I was working on the hero of my next book and found I couldn’t get anything real out of him. He was a bit two-dimensional. Flat. Too single purposed. I went through my standard exercises – dark wound, lie, fear, secret desire, true destiny… You can see that here: Dark Moment: Being yanked from his school, his family, his home to go to another boarding school. Lie: Don’t get close. Don’t open your heart too wide. Fear: Love involves pain. He’s even assigned that to God. Look what He did to His own son. But Tanner knows God is real and true, and he must seek Him. But is standoffish Secret desire/true identity: ?? What can he do in the end he can’t do in the beginning? Be honest about […]
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Conversations: How to use Action to show emotions!
Sally is on vacation this week, so I had some reading time in the coffee shop this morning. Since we’re talking about Showing versus Telling this week month, I picked out one of my favorite passages in an old novel that I thought might help her understand this concept. I stressed last week the fact that Showing versus Telling centers around the Emotion of the story. You tell actions, of course, and you can tell backstory, (but it’s much better delivered in dialogue) but the rule “Show don’t Tell” deals specifically with the subject of emotions. You want to let the reader feel it, and the best way to do this is to bring them into the world and especially into the character’s skin. We’ll be covering emotional layering later […]
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Featured Fiction Friday Presents: Tom Morrisey
Well, the Frasier Winners have been announced. The hard work of the judges has decided the winners, and today we will take a look at the novel of another of our esteemed judges… Tom Morrisey and his book In High Places Q: Tom can you tell us a little bit about your story? For Patrick Nolan, every climb tells a story. And now maybe it’s his own …. He’s right at the rim, staring over the cliff’s knife edge and wondering how things went wrong so quickly. It all started after arriving home from a weekend climbing trip with his father, Kevin. That’s when word reached them. In a silent moment, they’d lost the person most important to them—her death raising unanswerable questions and dangerous doubts. Launching a new life in […]
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Quick Skills: Olympic Sized Dedication
I am absolutely inspired by the Olympic Athletes. Their dedication to their sport, the sacrifices they make, the drive inside, their ability to envision victory that propels them forward. I’m loving both the team and the individual events. Like rowing! And the synchronized diving? Amazing. My favorite, however, is swimming. For a brief time, I swam competitively (I wasn’t very good), and watching the events brings back the feeling of adrenaline, the competitive burn, the sense of cutting through the cool water. It brings me back to those school and AAU meets, the smell of chlorine, crowding around the results lists to find my name. Sometimes I wish I’d had the courage, the drive….the vision to continue. I am loving the Olympic commercials, but this one with Ryan Lochte has […]
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