Nicole Winters's Blog

TT Isle of Man – The Siren

This is the moment you've been waiting for.This is your moment.This is… the Isle of Man TT.Coming March 2018 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Posted by TT Isle of Man – The Game on Monday, December 18, 2017

:O

“A film director controls a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects, and visualizes the script while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking.” – Wikipedia

Unlike a movie director, who works with a team of professionals, the prose writer takes on all the creative roles in their project — from producer and cinematographer, to costumes, sets, hair and make-up and (more often than we should!) caterer.

Without that crew and cast of thousands, how can a cinematic vision be applied to your writing? What can you learn from film directors that’ll enhance your work? Through the use of multiple YouTube videos*, we will discuss various directors and their approach to storytelling, specifically focusing on: action, pacing, opening and closing shots, aspect ratio, colour, sound, and other brilliant moments in cinema. At the end of this presentation, you will have the tools to use the cinematic eye of a film director to bring the power, intensity and immersiveness of movies to your own writing!

Before attending, you are encouraged to think of a scene you may be wanting to write or edit.

Nicole Winters has a B.A. in English and Visual Arts and is a PAN member with two YA novels under her belt, TT FULL THROTTLE, and her debut romance THE JOCK AND THE FAT CHICK. She is also the recipient of numerous award nominations for her screenwriting and received multiple rounds of funding from the Harold Greenberg Fund. She is currently working on her third YA novel, BREAKING, her first YA psychological horror.

http://torontoromancewriters.com/event/applying-cinematic-techniques-to-craft-powerful-prose/

https://www.facebook.com/torontoromancewriters/

October 14

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Northern District Library, Gwen Liu Meeting Room

40 Orchard View Boulevard

Toronto, Ontario M4R 1B9 Canada

Read the full Huffington Post article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/01/body-positive-icons_n_15086144.html#

 Terrific book recommendations: Read the full article HERE.

I’ve been working on my third novel, working title The Conjurer, and the fun part is researching stage magic. Last year, I attended the Browser’s Magic Bash and had a terrific time hanging with magicians and performers for 12 HOURS!!!

If you’re at all interested in magic THIS is the event for you! Chck them out at:

http://www.browsersden.com/bash/

Overwatch is an incredibly successful team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game released in May 2016. What’s making this game so popular is all the multi-diverse game characters you can play. There are 23 heroes to choose from – all shapes, sizes and even species. Check out some of these women characters. Awesome.

How awesome is this! I’m super excited:

click HERE for the full story.

Cheers!

Nicole

TT Full Throttle

I’m thrilled to have received a book review from Sarah for The Jock and the Fat Chick. Since 2014, Sarah’s been reviewing MG and YA books from all kinds of genres and a mix of new and older releases that you may have missed in your reading journey.

Thanks, Sarah! I have discovered and earmarked a few titles to my must-read list!

You can visit Sara’s website and the book’s review at: https://mgyabookreviews.com

No one ever said high school was easy. In this hilarious and heartwarming debut, one high school senior has to ask himself how much he’s willing to give up in order to fit in.

Kevin seems to have it all: he’s popular, good looking, and on his way to scoring a college hockey scholarship. However, he’s keeping two big secrets. The first is that he failed an assignment and is now forced to take the most embarrassing course ever–domestic tech. The second is that he is falling for his domestic tech classmate, Claire.

As far as Kevin is concerned, Claire does have it all: she’s funny, smart, beautiful, and confident. But she’s off-limits. Because Kevin knows what happens when someone in his group dares to date a girl who isn’t a cheerleader, and there’s no way he is going to put himself—or Claire—through that.

But steering clear of the girl of his dreams is a lot harder than Kevin thought…especially when a cooking project they are paired together for provides the perfect opportunity for things to heat up between them outside the classroom….

#YALIit #YARomance #bodypositive #oppositesattract #SweetRomance

One link to your favourite book retailer:

https://books2read.com/thejockandthef...

I had a lot of fun attending Word On The Street, saying hi to my CANSCAIP friends, romance writer friends and my publishers. It’s just so nice to see so many people out on a lovely sunny day enjoying the fine weather and perusing books and discovering new reads.

I wrote this article last year as part of a guest blog, but I think it’s worth reposting. I’d love to hear your comments below.

Writing for teens in an ever-changing environment:

It’s not as scary as you may think

You know that saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”? I find this true when thinking about and writing for the teen audience.

We can all agree that the environment we grew up in as kids is vastly different compared to today, especially with the advent of new technology and the information super highway. Kids can also be under an extra set of self-imposed pressures, like thinking they’ll grow up to be famous, or they must make millions on their YouTube channel, or feeling like they have to resemble their favorite celebrity.

But this doesn’t mean that your approach to writing for this target audience has to become more complicated just because things were much ‘simpler’ when you were their age; it doesn’t. Even though modern kids might be texting, tagging or snapchatting in truncated language, or faced with the pressure to succeed bigger, better and faster, a young character’s hero’s journey will remain the same.

Your teen hero will always reside in that unique place between dependence and independence, community and self, and connection and disconnection. It doesn’t matter if they’re a farmhand from the 50s or wired into technology 24-7, their struggles are universal. Being that age is an intense time, emotions are raw and malleable based on never-ending new information and experiences. They’re constantly exploring relationships between self, peers, family and the larger community. Couple that with the fact that one moment they’re treated like a child and the next expected to think and act like an adult and poor decision making is bound to happen. (Plus, it’s the author’s job to throw the hero head first into problems that are too big for him/her to handle.)

Compare Ponyboy from The Outsiders with Ender from Ender’s Game or Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars: three completely different characters in vastly contrasting environments, right? What all these authors have done successfully is create an intimate world between reader and hero that is intense and emotionally scary. All three heroes are thrown into situations so big that at times not even they know how to process what they’re thinking or feeling, let alone be able to express what they want or even make good decisions. Your teen reader is going to relate to this. Young people don’t want to make mistakes anymore than we do as adults. In a way, reading fiction allows teens to live vicariously through the hero who must face the consequences of certain decisions. Ponyboy, Ender and Hazel are trying to find out who they are and are constantly reassessing relationships with self, peers, family and the larger world.

In my romance novel, The Jock and the Fat Chick, my hero Kevin, is a nice guy, but he is so oppressed by what his buddies consider acceptable when it comes to dating, that I force him into a situation where he makes fun of the kind of girl he’d love to go out with. Falling in love is new to him and knowing that Claire is unacceptable to his peers suddenly places his world on shaky ground. If Kevin were an adult with a wealth of experience, I’m sure the novel would go something like this: Shut your face, this is the type of girl I like, I don’t care what you think. The End. But it’s not. He resides in the area of new experiences and decisions and his mistakes will also be new. He’s fresh in the adult world and trying to control of his own destiny. Who will he be, the guy who caves, the guy who hides, or the guy who confronts? He has no prior experience to draw from and for sure he’s going to cope in all the wrong ways and end up making his life more complicated than it needs to be, but that’s his journey.

Life for teens may have changed since we went to high school, but the challenges of being a teenager remain the same. They’re still people who experience feelings of love, loss, joy and disappointment as they constantly try to navigate through a complicated world.

–Nicole Winters

***