Author Interviews

Hi everyone,

I finsihed writing my new chapter one. It’s longer than the first version as it still contains 80% of the original content. But now has a lot more thoughts and opinions of my main character, Ellodie.

I think it’s better. More meaty and introduces the reader to the character more, lets them get to know her more. So they’ll feel, hopefully, more connected to her.

I haven’t evenly distributed her new thoughts and opinions inside the chapter. I’ve put more at the beginning than the end—actually the end is almost unchanged.

I want readers to connect with Ellodie as soon as possible. I think I didn’t do this in my previous first chapter to the best of my ability. Let’s hope it’s better now. I need to give it to a few people to read. And see what they think.

When I finished it, my brain was a little fried, but I still had some writing time left, so I watched author interviews on youtube.

When I started writing seriously, something that helped me, and influenced me the most, were author interviews, which is why I’m mentioning them here.

Watching them is fun, yes, but they’re also inspiring and informative.

Before I wrote Destructive Magic, I took an online Oxford continuing education course targeted at the YA category. It was a course that promised to get you from idea, through the outline, to the end of the first chapter.

One of the early weeks directed gave us to a website of author interviews and asked us to listen to three or four. I listened to closer to thirty. A lot covered where or how the author got their first idea for their novel.

What really resonated with me was an author (I can’t remember who they were anymore), who said that when he wanted a new idea, he had to open himself to wanting an idea first and to open up his awareness to his environment. And once he did this, he began noticing everything he’d previously ignored. Once he was actively searching, he began asking himself ‘what if’ questions about everything he encountered until one sparked his imagination.

I did this and within a week I had my idea. And Ellodie was born.

This isn’t the only piece of advice I’ve found useful from these interviews and others I’ve watched since then. For me, they’re a gold mine of advice.

Search for interviews of your favorite authors on youtube. You’ll be surprised how inspiring and useful they are.

That’s it for tonight.

See you tomorrow,

Happy writing,

Joanne.