You know what’s hard? Sitting at your desk day in and day out, month after month, year after year, trying to come up with fresh and significant angles on life in an imaginary world. After awhile it seems like every character you create spends all their time flipping through random… Read more“8 Places to Find Inspiration”
Tag: Character
15 Things Your Characters Should Never Do
He lifted his leg and fired. With a whoop and a cry, she shot it out the back. They bent to examine their special organs. He couldn’t believe he was alive—he touched himself with gratitude. She knew he’d never get at the secret she was sitting on. If he couldn’t… Read more“15 Things Your Characters Should Never Do”
13 Things You Should Have Known About Your Characters Beforehand
Are your heroine/hero and villain related? Closely? Are they, in fact, siblings or, maybe, parent & child? Because if they are, you’re going to have a lot of trouble explaining your idea of parenting. Do your characters care about the dilemma you’ve given them? Passionately? Desperately? Enough to carry both… Read more“13 Things You Should Have Known About Your Characters Beforehand”
3 Vital Steps to Creating Your Protagonist for NaNoWriMo
We’re talking about how to approach the first draft of your novel this month, in honor of NaNoWriMo, Last week we talked about the 3 Essential Guidelines for your overall novel, and the week before that we talked about Running into the Jaws of NaNoWriMo. And today we’re going to… Read more“3 Vital Steps to Creating Your Protagonist for NaNoWriMo”
Using Character to Fuel Momentum: guest post on Tartitude
Jan O’Hara recently made Twitter history by starting the #FreetheRealPorter movement about my recent interviewee Porter Anderson. She also stood up for my lace curtains, because of course all the right people understand about lace curtains. She’s the voice of the Unpublished Writer on Writer Unboxed, secretly a family physician… Read more“Using Character to Fuel Momentum: guest post on Tartitude”
Debuting on video—A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, interviewed by Joanna Penn
For years, I’ve been holding my husband and son captive over the dinner table as I wave my hands and rant and rave about fiction, writing, publishing, all the many and wonderful intricacies of this extraordinary art and craft. For years. Recently, I’ve been interviewed online in a number of… Read more“Debuting on video—A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, interviewed by Joanna Penn”
4 Tricks for Improving Your Fiction in One Day
We’re talking this month about instantaneous ways to improve craft—because, as Carrie Fisher says, “Instant gratification takes too long.” We’ve talked about 2 Tricks to Breaking Writer’s Block in One Day. And 3 Tricks to Ratcheting Tension in One Day. Now let’s talk about how you can use your own… Read more“4 Tricks for Improving Your Fiction in One Day”
How to Characterize Wrong, in 3 Easy Steps
So we know how to plot wrong. Now this week let’s talk about how to handle character wrong. Because this one is trickier—character is a trickier element of fiction while, at the same time, an even more essential one than plot. It’s possible to get by on pretty darn thin… Read more“How to Characterize Wrong, in 3 Easy Steps”
8 Ways NOT to Describe Your Main Character
This one, again, is thanks to @__Deb, who gave me my blog topics for the month of May. That girl’s just chock full of good ideas. (All wrapped up in hand-knitted sweaters.) I know you hear a lot of advice about making your protagonist heroic. Internally-conflicted. Easy for the reader… Read more“8 Ways NOT to Describe Your Main Character”
We can’t leave fiction alone—Talking Character
Last week, Roz Morris and I had the first of our four scheduled weekly editorial chats: Talking Plot. We’re running these chats here once a week throughout the month of April. We had a fabulous time and covered all the basics of plot—Hook, Conflicts, Faux Resolution, and Climax—as well as… Read more“<em>We can’t leave fiction alone</em>—Talking Character”