 Hello, how's it going lads? Have you been getting any right in doing today? Welcome back to another video- Alright, okay, I'm sorry. What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. It's gonna be a chill one today. Hell yeah, man! Okay, I haven't done a Q&A for like, it's been 84 years. It's been a while. Alright, what questions have you got for me today, dude? Okay. Sorry, I'm just feeling a bit goofy today and a little bit quirky. Have you written a death scene? I can't. I gotta stop. Have you written a death scene? What is your preferred way of killing a character? That's a great question, Blue. I have killed quite a few characters. In fact, I think I've killed most of the characters I've written, if we're including short stories. It's a bit of a hard question to answer, because obviously when you're writing a lot of deaths, you want to do them in different ways. I don't really have a preferred way of killing characters, so to speak, because I want each of the deaths to be like, a bit unique from the last. But I do still have an answer for you. I'm not going to give you a complete cop out there. I really like writing deaths where it's like, it's out of nowhere. Like it's just sudden and it's unexpected. It's one thing to have a character die from their wounds over a length of time, if you want that emotional interaction, where a character is dying in another one, begging them not to go. That's great. That's fine. But I also think it's kind of like, it's like a huge, oh fuck, moment when like, especially a major character just dies. Like they just get obliterated. But it's also hard to do that, because you don't want to feel like you're cheating the reader. Like you don't want them to have invested all of this time and love into a character you created, and then just unceremoniously, goodbye. Goodbye. I like deaths where they die very quickly. There's your answer. Alex says, I tried to film a few videos once, and to edit them, just to see how much work it would be to start a YouTube channel. And I didn't post any of them, because I knew that long term, it would be too much work for me. I'm wondering how you deal with YouTube and still have time and motivation for writing, because I'm kind of amazed at the quality of your videos. It must take time to get this kind of results. First of all, Alex, that's really nice of you to say about the quality of my videos. Considering the way this video started, I don't know if that's still how you feel, but thanks nonetheless. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. Doing YouTube videos, what I think is the right way, is not easy at all if you have like a normal life. You know what I mean? I have a full time job. I try to go to the gym every day. I try to read. I try to write. And I think what people need to realize about making videos, or at least videos like mine, is that it's like a full day thing. In one day, like today, I might film like a couple of videos. And then, not on the same day, but like another day, I will spend literally the entire day editing them. It's like about four hours sometimes to make a video from start to finish after I've already filmed it. It takes a long time, especially the like video essay style videos. I do more of them, not so much on my writing channel now, but over on the channel where I do book reviews and deep dives into books and that kind of stuff. Those videos take a really, really long time to edit. I mean, you could upload really easy quick videos. Like you could do the Steve Donahue where he uploads like 50 videos a day, but it's literally just him sitting in front of the webcam and just talking because he's good at it. Me personally, I can't do that because if I just sat down and didn't edit the video whatsoever and just talked, I would go on a long ramble about something that no one cares about, or I would have a lot of awkward gaps in between, you get my point. Some people can do it, others not so much. And also, I like having heavily edited videos. I think it looks cool. I think it's entertaining. This is a perfect example of me going off on a tangent. The question was, I'm wondering how you deal with YouTube and still have time and motivation for writing. I don't write nearly as much as I wish I did. I'll say it like that. I should be writing a lot more than I am, especially right now with so many different projects going on. I think if everything goes to plan, I should actually have, by the end of this year, going up, or at the very least, very early next year, I should have two more short stories in two separate anthologies and my own collection of horror short stories. Long story short, making YouTube videos or at least the YouTube videos that I feel like I have to make is extremely, extremely time consuming. It's not easy. I won't lie to you. It's really not easy. At least like once every couple of weeks, I'll question whether I want to keep doing this. I always end up going back to yes, I definitely do, but it's just, it's hard, man. It's hard. The dream is that I could write and make YouTube videos as my job and then I could quit my full-time job. But realistically, I don't think that's ever going to happen and that's fine. I know that's, that's like a dream job. So of course, you know, whatever. Karina's side of Sam says, if you were in a horror, a fantasy and a sci-fi, what type of character would you be? In the horror, I would love to be the comedic relief that gets killed very early. I'm completely fine with not being the hero. In a fantasy, I'm just going off what I always do for like RPGs and MMO games, that kind of stuff. I always go with the rogue character. You know, like the stealthy assassin kind of person. That would be my, that would be my pick. And for sci-fi, let's be real old. I'd be like Futurama, just completely baffled by everything that's going on. Kate Kavanaugh. Kate Kavaugh. Hey, Kavaugh. Cap. Kate Kavaugh says, if you had to make another video that could only last for four seconds, like your love triangle advice video, what would the topic be? Do you want to see the video that Kate's referring to here? It's only four seconds, so I'm sure I can throw it in. Don't. Just don't. Yeah, that's, that's the whole video. If I made another one like that, here, I'll do one right now. This one is titled, Your mother asks to borrow your laptop, but you forgot that you didn't delete your search history after doing research for that weird horror book that you were writing. Hey, honey, do you mind if I jump, jump on your computer real quick? I just want to, I just want to have a look at something. Yeah. Yeah, all good. Thank you, honey. Wait, wait. Kaylee Ogden says, do you script your videos before filming? I hate to break the illusion, but I do. Ironically, no, not for this one. This video is not scripted at all, aside from the questions that I'm reading off the computer, but normally my other videos are, yeah, yeah, that kind of scripted. A lot of the time, it'll just be dot points with points for me to talk about, you know, with like discussion videos, that kind of stuff. But if it's like an in-depth video essay style video or something like that, where I want to make sure I'm staying on track and hitting very specific points, I might go so far as scripting out sentence by sentence. It just depends. Okay, Cava again. Cava. Now that you have had multiple channels for a while, have you noticed a difference in how the YouTube algorithm is treating you? Or are you glad to have separated the topics and wish you did it sooner anyways unrelated to the algorithm? That's a great question, and the answer is yes. I wish I had done it pretty much from the start. I really do wish. So for anyone who doesn't know what she's referring to there, this channel used to be my book reviews and book discussions and video essays. And writing discussions, etc. Used to be about reading and writing, but what I did somewhat recently is I separated my book and reading videos onto a different channel called Wolf the Story Nomad. And now on this one, Page Nomads Writing, I do strictly writing videos. I wish I had done that sooner because although you would think that the reading and the writing community like goes hand in hand, the simple fact is, and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, is that a lot of people who go to YouTube for writing videos aren't really interested in book reviews, etc. And a lot of the people that might have followed my channel to hear me talk about books isn't particularly interested in videos talking specifically about being a writer. And unfortunately, when it comes to the YouTube algorithm, when you have half of your audience choosing to not watch your videos, which is completely fine for them, it kind of tells YouTube that your video mustn't be very good, so it doesn't get recommended to other people and it just ends up, like every video ends up tanking anyway. It was doing quite a lot of harm to my channel to be working that way consistently. And while this channel that I'm on right now hasn't really been getting any higher numbers than before I made that change, I'm still really glad I did it. I am a lot less stressed making videos now because first of all, the videos over on Wolf the Story Nomad, on that channel, they're doing really well. The videos are getting quite a lot of views considering the amount of subscribers I have and the analytics are pretty favorable so far. I don't want to jinx it, but so far it's doing pretty well and I'm happy about that. I don't want it to sound like it's all about the views and the clicks and so it's not, but like, I'm not going to bullshit you and say that I don't care about that stuff because of course I do, otherwise I wouldn't put so many hours into making videos. So that channel's doing all right but this channel, it's pretty much the same as always but then I also haven't been making a whole lot of videos on this channel compared to the past. That's another thing. Not so much in the last couple of weeks but I was making like two videos a week for that channel and one video a week for this channel. That's three videos a week which is a lot when you have a full-time job. So this channel doesn't have as many videos going up anymore therefore the algorithm doesn't favor me that much but honestly nowadays I don't care that much I'm just I'm glad I'm truly glad that I separated into having two different channels it's really working out well for me and I am a little bit disappointed I didn't do it a long time ago even back when I first started because I think if I had both this channel and the other channel would be a lot bigger. At the end of the day I'm still extremely lucky to have the platform I do have like this channel is still a lot bigger than I expected it to be when I started years ago so I'm fine with that I feel like the people that subscribe or are subscribed or stay subscribed to this channel and my other channel are getting the videos that they subscribed to see so that's what matters Aditya says Are you a character first plot second reader or the other way around? What is your preference as a writer? That's a hard question to answer because there are a lot of books where I enjoy the story a lot more than the characters and I am completely fine with that but I think in general I'm more of a character first person and I think that goes for my writing as well I think great characters can carry you through a not so great story but boring characters struggle to carry me through an even great story I don't know it really depends character first I'll say character first I definitely prefer having great characters Do you actually get scared when writing your horror scenes? Also, how do you write emotions or more specifically how do you write so the reader gets an emotion? I don't really get scared when writing horror scenes just because I'm like I'm the one writing them so I know exactly where they're going to go or how it's going to happen There's one story I'm thinking of that I'll have written where I wrote it and then I went to bed immediately after and I was genuinely creeped out and I was like wow I didn't know whether to be like impressed with myself or like embarrassed I will say though that when I was writing Welcome to Sand I felt a lot of the like misery and like depression that Joe was getting purely from me writing the story somehow I kind of when I was like coming up with the stuff that he did in his past and how he's reflecting on it it was it was weird because I didn't expect it to happen and it's never happened to me before but I was and I'm not saying it's because I was such a good writer but for some reason when I was writing you know these miserable moments for Joseph I felt it I really felt the misery I don't know if the reader's going to have the same experience maybe that only happened because I was the one writing it but I don't know it was just it was very interesting and let's just say I was glad once I finished that book as for how you write so the reader gets an emotion that's a very complicated question it depends I'm not like an expert when it comes to creative writing I guess I would just say that what I personally try to do is I try to make the reader empathize with the character I think the reader is more likely to feel what the characters are feeling if they have spent some time with the character and seen inside the character's mind you know what I mean Josie Gilmore says what's your favorite kind of character to write how do you start when creating a character I have a lot of fun writing a bunch of different characters um for example I really like writing like the goofy kind of you know dopey comic relief characters they're always really fun to add into stories but on the flip side of that I also really like writing the stoic serious characters that almost refuse to open up to the people around them because I like those characters because later on in the story when they do finally open up or get protective over another character or show that they care about someone else it's like a really wholesome and heartwarming moment I love writing that it always starts with their personality and then how they look etc comes after that I don't know I hope that answers your question have you always been so confident in front of a camera and speaking in public and do you have any tips on how to get more confident I always scrap my Instagram video ideas because I'm way too shy slash scared to talk absolutely not in no way I don't even know if I'm confident now I don't know if you can call this confidence I don't think I would do this in public the reason this is so easy and I'm so used to it now is because I know that I can edit this but then I guess I'm getting okay with the live streams as well it's gonna sound cliche but it's cliche because it's true and it's good advice the best way to get more confident in anything is to keep doing it I actually deleted the first ever video I made on YouTube which I wish I hadn't I wish I'd just made it private so I could laugh about it but I deleted it but it's me like kind of standing there you know very rigid trying to like give you a list of writing tips because that's what I did back then that's what I thought you had to do to be a writer on YouTube I thought you just had to give everyone advice that's what authorTube used to be it was just everyone trying to educate everyone else it was it was not great but anyway I would stand there very rigid my eyes constantly going down to the to the script beside me and sometimes in videos you can still see my eyes flicking over to my notes but this was bad it was like I was just reading off of it and I think at a certain point in the video you could even see me start the sweat it was bad I'm sure if you go back to like the earliest videos I ever uploaded even now it's probably incredibly awkward I would hope that you don't but you can if you want to I think the only thing I've done like as far as public speaking goes is when I interviewed Veronica Roth in front of like I think it was like 300 or 400 school kids I was terrified and weirdly enough as soon as I got on the stage and I sat down and I was talking to her with a microphone in my hand it was easy man it was so easy in fact by the time it was done I wanted to keep going I was having fun I don't know what to tell you it's just like once you start doing something it's it's kind of easy I would love to do like another interview or panel thing on a stage in front of people because it's just it's a good time it's it's a lot of fun do you have this existential pressure of having to be constantly productive in order for yourself to have meaning in life it's been bothering me just wanting to know if there are other people experiencing something similar to answer your question yes I'm not always productive but if there's a day where I so here's the thing for the last couple of weeks in particular I've been just kind of bummed out like about nothing in particular but it's just been one of those it's been one of those months it hasn't been great but even when I'm like not in a bummed out place there will be times where I keep procrastinating and for example I know I need to start writing up and filming some videos for the week I'll sit down at the computer and I'll be like I'll just play Terraria for like five minutes before I jump into it next thing I know I'm making excuses to myself I'm like I'll just do it tomorrow I'll do it before work or I'll do it after work and I push it back and I push it back and I push it back until like you know a couple of weeks has gone by and then I feel like shit I feel like I've just wasted a couple of weeks of my life I feel bad for not making the stuff I feel like crap about the fact that I've had this horror short story collection almost like finished for months and months the progress bar on that is literally at like 99% and I just can't finish it doesn't feel good and not to get too deep with it but like I'm turning 28 soon and I know to a lot of people it's going to seem really dumb me complaining about turning 28 because I know to a lot of people that's still really young and it is it is young I know but on YouTube in these communities I think I'm getting towards being one of the older people and you know when you see people younger than you succeeding astronomically like I'm happy for them don't get me wrong but it makes me feel like I wasted that time in my life you know I've been thinking a lot lately about how it feels like you know I turned 22 and then I went to bed and I woke up the next day and I was 27 it feels like like just imagine that happening to you imagine you go to bed you wake up and five years of your life is just just gone that's what it feels like a lot at the time I know I did a lot in those years I know a lot happened I know I created a lot of things but it just feels like I didn't do enough there you go there's a very depressing answer to your question you're not alone in feeling like that if you were any historical romance novel which character would you be? I'm talking everything from Footman to Magistrate to Wayward Brother and the love interest ooh la la I don't read historical romance at the risk of sounding really dumb I have no idea what any of those books you just mentioned are I'm still going to answer your question I'll say it like this I would not want to be one of those dudes in like that era of like Downton Abbey that looks horrendously boring to me I wouldn't want to do that a historical period that I think is very romantic that I would have loved to have been a part of fictionally speaking of course if I had the choice I wouldn't go back and do it because I would probably die from the plague the French Renaissance of like you know the Musketeers I think that's such a romantic time again putting aside all of the horrible stuff that happened at the time all of the murder and the disease but I love reading the stories you know of like these well-spoken poets of the time that would serenade you know women at their windows and I don't know it's just cool does world building always have to affect the plot or could we have characters doing something in a location just for the sake of showing off said location and still have proper pacing that is a really good question and it's something I've wondered from time to time like does every single thing that happens in the story have to have an effect on the major plot and I think the easy answer is no but you should also be really careful with that I think you can absolutely add stuff to the story that's just like a fun relief from the plot like a let's call it like a little side quest even especially when we're talking about fantasy when you want to really show off the world yeah absolutely I would say throw in a few side quests but the problem is if you do that too much then you run the risk of the reader starting to care a lot less about what is meant to be the most important plot line of your story it sounds like you're talking about writing fantasy so I would say throw in some fun side stuff to show off the world absolutely go for it how do you combat writer's block so I think about things that have motivated me to write before and what that usually ends up being is watching a most people will tell you to not do this but trust me watching a movie or show within the same genre that I'm writing for example if I'm writing fantasy I might watch the Witcher or even play the Witcher game or listen to fantasy sounding music when I want to get inspired or motivated I will bombard myself with media that is similar to what I'm trying to create what do you think of flash fiction or micro fiction love it I think it's a great thing for writers to do to really flex the writing muscle I've done quite a few something that I love doing is I like going on live streams and I'll have people in the chat in the live stream throw story prompts at me and then during that live stream I will write a flash fiction I've done it before and it's fun I usually upload them on Wattpad if your stories were to be translated into any language which one would you be most excited about seeing your writing in maybe this isn't exactly an answer to the question you're asking but I feel like it's in the same field I would love to see I would be most honored by seeing people in like Asian demographics or in the eastern part of the world enjoying my stories I think it would make me feel like I really have written something that kind of can transcend just western media I hope that makes sense kind of like when Emily Rota wrote Del Torrequest and it ended up being absolutely adored in Japan and it turned into an anime what is your work drink of choice normally tea but I don't drink it while I'm filming or streaming anymore because the people on the live streams will attest to this I keep spilling it on myself so big boy Cam gets to just use water now where does writing fit into your daily schedule do you write at a set time or just kind of wing it I pretty much have to wing it because my work schedule changes a lot some days I'll work like from 4pm to midnight other days I'll work from 10am to like I don't know like 8pm or so I don't know it's my work schedule changes quite a lot so I just kind of had to squeeze it in where it fits that's what she said do you write more than one project at a time and if you do how do you juggle between them working on two things at the same time is something I try to actively avoid just because I think it's it's a bad habit to get into if you keep doing that you're never going to finish the thing you started with so I try to avoid it but I have done it from time to time and I've done it recently during working on the horror short story collection I keep mentioning I started putting some real groundwork into the fantasy series that I want to release in the future as well and that's actually been really fun it's coming along quite well but I've stopped that for now and I've told myself no more working on the fantasy until I finish that collection what is your own process with critique partners and beta readers how many do you use where do you find them and what kind of questions do you ask them I've only done the beta reader process once properly I did it for welcome descent and it went pretty well so how I find them is through here I'll ask people on through a youtube video if they want to do it and usually so I've made like a google docs form for people to apply to be a beta reader and I got a bunch of applications and I ended up accepting like five people and then what I did is I sent them a form with just like a list of prompts basically just like a list of questions like how do you like Joseph as a character what do you dislike about him stuff like that just to give them a direction and then obviously they can throw in any other notes that they have what a couple of the beta readers did for welcome descent that I thought was just absolutely brilliant was that and if you're a beta reader I would highly recommend doing this assuming you get a digital copy of the story they literally went through the document and they made notes through the document with the story as they went like they would type in notes about a paragraph they liked or didn't like under the paragraph and explained why making notes through the entire story about every single thing that happened was a lot of effort on that part and I really appreciated it and probably was the best way to give me insight into the changes I needed to make where is one place you would like to vacation I could definitely see myself like on a beach with like a coconut drink just kick him back that sounds awesome however I also would really like to go to Canada just to spend some time in real snow and catch a few actual live hockey games around NHL season yeah I think I think going to Canada would be nice why is the sky blue because we all live on the surface of a giant that smurf penis no of any cheap editors cheap is a it's a it's a strange choice of word when talking about editors because it's not a cheap service assuming you're getting it properly and professionally done and that makes sense because you've got someone reading through your entire manuscript and fixing it that's not a cheap thing to do I don't know about cheap but I will recommend you the editor that I used for welcome to send because they were great and more importantly they were very fast as well they're called the expert editor expert editor dot com dot au they've got a price calculator on there where you can type in the amount of words that your story has and it'll give you a price I think when I used them it only took them like two weeks or something to send me back the finished fully edited manuscript and they were great I haven't really looked into the reviews from my book but I haven't heard anything about any typos or bad editing so I have to assume they did a good job that about does it that's my that's my Q and A for this two-year time period thanks so much for your questions I really appreciate it I really appreciate everyone who has been sticking around with my channel for so long it means a lot thank you thanks again for watching I'll see you in the next one catch ya