Writing Tip Wednesday #3: Know Your Characters

If you want people to read your stories, having excellent characters is a must. It doesn't matter if they are as simple as Luke Skywalker from "Star Wars" or as complex as Frodo from "Lord of the Rings." Your reader needs to care about them, or your story is going to the trash can. There are several ways to create engaging characters and all of them involve developing them to the point where you can put them in any situation and know exactly what they will do. The easiest way is to do this is to create a character profile. Basically, you create a list of their physical and personality traits, starting from the basics such as their hair and eye color to advanced traits such as their deepest, darkest fears and desires (and trust me, the deeper and darker they are, the better, as long as they aren't simply there for shock value). I personally don't use this method because when I actually write my stories, the characters gain "free will", so to speak, and chuck most of my diligent research out the window. The hardest way to create engaging characters is to write the story out from start to finish and go back and study the character's traits. Then you pick the ones you like and use those as a foundation to build the character. I use this method sometimes, but while it works for short stories, it is not practical when it comes to novel-length tales. That's why I personally prefer to write several short scenes about the character first. Then I reread them, choose the most consistent traits displayed, and create a character profile. That way, I allow my characters to come to life without having to rein them in after they've run amok across a 250-page manuscript. Regardless of the method that you use, the key thing is that you get to know your character as well as possible. Through getting to know them, you will come to care about them, and will be excited to see what happens to them. If you, the author, are excited to see what happens to your characters, just imagine how excited your readers will be...

My New Calling...

Hello everyone!

I have some good news. After my skills in writing got me published, I explored a new avenue of creativity: music. I was shocked at how quickly I was able to adapt my talent to instruments and creating song lyrics. For that reason, I discovered my true calling: to be a Christian bluegrass artist! That's right. I'm trading in the pen and paper for the banjo and fiddle and going to Kentucky to start my music career. However, before I close this blog down to focus on my new calling in life, I would like for all of you to vote on my band's name from the following list:

The April Fool's Quartet

The "I got you good" Boys

And, last, but not least, the "I can't believe you fell for it" Banjo Orchestra!

Prank responsibly, my friends, and stick with what you love, as long as it's legal, ethical, and healthy!

Writing Tip Wednesday #2: Know Where You're Going

When I watched the trailer of the film "Rumble Fish" on Youtube, the Motorcycle Boy (played by a young Mickey Rourke), made a really profound statement: "If you're gonna lead people, you have to have somewhere to go." Sadly, although I really wished to view the film, I looked up some of the content on imdb.com and decided to pass on it, for reasons which I will explain later. That being said, the Motorcycle Boy's statement applies to writing just as much as leadership. If you want to write an excellent story, you need to know where you are going with it. The best way to do this is to make an outline. You don't necessarily need it during a first draft, but when you start revising, it becomes essential. Otherwise, you can wind up starting the story with how Drake went on a journey to the center of the earth to fight the Dragon of Tormented Souls and end with Natalie successfully completing her quest to discover alien cloning technology buried in the Arctic. You'll just have a bunch of interesting ideas thrown together which make no sense whatsoever.

An outline will not only help you stay on track, but will also save you time and energy in the process. For example, "AIR WARS" took me four years to write. However, the prequel I wrote to that, "Clan of the Sun", only took one. The difference? I knew the ending in advance. That simple decision to take a few minutes to figure out my destination saved me three years of my life! So now I always outline all of my novels.

There are many ways to outline. Some people only know the ending and try to work towards it, like I did with "Clan of the Sun." Others plan everything down to the last detail, describing the date and time, what the characters are wearing, even counting how many elves and Neptunians walked down the street during the scene. I lean more toward the middle. I write a 1-2 page paper with the beginning, middle, and end each summarized in 2-3 sentences. This is the most effective way for meto outline, because it gives me the flexibility to take the plot in different creative directions while giving me enough of a map to keep from getting lost in the Tangential Forest of Doom. You really just need to choose the method which is right for you.

Figure out where you are going with your story and what you are trying to achieve with it and you are on the path to creating a masterful tale.

Writing Tip Wednesday #1: Just Do It!

To quote J.R.R. Tolkien, "it's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish." In nothing is this more true than writing. You can have characters so real that you can reach out and touch them, a setting so vivid that you can not only walk, but run and dance around it, and a plot so riveting that it would fill every theatre in the U.S. if it were made into a film. However, if you don't have anything written down, then these are nothing but elaborate daydreams. So stop spacing out in front of your computer screen! Type it up! Don't worry about making mistakes right now. That's what proofreading and spellcheck is for. Just get it out, so that you can have clay to make a sculpture out of, paint to make a work of art out of, a jpeg with which to create art in Photoshop with. That's what a first draft is: the material with which you will make your masterpiece!

"To Remind You That I Love You" finished, Hiatus from Writing, T-Bag on Breakout Kings!

Yesterday, after a grueling ten drafts, I finally finished "To Remind You That I Love You" and submitted it to Mindflights magazine. It's my best written short story to date and I even managed to sneak in some allusions to Beowulf, one of my favorite tales from my college English classes. Like "Heart of Flesh" and "Daughter of the Seven Seas", it is a Nineveh Academy story. Although it's the first one that is not told from Cassandra's perspective, she still is the key character in the tale.

On a sad note, I need to take a temporary reprieve from writing. There are some arrangements in regard to my life goals which I need to make, and which will require all of my attention for the next few months. So I will not produce any more fiction until summer. It's rough, but sometimes you got to make sacrifices in order to get what you want.

I've also got hooked on a new series called "Breakout Kings." Ever since "Prison Break" ended, I've lost a lot of interest in modern television, which mostly features dull sitcoms like "King of Queens", ridiculously offensive cartoons like "Family Guy", or smut like "Entourage." However, "Breakout Kings" is awesome, and tonight the convict was none other than the dastardly Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, the archenemy of Michael Scofield on "Prison Break" and the most charismatic and entertaining character on the show. As I sat drinking a cocktail of cranberry juice and ginger ale, I was glued to my seat as I watched Ray and Charlie's team track T-Bag down after his third escape. There was a scene later in the hospital so touching that it almost made me cry (which I will not reveal due to spoilers) and another awesome scene with Lloyd and T-Bag at the end. In that scene, after spending the whole episode wanting to analyze T-Bag and his motives, Lloyd finally looks at him and says that the truth is very simple: "Some machines just come out of the factory broken. You are a broken machine." This echoes Alfred from "The Dark Knight" when, speaking to Batman about the Joker, he says "Some men just want to watch the world burn." In other words, that certain people are just evil for evil's sake, a truth that most of society doesn't want to face, but that we need to in order to deal with criminals properly.

What I would also love to see is for them to work Michael Scofield into the storyline somehow. A nigh impossible feat, considering that he is dead. However, maybe they could work him in through flashbacks from another character who joins the team to help capture the convicts. Hey, it could happen.

That's it for now. Until next time, stay posted.

"Her Black Prince" Third Draft Finished

Hello everyone!

I have finally finished my third draft of "Her Black Prince." The plot is getting underway and the characters are coming to life. I have experienced significant delays due to moving out of state, but now everything has settled down and I can get back on track with my writing.

I also discovered "The Outsiders" TV show on Youtube. It's really awesome. My only quibble is that Tim Shepard was turned into a Dallas Winston clone. In the books by S.E. Hinton, he was the leader of his own gang and much more calculating and even-tempered than Dallas. However, that's all it is, a quibble. The rest of the characters stayed true to the way they were portrayed in the books and the acting was pretty solid.

Anyway, I hope to finish "Her Black Prince", by this Saturday and start sending it out. Now that I am finally settled, that should be easy. I've added another short story to my queue, which will be after "Her Black Prince" and "Ten Thousand Suns", tentatively called "To Remind You That I Love You." It will be the first "Nineveh" short story that is not told from Cassandra's perspective and came out golden when I wrote it. I can't wait to finish the final draft.

That's all for now. Until next time, stay posted.

"Her Black Prince": Still in progress...

Currently, I am still working on "Her Black Prince." Due to all the running around during Christmas and New Year's Eve and Day, I didn't make as much progress on it as I wanted. Nonetheless, I did get to the point where I was able to introduce a new character into the story and that made me very happy.

That being said, I'm definitely going to have to write another draft or two before it is publishable. I did a total "data dump" in which I threw in far too much backstory than was necessary and will need to trim it down in the next draft. There's nothing wrong with including background information that will help a reader understand the story. In fact, for Sci-fi/Fantasy works, it is an absolute necessity. That being said, there comes a point where you are giving your story a serious case of TMI (Too Much Information). For example, if your story features two women named Arezu and Batul who are having a serious feud, it would help to know that it began because Batul made a move on Arezu's man. That being said, do we really need to know that the cobblestones of the city street had been painted blue with black tiger stripes six hours before Batul tried to drag Arezu's husband off to "a nighttime chat" by the crystal water fountain? I don't think so. As Professor Cook, my best English instructor in college, once said, "Be sure that you include everything that the reader HAS to know." By logical extension, that means leave out all the fluff.

That's it for now. Until next time, stay posted.