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Character Emotions MUST Spill Out into Big Actions Characters, even supporting characters, should be bigger than life. No flat characters. Fiction demands round, “fleshed-out” characters. I’m working on a revision and I know this. Yet, when a friend read my revision, her response was that I needed big actions for my characters. In the revision, [...]
30 Days to a Stronger Scene Table of Contents Featured Today in Fiction Notes Stores When I teach Novel Revision Retreats, I need a variety of ways to explain this thing called “revision.” Lately, two ideas have helped. Scenes: Have you Hit Bull’s Eye When I evaluate a scene, I’m always asking myself, “Have I [...]
Develop Your Character Inside and Outside I’m working on a revision of an older story and am finding that my character is flat, lacking emotion. Here’s what should happen: action, reaction, thought and/or emotion. Here’s what is happening: action, reaction. Of course, there’s lots of variation and times when either might be appropriate. But overwhelming, [...]
Character Revision: 8 Ways to Jumpstart a Make Over You have a first draft, but you realize that your character needs work. How do you retrofit a character when you revise? I don’t think of a personality transplant. Instead, I try to add to and enrich a character. Here are 8 suggestions on how to [...]
As I’m working on the plan for this new novel, creating characters and trying out voices, I’m trying to strengthen my weakest areas. My Weakness is Character My weakness is character. I can plot fine, but creating characters with plausible character growth is hard for me. I think I’ve got it and my friends tell [...]
Are you in Pain? Question for your character. So, I’m sitting at the hosptial, waiting for my husband to follow in Harry Smith’s footsteps and get the Couric Procedure (screening colonoscopy). Every wall has a sign asking, “Are you in pain? 0 No Pain/Happy face
Shrunken Manuscript Technique Helps Visualize Problems Following my directions for shrinking, marking and evaluating a novel, here are some recent examples:
Does your Scene Pass this Checklist? Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the [...]
Anatomy of a Scene If you dissect a scene, what do you find? Sandra Scofield, in The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer lays out a simple, yet insightful discussion of this concept and it’s usefulness to a novelist. Here are the basics of a scene: Event and Emotion: Something happens and
Memoir of a Successful Book Trailer in Six Words by guest Lisa Gottfried of DigitalWeavers.com NOTE: Lisa did the editing for my retreat video. She spoke at the San Rafael conference and I was interested enough to try her services, for which I paid. This is an invited guest post and she speaks here as [...]
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