Can we be brutally honest? As a writer, you simply cannot be a nice person – at least not when it comes to your characters. There is no quicker way to lose reader interest than to present characters who never face failure or loss, who are never in danger, who never have to make impossible […]
So before I started teaching writing, I was a Youth librarian. And as everybody says, you can take the girl out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the girl. Especially when it’s someone like me. I was always the one chasing down the kiddos as they were leaving because I’d […]
When I do my prewriting classes, I always start with a session on idea generation. Sometimes students will already have a character in mind, or a genre they want to work in, or a few plot events, but I ask them to put that aside and – as a group – work out a brand […]
So this may get a little introspective, but I was thinking a bit today about self-awareness in fictional characters. Too little, and your character feels cold and unlikable, too much and they feel whiney and overly sensitive. Why is it such a delicate balance? Maybe some definitions would help. What is self-awareness, psychologically speaking, for […]
You have to be careful when giving a character a super-steep arc. I learned that the hard way. After reading the first five chapters of one of my manuscripts, one of my best friends – also one of my most honest friends – texted me, “I hate Character X. Why can’t Character Y be the […]
Just got back from ten days in California, plus a follow-up beach weekend – all (as per my hubby’s request) without my laptop. He knows me. If I’d had my computer handy, writing would have been in the back of my mind, and I’d have been up after everyone had gone to sleep trying to […]
