22 June, 2020

#SpecialFeature :: #GuestPost - Tips I Use For Writing by @danielnewwyn



*** Special Feature - June 2020***


About the Book:
Check out the Book on Amazon
What happens when a call girl and a death row prisoner fall in love?

Violet Pham can see sounds. The brown chirps of the sparrows dance with the colors of their feathers. The green blobs from her mother weave into her squeaky berates.

She believes she was born to become a painter but after being labeled as a burden by everyone around her, she questions that belief. The colors around the sounds become a curse rather than a gift. With her future unsettled and her family mired in debt, there is only one solution: run away from everything.

That’s when she meets Turner Nguyen. He’s everything she wishes she could be—an iron will and a flint heart. There’s only one thing wrong with him. He’s at the center of gang wars, uses his fists to collect debts, and makes his money off the addiction of others.

Soon, the sound of his words paints Violet’s world with the ugly shade of disaster. Where will they go from here?

'The Color of Your Voice' is a tragic, depressing love story that speaks to the lows of human experience. It deals with themes of self-esteem, desperation, and salvation. If this is your cup of tea, then this book is for you.



Tips I Use For Writing



I think that most readers are—or have tried to become—writers, and I know how hard the process can be. At times, you feel like you have so many ideas that you can’t possibly put into words; at others, you feel like nothing makes sense.

Edit! Edit! Edit!


I remember somebody once told me that writing means rewriting, and I can’t tell you enough how true it is. This is my rule of thumb: your first draft is going to be terrible. It is going to be riddled with errors, repeated words, and weirdly constructed sentences. It will be borderline unreadable.

Of course, no author likes to present their hot mess to their readers, so their books will need to be doctored. After all, editors exist for this reason. But doing stuff yourself before it gets to the editors is a matter of personal pride for many people, and of financial stability too (cleaner drafts take least effort to edit).

So authors edit. Some just go through it once and proofread it lightly. Some stares at every single word for so many times that they no longer look like words. I am definitely on the second spectrum. I have edited ‘The Color of Your Voice’ for at least a hundred times; each time there are new errors or sentences I don’t like. If there are still something you want to change in your draft, your story is not yet perfect.

Find your writing space


I’m a busy person. I have a freelance job, many other projects, and a social life in addition to writing. Therefore, I tried to squeeze in writing every minute I had, whether they were during commuting or while waiting for a computer file to process.

But that had never worked for me.

Simply put, I can’t get myself in the mood without a proper space. I need the comfort of my room, lit up with so many lights extremist will curse me for my waste of electricity, and with the sound of the fan breezing atop. I need to look at the flowers in the garden, let the autumn leaves topple all over my laptop, and with a cup of chamomile tea next to me. That’s when the ideas flow.

So I think it is important for writers to find their own physical space to boost their productivity. It can be at home, in the local café, in a library, anywhere! Make sure it’s cheap enough though! I’m not paying for a trip to Bali every time I want to write!

Don’t mistake mystery with obscurity


This is the thing I found so often in new writers. When I ask them about scenes that just don’t make sense to most readers, they told me that I didn’t get the mystery. I would tell them that there are ways to create mystery and not give away information without the whole thing looking like unearthed ancient hieroglyphs.

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that just because something is difficult to understand, it will create an air of mystery that will draw the reader in. This is rarely true. Don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness. People generally don’t enjoy reading things that are obscure and obscure only, whether this effect was achieved on purpose or accidentally. It needs to serve another purpose. Bringing that WOW factor to the table later on is cool, as long as you don’t lose your readers in the first five pages. Conjoining the general mood of the book is cool as well, but make sure that it makes sense in the immediate narrative. Resist the urge to be complicated for the sake of being complicated.



About the Author:
Author's Amazon Page



Daniel Newwyn is an aspiring writer, a professional eSports gamer, and a translator. His works in Romance, Sci-fi, Thriller, and Humor have won a number of online awards, and are listed among the promising Undiscovered Writers of Wattpad. As of current, he is the chief content producer of insightful eSport contents such as Hearthstone Rankstar Wild Report. Daniel earned his Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Sydney, and is on his way to complete his PhD in Psychology.


Daniel on the Web:
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram




Giveaway:

3 eBooks of The Color of Your Voice. Open Internationally.