Journal Entry 5

Monday, October 26^th 2009

Today, on the way to school, I thought up of a few ideas for the young adults’ essay I was going to write for my Assignment 4. As I stared out the window, I let my train of thoughts carry me into a surreal world that was created by the creative juices flowing within me. Some of the ideas I came up with were simply too common and I dismissed them immediately. However, there were a few ideas, which I felt was less common. One of these ideas involved a villain who controls people’s inner demons, using them to overpower them. The ideas were all a bit sketchy though. There was not really a plot. I felt that there were a few missing pieces to the story.

Fortunately, during the Creative Writing class today, more ideas started to form in my mind. As I was doing the ‘Imagining a Character’ exercise with my partner, Deborah, solutions to the loopholes in my story started to pop up in my mind. I am going to keep my story a secret for now though. Wouldn’t want to spoil the story now, do I?

I have to admit the more I read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, the more doubtful I was about its storyline. It felt to me as though the story lacked a climax to it, however, by some supernatural force, I was compelled to carry on reading the story. After today’s Creative Writing lesson, I realized that the characters were the ‘supernatural force’ that was compelling me to carry on reading. I felt that what was said in class today was true. The characters were indeed guiding the readers onwards from one part of the story to the next. I have learnt that if I wanted my story to be interesting, my characters must have strong traits that can attract the readers.

I feel that today, I have learnt much on how storybooks attract readers. Hopefully, I will be able to apply these skills on writing projects I do in the future.