Name of Author: Shannon Chen
Title of Book: Reality Shift
Favorite Authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Jonathan Safran Foer, Scott Lynch, Michael Pollan, Adrian Tomine, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood—yes, weird list, I know.
Bio:
Shannon graduated from Northwestern with a Creative Writing/Computer Science degree some years ago and has been coding for a large Silicon Valley-based tech company ever since. Once upon a time, he had dinner with Veronica Roth (and a bunch of other people). Another time, he dressed up as a power ranger for Halloween. He is able to summon a Patronus by thinking about deep dish pizza. He loves deep dish pizza.
Reality Shift
http://www.wattpad.com/story/35761091-reality-shift-an-urban-fantasy-crime-thriller
Can you explain what your book is all about?
Magical powers meets crime thriller meets average guy who has some major I-can't-get-over-my-ex-wife issues. Reality Shift follows said average guy as he tries to rescue his partner-in-crime—who happens to be a mage—from a supposed kidnapping following a supposed big heist. Bad things ensue.
Who is your target audience - and why?
I thought it would be guys in their twenties because I'm a guy in my twenties and I'm mostly writing something I might want to read. Turns out guys-in-their-twenties aren't the biggest demographic on Wattpad, but I think I've mostly found older readers in general. You didn't hear this from me, but I've been considering renaming my story "Chasing the Bad Boy" and introducing a certain Harry Styles...
What is 'paranormal' about your story?
Mages. Mages everywhere. Mages who live in two realities at once and have the power to bend reality such that elements of one reality can cross over into the other. Strange, otherworldly phenomena like Hello Kitty trash cans and glow-in-the-dark underwear also feature prominently.
Does it contain other genre elements, if so which ones - and why?
Some mystery in that you never quite know what's going on or who's behind what, though there's small clues along the way. Some thriller in that I've been trying to keep the pace relatively fast. Some fantasy in that there's magic, though it's all based on mythology with some artistic license. Some romance. Some humor. Some cat-fiction.
Tell us about your writing process - how do you get from story idea to a Wattpad published story?
Well, I had a new year's resolution for 2015: take over the world. On top of that, I also wanted to write 50,000 words in a single novel. So I started doing that. (Actually, I cheated a bit and started in December last year, but shh.) But then I realized that the plot was poorly paced and the character dialogue had gotten a little campy, and I dropped the project. I still needed to finish my resolution though, so what you see on Wattpad is the result of one night of furiously hacking away at an opening chapter then thinking to myself, "Okay, where can I go from here?" Then rinse and repeat. The battle plan has been built up over time, and at this point, I have a pretty clear idea of how the rest of the story goes, and I'm pretty excited to post the rest. Of course, as I'm sure everyone here knows, plots have a way of taking a hard left when you least expect it.
Did you encounter any challenges when writing, if so - how did you overcome them?
Motivation and nerves. So when I first joined Wattpad, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was one of those people who sat around refreshing their profile just to see if my reads had gone up, and I always had this sinking feeling in my stomach every time I published a new chapter because I thought that maybe *this* was the one that would lose all my readers or *this* was the one that would bring on the flood of hate comments. It was all silly, of course—all the comments I've gotten have either been really nice or really helpful (or both!)—but there were times, especially in the beginning, where I'd see that no one had read (except myself) and I'd think that I was wasting my time here on Wattpad, writing for no audience (read: earning no praise). That was bad.
This is, to some extent, a life problem for me, and it's something I've recognized and I'm actively trying to change. I think the key realization I had was that I was putting my own happiness in other people's hands. No one reads? Shannon is sad. No one comments? Shannon is sad. Someone makes a comment insulting Shannon's work and his mother and his unborn son? Shannon is sad. That's not good, right?
So I've shifted my mentality a bit: if no one reads and no one comments, hey, at least I still wrote the book I wanted to write, and that's an achievement for me. It's simple, but it puts me in charge of my own happiness and motivation, and it's gone a long way to solve the nerves. Sorry for the ramble, but I've seen a lot of posts in the clubs about people losing motivation because they're not getting reads or votes or whatnot. I figured sharing my own experiences might help. :)
You often hear that 'writing well' is the baseline for success. What does that mean for you?
Writing well is just writing the best story that you can. There's an audience for everything, and everyone's going to have a different definition of what's well-written. Ultimately I think writing well comes down to reading well. If someone reads a lot and pinpoints exactly the sort of thing that they like to read (and how to construct it), they should be able to write the sort of thing that they like to read. And it's very, very likely that someone—even multiple someones—will have similar tastes. It's just a matter of finding those someones from there. :)
