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A review by karen_wrighton
Ascension of the Whyte by Karen Wrighton
5.0
I worried at first that people reading the short prologue and blurb would get the wrong idea about this book, and I think that they do, but in some way that is a good thing because it SURPRISES them. It starts out appearing to be contemporary and real world but then very shortly becomes a full blown epic fantasy. Here is an insight into how it all began...
Writing this book came quite naturally to me, in fact I would say that the book seemed to write itself, but it didn't so much write itself as evolve, almost in true Darwinian fashion. It all started with a car journey, my daily commute, which is long a and tedious three hour journey through Norfolk's slow, tractor ridden country lanes.
I had been thinking about writing a book for some time and my computer was filled with half written manuscripts and plot ideas. On this day though I had just finished reading John Green’s The Fault in out Stars the night before and I was thinking about the bravery of the young people and how they were both so desperate to discover what had happened to a character in the story they were reading, who they believed had died, but didn’t really know for sure because the author had left the ending open. I started to think, well maybe death was not the end of the story, after all it was a story, so really anything could happen!
Then as I was driving I was gifted an idea. The image of a young girl swam into my mind. It was her first day of high school and she was walking out of school excitedly planning to attend a party with her friend, full of life, hopes, dreams and expectations and then something catastrophic happens, she is hit by a lorry and killed. The end of everything she had planned, but what if that was not the end of the book, I thought, what if it was the beginning of an adventure.
That was the genesis of the story and before I arrived at work that day I had the framework solidly in my head. I knew the beginning, I had a great idea for a plot and I knew how I wanted it to end. So now all I had to do was plan and write it. Phew, that sounds easy when you say it quickly, but in fact I was just about to embark on the most difficult, though possibly the most enjoyable part of this journey into authorship - planning and writing the story.
When I plan the ideas come first, mainly I just make things up from my imagination, sometimes I get ideas from things I see, hear or read about and sometimes they come from trying to solve a problem that the plot has thrown up.
The research comes next and usually the research gives me more ideas about how I can weave the information or characters into my story. For example I needed a method of communication in the Afterlands, J K Rowling had her owls, but I was loath to use birds as well, so I looked into communication in animals and came across the bee and how bees communicated with each other through dance.
I had already decided that some of my characters would be able to communicate with animals as well as to transform into them, so the bee made a brilliant messenger. I later discovered that bees have long been associated with magic, which I took as a sign that I had made the right choice.
Almost all of my planning and writing evolves in this fluid way. My characters regularly take me places that I hadn't intended to go. Originally I had two villains, Ka and Phlegon, but I soon realised that they were both such strong characters that the book wouldn't work with both of them in it. This gave me a big headache for a week or so until, again on my commute to work, I thought that instead of killing one of them off and losing a great character what if somehow I was able to combine the two together. Phlegon was made from Fyre so I was thinking of some type of mechanism for melding or forging them together and so I did some research and discovered how a crucible works and then the process of assimilation was born.
I don't think I could ever be organised enough to sit down and plan every detail of the story before I put pen to paper and anyway, I would soon get bored. I like to build interesting characters that take me unexpected places and do unexpected things. It is this that keeps me engaged with the story and hopefully it’s what keeps my readers engrossed too.
If I were to explain to you how I plot ‘in a nutshell’, I would say that plotting for me is seventy percent character driven, twenty percent research driven, ten percent plot driven and mostly takes place in the land of my imagination, while driving through the Norfolk countryside behind a tractor travelling at 20 miles per hour.
I think that it worked in this book, I love it and judging by the vast majority of reviews, my readers do too! I can thoroughly recommend this book if, like me, you love reading about magical fantasy worlds with strong female characters.
Writing this book came quite naturally to me, in fact I would say that the book seemed to write itself, but it didn't so much write itself as evolve, almost in true Darwinian fashion. It all started with a car journey, my daily commute, which is long a and tedious three hour journey through Norfolk's slow, tractor ridden country lanes.
I had been thinking about writing a book for some time and my computer was filled with half written manuscripts and plot ideas. On this day though I had just finished reading John Green’s The Fault in out Stars the night before and I was thinking about the bravery of the young people and how they were both so desperate to discover what had happened to a character in the story they were reading, who they believed had died, but didn’t really know for sure because the author had left the ending open. I started to think, well maybe death was not the end of the story, after all it was a story, so really anything could happen!
Then as I was driving I was gifted an idea. The image of a young girl swam into my mind. It was her first day of high school and she was walking out of school excitedly planning to attend a party with her friend, full of life, hopes, dreams and expectations and then something catastrophic happens, she is hit by a lorry and killed. The end of everything she had planned, but what if that was not the end of the book, I thought, what if it was the beginning of an adventure.
That was the genesis of the story and before I arrived at work that day I had the framework solidly in my head. I knew the beginning, I had a great idea for a plot and I knew how I wanted it to end. So now all I had to do was plan and write it. Phew, that sounds easy when you say it quickly, but in fact I was just about to embark on the most difficult, though possibly the most enjoyable part of this journey into authorship - planning and writing the story.
When I plan the ideas come first, mainly I just make things up from my imagination, sometimes I get ideas from things I see, hear or read about and sometimes they come from trying to solve a problem that the plot has thrown up.
The research comes next and usually the research gives me more ideas about how I can weave the information or characters into my story. For example I needed a method of communication in the Afterlands, J K Rowling had her owls, but I was loath to use birds as well, so I looked into communication in animals and came across the bee and how bees communicated with each other through dance.
I had already decided that some of my characters would be able to communicate with animals as well as to transform into them, so the bee made a brilliant messenger. I later discovered that bees have long been associated with magic, which I took as a sign that I had made the right choice.
Almost all of my planning and writing evolves in this fluid way. My characters regularly take me places that I hadn't intended to go. Originally I had two villains, Ka and Phlegon, but I soon realised that they were both such strong characters that the book wouldn't work with both of them in it. This gave me a big headache for a week or so until, again on my commute to work, I thought that instead of killing one of them off and losing a great character what if somehow I was able to combine the two together. Phlegon was made from Fyre so I was thinking of some type of mechanism for melding or forging them together and so I did some research and discovered how a crucible works and then the process of assimilation was born.
I don't think I could ever be organised enough to sit down and plan every detail of the story before I put pen to paper and anyway, I would soon get bored. I like to build interesting characters that take me unexpected places and do unexpected things. It is this that keeps me engaged with the story and hopefully it’s what keeps my readers engrossed too.
If I were to explain to you how I plot ‘in a nutshell’, I would say that plotting for me is seventy percent character driven, twenty percent research driven, ten percent plot driven and mostly takes place in the land of my imagination, while driving through the Norfolk countryside behind a tractor travelling at 20 miles per hour.
I think that it worked in this book, I love it and judging by the vast majority of reviews, my readers do too! I can thoroughly recommend this book if, like me, you love reading about magical fantasy worlds with strong female characters.