in-depth 2

In depth blog post two

Writing a first person narrated novel.

Progress report:

I have just had my second meeting with my mentor where we primarily talked about scene development, with  this  information along with the detail and character development exercises we did in our first meeting I have written the first 3 chapters rough drafts in which we meet the main characters and start to be introduced to the setting for much of the journey. As well my mentor taught me about how to “block out scenes” by making a chapter/scene with bullet points or simple sentences and I have stated doing that with my chapter 4 rough draft. In this scene lay out process you prioritize things you want to happen and add detail in the actual chapter.  I have decided to mainly follow the heroes journey writing model which is a twelve step for adventure novels and is the writing model that they’ve used in famous novel such as harry potter and for the forth chapter ( the one I’m working on) I’m on step 4 of the heroes journey, which is funnily enough called the meeting of the mentor, in most books the first four to five steps of the heroes journey happen quickly with step 5-9 happing slowly and 9- 12 sometimes being only a few pages and sometimes being half the book.

The steps of the heroes journey are

1   ordinary world, the heroes home or where they seem normal and feel comfortable

2  the call to adventure

3 the refusal of the call to adventure, which isn’t always that the hero doesn’t want to go but there might be an aspect of their life that they can’t leave

4 meeting the mentor, a teacher like figure giving advice

5 crossing the threshold/ acceptance of the call, the character goes into the unknown

6  the tests, this is when the hero meets those how help and hurt them and leaves their comfort zone

7 in to the utmost cave, the escalation to the final ordeal and what tells the audience just how bad the final ordeal ( typically the climax) is about to be there will often be a large trail of character in this step

8 the ordeal, this final terrible battle we’ve all been waiting for

9 the seizing of the sword/ reward, the hero gets a reward, whether it be gold or self confidence

10 the road back, the hero returning home this is often a stage were the hero must choose between the greater good and a personal reward

11 resurrection, this is what is truly the final battle and often a time where the hero will be put in extreme danger ( the real climax)

12 return with the elixir, the hero returns home a changed person with a different out look

Information on mentor:

My mentor is a talons alumni how also did her in-depth project on writing although hers was not focused on first person narration. So far we have had two meetings where we talked about character development, detail and scene layout.

 

Frustrations?

Everything has been very smooth sailing lately I’ve been enjoying writing rough drafts and scene layouts and haven’t run into a lot of issues yet

 

Project evidence

This is my simple sentence  layout for chapter four of my book, it has characters; safina( protagonist), david and anniya

Chapter 4  

 Starts Monday (first day of safinas school from safinas perspective) 

  • She goes to class from home and walks with david and aniya  
  • Gets hit in the back of the head with a note saying they should go to burnt building after school 
  • – she agrees
  • They continue to hang out at burnt building every day
  • Anniya starts questioning why it’s there
  • Safina wants answers but selfishly doesn’t want to tell others about this “escape” from reality  
  • Safina eventually agrees to ask the history teacher about any burnt buildings  ( step 4 heroes journey) 
  • History teacher doesn’t know of any burnt buildings
  • Anniya says questioning was to vague, they need to look harder  
  • David wants to leave well enough alone 
  • Anniya convinces them to break into the department of records  
  • Safina doesn’t fully trust them yet and says they should wait 
  • They do some “team building” ( school project about invasive species)  
  • – safina agrees to break into the department of records  
  • They arrive at the department of records at 1 am  
  • Climb on to the roof
  • And break the window ( end chapter)

 

Overcoming obstacles

So far I still haven’t hit any major obstacles, having meetings with my mentor over zoom due to covid-19 doesn’t affect my project. So far the biggest obstacle has been figuring out what order to write chapters, many books are written back to front instead of beginning to end  and there are pros and cons to each, I have pretty much decided to write front to back at this point but not knowing what way I wanted to write my novel was an obstacle because it meant I delayed starting writing for a bit while I was trying to figure it out.

 

Changes to project

In my initial project layout I planned to write one rough draft a week and then the actual chapter the next, my mentor told me it would be easiest and make the best novel if I wrote a whole novel rough draft, then went back and re-did the whole thing so I’m trying to get to at least 10 rough draft chapters by the end of march.

 

Resources used

The everything guide to writing your first novel ( book) chapter nine: shaping scenes

this give advise about when to write certain aspect of your novel how often you edit, how much detail you should add to certain areas and writing tricks like the simple sentence scenes

save the cat

this is a resource I plan on using along with the heroes journey writing method it is a layout of what should be in scenes, as far as detail, dialogue, or story arch.

https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/plotting-save-the-cat

 

 

how to have a beautiful mind

How I agreed with my mentor

Are their any circumstances where the other persons view might be right?

Yes, definitely my mentor knows so much about writing and she is constantly teaching me new stuff that can only be learned from experince, one thing in particular is the fact that while we were discussing my rough draft she pointed out that every character needs an emotional wound to fill out there character, I said that I already chosen trust issues, she pointed out that my character was much to trusting for someone with trust issues, I hadn’t realized that, but she was totally right so I revised my out look for the fourth chapter  a bit based on this insight, she also gave me some tips to make the character have a subconscious emotional wound where it’s semi-obvious to the reader but still not pointed out, by saying “she had trust issues” in the book your pointing it out a little too much many people don’t always realize they have personality traits, so it’s important that my mentor taught me how to add subconscious traits and I agree with my mentor that it’s better to add these traits subconsciously.

 

Make a real effort to see where the other person is coming from

I didn’t fully lay out certain areas of my story, so when my mentor started recommending I add certain parts to my story that I wasn’t sure I wanted in my story, while I did offer another idea for my story that she agreed with, I could see why she made her suggestions and they were good suggestions they just didn’t necessarily fit with my thought process.

 

Genuinely seek to find points of agreement with what they were saying

When she talked about how important pre-planning out scenes I genuinely agreed with what my mentor was saying, the idea of bullet point planning out chapters seems really, really smart to me, and it is a strategy I plan on using.

 

 

How to disagree

Do not disagree just to show how clever you are

I really did try to genuinely listen to what my mentor has to say, she’s been writing for a long time and has developed techniques, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with or want to use certain strategy I still heard her out because she’s the expert I even tried a few strategies that while maybe I didn’t agree with at first because I’m sure she’s tried them before and even though I may not end up using some of the strategies I think it was good that I looked into it.

 

You may want to disagree to show a difference in personal experience

I personally think that disagreeing to show a difference of personal opinion can be a good thing as long as you may have a genuine issue with what the other person is saying, so if I think when I didn’t fully agree with a strategy my mentor is suggesting, it’s fair for me to disagree because my personal experiences have shaped the way my novel is going to go.

 

Distinguishing between having a difference of opinion and disagreeing with an opinion

My mentor suggested an Idea about what emotional reasoning a character should have when making a decision and that was her opinion, I had a different opinion about what the character should have and this was us having different opinions, I thought her opinion was good and I didn’t disagree with it I just had a different opinion.

 

How to differ

When a difference arises, try to figure out what this difference is based on

Most of the differences of opinion that me and my mentor were not really strong differences of opinion

more of her suggesting a potential idea and me saying that there was a different way I wanted to go, so I think most differences of opinion in my opinion simple came from us being different people with different experiences and writing styles, us having different ideas is a really good thing though, some of her ideas I will definitely include in my book and some of which I decided weren’t for me, so because of this I think differences of opinion are a really good thing.

 

How can differences be reconciled? Which difference and how can it be reconciled

I think differences of opinion can often be settled through collaboration , for example my mentor suggested that my charecter have an emotional attachment to a certain space and I agreed with that but I thought they should feel a different emotion so I took her idea of them having an emotional attachment to a certain place but used the emotion I thought was best, this was a good way to settle our difference of opinion and add a great detail to my story.

 

Do you and your mentor have a different opinion for the future?

Not really, she has a similar opinion to me on how a plan to write my novel, she agrees with my timeline and I agree with many of her writing tips and tricks.

What are some opinions of your mentor how do they compare to yours?

My mentor has suggested that I use the save the cat writing strategy after doing a bit of research on that strategy, I think it’s a good strategy I just think that I will definitely use it along with the heroes journey strategy because I do prefer the heroes journey strategy personally, however the have the cat strategy does seem like a good strategy.