#juniversity101

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

Okay, first of all, *I just finished draft 5 of TOL* (but I finished it while I was hungry, so now that I’ve eaten I’m gonna look over it one more time)

Second of all, I wrote an ending based on an idea I had literally three hours before I wrote it, but it does set up a sequel, and here’s what you need to know.

49 days.

I have to do more research to be completely clear on what the origins, etc are, but it’s either a Buddhist or general Asian culture thing that a soul lingers in the world for 49 days after death. After that, the soul gets pushed back through the reincarnation cycle. Some of the works I’ve seen that use this fact have plots centered around fulfilling the soul’s final regret before they leave, and I’m not sure if that’s like. The soul can’t leave until their dying wish is fulfilled or if they just get put in a less optimal reincarnation or... You know? Like I said, I’m going to do a bit more research on it since my family is not a big believer in the 49 days thing, although we’ve mentioned it while watching movies and stuff.

Spoilers under the cut

Spoiler: Someone in my cast of characters dies and has 49 days to get back in their body or disappear. I’m aware this may be twisting some of the culturally correct stuff a bit, but again, I have yet to do my proper research on it, and I will do it justice.

This means that the sequel (if all goes as planned) is going to be about How to Love Your Boyfriend When You’re a Ghost and He’s Afraid of Ghosts. I am indeed still thinking about whether or not Kien and Yen get to show up in this at all and how that works out, but for the moment, that’s where I’m at. 

This also means there’s a chance that our dead character never makes it back in their body and ends up leaving the world forever. I hate sad endings but maybe there’s a way I can make it fulfilling. *side eyes all the Marie Lu books where the main couple almost never ends up together and have influenced my writing*

So, yeah. That’s that. The third or fourth concept for a sequel that I’ve presented over the span of two months. Even if this one fails me too, hopefully I’ve imparted some interesting cultural knowledge anyway :)

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

The Vietnamese language

Okay, so Vietnamese and English are very very different things. For starters, Vietnamese is tonal, which means different accent marks sound different and whatever and this is not something you have to know about to be able to read Unspoken, Unsung but i thought it’d be fun to talk about. Bc I’m The Teacher’s Assistant for Vietnamese in my college.

So a á à ả ã ạ are all different and to untrained ears they probably all sound the same. We also have “extra vowels” (3 a’s and 3 o’s; 2e’s and 2 u’s; an i and y that function basically the same)

That’s totally besides my point but alas. You’ll be seeing these things as I occasionally drop Vietnamese words in the wip.

The things that are important to Unspoken, Unsung are dialect and honorifics.

Dialect

North, South, and Central Vietnam have different dialects. I was going to link you to a video of them, but I couldn’t find one I really liked. Anyway, Northern dialect is the “proper” way to pronounce things. Most Vietnamese Americans, as far as I know, speak the Southern dialect, though. The southern dialect kind of.. mispronounces letters. It pretty much does sound more country, like Southern American accents. It’s not technically incorrect at this point, but it’s different. (Central is some kind of hybrid of both, but i can’t really explain it as I have relatively little experience with it)

They also just choose different words for things sometimes. This all matters to my wip because I decided Kiên speaks with a Southern accent and Yến speaks with a Northern accent. It fuels the imminent feeling of distance between them that already exists due to their social classes, but even to the core of the way they speak, they are different. It’s the same language, but also not.

Honorifics

Don’t you love languages that have 20 different words for “you” and equally as many for “I”?

So there’s certain words and ways of speaking that indicate your relationship to the person you’re talking to. For instance, dạ is an extra little word that you use in conversation with elders and superiors to show respect. Mày is a super informal form of “you” that you would probably get your butt whipped for if you addressed your parents that way.

I wanted to weave this into Unspoken, Unsung also to indicate the distance between Kiên and Yến. Kiên speaks informally; he usually doesn’t speak at all so. When he enters the Magnolia Grove and has to blend in, there’s a whole process of him re-learning all these honorifics and respectable vocabulary that he’s known but seldom used before. Yến, on the other hand, always speaks formally, but one of the things that makes Kiên realize they’ve gotten closer as friends and maybe more is when she starts throwing informal terms and addresses at him and only at him.

Let me know if you want more lessons in the Vietnamese language in the form of long text posts and I’ll see what I can do!

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

Diaspora

This is a theme I only recently wanted to explore, so I’m still figuring out how to do it. Post 1975 (fall of Saigon, hotspot of political problems and changed livelihoods), there was a lot of escaping and immigrating out of Vietnam. It’s how a lot of Vietnamese-American families arrived here and though it’s a fairly universal familial experience, we just Don’t Talk About It, partly because it’s hard to talk about that kind of traumatic event to your kids, I’d imagine.

Only recently, my dad has been more open about the specifics of how that was for him. How young some people were when they made the trip. How horrible the trip was. How families were broken before and splintered after. How messed up it all sounds talking about it now as a computer engineer in America after putting himself through college with a full time job, with a son who’s graduated and working and a daughter studying toward a career in medicine (that’s me!) How he had no idea how to parent besides doing the exact opposite of how his childhood went bc it was just that rough.

Point is, I’m now realizing with full force just how many different societies he and his generation had to adapt to. Vietnam pre 1975, Holland/Malaysia/wherever they went first, America in the 80s, America in the 2000s. Dealing with people just as badly off as him, meeting people slightly better off like my mom, dealing with this new generation who has it good with no idea what it was like Before.

So here’s the tricky part. Unspoken, Unsung is set in future Vietnam. I’ve been there exactly once when I was 2 and besides dramas and YouTube shorts, all I know about Vietnam are these kinds of stories. Still, I want to write a little bit about that weirdness of constantly having to adapt and the effect that has on a collective society, generations down the line. I think I’ll do it in Kiên’s transition to the Magnolia Grove, but I might also interlace it with the way the family and society reacts to Emerson and Finley.

Once you leave Vietnam and come back, you’re already treated differently. I have to think a little more on what I’ve been told about it so I can figure out exactly what “differently” means and how to write it. I just think it’s a very good theme to include if I really intend to use this wip as a little push into my own heritage, to embrace it after being in a predominantly white school for 8 or so years. And, idk, it’s all very interesting stuff and all very personal stuff, and that exactly what makes a good story, no?

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

Today is about tone.

In trying to separate my wips - bc this is the first time I’ve ever had to let go of one wip to start another since Touch of Light was the first wip I ever ever finished - I came up with this: Touch of Light was my practice on getting from point A -> B. Unspoken, Unsung will be practice in other things such as deliberate themes and tones and that kind of thing.

TOL didn’t have a specific tone, but I want UU to have one. Im thinking two very specific tones born from our two narrators, Emerson and Kiên.

Emerson will have a very air-headed “I’m on vacation with a pretty boy who loves me; life is good” type of tone. Not that she can’t be serious, but this honestly is her vacation.

Kiên will be much more jaded and subdued since this isn’t a vacation for him. It’s just life. I’m going to try something and see if I can hold him back on the flirting a little, but since Kiên doesn’t really talk and mostly spends his time thinking, this might not be feasible but that’s okay.

I think this will make it interesting when our narrators have to confront each other - seriously confront each other and not just hang out - and realize that their image of the other is maybe a little shattered. And realize that that’s okay and actually better than what they though before.

I’m also going to try this fun little thing; I have no idea if it works yet. I have synesthesia, so I can see colors (have strong color/image associations really) when I listen to songs. I’m gonna try to use it differently and choose a color scheme to keep in mind while I’m writing and see if that changes anything about cohesive tones and whatnot.

And of course, since I’ve made it a memoir, I’ve also decided that I can worry a little less about transition scenes than I did before bc wow that was difficult.

I thought I had more to say about this, but I guess that’s it. I’m still gathering these big picture ideas before I stick them into a formal outline, so wish me luck!

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

Today’s ramble is honestly going to be a miscellaneous few things I’ve considered while taking a break from writing. A few bricks that flew in and hit me in the head on a whim, you could say.

Theme: parents.

So I’ve been thinking about the convenient lack of parents in certain novels that share the vibe I’m going for. Since Unspoken, Unsung is set in an Asian town though, I find it highly unlikely that we have any chance of mysteriously absent parents - or even grandparents. I took a class last semester on Asian-American literature and a mix of that and my own life experiences lately have driven this idea into my head.

I think it’s worth paying tribute to the major influences parents can have in our lives in the way that they are all prickly on the outside sometimes but real soft deep down. Despite my main characters ranging from 21-27ish years old, there’s still a lot of room for direct parental influence there that I didn’t explore in my previous wip that I think I’d like to explore now. It’s something I wouldn’t have thought about before as I am only 20.5 years old which feels like I’m barely an adult, but I think the adult’s relationship with their parents is definitely an explorable thing because it never stops being complicated after your teenage rebellion years, and I see that now.

Narration:

Been deliberating for a while on this one. While I do like the triple first person narrative in my previous wip, I think this time I would like to try just one POV. My outline is poorly suited for this, but I don’t think it’s unmanageable. I think the triple narration got a little complicated for me as I tried to make sure all three narrators mentioned their separate lives away from each other. In general, I’m thinking to simplify it and remember that I don’t necessarily have to plant a garden of foreshadowing from the get-go because I don’t even really know what’s important yet (yay first drafts!)

Otherwise I could try 3rd person, but I just really really like writing in 1st person.

Theme: things left unsaid.

This is the reason for the title. Along with the other thing about parents, I was thinking... A lot of unsaid things in my life are being dragged out lately for whatever reason, and so I thought perhaps this would be a good time to write something about it. About how much more things hurt when you don’t say things than if you would just rip off the bandaid. How the hopeful delusion can crush more than flat rejection. How pleasantly surprised you can be when someone finally showers you in glittery compliments after acting like they hate you. How unpleasant it is when someone lets you break your back working until the last possible minute to tell you that everything about it is wrong.

Kiên especially is used to saying things in his head due to his habit of making himself invisible, and once Yến rolls in and he wants to share his thoughts, sometimes he forgets he has to say them. Sometimes the thought of telling her what’s on his mind is mortifying - because what does a rich heiress care about how excited he is that the lady down the street gave him free dumplings twice last week? That his little brother is absolutely precious when eating said dumplings?

Yến is not used to talking either because everything she proposes about anything is wrong for one reason or another - but it becomes right when some man says the same thing. It’s because she’s a woman, probably. A child, too (she’s 21 tho). You’d think people like Kiên and Yến know how to read between the lines but... They really don’t. And it causes several problems that could be solved with maybe a few more words and a littlw more straightforwardness. They’re just going to have to learn how to talk to each other and also to everyone else.

It’s imperative that they do.

[greenbriar-j]

Jun • i• verse (n) - the literary universe of a certain author named June aka scribbleknots aka me

New myth new myth! I’ve done this many times over many drafts and would you believe it’s actually very hard to make up a myth that serves your purposes?

As Sai’s soul left his body, dispatched by the one he loved so dearly, it made a final request that whichever deity allowed him to come to being - god or demon - saw fit to grant. He damned the family of the assassin, that none of them may ever find love.

The short of it is this: the first Muse ever (Sai) had a clairvoyant sort of Art which he used to overthrow the tyrant who had control of his hometown. Only, Sai didn’t really like his hometown either bc they were pretty sure he was demon spawn and treated him like it too. He took over and became the new tyrant.

Assassins came after them - so many assassins of various Arts and statures and skill levels. All failed except for one, who decided to befriend him to earn his trust before killing him. No one had ever scared him like this tiny assassin girl, and not because she was an assassin because he didn’t know that’s what she was. Quite simply, no one had ever been able to change his mood with single words, gestures, and smiles. He loved her and thought she loved him until she killed him because Duty First.

As if killing the man she sort of loved wasn’t bad enough, he cursed her with his dying breath, that all her descendants may only know love the way he had - oblivious happiness all at once, then painful as death at the drop of a hat.

Emerson is a descendant of this cursed assassin, and we’re going to see how she breaks this curse (maybe). It’s going to greatly complicate her relationship with Finley bc she’ll think she’s beaten the curse when he’s smitten with her from the get go, but then perhaps she starts to have doubts for various reasons (probably julians fault tbh) and she’s going to remember that this familial curse exists.

-> Idk what this means for the whole Architect business. It might nullify the whole thing and Finley will have to find something new to be obsessed with. Idk. This kind of changes some backbone stuff so I have to restructure a little