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/

Bookmark This

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!

Bookmark This

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.

Bookmark This

Ginger Collins

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

Bookmark This

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.

Bookmark This

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/

---

My editor advised a detour from the novel to explore the backroads. She suggested I take background situations and build short stories around them. The result would be a better understanding of the characters, finished work for literary journals and contest submissions, and . . . a needed break from the tedium of the novel.

In the next six months I crafted over ten stories. Several pieces were flash fiction of between 250 & 1,000 words.  The others were in the 2,500 – 3,000 word range. They were sent to journals and contests, and because there was a variety of material, I had the ability to send out a new story if I received a positive rejection that turned down the submission but invited future work.

I went back to the novel with a renewed interest and fresh ideas about structure. Certain character traits came to light as I wrote the short pieces, leading me to approach the novel-length story from a different angle. It developed a beginning, middle, and end that made sense in under 90,000 words. I had a finished, polished manuscript within the year.

That’s the “writing life” part of the story. Now for the “marketing” part. After a few of the stories were accepted for publication, I added to my agent query, “Stories based on the lead characters have been published online and in anthologies,” giving credibility to my writing and my characters .

At a recent conference, an agent suggested that I post the unpublished stories on my website and then do promotion to drive readers to the site. She noted a recent client who did this. The traffic numbers helped to build a selling point for the publisher pitch, showing that readers were already familiar with the characters and would be inclined to buy the book for more of their story.

The first of my RITA & SYLVIE stories posted last month at www.gingerbcollins.com. It’s the initial step in a campaign that began as a detour and will hopefully serve as the path to agent representation and publication of my first novel.

BIO

Ginger B. Collins writes short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work appears online and has been published in Freckles to Wrinkles, Silver Boomers, and the newly released Scratch Anthology of Short Fiction. She recently completed her first novel. Read excerpts at www.gingerbcollins.com.

In her blog, OFF THE TOP OF MY RED HEAD, Ginger applies a past career in sales, marketing, and PR to her new role as author, sharing links and writer resources while exploring subjects like social media, agent search, and writer platforms. All writers are invited to follow the blog and share experiences. http://coppertopcollins.blogspot.com.

Ginger and her husband, Melvin, are avid sailors, and would be content to spend life onboard, cruising coastal waters and exploring land from the shoreline in. Until then, they winter in the Southeast and summer in Atlantic Canada.

Bookmark This

When I submitted my manuscript to my pre-editor at The Editorial Department for editing, I learned something I had never considered or expected. My narrator, Grace is unreliable–and that is a professional term. Apparently, writing in first person is difficult enough without adding the point of view of an ‘unreliable narrator’ on top of it.

To paraphrase the more than forty-five minute discussion I had with my pre-editor, an unreliable narrator is someone who cannot be relied upon to recall the true or best version of events. This can be for any number of reasons and will depend, of course, on your story. In my case, Grace is confused, somewhat incoherent, unaware of her surroundings and suffering from a wicked headache. Thus she cannot possibly be considered a reliable narrator–yet, there she is, filling us all in on her version of rather important events.

Being thrust into the mind of an unreliable narrator can be jarring for a reader. As such it is important to stabilize the reader to ensure that (s)he is not lost in the mind of the narrator and eventually trust the narrator’s version of events. OR, even if the reader never comes to trust the narrator’s version of events, (s)he can learn to trust her own instincts about what is happening because you the writer has grounded her and made her feel as if she can in fact trust her own instincts about what she is experiencing.

By doing so, you make it easier for the reader to believe in the story they are being told and in many cases, believe in and root for the character. Without that very important piece, your reader will not feel a connection to the story or the main character thus limiting her ability to fully engage with your book.

Remember, you know what you’re talking about, your narrator knows but you don’t want your readers scratching their heads. Below are some tips you can use to make your unreliable narration easier on your reader.

1. Let your readers know upfront that your protag is an unreliable narrator as early in the story as possible by making sure they know that not everything that comes from the person’s mouth is to be trusted. This creates a sense of trust between the author and the reader. Remember, your narrator may consider her/himself completely reliable.
2. Use creative methods to confirm or deny the unreliable’s accounting of what is happening for the reader when something is in question. This can be done using dialogue (other characters), epilogues, journal entries, flashbacks, flashforwards, etc. Sometimes simply describing a character’s physical response to the unreliable narrator can do the trick.
3. Whatever you do, don’t take the easy way out and say, “it was all a dream.”

Have fun with your unreliable narrator. Don’t be afraid to experiment with her/his POV.

Good luck!

www.georgiamcbridebooks.com

www.facebook.com/georgiamcbride

www.twitter.com/Georgia_McBride

Georgia used to produce websites for a living. Then she quit that job to follow her passion and manage rock bands and market music.

She is an avid music lover, a songwriter and singer. So, when she writes, music finds a way in her stories.

She did lot’s of freelance work feeling completely out of sorts and utterly without direction. So in August 2008–Praefatio was conceived and her official life as a young adult author began. Now, she writes urban fantasy/paranormal books for teenagers.

NOT OFFICIAL COVER

photo credit: Mariana Britto

Bookmark This

I write my novels with a partner – three with my husband and now two with a friend I have known for over 20 years. So it’s not surprising that the question most asked at my book signings is “how do you manage to write with someone else?”

First, let me say why I like to collaborate. The process of writing is intrinsically a lonely one. You have to sit down in front of a completely blank page (or computer screen) and conjure up characters who will, if you do your job right, come alive as if you’d literally given birth to them. The plot lines you create for these characters must be both imaginative and believable. That’s really hard. Being able to bounce ideas off a writing buddy is, for me, a way to expand my creativity – especially when I hit a blank wall on a plot point or some issue related to a character’s personality. It’s also a wonderful motivator. There is something about knowing you have to get words down on the page because your partner is waiting that’s a great kick in the pants. And best of all, when you are lucky enough to have your novel published and your publicist books you for speaking engagements on TV or radio appearances, there is someone to lean on should you find yourself tied up with butterflies just before going on.

Okay, so once you decide to develop a partnership, how does it work?

I have heard a few writers who collaborate liken a writing partnership to a marriage. And now that I have written with both my husband and a woman friend, I can say that that’s not a bad analogy, except for one thing – since my real life marriage of 38 years is, I believe. uniquely compatible, there were far fewer preliminary matters to deal with as there were with someone I didn’t know nearly as well. Joel (my husband) and I have practiced medicine together, written nonfiction medical articles and books together, gone to business school together and run a consulting business together. We’ve had plenty of experience working out division of labor issues, so we very naturally fell into what have become our specific roles as novelists (for example, he’s a better editor, I’m better at writing the first draft, he’s good at the story’s overview, I enjoy managing all the little details as the plot unfolds). I will admit that the first book was the hardest – we had only been married 12 years! There was some push and pull as to whose version of a scene was best. However, once we had that first book sold, we learned that the publisher’s editor takes her red pen to your prose anyway and often scenes we’d agreed on between ourselves required yet another rewrite anyway. Now the process is much smoother.

Because it’s been so easy with my husband, I assumed it would be equally easy with any writing partner. Not true. Although Linda and I had been colleagues and friends, it really isn’t the same as living with someone on a day-to-day basis for many years. Not only that, we were trying to write together long distance- Linda lives in LA, I live in Florida. The time difference as well as the miles between us added additional stress. Friendship is a good way to begin a writing partnership. but if you’re not careful, it can end it too. So here are a few things we wish we had discussed before we started our first book and which, I think in hindsight, would have avoided the various difficulties we encountered along the way.

It’s probably a good idea to have a written document with agreed upon items stipulated formally.  Think of it as the equivalent of a prenup – hopefully the relationship won’t break up, but if it does, you’ve clarified “who gets what” so that it doesn’t have to be acrimonious.

1. How will you share the money you make from the book? I recommend 50/50 unless it’s clear from the start that this isn’t an equal partnership. I am assuming that your novel’s copyright will be in both names.
2. How will you share any expenses that arise while you are writing (for example: new software for writing, web making, video, etc)?
3. How will you share marketing expenses above and beyond what your publisher may pay once the book is sold? These days except perhaps for the very top sellers, publishers expect authors to take on more of the marketing costs themselves
4. Who will have the final word on contract negotiations? This can be very tricky because you both want to sell your novel, but one of you may be more willing than the other to hold out for a better offer or want to negotiate better terms such as keeping certain ancillary rights. If you don’t agree to present a united front, it puts you both in a weaker bargaining position.
5. Agree that you will meet deadlines. That means finishing your assigned chapter or completing rewrites or edits when you say you will. This is a place where lots of partnerships go awry. And that’s why #6 and #7 are so critical
6. Agree that you will let your partner know if personal life issues are keeping you from meeting your obligations.
7. Agree to talk about problems. Here’s where the marriage analogy comes in. My husband and I agreed from day one that we would talk through our disagreements and that we would never go to bed angry. A writing partnership should have a similar agreement, That way you don’t let upsets simmer, so that you start resenting each other.

Finally:

1. Don’t forsake your friendship for your work relationship. Because Linda and I both had full time job and family responsibilities, we tended to communicate in work mode only, trying to get tasks related to our writing done in between the rest of our lives. Frankly it took my husband’s pointing this out to make me realize that we’d stopped talking about anything else. Now we try to make time to catch up on mutual friends and other non-writing related topics. It’s really helped to strengthen our friendship and our writing partnership. We ‘re now ready to start working on novel #3 in our new Sammy Greene thriller series.

BIO: Deborah Shlian is a physician, healthcare consultant and recruiter, as well as author of nonfiction and fiction (medical mystery thrillers). Novels co-written with her husband are: Double Illusion, Wednesday’s Child and Rabbit in the Moon. Rabbit in the Moon won this year’s Gold Medal for the Florida Book Award, the Silver Medal for ForeWord Magazine’s Mystery Book of the Year, an Indie Excellence Award and was named a National Best Books Award Finalist by USA Book News. Check all the Shlians’ writing on their website at hpttp://www.shlian.com

Novels co-written with Deborah’s friend and colleague, Linda Reid are: Dead Air which is the first in the new Sammy Greene thriller series to be released in December in hardback and eBook format and Devil Wind which is the second in the Sammy Greene series and will be released in early 2011. Check out their writing on the new website: http://www.sammygreene.com

Bookmark This

My new book, Quantum Earth, started off as many books do: as a dream. I was hearing a lot about the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. This intrigued me. I studied up on everything I could about it and found that the Mayans were the first to record time, and that time ended on the winter solstice in the year 2012. There are also other sources talking about the end of the world happening around the same time. The Hopi Prophesies speak of the Blue Star Kachina. There is talk about the poles shifting too, causing monumental natural disasters.

I set my book right in the middle of all this. I decided to create a team of metaphysical scientists who were studying this phenomena. They found that there were already tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, etcetera, that were off the charts compared to what had come before. It was like the Earth was preparing for its final death throes.

I created several very different characters on this team who each brought something fresh and new to the perspective. I created them to be able to argue out several points. The main thing they are trying to find out is if humans are somehow creating what is happening with their thoughts.

They are asking; do we create our own reality?

The two main characters, Hawk and Shauna, have a budding relationship, so there is some sexual tension involved. I love a good love story, and felt that would fit in nicely within the story. There are some pretty hot scenes in this book!

There is one character, Noah, who is a trance channeler. The team hosts large group sessions that aren’t quite what one would normally attend. His job, through his spirit guide Jackson, is to determine the mind-set of the people who have crossed over to find out if they were thinking the world was too far gone and needed to be wiped clean. I decided to make this purposely unclear, so there would still be tension in the story.

Of course there has to be a bad guy. I made mine particularly nasty. His name is Beckham, and he is the money behind the project. The twist here is that he also has a spirit guide who is evil. He had been one of Hitler’s top scientists during his latest past life.

When I was finished writing I put the manuscript away for several weeks. Then I went back to it and rewrote a lot of it. I read it over and over again. Then I submitted query letters to every publisher and agent who fit my work. I finally found two who wanted it. I made my choice and had a very good editor who helped me edit and polish until it was gleaming. We must have sent it back and forth ten times! I kept finding things that didn’t ring true.

In the end I was quite happy with it.

Julie Achterhoff is the mother of five, with one son still living at home. She has been writing on and off for many years, especially in the thriller genres. She enjoys reading others’ work, weaving, hiking, and spending a lot of time with her son, Sage. Julie lives on the North Coast of California in a small town called Arcata between the Redwoods and the Pacific Ocean. If you’re interested in obtaining a copy of Quantum Earth right now you can get free shipping. Go to http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com

Julie’s webpage is at http://www.julieachterhoff.com

Bookmark This