Old People Writing for Teens, IV

Paru, sorry to hear about the bad night's sleep, I know how that is.

Bookgirl, I hear you on the not being allowed to talk. I think I've only had about three instances in my life where my voice was so bad I didn't talk for days at a time. While pointing at things and giving someone the begger's look, I hated not being able to put what I wanted/needed into words. Hoping you get to talk soon

Not much going on over here. Don't feel like editing today so I'm working on freelance stuffs and looking at images for a possible book cover. I'd love to learn how to photomanip good enough so the seams and such won't show. It looks so easy until you go and try to do it yourself.

Thanks for the warm wishes.

Ah, about the seams, have you tried 'blurring'. I mean you know where you put the object in a photoframe and use the 'soft-edges' setting, so it sort of wisps or blurs right at the edge. That is what I do all the time, and depending on the photo you can take pieces and blur them to, and fit them in to make it look more seamless - I do his in 'Keynote' to make desktop wallpaper, especially when the image is not large enough to take up the whole background. Chuckle. But that's just me.

Cool new av, parump!

Morning all! Trying to work up the gumption to write...soooooo tired. Stayed up writing last night and now I can't wake up. Oi.

Am working on a WIP and amy trying to get some pages done. Laugh, not making much progress. Just cannot get into the head of the character for some reason. Ugh!

Hey Pix, glad you like it. It's actually my desktop, I just sized it down to fit here. She is sooo cool. I could not resist. That and the Selkies are on hold for a moment. Looking thru my older WIP's for something to work on.

Hello all! Hope you've had fabulous days so far.

I was up late (for me) last night, forcing myself to write. I think I added another 1K. But when I read back on it, I think it really sucks. I'm having an "I suck at this" moment. I'm telling myself that first drafts always suck (as do first novels in general), right?

Anyhoo, hopefully I will get out of the funk tonight. Hubs has a meeting to go too, so once the kiddies are in bed, I'll have a quiet place all to myself.

I've noticed I can be struggling to get anything on the page, and then I get to scenes with certain characters and it just flows. I get like 1k in about half an hour. *sigh* I wish all my writing went that well.

Just finished the Li4r 5ociety. Good book, though there were times when it felt like they were trying too hard to identify a character with a specific trait. Still, really enjoyed it. Now class. L3ah Cypr3ss who wrote Mi5twood is going to be visiting our class!

Thanks for the tips Parum. I'm familiar with blurring, but still, some of these images I look at. It must take a lot of know-how!

Bookgirl, I go through spurts like that as well. I think it also may have to do with scenes that really interest and excite us. Even if they aren't fully planned, they're easier to makeup as we go because we like them so much. Then again, I've had times where my characters to something completely out of the norm and then they're the ones writing the story. I love it when they hi-jack.

kyva--I think that's true. What happens to me is I'll have a scene just waiting in my head until I get the chance to let it out. Then it just flows and flows. My problem right now is that I finished a scene like that, I know where I want my characters to go next, I just don't know how to get them there. The transition is getting awkward. I'm kind of thinking I'll just get through it best I can and then write the next scene (which I think will flow). I can fix the middle part in revisions. Hopefully by then I'll have it figured out. Like, I've got Point A and Point C, but they need to get through Point B and getting through Point B is like pulling my teeth out one by one.

kyva said:

Then again, I've had times where my characters to something completely out of the norm and then they're the ones writing the story. I love it when they hi-jack.

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Darius did that to me. And Gina has a couple of times. They're probably my favorite characters.

Pezie, the last novel I wrote I had this one scene I was working on with a great premise, but it took me about two weeks to actually figure out how everything worked. I kept telling myself 'this is the week I'll...' and of course, I had no idea what I was doing.

Unfortunately I cannot stand skipping ahead and risk missing something, so when that happens, I get hung up completely.

Bookgirl, I had a character recently who was so quiet that when he came out and defended himself and the clan, it nearly knocked me off my chair.

All of my characters write for themselves. Every word. I've never written for them in my life. They know what they want to say and who they are, and they just pull me along for the ride. At least up to this one.

That's not what's stopping me. It's that I have already written the book I am working on. Finished it. Done. It was 94,335 words, or roughly 400 page on word-processing documents in its entirety. I love it, I really do, but it got rejected - repeatedly, until there was no one left to send to. He is my absolute favorite character because everything (no matter what it is) is black and white to him. There is a right and a wrong. Always absolute, and so he creates a lot of conflict with his surroundings. Unfortunately the original book was in third person and a character compilation of sorts. Meaning there were a handful of characters who drove the plot. Looking back on it, it was not right for a book. Just not enough to really grab and hold on. So, rather than lose Kett, I decided to take a chance and re-write it from his perspective. Give him the voice, as he ends up being the most prominent and involved character.

It started giving me headaches from the off. The words were beautiful, I could see and hear him speaking them, but each and every one was a milestone. He is so hard to voice like this, because of the influence around him, and his purity of nature. He is jaded, and yet, not so. Knowing right from wrong, and fighting his father's evil. But showing that is going to break my skull in two. Laugh!

Ugh, sorry to hear about the difficulty Parum. He sounds like a great character though and I understand the desire to keep him around instead of giving him up. I'm actually running into the same issue currently as I try to keep my memoir in the voice of a young child. I keep slipping 'out of character' and saying/thinking things a child that age would never say/think.

It's a slow process, but you'll get through it. I have a book I wrote and rewrote about 6 times and it now sits at 160k words. I have not touched it since back in 2001, but it's my baby-my first serious try at writing. I love my characters, but I know so many things need to change if I plan on rewriting it again. I could just write a new story, but I love my characters too much to shove them under the bed.

parumpdragon said:

Unfortunately the original book was in third person and a character compilation of sorts. Meaning there were a handful of character who drove the plot.

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This is kind of the issue I'm facing now. My story is about a brother and sister pair (Liv and Logan...boy name may change, I hadn't really thought about the double L, though I guess that's common in families). I find myself struggling w/ POV as sometimes I want to show the thoughts and feelings of both, since they are a team and are equal. Everything is happening to both of them (for now). But I feel like it's really limited, you can't really be in two people's heads at once, right? So I'm wondering if I should switch it up, write it from Liv's POV exclusively. Showing how Logan feels through what she sees him do and hears him say. Gah. That is probably my answer.

pezie said:

This is kind of the issue I'm facing now. My story is about a brother and sister pair (Liv and Logan...boy name may change, I hadn't really thought about the double L, though I guess that's common in families). I find myself struggling w/ POV as sometimes I want to show the thoughts and feelings of both, since they are a team and are equal. Everything is happening to both of them (for now). But I feel like it's really limited, you can't really be in two people's heads at once, right? So I'm wondering if I should switch it up, write it from Liv's POV exclusively. Showing how Logan feels through what she sees him do and hears him say. Gah. That is probably my answer.

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You could go solo with Liv, but a more interesting route, and one that can make writing a bit more satisfying with this dilema is writing from both character's perspects, and having each be a chapter. One in his voice, and then you double back slightly, and cover part of it in her voice the next chapter, so that we see what is important to both. It really can bring out their difference of voice/POV. I warn you though, it is a bit of a juggle at times. But it makes a good challenge, and compromise. because you don't lose anything.

Done in books like 'Shiver', and the last Twilight novel "Breaking Dawn", when we see Jacob's perspective on it all.

kyva said:

Bookgirl, I had a character recently who was so quiet that when he came out and defended himself and the clan, it nearly knocked me off my chair.

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Darius didn't want to be written the way I planned. He wanted people not to know if he genuinely cared about and wanted to help Melody, or if he was just a creeper.

parumpdragon said:

You could go solo with Liv, but a more interesting route, and one that can make writing a bit more satisfying with this dilema is writing from both character's perspects, and having each be a chapter. One in his voice, and then you double back slightly, and cover part of it in her voice the next chapter, so that we see what is important to both. It really can bring out their difference of voice/POV. I warn you though, it is a bit of a juggle at times. But it makes a good challenge, and compromise. because you don't lose anything.

Done in books like 'Shiver', and the last Twilight novel "Breaking Dawn", when we see Jacob's perspective on it all.

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True. I feel like as I go, I'm in Liv's head more often and only Logan's occasionally, if I get in his head more often, maybe I'll try doing something like that. It could actually work well, now that I'm thinking of it. I know at the end of the book, Liv is going to be contained for a while (a quarantine of sorts) and so she won't have much going on, other than maybe some inner turmoil (yay). So I will have to write from Logan's POV to explain other things going on. Hmmm......

Do you all advise going back and trying this now? Or just writing it all out and sorting later? I find myself questioning my whole process.

Pezie, you could try an alternating POV where you go back and forth each chapter. Chapter one could be Liv's POV, chapter two is Logan's...so on and so forth.

One of my novels required me to do a split POV and while toward the end of the book the POV shifted to just one, it helped show the facts instead of one character reporting to another and the reader learning everything through dialogue.

edit: Parum beat me to it

Bookgirl, I've had that happen as well. It really sucks when you plan on killing someone off only for them to prove their worth. Then you kind of sit there wondering what just happened. It's like they know or something.

kyva said:

Pezie, you could try an alternating POV where you go back and forth each chapter. Chapter one could be Liv's POV, chapter two is Logan's...so on and so forth.

One of my novels required me to do a split POV and while toward the end of the book the POV shifted to just one, it helped show the facts instead of one character reporting to another and the reader learning everything through dialogue.

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So, it doesn't need to be especially equal between the two? That's good. It was one of the issues I was worrying about.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think i will give it a try.

I'm not sure if they have to be equal, I just did what the story required. I'm sure you can favor one more than the other.

Question time. How do YOU pronounce query? Everyone up here says "k-WEAR-y" and it drives me nuts. I say QUEERy.

I say it the same as you Chelsey.

Okay, I am not a teen but I'm not old or even middle aged. Would anyone like to take a look at my book and give me feedback?

We're discussing queries now. I'm twitching thanks to my query-induced breakdown this weekend....

ChelseyBlair said:

We're discussing queries now. I'm twitching thanks to my query-induced breakdown this weekend....

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Sorry. I thought we were discussing plot problem though? How did we get onto Queries? Oh, right, the pronunciation thing... Duh.

Okay, well, I am working on said story and I actually got like 1K! Does that help? Changing the subject, lol.