Today ISGR did an author skype talk with the famous youth author Chris Bradford. We are sorry that there were some technical problems with the screen, but everyone did the best of the situation. The students were excellent and very attentive too, despite that setback. So in the end, the author hit the mark.
Here are a bit of what Chris talked about, out from questions he got from the students.
How do you get over / passed writer’s block? Chris told us that he does “the swan”. That is a way of communicating with the subconscious to relieve the clog of writer’s blog. Bending and holding up your arm, and watching your hand like a friend, and see if the hand moves, gives any signals that you might use when writing. Little finger twitching means no for example and thumbs up means yes. Chris joked and told us that it would be interesting to find out if he actually wrote all of his stories, or if there was assistance from his subconscious as well. He laughed but was serious about it helping him from a 9 month block… within one day!
He put up a picture of writer’s block on his wall. Used humorous approaches: Coke and cookie, a walk or jog… Sometimes it was also needed to go for vacation, for example three weeks vacation to South Africa.
Do you have any tips to young writers? Recommended Stephen King’s book On Writing, as an excellent reference source about the writing process. Chris told us that he likes King’s approaches writing.
Other tip is to “fill the well.” Read a lot to give you examples of how to write, to expand vocabulary, and enrich experiences.
How did you get the idea to train for your books? Karate Kid (original) was inspiration for Young Samurai series. Bullying in school led to Chris interest in martial arts. Not to physically respond, but to gain inner strength and confidence. Chris told us that he is writing the kind of books he wants to read himself.
What is your writing process like? Chris usually write at 8-18 every working day. Even if he thinks that he does not have anything to write at the moment. He puts up a goal that needs to be accomplished by 18. He told us to remember that it is the polished version of books we see when we are holding one in our hand. It usually takes about 6 months to write a book. The first two of those are just assigned doing research. After 6 months follows the editing process in cooperation with an editor. That asks Chris to fill in gaps, answer questions, rewrite parts and more. In this process, Chris thinks it is as important to reread as to rewrite.
When talking about the editing process, Christ told us about the editing of the Harry Potter books. The first two Harry Potter books were amazingly streamlined. Edited with precision, no fat left. The later books became more ponderous, perhaps not as adroitly edited due to the success, time constraints to get them published etc. While still wonderful writing they could have become even tighter with further excision. Chris thinks that we shall edit and polish, eliminate unneeded words, replace with better fitting synonyms, adjust syntax several times.
Do any characters in your books represent people from your own life? Yes, the evil sensai, who was a bully, that Chris had early in his martial arts.
Have you aver considered making your books into a movie? If so, who would you like to be the actor for Connor? Chris thought it would take a lot of time and that it is hard to imagine how much and what kind of work it would take. He gives Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer as an example of a book series that have been hard to turn into a film. The young samurai series has nearly been turned into a TV series though. If the bodyguard series would become a film, he said he might cast Jackson in 7D as a character of one of his books on Connor Reeves in the Bodyguard series.
