Category: Uncategorized
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Who Said That?
Giving Your Characters A Voice When it comes to writing fiction there are a lot of ‘rules,’ things like ‘Show, Don’t Tell,” or ‘Don’t Jump Viewpoint,’ and like any rules in a creative field some are obviously more important than others. One of these so-called rules is that every character needs a voice and that…
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FINDING THE TIME
Why busy Writers Should Invest In A Low=Cost Time Machine I’ve been thinking about building a time machine, something that would let me jump back and forth on the clock to give me a little extra time to write each day. Unfortunately, since I don’t have any spare plutonium or other means to produce 2.21…
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WHOSE VOICE IS IT?
Every Character Has a Voice, Even If It’s Yours People often ask, who is such and such a character based on, and after a brief and unsuccessful attempt to conjure up a good lie, I admit the truth. My protagonist is almost always based on me. Okay, they then ask, who is the villain based…
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MAKING IT BELIEVABLE
How A Bit Of Trickery Will Make Your Writing Feel Alive In an earlier post I mentioned the term Suspension of Disbelief, which is really just a nice way of saying you are misleading your readers for a good cause. Today, let’s go into this a bit deeper. Come inside, if you dare. Every story,…
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WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
How To Keep It Real, Or At Least Fake It Well There is an old saying that sooner or later every aspiring writer is going to encounter: Write what you know. But, what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that you are limited to only writing about things that you have direct experience with?…
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CHARACTER BUILDING PART III – THE HOOK
Or, How To Make Your Characters Stand Out What is a hook? To a fisherman it is a tool to catch a fish. To a guitar player it’s that catchy opening riff of a great song. But to a writer, a hook is something to hang your character from, or more specifically, something to hang…
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Building Character – Part Two – Antagonists
Bad Guys Need Motivation, Too I will admit it, villains are more fun to create than heroes. Ask almost any writer and they will tell you the same thing. It’s more fun to create antagonists than it is coming up with interesting protagonists. Why? For one thing, your villains can do things most of us…
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BUIILDING CHARACTER, PART I
What’s the deal with Motivation? All right, let me just ask you, what is your motivation? Let me guess, it’s “I want to become a writer so I can be rich and famous, go on talk shows and ride around to all my book signings in the back of a limo while sipping expensive champaign!”…
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THE TOOLS YOU NEED
The things every writer needs in their kit. We all know one, the guy or gal who loves buying tools and gadgets for whatever their personal obsession might be. The person who wants, nay, needs that copper-plated electro steam fryer for their kitchen, the woodworker that craves just one more saw, the golfer who if…
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Do I Need A Degree?
Is A Literature Degree Really Necessary To Be A Successful Writer Once upon a time in a faraway land called Stratford-upon-Avon there lived a man named William. William had very little hair but loads of talent, and a really cool looking pirate earring in one ear. And although William looked like a buccaneer, what he…
Things Your English Teacher Won't Tell You 