And the Winner Is…

Right now, I’m sitting in my living room  listening to One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.”  I actually just remembered a funny story about that song, but you’ll have to wait while I go make my pizza for dinner.  Well, you won’t have to wait because………you already know why so I’m not going to explain it.  BRB BFFLs.

Okay, I’m back.   Sorry for your oh-so-long delay.  I guess now is as good a time as any to explain the title of this post.  My brothers won their championship soccer games the other day, and they scored the game-winning goals. (I don’t want to brag, but my bros rock!)  The other reason for the title is because it’s the title of the most recent episode of my new obsession, The Legend of Korra.  It’s the sequel series to the Nickelodeon’s old cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender.  With which I am also obsessed.  You can read my post about obsessions here.  Hopefully I’m not going overboard with mine…..

I just thought of another use for this title, since I obviously need something substantial to post about.  In my [planned] book series, I have a pretty good cast of villains to compliment my protags.  The question that remains is, who will win in this struggle of good and evil?  The only book  I know of where the villain wins and the protagonist dies isn’t actually a real book.  It’s Inkheart, which is an actual book, but I’m talking about the book Inkheart that’s inside the actual book called Inkheart……are you confused yet?  It’s usually the norm for the heroes to barely win and take out the villains, keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat.  But maybe, your tactic as a writer is to fool your audience into believing that everything is going to end perfectly, that it’ll have a happily-ever-after-type ending, and instead, dashing the reader’s hopes and dreams about the characters.  But that would be mean, so most writers (I’m not sure all writers do this) give their books a happy ending.  Sure, they may kill off a character or two in the process, but at least they’re not killing everyone, right?  If you really want your story to shock your readers, give it an unhappy ending, but don’t make it completely devoid of hope.  Sometimes, the villain is killed, sometimes, he/she is left alive.  How will you end your book?

An update on Fire & Water: The Elemental Saga: Gil (TOBB) and I have been hard at work on the series, and we’ll be posting the first chapter really soon!

CHALLENGE: Participate in the Demigod Diaries Contest and vote on the poll!

QUESTION: Are you planning to kill off your villain?

My Brother the Zombie-Killer

As I write this, I’m playing Halo with my brother and my cousin.  While they’re killing every zombie in sight, I’m failing MISERABLY……I am not good at first-person video games…  But back to the updates—I added a few new pages to Literary Lessons (Transition Words and Motifs), I posted the newest chapter of Demigod Diaries on the Official DD Blog, and Gil (The Original BURP Blog) and I have been hard at work on our super secret writing project, thinking of all kinds of awesome ideas.  Okay, it’s not THAT secret, but I will leak the title we picked and a tiny bit of the first chapter.  We won’t be publishing it for a little while longer, but I thought I’d give you guys something to look forward to.  Here is a snippet from chapter one of Fire & Water: The Elemental Saga.

Overemotional Cliff-jumping

Hey y’all.  Today’s topic is using your own emotions to inspire your writing.  If you write a story when you’re (for example) really mad, you get insight into your character. And yourself. You see the flaws in your character, which also reflect your own flaws and misgivings. (I’m basing my main character loosely off of myself, so that’s why I say that) I recently got kinda mad at a friend (we’re all good now), and I ended up writing five pages about my main character. She was very angry at a friend and looking back on the story, I used EVERYTHING I was feeling at the moment to write it. Even down to the tiny details. Although I don’t always contain my feelings, sometimes I take my bottled up emotion and channel it into my work. Now what book character (that we all know and love) does that sound like?  I’m not saying you should write EVERY time you’re sad, angry, jubilant, confused, etc.  Otherwise you’ll have a lot of strange emotional scenes and nowhere to put them.  Unless you like your characters overly emotional…..  But your character’s temper should flare up every once and a while, so pull on personal experiences to get the most you can out of a scene.  A few months back, I got my driver’s permit.  As fun as it is finally being able to drive, it’s a little nerve-wracking and scary at the same time.  This is probably a healthy fear, but I’m always nervous that a car from the other lane is going to come crashing into me at top speed.  I haven’t used this to inspire any writings yet, but the most extreme fear I’ve ever felt was when I had to jump off of a cliff into a deep pool of water.

How To Create Your Own Fantasy World: Part 2

Wassup my peoples! (that was my attempt at being cool because of my excitement at 3000 blog hits )  Since my first How To Create Your Own Fantasy World post was such a hit, aka it gets the most searches on my blog, I am expanding it into a gigantic world-building extravaganza post!  This post will be a blend between my previous 6.5 tips and a bunch of new ones!  Hope you guys get inspired by these 14.5 tips!

Step #1: Before you do anything, decide what genre you’re writing.  I know this guide is specifically for fantasy, but this is still an important step.  VERY important.  You don’t want to start out with historical fiction and end up with a bunch of space alien zombies. (…that was random)

Step #2: Create your solar system.  I know this might not seem important at all, because who pays attention to stars and planets in a fantasy book?  ME!  To give you an example, I decided that my fantasy world is going to have two moons and a bunch of cool constellations.  Just for the heck of it.  It may possibly turn into something very significant later—who knows?  But why not create a little universe for yourself while you’re creating a world?

Step #3: Figure out what kind of technology/magic you want in your world.  Is your world high-tech but magical?  Is there any magic at all?  All good fantasy stories have at least one of these: wizard, mage, magician (not the kind with the top hat and cape), sorcerer, sorceress, crazy inventor genius dude, master of the dark arts of some ancient and forgotten order that no one cares about until he rises to power, or immortal beings.  Think on that for a while.

Step #4:

Get a Little Perspective!

Today’s post is all about perspective in a book, or as it’s usually called, point of view.  There are many different ways you can present your book: first person, third person, multiple perspectives in both first and third. (if there’s a second person, I’ve heard nothing about it)  In first person, you read/write from the POV of the main character (i.e. Percy Jackson, Hunger Games).  In third person, you still see everything from the main character’s perspective, but you aren’t inside their heads, like everything is happening to you (i.e. Harry Potter).  You can probably guess what multiple perspectives are: views from various (but usually main) characters in a book (i.e. LOTR=third; Kane Chronicles=first).  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the perspective to be in my book.  At first, I wanted to have multiple third person perspectives in my book, switching around my main characters’ POVs.  The only problem is, the number of those character POVs would grow from two to possibly eight by my planned 5th book.  So it got me thinking, what if each book was in the perspective of one of my main characters?  Or what if I picked two or three characters and stuck with their POVs throughout that one book?  Depending on how I want to tell my story, I could choose any one of them.  Perspective sets the tone for your work, sometimes controlling how your story unfolds.  Think on that, and figure out what POV type works best for you.

I finally posted the newest Demigod Diaries.  Check out the DD Blog to read it!  I also added a Motifs page to Literary Lessons, but I haven’t had time to add anything to it yet. (look for that soon!)  And, I am happy to announce, that I will be teaming up with Gil (The Original BURP Blog) to write a story series based off of my short story, Elementa!  It probably won’t be out for a while, as we’re still in the planning and character process….be on the lookout for it!  Jonathan has also told me that he hasn’t forgotten about Wrathgate—another one will be out soon.

CHALLENGE: Fool around and write in different POVs/other character’s perspectives (besides your main character)

QUESTION: Vote on the Demigod Diaries poll!

To Kill A Mockingjay

(Yes, the title is inspired by To Kill A Mockingbird) I saw The Hunger Games again (like a week and a half ago), and it was even better the second time! (seeing the beginning was also a plus….)  If you haven’t seen the movie yet, or haven’t read the books (mostly just the first book), I recommend not reading this until you have because I will mention eeeeeeverything.  Enjoy my super long review!

Is She Insane? I Think Not.

Remember how I said I would write a review of The Hunger Games after I saw it?  Welllllll I need to put that on hold until I see it again, specifically the beginning. (the sound in our theater was jacked, so by the time they moved us to another theater, we had already missed everything before the Reaping…)  The parts of the movie that I did see were AMAZING!!!  The movie totally did the book justice, even though they left out a few things and added others in.  It all worked PERFECTLY though.  That’s all I’ll say about the movie for now, with the exception of, if you haven’t seen it yet, SEE IT ASAP!

Today’s post is about plotlines and how they affect your characters, especially when you don’t want your characters to be affected by a certain plotline.  I have now determined my favorite character in my [planned] book series, but she’s not my main character.  Her family was cursed generations back by a seer, and many people in her family have become insane because of the curse.  I don’t want my character to succumb to her seemingly imminent insanity, but at the same time she needs to be affected by this curse, and be afraid of it.  This is one of the greatest challenges in writing.  You can’t make up a crazy awesome plotline and then say, “Oh, well, this character just won’t be affected by it because I don’t want him/her to be.”  If that’s your only reason, then you need to rethink your character and/or plotline.  A good writer thinks their plotlines through, leaving no stone unturned.  If your character’s family has a disorder that causes them to die at a young age, how will your character deny fate?  Or in my case, how will my character stay sane while at the same time having the possibility of going insane?  And believing she will one day go insane?  At first glance, your greatest plotlines seem like just that: great plotlines.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t great when you dive into them, but thinking them through and thinking about which characters it will affect, when and where it will affect them, and why it does or doesn’t affect them is very important.  And if you have a few loose ends, it’s not always a big deal.  Just don’t make them details that leave people wondering, “How does that work?  The writer said that he/she was supposed to have been affected by that, and they never were!”  People won’t be as likely to read your story if the plotlines don’t add up.  Have fun thinking up crazy plotlines!! (**I’ve also added more writing tips)

CHALLENGE: Go through your story ideas and see if you have any plotlines that don’t add up with each other, or your characters, and change them so the plotlines work.

QUESTION: What was your favorite scene in The Hunger Games??