Author’s Craft- The Sèance May 21, 2010

The author’s craft is another one of those things that if it isn’t well written it isn’t a good book. In my book it is really well written. The meaning for author’s craft is choices an author/poet makes when writing a text (eg, organizational pattern, style, vocabulary, images, symbols, point of view, and audience).

For me good writing is a strong description so that when you are reading the book you can feel like you are the character or you are there in the story. In my book I feel that way because they give good and strong descriptions about what they are feeling or what they are seeing. Here is a good paragraph that shows how I think a good style of writing is “But at the graveyard, which is on a little rise of a hill west of town, I looked around at the ring of mourners and felt even worse. Under the heat of the afternoon sun, which beat against the leaves of the ancient dusty oaks, each of us from the séance stood alone. Like so many pillars of salt, we had tried to look back and failed. And in the eyes of the others who shared the pale, flat sky with us, there was sometimes suspicion, sometimes a little fear.”-Joan Lowery Nixon.  It takes a lot of thinking and a lot of time to try and get a good and well written novel, writers have to wait a long time for their novel to get publish because lots of things they first write is bad so they have to do it over again and do it better.

A bad writing style is saying this happened and then this happened, on and on again. Not really telling you what is really around them and what is really happening. Some books are written from both sides of the story and when they have more than one side of a story the descriptions are normally showed better so that you can understand different sides of the story good enough. Also I think it is bad writing and confessing for a reader when one paragraph is talking about one time than the next paragraph is talking about another time. In my book there are a few places where it does do that I think authors should put a full line with nothing there or put a star or something to show that they are in a different scene. Here is one from my book were they change the scene:

““Then what in the world happened to Roberta?”

Two days later Aunt Mel’s question was answered when a botanist from the university drove in from the Thicket at a speed high enough to raise the dust cloud that wouldn’t settle for an hour.”-Joan Lowery Nixon

A writer needs to have good writing skills for people to read their book. But authors can do anything they want to do because there is no rules in writing books they can use any word to make a good story. Ever since people were small and in school you learn how to write that is how writers get there techniques is from in school.

Characters and Conflicts- Week 2 May 14, 2010

Characters in a book is something that is in every book, they have to be described good for the reader to understand the people. In a book there is normally a main character and then a few other characters too. Not all characters have to be liked though, authors normally put a character that no one will like because the character is always doing bad things so the good person. That is were characters and conflicts come in together. Characters always have a fight whether it is a physically or verbally  fight. There are many types of conflicts, there is people vs. people, people vs. nature, people vs. society, and people vs. themselves. In a book there are more than one conflict that happens, usually the conflicts get bigger the more time you get into the book.

In my book so far things have slowed down a bit compared to at the beginning of the book. The few chapters that I read this time was mostly about trying to find out who took Sara and trying to organize everything about her and get all the stories straight. A guy was down at the Thicket and found Sara’s body in a pond. The guy brought her back and took her to Sheriff Novell. The stories people think why this may have had happen was she left the house some how and then she went to go meet someone at the Thicket, but the person that she was meeting up with murdered her and left her in the pond. They are having a funeral for her and her mom came in for it.

In my book there is only an internal conflict because Lauren which is Sara’s step sister is having a hard time  getting used of the point that her step sister just  disappeared. There is no one really yet that she is fighting with other than her self. There is always things going through her head, lot of questions that can’t be answered yet or they will never find the answer to. Authors try and make the conflicts grow and change because they like it to start off slow and get better and better the more you get in to the book.

In my book my character has really changed from the beginning, she really didn’t like Sara because Sara was really cool at school and Lauren wasn’t, Lauren was always scared and worried of a lot. Now in the book she really cares about Sara because she is gone forever and she will never come back and Lauren feels like it is was all her fault  that this happened because she was at the Sèance with her. Now Lauren always worries her self and isn’t that scared of everything because she has been through a lot of bad things since this had happened. But now she isn’t really self confident as much like she used to be.

In my book there really isn’t many people that seem to be the bad guy the only guy I don’t like is the sheriff  because he isn’t all that scared of what had happened to a teenager.  They put characters in a book that people won’t like so that the conflict will seem more interesting and you will get more into the good character.

Now that I am more into the middle of the book the author has slowed down on discribing how they look, the authors do that because now the readers have there first imprestion on them.

Beginnings In A Novel- The Sèance May 7, 2010

The book that I am reading is The Sèance, it is a mystery book. So far I have only read 42 pages which is 3 chapters. The book is briefly about these girls who have a Sèance which is a thing that you can talk to the dead, and a girl disappears out of no where during it and find out she was killed some how but no one knows who killed her.

This book is tooken place in a small town because it tells you at the beginning that there school doesn’t have very many people and that this girl moves from a big city to there in a small town.

There are many different characters in this book, but it has one main character so you only hear from one side of the story, the main character tells a bit about herself as well as the other people who are with her.  Most of the descriptions that sh is telling are how old they are, how they act, and how they look. Lauren which is the main character is a nice average person that wishes she was popular like her step sister, but still has a few friends. She also lives with her auntie because her parents died. This character to me is a very a well known normal person, it isn’t like a girl who is magical and stuff she is actually someone who you could believe as a real person.

At the beginnineg of the book it mostly is getting ready for what is about to happen in the book like the whole point of the book is the Sèance. So they start off by trying to get people to go to it and talk about who hates who.  Than by about page 28 they are at the sèance and the mystery part of the book starts happening.

The book is well writen because it tells about what is happening when they are talking or what is happen when they are just standing there, than you can feel like you are in the story and you are one of the characters. The only part I don’t like about it is you only hear one part of the story, because the main girl is thinking one thing and that is all you know, you don’t get to know what other people are thinking about the same subject.

My predictions for this book is they are going to have another sèance to ask the dead who took Sara and other girl is going to be tooken away and murdered. Than they will find out after a while that Sara was murdered and same with the other girl. Everyone is going to worry and be scared who murdered Sara and the other girl. Hopefully and eventually they will find out who did this to Sara and the other girl.

The beginning is the time the catch and keep your readers. A beginning of a story is very important, if you don’t get you readers eye at the beginning they are not going to read the rest of your story, even if the middle of the story or the end of the story is really good they will never know.