How to Create a Non-Cliche Protagonist Part 2! (Or, Creating Character Personalities)

Hello everyone! It's Me! Margaret!

……

Nothing, huh? Well, yeah, that sorta figures. If there should ever be a post on keeping to a writing schedule, Amanda would definitely write it. I know it's been a while, but I do solemnly swear I look at the posts and make sure this blog exists! I edit. Maybe. Sort of. Well, I do see every post before it goes up.

Why have I not written anything? Apathy. Procrastination. Pick one. I'd win a gold medal in procrastination  and I guarantee you that I'd avoid picking up that medal as long as possible.

Why am I writing now? Have you ever felt the disapproving stare of your best friend, despite being three hundred miles away, and the only form of communication is the internet? …

….yeah.

Okay! Now to the subject of today!

The much anticipated sequel to How to Create a Non-Cliche Protagonist is finally here!

The biggest part of a character is doing their good traits and their bad ones. Their gifts and their flaws. It's a pain in the butt, really. Between making sure the traits complement each other (EX: The character is confident, but sometimes arrogant instead of the character being arrogant yet humble at the exact same time!) and balancing them out so it's realistic, it can be frustrating and confusing as to where to start!

Well, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

There's a cheat sheet.

You heard me. There's a cheat sheet to getting good, realistic character personalities.

Annnndd it has to do with psychology.

So, once upon a time, this old dude looked at the people around him and thought about it them and their personalities for a long time. After a lot of thinking, he came up with an idea.

What if there are a set of basic personalities that pretty much everyone in the world fits into?

And thus, the MBTI Personality Profiles were created. There's exactly 16 profiles, each one being a combination of 4 words, abbreviated to their first letter. Each of those 4 words stand for a trait, that, when combined, create a possible personalities.

And it's generally pretty accurate! My profile fits me exactly!

There are 8 words to choose from. There are two words per category. There are four categories. The categories are  basically: How are we Stimulated?; How do we take in information?; How do we make decisions; and How do we operate on a day to day basis?

In more Simpler terms, it's this:

Are you:

Extroverted OR Introverted (Do you like to interact with people or do you want to mostly be left alone?)

Sensing OR iNtuitive (Are you practical and grounded, depending on your five senses, or are you a bit more up in the air, depending less on what's just in front of you?)

Feeling OR Thinking (Are you emotional, making decisions based on your value systems and emotions, or are you logical, depending more on facts than personal values?)

Perceiving OR Judging (Are you unorganized, spontaneous, or organized and purposeful?)

You pick one from each category that best suits you. A person doesn't have to fit 100% into each one, but they mostly suit one or the other.

As an example! I am an INTP - This means that I'm introverted, intuitive, thinking, and perceiving. In other worlds, I'm a daydreamer that hides in corners, doesn't trust her own emotions, and is deeply unorganized. There's more than that of course, but that's the basic gist.

What does this have to do with your characters?

Well, if you can fit your character into a profile, you'll have a handy list of basic gifts and flaws, how they deal with relationships, friends, and possible careers!

It really is that simple! Of course, your character doesn't have fit the profile exactly, but even if they apply to most of the traits and flaws, that's still gives you a fantastic starting point!

It makes life so much easier than having to simply brainstorm. And, I know I haven't talked much bout cliche-ness here today, but I sorta figured it was obvious. These personalities are created for real human beings to fit themselves into. If your character fits one, then he technically has a personality like a real human being.

Cheating for the win, my friends!

Below are links for your to explore the different types. Why not try yourself while you're at it? ;)

Personality Page: How MBTI Works (If I wasn't clear enough. :) )
Personality Page: The 16 Types

How Bad Do You Want It?

It’s been about a month since my last post. Sorry about that, it’s been a busy past month. School’s started up again. So most of August since my last post was dedicated trying to finish summer homework and get my last few freedoms of summer in. It was the last summer I’ll ever have as a high school student, so I didn’t want to waste it.

Personally I don’t feel like it was wasted. I might not have accomplished as much as I was hoping to, for example I really would have liked to have finished my book revision. However, I did make some desperately needed changes and make it 2/3 through the book. I finished writing a major, soul destroying, three years in the making, total of 319,994 word fan fiction. My little sister and I developed a method of co-writing together. Margaret and I established the bare bones of a story we’d like to co-write together and maybe post here (Bare bones as in we have the basic development of two main characters and the world conception – more news will come when we ourselves know what’s going on. So it’s actually more like we have the bones, but no skeleton yet. Considering we were lucky to have a real conversation every two weeks this summer, I hope you can understand).

But school’s back, and along with it a regular schedule. I am taking a lot of hard classes this year, but I’m also a lot more determined to really focus on literary aspirations this year. If I am indeed going to have two books before twenty (TITLE DROP), I really need to get a move on, especially considering I turn 17 this month.

It also helps that this year in my AP English class we are required to submit a piece of writing every single Monday, though it doesn’t really matter what the writing is. And you can get a virtually unlimited amount of extra credit by submitting multiple pieces (as long as you complete all the other required assignments). So now, not only am I writing just because I’m a writer and that’s what I love to do, but now I can get school credit for it! Is that awesome or what?

You’re jealous, I know you are.

But enough catch up.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I did not manage to finish my book revision by the end of summer. My new goal is that I want to have it ready to send out by my birthday. It’d definitely doable, but it might be hard, especially considering I’d like to keep my grades up and I also decided in my infinite wisdom that senior year would be a great time to all of a sudden get involved in a bunch of clubs and take all the hardest classes. Also, because I finished that giant story that I mentioned earlier, now my brain is free to go and come up with all of these other lovely, tempting story ideas that I want to write.

Last night I found myself done with my homework at 8:30, a rare occurrence – but I’m really trying to be better at getting homework done early this year for exactly the same reason that led me to working on my book instead of the most recent story that has captured my attending.

The most recent little temptress taking occupancy in my brain has been a short little fan fiction that would take a lot of explaining that wouldn't be relevant to this post. I’ve been writing it in between classes and sometimes in class when we’re done with whatever’s going on.

Last night I found myself with a few extra hours to work on my Monday Musing (the name of the assignment for English I mentioned), or in other words, time to write.

When I pulled up Microsoft Word, though, I had to make a decision about what to actually write. I could be productive and actually work on the story instead of letting it die a few scraps of paper in a notebook, or I could be even more productive and work on my book. Just as I was about to pull out the notebook I had been writing the story in, though, this thought occurred to me.

How bad do I really want this book?

I had two ways I was willing to spend my time, working on my book or working on a fan fiction. I wanted to work on the fan fiction. I wanted to write it instead of working on this blog post.

But I asked myself how bad I wanted my book. Did I want it more than I wanted to write that story?

The answer was yes, I did.

Just because I needed extra inspiration, I looked up a Youtube video. Eric Thomas’s “How Bad Do You Want It” speech set to “Time” from Inception and sports videos. The sports were kind of lost on me. Never been good at sports, and no real desire to be good at sports. But the message of the speech itself is really applicable to just about everything.

This is the first part of the speech:

“There was a young man who wanted to make a lot of money, and so he went to a guru. He told the guru he wanted to reach his level of greatness. And so the guru said: “If you want to be on the same level I’m on, I’ll meet you tomorrow at the beach.”

So the young man arrived at 4:00 a.m. He had on a suit, but he should have worn shorts. The old man grabbed his hand and said: “How bad do you want to be successful?” The young responded: “Badly.”

So the old man told the young man to walk out into the water. It was waist deep. The young man thought: “This old man is crazy.”

The young man said to himself: “I want to make money and this guy has me out here swimming. I didn’t ask to be a lifeguard. I want to make money.

Then the old man said: “Come out a little farther,” and the young man did so.

As the young man was up to his shoulders in water he again thought: “This old man is crazy! He’s making money, but he’s crazy.”

The old man said, “Come out a little farther.”

The young man obeyed, but wavered as if he might turn back.

So the old man said: “I thought you said you wanted to be successful?”

“I do,” said the student.

So the old man ordered the young man to come out even farther, and when he did he pushed the young man’s head under water and held it down. Although the young man fought, the old man would not let him up. Just before the young man passed out the old man raised his head above the surface and said: “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”

I don’t know how many of you have asthma today, but if you ever had an asthma attack before and you’re S.O.B. — you’ve got shortness of breath — and you’re wheezing, the only thing you’re trying to do is get some air. You don’t care about no basketball game. You don’t care what’s on TV.  You don’t care about nobody calling you. You don’t care about a party. The only thing you care about when you’re trying to breathe is to get some fresh air. That’s it. And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.

I am here to tell you Number #1, most of you say you want to be successful, but you don’t want it bad. You just kind of want it. You don’t want it badder than you want to party. You don’t want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep. Some of you want sleep more than you want success. And I’m here to tell you today that if you want to be successful you got to be willing to give up sleep.

You have to be willing to work off of three hours of sleep, two hours of sleep. If you really want to be successful, some day you’re going to have to stay up three days in a row because if you go to sleep you might miss the opportunity to be successful. That’s how bad you got to want it.””

I am not telling you in anyways to ignore everything else in your life in order to write. No. I want to breathe a lot more than I want good grades in my classes, and I’m working on that as well as my book, but the point is that if we really want this, we can’t just bandy about.  We can’t just “kind of want it.”

We have to actually want it.

I’ve talked before on this blog that it’s hard. It is. I don’t even know a lot of things about what I’m doing. I’m just muddling through all of this myself. I do know that it’s hard though.

More than that, though, I do know that if I don’t want it bad, if I don’t really want it, if I don’t want it more than I want to write some other story or surf Facebook then it’s not going to happen.

If you don’t want it bad enough, you won’t work hard enough to get it.

The Youtube video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watchfeature=player_embedded&v=_T1KyRtOWOc

It does NOT have the full speech. But it does have epic music. 

Force For Good

http://elitedaily.com/news/world/j-k-rowling-pens-letter-to-girl-who-survived-family-massacre/698490/

I discovered this article today and had to share it.

We've discussed on this blog before Why You Will (Probably) Never Become As Famous As J. K. Rowling, and I'm not here to rehash this. But on the 1/7 billion chance that I, or anyone who reads this does, I would like to say that that's how you do it.

There is nothing that can really make the situation for Cassidy Stay "alright". Since I belong to the same faith as Cassidy I know that she knows that she is going to see her entire family again. That this isn't the end. That doesn't change the fact that they're all gone.

It's a horrible tragedy, but I think that Rowling's actions are beyond admirable. She can't make the situation alright, like I said, but she did something to try to make it just a little better. If there's any chance that any of us could be as famous as Rowling one day, I hope that we could do something like that.

Personally that's a bit of a dream for me. If I could accomplish anything with my writing, I want to make someone's life better. Give them hope for a better day, encourage them to keep living and fighting, to make the best of everything. I want to be a force for good in any way that I can.

I suppose maybe that's why this article hit me so hard, because Rowling's doing what I hope to be able to do some day. What we should all hope to be able to do one day.

Why Do We Write?

Before I can say anything else, I would like to wish a late Happy Birthday to the Goddess of Writing, J.K. Rowling herself and The Boy Who Sold Billions of Books, Harry Potter. Yesterday was indeed their birthdays. Happy Birthday! May we all have 5% of the popularity you do.

This is our 50^th post guys! That’s why it’s coming so late, because I wanted to write something special for post 50 and couldn’t think of anything.

It came to me a couple of days ago, but I didn’t work on it right away because I was trying to finish the revision I’m working on by August (didn’t work. I made it through about 2/3s though. Only problem is that I promised myself I’d actually start working on my summer homework when we got to August. So I have a problem.)

Why do we write?

This is actually a question I’ve asked myself a couple of times.

I cannot speak for everyone. I’m only one person and I can only really tell you why I write and why I think other people do. Maybe you write for completely different reasons.

But whether there are different reasons or not, you and I both have this one crazy dream.

We want to write books.

Why?

Think about. For some reason in our society we put meaning in a couple of scribbles on a page. A couple of scribbles thrown together is a word and when you put those together it’s a sentence. A handful of sentences thrown together is a paragraph. Once you string a whole bunch of paragraphs about the same thing together it becomes a story. Why would anyone want to dedicate their time and their life to that? Mixing and matching squiggles in a way that is has some meaning?

Even if you can mix and match them really well, maybe if you get some sort of thrill from seeing them together in a sentence and a story, why would anyone put themselves through what we are? It’s hard to write a book. It’s not enough to come up with characters or a plot, you have to develop them and have a world to go along with it. You have to pace everything just right to keep people interested, you have to play to your audience, you have make sense, you have to tie up loose ends, you have to stagger your sentences, you have to make sense.

Then once you’ve done all that, you have to go back and rewrite it twenty times. And then you have to send it in to people who act like they want nothing more than to tear your fragile dreams apart and eat them sprinkled on a salad like bacon bits.

Even if you find someone who doesn’t tear them apart and in fact like them, you now have to rewrite it a couple more times and work your rear end off trying to get people to read it all so you can do it again.

Why would anyone put themselves through this?

Some people are just really good writers. For some reason those thrown together squiggles really speak to them. It’s just a fact: some people are naturally better writers than others. Those natural writers can’t really get by without hard work, but they do have a leg up on the writers who don’t. For some of those people, writing is just natural, just something that they do.

There is a lot of attraction to just doing things that you’re good at. It feels really good to be good at something, and so there are people who write just because they’re good at it.

Then again, I’m good at math but I hate it and would literally rather die than get a major in math.

For me, it actually goes back to when I was seven years old. That was when I really got into reading. I think that’s probably where it comes back to for most people. They enjoyed reading. I’ve only ever met one person who likes writing but not reading, and she was dyslexic so reading was painful for her.

My older brother and sister forced me to read the Harry Potter books before they would let me watch the movie that was coming out soon. So I did.

I can’t remember if it was Harry Potter itself or if it was the reading spree that I went on afterwards, but I knew that I wanted to be able to make people as happy as reading made me.

I feel like that what it comes back to for most writers. Most writers enjoy reading and want to be able to create that enjoyment for other people.

Over the years as I’ve spent more and more time writing, I really have been writing since I was 7 and now I’m almost 17 so almost ten years (though I would die of shame if I had to read some of my 7 year old writing. I remember I was going to write a book with my best friend at the time — not Margaret — during Recess. She used my middle name for her main character’s name and I used her middle name for my main character. They both discovered that they had magical powers and had to go off to a school to learn to control their powers. Sound familiar? I still remember the opening scene. They were going to a water park together and Beth ended up breathing underwater) it’s developed.

I don’t know if a desire to make people as happy as you are when you’re reading is enough to carry you through the writer’s block and the revisions and the rejections. But for me, the feeling of creating intricate plots and characters that breathe… that have pasts and experiences and traumas and personalities and worlds for them to live in. It’s about as close to God as we humans can play.

I can’t really think of any other moments when I feel as accomplished as when I finally come up with a solution to a plot problem, or I finally figure out a way to explain a concept that I have in my head.

Or the moment when I finally finished my first book. I don’t even know how to describe it; it’s just as awesome as that moment when you finish a book or a series that has taken you on this incredible journey of up and down and driving you nuts and making you happy at the time. And somehow it all works out, for better or for worse.

I love just the pure creationism of it. I get to come up with worlds and stories just with what’s in my head, my fingers and a computer/paper and pencil. I can explore my own ideas about controversial topics. I can share my opinion and debate it with myself with no one thinking I’m insane. I can share all my clever witticisms that I can never seem to come up with in the real life moment. I can make people laugh and cry and sit on the edge of their seats with anticipation. I get to make people think.

It’s beautiful.

There are lots of beautiful things and talents in this world. I would love to have a talent for art. I don’t. I know a lot of people who do. I think that dancers are amazing. I’m completely jealous of people who can just pick up new languages like that. The world needs people who can solve equations like breathing. We need people who can manipulate chemical compounds like we do words. This world would be a very very sad place if there weren’t people who had the talent of being nice to everyone.

All the same, I’m not sure I would trade my talent for writing and my desire to for any other talent in the world. Because it is hard, and frustrating, and sometimes you just cannot find the right word to save your life.

But I’ve never felt the same pleasure I feel from writing as I do from anything else. And that’s why I write.

Do you agree? Have a completely different opinion? Why do you write?

Importance of Opinions

This week I used some of my connections (this ladies and gentlemen is called networking, and it gets more people jobs than anything else) and managed to get a couple of people, 7 to be exact, to tell me what they thought of the title, summary, and first three chapters of my book.

This survey-ish thing has not been completed as of yet. But I have gained some valuable information from it, actually.

When each of them sent me a message volunteering, I sent them back this:

Please give me complete honesty, don’t try to spare my feelings. If you think something doesn’t fit, or it could be done better, or you just think it stinks, please tell me. That’s exactly what I need to know.

1.       You’re looking at a shelf of books and you see the title “Beguiled”

Does it catch your interest?

Yes

No

Depend on what the cover arts is (In the words of my friend “Of course I’m going to judge a book by its cover, that’s what covers are for!”)

I’m just looking for anything to read, so I’ll check out the summary

2.       Let’s say that you do pick up the book. You turn to the back/inside flap and read the summary

Erin was willing to give her life for her cause. Aviel was willing to do just about anything to prove to his father that he was worthy of his position. Unfortunately when the two first meet, she’s in a cell for trying to give her life for her cause and he has to learn why to be worthy.

The deeper the two delve into the truth behind true loyalty and honest revenge, though, the more they learn that nothing is like it seems and the only people they can trust are the ones least likely — each other.

And your honest reaction is…? If you could tell me pretty much exactly what you thought when you read it, or what you automatically assume about the book.

3.       Do you read the first chapter/couple of pages?

Yes

No

Still bored and looking for a book, so sure

4.     What if a friend had told you that they liked the book?

Still Yes
I'm bored, s/he said it was a good book, sure I'll read a few pages.
I'm hesitant, but I trust my friend enough to read a few pages
Even with their recommendation, eh.
Still no.

If yes, email me at [vinshire.sisters@gmail.com]

If no, thank you for your help! If you didn’t explain why not when you explained your reaction to the summary, please do.

The summary I came up with in like 15 minutes for the purposes of this. The last time I wrote up my summary was for the first draft before I made some serious changes.

I actually got a lot of good feedback. 

By the time I finished responding to the people who wanted to help (someone just contacted me this morning about it actually) the summary looked more like this:

Erin was willing to give her life for her cause. Aviel was willing to do just about anything to prove to his father that he was worthy to take his late brother's position as heir to the throne. Unfortunately when the two first meet, she's in a prison cell for trying to give her life for her cause and he has to learn why to be worthy.

The normal punishment for spying, the punishment all her predecessors faced, is death. Aviel saves her though, on the chance that she'll be the Rebel that will explain the reasoning behind the past five years of destruction. The explanation is nothing like what he expected — and the truth even worse.

But the deeper the two delve into that truth and the secrets behind true loyalty and revenge, the more they learn that nothing is like it seems and the only people they can trust are the ones least likely: each other.


If they responded that they would be interested enough to look at the first few pages there in the bookstore/library (which most everyone has said they would - one person said that she wouldn't if it was the first summary, but she would with the second) I sent them the first chapter with a new set of questions, the last of which was "Are you still interested". If they responded yes to that one, I sent the them the second with its questions, and then the third. 

So far only one person has made it all the way through Chapter 3, but the majority of my test subjects have responded on the first. 

The results have been very helpful. I feel a lot more confident about some of the choices that I made recently. I told you last week how I decided to add a second character's POV instead of keeping it limited to the main character the whole book. So far the responses to that have been that it fits and it's helpful. Because of the situation I can do a lot more explaining about the world and situation through his perspective than hers. 

But at the same time, at least one person opened my eyes with the comment "I kinda really want to know more background information, but ... I must have patience. " to the fact... that there isn't really much world building to be spoken of. So I realized that I really had to knuckle down and do some of that. (And I actually used one of our own articles, actually written by Margaret: World Building 101 - Margaret is a crazy insane world builder. Think Lord of the Rings world building status)

A lot of people told me that there were a couple of cliches, but for first impressions that's not what I'm totally trying to avoid.

I've also learned that friends have a lot of influence on the type of books we read. Almost every person said that they really take their friends suggestions for books into consideration. Which is probably really good for me.

We've talked on this blog before about the extreme Importance of Writing Buddies (if you don't have one, I beg of you to please find one. They are probably more useful to you in writing than anything else), but we also have to remember that for must of us our audience isn't our writing buddy that's also trying to write and is trained to notice any and all flaws so you and themselves have as few as possible... your audience is (for most us at least that are under 20) your friends. The regular people who are looking for something good to read. Sometimes they're not even looking for something good (though they should be).

Even if your book is a literary masterpiece, it's got to appeal to the audience. Maybe you're looking at the wrong audience and you need to adjust thusly. But they're the ones that will or will not be buying your book. And it your goal for them TO buy the book. So it's important to know what they're actually thinking.

We have an advantage in this over the rest of the writers appealing to our audience, because most of us actually are a part of the audience. We go to school with our audience. We know what they're actually reading, know what their actual opinions are. 

Of course that's not always true. Margaret's home schooled, she doesn't spend 6 hours at a High School with 2,000 teenagers. But for most of us, that's a big advantage. We're reading the books aimed at our audience and we know what there's too much of and too little of.

I now know from experience that it's actually a really valuable experience.

You might have a different experience than I do with this obviously. I contacted most of these people online. You might be able to do the same, if you are home schooled or don't interact with a lot of people the same age as your audience. I just posted a little ad in the other story that I write that I needed people to help me with a project I was working on, all you needed to give me was your time and your opinion.

If you do go to school, you could also very easily just print out copies of your first chapter and a summary and hand them out to people at school, asking them for their opinions (come school time, at least).

If you don't know anyone in your audience (I do realize that throughout this post I just kind of assumed that everyone here is writing for a teenager/young adult audience, but hey, maybe I'm wrong) I would definitely suggest working on that, because knowing those people and getting those people to like your writing is called a platform, and it's very important.

Editing Is Like Raising Children...

GUYS I FEEL SO ACCOMPLISHED. I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN WORKING ON MY BOOK. YAY!!! I've probably spent 20 hours, give or take, since last Friday working on editing or on my characters or world building. I feel very accomplished. But nothing like what it will feel like when I actually finish my edits, I'm sure ;)

One of the things I've had to do this week as I've edited is make a few sacrifices. Which is sometimes hard, but you've got to do it.

In Gail Carson Lavine's (the author of one of my absolute favorite children's books Ella Enchanted - seriously, you are never too old for that book. It is just so good.) book Writing Magic (that was a pretty great Christmas gift, Thank You Grandma!), she makes this comment about the difficulties of having to cut something you love, which I happen to love (her comment about it, not the cutting something you love.)

"You will sometimes write paragraph of staggering loveliness, You will! Probably you already have. You’ll want to have those paragraphs tattooed on your forehead where everyone will see them.

Then you’ll discover that they don’t help tell your story. Do not do not DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT bend your story to accommodate your brilliant words.

Revising and cutting take courage and self-confidence. You have to believe that you will write equally brilliant prose again. And you will. There’s no doubt about it. And some of your new brilliant prose will have to be revised or cut. But some will actually fit your story. Hallelujah!"

In this particular case it's not brilliant prose that I had to give up, but when I wrote the book I was very determined that I was going to write in 3rd person limited from the perspective of my main character. And I had every intention of sticking to that.

On Thursday I decided that I was pretty much going to have to add the perspective of the second main character and alternate chapters by POV.

I was really dead set against that when I started writing it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really kind of needed to add it. Because of my main character's position for most of the book, she can't be involved in a lot of the most important stuff going on, she has to be told or figure everything out second hand. Which isn't that bad. I knew that and still was determined to write it with only my main character's POV.

Then I also realized that it was sagging/boring in the beginning and at the end because she wasn't involved in anything. And I couldn't get her involved in anything without sacrificing some important plot points.

Also, the change in one character at the beginning seemed way to out of the blue without that perspective change... Writing from only the perspective of one character has its downsides.

Downsides which I have discovered in the past few weeks trying to edit this thing that I'm trying to turn into a readable book.

Maybe it's going to be the complete opposite for you; you want to have multiple character's perspectives but discover what's best for your book is to only have one.

Really I feel like that's what editing's all about. It's about doing what's best for the book, regardless of what you might want to do. You created this thing when you wrote your first draft. You gave birth to your child. Now you have to raise it into its own person. And you know most of the ideas about what will be good for this child. Go to school, don't eat glue, don't play with knives, don't shove beads up your nose, eat vegetables.

But at the same time the child (in this case your book... and I guess since we're all under 20 kind of sort of us...) needs to grow up into its own person. So don't be afraid to see it growing into something you weren't quite expecting, or doing something differently than you thought it would. As long as it's not on drugs and spending time in jail, you're good!

... well that metaphor came out of no where.

In addition to deciding to add another perspective despite my reluctance, I also figured out a lot more about my antagonist's past and reasoning, which really really needed to happen. An hour sitting outside in the shade with a pad of paper, a pencil, and my thoughts. Did wonders.

Summer Planning

I haven't made a post since school ended for me because I have been super busy. Last week if I wasn't studying for my finals, I was getting ready for Girls Camp, which I've been at all week. So there hasn't been much time to fit in writing a blog post.

But the good news is that it's now summer.

Other than something going on mid-July and summer homework, I'm pretty much free.

I understand if you are not quite as free as I may be. Margaret is not free at all. She's doing two Summer Camps, two summer classes, and get a job, literary goals aside. She's also attempting to figure out some serious plot problems and write her first book, and she's determined to write some blog posts over the summer. This is technically her blog as well. We share it. Even though only 9% of the posts on here were written by her. But out post popular post was written by her, so I'll give her the 10%.

:D

I'm a true best friend.

But even if you are busy, summer is a great time to try to write/edit/work on your novel. I finished my novel not last summer but the summer before that. Planned it, wrote it all, finished I think two days before school started again. It's 6 hours of your day that's now free, more depending on how much homework you have every day.

The biggest problem with depending on summer to get serious work on your novel done is accountability. There's two to three months depending on your school schedule, which is more time than you get for NaNoWriMo. It's easy to slack off, especially during summer which is THE time for slacking off. The summer that I wrote my novel I decided that I was going to get up at 8:00 and work on my novel until 3:00 when I could do whatever I wanted to. The idea was that I was replacing school with novel writing time.

... yeah that last for like a week or two.

I'm not quite sure how I managed to write that whole thing.

The trick is, like most things, to figure out what works for you. The best advice I've found is to write in a different place than you do your internet searching. I probably wrote more in one day at the library than I did in a week at home just because I was in a different environment where I could focus completely on my task and not get distracted by family or "Oh, I should check that."

Another tip I've found very useful, is to write without music playing. I know I've done at least two posts about writing music and it setting the mood for what you're writing, but it's really easier to focus on what you're writing without it. 

If you are going to have it playing, because there are some scene you really do need music to write to, get it on a playlist or some sort of radio channel. iTunes or a Youtube playlist or Spotify or Pandora. Do NOT listen to songs individually on Youtube. That means that every 3 minutes or so you have to go back to your browser to replay or find a new song, which means that every 3 minutes you have contact with one of the biggest distractions there is.

DON'T DO IT.

It's not worth it, I promise.

And of course there is the average tips. Keep the area around where you're typing/writing free of distractions. I've spent a good 3-4 minutes in the middle of this post shinning my nails because the little block thingy was next to me. 

I find it's better to have full meals rather than just snack because then you're stopping to eat your chips or carrots, depending on how healthy you are.

The best tip of all though is that you really need to just get into a habit. Humans are naturally creatures of habit. It takes about a month to create or break a habit, so try to find what works the best for you and STICK TO IT (See my post on consistency). 

I would also like to take the time to point out that this is really where we as young writers have an advantage over most adult writers. Only adults employed by school systems really have any summer breaks, and even then a lot of them live off teacher salaries and have to work during the summer to survive. But most of us are probably still being provided for by our parents and are more or less free during the summer time. We're practically given two to three months of time that we could spend writing. 

Take advantage of it! 

This is my last real summer of high school, so your can bet I'm going to. My goal for this summer is to try to edit my book, naturally. My goal is to be able to start sending my manuscript off during Senior year. The two biggest things I need to accomplish with my novel over the summer is figure out a sub plot and what I'm doing with my bad guy.

Have a great summer guys!

Words Are the Best

When we finished the AP US History test, my teacher decided that he didn't want to spend the entire next few weeks doing nothing, so he assigned us a project. Of course the main purpose of the class is over, so instead of making the project history related, what we had to do instead was come up with a presentation on what is "The Best".

It could be the best food, the best sport, the best athlete, the best movie. A lot of people did the best club/elective on campus. Best past time, best over all.

This project was also the first time in my entire academic career that signing up last landed me with the last day. That last day was today.

I had no idea what to do for the project for a while, but I eventually decided that I was going to do my presentation on how "Words are the best form of communication." If you remember my post about the Worth of 1000 Words, I really hate the phrase "A  picture's worth 1000 words" because it degrades the worth of words. This presentation ended up being more of an excuse for me to try to dismiss that phrase.

You've got to understand, as someone who works primarily with words, it comes off almost as an insult to me. Which I'm fully aware is irrational, but whenever they say that it makes me feel like in a way they're belittling me and what I'm try to create. So this presentation turned out a little (read: highly) passionate.

I asked someone to record my entire presentation, but it ended up being 17 minutes long, so the file was far too huge to send to myself. So I can't show you that, but I can link you to the Power Point.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zN0QgEv5nSq1_LIqoeGNFoMOVU-7kWXp7PJY_-eigSk/edit#slide=id.p13

It won't be as good as the actually presentation because I can't share with you all of my intonations and comments, but I did my best to add those into the presentation so it'd make a little more sense. 

Enjoy though!

Fan Fiction: An Argument for It

Both of us have mentioned it at one time or another, but that’s because it’s meant a lot to both of us.

Fan Fiction.

Most of you have probably heard of it, if you don’t write it yourself. Let’s be honest here, online blog for teenage writers? Most of us probably know about it. This fall I have been writing fan fiction for five years. Margaret started writing it a few months before I did. It’s how we met. We were both writing fan fiction for a website called Artemis Fowl Confidential.

You can see why I consider fan fiction one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. That being said, I am not ignorant to the ugly side of it. There is a lot of ugliness.

A lot.

Just in case you don’t know, fan fiction is a story that is written by a fan of a book/movie/show ect. These fans come up with stories or ideas about the characters or the world and write them. If you want a new ending, you can write it. If you think of something that was mentioned in the book that was never realized, you can write it or find it.

That of course opens the door to quite a bit of ugly. When it comes to couples in the fandom (a mix of the word fan and kingdom, it’s the collection of fans of a certain book/movie/show ect. and everything that they do to show their love for it) things get really ugly. There are crazy shippers (people who support certain people in a relation’ship’) who will attempt to murder you if you try to tell them that their ship is wrong or not going to happen.

Not only that, but you’re sticking a bunch of (usually) inexperienced writers in a situation where they can go crazy and write anything they want. That leads to a LOT of bad writing. Probably only about half of the fics (the term applied to a fan fiction story) you find on FanFiction.net (the main website for fan fiction) are legible, despite the fact that they’re all typed. Bad grammar, poor sentence structure, horrible characterization, cliché ideas, cliché characters that are basically their attempts to stick themselves in the story… We’ve mentioned it before in the Non Cliché Protagonists Post. Mary Sues are the hated Queens of Fan Fiction-dom.

And that’s not even going into the PWP (porn without plot)/M (Mature rated) fics, or how it’s a gateway into the worst parts of fandom.

All this being said, it’s probably done more for my writing than anything else I’ve done.

First, most obviously, it’s practice. I mentioned in the last post about consistency ( Consistency is the Goal to Meet Your Goal) that I’ve written 2000+ words of a story pretty consistently every week for the past three years. That’s a fan fic. If you start at the first chapter and make your way all the way through to where I’m writing now, you can tell that there’s been growth in my writing.

Just the simple act of writing constantly improves your writing. And if you’re a dedicated fan of whatever it is you’re writing, you will probably be writing pretty consistently (sometimes too consistently when it interferes with writing your actual material).

Not only is it practice, but if you’re in the right fandom/website, a lot of time there are other writers who are willing to give you advice or tell you what you did right or did wrong. Especially when you’re trying out a new style it’s a great place to try to out because you can tell from the reviews whether the readers think that you pulled it off or not.

Which brings me to another valuable skill I’ve learned from my years of writing fan fiction. Learning how to take constructive criticism. Not everyone is going to be nice. In fact, depending on your skill level they often will not be. But there is a difference between someone just being plain rude/mean (flamers) and people who are offering constructive criticism which is a fine line that you learn after enough reviews. Being able to tell the difference and bending your pride enough to at least take someone’s advice is an incredible useful skill.

In fact, it’s a skill that’s not only useful in writing, when you’re getting rejections from agents or editors or either one is giving you suggestions for what to do with your manuscript, but it’s just useful in life.

You learn how to develop characters. The mistake almost every new fan fiction writer makes is trying to write an OC (original character) that turns into a Mary Sue or warps one of the characters so that they’re completely OOC (off original character). I did it. My first major fan fiction involved my OC, Amanda, making the main character, a character who is not interested in romantic involvement at all, fall in love with her. She also spoke eight languages, had over 200 IQ points, came from a poor family, was beautiful… It didn’t help that the title of the story was “Amanda’s First Adventure”.

You learn to not make those mistakes. Making a mistake like that will (hopefully) keep you from getting a book picked up by any agent or editor.

It’s also an introduction to all different sorts of formats and styles. You can do drabbles, one shots, three shots, full length stories. You can write stream of consciousness, traditional, interrupted, scene skipping, flashbacks. Decide whether you like first person or third person. Try present tense. Figure out how to pace a scene so that it’s not going too fast or dragging on. Learn that you really do need to plan out what’s going to happen in a story or face epic writers block (See Margaret’s post on the Brick Wall from Hell).

Maybe even make a best friend.

Consistency is the Goal to Meet Your Goals

I think that just about anyone can agree that the key to success in most things is consistency.

I talked about this a bit in my post about New Year’s Resolutions, because it really is a universal principle. Practice makes permanent as my English teacher says, and it really does. One of the number one thing that people look for when hiring employees is consistency. They want people who will be excellent and continue to be excellent.

Now I have never been the best at starting habits. It’s hard. I forget, I get lazy, other things get in the way. And not all things require it. Some things are just things you bang out in one sitting, you don’t need to do the same thing every single day. You know how I said in New Year’s Resolution to edit for 20 minutes every day? Hasn’t happened. But I have started posting pretty consistently every Friday. Sure I skip a week here or there, but for the most part I usually manage to get something up.

Trust me, if I could tell you what made the difference or what it was that made it so I did one and not the other, I would use that secret all the time and would soon become the perfect person. Two weeks ago I started writing in my journal, and have since done so every night since. Do I know why it worked this time and not the 5 billion other times I’ve tried to start a habit of writing in a journal? No clue!

But I do know that most of the really cool things I’ve managed to accomplish writing wise have happened because I’ve been stubborn about consistency.

I think we can all say getting a novel itself requires some measure of sheer headed stubbornness. You have to refuse to let the writer's block get the best of you or keep working even when you want to do anything else. 

There is a set of stories that I write online, and I’ve updated them almost every single Sunday for the past two and a half years. Most chapters are 2000 words or more. I’ve all together written nearly 300,000 words for that story. And I’ve gotten quite a few fans off it, several of whom have told me that if I ever chose to write a full length novel they would be interested in checking it out.

Writing this blog once every Friday. Usually most writing bloggers say to update once a day or two days, and while we're not quite there (baby steps, baby steps), writing once a week has actually done a lot to the number of people visiting the blog. It’s not exactly about to become one of the most popular writing blogs ever, in fact when you Google search “Blog for young writers by young writers” which is the tag line for this blog, it doesn’t show up in the first five pages. But if you search “Two books before twenty” it is the first option!

It hasn’t always been.

Now there is a measure of quality. Quality is also very important. Even if I updated every single day and Margaret updated every other day so that some days we had two posts, it wouldn’t mean much unless we had a post that actually attracted people’s attention. And you have to have quality to keep people there/here.

But then again… there are a lot of people who manage to make a lot of money without writing anything spectacular, but they write a lot of it. John Grisham has written more or less the same lawyer story 20 times. Most of the “Kindle Millionaires” (people who have made a million or more dollars selling e-books) aren’t writing anything that would change the world of writing forever (if they weren’t making a lot of money off it online)… but they are writing a lot of it.

Consistency matters. You can hide writing skills that aren’t the best with consistency. But you certainly can’t hide inconsistency with good writing. All the best writing in the world will mean nothing if you can’t finish the book.

Of course the best solution is to have both. That’s the best way to go. But you have to have consistency and persistency.

Reblog: How to Do Your Chores in 12 Easy Steps

So today was my first day at a job that I'm going to be doing on Saturdays. We know a newlywed couple who both work full time and she has physical disabilities so too much physical exertion is painful, so she's hired me to help her clean up on Saturday for a few hours. I'm pretty good at cleaning other people's stuff, and I need money (lots of stuff to save up for), so it's a pretty good fit.

However, while I am good at cleaning other people's stuff, I am horrible at cleaning my own. I'm lazy, I get used to the mess and dealing with it, if I ever do decide to actually go and clean I'll get distracted or I'll realize just how much I have to clean and start trying to clean too many things at once, or I won't clean up cleaning up (as in putting away the cleaning materials). 

Which leads me to my reblog.

This is a brilliant little article that I found once, and it's just an awesome blog in general.

How to Do Your Chores in 12 Easy Steps by Nathan Bransford

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/05/how-to-do-your-chores-in-12-easy-steps.html

"Step 1: Start a novel

Step 2: Write 50 pages in a month

Step 3: Write 5 pages in the next two months

Step 4: Stare at the screen

Step 5: Despair

Step 6: Open a closet

Step 7: Eye cleaning supplies longingly

Step 8: Clean every square inch of your apartment/house, marveling at how much more fun you're having than writing your novel

Step 9: Find a filing cabinet, organize it

Step 10: Find tiles, scrub them with a toothbrush

Step 11: Run out of things to clean, return to computer

Step 12: Stare at the screen in a freakishly clean living space"

And the funniest thing about it?

I can't count how many times it's worked for me.

How Writing Novels Helps You Pass Your AP English Test

So today I took the dreaded AP English language and Composition test. I'm technically not allowed to talk about anything on the test because I signed the little "I will not talk about any of the stuff on this test until it's released" section on the booklet that you had to sign to take the test, so I will not do that, but I will tell you that the multiple choice was harder than I thought it would be, but the essays weren't that bad.

Probably because going into the test I was not worried about the essays much at all. Not only were the essays just about the only think we worked on all year in my class, but even before the class my essays were already pretty good.

Guess why?

As this is a writing blog, I think you can all manage to guess the answer to that.

Even though essays and novel are rather different writing forms, you'll either be surprised or already know how much extensive narrative writing skills can help you write good essays. 

At the bare minimum, you've got the writing mechanics down. You know how to form a sentence and that sentences form a paragraph. Even with spell check, you should have a good enough grasp on spelling an punctuation that the grader won't cringe.

If you're really dedicated to/good at writing, you also probably know how to develop an idea. Good essays aren't just thesis, evidence, idea, conclusion. (Unless you're in my 7th grade English teacher's class. In that woman's class you conformed to the strict format or she would fail you on the spot. So if you are in the younger grades (7/8) stick to the format and have hope for a future in which you can break free from suck limited writing. There is hope, I promise.) 

They have flow. The idea is developed and supported and expanded, just like a plot or a character. A Character is typically introduced and developed in the readers mind, then some of their background is explained so that we can understand them, then the character ( if dynamic) grows as a person/character.

Usually when writing a novel, you start to use a lot of different methods and structures and sentence lengths ect. It would be really boring to read a book with the same sized sentences and the same sized paragraphs and the same words. Unless it's a purposeful styles, "he said","she said" books are boring.

In short, you develop a certain repertoire of skills that don't just apply to narratives. They work and even should be used in essays. it makes them much better.

And of course, writers are more familiar with taking constructive criticism. Or at least you should be. So we're a lot better at taking a grade lower than we wanted because we can take that to improve our writing better than most kids who are used to getting As on everything.

We also tend to be a lot better at sitting in one place for 2+ hours, doing nothing but writing.

That helps a lot.