Chapter one
Progress reports
Progress report
I have actually made a lot of progress in this last week, I have completed the rough draft for chapter4-6 and have sent out my rough draft of chapters 1-4 for a peer read through by my mentor and a classmate ( Bana) and am awaiting any critiques, plot questions or character development issues from them. I am happy with my progress right now, my progress plan ( which has been altered slightly) is to finish the rough drafts for (minimum) chapters 1-10 by march 23 to leave myself time for a final edit and a final read over.
Mentor information.
So far me and my mentor have met 3 times in these meetings, we have discussed adding detail, character development, how to make the book easier to read, grammar, paragraph structure and the how to have a beautiful mind topics.
Chapter two
Frustrations, obstacles and resources
Frustrations
So far it’s been smooth sailing with all outer issues ( my computer or other people) my main frustration is with the general layout I did for my book, as I’m writing I’m finding continuity errors or obvious other solutions to issues that shorten or lengthen the story, and I actually turned my chapter 4 out line into two chapters, while this may seam like it wouldn’t be frustrating and like it saves my work, it means it pushes the climax by one chapter ( since chapter 5 becomes chapter 6, 6 becomes 7 ect) so I have to cover for that and add other elements which means a partial reconstruction of chapters 6-8.
Resources
OWL
A website about grammar that specifically relates to novel writing
https://owl.purdue.edu/site_map.html
Book editing.com
A website manly about paragraph structure in creative writing and how to make conversations and descriptions more evident
https://www.book-editing.com/start-paragraph-fiction/
All the wrong questions
A book that well illustrates the type of writing I want to do ( first person/action narration)
Harry potter and the philosophers stone.
A book that shows the heros journey style of plot development and character development well
Me and Banksy
A book that shows the type of conversation rich paragraph layout I want to use
Mentor quotes
‘change paragraphs when you would want the camera angle to change if you were filming a movie’
‘add more description to areas the audience would never experience, like supernatural events’
Plus others through out.
Obstacles
Honestly everything has been going pretty well obstacles wise, we can do everything virtually and just as an added bonus, me and my mentor are in the same learning cohort for our drama class so we’ve been able to discuss a few things during class breaks ( following appropriate school rules such as social distancing and mask wearing).
Chapter 3
evidence
Evidence of progress
The first part of the rough draft of chapter one
Black pine
( Rough draft ) Chapter 1
House of boxes
I jumped over a brown cardboard boxes, ducked behind a full-length mirror and crawled into my room under stacks of “junk”. home, it smelled like my mom’s flowery perfume and paint.
I entered my room, light poured in from the large window that was partially covered by navy blue curtains and on to my sky-blue wall, black dresser and shined off my silver loft bed.
the only special thing about my room was the bookshelf it was tall, taller than I was.
it was made of dark oak wood and was covered in not only books but everything important to me, soccer medals, a few polaroids of places I’ve been, post card of places I want to go.
except this wasn’t really my home anymore.
I know I should have packed my room days ago like the rest of the house, but the moving truck wasn’t coming for– I checked my watch 37 minutes?! that wasn’t enough time to pack up everything I’d ever owned!
I grabbed a few boxes and started shoving stuff in, nothing was folded, and it got messy.
At this point I didn’t know why I didn’t want to leave, I hated my school, I had no friends, I got bullied constantly it was just….. home I can’t explain it.
but back to packing. I shoved in jeans and the button downs and t- shirts I wore to school,
till finally I got to the band tee’s , nirvana, 21 pilots, Metalica, and not the cropped fake ones you get from h and m these were real, of course they were banned at the prep school I went to, but me in an object would be my band tee’s kind of overlooked but special in some ways, I loved’em.
“ Safina we Gotta go” my mom yelled out to me “ the trucks nearly here”
I went into panic mode, my mom could get scary at times plus I knew her and my dad were already on edge for the move.
Okay: clothes and junk box down, bed sheets and books to go, I assumed the movers would be packing up the furniture too.
there was one thing that I still had to do I climbed up the loft bed, checking out my window that my parents weren’t watching, ok good they were packing the car. I leaned out over the side till I barely touched the wall and pealed back a bit of the blue wallpaper behind it was a small hole in the wall.
it was where I kept the presents….
Chapter 4
How to have a beautiful mind part one
How to be interesting. I think is an especially important topic in novel writing, if you are not interesting people won’t enjoy your work and even you won’t enjoy your own book or working on it, a good way to be interesting is to add personal stories or depth ( although in book often the personal stories are altered slightly for privacy, continuity, space and relevance to the story) but people subconsciously connect with stories that add character development that are based on real life because slightly altered real stories seem relatable.
How I used points in how to be interesting and how to be a good listener with my mentor.
Find ways to link matters and generate interest.
Writing is all about reader interest, the last lesson that I did with my mentor involved ½ an hour of how to avoid skim reding due to large blocks of text. We have a shared interest in lots of writing styles and skills one way that we generate shared interest in meetings is to make connections between novels and movies we both enjoy, it gives us a better understanding of the writing style the other person is talking about since we’ve read the same books in that style.
Explore, elaborate and pull out interest.
I find writing quite interesting, so it is easy for me to pull out interest, however the fact that we were planning to do a grammar lesson worried me as I do not find that aspect very interesting, however I was able to find parts of it quite interesting like tips and tricks to avoid readers from skim reading.
Use what if statements to create new thoughts.
Thought our meeting I tried to use lots of what if… statements to connect thoughts and to clarify for example, while discussing paragraph structure, my mentor said paragraphs should be divided by new people talking, I said “what if it’s a rapid fire conversation” this caused her to elaborate on her point which was quite interesting in that she told me about how large blocks of description or dialogue text can cause readers to skim read part that could be important and that yes, even in rapid fire conversation, dialogue should be broken up.
Ask for clarification when you are unclear or disagree with something your mentor has said.
I did ask for clarification several times during our meeting, she was introducing me to many new ideas about book and paragraph structure and I was important to ask for clarification so that I could fully understand the topics. For example my mentor talked about describing larger scenes less, this sound confusing so I asked for clarification, she said “ if you’re talking about a war, you may not need to describe the battlefield you only need to describe the important thing or the unusual thing such as a doll lying in the street.” this statement greatly clarified the concept.
Support your mentors point with additional facts or evidence/ share a personal story that illustrates the topic.
One of the best points that illustrates both of these points is the same, my mentor was sharing the importance of using paragraph separations in description, I shared that of two of my favorite books, only one of them did this well and has my mentor had said, the one book that had large blocks of description text ( harry potter and the deathly hallows ) I was guilty of often “skim reading” parts whereas the other ( all the wrong questions) did this quite well and used short blocks of text that well illustrated where the book was taking place and only described important thing as opposed to describing those unimportant to the plot.
Modify an idea to make it more practical/ stronger.
Often in writing you have to take other writers ideas and styles to fit your books and characters. I am currently (re)reading the book “ all the wrong questions” in which the author utilizes a first person narration style to show both character growth and add some mystery to the story, I want to use a similar writing style with a bit of modification. The book I am reading is a detective story that is primarily focused on a single mystery with very few characters other than the main one, whereas my style of writing has to include and adapt for multiple characters.
Glossary
Skim reading
Glancing over large blocks of text to get to the point of text that can often cause readers to miss important parts