Believable Characters: Introduction

Hello, all!

Up until now, my blog has been simply that, a blog. I've been writing about boring daily life and everything, so now I decided that my site should have some purpose.

I have decided (with the help of a few great friends) that I am going to do a blog study on Creating Believable Characters. Of course, I sort of have to research quite a bit first, because I myself am not the best at creating nice characters. My characters are all flat... as I'm sure yours tend to be sometimes, and we all need a great way to make those people be 3-D!

It will be a great learning experience for me, and for you. Hopefully. Of course, if you already have fantastic characters (like, J.K. Rowling, if you're reading this) then I'll have to say, you've got to stop reading, cause all this will do is bore you. To death.

I'll be taking my information from many different sources, just to let you know... I've got about five writing help books on hold at the library!

Have a great day!
Love,
emma eldon

Jealousy

Jealousy is a very real emotion.

Real emotions are what you technically want your character to have. They can't be so perfect that they never feel anything. Your characters need to be real, so real, in fact, that the reader will be able to feel a sort of friendship with your character.

Jealousy is one of thos e very real emotions that we feel all the time, even if we don't know we are. Maybe it's a member of the opposite sex who's with someone else and not you, or how sometimes it seems as if someone's stealing your friend.

There's this girl in my class, let's call her Katy. Everyone hates her except one of my bff's Regina. And, you know how this goes... Katy needs help in math and everything like that, so Reg helps her. I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of math, thank you very much, and do not need any help.

Sometimes I think I should just pretend to be suckish in math so reg can help ME not Katy. But Regina's a really good friend, and I know that she'd never desert me.

Well, cheerio,
emma eldon

Kittens!!!!

How many of you who are actually reading like kittens? Probably a great number of all one of you do.

Well, as some people well know, living on a farm can bring certain ... joys into life. Like Kittens.

We have like 20 adult cats running around, and we expect many, many, MANY more to come soon, as it's spring, and they always give birth in the spring. I think it's partly because they have nothing else to do all winter...

There are four kittens, about a month old, who we absolutely LOVE. There's three boys and one girl. The girl's name is Tonks (from Harry Potter, of course), and is brown, orange and white. Then there's Teddy (who's orange and also a HP namesake), Edward (white with black patches, bet you can't guess how he got his name), and Aerrow (white with a brown stripedy pattern on his back, and the namesake of Stormhawks).

I am writing a joint novel with my friend, and how it works, is that we each have a character, and we formulate the character and everything and create her friends and enemies and her environment that she lives in. Since we live sorta far away from eachother, we email it to eachother. It's like what we do, except we know eachother. These two girls don't.

I believe this form of writing is called a Two-Headed Story. I'll do a little research on it- maybe we'll even be able to have a little three-part study on it!

I'll tell you one thing: Reese's character lives in Toronto, and mine lives in London, England.

Cheerio chaps!

emma eldon

PIX!!!!!

These are some sorta random pix that I took ... I hope you like them!

This is my impressive writing pile... symbolising that I have started more stories than I have finished -much, much more.

Well, this is annoying.... i can't get the pictures to load. Oh well, more pictures for another time, then.

Bye!

emma eldon

Why Won't You Tell Me?

Dear People of the World Wide Web:

Don't you just absolutely, positively, strongly HATE when there's this secret, that EVERYBODY seems to know- and nobody will tell you?

I can't stand that! Even though I figure out secrets anyways, I still hate that initial moment when everybody refuses to tell you stuff, and you're completely left out. And now, the people in my class KNOW that I hate that so much, so they purposely lead me on to believe that they have a secret just to tick me off.

Well, MARLA and MICHAEL were whispering on the bus home today and I was practically killing myself because nobody would tell me what the hang was up.

Anyway, I'm reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech right now ... and Prince Caspian ... and it's pretty good... although I'm looking for some positive feedback from those of you who have read it, you know, to keep me going. Cause, you know, if there's any, you know, romance in it then I'll definitely read on.

I'm quite the Romance junkie. I like my adventure and fantasy and murder mystery books to have a dash of Romance in them. Or else there's nto much worth reading. Although, the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is really awesome too, yet NO ROMANCE.

Anyway, I guess I may as well be writing in a journal, cause no one's hearing my voice. Please comment, if you are.

Love,
emma eldon

Of Alternate Words and Blood

Hello everybody!

Well, probably not THAT many, but, you know...

How many of you faint or get nauseous at the sight of blood? Anyone who's read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer know that a certain Bella Swan swoons at the smell and sight of blood. How romantic.

I, on the other hand, am quite different than Bella on that point. I am not stirred by blood, especcially when in miniscule quantities. But, when it does come to globs and palm-fulls of it, it is enough to make my stomach do backflips.

On my bus home today, a little boy by the name of Bradley had a bloody nose. Terrible, too. It came out so fast, me and Michael (Bradley's brother) exhausted alot of paper towel on his nose. It was dripping down his shirt and in his mouth and everything, so he panicked and started bawling something terrible. Which made his nose bleed faster. Finally, we had to stop back at the school and he and his brother and sister went in with Mr. G (our fill-in principal) to get Mrs. M. (secretary) to fix him up. She always does a good job.

So, what I'm getting at, is, well, nothing, really, just informing you on my incrdibly boring day which included itching a bleeding kid's nose, making about seven stupid sketches on Geometer's Sketchpad in addition to the three good sketches that I had to hand in, and watching Hairspray until I almost sweat 60's songs (and believe me, there was plenty areason to sweat today).

Also, alternate words. There are several words that are exhausted too easily in today's writing. One of those words is 'said'. It is a good word when used moderately and with adverbs tacked on the end, but otherwise, it sorta, well, is lame.

I brainstormed all the alternate words for 'said' that I could think of.

• exclaimed
• whispered
• told
• mumbled
• yelled
• shouted
• muttered
• answered
• replied
• giggled
• chortled
• chuckled
• uttered
• spoke (okay, so this one is quite lame, but, you get the picture)
• pronounced
• announced (hey, that rhymes!)
• stated
• conveyed
• asserted
• declared
• remarked
• commented
• communicated
• indicated
• stuttered
• growled
• barked
• argued
• roared
• screamed
• shrieked
• squeaked
• squealed
• grunted
• agreed
• mimicked
• protested
• instructed
• gasped
• responded
• demanded
• cried
• called
• implied
• admitted
• yawned

Well? How's that for a list, eh?(Can't you tell I'm Canadian?) So, the next time you think about using the word said, see if there's something better to use. I encourage you to copy and paste this list, or jot it down somewhere, as it's quite helpful, to me, at least.

example:

"You can't take her!" Jocelyn shrieked. "She's my child and you don't have the right to take her!"

Well, I hope you've learned alot about bloody noses (pinch at the soft part and DON'T BLOW!) and alternate words. Maybe next post I'll step it up and you'll actually learn something useful.

Blessings, (hope none of you get a bloody nose)

emma eldon

Starting Out

So.

All you teenage writers have something in common: you love to write. It's something you do constantly, even if you're not sitting in front of the computer or scribbling in a notebook.

You form characters and scenes, settings and backdrops in your head (usually while you're SUPPOSED to be doing your math homework). It's like there's a constant movie going on in your head, playing and playing and playing and editing and rewinding and playing again. It's something that I love to do.

So, with the help of this blog, hopefully you (and me) will become stronger, more publisher-worthy writers.

Also, I must warn you that there will be some crazed book reviews (i love books) and you might see me more than once off my knocker, so to speak, especcially if I am talking about one particular Edward Cullen..... aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh..... and maybe Harry Potter as well, but you must know that I am not in love with Harry Potter himself, and do not think of kissing him regularly (that's jewels' job) nor am I in love with Ron Weasley, or Neville the peanut, or Malfoy or even Goyle. No, my heart goes out to only one man, (or should I say vampire) Edward Cullen.

Well, so long for now,
Happy Writing!

emma eldon