nindogs

I'm starting to think that my titling has become counter-productive and are really an unhelpful way of attracting no one to my posts. Your other option was, of course, A Day in the Life of a Chest-infection , which, you know, I've suffered over the past week. ANYWAY. Having (finally!) seen X-Men: First Class , I was going to use it for a pleasant "perfect villain model" post. The brilliant Janice Hardy, however, already beat me to it and did a better job , so I shall save that post for another film. Instead, today I tear you away from your work and your children, and myself from my writing and my studies, to talk about climaxes . I had a chat the other day with a classmate, who's planning on writing a story for her English Extension 2 Major Work in the HSC next year. She wanted my opinion, as a writer, about the necessity of a climax. (I may or may not have made a few sexual jokes first, of course) She had this idea to have the larger climax toward the beginning...

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...

We all have our sub-genres and we all know that feeling when someone tells us some other author just got a seven-figure advance for a novel in said sub-genre or when an agent refuses your sub-genre on their webpage. We know that feeling that melts your gut and makes your arms feel cold like when you get a flu injection when you see a novel on Goodreads.com that has rave reviews and falls into your sub-genre just as well as your own work does. It might not even be that. It might be that you're inspired with what you believe to be an original story that is plaguing your dreams and your waking moments that falls into the sub-genre that was so two minutes ago. You're having a small heart attack when you're not creating this story, because you know that anyone with half a brain would laugh and spit in your face if you proposed this story to them. Everyone understands this. They can empathise. But you need to take a step back and have a good think about this. Almost every bestse...

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 ...

Can you throw 'em over your shoulder like a regimental soldier? Do your ears hang low? Surely you learnt that song as a kid. Well, maybe with ears. So, if you guessed, today we're going to talk about saggy middles. Don't worry, there shall be no Tyler Durden scouring the trash for your novel's fat arse tonight (just to sell it back to you in a bar of soap). But firstly: maybe you noticed that you didn't hear from me all of last week? Maybe you didn't. It's cool. I didn't notice either, until I sat down to write this week's post. I had a seminar to create over last weekend for Extension English, so on a procrastination front, I was either going to write a post or waste hours of my life being moody and adolescent on Tumblr . I know, excuses, excuses, "why have thou forsaken me?" and all that jazz. Well, I apologise - hey! I might even write another post tomorrow. So, I'm going to begin (for the second time) by telling you that there will ...

Say hip hip hooray for absurdly long titles. (And if you didn't catch those references, look here (at 2:50) and here ) I apologise profusely here, boyos. School has been an even greater burden that I'd ever imagined. If I want this mark I've been blabbering about, I am going to need to clone myself. Seriously. It's been a long week since I last spoke to you all and I'm afraid it may be another until I can break above the water. I'm drowning in homework, and core texts that I absolutely despise. In fact, I'm starting to look a little like this: And this glorious situation sparked me with inspiration as gracefully as lightning destroys a palm tree. Inspiration for, well, my blog. *Casts longing glance to manuscript in the corner* As I tried to straighten out my weekend to catch up on all the work I missed when I was sick this week, I realised that Saturday - my devout RETURN revisions day - was being consumed by extra reading/film viewing/art sketching for s...

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...

This is a pretty sad photoblog, but whatever. Deal with it. I had to use Photobooth to take these pictures - I couldn't find my camera. A couple posts back, I posted in my Friday Five (which I discovered actually takes place on a Thursday for the Americans - given that my blog clock is set to some non-Australian time zone) that I might do a photoblog to accompany my revisions complaining and moaning. Meet Beastie. I should probably be calling him RETURN, but Beastie seems more fitting. There are approximately 45K words in that, 250-ish double-spaced pages and then revisions added on to it. The post-its are mainly notes that I've shoved into parts that I haven't gotten up to, or on pages that I need a new word or to research something. You can't see any of the paper clips, only that bull dog clip, but they're the same thing: If I rewrite a scene or a chapter, I do it either on a separate sheet or on my laptop and print it, depending on how long it is. I strikethrough...

This morning I read a post over at Debbie Maxwell Allen's Writing While the Rice Boils which carried me through cyberspace to an old 2009 Kidlit.com post about the Four Horsemen of the Prose-ocalypse. Basically, emotional cliches or the four areas of the body that are well-known hit sites for emotional bombing in novels. Mary at Kidlit.com said that these areas are the: Eyes Heart Lungs Stomach She then goes on to list a number of cliched phrases about each of these areas of the body which I personally have seen far too many times. i.e. He cast his eyes to the ground . And I shall dismount my high, white horse; I am incredibly guilty of implementing and encouraging these four horsemen. I struggle to come up with new phrases and cool, fresh spins on things as simple as that knotting in your stomach, that ache in your lungs, or the teary sparking in the back of your retinas. And though these four horsemen are lovely , I think they have a couple kid-brothers that we see somewhat bu...