It’s been a crazy week for me. Preparing to go out of town to speak, spending a few days with friends and my hubster in NY, catching up on details and promises made that need to be kept. Then yesterday when I should’ve been working on a blog about fairytales, I was fighting with computer problems. A PDF process got caught in a loop and it looped and looped and looped, devouring all of my system memory. I aged a year just waiting for the Finder window to open. đ Shout out to my friend Federico for fixing the problem. So, I’m punting today with a different kind of Book Therapist blog. I was having lunch with friend Debbie Macomber, Roxanne St. Claire and Martha Powers (Carla Darcy if you […]
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Learning from Fairytales: Creating the Perfect Hero
We’re back to the fairytale and the indomitable hero. If you want to read what Tolkien says about fairytales, have at it. Here’s a link. If you pair it down to something akin to a Happy Meal, shot me an email! I’d like to read it. As much as I appreciate Tolkien’s exegesis on the fairytale, and probably his brilliance far above my own, I can’t get into the long details and descriptions. It’s like a doctoral study. I need a Ph. D.  handed to me when I’m done reading it. So, I have to go with a more modern and brief description of the fairytale hero. Let’s recap from the web site Den of Geeks about heroines: âWe donât care who they are, or what it is that makes them interesting. They […]
Read the RestBook Therapist: How To Exit A Scene Early
Hey all, Taking a break this week from fairytales to answer a question from one of our MBT faithful. We’ll go back to fairytale structure next week. But here’s the question: Q: How do you to leave a scene early and end with some kind of “disaster?” They seem to counter act the other.  A: Great question. I understand the dilemma but actually, exiting a scene early is exactly how you leave the reader wanting more and turning the pages. Let’s review what encompasses a great scene. Scene goal. All scenes need some kind of goal. Any thing that advances the plot, even a little bit, is moving the story forward and probably hints at or answers some part of the over all story goal and question. Ask yourself, “What […]
Read the RestLearning from Fairytales: Creating An Enchanting Heroine
Fairytales heroines nab our attention because they are either princesses, become princesses or encounter the supernatural. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, The Snow Queen. Even the heroine in Rumpelstiltskin marries the King who locked her in a room, demanding she turn straw into gold. (Whatâs up with that, by the way? Marrying the greedy guy put you in a tower?) But fairytale heroines are often tools in a morality story. A symbol. A two-dimensional character that shuffles the plot along to teach a valued lesson. For a novel, we need a heroine readers can relate to, who looks someone like them even if they are a princess, or meet a prince, or whoâs superpower is strictly her beauty. From the web site Den of Geeks: âWe donât care who they are, […]
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