Final Reflection

I will be breaking my final reflection down into six parts as seen in Blake’s article for tips on writing a second draft. The categories I will be reflecting on are the time line, characters, location, repetition and language, and plot (Blake, unknown year).  

The time line for my story takes place over the course of three years. In order to make sure that the time line was clear and consistent in my mind, I placed in in the times where my ages matched up to those of the characters (Blake, unknown year). For example, at the beginning Alex is about to start his second to last year of secondary college, so I made this the end of two thousand and thirteen, when I was at the same stage in my life. The New Year’s party takes place on the thirty first of December that year, carrying over into two thousand and fourteen where the bulk of the story takes place. The year that Alex and Mark spend apart is two thousand and fifteen and the year they are reunited is two thousand and sixteen. By putting the characters into these specific years I was able to keep track of how the time was progressing. I also made sure that there was something from nearly every season, and in future drafts I will do more to reflect this in the description of how the plants around them react to the season changes.

Blake says in her article that “head hopping” can be confusing for the readers (Blake, unknown year). I have received feedback from a few people that I consulted with that in the beginning the point of view isn’t consistent. I have been able to see this, however I do believe that I managed to pull it in to strictly Alex’s point of view fairly quickly. In terms of the characters being compelling, I tried to put as much raw human emotion into them as I possibly could. Before sitting down to write this story, I had a clear idea of what I wanted all the characters to look like and what I wanted their motives to be. I believe that I fleshed out the side characters just as much as I needed them to be. However for the next draft I will add some extra scenes with Heejin in order to build her friendship with Alex more, and I also want to touch more on Jaemin’s difficulty with school work.

The location for the story is what I am most proud of in my writing, and also one of the most important parts of any story (Blake, unknown year). The story takes place in various locations across the North Island of New Zealand, but they are all places that are close to me. Alex lives in the same village as I do, Jaemin, Carlos and Aiden’s houses are that of my friends’ from secondary college, and the bach belonging to Alex’s aunt is on the same beach that I used to visit with my family as a child. By using locations that I knew well, I feel that I was able to capture the feeling of them well. I tried to make it obvious that they lived in East Auckland, by describing the houses and the layout, the view from the top of the hill – Sandstone hill that overlooks Botany and Howick and all the rest of Auckland. The beach that they visit could really be any beach up towards Cape Reinga, however I painted this one to specifically resemble Oakura where I spent a lot of time during my childhood. While writing the scenes there I could feel the breeze and hear the waves crashing into the sand. It was very easy for me to put that into my writing, as was the same for other locations that I wrote about.

I have noticed that in terms of language and repetition, I have a tendency to format a lot of my sentences in similar ways (Blake, unknown year). A character will carry out an action before doing another action. Or a character will say something, then complete an action. After a character does one thing, they will then do another. This can be seen in sentences such as; “Alex took a few extra moments to prepare himself before rising from the outdoor recliner.” This is then shows in the sentence directly following; “He walked over, waiting till the others had stopped smothering him before he held his ice block out to one side and went in for a hug.” In my second draft, I need to be more mindful of this in order to avoid these things becoming annoying for the reader, (Blake, unknown year).

The plot that I designed for this story was very specific, as I had a few poems written in similar formats that I tried to organise into a cohesive narrative. In terms of a first draft, I’m happy with the way the relationship developed and how I hinted at things happening. The way that Alex’s feelings for Mark creep up on him and then suddenly take him by surprise is something that I wanted to make as organic as possible, and I would like to think that I achieved that. However, for my second draft there are a lot of chapters that could be perceived as filler and don’t move the plot along (Blake, unknown year). A lot of these chapters could be trimmed down or even completely cut out, in order to make room for more important chapters to be fleshed out more.

Overall, when looking at the full piece of writing – all twenty thousand and seven hundred words of it – I am proud of where it’s currently at. In terms of a first draft, I have gotten across most of the ideas that I wanted to and done a huge amount of work to make it as interesting as possible. However, when comparing it to the points made in Blake’s article, I can see that there are several areas where I need to tidy up. Being concise and making sure that my characters are relatable to the audience are main ones, but other than that I am relatively please with how it all turned out.

References

Blake, S. (unkown year). Sam Blake's 10 tips for editing your second draft. Retrieved 

              from https://www.writing.ie/resources/sam-blakes-10-tips-for-editing-your-second-draft/