Turning Tricks

Every novelist wants to knock out a great book, one that engages readers and gets them to care about the final outcome and read beyond chapter 1. To be an exceptional storyteller, the vital thing you must master is the art of hooking. And you do that by using plenty of page-turning tricks and lures.

One of the best ways you can create a hooky work that’s so very hard to put down is to end every chapter in some dynamic fashion…even better if it’s every scene. You never want to be predictable, to always use the same kind of endings, with a banal note of foreshadowing if in First, with a dum-dum-dum moment if in Third. The same kind of downturn used consistently time after time becomes stale, moldy and barbless, even exasperating for readers. Aim to surprise, stimulate and catch readers off guard.

I was reviewing one novel on TheNextBigWriter where every chapter ended with some kind of cliffhanger, but then when the new chapter began, the perceived threat was nothing. Perception by the character, or more likely a case of cheap teasing by the author, was way overblown.

This is melodrama in its most insidious and ugly form. It’s fake. It’s stupid. And worst of all, if you’ve dished this out every chapter and we’re four chapters in, guess what, you’ve inadvertently shifted your readers to a place where they no longer believe you, and you may never gain your credibility back. Even the most unsavvy minds are no longer fooled, more over hooked or affected, by your “trick”. DO NOT fall into this rat trap. Ever. You can play the misunderstanding card once, maybe twice if it’s far removed from the first, but really, overall, mix things up.

Even if you write literary fiction or a more character-driven work, you can strengthen your plot and make your book irresistible. Here are some cool tricks and angles you can infuse in endings in order to pull readers onward in the journey you’ve mapped out for them:

§ Failure in reaching a goal. Characters generally want or need something. Your job as a writer is to pull that object of desire further away from their outstretched hands. End the scene/chapter after a failed attempt.

§ A setback or deterrent. You can land your characters in a spot that’s far worse than they were at the onset of their quest.

§ Increased jeopardy. Is the antagonist one step closer to his or her prey, someone readers care about? Nothing gets readers turning pages faster than tension or a threat to the MC or another likable character.

§ A twist. You can lead readers to believe one thing and then make a shift in the story that gets them hungry to learn more about the jarring shocker you just revealed.

§ A new direction or lead for the protagonist/antagonist to pursue. Readers are information junkies and care about the story question you presented at the beginning, so get them excited or biting nails over the new possibilities in the arc.

§ A new question. You can hint at something that will be fleshed out later. Adding another mystery into your mix of goodies will give readers more to be concerned with.

§ Something totally unusual or unexpected. Pique curiosity, and you’ll hook.

§ A cliffhanger, imagined or real. If you leave a character in a state of peril, readers will race through subsequent scenes to get back and learn the outcome.

§ A chord of doom. If characters are about to follow a dangerous path in the story or are dealing with the weight of some kind of trauma or terrorizing realization, readers will be concerned with how a character deals. If you can end with sour, dire or terrifying chord, that’s best.

§ A departure from a heated moment. If you yank readers out of a heated argument or a passionate frenzy, they’ll be dying to return and see how things get resolved. BUT if the build up and full display are equally as important as the resolution, then do NOT shut readers out by giving a mere summary in the resurface, pick up where you left off. Write the scene and end with one character dissatisfied or regretful or spurred into another course of action. You can have a goal being met yet the outcome being not what the character anticipated.

§ Big trouble: a character dying, moving into a trap, blacking out because of a car accident, fall or whatever or caught in a chase; the emergence of a new threat; someone has died or has been found dead.

§ A new obstacle to overcome.

§ An apparent use of concealment. You may want to keep something hidden and depart from a point of tension that leaves readers guessing and wondering about what happened so you can reveal those details later on in the story.

There are many ways to hook readers. The key to good execution is to give doses of forward motion with plenty of unexpected and stunning scene-ending disasters along the way to the big answer. Write on. Hook ‘em and reel ‘em in, my fellow plumers.

~Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

To Be or Not to Be: That IS the Question

This deep question posed by Hamlet is not merely about living or dying, it seeks to find the meaning in life, as well as the breadth, scope, purpose, and tangibility in it. There’s an underlining hope for making an impact in it, to thrive beyond the pages of existence. To Be. It is the question of life. Everyone wants that. To Be.

Whether you know it or not, when readers delve into your story, they subconsciously ask this question of your creations. Will they feel alive or not? Can you make them Be, full of life, uniqueness and complexity, jumping off the page, demanding to be noticed and not soon forgotten, or will they be Nots, deadwood, quickly cast into a bin with other flat-lined drones, ill-crafted by countless others before you?

The best way to reveal true character and circumstance is to show. Many writers always chant the “Show, Don’t Tell” mantra because it’s a vital ingredient for good storytelling, while others are left shrugging their shoulders, unsure as to what that even means.

In my WIP, Sapphire Reign, my fifteen-year-old character, Skye, is adventurous and feisty. She’s an anonymous writer for the school paper and is attempting to uncover the secrets of this mysterious, terrorizing bunch of tricksters in her school called the Wisteria Sisters so she can expose the truth to the masses. Doing so could be dangerous, since she has no clue who or what she’s dealing with.

All that about her could easily be summarized in narrative, but that would be telling.  Instead, when I pull her onstage in chapter 7, I open her POV like this:

* * *

A scant shuffle of her pink, suede boot sent pebbles tumbling down the jagged face of the cliff side. They clacked like bones snapping until they plunked into the roaring river below, exactly where the current picked up and foamed around boulders.

Just jump, Skye. Jump. Do it. Jump.

Her body tensed. Skye gulped and edged back several steps. The fifteen-year-old covered her face for a few moments and adopted a slow-breathing rhythm to quiet her better judgment before it changed her will. She’d hiked all the way up here through layers and layers of gray to do this. Her mind was set but her shaking body stood very opposed to her decision. Her present espionage gig aside, she never considered herself suicidal. And that’s what this was. Suicide.

Skye refused to let herself back out. She took one deep breath and just did it. She ran two strides and jumped. At the fall, she screamed. Her stomach leapt into her throat. A hawk swooped below her. For one split second, she flew too and then fell into a thrilling negative-G producing plunge until her weight mashed into her harness seat and tugged taught at the zipline.

The rush surged so much greater than it ever had. Of course, she’d only zipped through woods, never over a gorge filled with so many ways to die.

“Whooooohoooo. This is crazy awesoooome. Wooo,” she yelled on her rapid swoop. She buzzed down, seeing a cascading waterfall from a bird’s-eye view, then fell fast in front of it, getting sprayed in its frigid mist as it spilled into another river. “Sweeeeet.” Getting wet spots on her sweatshirt was a minor discomfort, with exhilaration making it so worthwhile.

* * *

Then it breaks into dialogue with her two friends that reveals her main goal. In this scene I refrained from writing one thing in the narrative about her personality, her purpose and the potential danger she’s really jumping into. Dialogue and action reveal all of that. It’s more engaging this way. Readers now know she’s a fearless risk-taker, they’ve seen it, and that her friends, even the wild one who dared to make the zipline jump with her, think she’s crazy for going after the Wisteria Sisters. That shows far more about the circumstance and character than telling in a summary ever could.

Here is an example of telling versus showing:

T: Sam, so hot and parched, doubted he’d make it out of the desert alive, but he kept going, a step at a time.

S: The sun lapped up Sam’s sweat before it could bead on his arms and grit coated his throat, scraping it with each swallow. He smacked his tongue, but saliva remained dormant. Barely ambling, though still trying, he looked ahead again, shading his eyes with his hand, blinking at the vultures…waiting. An ocean of sand lay before him. Only by God will I get outta here alive.

Showing engages readers and helps them to identify with your characters. Show when you can. Let your people Be.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Aaahh, Breathing Room

Now that I’ve pretty much decided I’m going to do my own thing and choose my own journey with my YA novel, Kings & Queens, I suddenly realized I have more room. Yay!

You see, with any YA that gets into the big house, word count needs to be super minimal. About 60,000 is average.  So, I worked extremely hard and slashed many a darlings to get that word count down from 106 g’s to a less jaw-dropping 88.  How awesome of me, right?

Well, now that I’m not going traditional with this one, it gives me more creative control, which means suit coats won’t be telling me to cut this or that and more of my glorious words will be able to grace the eyes and ears of lucky readers. Sweet.

So, I’m gonna keep the terse version, just in case, ya know, an agent miraculously shows interest, but I’ll also create a beefed-up version that’s more compatible with its narrative-rich sequel, Sapphire Reign.

I’m only talking a thousand or two words here, but still, the extra room fills me with so much tickly delightful I can’t stand it.

So, back to editing I go. This time to give a bit more fullness to my story.

And I’m still slowly but surely getting Dropping Like Flies and Online Girl closer to The End, DLF more than the latter.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Learn How To Grow As A Writer

The cool thing about writing is you get a lifetime supply of do-overs. If one piece doesn’t work, you can scratch it and start something else. You can also try your hand at different things, poetry every now and then,  a flash piece or even a song.

And no matter where you are in your writing career, hobby or graffiti scrawls, you can always improve and get better.

Here are the main things that taught me about writing and helped me improve once I put paper to pen:

Reading books in my genre. You can’t really reach your intended audience or break into a market if you know nothing about either. Dip your toes in and try out different subgenres and things you may sneer at at first glance. You never know when someone’s writing will spark an idea in your own. Read, read, read. I read Twilight, which wasn’t wonderful for me, but it had good points and bad. I learned things from it about writing which I’ll share in an upcoming post.

Reading books on craft. There are tons of books out there on craft. Some good ones are How To Write A Damn Good Novel, How To Write A Damn Good Novel II, The Fire in Fiction (one of the BEST books I’ve read of late!!!), Writing The Breakout Novel, Characters & Viewpoint, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes. What I typically do is wait for these books to be sold inexpensively by outside sources, that way I can build my own resource library for cheap.

My husband took a creative writing class with the Stafford Institute, and reading the books he got in the mail was what inspired me to write my first novel. It wasn’t a perfectly marketable book—my structure’s all wrong, my protag is an unlikeable age (19) and I rely too much on coincidence—but it’s still a really great first effort with an adorable romance. Reading  books on craft is what helped me see why it falls short. Without that knowledge, I’d falsely assume I’ve got a wonderful story on my hands.

Diving into the blogosphere. Writers who are in the trenches as you are provide inspiration, and those who have published can give you the do’s and don’ts, the ins and outs, and agents will tell you flat out what they’re looking for, what works and what doesn’t, how to write queries, how to pitch, etc. So many helpful tidbits are out there for free, just waiting for you to gather them up.

Joining a critique group. I can honestly say, my work is a thousand times better because of my wonderful, stupendous critters. I have just learned so much from exchanging reviews, I can’t even tell you. Not only will you learn how to improve your own work, the feedback you get and give will help you learn the major things you need to know about writing, from avoiding plot holes to understanding how POV works.  Writing is an isolated effort but revision should be a team job.

You can certainly learn a lot from beta readers as well, but with a crit group, you can get more sets of eyes and more diverse perspectives on your work.

Sometimes deeper issue opinions can be wrong, a critter can be wrong, so you want to be able to balance all the input, to figure out for yourself what works and what doesn’t for your story.

Go find a group, either online or in person, whatever works best for you.

Joining good forums. In forums, like Absolute Write Water Cooler for instance, you can ask questions about research details or when an issue pops up in your writing, get feedback on your work and submission pieces and make some writer friends. There are hundreds of forums out there and you can generally find them to go with your genre, if you want to get more specific.

People always ask me how I learned about writing, and those are the main avenues that have helped me learn technique to begin with and continue to improve. So open your ears, eyes and hearts to the bounty of information that’s out there. It doesn’t matter how awful you are now, you can grow.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Characters: Keep on Surprising Me

When I wrote chapter 1 for my WIP, Dropping Like Flies, I was following inspiration and just spit those 1500 words out. I liked the thing, but it sat for months without me giving it much thought as I finished Sapphire Reign and jumped into an agent hunt.

Now that I’m picking it up again, I realize my character was not at all who I thought she was. I thought she was a peppy girl, left broken by abusers and now had to grapple to cope and move on. Nope. Wrong.

She’s not that girl. She’s jaded and angry, pissed really, even vowing to hurt those who’ve hurt her. Due to bottled-up pain and turmoil, she cusses like a trucker and blows my aim for a profanity-free work right out the window. She’s cool one minute, furious the next. She’s both withdrawn and outspoken. Oh, what. You didn’t think such an oxymoron was possible? Neither did I! She’s seriously a walking contradiction.

It’s so weird how I had one idea and she came out with fists flying and a completely different agenda and way of doing things. She ransacked my perceptions and said, “Um, no. THIS is me. Don’t like it? Too bad. Write some other story then! This is mine.” She wanted a new name, so I gave. She hated her appearance, so she took it upon herself to change her look, adding magenta streaks to her hair. She sounds just like a real teenager, so I guess that’s a good thing.

But wow. How did my creation get so far away from me? How does that happen? She’s not real. I invented her. So, how can she shock me? How can she be so ready to own and distort the pages I’d planned when I didn’t even do a character sketch? She’s emerging however the hell she wants as I’m lending ink to her story. And after writing chapter 2, I had to change chapter 1 to sound like the real her.

Though she bounces from extreme to extreme and may do or think things that make her lean more anti-hero at times, her thread of decency and pain, I think, is what will make readers connect with her. She’s brutally honest, real and raw. With her life in complete turmoil, with crazy things happening, she has no one to talk to, nowhere to turn, so the story she’s relaying is her only outlet.

My characters always surprise me, no matter how well I think I know them. I’m only three chapters in, and I can’t see where this girl takes me. I love the unexpected.

Do your character surprise you? Or am I the only freak with a pen?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

3 Newbie Mistakes I Nixxed

When you begin writing novels, you’re pretty clueless about a lot of things. I knew about head hopping, passive voice and showing, but I needed to know more in order to write well. My first novel is stashed in a purple folder somewhere, destined to stay there unless I feel an itch to give it a major rewrite.

Here are the top three mistakes I made:

1. Flimsy Story Question. When I wrote my first novel, I didn’t know there was this thing called a story question. A story question is the main concern the protagonist adopts at the beginning of a novel. Sometimes it’s birthed in a call to action, a shocker, a stated goal, a fresh start or a conflict.

Can a meek hobbit like Frodo actually destroy the ring? Will this jaded woman find true love? Can this rookie cop find the Beatles serial killer who arranges his death scenes to match Fab Four songs?

You can tell a story without one, but you have to work extra hard to hook readers.

I recently read Green by Jay Lake and there’s no story question to speak of, nor arc. The main character is sold into slavery as a toddler and trained to be a courtesan but you have no clue where the story is going. It’s not a bad book at all. It’s lushly written, the MC is feisty and strong, the voice, distinct, description, light-handed, but it’s not very hooky. I’d put it down and not pick it up again for weeks.

That’s okay for some writers, but that’s not what I want in my books. I want to have works that readers hate to put down and feel a bit sad over when they reach the end.

In order for your story to have that kind of hooking power, you should have a story question. Even literary fiction can have a story question. An MC, for instance, who wants to uncover her family’s buried secret, may do a lot of reflecting on every detail she finds. The questions would then be will she discover the whole truth and how will she deal with it if and when she does. The longer you keep the questions unanswered, the more gripping your story will be. You can create tension and suspense with the simplest thing. If the main character cares deeply, the reader will care as well.

The mistake I made with my first book was I answered the story question before the climax and the story’s tension dissolved. Use any kind of plot pathway you want, three acts, a circle, a rollercoaster, doesn’t matter, your biggest structural concern should be that question and keeping it taut until the climax or later, if possible. Then, you’ll be able to create a gripping read.

2. Be-verb Overload. I honestly never gave Be-verbs much thought at all until one of my reviewers pointed them out. Every…single…one.  Be-verbs work just as good as any in getting your point across, however, they’re blah and reflect laziness. Stretch yourself for juicer verbs. They’ll breathe more life into your prose. Those other little buggers that fly under the radar die on the page and may also indicate you’ve used too much passive voice.

I try to only use no more than 15%. You should only really use them if it’s the true voice of the narrator or if not using one would be too awkward.

3. Purple Prose. When I first started writing novels, I often would go the round-about way of saying everything. I notice this mistake a lot with many new writers, that’s why I’m bringing this up. I thought that was my voice: lush, lyrical, descriptive, eloquent. It sounded good to me, pretty, intriguing, writerly. I didn’t go all historical Harlequin exactly, but still, my work was chock full of superfluous fluff that wasn’t needed.

Purple prose and flowery rills are okay in small doses, but if your story is packed with such chunks, it’ll be more difficult for readers to get through and become engaged. You need to know that. It becomes more about the words than character or plot or story.

If you’re going for arty-fartsy, knock yourself out. But if you’re trying your hardest to write right, to sell your book to the masses, stop going all over the place and get to the point. Your readers will appreciate it and your writing will be tighter and overall better.

So, those are my top three book killers. What tips have you learned that have improved your writing once you implemented them?

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Putting Tell in Its Place

As Writers, the “show don’t tell” mantra gets chucked at us more than any other rule.  Nothing, not even “no head hopping”, can stir up such hellfire and fury. So, what is it about show that’s so important?

…engagement…

For readers to care about your story, they need to be able to engage in some way. It doesn’t mean you can’t have an interesting work, or a fun or terrifying one, but there’s just no way readers can become engrossed in your book without lots of show.

Think of showing as the beads of your story, and telling, the string. You need both in order to have a functional, beautiful work, like a homemade necklace, but the showing is what is meant to dazzle, while the telling merely holds everything together. Too much telling will always leave you with a dull, tangled mess.

Tell should always be an underlining, barely noticed thing. There are times to definitely use it. Tell can bring clarity to the show, trim words if you’re in a dangerous count zone, control pace and sum up what’s not worth showing, like a detective getting nowhere in his investigative questioning; including all those scenes is just not important.

Show reveals character, makes your work more colorful and visual, puts readers into the story and helps them to identify with characters. So, use it for the most part.

…show…

Like, think of ways you can show your character has an Ivy league education, loves sports, hates her mom, is persistent, is an emotional rock, has idiosyncrasies, works well under pressure, is tensing up in that traffic jam, is quirky, maintains life-long habits from living as an exchange student in Japan for one year, is suddenly afraid.

Relying on tell to reveal those kinds of things is lazy and nothing will make your work more dull and lackluster.

If critters are complaining that your characters don’t seem realistic or engaging, too much telling is likely the culprit. Come on. Even a pumpkin-headed horseman can be realistic.

If you want readers to become engrossed, for your characters to come alive, for your story to be gripping, your work needs plenty of clunky, funky beads. What’s so special about a necklace that’s predominantly string? Not much. There’s nothing wrong with some tell every now and then, but it should simply support and hold everything together. Never let tell overshadow or steal the show. Put tell in its place.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Fixes & Trims

My query process has been pretty slow going cuz I usually just send out a few handfuls, then wait for responses. I consider my first several months of querying to be like toe dips into the water. Sure, you could cherry bomb into the pool and hope for the best, but if you instantaneously get fifty people wet with rank hideousness, it skims your best picks right off the top, leaving you with lesser-thans.

If I get no requests after ten or twelve, I make changes. I’d do this for a while, then stop to make changes, but without feedback, it’s hard to know where I went wrong. Was my MC too whiny, wimpy, dull, what? Does my concept suck? Is my letter pure crap? It’s so impossible to know…Maybe not.

Well, I feel dunce-cap-worthy it took several months for the light bulb to finally flick on over my near-empty skull,  but I decided to just query agents who requested a query letter only, then I’d know for sure if the main glitch was with my letter. I kept sending out my query, then I’d revise and try again. I didn’t find much interest.

I mean, maybe the main conspiracy of my novel comes across too unbelievable boiled down into one sentence of explanation and tucked into a couple paragraphs of what’s, who’s and how’s.

So, I scratched my letter completely and wrote an entirely new one that is huge on voice and character with minimal plot points.

One agent requested a full, but she thought the work would be better in First person, which told me she’d only read a few chapters because anyone who’s read further on would never in a million years think that.  My MC doesn’t know the greater details of the plot until the epilogue, so, a limited perspective just wouldn’t work. The bulk of the story’s big mystery is revealed to readers through my parallel protagonist’s journey instead.

However, hints of that didn’t break open in chapter 8. So, I bumped his weirdness up to his first POV scene in chapter 4.  The bit of commentary I’d received was not entirely right for my particular story, but it helped me to see I needed to point the good guts out much earlier.

If my book were simply a girl against two would-be-killers, then First person would probably work great, but it’s not. Originally that was my concept, ’tis true, but sometimes stories just grow and unexpectedly surprise the writers penning them. And that’s what happened with me and my story.

Even if I don’t wholly agree with suggestions, they do usually help me to see where I’ve gone wrong and what adjustments need to be made. If you have Betas or critters of any kind, consider their opinion valid, even if you don’t agree. If you give it some time, you may see they’re right. Maybe they’re not, but keep the notes and try to see your work through fresh eyes. Maybe a part of what they’re saying is correct. Maybe it hints at a different, deeper problem like mine did.

Even though I liked it, I had to change my first chapter after several people complained of it being too confusing. The advice you get, whether prickly or smooth, could be just the thing to make your story even better. As the writer, you owe it to your story and your readers to write the best you can and edit with that same drive.

And if you’re in the querying stage like me and frustrated by all the form rejections you’re collecting that say, “Not for me” or “I’m not the right agent for this”, without so much as a hint of feedback to suggest where you misfired,  try querying agents who only request the letter. Start there. If you’re get nothing but form letters from agents who rep the kind of work you write, and you don’t have 200,000 words or some likewise monstrous book, your letter needs some work, so have it critiqued and keeping working on it until it shines and gets results.

If your letter is sparking interest and several agents request a partial or a full, then turn you down without much feedback, you’ll know the error is with your work, probably within the first few chapters. So set that sparkling jewel of a letter aside and take a hiatus to work on your manuscript. Once it’s ready, get back in the game.

Happy writing, happy hunting!

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Passionate Writers Wanted: No Posers Allowed

Yesterday, I read a first chapter on a critique forum I belong to where a male character—position not given—gave a just-hired guidance counselor a tour at his new employ. The whole chapter was empty. The dialogue was stilted, the characters non-existent, the narrative completely absent of voice, tone, texture, description and pertinent action. Plus, it brimmed with dialogue tags. Obviously, this word-waster’s a beginner, but even worse than that, a poser…not just someone who wants to write and has no clue where to start or how to bring words to life…this is someone who’s writing without passion. Clearly.

When people are passionate about something, no matter what it is, there’s an undeniable spark you can see, a hint of potential and desire underneath the rubble, and you know, aha, a diamond in the rough…which ultimately leads to dedication, persistence and a stretch for success. But, no matter how hard you try to write fantastic prose, if you don’t have passion for what you’re doing and believe in your ability to tell the story, it’s going to show.

Not that my work is perfect. I’m still in bloom. I’m an unpublished newbie and have so much to learn, but, I need to write, be it short story, poem, flash, novel, doesn’t matter. Writing is my dream revealer, my stress release, my thought organizer, my creative breath. I’m driven to put paper to pen and sharpen my knowledge by learning from others and reading books on craft so I can write well. In fact, reading books on technique is what kick-started me to write my first novel.

I love elements about my baby, but I’ve laid it to rest, at least for now. I poured so much emotion into it while writing it. I cried when I killed off my MC, Jenna’s best friend, steamed in fury during heated conflicts, trembled when Jenna was fending off the knife-wielding rapist who killed her BF, and reached for tissues again when she was reading a kiss-off note from her love interest even though I knew it was a practical joke being flipped into a marriage proposal.

As crazy as this emotional rollercoaster seems to you, that’s what passion is, being parked in the shoulder, searching high and low in your car for another crayon because your frantic writing is illegible on Dunkin Donuts napkins in that stupid light green. If you’re writing without experiencing the thrill and emotion of the work and not pouring everything into it, then you’re merely attempting to string words together that you only hope make some sort of sense and entertain.

Check out reviews on Amazon. With experienced, well-known authors, from Dean Koontz to James Patterson, readers can easily spot the difference between novels that were rushed to meet deadline and those birthed out of passion. Plots are weaker, characters are flatter, endings are messy or unsatisfying. Everything’s different and all the worse for the lesser effort. Those writers make big bucks for publishing houses and themselves, so they’re allowed to fudge every now-and-then and hand in something under the gun.

But don’t let that be you—except for raking in the money part of course. No matter where you are or end up in life, or how many awards you win, never lose your soul’s fire or consider something finished and great if it didn’t stem from it.

You should always strive to add greater depth and make your work better, to hone your skill and find your true voice, to develop characters so rich and full that even you forget they’re not real and care what happens to them during the journey and after THE END. Discover and use your most hidden, ugly, lovely, horrible emotions. Write the best pieces you can, losing sweat, tears and sleep in the process. Because if you don’t, readers will see the shallowness in what you’ve written. They’ll know. Don’t be a poser: a sub-par, mediocre, commonplace wannabe. Be exceptional, a true writer, an author, rushing onward in your drive and love for the craft. Grow and learn and work harder. For personal use, write whatever you want, but for the masses, always write with passion. Always give your best effort. Never less.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

Your MC Did What????

In Quincy, MA two patrons at a Mc’Donald’s chucked coins and safety cones at three cashiers after receiving small fries instead of the large size they ordered. This isn’t supposed to be a funny story but I laughed reading the whole article, which you can read here.

It’s just such an extreme and INSANE reaction for such a small infraction, one where a simple, “Um, you gave me the wrong size fries,” should fix the problem. This misalignment makes a moment of rage comical. What’s even funnier is it was the second fast food altercation in the area within a four-day span. What is wrong with people though?! Seriously.

An important aspect for believablitity in fiction is stimulus and response. In order for your characters to be believable, you must provide appropriate stimuli and catalysts for story directions and the decisions and choices characters make. Keeping stimulus and response in mind, you can get your character to do anything you desire. You just need to brainstorm and come up with an appropriate stimulus.

In the movie Falling Down, Michael Douglas’s character, Bill Foster, gets pushed over the edge after a hellacious morning where everything possible has gone wrong. He pulls a gun on a cashier at a fast food restaurant because they stopped serving breakfast. Such a small infraction again, but now we have a reason for the postal moment. Because the tension/stilumus was built up beforehand, it still looks as crazy as the Quincy nuts, but we can understand what made Bill snap. He’s a believable and identifiable anti-hero and we follow along.

Make sure you provide the nudges your story needs to make sense and not be laughable.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.