by Naomi L. | March 21, 2014 | J.C. Wolfe's Writing, Poetry |
Standing here within my bedroom,
Looking through the open window,
Staring out onto the street,
I see nothing.
Lying still upon my bed
As the sun recedes outside,
Breathing slowly, my eyes closed,
I hear nothing.
When I walk across my campus,
When I move along the streets,
When I stand at my front door,
I feel nothing.
Why am I here?
It was no fault of mine.
It was no choice of mine.
It was no wish of mine.
And yet, here I am.
In a world where I am blind,
In a world where I am deaf,
In a world where I don’t feel.
I am lost.
But I will be found.
I look out my open window.
To the north, I turn my gaze.
The horizon in the distance
Hides a place of better days.
For beyond the north horizon
Lie the promises of change.
The promise of dreams,
The promise of hope,
The promise of love.
My body is here.
My mind is here.
But my heart wanders elsewhere,
In that land to the north.
My past was not here.
My future is not here.
My life will not be here.
Not here, but in the north.
So come and find me where I lie.
Hear me as I breathe a sigh.
See me as I close my eyes
And very gently start to cry.
Come sit beside me, wipe my tears.
Raise my hopes and drown my fears.
Tell me that you’re here today
So I can smile and hear you say
That you came to take me away.
Yet another old poem I recently dug up. This one was written a few years ago, at a time when I was feeling especially homesick for America. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!
I was inspired to share this poem after reading this blog post by Vanessa Levin-Pompetzki. You should totally check out her blog. She’s pretty awesome!
by Naomi L. | March 19, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing |
I now interrupt the regularly scheduled broadcast of the story behind my first “novel” to bring you another topic for Writers Reveal. This month’s topic was given by… drumroll, please… me! That’s right; the totally awesome idea behind all of March’s Writers Reveal posts came from this brilliant mind! Aaand that’s enough conceit. For now. On to the topic!
For this month’s round, I dished out the prompt “People of the Past, Characters of the Future”. After thinking a lot about what topic I should suggest, I decided to have everyone write about the people they’ve met and how they can become inspiration for fictional characters. Have fun reading everyone’s takes on this topic!
People of My Past
I came up with this subject while going through some of my creative writing materials. In one of my writing exercise books, “What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers“, I found an exercise titled “People from the Past: Characters of the Future”. The exercise is to write a detailed description of a person you knew between the ages of six and twelve, preferably someone whose memory still invokes strong negative feelings in you, followed by an account of what you imagine they’re doing today. The point of the exercise is to understand how the past can provide material for the imagination (and how writing a good story can sometimes be the best revenge).
This exercise caught my eye because I love taking time to seek inspiration for stories. However, instead of focusing on the specific guidelines in the book, I’d prefer to take it a step further and draw inspiration from all sorts of people I’ve known in my life. After all, being a writer who loves well-rounded characters and happy endings, the good people are usually the ones that make it into my stories.
Roald Dahl’s “Big Friendly Giant” was inspired by carpenter Wally Saunders, who built the big brick hut in which many of the author’s most beloved stories were written
(Source: The Telegraph)
So who exactly are these people who inspire my characters? Being a shy person by nature, I come in contact with relatively few people who leave a lasting impression on my life, and even fewer who leave enough of one to make it into my stories. Because of this, my characters are usually inspired by my family and closest friends. These are the people with whom I have a special connection, whose flaws I’ve seen just as much as their strengths, and who are constantly teaching me new things. The way I see it, they’re already characters in the story of my life, so why not give them a place in my fiction as well?
Characters of My Future (and Present)
Most of the inspiration I get from the people I know is for the relationships among my characters. Family ties, friendships and romantic relationships are all usually based on experiences I’ve had or witnessed in my life. For example, if you were to read all of my romance works, you’d probably notice that most of the love relationships I write have a foundation of friendship. This is because I’ve never had a boyfriend who wasn’t my friend first, and because that’s the reason my parents are happy together to this day. In a similar way, many of my characters have a very good relationship with their families, which is a reflection of my happy childhood and the good relationship I’ve always had with my parents and sisters.
If there’s a pattern I’ve noticed in my stories, it’s that my main characters are usually based heavily on my own qualities and ideals while my supporting characters tend to display more traits from other people in my life. This is probably most evident in the novel-length fanfiction I’ve been writing about for the past few weeks. In that story, the main female character is a shy yet strong-willed girl who greatly believes love should always overpower hate, and the main male character is a passionate and loving boy who simply wants the best out of life. Also, as I mentioned before, their love is based on friendship, which in this case was inspired by my relationship with my best friend/boyfriend.
Meanwhile, two supporting female characters – the male lead’s sister and cousin – may have been partly inspired by my sisters; they’re both smart and extremely loyal to family, the former is very neat and hard-working, and the latter is very charismatic and extroverted. The female lead’s best friend was definitely inspired by some school friends I haven’t seen in years, who were nice girls but who were much more superficial and boy-crazy than I was; and her cousin was likely inspired by some of my male friends from the past, who were certainly noble where it counted but who could sometimes be a little arrogant. All these real-life traits combined with some of my own ideas helped me flesh out these characters and give them depth, and I don’t think I could have accomplished that nearly as well without the inspiration I found in my family and friends.
It goes without saying that observing people is an excellent way to get new ideas for building fictional characters, and for that task, there’s probably no better material than the people who have left an impression on your life. So if you don’t already, pay close attention to the people you meet. You never know when they may become useful inspiration for your characters!
Do you use the people you meet as inspiration for your characters? How much of their personalities are based on those of people you know in real life?
This has been a special topic post for Writers Reveal, a monthly blog swap among several talented writers. Be sure to check out the other blogs participating in the event. Thanks for reading!
Other bloggers in Writers Reveal
Melissa Khalinsky: Melissa Writes
Becky Fyfe: Imagine! Create! Write!
Rhianna: A Parenting Life
Ashley Howland: Ghostnapped
Emily Hawker: You Learn Something New Every Day
Emily Toxward: Have A Laugh On Me
by Naomi L. | March 17, 2014 | Blog, Word of the Week |
Word: erudite
Pronunciation: E-rə-dait / E-ryə-dait
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: having or showing great knowledge or learning
Source: Oxford Dictionaries
By now, many of you have probably heard this word a few times before, assuming you follow news on books and/or movies. I confess that I wasn’t familiar with it myself until I read a synopsis for the bestselling novel Divergent a couple of years ago. Those of you who know the story should already be aware that “Erudite” is one of the factions in the dystopian society of the novel’s future Chicago setting, and if you know what qualities they value most, you’ve no doubt already figured out what this word means.
An “erudite” person is someone who demonstrates an advanced level of knowledge and learning. The word comes from the Latin adjective eruditus “skilled”, which is also the past participle of the verb erudire “to educate”. This verb is based on the adjective rudis, meaning “undeveloped”.
I liked this adjective as soon as I learned it, most likely because I love any word that has to do with knowledge. From my understanding of it, this word is somewhat like others previously featured in my vocabulary segment, in the sense that it fits into a spectrum of synonyms. While I’ve seen words like “knowledgeable” used as a general term for people who are well-informed, “erudite” seems to be most applicable to actual scholars and people who place great importance on education. Perhaps that’s just my impression because I rarely see this word in context, but you may want to consider this if you ever decide to use it yourself. After all, I’m sure you’d like your audience to believe that the author of the stories they read is an “erudite” writer!
What are your thoughts on this word? Any suggestions for future “Word of the Week” featured words?
by Naomi L. | March 14, 2014 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)
She said: You know you ask too many questions? I said: Can you please just tell me what color plates you want? She said: Don’t you already know the answer to that? I said: If I know, why did I ask? She said: Maybe because you love asking questions you already know the answers to? I said: How do you know if I already know the answers? She said: Aren’t they obvious? I said: Do you have to do this every time I ask a damn question? She said: How else are you going to learn? I said: What’s there to learn? She said: You see how you just did it again? I said: What’s wrong with asking simple questions? She said: Do you realize how annoying it is to have to keep answering silly questions all day? I said: Do you realize how painful it is to be constantly criticized for the stupid things I do? She said: Did I ever say the things you do are stupid? I said: Isn’t that what you’re always thinking? She said: Why do you always have to assume the worst? I said: What else am I supposed to think? She said: How about that I’m just trying to help you? I said: Did I ask for your help? She said: Why don’t you just get back to setting the table? I said: You know this whole conversation could have been avoided if you had just told me what color plates you want?! She said: Blue.
This short piece is based on What If? Exercise 91: “He Said/She Said – But About What!”. The exercise is to write a story in paragraph form, 250-500 words long, using the structure of alternating voices who disagree about an issue based on an emotional subtext. The objective is to learn how to hang a story on a simple structure. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!
Back to the story
by Naomi L. | March 12, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing |
Time for Part 3 of my story. In case you missed the first two parts, I’m currently in process of telling the story behind a “novel” I recently published online: a fanfiction titled Chaos and Control. Part 1 introduces the idea of the story, and Part 2 is about the planning that went into it before the actual writing began. Have fun reading the next part of the story!
Today, I’m going to talk about the long yet wonderful process of writing Chaos and Control. This was definitely my favorite part of the journey, and probably the one that taught me the most. Enjoy!
Part III: The Writing
A quick note before I continue: remember how I mentioned that this story came out to almost 150,000 words? Well, the first story I wrote with my original characters, Generation Beta, was just over 70,000 words, so technically that was the first novel I ever published. Still, I prefer to consider Chaos and Control my true first novel, because I put much more time and effort into creating it. Just thought that was worth pointing out.
OK, back to this topic. After coming up with the idea and planning the story for a few weeks, I produced a 14-chapter outline for the fanfiction I wanted to write. I set up a text file where I wrote a summary of each chapter, so I’d have a basic plan to follow while working on the first drafts. Finally ready to start, I set to work on my new fanfiction.
Fleshing out the Skeleton
Some of you may remember a blog post I wrote a while back on something I called the “Frankenstein Writing Method“. Well, I used that technique quite a bit while working on this novel. Before I even began writing the first chapter, I had already started putting together a collection of excerpts as they came to me, worded almost exactly the way I wanted to write them into the story. This helped me to keep a clear idea of the entire plot, and it reassured me of how much I had really thought the story through. Even though I was still writing the beginning, I already had a set vision of how I wanted the plot to play out. And that gave me the motivation to always keep going.
So I started writing Chapter 1. I wrote a prologue in the style of a sonnet to parody Shakespeare’s introduction to his play. After that came a paragraph to introduce the setting of the story. Then I jumped into the action, setting up a scene to establish the rivalry between factions and introduce the most important supporting characters.
After I typed out the last sentence, I sat back and smiled in satisfaction at what I had created. Although the work was still far from over, I was proud of myself for having stuck to my commitment this far. The beginning of a story is often the hardest part to write, and at least the first step was out of the way. Now to move on to Chapter 2.
Enter Romeo and Juliet
Meet Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles and Lily’s father. He leads the progressivist faction of Control, and possesses a Gift of super speed.
In some ways, Chapter 2 was even harder to write than Chapter 1. That was because the former was an even more significant foundation for the story than the latter. While Chapter 1 was an introduction of the town feud and my supporting characters, Chapter 2 was the moment I would introduce my leads, and however I wrote this part, it would set up the most important relationship in the story for the rest of the novel. This meant I had to handle this chapter very carefully, especially because the single greatest factor I wanted to stand out in my story was character development.
So I had to decide well in advance how I wanted to portray my own Romeo and Juliet. I wanted my heroes to grow with each other, but also be able to stand on their own. I wanted them to be lovable yet flawed, innocent yet passionate, idealistic yet wise beyond their years. I wanted them to love and want each other without ever actually needing each other. And all their growth would depend on how I first presented them in the story. Not to put too much pressure on myself, but I absolutely had to get this right.
Miles and Maria are introduced in separate scenes within the same chapter. Both of them are first seen distant and lost in thought, but neither one of them is actually depressed. They each interact with their respective best friends – Miles (Romeo) with Lily (Benvolio), and Maria (Juliet) with Angelica (the Nurse) – and it’s through these conversations that hints of the people they want to (and will) become are revealed. The most positive qualities of the supporting characters are also shown in this chapter, including Sonia (Mercutio) and Rex (Tybalt), to help establish the other relationships that would last throughout the fanfiction.
Satisfied with all my characters’ introductions, I could now focus on developing the heroes’ relationship over the next 12 chapters. So I did. The growth my characters experienced after meeting each other drove the plot in a powerful way that left me feeling extremely proud by the time I typed the final words on the very last page. But more on that later on.
A Long Journey, Surprises at Every Turn
Meet Shadow the Hedgehog, Maria’s father. He leads the traditionalist faction of Chaos, and his Calling is warping through space.
Aside from being the most fun (funnest?) part of working on this story, writing it was also the longest part. Determined to finish my fanfiction no matter what, I worked on it every single day. I set a goal to write at least a page a day, and with most chapters reaching just under 30 pages, not to mention other projects I had to focus on, the writing process alone ended up taking me almost a year and a half to finish.
It wasn’t always easy sticking to this schedule. There were days when I barely had time to spare for this story, and others when I simply didn’t feel inspired to write. But I stuck to it anyway, because I knew it would be all the more satisfying when I finally finished the novel.
Yet what made the ride truly enjoyable was the way the story itself surprised me throughout the journey. Sometimes I felt it really wasn’t taking as much effort to write as I expected it to, because in a way, the characters were creating themselves. The further I got into the story, the greater their personalities developed, constantly sparking new ideas that I had never anticipated during the planning process. But this post is long enough as it is, so I’ll save the details for next time.
On a final note, I know some people might think I’m crazy for taking fanfiction as seriously as I do, and maybe I am. But as a writer who always takes her craft seriously, I fully dedicate myself to every piece I write, no exceptions. It doesn’t matter that it’s fanfiction; Chaos and Control deserved every bit as much love and care as I give to any of my original works, and I’m so glad I was able to pour my whole heart into this story.
This concludes the third part of the story behind my fanfiction. The next post will focus on the editing process and my excruciating attention to the details of my novel. Thanks for reading!
Note: If you’re interested, you’re more than welcome to read my story and even leave some reviews. I promise you don’t need to know too much about the Sonic universe to appreciate it. Reviews are positive, but contain spoilers! Thank you!
Sonic the Hedgehog and all related characters belong to Sega. All official artwork is displayed for illustrative purposes only. I own nothing!
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