Writing Tips - 3

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My Background:
I’m an Author.
I have five full novels, an anthology of short stories and a collection of seven short stories published, plus a number of stories and articles published in magazines and one multi-author anthology. UK US
I work as a professional Editor for a small Indie Publishing House.
I have a few years’ experience in publishing.
I was Editor in Chief of a large online magazine (approx. 100,000 hits per month at its peak).
My second novel, Cruel and Unusual was entered for The Orange Prize For Fiction in 2012.
I’ve written screenplays for movies and at least one of my stories has been made into a film.
I have a page on IMDB.

I've been asked for the links to my books. If you click the green text in the background blurb above, you'll get to the links.

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Pictures either with permission or from Google free to use image search

Writing a book is easy...

I can tell you how I write a book. I can tell you how other people write their books, that’s easy, it’s researchable – anyone can find that information. I think the reason you’re reading this is because you want to learn how YOU write a book.

I’m going to try to help you with that.

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For a good book to be memorable, you need great characters.

Good characters are necessary too… but the great ones will elevate your work.

Think about it… bring to mind the last novel you read. What springs to mind first?

The scenery? Description of the settings can be awesome in itself, but is that what you think of when you remember a book with fondness?

The plot then? The story, the twists and turns… is that what you recall?

The dialogue? What was said in the story’s conversations… the stinging retorts, the information gleaned from those interactions between characters?

I’m betting none of those.

In every book you remember with fondness, every story you go back to time and time again, there is at least one character that you either love or love to hate.

Darius is the one character my readers love to hate. He’s been in every one of my Wolf books except Cruel and Unusual and when I mused about writing the Darius Diaries, my followers on other social media clamoured for it. I’ve not yet written that book… but I will, because Darius is the bad lad – the one that makes the story that little bit more succulent because he can be pure evil and we all like to see how he gets what’s coming to him.

To make your characters more real you need to know them inside and out, their every like and dislike, every mood and trigger. To help yourself, write a biography for that character and keep it to hand. Write one for every main character. Make sure they are different and will clash on things as well as connect.

Ask yourself questions about your characters:

When and where – born, live, died?, grew up, life-changing event happened, first love, first murder - if you answer those questions, you have the beginning of someone that you can play with, develop and form into someone you’d follow on their adventures.

Then you can think of other things like name, parents, wealth/lack of (rich, poor, middle), school and college – subjects they liked etc. – If you have all of those things, plus any more you can throw in there as you go, you’ll have the start of a rounded and deep character that you can then place into your story.

Then the fun begins.

What motivates your character? What is the ultimate goal, their aim? Revenge? Returning a favour? Finding something they lost?

You have the beginnings of what’s known as the Character Arc - the development of the character through the story. Get that right and the story will be almost guaranteed to be satisfactory, gratifying – perfect.

The character arc shows how the character changes – all characters change because of the effects of their journey. If you have no change, the character doesn’t learn anything, doesn’t develop and grow, then you can basically say you’ve wasted your time and that of all of your readers.

How did Harry Potter get from THIS...

...To THIS?

Think about characters you’ve read about and loved. Narnia for example – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy start off as naïve kids and by the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they have grown to be warrior kings and queens.

Where’s the fun in ending the book with: Peter was still an arrogant arse, Susan was still a snob, Edmund was still a snotty snitch and Lucy was still little more than a baby.

The writer wouldn’t be happy and the readers would be dissatisfied.

There’s always a struggle

Edmund wants Turkish Delight but Aslan stands in his way. The story became more than just Edmund in his quest to get that infinite mound of Turkish Delight. It became a story of the White Queen and what she wanted. Ultimately, it became a story of how four kids from war-torn England became historical heroes of a fantasy world, defeating the evil queen and helping the Emperor from across the Sea in his quest. What no-one seems to understand is, it’s actually the story of Jesus and the resurrection.

Think about that for a moment.

The story between the start and the finish is the interesting bit. Kids torn from their family, sent out to the countryside, find a wardrobe … Come back through the wardrobe in time for tea.

The action taking place in those … is what you want to read… isn’t it?

Hazel walked slowly towards the boundary of the wood. Her Wolfhound – Mika - was missing and had been gone all day. As she pulled her woollen wrap tighter round her shoulders her pace was slowing as she neared the trees.
She called out for him often "Mika! Mika!" Listening to hear the deep bark from him, she walked on.

“How do we travel, Anton?” Nichasin asked.
“We travel, as ever, as swiftly as is inhumanly possible, my boy, light and fast. We have been fortunate it seems, in your deception at Marseilles, we seem to have lost our pursuers, but I fear that cannot last, we must begin to move once more. Niall will join us a few miles hence. Gather money and food, we leave everything else here.

And so they made for the capital.

Want to know the machinations, plots, twists, other characters and their adventures that go on between those two excerpts?

I did… and so I wrote it.

The saying Life’s a journey, not a destination – the same with the ‘lives’ of your characters. Show their journey.

More tomorrow