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Character Relationships: 3 Adjustments to Make
When a first draft is slightly off in the Show-Don’t-Tell of a relationship, how do you correct the relationship? Three places in a story can be tackled. Direct confrontations. When characters interact, it’s relatively easy to adjust a character relationship to heat it up or cool it down. The exact wording of dialogue can change: […]
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Jane and John Smith: Top 5 Tips on Naming Characters
I just named some characters, Jane and John Smith. What does that say about these characters? Do you think boring? No, no, think alias. Think clueless that such an alias might be too transparently an alias. What would make them so clueless? Ah, you’re getting interested in my characters just from their names? One hopes […]
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Voice Begins with Word Choices
Voice begins with the right choice of words Each story or novel has its own diction, or the group of words that could be used for this story. For example, a historical fiction would have different word choices than a romantic comedy. Of course, there’s lots of overlap, but each story has certain words that […]
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Voice Friday: Word Connotations
Voice Friday: Word Choices Voice Friday: Word Connotations Voice Friday: Word Sounds A professional writer must be a lover of words. It is the basis of their craft. We know about the definition of words, what words mean. Today, I want to talk about connotations of words. Connotations Speaking to Connotations John Ciardi and Miller […]