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What inspires you to write?

It’s mostly my desire to turn my feelings into words. Although I don’t have too many problems with verbal conversations, but I always preferred writing things down. I feel like too many things get lost in usual conversations, and I want to tell stories in its fullest.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a Literary Fiction named Melanchoid. Check out its tentative synopsis here:

When your dreams and your heart have been shattered, how far will you go to regain your pride?
L is supposed to be a genius—she learned AutoCAD by the age of 12, then earned a scholarship into the most prestigious architectural university in the City. However, her life spirals out of control after she fails to land an architectural job. After L gets into a huge fight with her boyfriend that spells the death of their relationship, she decides that she can't stay in the City any longer. Without a second thought, she packs up and leaves to embark on an aimless venture.
When L reaches a coastal village so remote it doesn't even have a name on the map, she collapses on the sands. On the verge of dying from a heat stroke, she's saved by a bizarre old man named G, whose passion is to sit and pray in front of a Moon God for hours. The man has a special knack, though—he's the best fisherman L has ever seen. G offers herself a second chance to become someone worthy, a chance to become the master of the old man's craft.
As L struggles to adjust to her new life, she befriends X, a happy-go-lucky teenage girl with the chirpiest sense of adventure. Together, they find the answer to the trickiest mysteries the Ocean has to offer. However, there's one question that L has yet to solve—
Her purpose in life.
As her inner desire to return to the City beckons, L faces a difficult decision. Will she leave the life she once had for good, or will she desist her love for the Ocean?

Please share three interesting facts about the characters in your book.

I’ll pick one fact for each character in my three books.

Violet Pham in “The Color of Your Voice” has synesthesia, meaning she perceive an additional sense along with the noises. For Violet, noises always go along with colors.
The ring that X gives L near the end of “Melanchoid” is actually given to X by her grandmother before she passed. X’s grandmother had told her to give it only to the person that would forever steal X’s heart.
Alexei Vronsky in “The Last Woman on Earth” had a mind that works so fast, in his ‘enhanced human’ mode, he can calculate the speed of gunshot in a millisecond.

If you could pick any famous author to review your book who would you pick and why?

I’d pick Tom Rob Smith. I have always admired his talent for writing thrillers since I read his book “Child 44”. And I would love to hear what he has to say about my War novel which takes place in Russia.

Name three things that you believe are important to character development?

Motive. A character needs to have a motive, either realistic, absurd, or plain silly. But character that chases their motive is a character that moves forward.
Conflict. Now it’s nice that the character has a motive, but they will have to face adversities to get there. The conflict can be grand, like saving the world kind of grand, or it can be simple like parting with their favorite dog. Whatever it is, the character needs to make a difficult decision to get out of that situation.
Backstory. This is what happened before Chapter 1, but isn’t necessary told early on. It can decide what shapes the character as they are today.

Do you ever experience writer’s block? If so what helps you to get over it?

Yes. I think every writer has experienced this at some point. I usually just pause that project for a while and turn to something else, whether it be another project, other hobbies, work, or simply enjoying myself. I make sure to only come back to address the writer’s block when the words in the document look so alien they seem to no longer be my own. It works.

What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most?

Editing. I think most writers dread this part, but I find much joy in reading my work again, picking up small errors, and reworking sections I am not satisfied with. Another re-edited draft is another boost to my confidence as a writer. I must have edited “The Color of Your Voice” at least a hundred times, no joke!

Do you know the ending of your books before you finish writing them?

Oftentimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Like for “The Color of Your Voice”, I had a vision at the very start. The story couldn’t have ended differently for me.

What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone that wants to get into writing?

Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Good writing is rewriting. No matter how good you think your first draft is, it most likely sucks. Come back to your first draft in a few weeks and you’ll see what I mean.

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.


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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:
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I came across a story in a newspaper somewhere about the romance between a drug smuggler who got caught and a young woman who would visit him whenever she was allowed to. I think she had said something along the lines of: “You people never bothered to learn whatever backstory he might have had, but only what you made him do. I don’t mind what you say, it doesn’t change my opinion of him.” I thought of how their relationship might have evolved and then wanted to jot it down because that’s what writers do. Incidentally, I was reading an article about a man explaining what it was like to have synaesthesia, then the idea just came to me.

To you, this might just be another fictional story of tragic love, of dealing with mental illness, and of unjust social expectation. But to many people in Vietnam, where depression is often seen as a sign of weakness and women are still treated as sexual objects, this might be their reality. Many Vietnamese, including women, are still holding rather conservative viewpoints regarding gender roles. Women are expected to be obedient, and men are expected to provide. I think many will agree with me that women in Vietnam are expected to walk on a knife’s edge between maintaining traditional standards of beauty and etiquette and a strong work ethic and sacrifice.

Men are lamentable, if you look at it from another angle. The deep-rooted belief systems led us to thinking that men are useless without a meaningful career, and a ‘meaningful career’ would usually be a very narrow selection of different doctors and businessmen disciplines. Oh, how we boost our egos with the partners we can buy, with the money in our account, with a shiny title on our business card. There’s no turning back. We have to be successful, and we have to be happy doing so. They will tell us that depression is a sign of weakness, and weak people die off, and that’s natural selection. But we just fail to realise we’re just another pitiful prey in the system, a system that’s designed for us to play our pre-assigned roles.

The question is: are all of this… okay? Is it better for men and women to be bound to ideologies that have existed for hundreds of years? Maybe that’s something we should think about.

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

Check out the Book on Amazon

The river was pitch black. Clinging to the old, wooden bridge, she shivered. Nobody was within her sight. She couldn’t see any color on the river, or in the narrow road that passed through the bridge. They were all black. The currents lapped at the base of the bridge; it sounded black. The wind wheezing past the bridge railings; it sounded black. The car honking from the distance sounded black, the chirping sparrows on the banyan tree beside the road sounded black, the brushing broomstick from the brickyard in the lone house over the distance sounded black. Black. Black. Black.

Too cold. Too dark. Too high.  

She was scared for a brief moment, but her fear was quickly replaced by anger. Turner had stuck around in her mind for far longer than she would have liked. Was there any reason for him to exist? His life was a vicious circle. Fighting, fucking, sleeping. Living like that, did he not feel bored?

Had he ever thought about what she was thinking right now?

Had he ever thought about her?

Of course he hadn’t. Why would he? Turner was everything she wished she was. Turner was a golden sculpture, an iron will, a flint heart. He would be a dream for any woman. He would be out of her league.

He didn’t even close his eyes when we kissed, did he? He didn’t even linger around, he didn’t even hold me in his arms, and he didn’t even tell me how good the kiss felt.

He doesn’t care about me. Nobody cares.

She cast her gaze downward, to the bottomless abyss. If she jumped from here, no one would ever find her body.

No one would find her if no one was looking for her.

She was not important. She was nobody.

There would come a time for everyone. Her time was up.

Suddenly, a hand gripped her wrist. “Why are you here?”

The voice was rattled and tightened, and she realized it was Turner Nguyen. She turned to look at him, her eyes panicked as if trying to hide. “W-why are you here?”

“Get away from the railings. Else I’ll carry you back home.”

“It’s not your job.”

He glared at her, and she didn’t know how to act. She flinched, hesitated, and stammered, “D-do you want me away?”

“Yes.”

“Why? There’s no reason. I’m probably just like any other girl to you. Who am I for you to care?”

Turner pondered for answers. She was right. Was there any compelling reason for him to poke his nose into someone else’s business? Do not help strangers, do not aid anyone, do not do more than assigned. Until then, Turner had a principle: if it wasn’t his problem, then he didn’t bother. It was the one thing that kept him unattached to all the troubles, while the others had been beaten by robbers and assassins, or eaten and shredded in clan clashes.

Maybe that was why he didn’t have a friend or a girlfriend. Who could love a person who “wouldn’t do anything” for the people close to them?

His only ex-girlfriend had said that. They had dated each other for a week.

Coming to think of it, Turner did more for Violet than he ever did for any other girl in his life. He got her away from the fuming prostitutes, then sent her to a new place where she could earn money without being hassled. Maybe, just maybe, I have a real soft spot for this person.

After what was possibly the longest silence of his life, he replied, “A fan,” biting his lower lip.

“What?”

“You are not just any other girl. You are my idol, ya see. And I’m a fan, one devoted fan who wants to see your paintings. If you jump right now, I won’t have the chance to see them.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you… telling the truth?”

“Why would I lie?”

Turner’s words eased Violet for a moment. Maybe I’m worth something in someone’s mind, after all, she thought. But his words weren’t enough; they were far from enough. Ten years of self-doubt, self-pity, and self-torture could not be reversed in a minute. She soon found herself torn between the trains of thought. Turner’s looking forward to something I will never be able to provide.

She spoke up. “But I cannot—”

“You cannot jump until you become a painter.” His face stiffened as he looked at her with that steadfast gaze of his. Slick black hair, freckled cheeks, and the sun in his eyes. That was what Violet had always been missing—determination. Her presence had always been dwindling. More than a couple of times she had thought about how to become rough and scabrous like Turner, but she just couldn’t figure it out on her own.

Violet didn’t understand. Was there a reason for a thug, who almost certainly hadn’t glanced at any painting in his life, to look forward to what she paint? Was there a reason, was there a reason, was there a reason...

We find a reason for everything. Why did she want to die? Because she was miserable, because she was incompetent? Why would Turner want to help her? Out of pity, or because society said that it was immoral to not save a dying person?

Why must there be a reason? If there was a reason for that, then there must be a reason for her to become an artist. Was there a reason for every sound to carry a shade?


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

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

Author Trivia:

Daniel Newwyn won the third prize in the Vietnamese New Age Writing Contest in 2012. In which category did he win the award?

Daniel Newwyn’s latest romance novella, The Color of Your Voice, was inspired by a real life death row prisoner. Where did he come across the source of his inspiration?

In his upcoming Science Fiction, The Last Woman on Earth, what will be the literary classic mentioned throughout the book?

Daniel worked many jobs before settling as an English tutor. What was Daniel’s first official job? 

Fun Fact:

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