Okay, so remember Darla from the plane yesterday? (Like I’m ever going to forget her!) ~ We’re going to talk about writing character emotions today, and the three main layers that authors use when writing them. Feel free to refer back to Dear Darla during the examples. (Or maybe she’s already firmly embedded in your mind) 1. The first layer of writing emotions is simply that surface emotion – the name of the emotion. Darla turned me and said: “I’m a little nervous.” She stated her emotion. Examples of this first layer: ~ She stood at the entrance to the gateway and fear gripped her. ~ She could not watch the children in the playground without feeling sorrow. ~ Never had she know such happiness as when she saw […]
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Dear Darla…
So – I just gotta tell you about Darla. I do a lot of travelling and not long ago, I was sitting in the O’Hare Airport when a woman walked into the gate area. She was in her early twenties, and carried a backpack, which she held with a whitened fist. She sat down and began to fidget in her seat, checking her watch, looking at the gate, pawing through her bag. She pulled out a book, and clutched it to her chest a moment before opening it, and pulling out a highlighter. The books said, in large black ominous letters – How to get over your fear of flying. Periodically, she wiped her hands on her jeans, and blew out a long breath, as if she’d been holding it. […]
Read the Rest. . . And your little dog, too!
Today we’re looking at part two of writing a scary, believable villain. For a villain to be great, his or her threats must be believable and truly scary. The threat has to hit home. In the Wizard of Oz, we’re afraid for Dorothy and her friends, but when the witch threatens Toto, we’re drawn all the way into the danger. “She’s going to hurt an innocent dog?” We see Dorothy’s response too. Not Toto! As you develop your villain or antagonist, create a scenario that’s real and hits home. Could it happen? And what if it did? Work on thinking outside the norm, too. Terrorist blowing up a city while Bruce Willis tries to save mankind is exciting and perhaps interesting, but I’m not really drawn in because the threat […]
Read the RestI’ll Get You, My Pretty!
My husband and I were talking recently about addictions. Why, if we have the resurrection spirit of the Living God inside us do we have such a hard time overcoming addictions? It’s like, we look the addiction in the face and it seems so huge that we can’t slay it. It’s bigger than us, stronger than us, outthinks us and sabotages us. It crushes us into submission. An addiction is our own personal a villain. Think about it – when you consider taking it on, do you stumble, do you wonder how you’ll accomplish it? Does it feel undefeatable? Does it feel personal – especially when you look at other people who aren’t attacked by that addiction? But I’m not here today to talk about addictions. Or even the fact […]
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