This Week's Topic:
If you went to high school with your characters, would you be friends?
Wow, now this is definitely a GREAT topic!
Sadly though, I don't think we'd be close friends. We'd probably be friendly, since I like to model my characters after my own psyche, but the truth is, my characters would probably end up being either the "cool kids" or the "loners" and I'd just either be a "geek" or an average joe.
You see, most of my characters either have special abilities or can leap 10 feet in the air with a cutlass and hijack a pirate ship.
This is why I create characters who seem so much cooler than I am...lack of self-confidence?
Anyways, this is actually a good question to reflect upon. I'm really tired right now - it's been a hell of a week - but I WILL think about this all through tomorrow's boring classes because it's a good way to get to know your characters. In fact, if I was in high school with them, I'd like to ask them a few questions...
What are your favourite classes?
Which teacher do you hate?
Like the caf food?
You failing classes? Yeah, I thought so...
But most importantly...
WHO DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON AND WHY??!! HOW??!!
(I'm hopeless when mapping out romantic relationships...)
So what kind of questions would YOU ask your character if they suddenly showed up at your high school one day and you were the given the duty of showing them around?
I apologize for the randomness of my writing this post. Just kinda overwhelmed by now...but have a few blogging topics I can talk about in the near future.
Hey Char,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment on my blog! You asked about writing credentials. Now I'm probably not the most experienced person, but here are a few thing's I'd suggest:
1. I got my editor at Scholastic through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. The awards, aimed at teens in grades 7-12, are held annually with deadlines in the winter. There are tons of different categories, including short stories, poetry, etc, but the category I won was Novel Writing. I would strongly recommend these awards. The Novel Category is awesome, since you get a shot at publication, but winning for any other category is a really good credential to have on your resume.
2. Short stories - Personally, I'm incapable of writing short stories. I wish it weren't so, but I was always more of a novel type. Still, if you're good at shorter fiction, I'd suggest trying to publish in a magazine or literary journal of some sort. Small credentials such as these are really good when it comes to querying agents.
3. Young Arts. This is another national awards program, but it's only for seniors (kids ages 17-18). They also have a Novel Writing category. I'm planning on entering this winter. You said you're sixteen, so you probably couldn't participate until next year, but it's good to keep in mind for the future (they have awesome scholarship opportunities).
I'm planning on querying agents for my next book starting in November. Once you have a novel, and you've polished/revised as much as you can, make sure to look up articles on writing a good query letter. The query letter is, if anything, more important than the credentials in terms of catching an agent's attention. I'm not very good at summarizing my stories, so I worked for weeks perfecting my query letter.
Hope this helps! If you have any more questions, you can email me at katay444@gmail.com.