Tagged: Character traits

Resolutions

book reviewing / details in writing / musings

Resolutions

Resolution: a resolve, a declaration, a decision to make a change. Authors make resolutions every day as they develop and write their character’s lives. True, they are not usually to lose weight or read a certain number of books; they revolve around day-to-day decisions with the intent of moving their stories forward. Will Marta recover from her injury? Will Steve get a job? Will Lynne keep her position with the Intermountain Ballet Company? Will Madame ever explain to Marta or Lynne why she was hard on them? Those are the fun elements in stories that need to be shared before...

Letters to Follow: a Sneak Peek

book reviewing / Letters to Follow / new works

Letters to Follow: a Sneak Peek

Chapter ONE Lynne stormed into the women’s dressing room and threw her ballet slippers into her locker. “That woman! She never stops yelling at me!”   “Maybe you deserve it. I mean, you’re late a lot and…”   Lynne swung around. “Mind your own business, Suzette.”   “I’m just trying to be helpful.”   “Back off, Suzette!” Lynne glared at Suzette’s saccharine smile. “You couldn’t help an old lady open a cereal box.”   The dressing room fell silent. The first year as well as the seasoned dancers watched the two women elevate their dislike to the level of a...

Character Traits

character development / details in writing / writer reminders

Character Traits

What makes a good character? Here’s a starting list. Please send me your ideas so I can grow the list and re-share it with you. *  flawed with strengths and weaknesses, scars and oddities in their lives *  well-developed personality *  distinctive ‘voice’ (you often know which character is speaking without the ‘said’ tag) *  approachable yet filled with secrets *  has a story worth our time learning about as we read *  share both their inner and outer conflicts *  grow and change over the course of the story

Carol: A Sketchy Character

84 Ribbons / details in writing / musings

Carol: A Sketchy Character

Character sketches are fun and part of an author’s ‘research’. They may be based on people we know, or they may be total fabrications. Sometimes, we take the best or worst traits of people we know and use them to jump-start our thinking. Then there is CAROL: the character many of you love to hate. Where did she come from and why? CAROL is a natural antagonist, just like some people we know. Life gave her lemons and she decided to squeeze the sourness onto everything and everyone she knows or comes into contact with during Marta’s story in 84...

Writing Blog: Beginning Text Using Character Traits

writer reminders

Writing Blog: Beginning Text Using Character Traits

  Our task as writers is to share enough character traits in the first page or two to grab and hold the reader. So what traits will do that? How do writers decide what works? It’s a deep dark secret; one even the writer often doesn’t know how to share until the story has gotten underway. That means writers often return to the first pages after they’ve written a chapter or two to show us the character in action. (First chapters are frequently tossed out once the story is underway because we need to start as close to the action as possible...