nindogs

I received an email the other day from a reader (who wanted to remain anonymous in this post - but we'll call her Sarah) who told me that she was having trouble getting into her protagonist, despite this being her most prominent POV. She is dynamic as many Young Adult characters are, but at the beginning she's anxious and self-doubting because she's in that adolescent phase when you realise everything you know about yourself is completely wrong and you're just starting to discover who you REALLY are. There's not much that makes her like me (or am I kidding myself?) even though I've been in the same position as her. Well maybe not exactly since this is YA SF, but as far as her emotional state goes, I've been through that. But I just feel like she should've developed more by now, and she still feels like a faceless stock character. Bildungsroman is the nature of YA above all, and that relatable trait for the protagonist is necessary. To some extent, ...

Teams and larger casts are set to boom, methinks, especially if these team-based casts (a la Hourglass ) and YA sci-fi, what with the starship crews and armies and expeditions to desolate planets, etc., continue to increase. But the problem with this is that YA is so used to focusing on a trio, with a couple memorable secondaries whose appearances are based purely on comic relief or plot, that some of these larger casts are having trouble growing from this trio. A book I recently read had this problem. Fluid, fast-paced writing, enjoyable. I hadn't felt any criticism itch until we got to introducing the "team" and what it is they could do/why they were there in the first place. Admittedly, introducing people with a focus on their abilities has the potential to be clunky, and a lot of writers take the easy way out with a dollop of didacticism.  This is Jack. Jack is sheepolopath. That means that he can read the minds of sheep, and it also means that he can contr...

BBC's  Sherlock -  the reincarnation of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective in 21st century London. In its second series, it only has six episodes, but confounds me in its ability to be perfect. I'm a snob about film and TV, but I'll also be first to say it's the finest piece of storytelling on TV in a while. We writers can learn from it, so welcome to my all-rounder series: Honey, You Should See Me in a Crown . I will be dissect this king of entertainment, created by Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who fame, a fan favourite since Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace and  Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead ) and Mark   Godtiss Gatiss (who also plays Mycroft Holmes in the series). From plot, to pacing, to characterisation, to relationships and dynamics, from themes to subtext, to stereotypes and archetypes, and all literary bad-arsery. (And thankfully this will tie in with my HSC crime studies, so HA! Board of Studies, ha!) Note: spoilers threaded throughout. No...

A friend recently recommended the BLUE BLOODS series (not some sort of novelisation of the cop show with Sergeant Lipton, unfortunately) to me. I scanned the blurb and found my processor not passing beyond two words. Schuyler Van Alen. Schuyler Van Alen . It took me a while to figure out how you're meant to pronounce that. Skew-ler van Halen. Yes, my mind read that as Van Halen. That, dear readers, is a teacher's worst nightmare in four syllables, or what I presume is four syllables. Who knows? I still haven't figured out how to say it. Is it Skyler? If so, why isn't it spelt Skyler? Basically, if I can't figure out how to say a character's name within a fraction of a second of reading it, I am going to put the book onto the Gifts pile. (Yes, I actually have a pile of books which I give to people for their birthdays which have only been used to the fifth page.) It isn't so bad for character names which I abhor. Usually, I'll suffer through a book ...

Psychologist Carl Jung named the face which we present publicly, which we use to hide things we don't like about ourselves, the persona . He also coined the flip-side, the shadow , which is something similar to the three-dimensional version of our physical shadows. This is teeming with everything that we try to hide, sometimes even from ourselves. In order to create a three-dimensional character, we need to individuate , or integrate, their archetypal parts into a cohesive sort of unit-y whole. This, of course, includes both their persona and their shadow. Now, the mark of a good villain in any story falls under his ability to force his opposition, the hero, into the spotlight where he'll find ways to highlight and criticise the things your hero would like to hide. Now, Shadow: Recognising It The shadow is upsetting the acknowledge, so we shove our awareness of it down to an unconscious level, thereby making the only way to truly know the contents of your shadow to co...

You know the saying. Write what you know . People do it. People don't do it. People advise it and against it. People debate about it. Well, I'm here to slide my two cents across the table to you, and tell you that what you might perceive as writing what you know isn't necessarily writing what you know. Oh, and the caption on the poster to the left? It says Anyone is a weapon if you twist them.  So, today I sat down in my Extension English I lesson to a discussion with director Adam Blaiklock, whose first feature film Caught Inside  (It's actually phenomenal. Support him and Australian film and try and catch it wherever you are if it's nearby) I saw a couple weeks ago. Its theme surrounds the concept that we don't want to take responsibility for the monsters we create . Essentially, this film is about a surfing trip off the coast of Indonesia, where the only law is set by one's skipper, and a group of Australian tourists find themselves faced with a ...

Bam . And she makes an appearance. You really can't look anywhere without the word Mary Sue plastered on something, or slipping over in its messy trails and into the pool of endless circular arguments. And if you try and take all of the arguments off of the table and ask one of these people what their perception of perfection was, they'd just stop and smile at you. They might be able to tell you someone's name, or something vague like success or like too pretty or something, but the truth is that we all strive for some degree of perfection, whether it be mentally, physically or emotionally, and there are many perceptions of that big word: perfection . Some may view perfection as an unfaltering sense of humour. Some may view perfection as a cellulite-free hourglass figure of a tanned 20-year-old. Some may view perfection as an ability to see the best in everyone and everything. Some may view perfection as Adam Levine deciding to strut about semi-naked and sing about ...

Surely, surely , by now you have seen Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-nominated Black Swan; oh, you know, the one about that dark, twisted ballerina? Right. Now we're on the same page. So as someone who probably spends far too much time analysing film and novels for the hell of it, I can tell you now that Black Swan has a lot of depth to it. I, however, will not be reviewing it or talking about any concepts you could expect; rather, I will be using it to talk to you about character perfection . I don't like the term 'Mary Sue'. Like paranormal , or star-crossed or danger , it's misuse or even its overuse in YA has led to loss in its meaning. To defame a character by crying "Mary Sue!" is not as much of a scandal as it once was, and to some extent, the misunderstanding amongst the literary world has only led to repeat-offenders and the persistence of a worn formula in not smothering itself in its vapid-ness. Yes, in my own way, I'm talking about dimension...

I find it odd how I can write about people being maimed and killed in explosions or through axe-wielding zombie Nazis or I can sit around thinking about how a telekinetic can kill someone in the most terrible of ways, but after writing one intense argument between two of my main characters, I feel displaced from the world and need to take a shower to calm my red-facedness down. Admittedly, this was an argument-to-destroy-a-friendship thing and drawing it out bit by bit was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. And it's not even finished, it's just sitting there on my desktop in script format. It's not even going to be in the damn book. This scene has existed for three years now. I formulated the whole concept of it at thirteen, when I first started to string this novel of mine together. I never wrote it. I didn't even know what was said or how emotional it got or even what subjects it touched on - I just knew the outcome and I knew the general message of ...

I would like to start this post off by reiterating the fact that I am a sixteen-year-old girl and was indeed born in the year of 1994. Just saying. Indeed, Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson are supposedly the heart throbs of my generation. I am here to tell you to look beyond the dishevelled youth (Except that new Spiderman. He's the sex.) *Clears throat* Hem hem. I pose you this question: who was the last significant secondary adult character in a YA book who was as well-developed as other secondary adolescent character? Exactly. For this post, I shall be focusing on male adult characters, as I find that I've encountered more of them as significant secondary characters than females as of late. (I apologise, this may be more getting to talk about older men I'm in love with than coherent writing talk) So, first off, we're going to look at the 25 Under 25 from last year. The boys? Shia LaBeouf (who doesn't count because when was the last teenager he played besides Sam W...

Guys! Say bonjour to Arthur, or as I like to call him, Artie. You know, that bland fellow to the left. Artie is an art mannequin, and once term starts, I will be spending hours with Artie and his species in my school art class. Artie is today's metaphor for the base of every fictional character. Human. Nondescript. Before I dive into this, I'll just do a bit of housekeeping. First, if you are looking for my Show vs. Tell blogfest piece, it's the entry below this one. Second, if you are new, you will not know that I have revamped this blog - regulars, hot dang . So, third, I will be using this entry for the What's Your Process blogfest , hosted by the stunning Shallee McArthur over at Life, the Universe, and Writing . It's premature, not due until the 18th, but what the heck? I therefore conclude with fourth, I will be abandoning you all until late in the first week of February - I will be in Thailand the day after tomorrow (Hence the four books in the What I'm R...