every book i want to write | what my projects are about & how i came up with them

you're probably thinking wow she must write some sort of high fantasy no no I don't and welcome to my channel my name is Tiana or Tiana which is with a J and today I'm really excited to talk about my writing projects so yes I am a writer that's why I started this channel it's why I started my podcast I've been watching writer tube author YouTube for probably the last two years or so and so I've decided to take the leap and make my own channel and so what way to what better way to start off than talk about my own writing projects I am definitely somebody who bounces between a lot of projects I have about 10 of them that are in various different stages and I'm going to go through every single one a little bit about me as a writer is that I would definitely say that I'm I'm an overwriterz answer so I'm not a super detailed planner and that I need to have everything figured out before I can start writing but I also am NE I've never gone into a writing project not having any idea of what's going to happen usually how it works for me is when I get an idea I tend to get more of an actual story idea versus characters like my best friend Anna new she's here on YouTube if you haven't watched her you should go check her out um she says that she tends to get more of an idea for a character and then she starts writing the story I'd say I'm kind of the opposite I have an idea and I'm trying to make characters to fit that idea and usually I actually tend to see the beginning and the ending of of my projects with a few scenes in between and then my job with writing is literally to piece all of that together that's kind of how my writing process goes and so that's how my first novel started which is this beauty right here um this is my very first completed manuscript uh it's as long as it looks it's um sitting this is the first ever draft it's sitting at just under 160,000 words and you're probably thinking wow she must write some sort of high fantasy no no I don't I this is actually a mafia romance novel and the way it started is in I want to say 2018 2018 I got super into Mafia romance and uh into 2019 I read I think everything in in the genre everything that was out at that time I read all of it I was inhaling Mafia romance books and after a certain point I got very bored of the genre and for me this project literally was the whole you know you know you have to write the book that you want to read that's kind of what happened for me so there were two Series in the mafia romance genre that I really enjoyed compared to a lot of other ones and so I was I was asking myself what stuck out to me in those two series versus all the other ones that I was either bored with or a few that I didn't even finish and I realized what sorts of let's say tropes per se or what sort of characters were in those books that I enjoyed and so I decided to you know what take the plunge and write a book and that's how this project which I realized I didn't even tell you what it's called This is Project to to is just the acronym for what the potential title is going to be which I'm not going to reveal yet but that's literally how this project was born so April 2019 when I was still a university student I started jotting so many notes about what I wanted this project to be and the initial idea um actually is it started off differently than how it ends up being now um but what this project now is actually about it's a it's a project about a girl named Alena and Alena's mother is murdered actually and so what she does is she enlists the help of the Italian mafia to help her find out who killed her mother and this is set in modern day Chicago and throughout this whole process of looking for her mother's killer she herself ends up becoming a ruthless mob Queen and as she's living this Mafia lifestyle and searching for her mother's killer she ends up finding out a lot of secrets about her own past and of course what actually did lead to her mother's murder and so that's what happens in book one um as to why it's 160,000 words I I'm an overwriterz actually said that for the length um like the story makes sense like how I wrote it and everything obviously I'm doing edits right now and I'm working on cutting back things this was my first ever fully written novel um as I've been reading through it there are I I see that there are big chunks that I can cut out I actually really started writing this during nanor rimo in 2021 when I wrote 60 and a half thousand words and and I realized that when I would first start writing somehow sometimes like the first 500 Words would be like a warm-up for me it would be like two to three paragraphs of me just you know writing all this fluff and then it's it was kind of like okay let me get into writing and then came like the actual good parts so I've been able to as I've been editing and reading through this is see exactly okay yeah I can cut out let's say these 500 Words here so um I think hopefully it will be not 160,000 words but I don't honestly I don't see it being below 100,000 which I know is above the typical word count for this genre but it's a very big story and so big in fact that I actually uh this is supposed to be a Trilogy so there's a second book after this that I have started which is sitting at around 13,000 words and then there's the third book which is so far off in my mind that I literally barely have an idea for it but I think I've written maybe the first handful of paragraphs and you'll see that this is a theme with me I tend to jump around on projects and then I start a new one and this is why you know four years later three and a half I don't even want to count because it's been so long since I started this that um it's taking for forever to get done and um I need to really get on my stuff to to finish this that's project to and it's it's going to be pretty dark it's going to involve you know lots of violence lots of murder um but I really want to explore Alena's transformation as a normal girl to you know becoming a killer herself in exploring how far somebody's willing to go to seek revenge for what they believe is a Justified cause in her case you know somebody murdered her mother and she's willing to do whatever it takes to to find out who did it and um in enact her revenge on them and so I really wanted to explore that but the I guess the thing that really started this project too is that what really bothered me about some of the mafia Romance Books is that the main female character was a lot of the times this very weak docile almost infantile little girl like there you know you've got the stereotypical dominant mob guy and that's great I I love that I love that very much um but I realized I didn't like this girl who just you know followed him around like a puppy you know he said do this she does that she tries to fight him off a little bit but in the end she ends up just doing whatever he wants and then a lot of justification for a lot of his bad behavior so in a few of them you know he would cheat and she just forgives him and that's just what mob lives I am I hate the cheating Trope I'm so anti cheating that I no I can't do that so I actually did not finish books that had that sort of Trope in it and I I like my female characters to have a little bit more personality I want them to be girls who are not just going to take everything sitting down and that really is what led to the birth of Alena is rather than her sitting around and being sad and moping you know for eternity waiting for the police to figure out who killed her mother which they never do that's not a spoiler but they don't um you know she was like screw this I'm going to go find out who killed my mom and I'm going to do whatever it takes to to figure that out and so that's that's how this story was born and I've realized that that's kind of the those are the sorts of characters that I want to write so as I tell you about my next few projects you'll see that I don't actually stick to one genre I don't want to I also don't think I can because as I get all my writing ideas they're all like wildly different genres they're all wildly different stories but I've realized that the sort of stories that I'd like to tell are those that they explore The Human Experience is the way that I've always thought about it I consider writing an exploration of what it means to be alive and so I do want to explore you know what does it take to become a killer what does it take to survive in a dystopian World some of these Concepts that are difficult to like most people don't even think about them I suppose and I just want to question like I want to leave the reader you know wondering would they do the same thing if they were in the same situation how far would the reader be willing to go in the same place as my character you know and maybe they're going to hate them because you know like with Elena they're just going to say oh she should have just gotten over it she should have just accepted the fact that her mother's dead you know normal people don't go off and you know seek revenge that's fair but you know if you had the ability to do that would you so these are the sorts of things that I'm looking more to explore in my novels versus just sticking in one genre and so that brings us to the next project which I've talked about on my Instagram it's been my Nano project for the last two years and that's project e ly or i l y and this project is a Sci-Fi dystopian social commentary is the best way that I would describe it so essentially I got the idea for this project while I was working on this project during my first Nano and I started getting this idea for a dystopian society that well it's a dystopian Society but it's built like a Utopia that's run by an AI system called the ey and and I as I've been thinking about the ever growing presence of AI in our society I wanted to kind of extrapolate from that and see what would it be like if we actually lived in a society that is fully governed by an AI system like there's still human interaction in the system and how it runs but essentially everything's determined by Ai and so I've taken Concepts that are literally really happening in the world around us and I've just tried to make it so that these things are now normal in the world so for example Elon Musk is working on neuralink which is supposed to be a you know implant in the brain and essentially would be like a computer chip that can record our thoughts our emotions and and basically truly bridge the gap between a human and technology and so that's totally normal in my novel like we've already reached that point where we are everyone has a brain implant and they fully interact with it it's totally normal everyone gets one at Birth um I've taken aspects of the social credit system that is currently active in China and I've implemented that into my Society totally normal thing you know trying to get places everything's governed by a social rating score and so and then there's certain Concepts in society today about transhumanism and about biology and and things like that and I've tried to extrapolate my thoughts about what could happen and make them totally normal in this uh City and so what happens is that my main character Jade she's born in this city which is divided into three districts she's born in a district called Bellum and she you know lives her life fully integrated with this AI system and lives her life like normal until one day she encounters a rebel who is not affected by the AI system and so she becomes intrigued and you know it's her first time meeting someone who is not affected by the system and so she uh approaches this Rebel and this Rebel and whose name is Gemma actually ends up taking her outside of the city to a like a little Camp s in a camp it's more like a fullblown settlement let's say outside of the city limits where there is a group of people that are all living not connected to the AI system and so that starts off Jade's journey into you know truly understanding what sort of society that she's living in because she's never lived in a society outside of not being in this uh AI governed system and so she starts to see the differences between let's say normal life as we're used to it now and her F fully technologically advanced society and so it's really like a commentary on my ideas of how I think things would happen if we lived in that sort of society and and I kind of turned it into let's say the the worst things again it's a Utopia but it's really a dystopia when you look at it so that is Project ILY so the next project after that this is relatively new project it um I got this idea back in I want to say uh November December I can't even remember at this point but it's called project circus and project circus is I mean kind of what it sounds like it is it is about a circus if anything it's actually I want it to be like a good oldfashioned freak Show like back as they had in the 1800s and the 1900s um last year I went to Vegas and I saw two cus solay shows I saw Ka and I saw I think oh the one with all the the water and the dive tank and everything and it was so cool like it was so cool cool to see all the acrobatics and everything Ka has more of an actual storyline but I'll be honest they they kind of lost the plot like they obviously don't talk during the show but I I definitely was kind of lost about halfway through about what exactly who was who and what the story was but I mean the actual acrobatics and the uh stage and everything and what they were doing phenomenal and oh is just more of an actual um you know it's just more like acrobatics in the water and everything not so much a story but I remember thinking to myself after that I was like man I would love to just see like crazy crazy stuff like they had back in the days it's just like people's sword swallowing and like siamese twins that are I don't know doing something and you know people like on doing dangerous trapes acts like I just felt like I feel like so many things now today are like muted down compared to how they were before obviously I know safety plays a role and all of that and everything and making things PC sure great um so but then project circus came along and I was like I want to write like a good oldfashioned freak Show um but the thing is is that this freak show is going to be based on the seven deadly sins and so every single circus act is going to be linking back to the seven deadly sins and then in my true writer writer style I suppose I'm going to be incorporating the reader in a way in which I want them to again question would they do certain things if they were in this scenario and that's my intent with that project the next project is one that pretty much nobody knows about so uh this is like the first time I'm really telling anybody about it and I'm going to say very little about it this is a project that I would like to to actually like put myself in some of the same scenarios that I would like to write about um it involves it's going to involve so much research on my end because I basically want to incorporate um real world events that have happened but obviously like add a fictional twist to them and so that project is I mean the mood board for this is going to be to com the first book is going to be it's called um project K and M for lack of a better term right now for it and then the second book would be project Druid and so basically in the first book it would be that my main character who who doesn't even have a name yet this is what I mean like I do more idea writing versus like like starting from an idea versus starting from a character so the main character she is is basically in the middle of a geopolitical underground war that she started let's just leave it at that um and so it the first book is basically her going and fighting this fighting in this underground War that's taking place between two ethnic groups and so obviously she's on the side of her own ethnic group the enemy is the other ethnic group and so this was actually only supposed to be project K&M I actually never envisioned a second novel for IT project Druid it just happened that last month so December I got ideas for project Druid based off of some own my own things that happened in my life like I just was going through something and then I was thinking about it and you know if you know kind of when something happens to you and you start thinking about the scenarios and like oh if I if I could control this this is what I would do or what I would say or I wish this happened so it kind of started like that and then I realized oh my gosh like I could take my envisioned ending of project K&M and use like what I'm visualizing right now to be the beginning of project Druid and so that's basically what I did is that project Druid kind of came out of nowhere and I just almost have the first two chapters done it's probably sitting at like just under 6,000 words whereas project K&M I haven't even actually really started writing it I maybe have like four paragraphs and then I have a giant brain dump document and so it yeah I'm I'm going back and forth between them I don't even know when I'm going to finish writing them I I feel like they're years and years and years away but they're you know eventually I want to get to writing them and then in that within that same world is Project R&J and so project R&J what it's supposed to be is it's set within the same world as where project K&M and project Druid are going to be in but it's my idea with R&J is that it's not going to feature the same characters from the other two projects it's going to feature two completely new characters and the whole point is that you know in a war you're going to have people who are actually fighting the war you know the soldiers um those that are politically involved and everything so they're kind of let's say the front lines but obviously during times of War there's also just normal everyday civilians who are trying to live life as normal and so project R&J is actually the only like love story that I have in mind for writing I'm I'm really not a romance writer um but it's it takes it's supposed to be two teenagers who fall in love and they're actually from the opposite ethnic groups so the two ethnic groups that are fighting each other these two teenagers are from you know ones from each ethnic group obviously that causes a lot of problems for them because there's an underground War happening there's a lot of political tension between these two ethnic groups and so their love story is a bit of a Forbidden love story but it's just you know this exploration of you know two kids who fall in love and are trying to navigate First Love while also you know you know it being forbidden and you know everyone saying that they're not allowed to be together um but then also I wanted to explore like you know with everything that's going on in the world like you know how far are we willing to go with war how far are we willing to you know prevent people from being together and and let things divide us and so that's that's what that story is about and it's it does take some inspiration from some already other published works but it's going to be entirely my own story then I have ideas for two non-fiction projects this is like I said I'm not going to stick to one genre I that's never going to happen like I just I have so many things I'd like to say and so many types of stories that I'd like to EXP explore that me sticking to one genre is literally never going to happen I don't think I think the only thing that I can guarantee is like my friend gab was saying like when we were talking about this is I think I'm going to be more known for rather like let's say the types of themes that I explore um or the types of like situations that characters are put in versus you know writing only Mafia romance or only dystopian like I I don't see myself doing that and I don't think I can nor do I think I should so I'm just going to write whatever the hell I want that's essentially my writing goal but my two non-fiction projects are one of them is based off of when I went into the jungle so April 2022 I went to the Amazon jungle for the first time and I absolutely loved it I've always wanted to go to the jungle and I was there for a week it was absolutely amazing like I did I did a guided tour and everything so I was very much living there like a tourist but I was deep deep in the heart of the jungle at a lodge during rainy season like I waited through chess deep water I had a tarantula on my face I I'll put a picture um I ate some sort of uh weird bug thing oh I had capara meat as well like I I went fishing for piranhas I literally one of the craziest coolest best thing I've ever done 10 out of 10 I recommend you go to the Jungle um but obviously while I was there I got to meet people who live in the jungle like they're they're born and raised there they live deep in the heart of like like middle of nowhere they've never left like they you know they that's that's just what they do their normal life is living in the middle of the Jungle and so you know I loved talking to people in what limited ways I could I mean they all speak Spanish or they speak tribal languages so one of the tribal languages that I got to hear was Yas and so it was obviously communicating with people was a little bit difficult because I speak English I my Spanish is extremely limited um and my Yas is non-existent so I would love to go back and live in the jungle for a longer time and just a spend time there cuz I loved it so much but I want to collect the stories of people that live there um I think there's just so many things that you know ways of life that are there and the tribes that live there um and and things that are happening that so many people don't know about and I and I want to hear it firsthand and then share those firsthand stories but I also want to talk about like my own experience like what is it like for me is just someone who grew up in Canada and you know traveled all over the world and I have my Serbian Heritage but then I just go and I live in the jungle which is completely unlike anything I'd ever experienced before and kind of it would be this back and forth about like my own experience but then also like you know the stories of these people of whose normal life is the jungle and so that would be the first non-fiction project and the second non-fiction project is then um it it's literally just I want to explore more about Serbian history and culture and Heritage and so I want to travel around Serbia and same thing collect stories talk about my own experiences and stories um Serbian culture is not as well known about as a lot of other cultures there's Al obviously some negative connotations as well after um former Yugoslavia fell apart and Serbia was bombed in 1999 for 78 days straight so there's a lot of there's a really rich history and culture here that most people don't know about especially they don't know anything farther than Yugoslavia or potentially perhaps you know beyond before World War One um like you know I think like most people can't even play Serbia on a map to be honest so it's in South uh Western Southeastern Europe by the way um so I just just really want to you know talk about that and because my own Serbian culture and Heritage actually does influence so much of my writing it may not be entirely obvious right now based off of the projects that I talked talked about but it absolutely does and it's also very important for me that people know that I'm a Serbian writer yes I'm Canadian as well but I'm Serbian you know my parents are both Serbian they just happen to immigrate during the war and so everything really about me is Serbian so it's very important for me that if I ever you know become published and if anybody ever knows about me that all of this whatever I end up doing came from a Serb and so that's why I want to write that project and the last let's say like actual writing project like I said there's so many of them is a short story it's the only short story that I have in mind right now uh it I don't really have a name for it as you'll see some of these projects have names some of them don't um so this one I don't even know how I got the idea for it probably like a year and a half ago and essentially this is maybe the closest closest project I have to Fantasy I don't really tend to write fantasy either because I I don't even read fantasy to be honest I'm not really I mean I don't I've read low fantasy like when vampires were all the rage oh I was all over Twilight Vampire Diaries um bunch of other series that I don't even remember right now um but High fantasy was never really a big interest of mine and so I I have no intention to write about it either simply because I I don't have an interest in it um so but this project basically it's a princess who lives in a palace um but she is not allowed to show her face so she's always wearing like a veil or she's wearing jewelry that like covers most of her face if not all of her face and one day her mother appears to her but her mother is apparently actually a goddess and her mother comes to warn her that an assassin is coming after after her to kill her and so she has to flee the palace and so she does and for the first time in her life she's actually allowed to show her face because nobody actually knows what this girl looks like right like she's always like only a few of her uh ladies in Waiting actually know what what she looks like but her almost no one in the palace does the subjects in the Kingdom none of them actually know what she looks like and so she's out in public for the first time um um with her face showing and then as she's you know going on her own Journey for the first time away from the palace she uh meets someone a fellow traveler and you know he's going on his own adventure but then of course he's got his own secrets that he's harboring and then at the end of the story they're supposed to they find out each other's secrets and how that how they're actually linked together and it might actually end up being an Nolla versus a short story but I I don't see it being a super long um project and that's it for all my novels I mean I dabble in poetry a little bit I've been writing poetry since a teen since I was a teenager some of it's half decent and some of it is not great I mean some I mean obviously like I wrote some of them when I was crushing on are like ex-boyfriends so they're more just like you know poorly written soab stories after boys so I'm I'm hoping that as I Venture more into poetry as a mature adult some of this poetry will be a little bit more um mature and high higher quality as well but yeah I these are all my writing projects and so comment down below which one you think think sounds most interesting to you or which one you you know love the most I'm really curious to to hear which ones that you think sound the most interesting and so yeah I'm I like I said project tood is supposed to be my main work in progress but I bounce around back and forth between a lot of them so I'll do another video later about um what my writing goals are and still be more specifically related to project to in terms of publishing and stuff like that but I'm very excited to be writing all of these books and to have finally taken the plunge to do so and so if you stuck around this long to watch all of this thank you so much and I hope you'll stick around for future videos to keep up with my journey of where all this writing is taking me and so thanks for sticking around and I'll see you in the next video [Music] bye

Channel: tianawithaj

Views: 6,445

Keywords: writer, writing, new writer, indie author, aspiring author, writertube, authortube, podcast, the write opinion podcast, new podcast, tianawithaj, writing podcast, how to be a writer, how to write a book

Id: 1JjudxHeCdk

Length: 36min 11sec (2171 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024