Behind storytelling.

What's behind a story?

Everything you are, that you know, and intrigues, 

combine, helping to tell a story.

Questions to ponder prior to writing. 

What stirs your heart?

Why does it stir that 'something' inside you?

What would you like to see more of in the world?

How can you transform what you know in a different way?

What has hurt you?

What has made you want to sing?

What are your dreams?

What are your weaknesses/strengths?

How did you emotionally grow/transform into who you are now?

What battles still fight silently inside?

What displeases you? Why?

What music do you listen to?  Is it at certain times?

Get those juices flowing. Jot a few lines down, pause on the answers. Different feelings will stir - write those down, too. When we begin to understand ourselves and our reactions to situations/people, we can draw on this knowledge while writing. 

Put yourself in someone else's shoes. What do you think makes them act/say things a certain way? Especially, the things you don't understand. Imagine the reason behind it and create a character, a sort of fuzzy template that you, as a writer, are going to define.

Analyze your environment. Observe the wind, how it bites or gently caresses your face, depending on the time of year/where you are. What can you smell? Fumes of a big city? Damp soil/freshly cut grass? Strong floral perfume? Woody aftershave? Try to use all your senses. Most often, we get accustomed to our surroundings and have to remember to look at things as if it were our first time. It's quite astonishing what we take for granted on a day-to-day basis, like smells. 

Study the movement of people in different environments: on the underground, bus, park, high street, pub, cafe, club. Strangers/lovers/friendships. What does their body language say about them? When they talk, how do they move? When you've had an argument, how did you move? Did the other person mirror you? This processing will help with the small descriptive passages in dialogue.

They say 'write what you know'. If you have a passion, a hobby, an interest that ignites the soul, or possibly something that frightens you - develop these in a character. It's incredible what inspiration derives from a simple starting point. Characters will start to come alive, letting you know where they want to go and the magic begins.

Reality or Fantasy Setting?

My imagination always keeps me mentally active. Okay, mainly researching/daydreaming. For as long as I can remember, I'd cross reference myths/folklore. It was important to create a story with a touch of ancient mystery in a modern day setting, something I could believe. So, I blended both worlds. I wasn't sure how much of each would mingle, wanting nothing overly dramatic, but not too 'normal' either. With my brain all fired up, using the old to create something new, that felt true to me, I set to work. Yup! A feel thing, quite difficult to explain. It's a strange natural buzz. A surging flow of energy that excites - all stemming from one source. A quiet tide becomes a raging storm of ideas emerging from the original spark, and in an instant, you just know it's right for you. A belief in that magical connection, that only a creative muse brings.

Whatever inspires that magical surge in you - follow. 

Scribble down, what may at first seem trivial bits of info. One or more of those ideas, at some point, will take hold and grow. Sparking something inside, refusing to be ignored. Before you know it, a story and characters will appear, and you'll have started your journey in the blink of an eye. :o) 

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo

Book Cover Reveal (March) - Autumn 2015 Release

BOOK COVER REVEAL

AUTUMN 2015 RELEASE

URBANE PUBLICATIONS

The young lady in the photos is my daughter - Charlotte-anne. 

The cover shown via a PDF format - the print version will be much clearer with UV highlighting.

Hope you like it folks :o) 

Love and light,

Trace

xoxo

A writer's epiphany - A Carpet of Purple Flowers

Third Person Omniscient 

***

Okay, so today I analysed my writing style. Which was brought on by feedback left by beta readers and a particular editor(a beta reader), Dominique. She mentioned how well I used third person omniscient. So, off I went to research. (Yup, I'm not great on craft terminology, it's something that I'm working on, promise). ;o)

***
I would like to share with you.

  Third Person Omniscient

For example, there are stories where the POV character changes with each scene, but each scene only shows a single POV character. This would mean the story is in Third Person Multiple. But every so often a scene would pop up where there are two POV characters or the narrator telling the reader what the characters in the scene are thinking—and that's when we'd call it Omniscient POV.

The Omniscient POV has many advantages over Third Person Limited. Perhaps the greatest advantage is that Omniscient allows the author to give more information to the reader in a shorter length of time.

In Third Person Limited we'd need to be "shown" what the characters are like, as opposed to Third Person Omniscient, where the narrator can simply "tell" us. Omniscient POV benefits from a larger scope than Limited and allows the author to say more things about the characters' situations than the Limited POV can.

It turns out that most fiction (particularly novels) written in the past century is written in Third Person Limited. Though Omniscient can do more with less, Limited is more common because Omniscient sacrifices what's perhaps the most important thing in fiction: It doesn't allow the reader to get close to and sympathize with the characters and the situations they find themselves in. This is because the distance created by seeing everything from the Omniscient narrator's point of view instead of the character's is too great.

Third Person Omniscient naturally distances the reader from the characters and the situations because there's an "otherworldly" voice telling the story. The voice knows everything that's going on, as well as—in the case of subjective narrators—the fact that they sometimes comment on the events in the story. An Omniscient narrator can even address a reader directly.

The distance between the reader and the characters when a story is written with an Objective narrator is even greater than Subjective. In Objective, the narrator doesn't "judge" the characters for the reader. However, since the reader only sees what the characters say and do and not what they think, it becomes like watching a film.

You can see the characters on screen, you can see who they are and what they're doing, but the screen is always between you and the characters. You can never step into their shoes and see the story from their vantage point, or understand what they're thinking at any given moment.

It isn't impossible to overcome the distance between reader and character when writing in Omniscient. That's most obvious when reading traditional fairy tales, which are usually written from an Omniscient point of view. But readers will most often sympathize with the characters and the situations as concepts, rather than with the characters as people.

In short, getting the reader to sympathize with the characters in the story is part of the art of the Omniscient perspective. Sometimes it can require creative solutions, but don't be discouraged if you run in to trouble. It takes both practice and a strong understanding of the relationship between the narrator, the characters, and the reader.

Pros and Cons

Strengths of using Omniscient POV:

• The narrator has godlike knowledge, allowing the reader to know everything going on at any time.
• It doesn't limit the author to a single POV character in a scene.
• It allows the author to provide information in a more natural way.
• It can provide smoother transition into action.

Weaknesses of using Omniscient POV:

• It's more presentational in nature, resulting in distance from the characters.
• Emotions are harder to convey to the reader.
• It tends to be more "Tell-y" (which can lead to massive info-dumps if you aren't careful).
• The narrator's godlike knowledge means that tension can be dissipated, possibly resulting in a dull-feeling story.

Omniscient POV is not the same thing as head-hopping; those who do it well are masters of the craft and work hard at it. Fiction written in Omniscient Point of View (OPOV) is more along the lines of what we might call Narrative Fiction. It can be any kind of story, but it’s narrated rather than seen/experienced through Deep Point of View (DPOV)—what we now see in most genre fiction. In OPOV, the author is basically narrating the story and can dip into any character’s thoughts at will. OPOV is the style we see most often in classic literature: Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens.

What separates OPOV from head-hopping is the fact that the omniscient narrator maintains a distance from the characters, even though he occasionally will let the reader in on what the character is thinking—but, again, in a style that’s more told than shown.

Authors experienced with using this POV are actually narrating what’s going on inside the character’s head. It isn’t the character’s direct thoughts. Authors who write in a head-hopping style jump from one character’s thoughts to another without any transition between them, sometimes from sentence to sentence, sometimes within the same long sentence.

Omniscient point of view is also referred to as alternating point of view,because the story sometimes alternates between characters. The focal character, protagonist, antagonist, or some other character's thoughts are revealed through the narrator. The reader learns the events of the narrative through the perceptions of the chosen character.

The Harry Potter series is told in third person limited for much of the seven novels, but deviates to omniscient in that it switches the limited view to other characters from time to time, rather than only the protagonist. However, like the A Song of Ice and Fire series and the books by George RR Martin, a switch of viewpoint is done only at chapter boundaries, instead of scene change.

The disadvantage of this mode is that it can create more distance between the audience and the story, and that—when used in conjunction with a sweeping, epic "cast-of-thousands" story—characterization is more limited, which can reduce the reader's identification with or attachment to the characters. A classic example of both the advantages and disadvantages of this mode is J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

The main advantage of this mode is that it is eminently suited to telling huge, sweeping, epic stories, and/or complicated stories involving numerous characters.

SOURCE HERE and HERE

The Difference Between Omniscient POV and Head Hopping

***
I completely resonate with this style of writing. Perhaps, due to the way I see my initial story play out as a film in my head - in scenes. When you watch a film, there are different camera viewpoints, adds more depth as visually explaining the information. I write on camera view, the scene/character that I need to tell the story and move plot on. This makes a lot of sense to me, as I am an extremely visual person, the artist in me :o) Explains a lot - out the box.
***
Third Person Omniscient Authors

Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials
JR Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis intrudes as the narrator in his Narnia Series when he writes, "For it is a very silly thing indeed to lock oneself in a wardrobe.” Third person omniscient allows the author to divulge what is happening to several characters even if they are separated by time or location, and also to show their internal thoughts and feelings. It is a popular choice for high fantasy or epic novels, which often have intricate plots and require lots of stories to be interwoven. 
JK Rowling: Harry Potter Series
Jostein Gaarder: Sophie’s World.
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

***
Below is Dominique's critique (Beta Reader)
Dominique, possesses a four year degree in creative writing, and also has two specialty degrees in 'Writing'. USA

I was crusing along, reading about Bea, then BAM! There's this Karian fella with his friends. There were characters running everywhere. This was a wake-up call for me as a reader and I sat up and started to pay some real attention at this point. With a lot of books, I think this sort of change would have overwhelmed me, but the author's writing is so skilled as to make this change a kind of electric spark that leaps through her writing.
I was very, very amazed at how the author used the third person omniscient viewpoint so naturally. I can honestly say I’ve never read a book where this technique was very effective. Usually I like to stay in one viewpoint, as a reader. But with this novel, I think it gave credit to the grand scope of the story. Bea might be the main character, but the story is about so much more than just her. It’s about Vororbla, something that intertwines all souls together in a way – so I considered it very symbolic to use the omniscient viewpoint.

More 'Critique' can be found HERE
***
Seriously, I am so relieved that I'm not actually doing anything 'wrong', just different :o)
It can be so difficult to see through your own work. To know whether you have what it takes, (I still don't know, but I'm trying). My wonderful beta readers have been such an invaluable aid to my own understanding of how I write, and now, everything is much clearer, thanks to them. It really helps knowing my style. I just started writing for the need to get that story out of my head, with no technical/craft knowledge, because I didn't intend to seek publishing. The story has grown so much, and people actually enjoyed the tale, so I thought, let's see what happens if I put my story 'out there'. It's a work in progress, lol.

Thank you so much for sharing my journey,
love and light
Trace
xoxo

I'm back!!! 'Keep your light bright' - A Carpet of Purple Flowers

A Carpet of Purple Flowers

(New Adult - Paranormal Romance)

'A Different kind of Love Story'

Hi everyone.

I wanted to create a post as I realise that they have been becoming less frequent over the past few months. I just really wanted you to know that I haven't forgotten any of you.

It would be great if you would take the time to pop over and follow my new book page - HERE

Website HERE

I will be placing updates on books release, etc there.

Thank you beautiful people x

Well, it has been quite a slog trying to get the manuscript ready for publishing, and finally, I'm almost there - Yay! I have given the blurb details below, and a little write up of how the story came to be. 

Please feel free to leave me a message, it would be great to receive some feedback, and a follow ;o) 

‘Every unknown is a beginning’

Bea lives a simple life residing in a SW London second-hand bookshop. It had been an especially difficult year, first with her uncle dying, then splitting up with Brandon, her philandering, druggie boyfriend. The shops trivial daily conversations, local faces and calm was all she desired, but that was all about to change.

No-one expects to bump into supernatural beings, let alone two opposing sects of a forgotten race. Bea’s quiet existence turns into turmoil as she slowly starts to unravel a secret past. A lost history in which love, revenge, betrayal, magic, power and karma are not mere cycles of a soul, but a sacred journey upon a web of many possibilities.

The future is not set in stone, and the choices that she makes ripple through the cosmos. As the secret unfolds she realises that no matter what form your soul takes there are consequences for ones actions in which time has no relevance – we call it karma, they call it Vororbla.

Will she cope with the heartbreak and truths before her?

 What would you do if your very existence came into question? 

Join Bea as she uncovers the truth of her past via a carpet of purple flowers.

Once I started to place pen to paper, the story began to grow into a much greater tale. Maybe, every creative whimsy that I have ever envisaged and not acted on has waited until now… to be brought to life.

My mind raced, as folklore came entwined with love, fate entwined with choice, science entwined with spiritual teachings - all guiding me to write a romance that revolves around a karmic cycle.

Let me share with you, a secret place in which only a parted veil exposes. To an ethereal plane in which otherworldly, angelic, type beings, tend to a well of souls.

In the book, I take the reader on a brief, visual journey to the home of these elementals called, 'The Sindria', their realm, 'Calageata'. It is here, that the purple flower of Vororbla grows, emitting a thick mist ready to greet the essence of a soul.

What keeps us going when the world can feel so harsh?

Where do we draw our strength from in times of need?

What urges us to carry on, when things become extremely overwhelming, and too much to bear?

We all know the answer... it comes from within.

Somewhere, deep inside, a light refuses to fade.

This light (our inner strength), may become less bright for a time, but in its fading, it is re-energising, and will again awaken from sleep.

Once, our inner light screams out its very last ray of hope - the sleeping energy awakes, re-igniting the inner, dimming ray.

Reminiscent of the illuminating birth of a far away star, and from apparent nothingness, wondrous brightness can evolve.

The Sindria (elementals) teach… 'To be able to shine brightly, ones light must first fade.’ 

In the book, I mention to 'keep your light bright', as we have all experienced at some point in our lives, a time when nothing makes sense, and I really wanted to send out an important message to my readers – that you are so much more than what you initially see, and to remember, a fading light, secretly, masks eternity.

Love and light
Trace
xoxo