writing tips

Quick Link: Character Group Dynamics

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A story is usually made up of more characters than just a hero and a foe. There needs to be a supporting casts, with different amounts of value to the story. How they all interact with each other is what gives the story depth and helps you to build up your character in your reader’s mind.   at Fantasy Faction discusses the importance of group dynamics.

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Character Group Dynamics

Group dynamics are very important. When in trouble, add bubbles!
Group dynamics are very important. When in trouble, add bubbles!

by Aaron Miles
June 18, 2016

One of the most important tasks of a writer is to get the reader to engage with their characters, but almost as important is how your characters engage with each other. Their interactions are what make up the narrative and drama of the book, bringing the story to life. How can your hero show off his quick wit if there’s no one around to impress, how can your villain be cruel if there’s nobody to terrorise? It’s only in concert with each other that the characters really start to shine.

There are a number of memorable partnerships and groupings throughout fiction, think of Sherlock and Watson, Han and Chewie, or the entire Fellowship of the ring. The success of these characters isn’t just down to the individual protagonists, but also to how well they work together, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. They play off each other in ways that allow the characters to shine, following classic writing patterns in order to get the maximum entertainment value. The nature of these groupings isn’t random, the author will choose the best mix that makes use of each character’s strengths and engineer matchups that will lead to great action.

If you think back to some of your favourite books it’s relatively easy to spot the formulas which lead to success. Whether in a partnership or group there are specific archetypes and forms that just fit better. Looking at partnerships first, there are a number of traditional groupings commonly used in fiction, for instance the pairing of a protagonist with a foil. The foil is a supporting character that will usually serve as a counter to the protagonist, someone to banter with and who will often have a wildly different personality type.

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Quick Link: How to Plot a Book: Start With the Antagonist

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At Helping Writers Become Authors, K.M. Weiland shares her tips on how to avoid making one of the biggest mistakes on plotting a story. Spoiler alert, you need to start with the antagonist, not the protagonist, because the whole story revolves around them. Sure the hero is important, but without a worthy foe how can the hero shine and be the best things since sliced bread?

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How to Plot a Book: Start With the Antagonist

by K.M. Weiland

"And then instead of moving the assets to the positive side of the accounting sheet, the evil bean counter divided the dividend...."
“And then instead of moving the assets to the positive side of the accounting sheet, the evil bean counter divided the dividend….” Bad protagonists aren’t bad enough.

I hate antagonists. Not so much because they’re, you know, the bad guys. No, I hate them because 90% of the time, they bore me into catatonia. Evil plan to take over the world? Yawn. Just please do whatever you gotta do to make the hero look good.

That’s how many authors approach their antagonists–as an external force who is present in the book solely for the purpose of giving the hero a reason to do all his cool hero-y stuff.

You may have planned almost all of your story–in your head, in an outline, or in a first draft–before giving even an afterthought to the antagonistic force. This is a mistake. Why? Because the antagonist is the catalyst for everything your hero does in his story.

TL;DR: Your antagonist is the catalyst for the entire plot.

In short, if you’re struggling with how to plot a book, the answer is easy: start with your antagonist.

The Plotting Mistake Almost All Authors Make

I’ll admit it if you will: my creative inspiration for my stories is always the protagonist. I can see him so clearly in my mind. There he is: going all Jason Bourne on some faceless thug, maybe weeping touchingly over a fallen comrade, then striking a melancholy heroic pose against the sunset. Let’s start writing!

But the plot? Hrm. You mean the reason why nameless thugs are coming after him, felling his comrades, and leaving him in such a melancholic mood? You mean the antagonistic force that’s opposing him for presumably watertight reasons?

Um, yeah, that’s a little blurry.

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Quick Link: The Secret to Bringing Your Characters to Life

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Readers want to fall in love with your characters, so your characters need depth and personality. At The Write Practice, shares with us his secret to bringing characters to life.

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The Secret to Bringing Your Characters to Life

While quite cute, these are not something I would want to read a full length novel about.
While quite cute, these are not something I would want to read a full length novel about.

by Jeff Elkins

It’s Atticus Finch giving advice to Scout that shows us he is a man of empathy and compassion. It’s Frank Underwood banging his class ring on the table that reminds us he is in command. It’s Holden Caulfield using phrases like “vomity” and “grow up” that helps us remember that he is an adolescent.

Using indirect characterization can make our heroes and villains leap from the page and come to life in our readers’ minds.

What Is Indirect Characterization?
Direct characterization is when the author tells the reader about a character.

Jack was a rambunctious boy.

Jill was a clumsy girl.

While it is something we have to do on occasion, when done too often, it can make a story flat and dull.

Indirect characterization is far more fun. This is when the author tells a reader about a character through the character’s repeated words, reoccurring actions, or physical descriptions.

As he did every day, Jack ran wildly down the hill with reckless abandon.

Jill stumbled on her untied shoelaces for the fourth time that day.

Showing our readers who our characters are through indirect characterization allows our readers to draw their own conclusions about our characters, intensifying our readers’ engagement with our stories.

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Quick Links: 5 Tips for Empowering Description with Contrast

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They say that descriptions are boring, and I will admit there have been times I have skimmed over a few paragraphs by some very good writers, just to get to the good bits.  But only if I feel that the extra text really isn’t necessary for the story. Marcy Kennedy gets it. In her post on Jami Gold‘s site, Mary gives some really great tips on how to make descriptions more entertaining and part of the story.

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5 Tips for Empowering Description with Contrast — Guest: Marcy Kennedy

by Jami Gold

When contrast is done well, it can be very interstesting
When contrast is done well, it can be very interesting.

June 16, 2016

We’ve probably all heard (or thought!) that description is boring. The part readers skip.

There’s no question that description has a bad reputation. Yet if we’ve ever read a story without enough description and been lost at what was happening or who was doing what, we know that description is essential to clearly showing events in our story to readers.

When I first started writing, I struggled with description, mostly by including way too much of it. Pages and pages. *smile*

I eventually learned how to balance description and use it to anchor readers in a character’s point of view. However, there’s another way to make description work harder for our story, and that’s by using contrast to create more powerful and interesting descriptions.

Luckily for us, editor-author Marcy Kennedy is here with us today to give us the scoop and share five methods to empower our description with contrast. Please welcome Marcy Kennedy! *smile*

*****

The Power of Contrast in Description

Readers need description to help them imagine the story world and to keep them grounded in the story, but often it’s considered the slow, boring part.

It doesn’t have to be.

Done right, description keeps the pace moving and brings out our point-of-view character’s emotions, backstory, and conflicts. It can also add subtext, foreshadow, and build on the theme.

One of my favorite ways to bring description to life and make sure it serves a bigger purpose in the story is to use contrast. I’m excited Jami welcomed me back to share with all of you how to make this work.

All of these tips work best—in my opinion—when we write in a limited point of view because it’s our point-of-view character who’s making the comparison. The description filters through them and is colored by who they are. (Though I’m sure you omniscient writers could adapt many of these techniques as well.)

Tip #1: Contrast What the POV Character Expected with What They Experience

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Quick Links: 6 Characters Your Protagonist Needs to Have Around

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Every star needs a supporting cast! has a list of extra characters you might need to support your hero.  Find it all at The Write Practice.

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6 Characters Your Protagonist Needs to Have Around

Grammar Girl, who is supported by Spellcheck Boy and their trusty companion white-out dog.
Grammar Girl, who is supported by Spellcheck Boy and their trusty companion white-out dog.

by The Magic Violinist

Your protagonist may be the star of the show, but they can’t do everything alone. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire cast of characters to help your hero along on their journey.

Do you think Harry Potter could’ve accomplished all that he did if it were just him on his own out there against Voldemort? Of course not. He had friends who stuck by him, teachers who came and went, and a whole assortment of villains that drove the plot forward. Your main character needs those people, too.

6 Types of Supporting Characters

Let’s take a look at the people who surrounded Harry and the roles they played in his life. Which of these character types appear in your story?

1. Mentor

This would be the Dumbledore of the story. Usually an elder, but not necessarily, they’re the one who always has some sort of nugget of wisdom right when the protagonist needs it. They teach and steer the main character away from stupid decisions (though they may not always succeed at that).

If your hero ran off without anyone to guide them, they’d probably end up in heaps of trouble.

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Quick Links: Most Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 51: One-Dimensional Characters

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K.M. Weiland post comes down to two things – show don’t tell – and make the details of your characters count. In the Harry Potter stories, Harry is known for his lighting bolt scar on his forehead, but J.K. Rowling doesn’t beat us over the head with it. Instead you will find Harry being self conscious about it, or it causing pain as a warning. It adds to Harry’s character but doesn’t define him.  Read the full details over at Helping Writers Become Authors.

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Most Common Writing Mistakes, Pt. 51: One-Dimensional Characters

Characters should be at least 3d, unless it is sci/fi and then you can add 4d
Characters should be at least 3d, unless it is sci/fi and then you can add 4d

June 13, 2016

K.M. Weiland

The most magical moment in writing is when you sit down with a new batch of characters, turn them loose on the page, and… they come to life. They spring up from that flat, white expanse of page, and they’re real. They’re dimensional. They’re organic. They’re compelling and interesting and wonderful. Except, of course, for when they’re not. Sometimes the magic doesn’t work out like that right off the bat. Sometimes you sit down, start typing, and what comes clunking onto the page are one-dimensional characters who are just going through the motions of the story.

The term “dimension” gets thrown around a lot among writers. We hear it and nod our heads sagely, “Oh, yes, we must have three-dimensional characters. One-dimensional characters are so dreadful.”

Honestly, it’s kind of a vague concept. “One-dimensional characters” is really just code for “bad characters.” But saying a character isn’t well written doesn’t do much to help you know how to write a better character.

Good news! That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

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Quick Links: How to Finish Your Book in Three Drafts

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Reworking drafts is a big struggle with me. I would much rather the excitement of a new story! So when  wrote a post on how to finish your book with only three drafts you bet my ears perked up!  So head on over to Jane Friedman‘s and check out the process.

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How to Finish Your Book in Three Drafts

by Stuart Horwitz

Clarity in a three step program
How many drafts to finish your book? Like how many licks does it take to eat a tootsie lollypop the answer is three.

Have you ever asked yourself while writing, “How many drafts is this going to take?” That may seem like a question that can’t have an answer, but I would like to propose that it does. And that answer is three. Three drafts, provided that each draft is approached in the right spirit and we take the time we need between drafts.

Some writers assume that the difference between a first draft and a final draft is a few revisions and a solid copy edit. What I am talking about here is a process that requires more patience.

It probably already makes intuitive sense to you that you can’t work on more than one draft at a time. But here is the mantra for the process as a whole:

Know what draft you’re in.

Each draft plays by different rules, and knowing what draft you’re in can help you avoid writer’s block.

There is a literary myth that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in one draft—one Benzedrine- and marijuana-fueled draft—over a twenty-one-day period. It is true that he created a 120-foot roll of paper so that he wouldn’t have to stop to feed more paper into his typewriter, and wrote one of his drafts that way. But it turns out that he was working from a draft he already had in his journals. Also, if you look at that typewriter scroll closely, you can see all kinds of corrections; those corrections are, in effect, his third draft.

Three drafts, not one. Also: three drafts, not forty-nine. You may have heard this cute story about Oscar Wilde: His host asked him how his writing was going, and he said, “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma.” “And in the afternoon?” “In the afternoon—well, I put it back in again.” That doesn’t count as a draft. What you are trying to do is tackle your book, not tinker with it. Because—are you ready?—the point is not to go through life writing the same book the whole time.

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Quick Links: Let’s Get Sensory: Powering Scenes Using The 5 Senses

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Steven King is one of my favorite writers, not just because he writes great stories, but because of how he writes. I grew up in New England, where he often sets a scene. While reading his stories, I can picture the scene so well I can almost smell it. He doesn’t just describe the environment but has the environment interact with the character.  Angela Ackerman agrees as that is one of her tips over at Elizabeth Spann Craig

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Let’s Get Sensory: Powering Scenes Using The 5 Senses

Angela Ackerman
Kids are great at using all their senses. As soon as no one is looking, the leaves are going in their mouth.
Kids are great at using all their senses. As soon as no one is looking, the leaves are going right in their mouth.

There isn’t a writer alive who doesn’t believe description is important. We know that the key to pulling readers into our fictional world lies in how well we can describe each scene, giving it color and texture, and infusing it with emotion and substance. And one of the very best ways to achieve this is to use sensory detail: the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds that our POV character or narrator experiences.

Emotion factors heavily in sensory description because the mindset of the POV character influences what they notice (which also determines what details the reader is privy to). A character sitting by a river to enjoy a happy, reflective moment after graduating university may be drawn to clusters of green shoots along the muddy bank that slant in the direction of the sun.  She might note the sharp, clean scent of pine needles and how each breath makes her feel renewed. The give of moss, the gentle breeze, and the sound of the water chuckling across stones…all of these details may lull her (and the reader) into a sleepy state of satisfied bliss.

However, a character dropping behind an uprooted tree along the riverbank to hide from her enemies would focus on different details: the poke and scrape of wood against her back and arms as she presses tight against the fan of roots. The cold river water seeping into her shoes as they sink in the mud which reeks of decay. The snap of branches, the shouts of her pursuers, the squeezing rush of her own shuddering breaths.

As writers, we can do so much with sensory detail, adding tension and painting each scene with emotion and mood. Choosing the right sensory description not only helps readers feel like they are drawing breath alongside the protagonist, it also triggers their emotional memories. A well-placed sensory detail will cause a past moment to surface, a time when the reader felt the same sensations and emotions as the character. This powerful “shared experience” is what we want to strive for as we describe, because it lays the groundwork for empathy.

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Author Tools: Craft Your First Story With This Creative Writing Reference Chart

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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

Lifehacker‘s Eric Ravenscraft shares a great chart he found to help writers plan their story.

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write_ref_chart

 

Read the full post (and get the free worksheet!) on Lifehacker

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Quick Link: Ten Clever Ways To Keep Your Reader Enthralled

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The Wicked Writing Blog is actually very helpful with tips by Sue Coletta on tweaking your writing to pull your reader further into your story. Check it out.

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Ten Clever Ways To Keep Your Reader Enthralled

by Sue Coletta
June 10, 2016

en·thrall - verb capture the fascinated attention of.
en·thrall – verb
capture the fascinated attention of.

We all know how to inject pace into our stories, don’t we? Just drop in a lot of exciting moments and space them with ‘scene hangers’. ‘Little did I know that my life was about to change forever’, and the like.

But hangers are clichés. Sure, they’re useful but not right for every story.

So what else can we do to keep the reader enthralled? Turning our every page? And wholly immersed in our story?

Top crime suspense writer Sue Coletta reveals ten tricks of the trade. We can adapt them to any genre!

1. Language itself is the subtlest means of pacing.

Throw away those passive expressions. ‘His head was hit by something sharp and cold.’ Yawn...

Think concrete words.

Concrete words are nouns that we experience through our senses. Example: smoke, mist, iceberg. Use active voice plus sensory information that’s artfully embedded. If you write long, involved paragraphs, try breaking them up into shorter ones.

‘Hail pounded his head. Icy water down his spine. He drew his collar round his throat and shivered.’

Drop in lots of white space.

 

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Quick Link: In the Flesh: Fleshing Out Flat Characters

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Janice Harding always has great advice. This time it is about how to change some less than memorable characters into more dynamic integral parts of the story.

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In the Flesh: Fleshing Out Flat Characters

Friday, June 10

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The only flats in a story should be these or a tire.
The only flats in a story should be these or a tire.

This week’s Refresher Friday takes an updated look at fleshing out flat characters. Enjoy!

Characters play just as many roles in the writing process as they do in the novel itself. Some characters spark the very idea of the story, others show up when needed to suit plot, and others are doomed to life as nothing more than spear carriers. Most of the time, by the end of a first draft you’ll have too many, and some (if not all) will be flat as cardboard. Now’s the time to start bringing them to life.

Get Real, People

Characters will pop in and out as you write, even if you aren’t sure what to do with them or how they fit. After you’ve figured out which to keep and which to cut, you’ll likely want to develop them more and make them as rich and three dimensional as your main character. Or, you might be the type who prefers to flesh out everyone after the first draft is done and you see how the story unfolds.

Look at what role each character plays in the story. Not their “the protagonist’s best friend” type role, but a thematic role. For example, in my fantasy novel, The Shifter, Aylin is the voice of reason. She’s the practical one when Nya gears up to dive headfirst and full speed into something she believes in (she’s  a bit of an idealist). Knowing this, as I edited the draft I kept Aylin’s role in mind. Her style and behavior reflected her personality and role, both as the best friend, and as the voice of reason. Her actions also reinforced this.

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Quick Link: How Writers Can Develop Emotional Connections between Reader and Hero

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We all want to tell our story and as writers we want someone to get our story, to fall in love with our characters. Patrick Cole at Live Write Thrive, shares with us his tips on how to connect the reader and the characters.

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How Writers Can Develop Emotional Connections between Reader and Hero

June 10, 2016

Even though she was on her way to marry David, she knew in her heart no one could compete with Mr. Darcy
Even though she was on her way to marry Norman, she knew in her heart no one could compete with Mr. Darcy

by Patrick Cole

Today’s guest post is by Patrick Cole: 

When I first met Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, I was in high school and certainly not yet “fully baked.” In fact, my major emotional connection to the novel was not with Sydney Carton but with Lucy and Charles. They were so in love, and I just wanted there to be a romantic happy ending for them. Dickens did not disappoint me.

Of course, since that time, I have reread this novel two more times—once in college for an English Lit. class and once more because there is much to learn from Dickens’s writing.

To me, now that I am closer to coming out of the oven, Carton as a redemptive figure is one of the best in literature. And while many fiction writers do not have “Christlike” characters in their novels, the methods used by Dickens to establish that emotional connection are timeless and universal. Here are things I have learned that you can learn too.

  1. What’s the Backstory?

Readers cannot develop connections with characters unless they have the backstory that got them to where they are at the opening of your piece.

Backstories can help to establish empathy, understanding, and credibility, as long as they are done well.

Before you ever develop your protagonist in his/her current situation, spend some time developing a history that logically leads to the emotional and behavioral state in which they find themselves today. Never do this through a narrative. Provide that history through thoughts, behaviors, words and interactions with other characters.

It’s easy to see Sydney Carton’s backstory by his behaviors in the beginning of the tale—he is a drunk who feels worthless and inept, despite his stellar legal history. He has “fallen” and, though would like to redeem himself, cannot muster the strength and courage to pull his life together. He has no purpose.

 

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Quick Link: 5 Sentences Requiring Hyphenated Phrasal Adjectives

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Another great post from Daily Writing Tips explaining when to use hyphens. I know I learned something.

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5 Sentences Requiring Hyphenated Phrasal Adjectives

Hyphens - grammar's Tinder.
Hyphens – grammar’s Tinder.

By Mark Nichol

When two or more words team up to describe something, they’re usually hyphenated to make their symbiotic relationship clear. Each of the following sentences contains a phrasal adjective that should be linked with one or more hyphens; each example is followed by a brief discussion and a revision.

1. Their affair wasn’t exactly the best kept secret.

This sentence refers to a secret that is the best kept, not a kept secret that is better than any other, so link the phrasal adjective together: “Their affair wasn’t exactly the best-kept secret.”

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Quick Link: 5 Faulty “Not Only . . . But Also” Sentences

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Grammar time! Mark Nichol from Daily Writing Tips helping us again, this time with sentence structure and the pesky “not only – but also” sentences.

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5 Faulty “Not Only . . . But Also” Sentences

"Stop! It's Grammar Time!" duh, duh duh, da duh duh duh
“Stop! It’s Grammar Time!” duh, duh duh, da duh duh duh

By Mark Nichol

 Often, when a sentence expresses a point and a counterpoint with the phrases “not only” and “but also,” writers have difficulty constructing the sentence in the correct syntactical order. Each of the following sentences demonstrates various erroneous ways the “not only . . . but also” construction can be misused; discussions, followed by revisions, explain how to repair the damage.

1. Moving to the cloud had not only improved security but had also reduced the risks they faced prior to implementation.

Had can be shared by both the “not only” phrase and the “but also” phrase: “Moving to the cloud had not only improved security but also reduced the risks they faced prior to implementation.” (If had is to be used twice, it should follow “not only” and, when repeated, should follow “but also”: “Moving to the cloud not only had improved security but also had reduced the risks they faced prior to implementation.”)

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Quick Links: Botched Beginnings—Common First-Page Killers

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You already know that the beginning of your book needs to be strong. This is your opportunity to grab the reader and pull them into your story. The ever entertaining Kristen Lamb covers some of the pitfalls that will block your reader from engaging.

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Botched Beginnings—Common First-Page Killers

by Kristen Lamb

She read the first line "It was a dark and stormy night" and then fell soundly asleep for eight hours.
She read the first line of the story, “It was a dark and stormy night”, and then fell soundly asleep for eight hours.

We can Twitter ’til we flitter and Facebook ’til we face plant and that won’t matter much in the greater scheme of things if we fail at our single most important job—writing a great book. Our single greatest challenge is to hook the reader hard enough to buy (and then read) our novel.

Sales ultimately are impacted by reviews and if no one reads and no one finishes?

Exactly.

Yes, covers are important and social media is vital, but those sample pages can mean the difference in No Sale and Big Hit.

One writing book every writer should have is Hooked by Les Edgerton. I think this was the first craft book that truly woke me up and showed me all I really didn’t know about writing.

As a new author, there were far too many elements I believed were important when in reality? Not so much. Additionally, because I was focusing on the wrong “stuff” I was failing to develop the “right” stuff.

What I love about Hooked is how Les demonstrates how all the factors that go into making great beginnings don’t just evaporate. These are tactics we must keep employing throughout the work to keep the reader engaged and turning pages. Our job is to obliterate sleep, to send our readers tired and grouchy and over caffeinated to work…but ultimately satisfied.

Let’s talk about some common ways beginnings fall flat.

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