K-Drama: City Hunter (시티헌터)

After introducing Lee Min Ho in the last post, I had to post about City Hunter next.

 

City Hunter really solidified my crush on Lee Min Ho. I can’t reveal much about this drama because it’s pretty much all spoilers, but it is a revenge drama. Lee Min Ho is pretty amazing in this, and the main girl in this is his real girlfriend (although they apparently recently broke up).

 

This is definitely a Must-Watch drama (it even has a love-square…. well actually it’s more like a love octagon the amount of people who like each other in this lol), and I wish I could talk about it more with you but I’m scared to spoil it ^^ Let me know in the comments what you thought of this drama, we can write all the spoilers there that we like 😀

K-Drama: Personal Preference (개인의 취향)

This drama has two English names depending on who you ask: Personal Preference and Personal Taste. The Korean title is 개인의 취향 .

This drama introduced me to Lee Min Ho (이 민 호) and has a small cameo for Yoon Eun Hye (who I may have mentioned in several previous posts- because she is awesome!)

The drama focuses on the girl, Park Kae-In who is a slob-ish furniture designer. She lives in a traditional style Hanok house that was designed by her father, a famous reclusive architect. One day her boyfriend (who is a total d-bag and has been taking advantage of Kae-In for years) dumps her out of nowhere. This same day, she met Jeon Jin-Ho (Lee Min Ho’s character) the two don’t get along well, which is very entertaining- I love the bum/bus scene.

I don’t want to go into too much detail but poor Park Kae-In has a horrible day, and needs to find a room mate. Jeon Jin-Ho wants to look around her house, but her father made her promise not to let people in, and not to allow photos/videos to be taken. So Jeon Jin-Ho pretends he needs a place to stay, when she says that she- as a single woman, cannot share with a single man- Jeon Jin-Ho pretends to be gay.

This wasn’t my favourite drama, there were a lot of things that could have been cleared up with just a little honesty. Or even a little common sense. But I still enjoyed it and recommend it- even if only to see Min Ho shirtless 😉

Writing tip: Over Used Words

Go through and do a “find” search on the last piece you wrote. Look for “that”

 

I can bet there will be far too many. You can leave it in speech, as people tend to say it far too often, but the rest of them…

 

Edit them out. Most can be removing and the verb changed to it’s “ing” form. Others can be replaced by ‘who’ or ‘whom’  if it’s a person or ‘which’ if it’s an object. This is one of those mind-numbing tasks that you have to do. So make it easier on yourself and do it at the end of each chapter rather than doing the entire 300 page document at once.

K-Drama: Coffee Prince

This was the second drama I watched, “The 1st shop of the Coffee Prince” starring Yoon Eun Hye.

This drama is one of the reasons that I love Yoon Eun Hye so much, she is really believable as a guy. I showed my little sister part of the first episode and at the end told her that Yoon Eun Hye was a girl and she was shocked. I originally watched this one because I was looking for something similar to You’re Beautiful and boy did this out do itself.

This drama follows Yoon Eun Hye’s character Go Eun Chan, as she meets Choi Han-Gyul a rich playboy who wants to be a lego designer. (Seriously- weirdest job ever) His rich grandma says he has to run a coffee shop at a profit for a set period of time and then he can do whatever he wants so he opens the “coffee prince” shop where all the waiters are handsome men. Go Eun Chan needs a job and Choi Han-Gyul already thinks she is a boy so she starts work as a waiter.

Here’s where the story gets complicated. Go Eun Chan has a crush on Choi Han Seong (guy on the left in the above photo) who happens to be Choi Han-Gyuls cousin. Choi Han Seong used to be in love with Han Yoo Joo (girl on the left) but she left him for an art dealer (she is an artist). To make things more complicated Choi Han-Gyul has always been in olve with Han Yoo Joo too. Can anyone say love-square?

Definitely worth watching.

K-Drama: Goong/ Princess Hours (궁)

This was the third drama I watched. I watched it because I didn’t think that Yoon Eun Hye could play a princess after watching Coffee Prince. I was wrong. Yoon Eun Hye is one of my favourite actresses because she is so versatile. I will be reviewing ALL of her dramas because she is just that good.

 

So this drama gets a little complicated. It has a love square. The guy on the far left is Lee Shin. He is the crown prince. He was dating a ballerina, girl on the left, before he discovered that his grandfather had set him up with Shin Chae Kyung (Yoon Eun Hye’s character) the girl on the right. Shin Chae Kyung marries Lee Shin, but their parents both agree that they are too young to be a real married couple and instead let them sleep separately. Enter Lee Yul, the guy on the right. He was supposed to be the crown prince, but he and his mother were banished (you’ll find out why in the drama). Now he is back from England and plotting to steal his crown. He falls in love with Chae Kyung, who was supposed to marry the “crown prince” which in his mind is him.

There is a lot of drama in this, and a lot of the issues could have been solved if everyone had just been honest with each other. It’s also very funny, and well worth watching. Yoon Eun Hye really adds all the comedy to this, and it would be a very different show without her. 화이팅!

K-Drama: You’re Beautiful ( 미남이시네요)

You’re Beautiful was the first Korean Drama I ever watched. I had been watching a lot of J-drama (Japanese drama) and found the J-drama remake of You’re Beautiful. However they had only made 3 episodes so I switched to the Korean version and was hooked.

You’re Beautiful follows Park Shin Hye’s character Go Mi Nyu, a nun-in-training. She is about to go to Rome for nun-training when her twin brothers manager finds here and begs her to pretend to be her brother (Go Mi Nam) for an interview.  Go Mi Nam has a wonderful opportunity to become part of a very popular boy band, but if he misses the interview he misses this chance. Eventually she agrees and is whisked away to Seoul to meet the band. At the meeting the bands leader who doesn’t want any new member, but has damaged his throat so cannot sing enough to be the solo lead singer any more, forces her to sing. She complies singing a hymn that shocks everyone with how beautiful her voice is.

This is where it gets weird, because she has a girls voice- yet no one notices that she is a girl. Anyway, she becomes part of the group- BUT her brother needs more time (plastic surgery gone wrong) so Go Mi Nyu is forced to live in a house with three boys and train to become part of a boy band. One by one the members start to fall in love with her as they realise she is in fact a girl.

This is a funny and cute drama, with pretty decent original music. And it’s one of the dramas that you HAVE to watch.

Writing Tip- Use less -ly words

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. Somerset Maugham

Having recently had my book looked over by a real editor, I’m currently going through and editing out all my unnecessary POV changes and -ly words. I have a nasty habit of using the word “said” and then adding a -ly word to describe the way in which it was said, so that’s my job for the day. Replacing “said verb+ -ly” and I have found a pretty useful document that lists all the different ways to say “said”.

I found the 3rd page most useful, but hopefully it helps you too 🙂

View this document on Scribd

Writing 2.3 – A Contract with the Reader

This really hits home when you consider my first post the other day http://wp.me/p3A9zK-7 I hope to keep to the contract in the future, in fact I’m working hard at doing that right now 🙂

brainsnorts inc.

When I took a graduate class called “Writing the Novel” a few years ago, I learned two very important things.  First, if you tell a writer that her work in progress is a romance novel when she thinks she’s writing literary fiction, be prepared to see a chair fly across the room.  Second, there’s something called “The Contract with the Reader.”  Let’s forget about throwing chairs for a while and focus on the contract, which was something I had never heard of before.

Let’s pretend you’re in a bar and a guy sitting to your left says, “You want to hear a story?”  Of course you don’t, but you say, “Sure.  Thrill me.”  He knows sarcasm, so he says, “Tell you what.  If I give you a four-sentence setup, and you agree that you’re interested in hearing the rest, then you owe me a beer.  How’s that?”  So of course…

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If at first you don’t succeed

I recently published a book: “Betrothals & Betrayals” however if you went looking for that on Amazon you (hopefully) wouldn’t be able to find it. That’s because I rushed it, and in my desperate attempt to be able to finally call myself a published author, I published a sub-standard book. After a week or two of stressing myself out trying to write the sequel I realised why I was so stressed and pulled my book from publication. It’s currently being revised along with it’s sequel and I hope to republish in time for my younger sister’s birthday. Although I have learned my lesson about rushing, so no promises yet.

So what is the proper way to self-publish a book? I’m no expert but from what I gather there are certain standards to hold yourself to. Here’s what I am doing.

First things first: If you want to be a “real author” is very easy to simply upload a Word .doc (or .docx ) to Kindle and publish through them. They even have a helpful little program to build your cover. However while doing this might not cost you any money- realistically it’s never going to make you any money either. (And if you’re anything like me this sub-standard book will haunt you until you withdraw it and fix it properly!)

Once you have written and edited you book yourself, find an editor. But wait a minute you just told me to edit it myself, why do I still need an editor? I read somewhere (can’t find it now) that you should edit your work 4 times before you give it over to someone else.

1. Before you finish for the day read through what you wrote. Does it make sense? Are there spelling issues? Is there anything you would like to expand on for tomorrow?
2. When you finish a chapter, read through that entire chapter to check that it flows, that you stay in the same room or change scenery when you are supposed to. Check that it’s obvious who is talking, what they mean, why they are saying it. Has this chapter followed the plot or have you gone slightly astray?
3. When you have completed your book, print it out and read through it for spelling mistakes. Have it on screen at the same time to make your changes as you see them, this will save you time.
4. Read it. Out loud. You can read it to yourself, to your dog, to friends and family, but read it out loud. You’ll find that certain things change when you read it aloud and you will need to change your book accordingly.

Now that that’s done, send it to a professional. Yes- you have edited it, and I’m sure you did a good job, BUT you are far too close to see any issues. Also this isn’t your job, you don’t know what to look for.

There are many different editors out there (beware “companies” that want to sell you a “package” to publish your book-these are mostly scams that will not help you as much as doing it yourself (Also they will charge extortionate amounts of money!) and there are different types of editing available too. I don’t really understand the different types yet, so I’ll leave that for another day. (Or if a kind editor agrees to guest post that would work out too)

I’m having my work ‘Content Edited” this means that my editor will check the flow and the character development. Once my book is edited I will pay someone to proofread it, fixing all the mistakes that I as a dyslexic/dyspraxic English girl have made while typing on my Korean/American computer.

Finally I will pay someone to turn my document into a pdf file to be submitted to the online retailers. This is something you can do yourself, but it’s quite fiddly and not very expensive to pay someone. Now your book (or in this case my book) is finally ready to be uploaded. BUT it has no cover!

Instead of using the cover creator program please spend the money to have a cover properly designed. As an avid book reader I know that books are judged heavily on their covers in book stores, both online and in person. So isn’t worth spending the extra money to have a professional make your book look divine?

So that’s all for now, please learn from my mistakes and put the time and effort into it if you want to self-publish. Remember googling “how to self publish a book” or “cheap way to self publish” isn’t really going to help you. You have to spend money to make money, and if your book was cheap to make, it will look cheap.