It’s one thing to endow imaginary characters with hopes and dreams and Dark Moments and Wounds, Lies and Fears. It’s something else all together to go mucking around in my oh-so real hopes and dreams … and hurts.
If we want to write real characters who make our readers laugh out loud or cry as they turn the pages of our books, they we have to delve into our hearts and remember the events and the people who made us laugh out loud and cry behind closed doors — or in public.
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At the beginning of a novel, a character starts out in his identity – who he thinks he is. By the end of the story, if you’ve developed the story correctly, he ends up in his essence – who he really is.
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I started reading a great book last week and about a third of the way through a thought hit me: What if THE HEROINE was THE HERO and THE HERO was THE HEROINE? Meaning, what if their rolls were reversed? Suddenly the book became much more interesting and the one on my Kindle seem kind of status quo. Sure, some of the other plot points would be different if SHE was a HE, but it would also raise new, more intriguing plot obstacles. In an historical book, it might be hard to switch rolls. If you were writing about the Alamo, it would be hard to have a man spying on General Santa Anna since the spy was a female prostitute. But, what if you took an historical event, like […]
Read the Rest“Today, you write,” I said to Sally as she plunked down her bag. She appeared frazzled today, her blonde hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. “Good, because I need some writing therapy,” she said as she sat down on the chair. “After week with the kids home from school, it’s time to escape. In fact, I might have already started.” She handed me four pages of her manuscript. “It’s the first scene.” I scanned it. “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a smattering if the first scene and a lot of backstory,” I handed it back to her. “But it’s a great start. And you’ve done what I would have suggested you do – sit down and start writing that first scene. I expected […]
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