Feedback wanted!

Hey all!

Writing has official re-commenced.  Oh man.  This is exciting.  :D

After reading Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, some of my story was overthrown.  I had to jettison Skain's negativity and pathetic-ness (say goodbye to the chapters I posted earlier) and rework my romance a bit.  (Plus, my Te function continually keeps finding plot-holes that I absolutely have to cover up, which means plot rework, plot rework, plot rework, re-outlining, scrapping arcs, and creating arcs galore.)

Anyway, I was having some fun this evening, testing Skain's entrance out.  If you happen to pass by this corner of the internet, please read this and let me know your thoughts on Skain!  My goal is to make him more likable.  Hit or miss?

~ ~ ~

Prologue IV: Skain

“All right, ladies, break time!”

Shrike stands outside of the boxing ring, his tattooed arms folded.  In one hand, he waves a crisp sheet of paper; in the other, a fresh cigarette is burning slowly.

Lowering my gloved fists, I pull off my helmet, shaking my sweaty hair away from my scalp.  Antony, my sparring partner, sucks on and spits out his mouthpiece and asks, “What’s up, Shrike?”

“Heinrich sent a letter,” Shrike replies, “for Skain.  Seems like it’s finally about to hit the fan, and they need all hands on deck.”

I step forward, yanking off my gloves between my knees and taking the letter from Shrike.  Heinrich hasn’t contacted me over the last half decade for anything more important than my birthday.  No updates, no mention of future plans, only rare comments on my training.

Why is he suddenly talking now?

  With damp fingers, I unfold the sheet of ivory cotton paper and skim the black printed words.  Antony reads over my shoulder out-loud.

“‘Skain,

“‘The police force in Twainside is soon to begin a project that has been seven years in the making.  Via these letters, we are assembling our high-potential cast from your individual locations to create a special operations task force.  You will be joining a group of five other young men and women as their leader.  Arrangements have been made for your arrival on Friday at 1730.  Plan accordingly.

“‘Your father, Heinrich.’

  “Hey, look at that” Antony remarks, elbowing me with a grin and pointing at Heinrich’s closing, “He still thinks of you as his son.”

I don’t retort.  Partly because I’m too blasé about being adopted to feel any residual shame.  But mostly because I’m distracted as I re-read Heinrich’s brief letter over and over again, emphasizing different sections each time: ‘Twainside’, ‘our high-potential cast’, ‘Friday at 1730’.

  That’s in just two days, I think, feeling a knot form suddenly in my stomach, Will I be ready by then?

I push back my discomfort as best as I can and duck out of the ring, beginning to shelve my boxing gear in silence.  Behind me, Shrike and Antony tell me that they’re going upstairs to get cleaned up, and I raise a hand briefly in acknowledgement.  After a second, the basement door clicks closed, and I’m alone.

For seven years, I’ve known that this day was going to come.  I knew this day was going to come, and I imagined its form in all sorts of ways.  The police would finish their planning, and I would be recalled to the city, maybe put under public eye or hidden as a secret weapon.  Then, back at home, I would fight for Heinrich’s cause, waiting, waiting to see his smile.  Not because I’m starved for attention and want a father’s love, but because I genuinely respect Heinrich, and I want to see him succeed.

  I’ve spent seven years bracing and preparing myself for now.

  Yet, now is here.

And I feel annoyingly vulnerable.

Am I enough?  Has seven years been enough time?

  Bad memories begin to resurface without my permission.  Random stuff about a raised, manicured backhand, angry crying, and a lot of trouble-making and hell-raising.  I shake my head as I rummage through the basement’s mini-fridge for an unopened water bottle and push those bad memories back too.

  Shrike always told me: “Wrong place to go, Skain.  I’m spending every day filling your brain with everything you need to know to conquer on that urban battlefield.  This won’t be like the orphanage.  You’re top of the pyramid now.  No one will touch you unless you let ‘em.”

  And he’s right.  I’m nineteen and independent and pretty much untouchable.  But I still sometimes can get mentally and emotionally stuck in my trapped, controlled days as an eleven year old orphan.  Bad habit of mine.

  Whatever, I think, letting out a sigh of contentment as I pour cold water down my throat.  Friday is in two days.  I have plenty to do in terms of travel preparations before then.

  Besides, whether Shrike is right or wrong about my current aptitude and whether Heinrich wins or not, I’ve been single-mindedly focused on this moment for seven years, and I have no intention of letting it slip out of my grasp.

  I have too many people to prove wrong, too many people to prove right.

  Ready or not - I’m coming.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove

Writing Silence

I feel like I've been swallowing words recently, swallowing until I suffocate.  People keep saying that I'm exposing too much truth, too much darkness, too much reality in my fictional writing.  The world does not need to know everything I want to say.

After all, I'm not responsible for keeping people informed.

If I spoke, people might be offended.

People might think the wrong way.

People might blame others for an "accident."

I'm sorry.

That's why this corner of the internet has been so quiet for so long.

Not just in fiction but stemmed in reality, I've been forced to keep quiet in a few areas about what I did and how I feel.  For example, last month, I was reunited with someone who had been my best friend, and I was told to keep all of the whisperings of doubt and relief that had developed over our distance inside - to only chit-chat.  This week, I was suffering because someone was playing with my heart and blatantly disrespecting my body, and I was told to keep my hatred and my accusations to myself - to forget anything happened.  Over the last several months, I've been trying to help a young girl navigate her early teenage years, but I was told to paint life lightly, not in the brutal battlefield that it is - to stay silent about reality until it was too late.  As a result, she was hurt - hurt exactly as I knew she would be - before I could warn her.

I don't have problems that need answers.

I don't need suggestions for solutions.

I have stories and no outlet.

Fiction is based deeply in reality; there is no fiction apart from reality.  What I've been writing has been "too accurate to life".  I need to blur the intense pain that I've experienced; I need to keep quiet about exactly what happened to others from my point of view - because they might know themselves, but they don't want to hear it.  My characters are too obvious; my plot arcs are too close to touchy subjects: the LGBTQ community, racism, feminism.

I, an author, should delete what I just wrote.

I probably said too much already.

But, haha, oh, this is just the beginning.

Write on!

Clove

C.S. Lewis Writing Advice...and more other stuff

My last post was just over a week ago.

Crazy how much life can change within that time period...

So.  Scholarships.  What happened?
I didn't get either of them.  XP  I'm not surprised with the scholarship for the tech school, because my competitors were flipping incredible, but I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get the other scholarship, as I felt very confident about that one.  As a condolence, the latter college said I'm first on the waiting list in case if some genius got a better offer at a better school and didn't want their full ride, so that was nice-ish, I guess.  (I don't want to even go there anymore, so the condolence is, in reality, empty to me...  :\)
That said, I'm glad I had the opportunity to interview as a fresh little seventeen year old girl.  :P  The experience was both thrilling and humbling, and I had a kick out of competing for forty whopping thousand dollars anyway.  In the meanwhile (i.e. over the last twenty-four hours), I've submitted applications for a few jobs to pay off dem titanic-sized student loans, hue hue hue, so, if I disappear off the face of the planet, welp, I've officially joined the ranks of those broke college students, going to a tech school that's out of my league.  XP

In the meanwhile, I've been rethinking a lot of my writing style and plot arcs recently.  I'll write a sufficient post later about how I've evolved over the last two-ish years and will hopefully announce one final story change before I buckle down (I'm serious this time) and start churning out chapters.  ;)

In the meanwhile, I read this article filled with C.S. Lewis quotes the other day and loved it, so I thought I'd share.  Enjoy, lovely people.  :)

Write on!
Clove

My Favorite Creepy Stories...and other stuff

Whoo!  I am happy to announce (belatedly) that the main of my high school life is done!  I went to my last scholarship interview on the 11th, decided my first college choice (the tech school where my older ESTJ brother attends), and am waiting to hear back from both universities about my scholarships by Friday.  Exciting stuffs.  :)

Anyway, I thought life would calm down, but, duh, I'm an ENTJ.  I don't even know why I kid myself into thinking I'll ever make "free time" for myself when I could be hosting tea parties with my girl friends and studying up on whatever interests me most.  Plus, with work, college (one major project down, one exam to go), and trigonometric identities (super fun, by the way), writing has taken the back seat.

...yet again.  :\

Admittedly, I have been writing.  I'm at about chapter nine in Where the Broken Things Are, but the chapters need more polishing before I'm willing to upload them here, and editing is the most time consuming part of writing for me.

That said, hold onto your horses.  Good stuff is to come.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd share two of my all-time favorite creepy stories.  Strangely enough, I can't stand horror in film, but I love suspense and the like in writing.  There's something unique and talented about authors who can create a world of off-setting tension without actually using creepy music or frightening images.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Cltarlotte Perkins Stetson is one such story.
"The Landlady" by Roald Dahl is the other.

Check them out and let me know if you also find them creepy -- or if it's just me.  (My siblings thought The Landlady was creepy, but The Yellow Wallpaper was just weird.)  Hopefully, in the future, I'll actually do an analysis of what makes the above stories so unnerving and will share my findings here.

For now, the love of my life is calling me to bed.
Looking at you, pillow.  Hehehe.

Write on!
Clove

Character Imbalances - Revisited!

Hey all!

This year in January, I made a resolution to read way more than I did last year.  That said, I've been spending a grand amount of time at my local library on rainy spring days, picking up and skimming through random books that hold interest to me.  During one of these bookshelf scavenges of mine, I ran across a book by Ye Grand Writing Master James Patterson called "Run for Your Life".

As I was reading and my little analytical brain was scouring for elements that could be mimicked in my own writing, I realized that something was missing in my knowledge of character imbalance.

In case if you need to get refreshed, I've previously written two posts about character imbalance, one explaining what it is and one explaining how to use it.  I won't go over those again, but I definitely do need to clarify what I said when I wrote those posts over two years ago.


Earlier, I basically implied that character imbalances must all be character flaws.
THIS IS NOT TRUE.


In "Run for Your Life", the main character Michael Bennett is an inherently relatable character, and yet he doesn't have any personal character flaws.  I felt instantly connected to him, but not because he was struggling in some personal way, such as self-doubt, anger, or pride.  Rather, he was humble and hard-working and extraordinarily likable.


Here's what James Patterson did differently:

1.) He exchanged character flaw for circumstantial pressures.
Rather than giving Detective Michael Bennett a personal inability or inner conflict for character imbalance (like a demented leg that keeps him from getting around while on the job or an inflated ego that blinds him from crucial clues), Patterson gave his main character circumstantial pressures for character imbalance.

As the story opens, the detective comes home for a long day on the field and must instantly care for his sick children...all bleeding ten of them.  That's when you learn that Bennett is a single man whose wife passed away from cancer a little while ago, and he's the only one who can provide for his kids, along with the help of a sweet Irish nanny.

I haven't gotten that far in the book, but you can already tell that Bennett's children will serve as an obstacle to him.  He seeks to protect his children and to care for them, and yet his antagonist is a highly-volatile, psychopathic killer.  Bennett's desire for his children's safety, placed in opposition to his dangerous work, is just as relatable to the reader as any other character-flaw-type issue Patterson could've given Bennett.  After all, which of us haven't struggled in a small way to keep those we love safe from harm?

2.) Simultaneously, Patterson pumped up the "no-bum" characteristics.

In my first post on character development, I talked about a main character like Sam who has it all: brain, brawn, and beauty.  I basically warned against giving your character everything in his favor, as those characters tend to be 2-dimensional and predictable.  Yet, as I thought about it more, Bennett is actually Sam.  He's a detective and a natural problem-solver, definitely no mental slob.  From all of his field work, you know he has a strong physique, and his mixed Irish genes give him above-average looks.

However, because Patterson still gave Bennett character imbalance (albeit in a different form), he is able to keep all of those strengths without making Bennett over-powered, contrived, or arrogant.

In summary, I earlier suggested that you ought to write a flawed character placed in hard circumstances custom-made to fix said character's flaw.  But Patterson writes a well-rounded character placed in hard circumstances that are so difficult, you don't know if even the great character will be able to handle all of the stress.

Now, let me be clear.  I'm not advising that you should only write "circumstantial pressure" character imbalances from this point forward.  In my other posts about "character flaw" character imbalances, I mentioned some fantastic Disney/Pixar movies that have successfully used the "character flaw" character imbalance style.

However, in my current opinion (this could always change, hehehe), I really like circumstantial pressures best, as I've been experimenting with that type of character imbalance in Where The Broken Things Are.  I've been free to up the intensity of the plot while still retaining respect for my main character (or so I hope, hehe), and that's been working best for me.

But, as always, every author is different, so do what works for you.

Any thoughts or comments?  Let me know your preference in the comment section below!

Write on!

Clove

Where The Broken Things Are - Chapter 4

Before the fictional story, here's a real-life story about my other hobby, kids.  :P

Yours truly is actually only an author by night.  By day, I'm a violinist/businesswoman/student...which explains why I write so terribly and infrequently, hehehe.  Anyway, last night, I was over at yon college orchestra, practicing with my orchestra's string sections: violins, violas, cellos, and basses.  Typically, we meet with the whole orchestra (including the percussions, woodwinds, and brass) from 7:15 to 9:05 with about a 10-15 minute break in between.  However, of course, since we were just the string instruments, we went from 7:15 to 9:30 without a break.  (If you didn't know, string instrument players are notoriously hardcore.)

During that time of much sweat, very tears, and such ugh, we had a nasty fight between the first violins (aka. the experts) and the second violins (aka. the amateurs, like me).  The first violins claimed that we weren't playing a particular measure correctly.  (Absurd, I know, right?  x))  The measure in question was in 6/8 time, which means that there are 6 beats per measure, and the notes to be played fell on beat 1, beat 2, and beat 5.  At a zippy tempo, those aren't exactly easy notes to hit, so, at first, we second violinists thought that the issue was our fault.

For nearly thirty minutes, we were working on this one measure with the first violins getting all up in a rage that we couldn't count correctly.  (Let it be known: though we're the "amateurs", we have some excellent second violinists too.  My section leader and I both teach violin, so we have to know our stuff.  I was personally baffled.)  We used every counting practice technique there is known to man: slowing down the tempo, tapping, bellowing (which happens to be very effective, by the way...just look at drill sergeants XD), etc.

Finally, when we were all suitably discombobulated and disgruntled and dis-whatever, I pulled out this old, old, old counting trick, which is to write out how many beats are in each note over the note.  Thus, I would have written a 1 over the first note, a 2, 3, and 4 over the second note, and a 5 and a 6 over the third note.  However, what I actually wrote was a 1 and a 2 over the first note, a 3, 4, and 5 over the second note, and a 6 and a 7 over the third note.  There were 7 beats in a measure that was supposed to only have 6 beats.

I hesitatingly turned over to the guy who was sharing stands at me and showed him what I wrote.  My stand-mate is a white college freshman who has always been pretty nice, but he tends to chuckle at my mistakes (because he happens to be leagues better than me), and I felt like I could've been totally wrong because I was so exhausted by that point.  Anyway, my stand-mate kind of shrugged and said, "That's weird," so I showed our conductor, and, just like that, the entire problem was fixed.

Because.

The STUPID composer.

Wrote a quarter note.

Instead of an eighth note.

In the second violin part.

But not the first violin part.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I burned my violin.

...

Just kidding.

I'm hardcore, remember?  I can take stuff like this.

I can.  I definitely can.

I'm hardcore.

...

Um, while I go cry in a corner, here's the next chapter.  XP

~ ~ ~

Chapter 4

- FOR THE MANY -

     The train paradox.

     Imagine.

     A range of forested hills and mountains.

     A sleek, swift train, slithering through the terrain at an incredible speed.

     A conductor in the train.

     The conductor is transporting goods from one city to another.  He has plenty of fuel and very few concerns, as he has made this exact journey routinely.

     Doesn’t his work seem straightforward and uncomplicated?  All he has to do is maintain the proper course and arrive on time.  To others, failure seems impossible, and struggles seem fabricated for attention.

     Even the conductor initially believes he will be fine.

     But, still…

     We suffocate.

     We suffocate.

     Not long after traveling some distance, the conductor is warned by radio that, on his current path, there are six humans, bound, gagged, and laid on the tracks.  On his only alternative track, there is only one human, who is also restrained on the tracks.  The train is moving too fast to stop in time, and no one else is around to help free the captives.

     The voice over the radio asks the conductor which path he will take.

     If he continues forward, then he avoids blame.

     Fate has made its deliberate choice, not him.

     He was only doing his work.

     If he switches paths, then he is the sole recipient of blame.

     He has made his deliberate choice, not Fate.

     He was tampering with the value of human lives.

     In the first option, he chooses to kill six humans over one and makes his delivery successfully undamaged and on time.  Yet, everyone who hears of the incident - his closest friends, then his family, then the media - they all condemn his gross disregard of life.  They pin him for selfishly evading guilt, they cast him out as a mass murderer, and, eventually, the conductor is also sentenced to death for his crime.

     In the second option, he chooses to kill one human over six, and he is likewise successful in his delivery, receiving pay and satisfying his customer.  Furthermore, because he courageously chose to save six over one, he is cast in a heroic light and rescued from the death penalty.  To outsiders who hear of the incident, this would be the only acceptable choice, given his circumstances.

     Yet, from that point forward, only the conductor knows that he must exist with a spoiled reputation and the burden of his guilt.  Every day, even when he awakes to a full mailbox of seething hatred and unbearable accusation, he must live.  When he is confronted by the begging, sobbing family members of the deceased, he must live.  When his mind is torturous at night and plays on repeat the feel of the impact, the pleading eyes of the one, the task of scraping the blood off the train…

     He must live.

     On this path, he learns to prefer death.

     The young boy, only thirteen years old, sat at Heinrich’s desk, raising his eyes from his textbook after reading the tragic dilemma.  With a deep sigh, he said, “That was a sad one; I didn’t like it.  But which one would you pick, Dad?”

     “There is only one right answer.  Look again.”

     The boy glanced down at the text, frowning.  “The conductor loses both ways, doesn’t he?”

     “No.  Human lives are all of equal value.  Six is greater than one.”

     “But…”  The boy slumped into his crossed arms on the desk.  “I don’t understand why that’s the better choice.  The conductor seems to be far more unhappy by killing one instead of six.”

     “You’re mistaken.  The conductor is unhappy either way.  Furthermore, he is not at liberty to choose what will make him feel the happiest; he must choose what will help the world the most and hurt the fewest number of people.  That is the essence of mercy and of justice.”

     The boy sighed again.  “Well, I don’t see why I’m learning this.”

     Icy blue eyes glinting in the dim light of the office, Heinrich laid his strong, large hands on the desk in front of his adopted son.  “One day, you will be responsible for making the right choice of the train conductor.  If you choose the six, you will inevitably die.  The path of unhappiness is the only path that will lead you to survival.  Remember this lesson, Skain.  The conductor must live.”

~ ~ ~

Write on (AND IF YOU'RE A MUSIC COMPOSER AND YOUR NAME HAPPENS TO BE LEROY ANDERSON, EDIT YOUR FLIPPING WORK, YOU NINCOMPOOP)!
Clove

Where The Broken Things Are - Chapter 3

Hiya, everyone!

How have you all been in the past two days?

On Friday, I went to my first scholarship interview out of two and came back...er...mostly alive, hehe.  :P  I definitely must admit that I was duly (and, arguably, overly) impressed by my competition.  I was definitely expecting them all to be intellectually stunning, but I hadn't thought they were going to be as commanding and aloof and suave and professional as they were.

But, oh well.  Thankfully, I don't get quite as intimidated or awed by Alpha-type people as I did when I was younger.  If anything, I'm just realizing that I can't rest on my "smart for a small-school, suburban girl" laurels anymore.  I've got to blow by the rest of my peer group in high school if I'm going to be even average at this university, so I'm determined and inspired by the people I met to keep working hard and growing my people skills until I graduate!  :D

Hehe, second winds are beautiful.  x)

Anyway, I've got a month break before my next interview, so I'll try to write more during this time.  In the meanwhile, here's Chapter 3 to Where The Broken Things Are.

(As a quick disclaimer, I should add that the organizational style of this new story is very different from what I've done before in The Immortals, which had massive chapters and several breaks in the chapters.  Instead, I've just made each break its own chapter, resulting in many small chapters.  This way, I can introduce and play with the several themes in my story without having to worry so much about flow.

Anyway, don't be concerned that the last chapters and this one don't seem to be coherent.  I promise, once I post Chapters 4-6, everything should make sense, I...um...hope.  :P)

~ ~ ~

Chapter 3

- AS IF IN A DREAM -

     “Do you know why I chose you, Skain?”

     The boy sat in the back of a leather-seated car, his arm wrapped protectively around his little sister.  Behind them, the dirty-paneled orphanage was fading away in the underground darkness, a tombstone rising from the uneven, potholed road.

     The rusty sinks whose water tasted like blood, the rows of creaky, metal-frame bunk beds in that narrow room, the impatient workers and the frequent leg-beatings - they were leaving every nightmare behind for what they had been assured would be a “safe, pleasant home”.

     A home?

     That word had no meaning or context to the boy.

     He only knew of the orphanage, which was neither safe nor pleasant.

     “Skain, out of all of the boys in the orphanage, do you know why I chose you?”

     The boy looked at the driver and then at his sister, who was sitting wide-eyed and self-aware of the details in every second.  Outside, lights, strung from the above-ground’s main power grid, created passing shadows that loomed and then faded with constant, hypnotic regularity.  The buildings along the street were mesmerizing too: blocks of brick, sheer faces of cement, stretching on for miles and miles.  Were there really people in those structures?  They seemed so forsaken…

     “I first saw you when you interfered with Brielle’s beating.  She had stepped out of line, but you took her punishment.  Do you remember this specific instance, Skain?”

     Mute, the boy looked down at his frayed, patched black jeans.

     Of course, he didn’t remember.

     The boy had covered for his sister ever since they had been abandoned in the orphanage.  From the moment he realized that their mother wasn’t returning for them, he took full responsibility for making sure that Brielle was safe, full, and warm, regardless of if that meant he was placed in danger, hunger, or cold.  His shins and calves bore the bruised testimony of his determination, but her happiness kept him driven.

     “I chose you because you were kind to those who did not deserve your kindness.  I have permission from the mayor of our county to train you for a specific purpose, Skain, but I will only keep you as long as you retain your kindness.  Do you understand my meaning?”

     The boy entwined his fingers with Brielle’s.

     Only she realized how much he was sweating, how badly he was trembling.

     Looking again at the driver, the boy set his expression and said, “I understand, sir.”

~ ~ ~

Write on and STAY PASSIONATE, FRIENDS!

Clove