Writer's World

Jewel's of knowledge from jewel1307!

*Claps as jewel1307 enters the stage* Our next guest is jewel1307, one of the most humble, talented, nicest people on Wattpad. She knows what she wants and she will get it. She is here of pure skill, not by the luck of the Irish. 

Question 1. Callie - An Enchantress Novel Book 1 Tell us about this story.

Well, the idea of Callie came about after reading a few ‘fan fiction type’ vampire stories on the ‘What’s Hot List’, you know the sort – sparkly vampire meets lonely new girl and click they fall in love. A few were anything but well written, lacked any depth, but had loads of reads etc. and I thought, I can do that. So I had a go, it’s that simple.

I wanted it to be different from the average story and having read a lot (I do mean a lot) of books over the years, I had the plot and characters in mind almost immediately and it practically wrote itself.

Question 2. Some call you the master of competitions You recently won The Pad Factor, and I see you are currently involved in Judging a fantasy Smackdown, how did that come about?

Hardly a master, I’ve won one competition and that was a close call as well you know, seeing as you were the main competitor. Having fun is the key ingredient for any competition I find, whether judging or writing. If you’re not enjoying it then you won’t give it your best and it will show. 

The judging came about when I found a discussion on the fantasy club pages, they were looking for both judges and contestants so I signed up. The same with the Sci-fi smackdown. I love to read, wouldn’t be here otherwise, and figured I might as well be useful as I do it.  Multitasker, I like how you do it. 

Question 3. What do you look for when you are judging stories? That’s easy. There are set guidelines, 10 points storyline/originality, 10 characterization/voice/storytelling, 5 points grammar/spelling. Each contestant produces a short story using a few pictures as guides. The hard part is reading something that has no depth. Two people talking with no description of what’s going on around them or they jump from inside a house to falling of a cliff. Then you have the bad spellers, and ejits who’ve never heard of the word grammar never mind adhered to the basic rules. Trying to score something that you can barely understand is my worst nightmare and I’m dreading when I come across one of those. Take note future competition entrants.  

Question 4. What has been your favourite part since being here on wattpad? The whole wattpad experience from reading and speaking to people whose stories I’ve enjoyed and finding out they’re really nice people. To discovering that I love writing and the stuff I write actually gets read and enjoyed by other people, that’s an amazing feeling and rather addictive. 

Question 5. What would you say to someone starting their first story?

Jot your ideas down in a notebook, or similar, the instant you have them because you can be guaranteed you’ll have forgotten half of it by the time it comes to writing your story.

Make basic character profiles just like@lilly-rain said in the previous interview, your readers will remember what you don’t and it’s easier to look at a page than skim through half your story to try and remember what colour eyes your main character has.

Have a rough guide to your story – beginning, middle, end. Then break this down to various small events that will lead to each bigger event.

The beginning of your story will be the introduction of your main character but don’t just say:

‘Callie has blonde hair, blue eyes, and likes to drink.’ This is Boring with a capital ‘B’