite series of all time: Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn (a true masterpiece of a book that should be read by everyone). Hearn's style is a very poetic one;thick on descriptions and making even the most mundane things seem poignant and beautiful. Her style really stuck with me and from then on I also tried to add a more poetic quality to my writing and started using my complex language from my very over-developed vocabulary (note that when I read this book I was only nine years old, while the book itself is rated for teens and young adults). From then on my writing became more like this:

The air was warm, but not still. A cool breeze ruffled the bushes and swept through the smooth, long grass so that it rippled like the waves out at sea. Below, a long, wide river ran through the valley, like molten silver in predawn light occasionally splashing up against the bank sending a spray of foam over the cattle grazing nearby, but they only flicked an ear. There were many other creatures too; a family of field mice stirred in the grass at the top of the valley, a lone hawk hovering above them, waiting for one to emerge. And there was the girl. (This was actually written a few years after I first read that book, but you get the idea.)

Much, much better, but still not me. It was too formal and almost cold, not as friendly and emotive as I would have liked - though at the time I though it was brilliant (ah, my poor over-sized ego).

 A few more years passed and I read more teen fiction and popular books, but as well expanded my reading to some other adult authors such as Phillipa Gregory and worked my way through some more classical novels such as Pride and Prejudice. In other words, I read just about anything I could get my hands on. It was during my perusal of teen fiction that I picked up on a more colloquial style of writing, a way of keeping things informal and light but at the same time keeping the audience emotionally involved with the story.

This was where my writing voice really started to come into being. I kept my vocab and my love of Hearn's descriptive style, but made it less formal; only using the more complex vocab where appropriate and not superfluously, as I had before. I learnt how to use different lengths of sentences and ways of phrasing things that worked for me and the story. This took several years to truly come into being, but now I feel like I have a voice that is entirely my own and what I want it to be:

I never found life to be empty; there was always something new to enjoy or to learn, something to fascinate or enthrall. It felt good to work towards my goals – to feel I was achieving something – and to do well was an undeniable pleasure.

But things change.

I changed.

Now life seems pointless. I watch other people enjoying it, revelling in it, but I can no longer join them; I envy them and long to feel the way I used to, but that isn’t possible. I barely pay attention to my daily life any more; just go through the motions, like a bored audience at a play – a play about me.

This is something I wrote only a few months ago. It is far from perfect I'm sure, but I know it is so much better than what I started with and it's sounds how I want it to: to me and hopefully to you too.

I hope you've enjoyed my little life story. The first two samples of writing were not really from when I was younger, just something I thought would give you an idea of how I was (I was probably much worse than that, but I have no evidence of it - hehe!). Please do not use either of the other samples as they are mine and I may use them later on.

See you next time.

W-O xx

Character development - how I create people

This is how I go about creating and developing my characters.
I start out with a basic layout:
Age: (this doesn't always work as ages can change throughout the story)
D.O.B: (I normally just have a month and day)
Natural hair colour:
Eye colour:
Parents: (include mother's maiden name)
Siblings: (include rough ages)
Pets:
Known Powers: (this for when the characters are magical folk)
Subjects: (if the character is still at school)
Profession: (if the character has a job)
Weapons of choice: (should my character ever end up in a fight)
Martial arts grade: (same as above or in case I want them to have some cool fighting moves up their sleeves)
Characteristics: (these range from 'bad liar' to things like 'hates disappointing people')
Querks: (any funny or interesting habits the character may have, like hates red foods or believes in ghosts)

This gives me a basic character profile and an idea of who this person is. I don't always fill it all in at once: sometimes I just start off with the basics like name and appearance and add the rest as and when it comes to me.

Sometimes I create the characters on whim and then add them into the story later. Other times, I start writing a scene and suddenly introduce this character that I've never even thought about before: I then go and write them a character profile in my little planning notebook, filling in everything I've included in the scene with them and then add the rest (then or later on).
My main characters are, obviously, ones I thought about before writing them. However, I originally started my story with just one main protagonist in mind, but as I continued I reaslised I wanted somebody else to express a different point of view and have different ways of doing and thinking about things: someone who was more than just a sidekick or secondary character. I then developed this new character to have her own plot within the book and to have equal importance to my original main chracter.
So now I have two protagonists whose stories I can weave together and two separate points of view that I can write from: this lets me choose what I feel like writing, as the two are very different people and have their own distictive moods and atmospheres.

Well, that's my character development for you.
Hope this was helpful
Bye
W-O xx