Writing

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I've been writing for many years now, since my early teens. The first story I ever wrote was during my Common Entrance (13+) English exam. The essay question was 'Write a story based on the following picture'. The picture was of a classroom door marked 'Out of Bounds'. So I gathered all my creative powers and...

I wrote about 2 boys, Mark and Darren, who broke into the classroom. The door was actually a time portal, and the two got sent to Edward Jenner's time, just before he was about to invent the vaccine. Jenner's life was in danger, as the Duke of Manchester refused to believe a biological explanation to what he considered 'God's will', and was trying to assassinate him. So Mark and Darren help Jenner lie low, and inadvertently help him discover the vaccination!

I still remember the feedback: while the idea was good, the writing itself wasn't the best- too much dialogue and not enough setting! But in spite of this, I acquired a taste for writing.

But it was a while before I started using my own characters. When I started secondary school, I started writing fanfiction- mostly Sonic the Hedgehog and some old old animes, like Tekkaman Blade and Shinzo. How glad I am that those awful pieces of unoriginal scrap have faded into the shadows of time! I will say, though, that they did help me in developing my style, and I still to this day occasionally dabble in fanfiction to practice other aspects of writing. So, fanfic writers, while I would say the sooner you move on to your own characters the better, it's a good place to start!

So, when did I decide to change tack to using my own characters?

It was a gradual thing, and was motivated by my other love; that of drawing. Again, I'd stuck with fanart (still do!). Then one day I decided to draw my own character:

I named him Kaylen, after my friend's boyfriend in America. He was a sorceror (the character, not the boyfriend!), loosely based on the anime character 'Sorceror Stabber Orphen', but with different hair. I did some more drawings of Kaylen, but I never really developed him past being a sorceror. I gave him a female companion, Ellia, and a male counterpart named Kester, though again neither had much development past my designs. These would later become the main characters for my first novel project, the Zodiac Hunters.

Unfortunately this didn't really go to plan. I wrote the novel but it had a lot of flaws, so I decided to leave it for a while and come back later.

In the meantime, I found another project to work on. I was in the middle of my hospital placement shadowing (having just graduated from medical school, we had a couple of weeks working in the hospital before becoming officially employed). I was taking some blood samples to the pathology lab when this image came to me: a girl hiding in a forest because of a 'vulnerable heart'.

So when I went home that day I tinkered with the idea and came up with The Binding- a spell that forced people to be in love. And it all stemmed from there...

Click on the links to find out more:

Chronicles of Azaria Series