Friday, May 31, 2013

Emmy & Rachel

 Name: 
Emmy

Birthday:
June 13

Personalities:
Loud, troublesome, adorable

Greatest Wish: 
To be able to do whatever she wants whenever she wants


Name:
Rachel

Birthday: 
June 13

Personalities:
Shy but loud, troublesome, a follower

Best Moment: 
When she & Emmy insulted Mahalia.

“She’s Lucy,” said Emmy. “You do know name-calling is hurtful?” 
“Yes it is, Ello,” said Mahalia teasingly.
“My name is Emmy,” said Emmy. She was getting mad. “That’s to you, Calia-balia!” “Calia-balia, calia-balia,” sang Rachel.


Monday, May 27, 2013

Writing Tip #2: Beginnings



Four words: Beginnings change A LOT.
I mean A LOT. The current beginning of The Hidden Amethyst is actually my fourth beginning. Seriously: my first-ever beginning goes like this:

Eliza bent over, hoping no one had spotted her. Too late. The manager of the asylum, Ms. Ursula, saw her. "Eliza Butternut," she said, tugging Eliza's waist-belt, "You know better than to go out and hide. The train will leave this morning. You will ride."

Can you see how much has changed since then? Even Amethyst’s name—as you can see, it’s Eliza there. I wrote this beginning probably three or four years ago. 
 Here’s the actual, final beginning of The Hidden Amethyst:

The day started out badly. First of all, Amethyst woke up late. When she woke she was faced with the headmistress‘ wrinkled old face, which was glaring at her. Amethyst shrieked.

Can you see how much it has changed? Names have changed. She’s in the asylum still, but in the first, the train’s about to leave. In the final beginning, she’s just waking up―no train is leaving yet.

Alright, you’re probably sick of examples. Down to the basics.
First: Don’t make beginnings too long. Well, you can have long beginnings, but then it depends on what you think of when you think of “beginning”. Is it the first paragraph? First chapter? First seven chapters? (That would probably be too long.) Here’s one easy and simple way to look at it. The beginning is what happens before the first main thing happens. I know that sounds strange and confusing, so let me take an example from my book. If you looked at it the way I just said, then the beginning is what happens to Amethyst before she is put on the train (the first main thing). In that case, my beginning’s three chapters. But it all depends on the story; some stories work better with longer beginnings, some shorter.

Secondly: Beginnings need to be interesting. It needs to draw in the reader with the first sentence. It doesn’t have to start with action necessarily; it just has to make the reader keep reading, whether it’s because they’re worried or curious to find out what happens next. Like I said, it doesn’t need to start with action all the time; just with something minor happening.
 When I say minor, I mean something that is happening that doesn’t relate much to the plot, it just gets the story going, develops the setting or characters, or helps lead up to the first main thing. In my case, my beginning helps develop these facts: 1, the headmistress Miss Odelia is very cruel and uncaring, and 2, Amethyst doesn’t like living at the asylum at all. And it helps merges into Amethyst going on the orphan train.
Or: you can have minor happenings that foreshadow. Things happen that seem unimportant to the reader, but really they’re foreshadowing what is going to happen.
So to sum that up: I’d advise you to begin with minor happenings, then merge those into the first main happening. In my book, there are minor happenings after minor happenings the first three chapters, and they all help lead up to the first main thing (Amethyst being put on the orphan train), and helping develop the setting (the asylum) and the characters.

If you have trouble merging, my best tip would be keep writing. Make more things happen, and see where your writing takes you. Don’t worry about anything like staying within a word limit. Just write, and see where it takes you—and maybe you will find one of your minor happenings actually turn out to be a main happening! Don’t be afraid of changing your story. If you stick to one guideline and don’t let yourself branch out, you’ll get a good story, but not the best; you’ll miss out on ideas you would’ve gotten had you just seen where you story takes you.
I know sometimes it seems like beginnings are impossibly hard and difficult. But here’s a way to make it easy:
 Write a sentence. Any sentence. It can be, “There are chocolates on the counter.” It can be “I wish I had an iPad.” Or it can be “Amber jumped up and down, screaming in delight,” as if it were a story. Then imagine it’s the beginning of a book, and keep writing. What happens to those chocolates on the counter? Are they melting? What kind of chocolates are they? Has one fallen off the counter onto the floor, and ants have snuck inside to eat it? Or are the chocolates outside to begin with, and ants are already eating it? Who will discover the perfectly good chocolates being wasted by ants? Will it be the responsible twelve-year-old? Will she be mad? Sad? Hey—that’s the beginning of a story idea! See how easy that can be? Just think of questions, then answer them, and you might get a beginning. Or just write!
Beginnings can be hard. But if you try, you can make them fun.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Writing Tip #1: Naming Your Characters



Characters’ names play a very important role in your story or book. You need the perfect name. For example, what if I’d named Mahalia ‘Elise’? ‘Elise’ doesn’t sound like an evil fairy name, but Mahalia does. (Note: If any of you readers are actually named Mahalia, no offense.)
Or what about Eugenia? Suppose I’d named her Sarah?

You may be wondering where I got all the names in my book. Well, for most the evil fairies, I got them from this website:
It’s just a random name generator, but it worked for me. 

Besides all that, you need names that fit your characters. For example, I chose the name ‘Lucy’ for a six-year-old orphan girl in my book because it sounded like a poor little girl’s name. What if I’d named her Nancy? It doesn’t have the same effect; it wouldn’t had worked as well. 
About changing character’s names— it’s never too late to change them (unless you’ve already written books about them;) During the writing process, you can change them many times if the names don’t sound right. I did. Almost every one of my characters has had a different name at some point—and some characters have had two different names.

Speaking of such, I named almost all my characters after my friends. You may want to do that, too, with your friends. You can; but it depends on the setting. You can’t name your main character Madison if the story takes place three hundred years ago; the name wasn’t around then (as a first name, of course). But that doesn’t mean you can still base the character on your friend! Or you could temporarily name the character after your friend, and switch it later. The bad thing about that is, sometimes you don’t want to switch—but depending on the setting, you’ll have to.
If it fits your story, I think it is a great idea to name your characters after your friends or family. When you’re writing and you see your best friend’s name in the story, you can feel the story so much more; you can put more emotion into the story; really make it come alive. That is the upside. The downside, of course, is you don’t want anything bad to happen to them, for two reasons:  One, because when you write it, you don’t see the bad thing happening to your character; you see it happening to your friend, and of course you don’t want anything bad to happen to your friend. And two, you get worried about what the friend the character is named after will think. You make something horrible happen to your best friend Addie’s character, then delete it all because you think, What will Addie think? 

Here’s the thing, fellow writers.The hard fact is that if your whole story revolves around what your friends will think, it will not be a good story. I’m not saying that you should avoid your friends, ignore their opinions, and make bad thing after bad thing happen to their characters—actually, it’s a great idea to get your friends’ opinions. In fact, one of my best friends is now helping me with my next book. Like an editor/advisor. A lot of my other friends are helping, too, with proofreading and illustrating and advertising. The point? It’s a great idea to have your friends help you. Just don’t let your story revolve around what they will think about their character. If it’s too much trouble, just don’t put their name in at all, or give them a small part.
Dealing with number 1 can be more of a problem, sometimes. You don’t want anything bad to happen to those certain characters named after your friends; and if nothing bad happens in the story, it’s not going to be a great story. If you’re struggling with 1, think of it this way—the bad thing isn’t happening to your friend; it’s happening to a character named after your friend. 

So to sum up all I’ve said: naming characters can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. And it’s always fun. 

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Steve Mocha

                  Name:
               Steve Mocha

                Birthday:

                  April 10

              Personalities:

Sneaky, sly, cheerful, helpful

             Greatest Wish: 

For Avery and his mom to join the good side with him

May Update

Hello, friends!

I had a book-talk at the library last week. It was awesome!  I talked about how I got started writing, the publishing process, and gave some writing tips. I found out I really enjoy public speaking and hope to do more.

Also-all those awesome illustrations of the characters in the character profiles were done by the amazing Angel Dash. If you think her drawings rock (like I do), then check out her drawing blog:

http://therandomarts.blogspot.com

And yes, if you're wondering, more character profiles are coming.