Intro to Fiction Writing (week 1)

Take careful note that this is my first draft but I thought I should post another writing folio piece seeing as I’ve started back at uni now. Hoorah!
Enjoy and please criticize as much as you like!

I remember when he came for me at night. I used to wait for him, watching and holding my breath, hoping that perhaps one day, he would stop coming. When he did come, the darkness in my room settles to the earth and he almost glides to my side and whispers the events that happened that day, that year and my whole life. When he departs I used to dive under the darkness that was slowly rising to try and get a glimpse of his feet. The mystery frustrated and frightened me. He told me everything about him, but never anything about his feet. I hated not knowing the full situation, yet I hated remembering. It always made me wonder whether he was really telling me everything, or whether he was leaving something out, like his feet or some very small but significant piece of information I should know about.

My thoughts would fill as the darkness rose when he left and I would wonder every night whether I should ask questions, give my opinion or even demand to see. I never did. I sat, I listened and then waited through the rest of the day until night falls, darkness sinks to the ground and I remember.

When he came for me this evening to help me remember, he was not alone. I dived under the darkness hoping he would not see me, that perhaps on this changing evening, the man that comes for me every night would forget I existed and the man next to him would leave me be. The man standing next to him had a suitcase in his hand and brown leather shoes. When I saw the shoes as I lay on the cold earth I wondered whether this was the night I would be shown something new and not just reminded about the old. The man that comes for me every night glided as usual towards me and whispered the usual information I’m supposed to know about. I sat up cautiously, waiting for something new to be said. But I didn’t hear anything new and after he finished he glided out, the darkness rose and the man in brown shoes disappeared. After the third evening of this occurring, the man with the shoes shook hands with the other man and they walked out. On the fourth evening, I was taken…

Jinx xx

YA Alternate Worlds

Today I decided to ring one of my best friends, Tory and while talking to her about school books and how the novel Dracula explains things in too much detail we came to talking about Scott Westerfeld’s series Uglies.
For most of you who know Tory, you will know she has a very keen eye for finding books that grab your attention straight away. You will also know that she hasn’t read Uglies. For shame!
However, she has given the books a good go and what she found interesting, yet also frustrating was the fact that while being able to create a new world, Scott Westerfeld didn’t explain a lot of contraptions and new technology. She wanted to know exactly what a bungee-jacket was, but for it to still fit into the story, which is difficult, unless you use footnotes like Terry Pratchett.
This made me think back to a recent interview Scott Westerfeld attended with Holly Black and Cassandra Claire about alternate histories and how hard it is to show a story, not tell it.
I often have this trouble in writing classes and I know it will take a few years for me to get the hang of it, or maybe I won’t get the process at all, but for those who are interested in how professional writers overcome this difficult process of explaining little things in the world (like hoverboards, sneak suits, even gloves!) through the eyes of a character who has lived in the world all their life and know nothing different, here is the interview as a linkage

http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/?p=1098

To read up on the other authors, Holly Black’s page is here http://www.blackholly.com/
And Cassandra Claires book is here http://www.cassandraclare.com/

I have read Holly Blacks work before (Valiant) so I’m really looking forward to White Cat. And there is of course Cassandra Claire whose book City of Bones I have at home, yet (as I've explained to Tory) is part of my tower of "must read" books.

Enjoy!

Jinx xx

Wolfgang Iser vs. J.K Rowling

It has been a long time, but finally once more I bring to you another post about my world as a reader.
When Harry Potter hit the shelves in 1997 a change in young adult reading was formed. It is all thanks to the wonderful author J.K Rowling. But as you will find from this post, not only do young adults read this wonderful tale, but people as old as 86 can enjoy it just as much

I am talking about my Grandmother. I was having a coffee with her the other day and the conversation started with Cornelius, my cat, and where his name came from. I said
“no he’s not named after the ape from Planet of the Apes, nor is he named after Cornelius Fudge from Harry Potter” and she goes
“I thought you would have named it after Cornelius the monkey. [This is a large toy monkey that’s been in the family for 35 years] Are you excited about the Harry Potter movies by the way?”

And now it begins

When I started reading Harry Potter I leant them to my Grandma and we both got really into them! But she never wanted to see the movies because she didn’t want the image of Hogwarts being ruined for her. Her idea of Hogwarts was something she knew would be different to the director’s point of view because it’s his opinion of what it should be. When explaining this to me she then said
“What do you think makes a good story? One that can pull all ages under its spell, but how does it do that?”

Usually my answer to this question is good language AND slanguage (slanguage being the colloquialism to suit a certain age group) but of course, how can J.K Rowling write such a story that suited both my 86 year old Grandma and me, an 18 year old teenager.
I paused and thought back to what I learnt in my course trying to search for a clue to how authors seem to be able to do this. And finally I came to Wolfgang Iser. I said
“It’s being able to ask not what the text means, but what the text does to the reader. To you and I, we both picture our own Hogwarts, our own Harry, our own magic world depending on the life we’ve led so far. It’s what the text does to the reader like you and I, and not what J.K Rowling tries to pull out of the text for us. It’s just like Wolfgang Iser said, we have to create our own implied reader to gage what to expect in a story individually”

Think back to all the times you’ve read a story and leant to someone older or younger than you. Did they enjoy it on the same scale as you? What were their expectations compared to your expectations?

Jinx xx