Take the week off, fellow writers! But be sure to stop by on January 1st, when we start our new Year Long event – A Year with a Hero! We’ll be studying The Hero’s Journey, step by painful, exciting, epic step, from premise to characterization, to plotting, to the not-so-saggy middle, the black moment, epiphany and much, much more! We’ll dissect scenes and even help you with your own exhilarating WIP! Take advantage of our weekly exercises, post your excerpts and get feedback to take your novel from everyday to Epic! Look for weekly chats on problem spots and even an occasional podcast! Spend a year with Hero…(After all, who doesn’t need a good man in their life?) See you in the New Year! Happy Holidays from Rachel and Susie, […]
Read the RestArchive | December, 2007
Picks: Brad Whittington’s Welcome to Fred
I’ve known Brad, at a distance, for a few years. He’s a fun, albeit quirky guy, the good kind of quirky, with a sparkle in his eye, capturing the oddities of life. I’ve had his book, Welcome to Fred, for awhile and finally settled down to read it. It’s a first person account of Mark, a PK (preacher’s kid) and his adolescent journey. After living in Ohio for four years, his father takes a church in Fred, Texas. Mark is definitely out of step with his long hair, bell bottoms and beads in this farming, cowboy, jeans-wearing town. While feeling like a misfit throughout most of the book, Mark adapts, makes friends and discovers life. Whittington has a great voice. A true first person storyteller with lovely writing and the […]
Read the RestPrescriptions: Hooking your Reader wk 5
Welcome back to our HOOKS discussion! We’ve been talking about the elements of a great HOOK – using the acrynom SHARP: S= Stakes (Public or Private) H = Hero Identification (or Sympathy) A stand for ANCHORING! Or, using the journalist inside to create place! I can’t stress how important it is to anchor your reader into the scene. So many books I’ve read recently start out with dialogue or action, and they leave out the where, and when, and even to some extent, the who. You want your reader to know where they stand in a book, what the world is, who the players are, and to some extent, why they’re there. Here’s the novelist’s twist, however: you want to use these elements to anchor your reader in a way […]
Read the RestSelf Therapy – Taming Rafe and the colors of grief
Love. Anger. Happiness. These are broad, blanket emotions that can take on many actions and facets. Many “colors.” Yesterday we talked about brainstorming the different hues in your basic emotions, and drawing those hues out to illuminate a character’s emotions. I want to give you a glimpse of how I did this in my upcoming book “Taming Rafe.” Rafe’s a tough guy…a bull-rider. And he’s hurt deeply by the actions of the woman he loves. He’s been through a lot, and he’s broken. At his darkest moment, I didn’t want him to punch things, or go on a drinking binge…I wanted the reader to enter into his despair. As I looked at the emotion of GRIEF, I saw: Regret and Hopelessness. I picked those emotions to work with to illuminate […]
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