Top 5 - High School Movies

It's time to have a little fun with a TOP 5!

I am a huge fan of High School movies. I absolutely love them, so choosing a Top 5 was really tough. I had so many on my list!! But I think these are my favorite :)

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

So how about you? What are your Top 5 High School movies?

Hollywood Books

I am a huge fan of reading. I am also a huge fan of movies. So when books are made into movies, I am usually very happy about this. I am able to separate the two easily and it's not often I see a movie version of a book and am disappointed. Sometimes I am, but you can't win them all.

Because I am such a HUGE movie fan, the idea of my books being made into movies is the ultimate. I may never get there, but I always think it's good to set your sights high.

When I am constructing a story in my head, I see it as a movie. When I'm writing the first draft, if I can't visualise the characters in the scene as if I'm watching it onscreen, then I usually take it out of the book. My favourite types of books to read are the ones I can see as movies in my head, therefore when I write, I have the same goal in mind.

When you read - do you see the stories play out as movies?
Are the books you love the kind you think should be turned into films?
What books have you read lately that would make amazing movies?

Friday Favourites - Worlds

I have spent this week planning out a new trilogy that I'm hoping to publish next year. It's a fantasy, which I've never tried before and I can already see that it's going to be a huge challenge for me.

A few days ago I started penciling out a world for these characters to "play" in. It was really fun coming up with names for different places and designing what the world will look like in my head. I had to decide how far I was going to go and I made the decision not to be too extreme. I'm sticking to scenery that we see in the world we live in. I will add a few magical elements here and there, but on the whole when the reader is reading this book, they should have some sense of what the world looks like without me having to go into copious, descriptive details.

My reason for doing this, is that I am a very character based writer. I like my stories to spend a lot of time on the relationship between the characters and the internal struggles they are dealing with. My stories are always dialogue and action heavy. I don't want to spend too much time visually creating a world that the reader has to work extra hard to connect with, because there's nothing they can compare it to.

I was thinking about some of the fantasy or sci-fi movies I love and picturing the worlds they live in. I love Lord of the Rings because I feel as though it's magic in the real world. It's the same with Harry Potter. I know there are creatures in both those movies that don't exist, but the landscape and environments are things we can relate to.

Avatar, on the other hand, is a whole new world with plant life and animals that are completely new to us. It's the same with the Star Wars movies. Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed Avatar and I have loved Star Wars since I was a kid, but I think I prefer stories that have slightly more realism, yet still a sense of magic.

What do you prefer?
Are there any worlds you have discovered in books or movies that you've fallen in love with?