How’s it going this week, Noveljoy? Our Dear Hero, From Villain contest is wrapping up and we’ve decided to start-up the Noveljoy Comments Contest again, in the hopes of encouraging you guys to be more proactive with making friends and discovering cool stories here at Noveljoy! If you’re trying to expand the audience for your work, our advice to you is to read the work of others and comment on their stories. Chances are, out of the gratefulness of their hearts, the very same writers will come and check out some of your work and give you some nice critiques, too. And, voila, a friendship is born! Aside from that, hope you’re all keeping yourselves hydrated and cool in this brain-cookin’ heat! We know we’ve been laying about on our stomachs in front of the fans and napping (when Svick isn’t around to whip our butts into action!). Productivity is at an all-time low. Luckily for us, we just have to come up with questions for Writer’s Corner Interviews – it’s really you guys that are doing the work for us! :P This week we have the opportunity to pick the brains of the wonderful and infinitely creative Melody Hallows! Hi Melody Hallows! Tell us your favorite: Food? Oh, that’s a toughie… hmm… I think I’ll go with mint moose tracks ice cream for now, but honestly my favorites change constantly. Song? Quite like foods, I have a new favorite for pretty much every week, especially since my favorite song is what wakes me up in the morning… umn, my favorite artist are between Eisley and The Cat Empire? Word? Finally an easy one! Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. Why? Fun to say, and it’s ironically the fear of long words A fear that even you find hard to admit even to yourself: Umn… fear of meeting myself in person maybe? The best gift in the world someone could give you: A TARDIS cake, preferably triple chocolate with special dark chips mixed in. Honestly this is only the second best gift someone could give me, for now the best gift is a secret. A guilty pleasure: Mmm… In Too Deep and My Soul to Take by DarkMoonX on fanfiction. Or simply GhiraLink in general… Tell us a bit about yourself, Melody! What stuff has been inspiring you to write lately? What kind of themes do you like to explore in your writing? (.-.) *flip* (._.) hmm… you, dear sirs and madams, have come up with some really hard questions. I guess what inspires me as of late is mostly the stories themselves or the characters, but also gotta give kudos to some awesome listeners like my little sis Tabitha, my mum, and a certain noveljoy regular by the name of moonvibe… Who are your current favourite authors? What do you think are the most important traits one must develop in order to be a successful writer? All-time favorite author is Lewis Carroll [or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson if you don’t go by pseudonyms] and honestly if I could go back in time I would go back to the Victorian Era just to marry him. Other favorites would have to be J. K. Rowling, Christian Paolini, Erin Morgenstern, Angie Sage, Jonathan Stroud, Carl Hiaasen, T. A. Barron, Douglas Adams, Mitch Albom, and Joanne Harris. I might be missing a few, but I tend to have deep respect for the authors that wrote my favorite books. Traits? Um… punctuality, perseverance, and respect? Here’s one of our favourite questions to ask: when did you start writing and what was your first story about? Oh well, my ambition to write a novel only came second to my ambition in pursuing the arts. I made my first attempt at a full length book in first grade, it was titled The Mist Flower, and it stank so royally that it’s no longer even on my radar of ideas. Its basic premise revolved around two self-insert twins [because when I was little, I somehow thought the world would benefit from having two of me] and their journey to the very well named Capriquaria, so named for the fact that I was born on the cusp of the zodiac, or at least, I was back when there was a discrepancy between January 19th and January 20th. You mention in your profile that you like to write an “amalgam of sci fi, fantasy, humor, action and suspense” and that you “like to pull techniques from [your] favourite works”. What are you favourite works? Care to share with us some examples of when you did this? Hm. My favorite works in the case of humor would have to be The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe followed by a close third book Life, the Universe, and Everything, sadly I haven’t gotten to the last two. My favorites in the case of action, fantasy, sci fi and suspense are Eragon, Dragonflight, The Theif Lord, Harry Potter, The Night Circus, House of the Scorpion, and admittedly I have a major soft spot for The Night Queen even though it isn’t published yet. When I write my dialogue, certain characters are armed with the charming wit that you’ll find in the dialogue of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but obviously sub-par to that because Douglas Adams was like the Pope of humor; the descriptions and plot twists are more my own individual style, but I admittedly choose to make them serious because I love the plotlines in books like Harry Potter or Eragon slightly more than the plotlines in The Hitchhiker’s Guide. That and I’m admittedly too depressing to pull off straight humor. How many writing projects do you have going at a time? If you juggle multiple writing projects, do you find it difficult to re-insert yourself into the various different stories/worlds you’ve created? I can handle two original stories at most, though admittedly I’m having a bit of trouble juggling my fanfiction and the collabs I’m planning with my sister. It does sort of get hard to re-insert myself, but I find it a little easier with A Dreamgiver’s Tale and Sensa Nome because I have more of the younger story and I’m very familiar with most of the characters in Sensa Nome [as it’s roughly three years old]. You’ve been a frequent dispenser of advice on writing here on Noveljoy. What are some common mistakes you think newer writers make in their stories? Any advice on how to fix them? Oh dearie me, that one’s difficult. I honestly couldn’t immediately say because my love for writing started when I was a little tyke and back then there was a grammar mistake and plot hole in every sentence. I’d honestly say that the most common mistakes for a new writer are beige prose, underdone description, clichés and the threat of a Mary Sue. This is especially so if you start out younger because you know less about the literary world on are more likely to make a mistake like a Mary Sue or to fill up on beige prose. Solution? Write more. What is the craziest thing you’ve done in the name of trying to make your story successful? If you can see me through the computer screen I’m currently trying to tilt my head upside down while racking my brain for an answer. Hm. I think the craziest thing I’ve done is to “advertise” my story was mentioning it while reading a stream of consciousness piece aloud at my school’s coffeehouse. Other than that I’d say I’m pretty tame with the “crazy” maneuvers. What’s one thing you do every day to exercise your creative mind and keep it supple? I have a habit of pacing while I listen to music. It helps me visualize certain aspects of my various story ideas. Other than that, I have this giant think session with myself before I go to sleep, which lately has been keeping me awake for an extra two hours thanks to anxiety problems. Tell us about A Dreamgiver’s Tale! How many drafts has it undergone? A Dreamgiver’s Tale was honestly one of my youngest stories when I started writing it at the beginning of the year. I came up with the name for the story about a year and a half ago, but the actual story didn’t truly come into being until August of last summer. And as for drafts… well, would you believe me if I said that everything besides the prologue is on its first copy? I never got past the prologue until I started my Creative Writing independent study in September. The prologue, on the other hand, has three copies, one of which is hiding on my computer and the other of which is somewhere in my various mostly blank and depressingly empty journals. Both of the originals are unfinished. What inspired you to write A Dreamgiver’s Tale? Many things, actually. The first inspiration came from my short story “Mercy”, and a strange person I find in my dreams every once in a while that I simply refer to as the “hot faceless guy” since he has a face while I’m dreaming and I’m attracted to him while I’m dreaming, but when I wake up I cannot for the life of me remember what he looked like. In any case, those two stimuli lead to the creation of the name “A Dreamgiver’s Tale” and also the beginning formation of The Dreamer Trilogy’s third installment [I made rough plans for all three books this year]. After that first draft’s failure I forgot about the story for a while until I had the strangest dream about my old middle school being alive, like some spooky version mixing visuals of Mirror Mask and Labyrinth [don’t ask, I have no idea where it came from]. Then I got to imagining a Dream World where the occupants were living beings made of independent thought… and slowly the plot of A Dreamgiver’s Tale came into being. You wrote a few of your lessons on character building which are posted on Noveljoy. Of all the characters that you created in A Dreamgiver’s Tale, which character flew right out from your imagination, landing on his/her feet right into the story with the most minimal fuss and bother? Hmm… I think that prize is a three way tug-of-war between Lilith, the All-Seeing Eyes and Poltergeist, and Poltergeist is slightly on the verge of winning. The All-Seeing Eyes was someone I had in the idea scope from the get-go, but the prissy “I hold my pinky up when I drink tea” attitude came from my really wanting a character to say “Oh fiddlesticks!” Lilith also was in planning from the very beginning, but I didn’t have her full entry as a character until Chapter 2, and by then I had pretty much decided that her characterization was like giving my subconscious a microphone and a fervent AislingxCyrus ship. In short, to write her dialogue, most of what I had to do was think “Hmm, what would I say?” Of course, I think Poltergeist wins this one out because he was a total whim. I knew I wanted a Nightmare protagonist by early on in Chapter 1, but I hadn’t made any decisions on his character until I started writing Chapter 4, and honestly I was pleasantly surprised with what my brain came up with. For me, Poltergeist ended up being this adorable little wimp that has no idea what to do with himself. Man, I love his character. We think it is immensely difficult to write a god-like character like Aisling and make her somehow relatable and sympathetic as a character. Which character do you feel was the most difficult to imagine onto the page (and why)? Honestly Cyrus was the hardest to get out, next matched by Aisling herself. Both were a challenge for me because I’m not used to making old characters and Cyrus’s innocence and ignorance were both difficult to portray and a pain in the ass to develop. His character ended up being like a Rubix cube to me, I’m still not quite done with him. If you were to partner with one of your characters to solve a puzzle that could save all of mankind, which character would it be and why? Definitely the All-Seeing Eyes, he may be a cocky self-absorbed prick but he does have the wisdom and knowledge to back it up. Conversely, which character would you not get along with in real life and why? Honestly Lilith, Poltergeist, and the All-Seeing Eyes. Lilith because she’s a tad too much like me, the All-Seeing Eyes because he’s a prick with an absolute lack of humility, and Poltergeist because as adorable as he is, every time he tries to speak I’d be horribly tempted to say “Dude, spit it out already!” A Dreamgiver’s Tale is set in a fascinating and surreal dreamscape – how do you come up with the various wondrous places in your story? I type. No seriously, nearly all of the designs are just on the spur of the moment. Do you like world-building? What’s your favourite part of world-building? In A Dreamgiver’s Tale – what was your favourite magical/supernatural creation? I like maps, and drawing settings out after I’ve described them on paper [which I have done with the first three dreams if you’d like to take a look: peevesronni.deviantart/gallery/44081489] I think my favorite’s between the world of The Dreams that Never Sleep, the diamond planet [Cyrus’s dream, specifically], and the most recent dream in Chapter 20. What’s your favourite scene in A Dreamgiver’s Tale? What about your least favourite – or the part of the story that you think needs the most work? Oh dear. Hmm. I’m insanely fond of Chapter 10, where Aisling, Lilith, and Cyrus and all sitting in the willow grove and discussing how they view each other. I really liked how the dialogue came out in that one. As for a least favorite… I think I’ll have to go with Chapter 12. I had so much trouble with it and it’s still not complete in my eyes. Seeing as how we’re talking about dreams, have you ever dreamed up an entire story and woken up the next day to write out as much of it as you can remember? Yes, actually. I had this one really long, incredibly strange chain of dreams in which I traveled around the worlds by myself and saw various people and characters from tv shows and some really creepy images, like that one assassin who was trying to kill me but couldn’t stop puking up blood… anywho, I have a three or so page script in one of my journals describing everything I could remember up until eating breakfast with the women of Amazon Lily in One Piece. Aside from novels, you’ve also written and posted a number of poems here on Noveljoy. Do you think poems are underrated lately? Did you start writing poems first before attempting to write full-length stories? I don’t think poetry as a whole is underrated lately ‘cause, well, music and lyrical poetry is still popular with a good amount of people. And as for poetry, that definitely came after my first attempts at published authorhood [yes, I thought I could get published at the ripe old age of seven]. Do you have a favourite poet or poem? Favorite poet: Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll, and Emily Dickinson. “The Moron”, by Anonymous [he’s very famous poet you know, wrote the Test Prayer and even all of Shakespeare’s plays if you believe the conspiracy theories] Ahem: See the happy moron, He doesn’t give a damn! I wish I were a moron. My God! Perhaps I am. I don’t think you could have a more beautiful rhyme. Being able to handle critiques is an important part of maturing as a writer – what was the most useful critique you’ve ever received? What was the hardest critique you’ve had to take? Hmm… most useful… I’m thinking it’s between Krystal’s critique of my full plotline and well, pretty much every review by Aspenwood on fictionpress. Hardest critique to take wasn’t really even a critique but more of a comment by my Creative Writing teacher about how she didn’t find the Nightmares’ abilities to be believable. That one I tried to explain to her over and over again by pulling examples from earlier in the story but she still didn’t think it was realistic. Do you have an awesome support system of friends and/or family in real life – people who constantly encourage you to write? Yes: mum, Tabitha, my *former* Creative Writing teacher, my *former* Resource teacher, nearly every high school English teacher I’ve talked to, actually, scratch that, a fair portion of my teachers in general, and my awesome cousin in Virginia. Honestly though, most simply encourage my stories second to my artwork. They sort of constantly tell me to make use of my talents [with the exception of Tabitha, she’s more of the fellow aspiring author that I bounce ideas off of when we’re not pissy with each other]. You’ve been an awesome contributor to Noveljoy – posting in the forums, creating excellent courses, and just being really active. We really appreciate your presence! Is it important to you that you keep growing your various ties with writing communities (in real life and online)? I honestly have my biggest ties in the writing community through Noveljoy, and I sorta just… like it here. This site’s really been quite awesome for me ever since I joined. We notice you are particularly good at prompting others to read your stories! Many writers may be good at storytelling, but they aren’t good at advertising themselves and getting traffic to their stories. Do you have any advice on the best way to improve traffic? The most I did for advertisement is to story swap. I actually find it a little annoying and self-centered to ask people to read your story without offering anything in return, so I tend to read something in exchange for people reading my story. I think it’s important to do something for someone else when you want something from them [now if only I could follow that rule to the letter in real life and online].
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 19:00:12 +0000
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