Teen Writing, Part 1

Mostly cross-posted from the Den of Shadows message board.

These are two posts by SF writer John Scalzi about writing as a teen/teen writing. The first is his initial post and the second is a follow up. I encourage anyone who is a teen writer now or was a teen writer to read his posts. I don't know from other peoples' experience, but, at least from my own, the blog posts are spot on.

I agree with pretty much everything he said. At some point when I have more time and/or remember, I might write a full blog post on why I agree with what he said and my own experience just because I think it'd be too long to write here.

But, yeah, I can say that when I was a teen and even some of the stuff I wrote for my first couple of creative writing classes in college I thought was the greatest stuff in the world. One was a short story called "Internet Alien" and the other was a short story that was rewritten/expanded into a novel chapter called "Angel Love, Demon Love". At the time I thought these two stories were the pinnacle of my writing. Then I got older/smarter.

At times I think about going back and fixing up "Internet Alien", but there's something I still like about it, flaws and all. But I would like to go back to Angel Love, Demon Love and turn that into at a novel.

On the Origin of Stories

This is modified from my original post to the Fangs, Fur, & Fey LJ community.

I think my favorite stories to work on are ones that come to me in pieces, where I get a glimpse of something here (like a character, an image, a title, etc.) and I get a glimpse of something there. For a while I think these glimpses have nothing to do with each other--and for the most part they don't.

Then something happens where I need to work on an actual story (rather than filling notebooks with random notes), and all these different, previously unconnected pieces just fit together.

So I can start with an opening line ("An angel and a demon can never be friends."), an image (all the fishes gathering at spawning time), a title (Dragon Rose: A Dragon's Love Story), a character (Pai's drawing, Rose and Striker from role-playing games), or a "what if . . ." (What if you made this a sci fi?, What would it be like to live in a world where . . . ?, or What if he didn't know that she [his girlfriend] was the supernatural he's supposed to be hunting?), but usually one of these isn't enough to get the full story. Also, I mostly rely on the "what ifs" to fill in the missing pieces of character and plot.

Because I know the origin of Pai's story the best, I will use it as an example of how one of my stories came into being.

When I was in 11th grade, I drew a picture of a girl wearing a Chinese-style dress, wore a cape, and had a sword. I named her Pai after a video game character I used to always play at my friend's house, but for the life of me can't remember the game. At the time, I think I had some notion of turning her into a superhero.

A few years later, I got this idea for a "magical girl" story (which is a Japanese manga/anime genre about a young girl who gets magical powers and can be like a superhero). Around the same time, I wanted to write about a character who had a sleepwalking dream, much like my own experience. So I named this "magical girl" story "Nothing Else Matters" in memory of the boy I had the dream about.

The story didn't really go anywhere. Fast forward a couple years to my creative writing class in my last year of college where I needed a short story to write. I had planned on working on another short story, but I got this image of a teenage girl holding a sword after a long battle with blood running down her hands, but not from the actual fighting.

My mind placed all these things together, so when it came time to write the short story (which was really chapter 1 of my new WIP), everything just fell into place. The short story was titled "Esper" (a type of magical girl who uses psychic powers or has ESP), though the title of the book changed to "Bleeding Hands". I didn't like "Bleeding Hands" as a title, because while it captures that image I had, I don't think it sounds good, plus I wanted to continue with the Metallica-themed title since I was dropping "Nothing Else Matters". So the new title is "No Leaf Clover" which I think fits the theme or the events much better.

Writing Prompts

Mostly cross-posted from the Den of Shadows.

Angel Love, Demon Love is a story about angels and demons. It started from a short story I wrote during college when I was in one of my moods where I just needed to write something and have it finished. Then I took a creative writing class and the story just exploded.

Rather than outlining the expanded version of Angel Love, Demon Love like I normally do, I thought it would be fun to take the vague idea of plot from the short story I had written and write the story based on writing exercises and prompts. This actually wasn't my idea to start with. I hadn't planned on it being more than the short story that it was, and all I was going to do with it was maybe revise the short story and try to sell it. But then, like I said, I took that creative writing class.

For the first short story or chapter of a novel that we were supposed to turn in, the teacher gave us a prompt to write some part of our story or something about our characters. At first I thought it was really stupid because by writing based on some prompt, I thought it would eliminate my creativity. Instead, I found the opposite to be true. And I found out there was a lot more to Xander and Cortillya's story to tell than what I wrote in the original short story.

But now, I want to write their entire story (or the vast majority that remains of it) based off of writing exercises and prompts.

Angel Love, Demon Love Snippet 2

Here's another small snippet of Angel Love, Demon Love (cross-posted at the Den of Shadows message board). The location was a dead city.

Cortillya had never understood what her mother meant. Even if she had, she would have ignored her mother's warnings about The City being dead, and traipsed down there to visit Xander anyway.

But now she looked upon the city with a different light. After living with the demons, Cortillya knows that her mother's words could never be more true. The City was dead. Not only that, it was like all the humans who continued to live in The City had the very essence that made them humans sucked out of them until they were nothing more than empty vessels imitating life.

She finally understood why it was so important to save the humans, even when they didn't want to be saved themselves. Only one question remained. Was it too late to save the humans even if it was too late to save herself?

Angel Love, Demon Love Snippet

So over at the Den of Shadows message board, there's an Adding Depth thread in the Writer's Section. Usually I don't post there, but I've been procrastinating with Kitsu's story, while also really regretting not bringing my red Angel Love, Demon Love folder to Japan with me when I went home in January.

The location for this was supposed to be a castle, but I took a few liberties with the term, and used the Great Wall instead.

Anyway. Here's a small snippet from Angel Love, Demon Love.

Xander tried to force his head up, in an attempt to ease his suffering, but it only caused more pain. Giving up, his head flopped back down, a mere inch from the vast desert sands. He was just as his brother had left him, chained and bound upside down to a large barbed pentacle. Would the demon learn his lesson? Would he give up his rebellious ways and convert the angel Cortillya?

Not bloody likely.

He spun the large barbed pentacle around so he could gaze upon the Great City Wall one last time. Cartillya was still trapped within the City, awaiting whatever fate Abaddon deemed suitable for an Archangel's daughter. Xander dreamed of being the dashing knight of ancient legends and rushing in to rescue his princess from her prison as he passed out.