Creative Writing: Chapter 1 and 2

In this post, I would like to detail the writing process I did for my book. This post will cover the creation of chapter one and two. 

Chapter one, named Prologue begins back in April of 2020, following the life of boy named Aprilio or April and his mundane school life. The chapter sets to explore April as a character, mainly his thoughts and actions in the beginning of the story. It will show some of April's backstory, his daily routines that he finds comfortable but restrictive, his fear of being left behind by his friends in terms of progress, and most importantly is showing his desire of wanting to find a passion and be better.

The chapter will explore his three close friends by looking at their strong personality, talents, and passion for their aspirations, leading to April feeling left behind. It also serves to give detail on how April's family is, especially showing the conditions before their transformation later in the second chapter. This condition will be about how a part of his family is dysfunctional due to their parents absence. Lastly, it will details on a minor character, Ms. Cynthia, his homeroom teacher.

I have used some pictures to help the readers imagine the story more clearly. The first and second pictures were pictures that my friend took of my school. The other images were taken from Unsplash, which I will reference in the last page of the book. I have tried to show detail in places, mood, time, and others based on the research I made on Haruki Murakami's memoir, "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running." The first chapter consists of ten pages.

Here is a screenshot of page one to five.

Chapter two, named Changed, will be set in April of 2022, two years since the events of the first chapter. As fitting to the title, it will heavily focus on April's development since his change of mindset on the first chapter and how the pandemic forced change upon him, his family, school, and many others. Some parts of chapter two involves flashbacks of the period between the two chapters, especially a flashback on how he found his passion in books and writing, as well as how his family has struggled and learned to be more open throughout the two years. 

In terms of April's thoughts and actions, it will show April's immense passion and care for writing, so much so that he accidentally neglected his close friends. It will greatly emphasize on April's very insecure and awkward nature, especially through his deep worries of his close friends abandoning him, and his decision to focus only on writing as a form of escapism. April's character will be shown to be less lively here, mainly due to the pandemic and quarantine increasing his insecurities and anti-social behavior, all for the sake of chasing his dream of being a writer, leading to his decision to study abroad in America to both escape confronting his close friends and escaping what he felt to be restrictive and boring routines because of online school.

Another important exploration in this chapter is the change in April's family dynamics. It will explain about how the pandemic led to their parents spending more with the family and gradually becoming more open. Then, as the pandemic became harsher, it led to an increase in pressure between the two, leading to a fight. The story then shows how this fight, nearing divorce, led to his parents learning from the incident and changing a part of their negative attitude, leading to an even more open relationship between the parents and their children. Lastly, this chapter consists of around nine pages and contained three pictures taken from Unsplash.

Here is a screenshot of chapter two, page 11 to 16

The next post will be regarding Chapter 3 and 4.