Characters

I was planning on running the rest of the series on the important aspects of writing, but unfortunatly, with all the school stuff I’ve had to do, I haven’t had time to write the posts. Therefore, this will most likely be my last post until the end of November. But anyway, on with the post…

According to Google, a character is simply a “fictional character: an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction”. However, I would expand that definition to include any being or thing with human qualities.
Characters are important aspects in novels, because they’re what readers have to love. If the readers love your characters, they will read your book. To make readers love your characters, the characters must be believable.

When creating believable characters, the first thing you must do is consider what story you’re writing, and the purpose of your character. The character must be able to do what is required of them. They should be physically and mentally able to complete the task. However, do not make them perfect. Doing this will take away from the believability of the character. After all, no one is perfect. Everyone has flaws, and so must your characters. Having flaws can help with the plot – it can provide tension, which makes a better story.

You should get to know your characters. One way to do this is by have a character outline. There are heaps out there, but the one I use (and am very happy with) comes from here. Fill out all the details as well as you can (see an example here), and you’ll come to know your characters really well with time.

I’ve written a few blog posts about characters throughout the year. You can read a post I did a while ago about Mary Sues, the perfect character. If you specifically want to know about antagonists, check out Making Bad Guys Bad part one and part two. Another post I’ve done is on Outsiders, the character your reader can relate to.

Plot

In all books, there are several essential aspects which make the story. Those aspects are plot, characters, dialogue, style and setting. Over the course of November, I will be addressing those five aspects. Today, I will start with PLOT.

According to Aristotle, plot is the most important element of storytelling, and I have to agree. Without a plot, a story is nothing more than just a series of words set out to describe a series of events. Without a plot, there is no problem. No direction. No story.
As writers, we need to provide a plot, a problem, something to entertain the reader. A farmer checking on his farm is not a problem. However, a farmer checking on his farm, and finding some of his livestock missing, is.

A plot has four main stages, which together can form a pyramid or bell, depending on the image you look at.

Exposition/Beginning: The beginning of the plot, often sets up characters and setting. They are probably the most important part of the plot, as they have to, to be effective, do a number of things. Among a number of things, they should open with a character, they should open with action, and they should set the tone of the story. KM Weiland goes through this much better at her blog. Also, the Beginning is the first part the reader reads. The beginning is where the reader decides whether you’re a good writer… or a bad one.

Conflict/the Problem: This stage is essential to your work. The problem should be introduced. No conflict = no story. The tension should begin rising. There are several types of conflict:
Human v. Human – Protagonist v. the antagonist.
Human v. Society -  Protagonist tries to change the world. The protagonist is against the rest of the world.
Human v. Supernatural – The protagonist against a supernatural force/being. Think Dracula.
Human v. Technology: Protagonist is against a machine. I, Robot is a good example.

Climax: This is the part, right towards the end, where the action reaches it’s highest point. The climax is also the moment of highest tension and danger. The antagonist should be defeated by the victorious protagonist.

Denouement/Resolution/End: The end of the plot, the problem is solved and the goal is achieved. All loose ends should be resolved, unless deliberately left loose, perhaps for a sequel. Readers can become very frustrated if you leave loose ends. They feel cheated. They feel angry. They might not pick up your next novel. We don’t want that.

It’s important to have all those stages in your work for it to be complete. Have a good, exciting plot, and you’re on your way to writing the next best-seller.
Next time, I’ll look at creating realistic CHARACTERS.

October Noticeboard

Poseidon’s Trident:
Current Chapter in First Draft (Typed) Stage: 12/29
Current Chapter in Edit Stage: None

Daniel Fox:
Current Story in Rough Draft Stage: The Fox
Current Story in Edit Stage: None

I’ve decided that The Fox needs a re-write. Like, a MAJOR re-write. So I’ll be working on that, instead of TKAK. With PT, I cut a few chapters and combined two into one, so that changed my chapter count around.

Also, you may have noticed that the blog here has a new look. Like it? Along with the look, I also combined all the blog pages into one, CURRENTLY WRITING, with links from there to the pages. If you head over to the page on PT, I’ve changed the blurb around a bit. Click here to take a look.

Goals for October:

• Write everyday – Afraid not.

• Edit TF – Yes. Re-writes are now in order, thus putting TKAK on hold.

• Keep working on TKAK – No.

Goals for November:

• Finish my plans for the blog over Christmas

Looking at all the things I need to write, I’ve decided to put PT on hold for a week or two, so I can focus on some things for the blog over Christmas. Hopefully I can resume writing PT mid November.

In November, I’ll be running a series of posts about important aspects of a novel. Those aspects are plot, characters, dialogue and setting. I had planned to have all written by now, so it would be one less thing to do during my end of year exam block (last week in November). However, I’ve got one to complete.

How was your month, writing wise? Did you do well? What were your goals for October? November? Good luck NaNo participants!

National Novel Writing Month

As you all know, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is fast approaching, and shortly, thousands of writers will undertake the task to write 50,000+ words by midnight, November 30.

NaNoWriMo was first started by Chris Baty in San Francisco, 1999, and had only 21 participants. However, the project quickly expanded, attracting over 40,000 people in 2004! Now, NaNo is an international event for the writing community. NaNo have said that they considered changing NaNo to International Novel Writing Month, but InNoWriMo doesn’t sound as good. (However, I disagree, InNoWriMo sounds great in the ‘I’ in In rhymes with Wri.)

Approximately two thirds of participants manage to write the required words to ‘win’. If you want to ‘win’, and I’m sure you do, I have a little bit of last-minute-advice, before you start.

Write everyday: You’ve only got 30 days to write, so it’s definitely a good idea to write daily. If you write everyday, your journey will slightly easier, with only 1,666 word needed each day to pass. Keep in mind however, that the figure is still a lot! If you only don’t write everyday, maybe have every Saturday off, to catch up all those missed days, you’ll have to write 1,923 words instead.

Turn off your Inner Editor: If you let your little  Inner Editor out, he/she will quickly ruin your chances at succeeding in NaNo. Turn him/her off, you’ll find yourself writing much faster, as you wont have to stop to fix spelling and grammar errors. If you can’t turn him/her off, turn off the Spell Checker. Remember, NaNo is all about quantity, not quality. You can edit later.

The internet is your enemy: How much time can you waste on the internet? For me, a lot. Checking emails can lead to “I’ll just check Facebook”, then “I wonder if there are comments on my blog?” Then, next thing you know, you’ll have wasted an hour. Instead, don’t allow yourself on the internet. Turn it off. Don’t allow any temptation. If you need to Google something, make a not of it, and Google it later.

Try some ‘writing games’: There’s lots of writing games out there. Timed Writing, where you write as much as you can in a set time period; Writing Binge, where you spend your weekend writing as much as you can for one hour, take a break, then resume writing for an hour, take another break, and keep going… There are heaps of games out there, try them with a friend.
Use an outline: This may be a little late for some of you, but using an outline really does work. Instead of wasting time figuring out a problem, or deciding where the story goes next, you can write.

There is plenty of other tips out there, Google is full of them. But that’s a sample which should help you out. What tips do you have? Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? Did you win?

And to the NaNo participants, remember, HAVE FUN. That’s what NaNo is all about.

Now to you. Are you competing? What will you be working on?

I wish you the best of luck.

Making Goals When Writing

When writing, it’s a good idea to have a goal. Not a vague goal, like “I will write this novel”, or “I will edit my short story”. When you make goals, if you want them to be successful, there’s several things you need to do. Your goals have to be SMART.

S is for Specific: Don’t make your goals, vague, they have to be specific. Don’t say “I will edit”, be specific and say “I will edit my short story”.

M is for Measurable: Your goals have to be measurable for them to be successful. You  have to have something to show for it. Don’t say “I will read some of my books this month”, make the goal measurable. How many books do you want to read?

A is for Achievable: There’s no point in setting goals you can’t reach. If you can’t write 1,500 words each and every day, don’t set it as your goal. Instead, set it lower, so you can achieve your goal. Perhaps writing 250 words/day is better for you. Remember, it is better to go over your goal regularly, than to fail often.

R is for Realistic: Be honest with yourself, do you really have the time and commitment to finish the last 100,000 words by Christmas? If not, don’t set it as your goal.

T is for Time-framed: There has to be a time-frame in which you must complete your work. Don’t say “I will write the rough draft to my novel”, say “I will write the rough draft by June next year”.

Making Minor Characters Pop

I am extremely excited to introduce my first guest blogger, KM Weiland. KM Weiland is guest blogging here today, as part of her Blog Tour for her latest novel, Behold the Dawn, which was released October 1. It is my pleasure now to  introduce KM Weiland, and her guest post on Making Minor Characters Pop.

Minor characters are one of the most vital elements in any story, simply because the vast majority of your cast will necessarily be composed of minor characters. And yet minor characters are too often not taken full advantage of. Instead of grabbing the opportunity to use a minor character to bring a scene to life, to add verisimilitude to the setting, and to give the protagonist a worthy foil, we too often allow them to lay on page, flat and flaccid and boring. While writing my recently released medieval novel Behold the Dawn , I learned a lesson about minor characters that has changed the way I approach them.

Lady Eloise stormed her way onto the scene, as the wife of Lord Stephen of Essex, the man who would provide sanctuary to my hero’s beleaguered wife, Mairead. Eloise’s only necessary role in the story was to indicate Lord Stephen’s matrimonial state and, perhaps, give Mairead someone to converse with. She could so easily have become a vapid, two-dimensional talking head: a sweet, meek old woman in a wimple. But, thanks to a reminder from best-selling author James Scott Bell, such was not to be Eloise’s fate.

Minutes before sitting down to write Eloise’s introduction, I read Bell’s article “Second to None” (Writer’s Digest, June 2005), in which he reminded writers that “minor characters should add spice to your novel, not dull it down. Well-conceived minor characters add an extra spark that distinguishes the best fiction from everything else.” With his words ringing in my head, I approached Eloise’s scene from an entirely new vantage point. What could I do to bring this seemingly irrelevant character to life? How could I keep her from falling into the role of a stereotypical talking head? What would make her pop?

From there on out, Eloise (like all good characters) took over: “The door banged open again, and a silver-headed woman bustled into the room. Quick gray eyes took in the two visitors and landed with visible delight on Mairead. She bowed to the room at large and turned back to Annan. ‘Master Annan—delighted to see you, of course. I rather expected you to be dead by now.’”

Her unexpected and acerbic comments, her physical energy, and her unequivocal opinions made her jump off the page. She wasn’t a likable character; she forced her unwanted opinions on other characters too often for that. But she was a real character. Her foibles and her quirks were balanced by a stout moral core. Eloise did whatever she thought was right and hanged the consequences. The fact that she wasn’t always right only deepened her dimensions.

Like any well-rounded, three-dimensional personality, minor characters must have a healthy balance of good traits and bad traits. They must add to their scenes, instead of being so much dead weight. And—as I hope Eloise was able to do—good minor characters must be capable of bringing that extra spark of which James Scott Bell fortuitously reminded me. May his words remind you too.

About the Author: K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She is the author of A Man Called Outlaw and the recently released Behold the Dawn . She blogs at Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors and AuthorCulture.

Snip Snip

A couple of days ago, I took an estimate of how large my WIP would be once completed. I had 33 chapters, and had the assumption that each chapter would be 3000 words long exactly (of course, the  chapters would end up being larger than the assumption, but for the estimate, it would do). So I did the calculations, and came up with 102,000 words. Yikes!

Since then, I’ve been examining my WIP, looking for any chapter that can go. So far, I’ve managed to cut four chapters, which brings the estimate down to 87,000. A shame, because that meant cutting a scene I really liked. I tried to find a way for it to be needed, but, nope. I can’t use it even if I wanted to because of a few changes I made to the overall plot to fix up where the taken out chapters are.

What about you? What are your estimates for you WIP? Have you had to do this?

Chapter Lengths

Recently, I began to wonder about chapters, and how big they should be. I know that there is not proper limit for the amount of words you should write, but I’m still curious. I asked about this a while back, all the way back in March, and one commenter said the usual average word count for chapters was around the 3,000 word mark. Since then, I’ve always aimed for that.

Anyway, as I said, I recently began to ponder this again, and did some research. The answers all varied, but many sites did say around 2,000 – 3,000 words/chapter. Of course, this all depends on the genre you write. Fantasy, as I read, can be larger, around the 5,000 mark, while YA and MG are shorter, around 1,000.

Personally, I prefer shorter chapters, as I like to finish reading at the end of chapters. I cant stand reading chapters that stretch on for pages, it gets to the point where I skim over the words, trying to reach the end.

What about you? How large do you aim for your chapters to be? Or do you just write, not worrying about the size? And as a reader, do you have a preference for long/short chapters?

Making Bad Guys Bad Pt.2

Every books needs a evil character. A bad guy, a villain, an antagonist. An antagonist can make, or break, a story. Create a believable and evil character, and you’re on the way to having a great story. Create a pathetic, two-dimensional wimp, and your work will be put down faster than an elephant in an elevator. Last time, I talked about how to create an antagonist. Now, I want to talk about making them believable.

There are several questions you can ask yourself when creating the antagonist:

What does your antagonist want? What does he/she desire? What does she/he want? Answering these questions can lead to giving your antagonist a goal. Motivation to achieve this goal. And giving him/her motivation will lead to unlocking what drives them to win.

What are her/his strengths? Is he/she strong physically? Or is the antagonist intelligent? Does she/he have superpowers, or a supernatural talent?

What about weaknesses? Does your antagonist fear bugs? Blood? Heights? Flying? Weaknesses are important for antagonists, because after all, they are created to lose. Give them weaknesses, something the protagonist can use against them.

What are his/her motivations? Why does your antagonist want to be evil? Perhaps write up a timeline for your antagonist. Perhaps he tortures people because he was abused as a child.

Is your antagonist intimidating? No one will be scared of a short scrawny midget. How large is she/he? Many antagonists are big and scary. Your antagonist needs to be intimidating to frighten your protagonist.

What is her/his habits? All characters need habits, it makes them believable. Antagonists are no exception. Perhaps she twirls her hair around her finger. Maybe he taps his foot when he’s bored. What about always wiggling fingers?

That’s just a brief overview of making believable antagonists, and in fact, all characters in general.

September Noticeboard

Poseidon’s Trident:
Current Chapter in First Draft (Typed) Stage: 13/36
Current Chapter in Edit Stage: None

Daniel Fox:
Current Story in Rough Draft Stage: To Kill A Killer
Current Story in Edit Stage: The Fox

NPI was definitely a large help in writing, I finished  Chapter Eleven, which was a large chapter, and then wrote the next chapter in the next couple of days, before starting Chapter Thirteen
Also, I worked a bit on plans for that fantasy novel. I’ve come up with a bit more of a detailed plot.

Goals for September:

• Try to write at least every second day – Check. Wrote every single day.

• Edit TF – A little bit, but no real progress.

Goals for October:

• Write everyday
• Edit TF
• Keep working on TKAK

Coming up in October, I’ll be concluding the Making Bad Guys Bad series, with part two, on making them believable. Also, a post on chapter lengths and what I learnt as a result of MSFV 1000 word critique. I’m also excited to announce that KM Weiland will be doing a guest post in mid October. I’m excited, and look forward to having her stop over as part of her blog tour. Finally, I’ll be concluding the month with a post on creating goals in writing and some tips to winning NaNoWriMo.
If you’d like to do a guest post, email me, or check out a post I did earlier.

How was your month, writing wise? Did you do well? What were your goals for September, and what about next month?