At some point in every fairytale, there is a taste of death. Sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. Cinderella, in the Disney version, was locked away in the tower when the king’s men came looking for the dream girl who wore the slipper. Snow White bit into the toxic apple prepared by her step monster and fell into a deep sleep that looked very much like death. The dwarfs laid her out in a casket and mourned. Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, also looked to be dead. Photogen and Nycteris lost their entire worlds when they realized they’d been manipulated and all but imprisoned by the witch, Watho. At the taste of death, the story appears to be over. All is lost. Hope is gone. What about our modern love stories? While You […]
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About Rachel Hauck
Author Archive | Rachel Hauck
Craft: The Golden Rule of Fiction
Still in a traveling frenzy… off to see my Grandma for her 99th birthday… so I asked author and writing coach Randy Ingermanson if I could share a post from his Advance Writing E-Zine. He said Yes and offers us a good take on characterization. Here’s Randy: About twenty years ago, I was accepted into a small mentoring group led by Sol Stein, a famous novelist, playwright, publisher, and writing teacher. It was a great group and I enjoyed hanging out with so many talented novelists. Sol had a recent book out, THE BEST REVENGE, and most of us in the group bought a copy. Sol, knowing that I’m a physicist, autographed mine as follows: “Physics = facts; Fiction = truth” I’ve often thought of that over the years. A […]
Read the Rest10 Commandments for Writers by James Scott Bell
I’m on the road at the Romantic Times convention this week so I asked the wise and noble James Scott Bell if he’d fill in for me. He graciously accepted. Thanks Jim! 10 Commandments for Writers When I first started to teach writing in the late 90s, I jotted down what I thought should be the 10 Commandments for Writers. I looked at it again recently and thought, You know what? It still holds up. I’ve tweaked them a little bit, but they remain essentially the same. Here they are: 1. Thou Shalt write a certain number of words every week This is the first, and greatest, commandment. If you write to a quota and hold yourself to it, sooner than you think you’ll have a full length novel. (I […]
Read the RestFairytales: Scaling The Walls
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 […]
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