The height to which your protagonist scale to achieve love, happiness or peace is the height at which your readers will love your story. At what price love? What will they do to win the intended’s heart? Or, find the killer? Save the family farm? Or, if you’re a fan of Firefly, fly into the black where reavers dwelled. (Shudder!) You must create a high wall for your hero or heroine to scale in order to achieve the dream. It’s not about the wall. It’s about the internal journey. The protagonist must come to her end, believe all is lost, then dig deep, find inner strength, and try one more time. Scaling the wall is not in absence of fear, it’s in spite of fear. It’s the moment of truth […]
Read the RestArchive | April, 2013
The What and Why of Writing: Noble Cause
Every story starts with an Inciting Incident catapulting the hero and heroine into a journey. They’re either scrambling to get their lives back to normal or hoping to settle into their new life after some amazing “I never knew this could happen to me” experience. Each scene you write is either an Action or re-Action scene. Your characters are doing something or responding to what happened. But the challenge is to write more than just he-said-she-said or he-did-she-did scenes. You want to layer in emotional depth – and one way to do that is to know your character’s Noble Cause. What: The Noble Cause answers the question why? It’s the motivation that moves your character from chapter 1 to “The End.” Think of your protagonist saying something like this: BeCAUSE […]
Read the RestFairytales: Belief, Dream and Your Protagonist
You’ve probably figured out by now I’m learning as I write these fairytale post. We’ll compile them, clean them up and offer them to you in book format one day. Anyway, I’ve been reviewing my original, “this is a fairytale” list and it’s quite shallow. We’ve covered a lot of what I initially thought to elements of fairytales but now I realize there are all kinds of fun elements. Belief Your protagonists, your hero and heroine must believe in something, someone, in values, in the goodness of humanity. In CBA novels, they should believe in, have hope in, the goodness of God. As I review novels from new writers, even from established ones, often the core belief system is missing. This ties into the “secret desire” of the heart or […]
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Taking The Next Step: Fast Drafting
As a newbie writer, I completed my first Fast Draft. I was elated. I even did the happy dance. I couldn’t believe just how much I learned and of course, I had to share. Plot And Plot Some More! For me, it was truly a timesaver and stress reliever to have the story plotted ahead of time. I was really blessed; my friends helped brainstorm the story. Then I used The Book Buddy to get my thoughts down. It allowed me to have all the main points of the plot and the character development done before I sat down to write. It cut down on some of the “blank-screen-staring” that so many writers go through. At the same time, it still allowed me the freedom to change several scenes and […]
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