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~The Golden Quill~


by mystify

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Amy, a Lupe from Terror Mountain, had always dreamed of seeing every corner of Neopia. She has travelled extensively and seen way more than most people had. Her parents weren’t thrilled with the way she had spent her time however. They wanted her to settle into a comfortable life with a family, a stable job. Amy wanted to make her parents proud, but she didn’t want to compromise who she is or her own dreams. So she decided to take up writing, she figured that being published enough in the Neopian Times to achieve the golden quill would show them that all her travels weren’t for nothing. That she could turn it into something. The main issue here was that she didn’t actually know how to write very well.

     She had taken a trip to the local library to gain some intel and get some advice on what to do, and the helpful librarian gave her a stack of books to review. She had just left the library when we checked in on her last. She was home now and cracking into the first book.

     “How To Write Like A Pro”

     The book sat on the desk in front of her, staring back at her while she stared at it. This was clearly going to be the book that told her everything she needed to know, so why did the librarian give her four other books?

     She cracked open the first page.

     Welcome to the guidebook: How To Write Like A Pro. In this edition, you will learn everything you ever wanted to know about writing, and then some. We cover things such as word choice, intelligently using adjectives, story structure, both narrative and documentary-style writing, and more. This is going to be your best reference book to guide you through your writing journey.

     This is promising, Amy thought as she combed through the pages. I’ll be able to reference this book throughout all my writing.

     Amy knew the purpose of this book. It would guide her not only throughout the writing process but also through her journey through the other books. She could make sense of lessons taught in those but calling back to this book, and vice versa. This would be her spirit guide and she’d get a lot of use out of this.

      Chapter One: Why Do We Write?

     We write as a way to convey ideas to others. We want to express ourselves in a way that is understood by the reader. It is important to let your writing speak clearly, but also concisely. You don’t want to drag on and on and lose the interest of the reader. But it is important not to be too concise, or the idea won’t be conveyed properly.

     If you are interested in world-building, for example, you need to strike a careful balance. Use enough of a description to paint the world the characters exist in, but you must not drone on about the minutia. The reader's attention span can only last so long, especially in the digital age.

     Writing has been happening since the beginning of Neo-kind. The greats would write stories of fantasy about the world that they lived in, or as a way to document real, historic events. The idea was that they wanted to tell the current and future generations about the way they lived, the way they entertained themselves, and so on. We write so that others can know what it is like to live a life other than their own, fiction or not. Ask yourself before you start your first story, why do YOU write?

     Why do I write? Well, I write for the same reason they said. I want to tell my stories to the world and I want them to know how I live my life. That is also why I travel, I want to learn about how others live their lives. So, I guess, I will write to tell my stories about telling the stories of others. Is that too complicated? I want to share lives with people. My own life and others.

     Chapter Two: Crafting A Concept

     Now that you know why you write, you have to decipher HOW you want to write. Is your story going to be in the realm of nonfiction or fantasy, or somewhere in between? True stories need to be written in a way that is authentic to who it is told about, you wouldn’t want to slander someone’s name or misrepresent the facts of a situation and cause trouble for those involved in the story. That is why “Inspired By A True Story” types of stories are so popular. You can change the details around to suit your needs as a writer. Fiction, on the other hand, is all up to you, but are you able to make a compelling story up in your own head? I always say: write what you know. If you are a Cybunny from Maraqua, write a story that involves a Cybunny or takes place in Maraqua. These are things you are familiar with and experiences you know, so although it is fiction it can still feel realistic enough to draw the reader in and allow them to relate.

     If you are writing something nonfiction, make sure you know every side of the story. If this is your first time, it is going to be best to write from your own perspective and your own lived experiences. That way, you know all the facts, and even if you don’t then you will only be getting yourself in trouble!

     I can do that, I know what I went through, and I kept journals of my experiences! Amy did keep journals, but they weren’t written in any type of way that could be published. They were more like time-stamped entries detailing the events of the days. Still, this was extremely helpful as she could flesh out the details of those notes using the lessons she was going to learn. She could take her short snippets she wrote there and turn them into long chapters.

     Chapter Three: Writing Your First Chapter

     It’s time to sit down and write your first chapter. Gather up your inspiration and put together a solid idea of what you want to write about. You want to have a strong foundation for your story before you even start writing anything. If you start writing without clear direction, it will come across as jumbled and sloppy to the reader. You want to carve a path out for yourself that you can follow from chapter to chapter. This is where outlines come in handy. Jot down some notes about how the story will begin, how it will end, and what kind of events will happen in between. From there you could fill in the details as you write.

     Knowing how the story will end is incredibly important when it comes to being able to start the story. If you know how everything will end, you can set up the first chapter to reveal the important details and set the reader up with the knowledge they need going forward. It helps to keep things concise so you aren’t rambling on about details that won’t matter later on in the story.

     Amy cracked open her travel notebooks and started looking around to see which story she wanted to tell first. She settled on her journey in the pyramids of the Lost Desert. She met a lot of vendors there at the markets, she got lost and almost starved in the desert, and she also found her way deep into a secret pyramid that no one seemed to know about. This would be the perfect way to reveal to the world what she learned!

     She took the advice of the chapters she had read and started crafting her whole story from top to bottom in an outline. Arranging the ending so she knew how to begin, and carefully picking which small stories she wanted to include within her larger story.

     Every hero takes on a side quest!

     She scribbled down in a new notebook all her ideas, drawing lines back and forth between her notes to link her story together. Creating a visual grid of what would go where in the final edition. She was careful to do it all in pencil so she could freely erase and rewrite anything she needed to. She was starting to learn that stories are ever-changing and a lot more fluid than she thought before. The writing process is anything but rigid and she had to be able to adapt to where to story took her, not to where she took the story.

     She felt more prepared than ever before and she’s only started on one of her books. And speaking of heroes, her next book to read was all about a hero. This one was a fantasy tale about a hero slaying an evil dragon. She knew she could read through it and pick up on the way the author told their story as inspiration for how she could tell hers.

     To be continued…

 
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