Amanda Meuwissen's Blog - Posts Tagged "writer"

Not many people know this, but back in high school I had three potential career choices I debated between.

One was vocal music performance, and while I love to sing, I knew I didn’t want to pursue that.

The second was acting. I had done theater since 7th grade, and had been a lead all throughout high school, and honestly…it was my top choice for a long time. For some reason the anxiety I got from singing in front of people never reared its head when acting.

The last choice, of course, was writing. And I probably wouldn’t have published novels today if not for events in high school that pushed me toward that path over acting…all because of fanfiction.

I’m a video game geek, so my first fanfiction was written around that, particularly Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII. In this case, FFVIII was the culprit. I had been enjoying another author’s epically long fanfic centered around the character Zell, but when it finally reached its end, I was disappointed.

I reviewed the story telling the author I honestly felt it could have and should have ended differently. She agreed, and we began conversing back and forth on how I might write an alternate ending, sanctioned by the original author herself. It was an amazing collaborative experience for me.



Not to go into too much detail, the story revolved around topics of teenage depression and suicide. I wrote an ending with more hope than the original, and had a great response from readers. One review in particular caught my attention and has stuck with me to this day.

It was an anonymous review, so there was no way for me to contact this person or know who they were, but in it they confessed that they had felt similarly depressed as the character and had been considering suicide, but felt a renewed sense to continue fighting after reading my alternate ending to the fic.

I don’t know what became of this person afterward, but the thought that my writing could do something so profound for someone made my decision for me then and there.

I never doubted my decision to pursue writing after that, and every time I reach a fan even in the smallest way, it reminds me of the time I reached someone significantly, and that is more than enough motivation to keep on.

You’ll find me touting the importance and good of fanfiction all the time, and this was one of the reasons why. Reading can change people’s perspectives, change their lives, and fanfiction is no different from the most praised novel. Never downplay the importance of any form of writing. Every time we can communicate and reach others with new and important ideas, that’s something truly special.

What about all you other writers out there? What was the final catalyst that made you a writer?

It's funny how often I'll notice a bad review or lower rating...the same day as I get a brand new 5 star. Remember, budding writers, to take the bad with a grain of salt, and bask in the good.

The other day, after noticing a new 3 star rating, I had the following 5 star review from Sean Sterner waiting for me.

Here's an excerpt:

"I have to say that this was the quickest I have read a book and could not take my eyes off it. It kept me at the edge of my seat and wanting more page after page...Incubus, from the moment I started reading it, made me reconsider what my top all time favorite series was."

Thank you so much, Sean! I can't wait to hear what you think of Changeling, and the final installment yet to come!

I'm so excited as I'm working on the ending of the final book, the last season of the serialized version to air on BigWorldNetwork.com starting in February, and then the final compiled book to release in August.

This has been an amazing ride, and to all the wonderful readers out there, especially those who have taken the time to review, thank you. I couldn't keep the motivation to write without you.

I’ve always been so excited for the Marvel Studio controlled films. They’ve been amazing, right? A new age in cinema, connecting so many films across so many years. Well…this is the first time I’ve ever been wary, because I was always so certain Civil War would never, could never happen in the movie-verse since they can’t have any mutants or other important characters that would be needed.

Well, they’re doing it anyway, and now they’ve finally managed to work things out with Sony to use Spider-Man.

A little background from me – Spider-Man is my guy, my favorite superhero since I was a little girl. I’ve enjoyed his films but none of them have quite captured Spidey right, not the way the 90s cartoon did, or other mediums. So I want to be excited at this second (third, fourth, a millionth?) chance to maybe get him right. At the same time…I don’t want his presence to screw this up.

See, I was already worried about Civil War because for those who might not be familiar with the comics, it was about whether or not people with abilities/powers should have to register with the government and give up their secret identities, sort of like the plot for the first X-Men movie. Obviously, mutants were against this. Cap was against it. Tony was for it. That’s what divided them.

We can’t have that be the plot here because…everyone knows everyone in this universe, there ARE no secret identities. So instead we can guess, since Bucky is planned to be such an important character in the next Cap movie, that the division will revolve around him. Everything will be strained after Ultron, with a lot of the blame on Tony and tensions high. After getting over PTSD, and everything else, this will leave Tony pretty broken.

Then boom, back from the dead is Cap’s friend Bucky who also happened to be the murderer of Tony’s parents. The division will come from whether or not Bucky should have to pay for his crimes.

Now, this is just a guess for now, but I’m pretty confident about it. The problem is, you could sort of understand both Cap and Tony’s points of view in the comic version of this story, at least at the start, but this? Bucky literally had no control over himself and shouldn’t be to blame for any of the things he did as Winter Soldier, so I feel the movie will really end up vilifying Tony even more than he was in the comics, and who wants to hate on RDJ? No one.

It also bugs me that we barely had one movie where they were really a team, the Avengers together, and already we’re going to divide them.

But of course, we can also guess, that this will mostly be resolved by the end of Civil War so that when the final Avengers movies come around, the team is unified again to face larger threats. So how will that happen?

In the comics, Cap turned himself in to end the bloodshed that had arisen in the face of this fight, and was assassinated, leaving Tony in one of the most iconic moments in comic book history, saying… “It wasn’t worth it.”

Now they could still do that, kill off Cap, leading in for Bucky to take up the shield, and still allowing for Steve to return some day, as is comic law. But given Spider-Man’s new involvement in this tweaked version of the story, I have a better idea.

The last thing I want is for Spider-Man to steal the spotlight here, and in doing so wreck what has been such a great run of amazing movies. After all, it was never assumed he would be able to join the team. But I think there is a way he can be important and impactful without ruining anything.

So many people are clamoring for Miles Morales to be Spider-Man. Miles is a young man of color who takes up the Spider-Man mantel in the Ultimate Universe (which the movies are more often based on than the normal universe) after Peter Parker dies. Now, I don’t want them to go straight to this, how can they when Peter hasn’t even existed in this version of the Marvel universe yet, but I’m not opposed to adding him eventually. So how about this:

What if Peter Parker as Spider-Man, a young hero who worships Cap and Tony, gets caught up in their Civil War, as is factual of the comic version, but instead of Cap…Peter is the one who ends up dead in the crosshairs. He’s what pushes it too far, what makes it ‘not worth it’ and ultimately brings Tony and Cap back together. This then leaves things open for the next Spider-Man movie, planned for after Civil War, to be about Miles. Everybody wins! We get a heartfelt more interesting way to tell Civil War, since it’s already a bit messed up from not fitting the comic book version anyway, and get the new Spider-Man that so many people want.

What do you guys think? Did my editor and writer side take this far off base, or should Marvel be paying me for setting up a better plot? Personally, I hope this is already where they’re planning to take things and that my (and my husband's) psychic powers are spot on.

I wear several hats in my professional life, one being writer and another editor. And I don’t just mean editing my own work; I am Managing Editor for BigWorldNetwork.com, and read chapters from around 20 stories each week. It’s a dream job really, though it isn’t the one that pays the bills, because I get to experience all of these different novels before they’re even finished and have a bit of my own hand in them as well.

For me there is an automatic sense of mentoring that goes into editing another person’s work, and it doesn’t matter if I’m older or younger, more or less experiences, or have more or less published novels under my belt than the person I’m editing for, because everyone needs an editor. More than anything it’s about expressing the reader experience to the author so they know how to tweak or react accordingly. Is what they’re writing evoking the reactions they wanted? Awesome!

So while copyediting is helpful, as well as comments about plot structure and pacing, the most important thing I can offer other writers is my honest opinion, so they can ask themselves if my reactions are in line with what they want readers to experience.

When I read and edit someone’s work, I always want to err on the side of the author so as not to impose too much of my own voice, or risk changing theirs. It doesn’t matter what POV they write in, whether they overuse passive voice, or over simplify descriptions; it’s about whether or not they are telling an engaging story the way they want. That is always the lesson I want to pass on to writers who give me their work to read.

Besides having to edit many stories for my publisher, I also beta friends’ work, and approach it the same way. I may not always have time to read, but I am always open for queries into how to approach writing and publishing, and adore people who recognize the value of a good critique. One thing I would never do, however, is tell someone how their last book could have been better, but would rather tell them how the current one they’re working on could improve, because that’s something they can still change, while an already published book is set in stone. Besides, no matter how good the book, there will always be enough bad reviews out there to cover that part for me.

Working with BWN gives me opportunity to mentor so many new authors along with making relationships with already successful ones, and over time it has grown out of straight up mentorship into community. The authors, editors, and narrators at BWN have a closed Facebook group where we share ideas, help promote each other’s work, and ask advice all the time. I also point aspiring authors toward valuable Goodreads Groups like Support for Indie Authors.

The most important aspect of mentoring is to listen. Hearing someone talk passionately about their story ideas and then want to share with me their actual writing is half the fun of being an editor (and author). None of us would be in this business if we didn’t love stories. People are always welcome to contact me, and I hope other writers approach mentoring this same way.

Not every character is created the same way, even if you’re an author who has a certain method you follow when taking on a new story. While Sasha Kelly, the incubus character in my recently completed trilogy The Incubus Saga, isn’t the protagonist, there wouldn’t be a story without him.



I had a vague idea many years ago of an incubus story I wanted to tell. I knew generally what Sasha looked like, his name, what he was, but not a real feel for his personality. The story was actually going to be about Sasha and a teenage character, who in the end I did still add to The Incubus Saga though in no way romantically involved with Sasha—a fan favorite actually, Evelyn (Leven) Taylor.

Whenever I tried to write the initial story I had in mind for them, nothing would come out. The bare bones was there, but the heart of the story eluded me. I knew then that I couldn’t write the story yet as it was in my head and held off.

Cut to nearly a year later when at last the muse was inspired and told me what Sasha’s story really was. It wasn’t about Leven, though he played a role, and Sasha’s character was vastly different than I’d initially imagined. It was while watching an episode of the TV show Supernatural—and anyone who’s read The Incubus Saga can understand the inspiration drawn from the show in general—and something just clicked, suddenly I had an epiphany and I knew exactly who Sasha was, his personality, his likes and dislikes, his backstory, everything.

Never before in my time as a writer have I ever had a character just appear before me fully formed like that and say there you go, this, this is my story. Well, I spent the next several years writing it, editing it, tweaking it, and again, Sasha isn’t even the main character, but it was the epiphany that night that started it all.

I doubt I’ll ever have another character experience like it. But it does help hammer home something I’ve discovered as a writer. My characters are always the most fleshed out, the most real and relatable when at least some part of them feels like divine intervention. Not to the extent of Sasha usually, but small things I haven’t yet realized about my characters just suddenly making sense, almost like magic.

I tell people all the time, I don’t create characters; I discover them. I don’t choose things about them; they reveal the truth to me over time.

A more common example of this is for my current work in progress, Life as a Teenage Vampire. As I was working out the details of the protagonist for this story, I knew certain things about him right away. Age, generally how he looked, vague personality, where his story would go, what he was, and what he wanted. But there were still enough things missing that I didn’t feel I was ready to write his story just yet.

Part of how I try to get the muse working to reveal to me those missing elements when starting a new story is simply jotting down notes. With what I do know, what might happen for this scene, that scene, why would a character react this way or that? And maybe it’s part of being a writer, something I can’t explain to someone who isn’t one, but the ideas almost always come naturally if I’m on the right track.

I knew, for example, that this new character, Emery, had a non-American grandmother, but I couldn’t pin down the heritage, and that’s what was tripping me up, this ethnic background that could have an impact on the character and his story in some way, if only I could realize what it was. Greek? No. Romanian? Not quite. And then I felt quite silly, because I knew his surname was Mavus, and that this grandmother would be on his paternal side, so I did a simple name search: what countries is that surname most prevalent? The answer: Turkey.

It might seem like a simple thing, but in that moment several things clicked; his father is Turkish, born there, raised in the US, so very much an American in most ways if no one knew his parents, though his mother moved back to Turkey after her husband passed away, and my main character only rarely gets to see his paternal grandmother now, though she is very warm and doting when she visits.

Even if this doesn’t end up having a huge significance on the story, it’s part of who the character is, how he looks, how people think of and react to him. Even if the detail in question was something as benign as his favorite color instead (gold, by the way), those types of facts are something you need to know about your characters, because understanding their inner workings is how you tell their tale with legitimacy and heart.

How you get to that part can vary, maybe through very technical means most of the way, with sparks of inspiration from unlikely places, but it is my firm belief that the writing comes the most easily if you’re on the right track, telling the story you are meant to tell.

So if you can’t quite get a story out of you, maybe you haven’t discovered everything you need to know about your characters yet. Don’t worry, don’t rush, just wait, give them time, and when they’re ready for their story to be told, they’ll tell it to you.

Everyone deals with writer’s block. Sometimes the answer is to take a break. But since we all know that writing a little every day is best to facilitate a healthy writing relationship, how do you take a break, or step back from your fiction writing, while still keeping your juices flowing? Non-fiction.

Non-fiction doesn’t mean you suddenly change the genre you write in. It can mean blogging, like I am now, keeping a journal, writing articles for other publications (or your day job), or simple commentary on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr to get your ideas, even if non-fictional, out of you.

Personally, I find that spending some time getting my everyday thoughts on paper (or in a Word doc) makes me itch to get back to my fiction, especially if I had otherwise recently burnt out on fiction writing.

Write every day. Yes. But don’t feel you need to only work on you current big fiction project just because you are or want to be a fiction writer. Take a break, writer something else, write something in a genre or style unlike your big project, and you might be surprised how quickly you’re inspired to return to the writing you really want to delve into.

Every spring I participate as a judge for local Speech competitions in Minnesota. Sometimes I forget how seriously Minnesota takes its Speech season, as we have an entirely different organization than the National Forensics League, doing our own thing on the side with some of our own categories, while also having kids participate in the NFL version when we compete at Regional, State, and National competitions.

Minnesota High School Speech is composed of thirteen categories across interpretive and public speaking styles, some of which have the students write the content themselves. The categories offered include things like Creative Expression, Discussion, Extemporaneous Speaking, Informative Speaking, and Original Oratory.

While I’d love to go into detail on all of these categories, I’m going to stick with one today, which despite not being one I participated in during my high school career, is my favorite.

In Original Oratory, or OO, the speaker presents an originally written speech with the purpose of persuading the audience. As a writer, I am most critical when judging categories like this that involve writing because I think there is a distinct lack of good writers in today’s youth. This belief stems from real life examples of people constantly telling me how ‘good writers’ are hard to find in the work force, and experiences I’ve had as an editor.

I had the pleasure of hearing a speech in the OO category this past weekend about critical thinking and how we need to work toward building up this ability in people now more than ever. Considering how important this skill is for writing a persuasive argument as much as an informative speech or essay, the topic resonated particularly strong with me. Too many times I see people picking sides on an argument without presenting facts, or being willing to listen to rebuttals.

Critical thinking is described as “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.” Being objective may be one of the more difficult things for us humans, especially when an issue is important to us, or something we feel very strongly about. But all the more reason that we need to step back, weigh both sides, consider facts, and try to think objectively before forming opinions—or maybe even changing our opinions.

It was a relief to hear a maybe not even sixteen year old young man present a speech on this argument, and do so with critical thinking applied to how he wrote his speech and attempted to persuade me. The kids who ranked lower in that round failed to apply what this boy’s speech was about—the need for evidence and objective reasoning.

Human beings are emotional creatures. As a fiction writer I embrace and accept that emotion is often what drives whether or not someone enjoys my stories, but critical thinking has a place in fiction too. Whether we’re writing to inform or persuade someone, we still always present a thesis, back it up, and then form a conclusion.

In fiction, your readers will ask themselves, maybe subconsciously, maybe directly, whether or not they care about your thesis (what the story is about), whether or not you gave adequate reasons for them to agree (enjoyed the plot and building climax), and whether or not your conclusion (the story’s ending) was satisfying. It’s only if they can answer ‘yes’ that they will leave your work having truly enjoyed it.

Consider critical thinking when writing anything, when commenting on others’ work, when engaging in conversation, no matter the topic. We might be emotional beings, but we’re also intelligent, so the next time you present writing to the world, hand-written or typed, to any audience, ask yourself whether or not you did so objectively and applied critical thinking to what you said. Chances are you’ll be more persuasive, more informative, and more engaging if you did.