WELCOME TO
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WELCOME TO
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The contents of these pages are meant for writers interested in improving their writing and will be changed and updated from time to time on a loose schedule. When there is an article, form or other item/items worthy of your saving, we will provide a link at the bottom of this page to go to that item. You can always save it to your word program by cutting and pasting.
As writers, it is our
task to string the words we use together in such a way as to illicit the
feelings intend from our readers. Each sentence we write is
as important as any other. Thus, we
must work one sentence at a time within the framework of our story.
The word is our basic tool, the sentence our toolbox and the finished
product our entire career.
The following is taken from my book: EVERYTHING YOU'LL EVER NEED TO KNOW TO WRITE A BEST SELLER Getting
to know your character While
there are many aspects to writing, and we’ll cover most if not all of them in
this book, as I said earlier, I believe the most important part of any story is
its character or characters. So
you sit down to write a best seller. You
either have the idea for the story in your head or you have written an outline.
Now, you must introduce your hero, heroine or whomever.
Every story has at least one of each.
How are yours different? Or
is he/she? How
thoroughly have you created your main characters before you start writing? Do
you have but a vague idea of what he or she looks like?
Do you know what manner of speech your character will use?
Do you know what he or she thinks of politics?
Kids? Movies?
Other drivers on the road? Is
she prone to outbursts of anger? Is
she a gentle soul? Let’s
assume you are about to begin a murder mystery, with your heroine being a police
detective, Irene Carson. Of course,
you want Irene to be different than other lady cops you’ve read.
If she wasn’t, why write about her?
If your character is going to be the same old lady cop, with the same old
problems, why bother to create a new character?
Just take her from one of your favorite author’s stories, change her
name and change the story a bit. No,
this might not be plagiarism. Awfully
close, though. But
if you are going to waste the paper, ink, time and effort you might as well do
something original. Each of us has
it within us to do exactly that. No,
let’s not copy anyone. Let’s
truly make Irene unique. But how do
you do that? Besides the obvious, I
mean. At this point, I would like
to ask you, the reader, a question. How
would you write someone’s biography? The
answer would seem so obvious as to make the question seem trite. You would have to get to know this person intimately. Right?
To do a good biography, you’d have to know their nice side and their
dark side. You would need so many
facts that the job would be truly labor intensive.
And that’s why I do not do nonfiction - too much work!
Interviews with relatives, research at local newspaper archives and a
long, long list of laborious, sometimes boring details.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just sit at home and make everything
up? We
can. We write about a fictional
character. But if you are writing
fiction, you must know your character better than she knows herself.
By that, I mean, you must not only know her by her physical appearance,
but you must get inside her head and analyze her every motive for everything.
You must develop a psychological profile of Irene of which even she is
unaware. We all have hidden things
from ourselves, which others cannot learn, because we don’t know them
ourselves. That’s a big advantage of writing fiction.
Our character can keep nothing hidden from us.
You’ve heard of author omnipotence?
This is where it comes into play in a positive way.
As the author and creator of Irene, she has no choice but to give up her
innermost feelings and the secrets she knows and doesn’t know about herself.
You must extract and know every tiny bit of information you can dredge up on
Irene. Start
with the basics. Age, height,
weight, place of residence (house, apartment) car, furniture Etc.
Then get into more detail:
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