Entry 4: Character interviews

Finally managed to take some time out of my not so busy schedule to work on this blog again. Thanks to the poll on DeviantART, I am going to be doing character interviews with the main cast of A Horse Named Ox. I'll probably do something similar for the cast of Stallion Song at some point if there's enough interest.

Quick update on life in general: I have found a new obsession which is probably not the best of ideas considering I have more than enough already, but anywho. One of my housemates is a gamer, and though this hasn't really interested me at all since I was about 12 or 13, she got Assassins Creed III for Christmas and started to play it here, in our uni house. I was sat down, tapping away, minding my own business and then I glanced at the screen and was hooked. After she finished the game I worked through the older ones and just fell in love with the history and the prettiness of the game, not to mention the surprising amount of depth some of the characters had (mainly focusing on Haytham in ACIII cus I bloody love that man). She's recently acquired Brotherhood so I've been sat glued to the screen watching her playing it...anyone else do that? I'm a terrible gamer. I can backseat game excellently, but I desynchronised so many times in the first and second ones it wasn't even funny anymore. So I've been obsessed with this since January, and it's actually helped me with my writing, in a strange kind of way- it's just another piece of inspiration I've gotten! Anyway. I digress.

I was going to just go through the cast in a fact file format, but I thought this would probably be more fun and make them seem more real.

 

Feature: character interviews for 'Ox'.

Cast:

· Angus

· Linus

· Cerys

· Felicity

· Travis

Interviewer: So, you're all here! I hope you’re all well. We’ll go straight in with the questions, first off, how did you get to Stonechat?

Angus: Well, I got in on a scholarship- I was talent scouted at a local show I was at.
Linus: I always wanted to do something with horses, and where there’s a will, there’s a way. I wanted to show that I wasn’t just some rich kid who got here out of Daddy’s pocket, though- so I ended up auditioning with one of my uncle’s horses for the scholarship. I didn’t get through (ol’ Scholarship managed that instead) but they said how much they wanted me to come, so I convinced my parents to pay for me.
Cerys: The moment I heard Linus was trying out for Stonechat I jumped on the bandwagon- no way was I staying in boring old Dublin by myself! I wasn’t sure if my parents would be happy with shipping us both off to an expensive academy, but it turns out they clearly wanted shot of us! Maybe Linus more than me…
Linus: I heard that!
Felicity: I just paid to come here, like most of the others.
Travis: My father came to Stonechat, so I carried on the legacy. There’s always been someone of my family here.

Interviewer: Wow, quite a mix then! How are you finding your stay at Stonechat so far?

Angus, Linus and Cerys: (together) Loving it!
Linus: Although the workload is a handful…and I have to read…no one told me about reading!
Cerys: (laughing) Moron.
Angus: Some of the early morning work outs are difficult though.
Felicity: I agree! Sometimes I can’t drag myself out of bed quick enough!
Travis: It was much better back in my father’s day, when they wouldn’t just let in any riffraff.
Cerys: Linus, sit down. You can punch him later.

Interviewer: It’s good to hear you’re settling in well! So, Stonechat is renowned for teaching the champions of tomorrow- where did you all start in your riding career?

Angus: My father was a big eventer until he got injured in a riding accident. So I’ve always had the horse-loving vibe around, even though we moved away to a city. I started riding horses properly when I was about nine, and I fell in love there and then. My city had a small urban riding stables and the moment I could I started helping out around there to pay for my lessons. I started going to a few shows with them, and that was when I was talent scouted. I guess the rest is history.
Linus: (thinks for a while) I started riding during a holiday in Spain- I think I was about ten. My sister had been riding for a while before and I whined a little bit about having to ride on HOLIDAY, of all places…but I’m glad I did (laughs) I still remember the fun we had. After that I started borrowing my uncle’s old point to pointer and took him for a few spins on National Hunt tracks. He also had a grumpy cob pony that I used to compete with- not very well though. He had a bad habit of refusing without warning and sending you flying over his head.
Cerys: My uncle started me off. When Linus was too busy trying to play football, I would be riding the point to pointer, who was called George, around the field and trying not to fall off.
Linus: (interrupts) You used to fall off all the time!
Cerys: He was a big horse! Anyway, I can’t really remember a time where I wasn’t obsessed with horses.
Felicity: My dad was in the business- I never had a chance to like anything else!
Travis: Same with me.

Interviewer: Are there any other things you like doing as hobbies?

Angus: This is going to sound a bit sad, but horses are sort of my life… I don’t think there’s much else to it. I tried playing guitar for a little while, but now it just sits in the corner of my room like an ornament.
Linus: I like zombie movies! Lots of zombies, the gorier the better!
Cerys: Sometimes I draw… I like going around sketching things I see. But nobody’s meant to know about that!
Linus: Aww, you sketch? That’s adorable.
Cerys: And that is why. (smacks his arm)
Felicity: I do a lot of photography. Although, I consider shopping a hobby too…
Linus and Angus: Girls.
Travis: I did a lot of rugby back home at school. I was in the team since I started- they called me a prodigy!

Interviewer: Back to horses, seeing as that’s the main point here, what are your favourite breeds and why?

Angus: I quite like thoroughbreds. I like tall horses with a lot of give.
Linus: I’m a big fan of Andalusians and other Spanish horses- they got me into the sport, I owe a lot to them! Not to mention they’re like…the Porsche of the horse world, you know?
Cerys: A Porsche? Really? I like Friesians. All that wild mane! I’d love a Friesian someday.
Linus: Friesians won’t win 3 Day Events, Cerys.
Cerys: Neither will Andalusians.
Felicity: I like Arabians. They’re so dainty and really photogenic, not to mention the fact they have so much endurance.
Travis: So long as they’re well-bred and good at their job I don’t mind.

Interviewer: Quite a variety there! What about your favourite disciplines?

Angus: I quite like Dressage, actually. It’s a lot harder than it looks, but at least you don’t have to worry about your horse falling over. It’s all about making sure the horse is moving right, and that they’re nice and supple. And you get to do it to music a lot of the time- that’s always fun. But I also like Cross Country…tough one!
Linus: Cross Country, without a doubt! Or hunting… hunting’s fun too.
Cerys: Show jumping for me!
Felicity: I like Dressage. Though showing in general is fun.
Travis: In general, I like racing, though I’m probably a bit too rough for that.

Interviewer: Okay, I think that’s all for now! Thank you for answering these questions and we’d like to hear more from you soon.

Also, I apologise for the strange changing of font- I think blogger's playing up a bit.

Entry 3: How to start?

I haven't updated this in a while, and there's a reason for that.

I've not been writing.

Shocking, I know. I'm usually one of the people at the back of a social gathering with a notebook scribbling down the next chapter or scene of a story in the making and trying to blend into the wallpaper (trust me, this is sad but true), but I'd lost the motivation to write anything. I think there comes a time (and often many times) in any creative person's life where they become a little wobbly in their ability and feel like they're not worth anything. I had this issue for a matter of months, and it was not nice. I read somewhere that some people have a 'shoulder devil' that tells them they're not good enough and neither is their writing/artwork/music, and that's exactly what I had.

'You're never going to get published, you know.'
'That's meant to be a sentence?'
'Well no one's going to like that character, even if you adore him.'

You know the drill. However, thankfully, one not very special day, I opened up Stallion Song's file and started reading through it. And although I had the same 'I hate this story' mentality, I actually started doing something about it. I began to edit, and I'm happy to say I think I'm getting back into the hang of things! I was writing during my slump, but most of it was either drabble or short stories about my other characters I tend to draw more than write about (and some who I only write about). I might end up posting them on my DeviantART account for people to have a look at if I feel brave.

Anyway, seeing as Stallion Song seems to be back on the horizon, I'm going to start working on both that and A Horse Called/Named Ox at the same time. Although you'd expect that it makes things harder, I find it a better system of working; I use Ox as my 'break' from Stallion Song as it's a much more relaxed kind of plot with less depth to it. And I also work on some short stories and excerpts from stories I want to write in the future but don't have totally 'down' yet.

Feature: How I write

After my poll on DeviantART eons ago, people seemed to want to read about how I start writing, and how I write in general. I don't know if any of this is going to be relevant to anyone but myself, and certainly don't feel like you have to work in this way; this is just how I do it. :)

1. The first thing that gets me kickstarted is some kind of inspiration. This comes usually from films I've watched, books I've read or music I've listened to. It's all outside influence, and I think that if a writer ever says an idea just walked into their head without any background to account for it they're either lying or unaware of the influence.
Personal example: I think it's obvious that some of my inspiration for Stallion Song stemmed from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and particularly one exchange in At World's End between Barbossa and Jack, where Barbossa comments that the world, '...used to be a bigger place', and Jack responds with, 'The world is still the same. There's just... less in it.' That got me thinking about the whole 'last of the kind' sort of idea for Song, and how the world is shrinking around them thanks to progress.

2. I usually start a story with a single scene or character that comes into my head. I'm a very character-orientated person, which sometimes means my plot suffers for it. Anyway. I start off with a character that interests me, and I start developing it over time. I saved a massive character profile (a whole 7 pages worth) from a surprising source on DeviantART. I sometimes fill that out to help me, or I sometimes get a character that strolls into my head fully formed. That is a very rare occurrence though; most of the time I start with a character who waltzes in and declares their name, and then I get their features revealed to me one day at a time.
Personal example: Mercutio, the 'anti-hero' protagonist of Stallion Song, has been around in my sketchbooks since 2008-9 and he's only JUST been given a proper developing plotline. Obviously, this isn't the case for everyone, but Mercutio is a bit of a special case. Anyway, so one of the ways I start is with a character, or a scene, and I think 'What do I want to do with this character?' Usually only the most interesting of the characters that appear in my head are given a story- the ones that don't seem to give much are demoted to secondary characters.

3. Another thing I do is start with a question that wants answering. For example, it could be something like 'how would ____ overcome his anxieties?' or 'Who's really the bad guy in this scenario? Maybe it's the one you least expect?' I have a tendency of being in love with the underdogs and dark horses, so I do tend to switch the roles a little bit.
Personal example: For Ox, I started with revisiting some of my old horse books from when I was younger, and found one that was a sort of 'riding boarding school' type set up, set in Canada (or America, I forget which one...there are probably both in existence) and thought 'I wonder what would go on in English riding acadamies?' and then, 'how come there seem to be barely any males in the sport anymore? It used to be so male dominated!' I think a good inspiration was the 2012 London Olympics too- watching all those equestrian athletes got me thinking about writing something about what they were like before they reached the big time. And then the idea of an ugly horse that no one loved appeared, and the story took off.

I know a lot of people start from the beginning, and in all honesty I tend to do the same. I've heard some writers construct their stories in a sort of patchwork, starting off by writing bits of scenes and drabbles and then piecing them together slowly, but I found that if I did that (as I did with my first story, Plastic Stars) there's a lot of 'fill in' that needs to be added, and it tends to read as forced or bland. Particularly with Stars, I found that I was just skipping half the text to get to the scenes I'd written beforehand, as they were especially juicy or action packed, and you need to keep your reader's attention throughout, even if there's not an awful lot going on.
I tend to write the first chapter to test the waters and see if I like the feel of the story, and if after the end of one chapter I feel willing to go ahead and write a few more, I keep it. If not, the chapter gets stuck in a drabble folder. I then tend to plot out where I'm going for at least five chapters before I even think about writing anything else, and then go from there.

I hope this was at least informative into my strange little writer's mind, and maybe it'll help you in your writing endeavours! The next entry is going to be some sort of character interview, so I'll probably set up a poll on my DeviantART page (since most of you come from there anyway) to decide who I'll do one on. Any suggestions for questions are also welcomed!

Kes xX

Entry 2: Roofs to Cover Us

So, I'm sure you all have read on DeviantART about my little escapade with my student house roof that decided to go off flying down the road, but the news on that is that the roofer is coming on Saturday with any luck so it should be fixed by next week!

Anyway, my lectures have recently started up again which means I've had less time to write, but it's been giving me a reason to get out of bed in the morning I guess, which is always a good thing- I'm a lazy blighter at the best of times, and I do love my lectures. Except for Modernism. *shudder* Although I had a rather nice seminar about it today, and my tutor said a rather lovely and poignant thing that I decided to scribble down:

'We have all experienced immortality, for in our dreams we are immortal.'

I'm not sure if he got it from Freud or just worded it himself, but I thought it a rather lovely little phrase. There was another rather beautiful one about writing history too but I seem to have misplaced it...I'll find it again at some point.

Anyway, despite my lack of time for writing I am actually well into a fourth chapter of A Horse Named/Called Ox. I'm hoping to get it done by the weekend so I can edit it and polish it off before sending it out into the wide world for approval! I'm rather liking how it's going at the moment, although I do have more scenes in my head for later parts of the story, so I may scribble them down as drabble for now so I at least have them there to pad out the narrative later on. That's what I tend to do anyway!

Kes language: Drabble

I use the word drabble for any piece of writing that doesn't have much of a point to it; it's not part of a bigger narrative, nor is it a short story in its own right. It sort of stands alone as its own little slice of a life; I like to think of them as scenes in a film that are edited out at the last minute. Most of the time I write drabble to help develop characters and forge bonds between a few of them, so as a result a lot of it is made up on banter and conversations between characters instead of any sort of rich description. I sometimes write drabble and then allude to them in actual narratives too, just to help build a stronger sense of character.
I have a great deal of 'drabble' in my folders, and some of it even I hate, but it's all part of a learning cure and I wouldn't dream of ever getting rid of anything. I used to carry around a notebook with all of this 'drabble' in it, and I like to think of it as the equivalent of a travel sketch pad; you sketch out a scene in a few words and then write it up properly later.

So, seeing as this bog is going to become a considerably regular thing, I want to know what you all want to see from it. Would you like to see drabble? Or character bios from the stories I'm writing at the moment? Or just techniques on how I write and what I do? Let me know, either on here or alternatively on DeviantART :)

That's it for now, seeing as it's 1 in the morning over here. I'll update soon!

Kes xX

First entry and Introductions

Hello strange little world.

For those of you who don't know me (and you all probably do seeing as I'm sure you'll only find me through my links on other sites) this is Kesi Legend from DeviantART. I should put a link somewhere...I'll have to sort that out soon.

As you can tell, I'm rather new to this and it'll take some time for me to get used to the controls- I mean, it took me about 6 months to figure out how to answer asks on my Tumblr *facepalm*- but I hope you'll be patient with me. I need to learn!

Anyway, I set this blog up with an intention in mind. Though I'm an avid artist (artist being a strong word for what I do) I focus more on my writing- or at least I want to. You see, I've wanted to get published for quite some time, and I've always got a lot of writing projects on the go. I only started thinking I could seriously do it after finishing my first story Plastic Stars but at a whopping 250 pages typed with such a simple theme, I feel like I have a long way to go to getting publish-worthy!

At the moment, I've got two projects in the works:

• Stallion Song- a historical/fantasy about pirates, namely one pirate who calls himself Mercutio. With the world around him shrinking, and a ruthless pirate hunter on the tails of all remaining pirates in action, Mercutio sets out to find something, anything, that will help his and his crew's survival in a harsh new world. Obviously, magic is going to be involved, and the dark shadows of Merc's past will come back to haunt him as he realises that fighting the inevitable isn't always the best option.
• A Horse Called/Named Ox (can never get the wording right!)- a more down to earth story about a teenager named Angus who has the chance to enrol at the elite Stonechat Riding Academy on a scholarship. Not only does he have to contend with the rich students and their prejudices on a nobody like him, but he is also landed with Ox, an unsightly chestnut mare that had never had much luck in life. As the two misfits build a relationship strong enough to rival the others on the Eventing tracks, Angus has relationships of his own to forge, making friends and enemies along the way. Something similar to a 'rags to riches' story I suppose.

At the moment, Ox is the one I'm enjoying the most. I think that Song needs a bit of rework already, as the pacing is a bit patchy, and there's a lot of waiting around and not doing much I feel. Also, with 5000 words-ish a chapter, that's to be expected, so downsizing might be a good option too. I'm wanting a reader at the moment to have a look and see if the pacing really is off or if it's just me being paranoid, but at any rate it feels like it needs an overhaul. Ox is feeling simpler and easier for me to write at the moment, so that's what you'll probably see the most of here in terms of news.

I'm currently at home and not at uni, so I may not be writing too much. At the moment I'm sat here with a glass of wine (which isn't that super, probably gonna switch to tea soon) doodling up concepts for Ox characters. I find that drawing them helps me visualise them- then again, often they come out looking nothing like I imagine! Currently working on Wilde, the horse equivalent of Casanova in the story:

He's actually turning out alright! Anyway, time to sign off I think for now; I hope I keep this relatively active for you guys to enjoy!

Happy Saturday!

Kes xX