motivation

Answering the WHY? question
It’s the WHY question that is plaguing me right now.
Why does my character want to participate in this project?
Why does she want this so much that she will

Supporting characters

Make supporting characters interesting
Wednesday, I went to north central Arkansas to teach a professional development class and on the way up, I listened to an audio version of T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton, the 20th Kinsey Millhone mystery.

At one point the detective calls a college to do a background check on a suspect. [...]

Motivations

Why did he do that?
I have a full draft of a new novel and am starting on a revision. I think I’ve about worked out some of the factual issues and am now looking at character. A friend asks me, “Why?”
Character motivations are

blood thirsty

Charlotte was Blood-Thirsty: Character Paradoxes
Charlotte, from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, is remembered as a character of great warmth for her friendship with the unlikely pig, Wilbur. Poor Wilbur, once the runt of the litter and saved only by

death

Does Your Story Need a Tragic Death?
A friend was talking to me about stories in which a child dies. he asked, “Is a child’s death in a novel just a cheap narrative device?”
Well, it depends.

Depth of Characterization. How well do we know the character? Do we know and care for the child? Does the story [...]

Character Bait

Letting Characters Emerge
Hurrah! My potential character took the bait! He is revealing himself slowly.
As I was thinking of ideas for picture books, an idea came up: what if the family was structured in a distinctive way?
At 2 a.m. this morning, the character woke me up and started dictating a scene about dealing with her [...]

3 Writing Tips from the Season

Creative writing tips, courtesy of the season:

Peppermints! When you add sensory details to a story, the most common is visual details. The two most neglected are olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste). Flavors of the season are peppermint, cinnamon and cloves.

Gifts! Give your character something to hold in his/her hands. It’s one of the easiest and [...]

Snooping on Characters

I’ve been reading a great new psychology book that should help in developing characters, especially the settings which reveal so much about a character.
Snoop
Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling, Ph.D. is a fascinating book by a psychologist who studies a person’s environment and what that environment says about you.
For example, in [...]

Can Children’s Literature Change Nerds?

I’ve been nerdy lately, reading a new book about nerds.
Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them, by David Anderegg, Ph.D.
Nerds as a Cultural Stereotype, and Why Authors of Children’s Literature Should Care
Andeggers postulates that the reason we have so few kids interested in science/math these days is the cultural shift [...]

Novel Characters Transform

When you write or revise a novel, one thing to check for is how characters change or transform one another.
Novel Characters Transform Each Other

Pillow Fight, Piazza Maggiore by Donato Accogli

In my WIP, I just created a chart showing the emotional narrative arc of two characters. Each is pushed along that narrative arc by the [...]