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Sorry I’m posting so late, but I’m just home from Dallas and the ACFW conference. So, here are a few Doctor’s Notes! Branding. How do we brand? What is a brand? First, let me say for new authors, unpublished or published, branding is not something you need to worry about right away. Certainly look for your unique voice, story, way of writing, but I don’t recommend spending a lot of time trying to come up with some tag line. The best brand is the author’s name. What do you think of when I say John Grisham or Nora Roberts? Right. A brand is something that helps the publisher, retailers and readers describe your work. A summation that fits nice in a sales pitch. Usually a brand is said in ten […]

Last week we talked about sitting down with your character and getting to the bottom of who he thinks he is (I feel as if I’m talking to one of my teenagers – WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, MISTER?) to discover their values, dreams and fears. WHY? Because we want to make them SUFFER. But why do we want suffering, Doc? Isn’t that cruel? Hey – that’s the price of a good story! Lots of angst and suffering. Suffering makes the character uncomfortable, and causes…CONFLICT! Hint #2: Create Conflict they can’t live with! Conflict is what drives a story. We talked about inner conflict – that conflict in values. And we pinpointed the external conflict by determining our characters greatest dreams and greatest fears. Now, let’s use all that […]

I watched a movie this weekend, one of the best thrillers out there for continually raising stakes and forcing the viewer at the end of her seat: Cellular. In a nutshell, it’s a movie about a woman who is kidnapped. She uses a demolished phone to call for help and gets a hold of a young man whose girlfriend has broken up with him because of his irresponsibility. A deadline of sorts hangs over their conversation (and we’ll talk about deadlines in an upcoming book therapy), because at any moment, they could get cut off, and she may never be able to dial out again. She must convince this guy to help her and eventually get involved to the point where he begins to break the law and risk his […]

I talk a lot about the Noble Cause, or purpose of a character as a key to discovering their motivations behind their actions. A Noble Cause is that one thing that drives a character through a story, whether it be a thriller (i.e., saving someone from being killed), or a romance (fighting for true love). But how does one determine the Noble Cause? I always start by asking the question of my character – What makes you the person you are today? His history will show you the things that molded him. Was he abandoned as a child? Perhaps, then, his Noble Cause is family, and never abandoning his own children. But let’s say he didn’t have a traumatic past – then ask: What is worth fighting for, and why? […]