Kate Cary's Blog

The Art of Fan Fiction-izing

Hello! I’m Kat, and as some of you may know, I love to write Warriors Fan Fictions!

Ever since I have been on the blog, I took an interest into writing. I really wasn’t big on it before hand, although I had some small, odd stories that I lightly touched on but never completed. When I read and learned about Fan Fictions, I realized how fun it is to fill in gaps in the Warriors series, think about hints that were dropped as to secret relationships, hidden battles, or even silent rivalries.

After all of my time, I have found ways to get more people into the stories that I write. I would like to share what I’ve learned with you all.

1. Presentation:

I have discovered that the way that you present Fan Fictions has a big impact on the feedback you receive. If you have proper captitalization, grammar, and spelling, you will often not get comments such as “You spelled ‘grass’ wrong” or “This and that are not the same thing.” Why is that? If you read a paragraph that is beautifully written but too many errors, it is extremely distracting. It turns fascination into boredom.

Word overuse is very common in writers. When I write fan fictions, I keep a mental list of how often I use a word. Especially after quotes. If I write “Hollypaw meowed” once after a quote then say “Jaypaw meowed” in the next quote, it looks repetitive and lazy. When I read things, word overuse drives me insane. The word repeats in my head over and over again…besides, it is boring. Clipping an adverb onto it such as “happily,” will not help if you’ve already used a verb forty times in two paragraphs. I suggest adverbs, but not every single quote.

Last but not least in the presentation catergory, paragraphing and indents. You might not know, but to make things look neat, there can only be one person saying any amount of quotes per paragraph. For example:

<i>Lionblaze passed a wary gaze over Jayfeather and Dovewing. “What are we supposed to do now, that the Dark Forest is gone?” he demanded. “Simply ignore them?”</i>

See? Now, since it is implying that Lionblaze is saying the quoted words in the paragraph, you don’t have to add “Lionblaze said” after every quote. If someone else is saying something, start a new paragraph and indent it. If a story is spaced out equally and not clumped together, it is more pleasing to read because it isn’t jumbled. To paragraph, press enter. If it is still clumped together when you post it on the blog, you have to press enter twice when you write on a program.

2. Where to find inspiration

The first place to find inspiration is <i>always</i> a book. But remember, inspiration just gets your mind creative, thinking of new ideas, heartrending events to include, etc. The right book is important too, and if you can’t find one, I have an alternate way:

Music. When I listen to music I love on iTunes, or dabbling in songs played on the radio, I find inspiration. I don’t often love the songs on the radio, but even if they are simply horrible, I connect on how the song was written and which personalities they would match for a character. For example, the song “Heart of Life” by John Mayer made me think of a secret relationship between Littlecloud and Cinderpelt. Here are some of the lyrics:

“Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won’t all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good.”

Why did that inspire, and what did you think of?

I realized how Cinderpelt would feel so crushed on the night Sandstorm and Firestar’s kits were born. Those were supposed to be she and Firestar’s. So what if she turned to her friend Littlecloud, and he talked to her about how she’ll be hurt, but love will turn it around? What if she thinks that he is accepting her love for Firestar, but in reality he is musing on a relationship between each other? How would <i>Littlecloud</i> feel?

The questions made me think of answers. She would most likely feel that he is only being a great friend–and perhaps wants her to love Firestar instead of him–then never learns what he really meant. Littlecloud would feel horrible. He would feel guilt for himself. He would feel angry that his mouth slipped. I can’t answer anymore without making a Fan Fiction about it!

See how it will work out for you?

3. How the story progresses

I am rewriting an after The Last Hope Fan Fiction (I know Bramblestar’s Storm will come out and make all of my book invalid, but it’s a fun hobby anyway) called The New Sun. When I originally wrote it, I reached seventeen chapters. Those chapters got attention among a few people, but I was thrilled that people were reading it and feeling sympathetic for characters, curious about characters, angry at characters.

The reason it happened was mainly because I kept posting. Earlier, no one commented. But I didn’t let that stop me. I later found out that people were reading, but simply not replying. So if you don’t get comments, don’t automatically assume no one saw it, because we did, and we LOVED IT!

Conclusion:

The main focus of Fan Fictions is that you have fun. What else is it for? To be on the pathway to an amazing writer, try to look through writing styles and stories by our amazing writers, specifically Kate Cary, and make what you feel should be in theWarriors series!

Silverflame sent in this fabulous drawing! I’m speechless with admiration…can BlogClan get any more talented?!!

I loved these so much , I’m sharing them on a post. Gosh, BlogClan is producing some really imaginative and skilful work at the moment. From Cinderflame’s totally original horse-themed Warrior drawings to these beautiful sketches by Shinglewhiskers. (I spent many an hour as a kid drawing cats. I always had trouble with their noses, but Shinglewhiskers does them beautifully. EPIC as Vicky would say!)

Thank you! Loving you artwork, BlogClan!

Thank you for these

The first one is beautiful and the second made me chuckle. I sent it to Vicky (made her day!). She loves horses. Even as I type, I’m rewriting Warriors in my head with hooves. Horse battles? Not pretty! (Have you ever seen giraffes fight btw? Very strange)

Apologies: Because I originally named this post Fan Art, all the comments and clicks sent you to the Fan Art Page. I’ve learnt something new (well, almost learnt. I don’t quite understand. But I think I’ve fixed it.) Won’t make that mistake again.

A Study of Catspeak, and what Leonardo da Vinci has to do with it

Many moons ago, when surfing the blog, I discovered the concept of a Clan named “RuneClan” that wore markings on their flanks to denote their ranking and Clan history. Someone had commented with the claim that the cats had no system of reading and writing, and therefore this concept would never make it into the books. This made me think – was that statement true? Certainly in real life, but considering that the Clans have such a complicated language, as well as the use of the Stick as a tally (which can be seen as a form of reading), made me realise that the Clans could have a writing system if they ever had the need. Not only this, but what about the system of tail signals seen in Battles of the Clans? It seems far too complex for a real-life cat, and is certainly different to the way real cats use their tails to portray emotion. But if a writing system is possible, a richly structured language is needed. In this article, I will be exploring the way the Clans use language, the real-world possibilities of catspeak and how a feline language could coexist with Twoleg English, in-universe or out.

The name system of the Clans clearly shows how much more complex Warriors language is than the communication system of real cats. Not only do cats in Warriors name each other – which is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon in any real animal – but these monikers consist of separate sections relating to both the cat’s characteristics and their rank. As far as scientists know, the only animals that could possibly be capable of this are cetaceans. Dolphins have individual names and a vocabulary of 200 words. Orca use grammar and syntax and have dialects. Whale songs even rhyme, in a sense. However, the Clans surpass this by far with their vast, human-like vocabularies and complex naming system. However, the real question is not “can the warrior cats speak a feline language?” but “do the warrior cats speak English?”

I always used to be confused when Warriors readers said that the books were about “talking cats”. I always thought that the language of the characters was simply cat language, translated into English. I understood that the catspeak was far too complex to be simple, real-life feline mews and purrs, but I assumed that it was some variant of real cat communication changed to be far more subtle and intricate. However, a key piece of information about catspeak comes from Brambleberry’s quote on page 53 of Crookedstar’s Promise:

“Perhaps I should change my name. I could be called Swallowherb. See? Because that’s what I do. I make cats swallow herbs.”

This may seem of little importance, but something very rare has occurred in Warriors. A cat has made a pun. Puns in English will lose their meaning when translated into another language, and vice versa. One example of this is Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine. It is a portrait of a girl named Cecilia Gallerani. It has been speculated that this is because the Greek for ermine is galay, a pun on her name. This would be far more obvious to the modern English-speaking world if she was either named Cecilia Ermine, or the English word for ermine was galay. This demonstrates that puns will only work if there is one word with two meanings. Brambleberry has just proved to us that a pun that works in English will work just as well in catspeak – a play on the verb “swallow”, to pass food down the throat, and the noun “swallow”, a small songbird. As far as I know, the only real language this pun works in is English. Therefore, the cats must be speaking English.

If this is true, then one might ask how Twolegs communicate in the novels. If the cats speak English, then what do the Twolegs do? Do they just walk around meowing at each other? Of course not. Although the cats must be speaking English, they’re still described as “purring” and “yowling”, and Twolegs have been explicitly shown to speak English in the mangas. This must mean that both Twoleg and cat speak English, but the languages have evolved until neither can recognise the other, because of their different vocal chords.

Could this exist in real life? Possibly. Definitely not yet, as feline language is far too simple, but evolution happens. It happened to the whales and dolphins, it happened to us and eventually it’ll happen to the cats. In several million years’ time, cats may be able to tell each other wild stories, comfort each other, cry, laugh and sing. Warriors could be truly real.

Blogheart

Hello BlogClan,

Excuse my tardiness.  I have finally added the gorgeous fan art you’ve been sending me. Here’s a cute one by Lilyshine just to whet your appetite.

How To Draw Cats Stylized

By Sageheart

For the users of BlogClan

By the will of Katestar, I am going to be doing a little article here on how to draw cats, but not just draw. How to make your cat look like a real, individual character. I have some experience with this, but I can’t say I’m an expert, so if you find a better way to do it I’d love to know!

The Face

Cats are really interesting in the same way as dogs and people are: They have many many different facial shapes. So, speaking in terms of character, let’s say we’re going to go through this article using Cakestar.

“But Sageheart!” you may say. “How do we do all this?” Simple, BlogClan friend! With shapes and lines. You just have to picture what you want and go.

So, let’s begin with the very basic face shape.

Nothing really has to be precise with this, so you know. I can’t do a perfect circle to save my life, not to mention the lines aren’t in the middle. You’ll be drawing over and erasing them anyway! There’s no reason to be perturbed.

Now that we have the basis, we go on to shaping her up. Cakestar, in my mind, is pretty and thin, so we’ll make her face look more triangular. With that in mind, let’s continue.

So we can now see that her face is rather thin, like I said. Mostly this just means I didn’t go too much outside the bounds of the circle and then elongated it for the chin placement.

Notice how the eyes are almond-shaped. Cats eyes tend towards four shapes: Triangular, almond, oval, and circular, and then from there they can be half-lidded to look sleepy, darkened to look serious, etc. There will be more on that later. Almond looks kind and wise on Cakestar’s triangular face, but really, you can experiment and get lots of different results.

You will also see some weird-looking lines on the side of the face. That’s simply the cat’s cheekbones! They should be within a short distance from the bottom of the eye, but they can range a little. Closer looks more sly, farther looks more innocent.

Now on to the fix-ups to give this cat some more shape.

I fixed up Cakestar’s eyes a little bit, added her fur, and put her muzzle there. One of my favorite parts about drawing cats is how easily they fit themselves together: those cheekbones you were probably worrying about? They just extend right into the muzzle, acting as the top jaw! This is true for all cats, from the flat-faced Yellowfang to the narrow-headed Sol.

Now we’ll move on to making this character individual! Cakestar is a kind, benevolent leader, so I imagine she’ll be smiling. This would also mean that the skin under and around the eyes crinkles a bit, like so:

Now for the eyes themselves. There are many styles of drawing eyes – I myself use more than one! I’ll be using the more simplistic one for this, simply because I really like it and it’s easy to see what I do with it.

See, we’re almost done! I added a little more shape to the “brows”. That’s another thing that adds to personality of a cat’s face.

Also, the black lines on the inner corners of the eyes are ducts. I emphasize them stylistically, but there’s really no need to unless you want to.

Basically all we have to do now is re-line the whole face and it’ll be ready for coloring.

Now I’ll just color it really quickly and you guys can see the typical finished product!

Making Your Character Unique

Vary your eye shapes. Different eye shapes can give different effects!

Blue – Round

Purple – Oval

Red – Almond

Green – Triangular

You can also vary your face shapes.

Mostly the faces and eyes go together like:

 1 – Round

2 – Almond

3 – Oval

4 – Triangular

There’s a little bit of sway with this, so have fun with it! Experimenting with the shapes is the very best way to get your cat to look the way you want.

Finally, here are some original series Warriors characters for you to use as inspiration for your own drawings! Happy hunting, fellow BlogClanners!

If you have any questions or want to see my own art, you can find me at morganacard.deviantart.com and I’m always, always happy to get responses!

Sageheart out.