Teens Writing for Teens, the 5th

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amlptj

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An artists' job is to make very complicated stuff seem easy, Ally ;) And if a person doesn't have much of an interest in art(be it books or paintings or movies), they just don't notice the flaws. The 6th graders in my school don't seem to notice the difference between the stuff I drew with crayons 5 years ago and the stuff I draw now >_> It's really frustrating.

Oh there is no difference in my drawling when i was 5 and now... heheheeh! No artistic ability at all. As for writing. I HOPE there is a difference hehehe!
 

Elysium

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OMG. Suddenly was my favorite word. I used it a lot too! :D

Yeah, I know what you mean. I LOVED Pyra so much. It was about a girl who discovered she was a Princess on another planet, but what she doesn't know is that being a princess takes more than just wearing crowns and looking pretty. There was romance, adventure, and kick-ass action scenes. I thought it was the best thing ever. It hurt the day when I realized that it wasn't.
 

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See! Yeah it not just my friends yay! My boyfriend every time i tell him i'm editing it more get so upset. He is that person who always tells me its wonderful and awesome, so i thought it was just him being bias but after i ended up crying over the perviously mentioned beta's review he read what she wrote and was like

"THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH TELLING! You take it all out and it wouldnt be good!"

So just to try and i guess prove him wrong over the next week i tried oh did i try to erase all telling. He read it and was like "Yeah this sucks i liked it better before, This is the shit that made me stop reading most books."

Now it could have been a failed attempt at showing verses telling maybe but i really tired hard, and even i didnt really like it as much as my original version.

Maybe it just me and maybe its just because he "gets" my books but I dont know i'm really starting to question alot of rules/guidelines. It made me go back and read alot of my favorite books, to find that alot of them tell more then they show, there characters arn't the right ages and there stories dont follow alot of rules.

See...the thing with the rules of writing (showing included) is that you have to know when to use them and when to ignore them. Yes, there are times when telling is much better than showing. No book is not going to have any telling. For example, telling is a good tool to condense a large space of time into a small number of pages.

For example, there's a bit of telling in CT that allows me to skip over five days where all they're doing is traveling through the woods from one place to another. Nothing of importance to the plot happens during those five days so I used the telling to condense them into a couple of lines instead of showing them traveling all that time.
 

amlptj

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That moment came to me when i was 16 and starting on the third book in my series. I added alot to the aspect of the Freaks in that book with the Color modes. I also was much much much better at developing characters and plots at that point in time. So when i thought back to the first book i realized with all the stuff i was adding and expanding on now.. it was going to just leave alot of holes in the first book. Especially Fuzzy... he was still in my books, and that was just becoming hard to write him in and keep beliveable. When i started my 4th book i pushed all the negative thoughts about my first one away and i just finished the 4th one. After that i sat myself down to fix the first book. After i read it (having already re-wrote/edited it 3 times before i started my second book) I was crushed... it was still sooooooo horrible.

But i couldnt just trash it for I already wrote up to book 4 and had been working on the series for 5 years at that point. (I was 17 at the time) so that summer i re-wrote the whole thing from scratch. This time not even bothering to look back at the original copy. I also plotted this time around too. And after a 6 months the book was saved!!!
 

amlptj

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See...the thing with the rules of writing (showing included) is that you have to know when to use them and when to ignore them. Yes, there are times when telling is much better than showing. No book is not going to have any telling. For example, telling is a good tool to condense a large space of time into a small number of pages.

For example, there's a bit of telling in CT that allows me to skip over five days where all they're doing is traveling through the woods from one place to another. Nothing of importance to the plot happens during those five days so I used the telling to condense them into a couple of lines instead of showing them traveling all that time.

That's where most of my telling come from, when i have to skim over days or in the first books case hours where nothing is happening. (the book is only over 7 and a half days) That or descriptions of the MC's and the slight background stuff in the beginning.

Question though, I've asked this before and got mixed answers. is a character talking and telling a bit of history telling? Its not the narrator but a character?
 

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At the same time, I'm glad I let my first book go. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I tried to fix something that just couldn't be fixed. Letting go is one of the hardest things about being a writer. I don't want to be dramatic, but it's like you lose a piece of your soul when you decide to bury characters that you've grown to love.
 

amlptj

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Its not dramatic. I had to kill off a very dear character to me when i rewrote the first book again. It KILLED ME! I was depressed for a long time like he was a real person/thing that died! And every time i re-read his death i cry like a baby.
 

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That's where most of my telling come from, when i have to skim over days or in the first books case hours where nothing is happening. (the book is only over 7 and a half days) That or descriptions of the MC's and the slight background stuff in the beginning.

Question though, I've asked this before and got mixed answers. is a character talking and telling a bit of history telling? Its not the narrator but a character?

I think the reason why you're getting mixed answers is because there's no cut and dry answer. It's more of the way it's written into the story. Without seeing the actual scene, I would say that as long as the dialogue flows well and doesn't read like an info dump, then it's fine.
 

amlptj

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Yeah i get what you mean

I broke it up so that Ally, Max, Laura and Pip were asking Tod questions while they forced information out of him. So each bit of information wasn't horribly long for it was broken up by questions and some scaring techniques to get him to talk.
 

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I treat all of my characters like they're real people. I have conversations with them, and I try to get in their head. No wonder why some people view writers as emotionally unstable, most of us get so involved with our characters that their pain becomes our pain in a way.

One of my main characters sister's committed suicide and she found the body. I never really lost anyone close to me so her pain is sort of alien to me but I wrote a scene where she breaks down at the sight of seeing a tub (that's where she found her sister) and it kills me every time I read it. Every single time.
 

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If I don't cry every time I read a scene that's supposed to be heart-breaking, then I need to rewrite it.

I had one character in Jump that died. He told me that he was going to die soon after he entered the story. I almost started crying right there before I even got close to the scene. I loved that character.
 

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I kill whoever my characters tell me is going to die. I'm scared to death that one of my main characters is going to die in a future book. I think I know who it is too...
 

amlptj

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That's the same way i am. Honestly when i was much younger 11-13 they were really more like imaginary friends to me. I used to have epic daydream adventures with them when i was younger sitting in school bored... this is actually how i started writing, and why i start writing with myself in my own books.

As i got older i separated myself from them so there not so much imaginary friends but i know what you mean. Alot of time i just sit there in my room and just think up new fun little sinarios, or when I'm having a bad day i wonder what they would say to me if they were real.

My boyfriends when he found this out got me a mug that said "Writers Block: When your imaginary friends get fed up with you and ignore you."

I wrote a scene in my 6th book where a minor character Maria is killed. The part that is so sad is that she is Max's (a MC) girlfriend who his has been madly in love with since the age of 5 and finally won her over and has been blissfully dating for for only a year. Her throat is slit right in front of him and she dies in his arms.

It made me ball my eyes out when i was writing it and every time i read it. Just because of how heart crushing it is for Max.
 

amlptj

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I kill whoever my characters tell me is going to die. I'm scared to death that one of my main characters is going to die in a future book. I think I know who it is too...

Oh God if one of my characters told me they were going to die, i'd talk them off the ledge. After Fuzzy i could never kill off a main character ever ever again. I loved him sooooooooooo freaking much... but it was better this way. I vowed there and then that i would never kill off a main character. So what I do instead is add in more minor characters knowing ahead of time i'm going to kill them eventually, or kill off people close to my MC's,(because if i'm doing my job right the reader should be just as torn apart knowing how it would effect the MC) and with there lifestyle there are a shit ton of close calls.

In the second book you think that every single MC but Ally is dead until the last paragraph.
 

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I don't want to kill them but sometimes it's right for the sake of the plot. Think Mockingjay and Deathly Hallows. There was a war going on. If no one had died, it wouldn't have been right. It's the same way with me and CT.

So far I've only killed a minor character but she was another minor character's twin sister. I haven't cried yet at her death scene so it's on the list for some revisions.
 

amlptj

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Sorry never read either book but i know what you mean.

Yeah so far of dear characters i've killed off
Fuzzy- who was an MC
Joey- Max's unborn little brother. His twin sister Faith survived. He died because Max while drugged with a pill that made him violent pushed his pregnant mom down the steps. Being an already caring and awesome big brother he was crushed.
Nick-Robs best friend and friend of Pip's
Josh- Tod's older and admired big brother he was very closed to. He was also like Jul's older brother she spent so much time with Tod.
Maria- Max's girlfriend
The Hinkle's- grandparent like figures for they babysat Max, Laura and Pip and children
Johnson-mentor/family friend of them all.
 

Elysium

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Ugh. I'm a little iffy about my wip's first paragraph. Namely the first sentence.

What do you guys think?


My mother knows how to kill.
Though the people she murders are fictional – that didn’t mean her expertise couldn’t help me in real life. I found her in her usual spot in the back of this town’s bootleg Starbuck’s, eyes glued to her laptop, fingers dancing across the keys. It took her a while for her to acknowledge my presence. When she finally looked up at me, I couldn’t help but notice the bags underneath her eyes and the lines etched into her forehead. If this is what being an author on a deadline did to you, then she didn’t have to worry about me following in her footsteps.
 

Thalia

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Characters I kill...

a lot die, but the mains mostly won't die 'till the last books of whichever series they're in, if they're in a series.

POTS has the most MCs dying. Tragically.
 

amlptj

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nothing can be perfect. At the time that you write it its always going to seem that there is a better way to write something. But if you just let it be and continue writing then go back and read it all later 9 times out of 10 it will surprise you how good it is.
 

Thalia

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I don't understand how you would kill the narrator, unless the book ended with their death.

Hang on. I'm going to take a look at some of my old writing.

Ugh, found this from Grade 6. Ew.

There I stood, gazing toward the foggy blue lake water. It resembled a crystal ball- no, not the misconception people have developed concerning crystal balls and divination. I mean the kind of orb encrusted with tiny, glimmering stones, the kind that transports you to a land of foggy blue mist, where everything has been done, yet nothing has begun. The lake reflected nothing. It was liquid blue smoke, rippling against the stony shore. Here and there, you could almost spot wisps of clouds. But the lake was seemingly endless, to my infinite surprise. It was a long azure cloth that overlapped the stage it was assigned.

An image was forming itself in the lake. As it swam into view, I could make out a large, heavy tome, with a faded out title written in shimmering gold ink. The Book of the Gods. As I marvelled over the cryptic message, a Gorgona rose to the surface. It spoke, in a rasping voice that seemed to carry the voices of a thousand others, yet her words reached not my ears but my very being, and were not in any language I knew, yet somehow I could understand.

"Your destiny shall be revealed through the pages of this book." I heard nothing else after that. The Gorgona opened her mouth again and breathed over the lake, and her breath was a mist so overpowering that I fell into the realms of darkness I knew so well.

I'm reading over this thinking to myself, "What the hell is a Gorgona?"
 
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