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CHARACTERS ARE PEOPLE TOO: BRING YOUR BOOK TO LIFE (PART I)
If you write your characters like real people, they’ll read like real people. But, in order to bring them to life, we first have to figure out who they are. Some writers want to understand their characters before they type a single sentence. Others like to learn about them on the way. Think of it like meeting online versus a blind date. When you meet a potential date online, there’s an opportunity to get to know him before you’re face to face. You might discover that his blue eyes remind you of a cloudy day, that he works at a law firm, loves sushi, hates politics, and lost his mom…
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Understanding POV
Pitch out Visuals? Pass on Variety? Personalization of Villains? People of Value? Just what is POV, and why do you care? Point of View (POV) refers to the character telling the story in a particular scene or chapter of your book. And only one character should tell the story at a time. Come find out why on Writer’s in the Storm, where I’m hanging out today at Understanding Point Of View
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Down with the Rules?
Avoid unlikeable main characters. Show don’t tell. Lock your character into character. Tell your story forward. Pass on passive verbs. Say bye-bye to backstory. Nix the omniscient narrator and dodge the dreaded head hop. Always remember adjectives are lazy, exclamation points are evil, and adverbs are from the devil. And for goodness sake, don’t forget to cover the mirror—main characters can’t ever describe themselves. Those are just a few of the writing rules we’re taught to follow. Sometimes writing a story feels like stumbling through Dante’s Inferno. A lot of don’ts punctuated with a stern warning that you’ll be tossed into writer’s hell—an editor’s circular file—if you do. So . . . why the…
