It doesn’t matter if you have the most unique and interesting story on the planet if your readers can’t connect with your characters. Think of the books you love most; the ones you gently stroke as you walk past your bookshelf. As I write this, one book in particular comes to mind – I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb. When I finished reading this rather lengthy novel I felt as though I had lost a good friend. I lied awake missing him like he had just gone off to war and I might never see him again.

The character I’m referring to is a middle-aged man with anger issues and I’m… well, none of those things. It was the realness of this character; the raw truth of his story and the often brutally honest, sometimes vulgar soaked thoughts that brought his story to life and into my world, permanently etched into my memory. This effect is a major goal, but not one that’s always achieved so easily.

When I’m having trouble getting into the minds of my characters or struggling to picture them in my story, I go people watching. This is one of the most fun and enlightening writing exercises you can do. If you’re just starting out go anywhere, a coffee shop, a park or just take a ride on the bus. If you already have a character outline think of the places your character would go and the type of people they would associate with and go to those places, watch those people.

Wherever I go I notice little things about people that can lift characters off the page. I used to take the subway to work and somehow always ended up a few seats behind this guy with a buzzed haircut who always kept a short pencil behind his ear. He never carried anything with him except a black lunchbox and once or twice a trip he would take the pencil from behind his ear and twirl it between his fingers then put it right back. Every day I would try to figure out what this guy did for a living – I was intrigued. What an odd character I would think.

There are people who dance as they walk; the ones you always assume to be listening to music, but guess what – lots of them aren’t! Some people wear spandex when it’s obvious they’ve never worked out a day in their life; some feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to let a pregnant woman stand while they sit comfortably in handicapped seating. Some shake their foot out of nervousness while others read books with covers on them so no one can see what they’re reading (and yes this drives me crazy because I always want to know what people are reading!).

Sometimes a simple hand gesture or tattoo on someone’s shoulder can spark a whole new story idea or create a character that your story is missing.

I just read an interview with Jennifer Aniston in the newest issue of Elle and she says when she thinks about a character she thinks about the shoes. “What kind would she wear? How would she walk in them? If I’m going to put on a dress for a role – I don’t care if it’s the hardest dress to put on – I have to put the shoes on first”, she said.

This can be a great place to start with people watching. Find your character’s shoes and then look up to find your character.

Everywhere you go there will be interesting people in varying shapes, sizes and personalities, and by simply sitting back and watching sometimes, you can give your characters those true human elements that make people feel like they know them, relate to them and miss them once they’re gone.

Shelby Rachel

Shelby graduated with a degree in Media Studies and a diploma in Journalism from University of Guelph-Humber. She was trained in broadcast, radio and print media, and completed her internship as an Editorial Assistant at Outpost Magazine in Toronto.

As an Editorial Assistant she was responsible for copyediting, fact-checking, rewriting and writing small articles. Shelby had a number of articles published in Outpost and once her internship was finished she stayed on as a freelancer for a few issues.

She has taken on freelancing as a fulltime career and loves what she does more than she ever thought possible. The majority of her work has been ghostwriting blogs and articles for companies both small and large for the purpose of driving traffic to their business websites and expanding their clientele.

http://shelbyrachel.com/

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By Tamesha S. Hawkins

Writing is breath…

Catharsis wrapped in self-reliance and possibility

Write because it doesn’t make since not to

It is adjuvant in the development in personhood

Without the written word

The body lies on a bed of discontentment

Rigor mortis in thoughts

Blood siphoned

The ink that kept everything flowing

Without the lingual quill

Nothing moves forward

Writing is breath…

Because when you give a girl a pen

You make an honest woman out of her

Breathing honesty with every page

Creating the mogul, maverick, the majestic

Many solutions

Many powers

Many things needed to keep consciousness spinning on its axis

Writing is breath…

The pulse for the beating heart

The tissues used to coddle muscles

Swaddle the capillaries not to be vain

Throbbing with creativity

Writing births new ideas

New beginnings

New essences from scratch

Without it

Nothing moves forward!

Tamesha S. Hawkins is an author, actor, vocalist and PBGP Slam Champion for 2009. She has written “Sugar Lumps and Black Eye Blues” (2007), “Confectionately Yours” (2009) and is the creator of “Cipher This” for PMZ Magazine!. A lover of the arts, Tamesha will continue to expand her knowledge by producing her first play “Beginning with Molasses” then she will be traveling to Japan to perform poetry. For more information: www.myspace.com/tameshashawkins or become a FAN on Facebook!

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Frank Fiore – Novelist & Screenwriter

In days of old when authors had to do research on their novel, their research options were not only limited but geographically challenged. You either had to go to the library or actually visit the places you wrote about.

Then came along documentaries and videos that an author could find that could give him or her a better idea of location for their novel or even some background information.

Today we have the Internet.

Does that eliminate the library and the need to visit an actual location? We have at our disposal Google, MapQuest, Google Earth, Google docs, first person accounts of a place, event or situation through blogs and articles – and a gaggle of other resources available on the World Wide Web.

So which resources do you use?

Frank Fiore is a bestselling author with more than 50,000 copies of his non-fiction books in print. Frank’s writing experience also includes guest columns on social commentary and future trends published in the Arizona Republic and the Tribune papers in the metro Phoenix area. Frank has a B.A. in Liberal Arts and General Systems Theory from Stockton State College and a Masters Degree in Education at the University of Phoenix. He and his wife of 30 years have one son. They live in Paradise Valley, AZ.

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From my spot on Cape Breton Island, I waited for the worst, but Hurricane Bill didn’t deliver. He kept his big guns offshore, and delivered only rain and wind gusts that never reached more than the tree-bending stage. But, while Bill was a non-event weather-wise, he did wonders for my writing. The previous day was spent preparing for a power outage, which meant clearing the decks of laundry and dishes, and finishing all internet tasks. I was ready to be cut off from humanity. When it didn’t happen, I seized the opportunity.
I described the storm. I described my feelings of anticipation, knowing I would be alone in the house and maybe stranded without power. I described my letdown when it was over, and my excitement when I discovered it was now a “free day” with nothing to do but write.
Then, I took the main character from my novel in progress and did the same thing. Since Ellie is a 16 year old girl who just lost her mother, and is saddled with a father who lost all their savings in the market and is more concerned with his loss than her loss, it allowed me to explore her feelings –and the realization that she was pretty much alone in the world. Experiencing Hurricane Bill through her eyes I unearthed her deepest emotions. Writing in the moment showed me that she’s sad, she’s angry, she’s scared, and way down deep she’s even a little impressed by her resourcefulness and good judgment in the face of an emergency.
Thanks Bill. Thanks for not sending my lawn chair cushions into the next county, for not crashing any trees into power lines, and for giving me a day to learn such valuable information about Ellie.

Ginger Collins

http://coppertopcollins.blogspot.com
www.gingerbcollins.com

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Liza Carens Salerno

In a quest to self-educate, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott, sits on my bedside table.  It is a library copy, and I admit here in print that I have bent down at least five page corners containing sentences or whole paragraphs I want to reread and remember.  A casualty of the 8:30-5:00 schedule is the lack of an endless supply of yellow sticky notes with which to mark significant pages; but I get some credit for not using a highlighter, right?  By the way, the book is stunning; for me because I’m trying to write, but for everyone, because the author is funny, self deprecating, brutally honest, and she spells it all out in language that makes you want to holler, “Exactly!”

So anyway, I’m plowing along and marking these inspirational comments because they are real and they teach and they guide, and then I turn to page 193 and read a quote that stops me dead.  The author didn’t write it.  She, like everyone who writes, once struggled (although she’ll tell you that it’s always a struggle), and before she was published, Lamott submitted a short story to “an important magazine editor.” Loving and kind soul that he must have been, he sent her back a note that said: “You have made the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting.”

Whoa.  Big swallow.  My blog—multiple posts between February 6th and now—all about me.  I am experiencing, I believe, a minor crisis of faith here, so please bear with me.

You know–I had no conscious plan in February to start writing a blog.  It poured out of me as a result of the trauma from the elimination of my position the previous day, and the first essay made me feel whole and slightly accomplished and in a strange way relieved; like discovering the last portion of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, stuck way under the couch with the dust bunnies during a good spring cleaning–and I’ve kept on.

I look back at some of my entries and think, “Yuck,” or “Does anyone really care?”  To my credit, sometimes I think, “Wow, I wrote that?”  In some regard though, it almost doesn’t matter, because I am so completely in love with the effort, the unexpected words that bubble up out of me day after day.  There are mornings that I approach the computer with nothing less than trepidation, because I’m not sure there is anything left in me to write.  But so far, something always spills out of my fingers and when I’m done I think; “At this moment anyway, this is me on the page as best as I can get it, as honestly, and clearly as I know how to write.”  I’m not writing what I think my three readers want to hear…I’m just reporting if you will, the things that apparently swirl down there in my Swiss cheese of a soul.

Of course, I hope in some regard that this practice is helping me to improve at my craft, but hear this.  I’m simply grateful that I am doing it.  Lamott comments on that horrific response from the editor with the following: “Now needless to say, I was mortified.  But the note ended up only helping me because it didn’t stop me.”  Turning to another folded corner I read this:  “Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.  The thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part.”   I’m with her.   Of course, results matter; but even harsh criticism is worth it because the thinking, the imagining, the creating, the formulating, the editing, the revising, the massaging–even the hair pulling, it’s this giving birth to writing that the author so succinctly points out, is “the best part.”  So I hope you like me, but even if you don’t–taking a bent page out of Anne Lamott’s book, I’m not stopping either.

Liza Carens Salerno is a freelance writer and former corporate professional whose position was eliminated in an economic downsizing.  Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Adoptive Families Magazine and Writer’sDigest.com.  She has spent the last several months focusing on her writing and blogs at www.middlepassages-lcs.blogspot.com.

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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