How many colors does your writer’s palette hold? Why would you choose to use only one? Listen carefully, and your characters and scenes will show you the colors to use in harmonious storytelling.
characters
Make Your Readers Feel the Pain
I’ve been neck deep in research and editing, enjoying every minute. And letting the days slip past before I come out of my red-pencil fog to check my deadlines. I planned to write about layering your characters’ backstories, referencing scenes from the movie “The Homesman.” In the meantime, I read Sue Coletta’s post over […]
How Do Your Characters Handle Adversity?
A while back, I wrote a post about using the lemons life hands you in your writing. Maybe it’s time to expand on that idea. The past two weeks, I’ve been helping my sister after she underwent major surgery. As we discovered what she could and could not do, how she felt after normal daily […]
Where Do Your Characters Draw the Strength to Take Action?
After seeing how our characters’ body awareness reflects who they are, and what their Inner Critics whisper in their ears, we analyzed how their fears force them to take action. Now we need to understand how and where our characters draw strength to accomplish those actions. Once they acknowledge fear, it becomes something to overcome. […]
Fear Forces Your Characters to Make Choices
Have you been working with your characters as we’ve analyzed different aspects of what makes them come alive on the page? I hope you discovered intriguing possibilities for torturing and rewarding the people populating your latest manuscript. In the first week, you learned how to use body awareness to flesh out your characters. Then we […]
Body Awareness Puts Flesh on Your Characters
I’m taking this incredible course called Writing for Warrior Healing presented by Laura Probert. Our first week is all about body awareness. She asked us today to think about how body awareness relates to our work. You may be thinking, “What? That’s crazy. Writers don’t have to think about body awareness.” Okay, putting aside the […]
Falling in Love, Again
I’ve been reveling in the forgotten joy of picking up a manuscript I set aside some time ago. There are moments of joy found in paragraphs and chapters that excite me again as I re-read before beginning the writing process again. And there are minutes of agony over words, sentences, and paragraphs that I now […]
Mining the Emotions of the Past
A couple of weeks ago I attended a reading and book signing by author Susanna Kearsley. She was promoting her new historical novel, A Desperate Fortune, which I enjoyed immensely. (Note: This is not a book review, only my thoughts on what makes Kearsley’s book work on all levels.) I find it fascinating to discover […]
Riding the Story Flow
Have you ever had the bulk of a new story drop into your consciousness while you teetered on the edge of sleep? It happens to me every once in a while, and that’s what I experienced a couple of nights ago. I wasn’t planning to start a new manuscript. I wasn’t even looking for a […]