Inspirational Images

Today’s RTW question from YA Highway: Share some images that inspire your WIP(s).

So here are some pictures that inspired my WIP, The Rose of Coracus, almost 10 years ago when I started writing it! (For more about what inspired this manuscript, read here.)

The heroine*:

An energetic dancer from a disliked ethnic group with a talent for sewing.

The love interest*:

A handsome prince who wants to learn more about his people…so he explores the city in disguise. 

The nasty noble girl*:

No more needs to be said about her.

The setting*:

 A huge castle on the hill above the sprawling and Tudor-esque city.

I’m really really excited about this manuscript…which is good, because I’m starting to query agents! *Eep*

* Photos, top to bottom: Esmeralda from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Prince Henry and Marguerite from Ever After, Salzburg Castle and the streets of Rouen, France. 

In the Name of Research

Today’s Road Trip Wednesday question from YA Highway: What is the strangest/weirdest thing you've ever researched?

I hate to take the easy way out, but it’s that kind of week. I covered this topic several months ago. Attending a Medieval Festival was definitely the weirdest thing I’ve done in the name of research! Since then, there are some new things that I need to put on the to-be-researched list: dancing (I might attend a contra dance), horses, and historical dress making techniques. These aren’t quite run of the mill interests, but I know I will definitely have a lot of fun learning more about them!

Ice Cream

No, this is not where I’m going to share my favorite homemade ice cream recipes (but that can be arranged at a later date if you’d like), but rather the title of this post refers to soon-to-be-huge author of Divergent Veronica Roth’s brilliant blog post.  This post was written way back in October and I wanted to respond to it, comment on it, do something, but it was so brilliant yet simple I felt that I could not match its eloquence. 

I’m not going to try to now, either.  The gist of what Veronica says (but please read her post) is: you have to go out and do things in order to be able to write well.  Experiencing new things gives people (and therefore writers!) a fuller understanding of the world that they can write about to give their books more depth.  Don’t just sit in your house and write all day, every day.  Fly a kite! Move to Eastern Europe! Try Korean food! Volunteer at an elementary school! Do something! (Just to be fair, Beth Revis [Across the Universe] gave the same boiled-down advice during the Breathless Reads tour a few weeks ago that reminded me of Veronica’s post.)

I completely agree with this advice, and it’s always interesting to me to see how what I do influences my writing.  Here are a few recent examples…

The Rose of Coracus (WIP)

·      Read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and realized that maybe the oomph needed as a climax in my novel was a little revolting and rebellion. Not full-blown and horrifyingly violent like in Mockingjay, but the idea is there.  The same can be said about Katniss and Prim’s relationship inspiring me to build up Shayna and her sister Minna’s.

The Lady and the Unicorn’s Lover (WIP)

·      Read Tracy Chevaliar’s historical fiction novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, then saw the famous tapestry in the Cloisters Museum in New York, then wrote a term paper about medieval tapestry for my art history class in London, which inspired the playful title of my novel.

·      Watched the wonderful British TV series, Downton Abbey, which inspired me to increase how much the servants’ lives (beyond the main character) are depicted.

Untitled Picture Book Idea #1

·      I bought new socks the other day.  They’re made from bamboo.  I suggested (hopefully) to my boyfriend that pandas would now become attracted to me and follow me home. This seems like a playful premise for a children’s book.

Untitled Contemporary YA Series #1

·      I was thinking recently about my church youth group and some of the wonderful experiences we had together during middle and high school.  There were also a lot of serious issues that had to be dealt with. Since there’s been a lot of talk about teens wanting stories about real kids (not rich/ famous ones) and/or novels that deal with ‘problems’ I’ve been wondering if my experiences with that group could be the basis of a series.

Untitled Contemporary YA novel #1

·      My boyfriend has a crazy roommate. The roommate doesn’t have any social skills, barely speaks English yet reads classics (like the tome Gone with the Wind-only people like me read that!), and keeps very strange hours (often returning to the apartment at 4am only to leave again at 7am).  Thus, the currently theories are that he is either a spy from a foreign country or a vampire.  He’s great source material for some sort of story.

So, there you have it, by reading books, watching tv, visiting museums, studying, buying socks (!), socializing and just living- aka not writing- I’ve come up with plenty of story ideas and ways to make my writing fuller. 

Mmmmm….and now I want vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and chocolate swirls!

Book Maps

In between ‘finishing’ The Rose of Coracus and beginning my next manuscript, I took a break to reconsider the world in which my novels are set: the kingdom of Harren.  I had done this before, right when I started writing these novels (at age 14).  I have maps, family trees, complicated documents outlining the form of government, type of religion, the history of noble families. Having visual aids is key.  Planning is important.  Being organized is important. I’m good at all those things.  So, just because I have always found it intriguing to see how authors work and plan while they’re writing (have you ever seen J.K. Rowling’s impossible-to-read-script listing Hogwarts students and outlining the plot?), I figured I’d share two of the maps I’ve made with you.  

Are these maps interesting? Insightful? Strange?  I'm not quite sure (and I'm sorry they're so small)...but they're definitely helpful when I'm working on my stories!

The Things You Do For Research

The best writing of all comes from personal experience: “write what you know” is advice I’ve heard way more than once.  But sometimes you have to admit you don’t know everything.  You may know how your character would react to a break up…but not necessarily the way ancient Romans would express heartbreak.  Or, you might want to set your story in Dickensian London…but don’t know the vernacular of the time.  Sometimes, you just need to research something.  And writers today are lucky; at the tip of our fingertips you can research just about any topic out there. You name it; you can find something about it on the internet, and lots more things you never even thought to think about. 

When writing my YA novel, The Rose of Coracus, I’ve done my fair share of research online.  Although my novel takes place in a fantastic quasi-medieval kingdom, I want some elements to be relatively historically accurate.  Or, at the very least, I need the right vocabulary to describe types of dress, medieval warfare or architecture.  I spent one afternoon looking up medieval castle floor plans…you’d really be surprised what’s on the web!

Sometimes, though, research takes you a bit further than a simple Google search.  I’ve made more than one boyfriend jump when they see “babynames.com” in my research search history.  Calm down guys, I’m just researching character names! (Side note: I really do love character names that have an additional meaning or ones that help further detail the setting/culture of the novel.  For example, I named all the characters of a particular ethnic group linguistically similarly: female names end in –a or –i, and often come from Eastern European or Balkan backgrounds.  Details count, even ones that your readers might not be consciously aware of!).

This past weekend, though, my research reached a new high…or low…depending on how you want to look at it.  I attended the Medieval Festival at Fort Tryon Park.  Now, I’ll admit, my not-quite-entirely-inner nerd has always wanted to attend a Renaissance Faire, just to see what it’s like.  But when I realized that this past weekend’s event would actually be beneficial to my manuscript, I had to attend.  I was most keen on seeing medieval combat in action; it’s pretty darn hard to describe action realistically and dramatically if you don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like in the first place!  The highlights were that some people were dressed in what I imagine to be realistic costumes, I heard unique music (with instruments I’ve never seen before and might now include in my manuscript), and saw medieval blacksmithing techniques (key because that’s the trade of my main character’s father). Overall, the Medieval Festival was interesting, although geared more towards kids than I would have liked, not all that authentic (there was a Quiddich match…cool, but probably didn’t exist in medieval times) and I missed the jousting…but I did see a real live unicorn!  All in all, it was a cool experience on a beautiful fall day that at least got me thinking in the realm of medieval-ness.

The next book I write, though, I think I’m going to set in an ancient Scottish castle or Prague or an exotic Polynesian island.  Cause a research trip couldn’t hurt. ;-)