Stress is a barrier...

...that will prevent you from writing with a free fluidity! That's why it is always important to claim your own personal and private part of the house. I know most of you reading this will have your very own bedroom, but I on the other hand, have to share mine with my sister. It's very inconvenient for my writing! Not to the mention the fact that my family is naturally loud and boisterous all the time.

So, if you're in the same boat as me, with a rather loud family, you'll want that private place for sure. Moreover, I am making this post because I want to tell you of the relief from stress that drawing can give you. It could be a little sketch. It doesn't even have to be that good! Just as soon as it's taking your mind off stress and the problem you're faced with at that moment. Perhaps, your writers block? 

Whenever I am very bored and I cannot entertain myself with writing because of writers block, I turn to my pencil and paper. Or paints and paper! Painting can actually be a lot more freeing than drawing, but the pictures that I've shown below are all pencil/pencil crayon drawings, as I find myself lacking paints sadly. 

Claudia, Interview with the Vampire.

Claudia, Interview with the Vampire. I have always been enchanted by her state, being a vampire before she could reach adulthood. Her story is very mysterious - as to how she feels about being trapped within a child's body - and haunting, as you glimpse the true nature of it at the end of the novel, by Anne Rice. She is, however, one my favourite characters of that book, so I like to draw her.

This is part of my final piece for my AS Level Fine Art exam, from February. As you can probably see, it isn't finished. I  wanted to show a colouring crayon picture, though. If you must know, this Canadian goose is a little fellow from Braunstone Park in Braunstone (of  course) :). 

I actually drew this pencil drawing today, of Gabrielle Aplin, the indie/folk-pop singer. It's from a snapshot of her 'Home' video. Strangely, her eyes became rather intensely angry! Oh, well, live and learn. I used more chiaroscuro, too, the difference between light and dark.

Characterisation

This is an aspect of story-making that is frequently overlooked: how you present your character to your readers. How do we learn about them? Is it from other people's mouths, perhaps the old lady by the doughnut shop? Does the narrator discover an old letter revealing their past? That's the kind of 'characterisation' I am talking about. 

If you want to make a successful novel, you must include themes in it. These themes are usually created in the way and how you present your characters or key locations e.g. the haunted house where the story is based. Take note of this: I don't recommend building your character all at once, you should slowly, almost frustratingly reveal facets of their personality and appearance. One of the major flaws in books such as Fifty Shades of Grey - and other contemporary romance novels I have read like Wait For You - is that they repeat the same phrases in their descriptions of characters. It's very boring and tedious for the reader and makes them lose interest because the book they're holding is emanating the sense that it's not going to go anywhere. Reveal your character's green eyes in chapter one, their brown hair in chapter five, then their croaky laugh in chapter nine. Draw it out so you don't end up running dry. This technique of slowly revealing aspects of a character is most useful if you're writing a mystery, thriller or horror. 

There's nothing wrong with giving a full description of the character in chapter one - it happens a lot in romance novels - but you should leave something left for the chapters to come. Or merely avoid giving descriptions of the character, as a lot of successful novels do. Yet a lot of successful novels add in descriptions all the time, to build in their themes. It all depends on what kind of story you want to write - it could even depend on you wanting to use that repetition to enforce a certain theme. For instance, repeating the fact that the person has black eyes to convey the danger and evil within that character. 

So, I'm going to list some of the characterisation techniques I know: 

• Names - what do other people call them? Perhaps one person calls Roger "Roge," which would imply that she's close to him, where as everyone else calls him "Roger."
• Imagery and symbolism. 
• Comment in narrative voice - your narrator could be narrating about a character, or about themselves.
• What other characters say about them.
• What the character says about themselves. 
• Contrasts of the character and other characters that have stark contrasts to them. 
• Their actions - remember, 'actions speak louder than words.' 
• Amount of time and focus on exploring their character - which would suggest their importance to the novel.
• Focalisation
• Selective detail - (used mostly in mystery/thrillers) where the narrator picks out certain few features of the character e.g. their smile, as it is in The Great Gatsby, or their beautiful, small voice as Louis does with Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. This way, the characters become more memorable to the readers. 

That's all I've got for today. Adios! 

Gemma out x