I Missed University So Much

I send out the biggest apology to everyone I usually follow for my absence. Last week was a rush to get myself organised for my return to university and then the past three days were spent settling back in. Guess who's just started their second trimester at Deakin?! This chick! Right here! I love being back on res, constantly socialising and learning things. My new timetable is pretty similar to the last trimester: one writing unit (Writing Spaces), one philosophy unit (World Religions), one journalism unit (Contemporary Journalism B), and one elective (Texts and Images). Still a measly nine contact hours, still only three days a week with classes. I've decided I need something to occupy myself in all that free time aside from just writing, because I'd also like a little bit of income, so the part-time job-hunt has begun and I've already had one rejection. Yay!

As well as getting to see all of my friends from the last trimester, both on res and in classes, the new timetable means that I'm meeting new people too, especially in my tutorials and at all of the welcome-back-to-res events. The thing I love about meeting new people, as a writer, is finding particular traits, characteristics and unique details that I could use in my own characters. For example, I was sitting with a group of friends at the campus bar after class yesterday and started talking to someone I'd met before, but never actually befriended. I was impressed to find out that he lives on a farm, where he grew up... not just any farm, but a rose farm. It's a place I'd never considered putting a character, a detail I'd never thought to give one, but I found the idea intriguing and potentially symbolic, although perhaps a little cliche once the symbolism starts coming into it.

I have one class to go to later this afternoon before I can say it's the weekend. I wonder if I'll meet anyone else I can make friends with and then quietly pull apart to find a potential character.

On another note, I received an email offering me a free one-month premium account on grammarly.com, which is an online word-processor. I've been asked to review the programme.

Has anybody else ever met someone and thought that a certain aspect of them could be used as a part of a character, in your own story? Does anybody here use Grammarly or another online word-processor? 

- Bonnee.

This and That About My Writing

First up, here's the most current version of the excerpt I posted from my manuscript a couple of posts ago, after a few people gave me some good feedback:

It was warm inside the Training House. The room was large, with tables and chairs against one wall. A stone fireplace crackled with life at the far end of the room. The three children walked into the changing rooms at the back of the building where they put their training gear on. Their uniforms were white, but Chihiro’s uniform had a golden insignia of an Evergreen Tree sewn into its back and on its breast, signifying that she was a Master of the Arts, just like Master Yuusan. Her siblings were still only students. The last parts of their uniforms were their belts: all black.

Feel free to give me more feedback!

Question: Should I workshop snippets of my manuscript on my blog again? What do you all think?

In other news, I won a free signed book, which I think is pretty cool: Love-Shy, by Lili Wilkinson. I read a snippet of it on her blog which I enjoyed and I am looking forward to reading more!

Last up, I finally finished reading The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman, which I am studying in English this term. And I am now a quarter of the way through a screenplay which I am studying in literature: Bastard Boys by Sue Smith.

And just because I managed to edit another three pages of my manuscript since the last blog post (good effort, I know right?), here are the last few characters who I managed to visually create using THIS programme.

Madam Koi: This is the closest I could make her. Her hair is meant to be really crazy! But otherwise, this is pretty cool. I love the way I was able to make her eyes.

The Witch of the White Lands: Again, best impression, but I'm quite pleased with it. The programme didn't offer black lips though.

The Witch of Thorns: I can't complain that much about this one. She's not that big of a character in A Fallen Star, but I do plan on making a sequel in which she plays a much bigger role. I just thought I'd make her too because the programme wouldn't let me make male characters and I was really bored.







Enjoy!

- Bonnee.

Trump Cards of the Slack

Happy Easter, folks!

So I managed to go from following 60 blogs to following 89 in the space of an hour on Good Friday. Damn you Jane Friedman for posting so many good links... The number of blogs I follow has since increased. I have probably just signed myself up for a suicide mission, as I wasn't reading all of the new posts from blogs I was already following... and I've just increased my list by half. Oh well! The more resources the merrier! :)

In other news, I have been such a slack writer/editor person and hardly touched my manuscript whatsoever since before the Easter school holidays, except from the little workshop I did on the short passage I posted last blog entry. And now we are more than half way through those two weeks of freedom from school. I'd like to blame the amount of holiday homework which was mercilessly dumped on me, but in all honestly, I've hardly touched that either. Oops...

So here is my blog-worthy trump card. A few years ago, during the inception/first draft of Evergreen: A Fallen Star, I stumbled upon a female anime creator on deviantART which I can no longer find the link to (if anyone recognizes the programme and knows where I can find it, a link would be lovely), and so I created some of the female characters from Evergreen to the best of the programme's and my own combined ability. Here are the results.

Chihiro: I could only find long hair which was straight in this programme, so this is as close as I could get. I would have liked to make her hair a bit wavier, curlier, crazier... not over the top, but with a little bit more life. Now that I look at it, her eyes and eyebrows are not right. At least not this combination. Her eyebrows should be more raised; she's supposed to be a confident character. This picture highlights her motherly/gentle side more than her overall personality does. The smile is right though, and I can't complain about the rest.

Sakura: This is probably the best visual recreation of any of the characters that I could generate. Her hair should be perhaps a touch darker, and I wrote it as braided, not like this. Otherwise she is perfect and I lover her too much for words.








That's all for now! Tell me what you think of these characters and I will get back to you soon (either next post or the one after that) with a few more visual recreations of my characters.

- Bonnee.

Edit: Thank you to Giora for helping me find the programme which I used to create the visual images of these characters. Please click here to check it out! 

My Canon of Literature

After reading a blog by The Bookshelf Muse last night, about 'canon of literature' I had a bit of a think about it. The blog entry I read explains that your canon of literature is a list of books out of all that you've read which touched you so deeply that you still go back to them years later. The Bookshelf Muse blog explains that it is important to identify your own canon; it shows where you came from and what you value as a writer.

So today, I thought I'd share my little list. I'm only 17 and was not a big reader as a child, so it's not an extensive list at this point. But here it is.

Jenny Angel by Margaret Wild. Yes, it's a picture-story book, wow! This was illustrated by Anna Spudvilas and I remember first reading it in yr 2... well, I remember my teacher reading it to the class. And I remember thinking that it was beautiful. After I moved schools and began to hang out in the library a lot, I remember seeing it when I was in yr 7 and picking it up to read it, because of all the books from my childhood, I remembered it. Since finding it in my school library, I have returned for the pleasure of reading that book over and over and over again. It's a sad story about a girl who's little brother is sick, and she believes that she is his guardian angel and can save him. Now I see that I value sibling relationships in my writing, which is very evident in my novel Evergreen: A Fallen Star, where the three protagonists are brothers and sisters, yet best friends all the way. I will eventually obtain my own copy of Jenny Angel... it's been a whole 10 years since I first read it and I'm still in love with it.

Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. I read this for the first time in yr 6, so I was about 12. How many times did I read it? At least 5 in that one year. It's by the same author who wrote the Inkworld trilogy (Inkheart, which I also loved, and Inkspell and Inkdeath which I am yet to read). This story is about a silver dragon and his brownie friend who are on a mission to find a new place for the other silver dragons to live safely, because humans are invading their home. On an epic journey to the Himalayas, they befriend a human and a manikin worker of their enemy; a gold dragon, who's diet had consisted of silver dragons until they had disappeared. Obviously fantasy and friendship; topics which I love to write. The idea of the epic journey to an unknown place, and an enemy who remains unknown to the protagonists for a long while, is found in Evergreen: A Fallen Star. I will admit now that the copy of Dragon Rider I own is actually my mothers, but she's never read it and never will, and I doubt she'll notice it's absence now that I've abducted it from her bookshelf and placed it on my own.

Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French. I read this first in yr 5 (so I was 11 yrs old) and I didn't understand much of it at all. But what I did understand, I enjoyed, and I fell in love with it completely two years later, when I had to study it for English at school, and understood it better. A girl tells her friend a story as they wait for their bus to take them to school; the story of Hitler's daughter. As far as her friends are concerned, it's just that; a story. But one boy is suspicious and curious and wants to know more, undecided on whether he believes the story to be true or not. All the while, the story is told beautifully to the readers as they flash-back through time to World War II. The end of the story has that good old sting-in-the-tail effect and leaves the readers unsure of how fictional the story is too. I can't think of any examples where this books has been reflected in Evergreen: A Fallen Star, except that on more than one occasion, stories are told between the characters. I did have a copy of this book at some point, but it's disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm pretty sure I gave it to my best friend's little brother when he had to study it for English a few years later, and I never got it back because the friendship fell apart and I am no longer on speaking terms with that family. Damn...

So that's my short list of canon literature, and my little rant about it. Has anyone else read any of these books? What about you guys, what do your canon lists consist of and why? I hope to add more titles to this list in due time.

- Bonnee.

The Weird and Wonderful Ways of Writers: With Hana Brightside

A quick recap: last blog entry, I spoke of a conversation with my friend Hana and explained the art of writer role-play. This post is about one of my writer role-play experiences.

Wild and wonderful as Hana and I are, we decided to have our first Skype conversation together and try a bit of a character role-play workshop, where I was Chihiro from my novel Evergreen: A Fallen Star and she was a character from her current writing project; the historical character Billy the Kid. It was an awkward and short lived conversation that was sidetracked by spiders and dinner, but it was totally fun and totally worth it and we're totally going to do it again. 

I do believe that this is one of many examples of the weird and wonderful ways of writers. :) 

Anyone care to share any of their own wacky experiences or tactics? 

- Bonnee 

Writer Role-Play: With Hana Brightside

In the same conversation about Evergreen: A Fallen Star with my friend Hana, which I spoke about last blog entry, I went on to admit that whenever I did writer role-play to develop characters and plot, I usually became Chihiro. Then I had to explain writer role-play... me and my big mouth.

Writer role-play, as far as I take it and use it, is when an author acts out the part or parts of one of their characters. This could be anything from a conversation to an action scene, and the process could be repeated with changes until the author is satisfied they have created something worth adding to their story.  

I think of it in terms of drama, which I studied at school as one of my final subjects. It's like a private improvisation work-shop where you get to theatrically explore and develop your characters. I find that if I am having trouble doing this on paper, an activity like this will give me a bit of a boost. I can establish my character's voice, movement, gestures, facial expressions, and I can explore their moods and reactions to circumstances on a physical level. Or I can literally talk myself through a conversation with them until they say what I want them to say, rather than having to backspace every time I write it and am not happy with it.

Has anyone else out there tried writer role-play or something similar?

My next blog entry will be about a particular experience of my own, so stay tuned.

- Bonnee.

Relating to Your Characters: With Hana Brightside

My friend Hana, a fellow young writer, asked me recently what my novel was about and so I began to explain Evergreen: A Fallen Star to her. She was kind enough to ask about the main character(s) and then asked me which one I related to most. 

I'll share my answer here: of the three main characters, I relate most to Chihiro. Not because she is based on me, but because she is someone I strive to be like. I will admit that she was originally based on me, but she is a far more awesome version of myself which hasn't been fully generated into reality... yet. 

Chihiro: The 19-year-old older sister of the Imperial siblings. Chihiro is a motherly figure for her younger brother and sister and an understanding, thoughtful friend whom they confide in and often receive good advice from. She is strong willed, influential, intelligent and the immediate heir to the Imperial Throne providing she marries before the responsibility is passed down. 

More information about Evergreen and it's characters can be found in a previous blog entry here.

- Bonnee. 

The Joys of Editing

Going over my novel, again, I still manage to find mistakes, useless and unimportant details and badly-worded scenes. I have deleted so many "moments" within the text that it's not even funny anymore; and what's more, I haven't even gone over HALF of it yet!

But it's worth it. My first chapter alone might be a whole 150 or so words shorter, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The beginning felt too drawn out as I read it over, and so I've added hints of the conflict sooner. This should also introduce the conflict more smoothly.

Another thing I'm changing are some character names. While all of the main characters have Japanese names, some of the minor characters don't quite fit into the scene. I've SORT OF picked out replacement names and I'll have to change them as I go. Naming characters in your book is like naming your child while you're still pregnant; you've still got time to change your mind if you reconsider, and you want to choose the right name because once it's published, there's no taking it back.

I read an interesting blog post about naming characters and babies here a week or so ago if anyone's interested.

"I've Lost Mine" by yours truly. 

In other news, "Emma" is horrible even though I've finished reading it. Never read anything by Jane Austen if you can avoid it. Having said that, if you can manage a Jane Austen book, you can do anything. "The Rugmaker of Mazar-E-Sharif" by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman is a breeze in comparison!

Ta-ta for now everyone. Check back soon for more blog updates!
- Bonnee xx

Evergreen: A Fallen Star

This blog will be about my novel. Includes: Previews/snippets from the novel, about setting, and main character bios. 

"The autumn breeze was sweet and refreshing on the skin of the three siblings who came dashing out into the gardens that early morning. The air was pleasantly icy, and its sweetness came from the Evergreens, the fruit trees and the exotic flowers. There was frost on the grass, telling them that winter was approaching fast, and would arrive before autumn’s end. The frost was disturbed as they raced into the gardens." 

(Opening paragraph from the novel.) 

What is 'Evergreen' about?

Very briefly, three kids saving the world. 

Not quite so briefly, but still briefly, 'Evergreen' is about three teenagers, brothers and sisters, who embark on a journey to save the life-source of their world, after a fortuneteller shares a prophecy revealing them to be the ones destine to be the heroes. 

"‘Ebony wings of a nightingale

Soft, black feathers of a nightingale

Sweet, sad song of a nightingale

My dear angel, nightingale…’"

(The siblings' childhood lullaby, Verse 1.)

So... Where is this novel set?

'Evergreen' is set in an alternative universe where the Imperial Family reigns over the peaceful and prosperous Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom is full of life which is given and protected by the sacred Evergreen Trees; the life-source of the entire Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom is a heavily Asian (particularly Japanese) inspired place. 

"‘Delicate wings of a sparrow

Soft, brown body of a sparrow

Sweet, sad flight of a sparrow

My dear angel, sparrow…’"

(The siblings' childhood lullaby, Verse 2.)

Who are these characters anyway? What are their names?

For this, I'll give you a bit of a character bio for the main protagonists and antagonists.

First up, the good guys!

Chihiro: The 19-year-old older sister of the Imperial siblings. Chihiro is a motherly figure for her younger brother and sister and an understanding, thoughtful friend whom they confide in and often receive good advice from. She is strong willed, influential, intelligent and the immediate heir to the Imperial Throne providing she marries before the responsibility is passed down. 

Zutto: The middle child of 16. He is quiet and pessimistic and doesn't choose to socialize with anyone beyond his two sisters. Chihiro is his trustworthy best friend, and he would do anything to keep his precious little sister safe. If Chihiro hasn't married by the time the responsibilities of the throne are ready to be passed down, it will be his place to step up. 

Sakura: The youngest of the three who turns 13 early into the story. Sakura is still very childish and has never expected the responsibilities of the throne to end up falling on her, and therefore does not act so level-headed and responsible as her two older siblings do. She looks up to them and depends on them. Zutto is her best friend and his opinion is most important to her. 

"“Colourful wings of a butterfly

Soft, black body of a butterfly

Sweet, sad flutter of a butterfly

My dear angel, butterfly…”"

(The siblings' childhood lullaby, Verse 3.)

And now for the bad guys!

The Witch of the White Lands: This evil and ancient woman has been waiting thousands of years to take her revenge on the human race for the injustice they did her by rejecting her dark magic and therefore rejecting everything she was. She can feel when the Evergreen Trees begin to fail and her aim is to use the Middle Kingdom's crisis to her advantage. But to achieve this, she has to get past the Imperial Children, and to save the world, they have to get past her. 

The Witch of Thorns: The Witch of the White Lands's twin sister who lives in another realm of their universe; the same realm in which the Imperial Children will find the answer to their crisis. 

"“Nightingale, sparrow, butterfly

Far from home where they will fly

Up the mountain to a better place

Where the enemy will not show her face

As they’re searching for a star

Back home we wonder where they are

And hope they come back to us in time

Before I sing my final rhyme

Nightingale, sparrow; fly on home

My dear butterfly, cease to roam

Time is short so come home soon

Before our Kingdom meets its doom…”"

(The fortune-teller's prophecy.)

So tell me, my audience...

What do you think of the previews I slipped in there? What do you think of my setting and my characters? Are you interested in my novel yet? 

Any questions? 

Leave me a comment if you read this, anonymous comments are welcome. 

- Bonnee.