Writing With: Lily Barnes

Lily Barnes is a lovely writer with a wide range of fan fiction currently up on her story page. She’s here to tell us a little bit about her current works: Your History of Silence and Somewhere Only We Know.

Your History of Silence

“When I first joined Mibba, I had picked five people I wanted to write about and Joel Madden was one of them. I wanted him to be different from typical male characters, not suave or witty but insecure and shy, and make a story about how these traits would cause him to be trapped in a relationship because he’s too afraid of offending people to break up with his girlfriend.”

This story centers around Joel Madden and his life as a struggling lounge singer, hoping that his band can really take off. Meeting Charlotte could be exactly what his band needs, but he realizes that his feelings aren’t in line with what’s best for his band when he falls for Charlotte’s sister, Vienna.

“My favorite character is actually Charlotte, the girl Joel starts dating before he falls for Vienna instead. Originally, Charlotte was supposed to be this snooty, I’m-better-than-everyone-else character, but she ended up being an entirely different character and I actually love who she’s turning out to be. She's girlie, like me, but way more uptight!”

Like many authors, her characters and what they have to do to grow are her favourite part about the story. “At some point in the future, they’ll both have to realize that they’ve been trying so hard to be something they’re not that neither of them really know who they are themselves.”

When asked about the future of her story, Lily said, “Honestly, I have no idea. I know what each character has to learn and how they’ll change, but I haven’t worked out how exactly it will happen.”

Somewhere Only We Know

“This story is actually being written for a prompt contest, which just closed today. I chose the prompts 'love letters' and 'garden', which led me to the image of a woman reading a letter sitting in her garden. It wasn’t until I had written the first ‘letter’ that it occurred to me: What if the letters weren’t meant for her?”

Somewhere Only We Know features love letters written by a soldier on duty meant for his girlfriend. However, not everything goes according to plan when Jenna ends up with the letters, instead of the intended Jane.

Moving away a bit from the characters for this story, Lily says, “My favorite thing about this story is honestly the imagery. I’m putting a lot of effort into describing it, because it’s an important aspect of the story. There’s a creek outside Jenna’s house and a creek by Matt’s camp. The town Jenna lives by is one I entirely made up, even mapped out using Paint program. It’s just amazing to come up with all these places and sceneries as I’m writing this story.”

She has more of an idea of the direction of this story. “Currently, I’ve set up for Matt to pay a surprise visit to Jenna’s house, looking for his girlfriend. She’ll have to find a way to hide the truth from him under his very nose!”

Lily has pretty specific writing habits. “To start, I always have to have music. I have playlists for each story on my iPad and always have to be listening to one. I like to have at least one chapter in reserve for each story, so it’s easier to meet my goal of updating each story once a week. It’s challenging because I have five stories I’m posting and three that I’m writing in my free time as well. When I don’t have a pre-established idea for a chapter, I listen to the playlist until an idea comes to me.”

In her short two months on Mibba, Lily has come to love "how nice everyone is and how hard the moderators work to keep it a hate-free environment". She would consider herself a ‘social butterfly’ Mibbian, “I just love chatting with people and sharing my stories.”

Special thanks to exploding boy. and Audrey T for editing!