The Trendsetter

Middle Chapter Blues

Julia Unggai — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:55:13 +0000

For those who are currently writing their manuscript — especially a novel, you know what I’m talking about. Yes, what to write in the middle of the novel. The first several chapters are easy to write and you know roughly about the ending or even have several options for it. Yet, you’re stuck in the middle.

For the first time writer, the novel usually has a beginning, middle and ending. So I’m talking about the middle section.
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Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

Julia Unggai — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:13:46 +0000

I saw him for the first time on TV during the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston. And only later did I learn that he wrote a couple of books– Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

I just don’t pay attention to politicians who write books. They’re all about politics and I’m not really interested in politics anyway.

Then he ran for President of The United States. My curiosity about him increased. So I decided to get both the books he wrote. I chose to read Dreams from My Father first.
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How to determine what fiction genre you’re interested to write

Julia Unggai — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:22:00 +0000

In my previous post I wrote about Creating a story for your fiction where I mentioned how you can determine what fiction or novel you’re interested to write based on your favorite movies.

In this post, I would like to expand upon that post by exploring how your favorite novels could be used to help determine what type of fiction genre you write.
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Sprucing your blog with print plugin

Julia Unggai — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:31:54 +0000

Wow!

Time flies so fast. I just realized I have been blogging for almost a year now! Well, I started back in August and it is June now. There are two more months before the first anniversary of being a blogger for The Trendsetter.

While blogging mostly about writing, I admit I’ve neglected the technical side of blogging - yet again.

Sigh…

Well, I’m just lazy to update my blog template or even spruce it up a little bit until I want to display the printable version of each of my individual posts and print it. When I “print preview” one of my posts it just doesn’t look good.
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How to create your character’s background

Julia Unggai — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:36:48 +0000

In my previous blog about “outlining vs. not outlining before you start writing your novel”, I wrote about writing a journal for my characters—especially my focal characters. By having a journal sheet for your characters, you’re able to compile their important background information like the height, weight, eye color, race, age, gender, marital status, etc.

And I have also expanded the journal sheet to interview them about their perception about the villain or other secondary characters after meeting them. However, that was not enough to carry my focal character to 100,000 words.

I solved this problem by using Erikson’s Psychosocial Development and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
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