Sep

10

Working through Writing the Breakout Novel, Part 1

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As I mentioned last week, I’m going through Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook with an eye towards The Morgan Affair. Rather than writing directly in the book (and there are spaces in the book so you can do that), I’m writing it all out in a spiral-bound notebook. That way I’ll have it all together in one place, and can eventually stick it into the “bible” I’m building for the novel (and, hopefully, more books about Alex and her friends).

I’ve finished the first three “exercises” of the workbook, and I’ve already learned something new about Alex: what it is she really wants. It’s not what I originally thought it was going to be, but it’s something she will never be able to have. How’s that for inner conflict?

The workbook recommends reading Writing the Breakout Novel (which I will refer to in the future as WBN) first, so you can learn about the concepts before trying to put them into practice. I’m glad I did that. While each set of exercises are prefaced with examples from actual books in print – ones Maass has identified as breakout novels – there’s not a lot of explanation there. WBN has pretty thorough explanations of the characteristics of breakout novels, but really not much in the way of practical advice on how to do it. And that’s what the workbook is for. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to attend one of the workshops Maass runs in person, so I’m using the workbook as a surrogate.

Okay, enough procrastinating. Time to fold some laundry then get back to “class”. :)

Mar

19

4 Techniques for Getting to Know Your Characters

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This article was written by Regina Paul, and is used with permission.

Anyone who writes fiction starts out with a general idea of who their characters are, their personalities, their likes and dislikes, who they’re going to fall in love with, and or who they are going to hate. Some of us begin our story by just writing, and listening to our characters talk to us about themselves. But what if you aren’t this type of writer? What if you have an idea for a story and characters but not very much of an idea about who the characters are? This happens to all of us at one time or another, even the ones who just write and let their characters “talk” to them. So, what do you do if this happens? There are several techniques you can try to help you get to know your characters better.

1. Interview your characters. That’s right come up with a list of questions you want to know about the character, and have the character answer them. It sounds a little silly when you think about it, but since our characters come from us, it’s probably not as difficult as it may seem. This technique gives you an opportunity to really think about your characters and what they are like, and where you want to go with them in your story.

2. Get together with some friends and or fellow authors, tell them the premise of your story, and what little you know about your characters and have them come up with the interview questions, and then you pretend to be your character and answer them. Sometimes your comrades will think of questions that you wouldn’t, and this will make you really think about your characters and how they fit into the story.

3. Think about possible scenarios either from your story, or just from your imagination, then ask yourself what the character would do in that situation. Think about the character’s reactions, and what they might say. This can give you further insight into them.

4. Create a story board. Look for and find pictures of people that fit what your characters look like either from pictures you find online, or from magazines. Take a large piece of poster board and create a visual scene from your story or imagination. You can do this for more than one scene, then put it up somewhere close to where you write so you can look at it when you are feeling stumped about where to go next. This technique serves 2 purposes, to have a visual picture of your characters, and to help jog your imagination when you are stumped about where to go with the story.

These are only a few techniques for getting to know your characters, I’m sure you can think of others. Knowing your characters is important because as a writer if you have your characters do something that is contrary to who they are as people, this can disappoint readers. And that is the last thing you want to do.

Want to use this article for your blog or newsletter? Feel free to do so, providing you give me credit by keeping the bio section below at the bottom.

Regina Paul is a full-time freelance writer, and author. She writes both web content and romance fiction. She has six books published, and over 300 articles published online. For more information on her books you can visit her website at http://www.reginapaul.com or if you are interested in hiring Regina to write web content you can visit her freelance website at http://www.freelancewriterforhire.110mb.com for rates and more examples.

Jan

23

Journals as a Character Development Tool.

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Yesterday was a pretty big writing day for me. The word count was about 4000 words written/revised. 2400 of it was for TMA (so for those of you keeping track, you can see the word meter has progressed), and the rest was for games I’m playing in. That doesn’t count the actual in-game stuff I wrote. (There wasn’t a lot of that.) What was it that I spent 1600 words on? Journal entries for my character. (If you’re interested in those journal entries, check them out here. )

Why do I write them? It’s a way to record my character’s thoughts about what’s happened. It also allows me to explore her, learn new things about her, and express stuff that really ought not to be brought up in game because it is either inappropriate or would derail the scene. For example, in journal entry #3, Brigid talks about the scars she got. She goes on to explain why they are so important not to just her, but to her own kind. That kind of exposition (I had to look that word up to make sure it meant what I thought it did :) would have been out of place in the game. It was an ensemble scene, and it was a point of transition between one act of the story and another. A completely inappropriate time and place to be talking about things the character already knows, and is unimportant to the story as a whole.

The reason why I bring up these character journals is because they are a great thing to do for characters in regular fiction. You can’t have pages and pages of inner monologue in a book. Not if you want your reader to keep turning those pages. Not can you afford to ignore that stuff going on in your character’s head that wants – and needs – to come out. An in-character journal is the ideal tool.

It’s not something you ever have to include in your book, or even show anyone. The important thing is that it lets you work things out. It allows you to verbalize your character’s thoughts and feelings and figure out what they’re thinking. You might know your hero hates the color red, but it’s in a journal entry where you discover the playground bully in elementary school always wore a red jacket. That specific piece of information may never make it into your story, but it’s an important piece of background that colors (if you pardon the pun) your hero’s actions.

Why not consider creating a journal for your characters, to see what they’re thinking?