Writing | Guelph Write Now

Think you have no time to write? You’re right.

By Cindy on July 5, 2013

Welcome to Friday on the GWN blog! Today we have Lynn Cahoon talking about finding the time to write.

Here’s Lynn!

The problem isn’t in your schedule. The problem is with your thinking. Now before I break into the story about The Little Engine That Could and your eyes glaze over, let’s start over.

You have time to write. You just have to take it.

I can hear the defensive walls being built already and we’re only three paragraphs in to the blog. But truly, the first thing you have to do if you want to find the time to write, is write.

I was one of those people. You know the ones who come up to authors at signings and smugly say I’m going to write a book. Then they add the next word, and you know as the person walks away, it’s not going to happen. What’s the word? Someday.

Well, sometimes, someday never comes. I got slapped upside the head by fate in 2007. I had just moved across the country (to a flyover state as my son likes to call my new home). When I started a new job and became eligible for insurance, I scheduled my checkups. New dentist. New family doc. Mammogram. All checked off. I was feeling pretty healthy and pleased with myself. Then I was called back to do another mammogram and diagnosed with breast cancer. And my someday became a question.

So now I write. And I train people in drilling their days down to the basics so they can find time to write as well. Here’s a few of the tricks I use to get words on the page.

Set a consistent schedule. It doesn’t have to be every day. Except Stephen King writes every day. Just saying. Writing consistently keeps your story in your head, mulling, brewing. And 350 words a day is 10,000 words a month — 120,000 words a year or a full length novel in twelve months. Writing is a job. You need to train yourself to be able to create even when your muse has left the building. The magic comes in the work. Not before.

Just open the document. Sometimes I don’t want to write. I don’t know where the story is going. Those days, I tell myself all I have to do is open the document. As I read over the last few pages, I’ll see an error or a sentence that needs massaging. Before you know it, I’ve reached my daily word goal.

Set a weekly word count goal. Give yourself a goal that’s a stretch, but doable in the time you have. I like working a week at a time. Why? If I miss a day, I have six other days to make word count. Once you know what you can do in a week, you can plan out a schedule, so if you want to pitch a ‘complete’ manuscript at a conference, you’ll know when you have to start to have it finished in plenty of time to be confident in your pitch appointment.

Set an appointment with yourself. Look at your week, and figure out slots of time where you have time. It doesn’t have to be a two hours slot. Maybe it’s only thirty minutes. Or fifteen. Now that I’ve been writing a while, I can draft 1000 words in an hour. If you have no time now, you have to give up something else to make the time. Give up an hour of television a day for your dream. Get up thirty minute early to write. Write on your lunch hour instead of going out with your friends. What, you thought this would be easy? Sorry, you have to sacrifice something if you really want to write.

Finally, be honest with yourself about what you want. It’s okay to dream about writing a book someday. But if you don’t prioritize that dream into a goal that’s specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, and time based (SMART goal), it will always stay a dream. How bad do you want it?

So what’s your plan to carve out time to work on your dreams?

BIO – Lynn Cahoon is a contemporary romance author with a love of hot, sexy men, real and imagined. Her alpha heroes range from rogue witch hunters, modern cowboys, or hot doctors, sexy in scrubs. And her heroines all have one thing in common, their strong need for independence. Or at least that’s what they think they want. She blogs at her website www.lynncahoon.wordpress.com

Cindy here again.

Thanks so much for being here, Lynn. I needed this kick in the pants pep talk!

Happy writing.

Cindy

Excuse me – Where did you find that world?

By Cindy on July 3, 2013

Welcome to the GWN blog! Today we have David O Smith talking about one of my problem areas, world building.

Here’s David!

Fiction writers whose works take place in the here and now have it easy. They have a complete, ready-made world in which to set their stories. Those of us who write speculative fiction have extra problems. We not only have to write the story, we have to build a world in which to set it. A world that may be marginally different from the one we live in, or a world that might be totally removed from ours.

Simple, you say. Hie thee off to the nearest library and get yourself into some research. Find the nearest appropriate period in history and learn all about it. So, I’ve got Noggin Halfaxe bouncing around in my skull screaming “Write about me, write about me”. That name sounds like a Viking name so should I spend the next six months studying life in Viking times to give me some grounding for his world? Noggin’s gone off in a huff by then and will never get his story told. Not by me, at any rate.

And how much research can you do for something set in the future, or in somewhere totally different from this world? Anne McCaffery’s “Pern”, say, or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.

But you’ve still got to build that world. There will need to be a consistent, cohesive stage for Noggin to strut his stuff on. How do we do that? Ask questions of your characters, something all writers should be very good at. “Well, why the heck do they call you ‘Halfaxe’?”

We still have to answer those story questions, but there are others that we must ask, as well. Start from very basics – “What’s that axe made from, Noggin?”

Beware – world building can be addictive. Yes, another good excuse to do something other than writing – as if we needed one. It’s fascinating to settle down and draw up all the details of a world. I could spend a year or more, full time, creating the planet Noggin lives on, and masses of information about where it is in space, what its sun is like and so on. By that time, of course, poor Noggin has got fed up with waiting and stalked off to raid someone else’s brain, and my work’s wasted. If I put in that much detail most of it will be wasted anyway, because it’s not relevant to Noggin and his life.

Let me give you an example. In one novel I have in progress the world has two moons. One goes round the world in 10 days and the other in 40. It so happens that the world goes round its sun in 400 days (yes, all right, I chose figures to make it easy. You don’t have to make everything hard for yourself, you know). So their calendar divides the year into 10 circuits of one moon (which they call months – I wasn’t feeling very original that day) and that is subdivided into 4 periods of 10 days corresponding to the circuits of the other moon. They call these “Lights”. How long is a day you ask? Sunrise to sunset, and back again. That’s all you (and your characters) need to know.

See what I mean? Build those parts of the world that will affect the life of your characters, your story, but don’t waste time on things that don’t matter.

Noggin’s a sea raider. He spends part of his life sailing over the seas raiding other people’s homes. So the weather, ships and seafaring are going to be crucial things to know about in his world. For one quarter of his year the sun beats down from a cloudless sky, there is no wind and no rain. For another quarter there are violent storms, and the rain comes down in stair rods. For the other two quarters there are steady breezes, the sun is warm, but not blazing hot, and there is a certain amount of refreshing rain. So when will Noggin do his raiding? And how does he tell when the seasons are changing? Does he care if there’s a vast country on the other side of his world that is ruled by Amazons who make Ann Robinson look gentle, and polite, and have only one use for men? Not unless he gets blown there, at which point it becomes part of the story.

It needn’t all come from your brain, of course. If Noggin’s Gods are similar to those of the Vikings that were in this world then, yes, off to the library you go. Be prepared to do some tweaking. If it doesn’t fit, change it. After all, it’s your world. You are the great creator.

Don’t feel you have to do it all at once, tying young Noggin into a corner until you have his world all polished and sparkling new for him to go raiding. You can – but don’t be so drawn into creating his world that you never actually get round to his story. Or you can be like me, start telling the tale, and build the world around it as you go.

And above all – have fun!

Visit David’s Website: www.davidosmith.co.uk
Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BigBassDave

Cindy here again!

Great tips, David! Thanks for sharing your world building techniques with us.

Happy writing.

Cindy

What do you mean?

By Cindy on July 1, 2013

Welcome to the GWN blog and Happy Canada Day! Today is Canada’s 146th birthday. We’ve got Lynda Kaye Frazier talking about writing communities.

Here’s Lynda!

What do you mean I don’t know how to write?

When I decided to write a book, I did just that. I sat and wrote a book. Easy, right? That’s what I thought.

I had written 137,000 words in two months, I was so excited to write the words ‘The end’ that I sent it right out to friends to read. I felt accomplished, but my balloon burst pretty quickly after a few eye opening critiques. It didn’t take me long to realize that those two little words really meant the beginning. I had no idea where to go but I knew what I needed, help, and lots of it.

I stared at my story and was so lost. I didn’t want to box it up, start over. I worked so hard and my readers said they loved the story line, just not my inability to write. I had no direction on where to get help so I asked my critique partners and after a few weeks I had a list of online writing groups. I quickly researched and realized that there were so many things I needed help with, but I didn’t have a big savings account set aside for my workshops, and some of those sites were expensive. I was heartsick but knew there had to be some groups that were for the struggling writer, eager to learn. I polled a few of my yahoo groups and found Savvy Authors. It was the one that was recommended for a POV, grammar and punctuation class that quite a few of my critique partners said I needed. And yes, they were right. My grammar sucked. : )

I went to their site and found an amazing amount of useful information. They had workshops, seminars, online chats and even pitches with editors. I felt like it was Christmas and I just opened my big gift. They had so many workshops that I wanted to take so I joined the group and started to sign up. I have to say I was in heaven. I took classes, met new friends and formed a bond with this group that has helped me battle through every obstacle that got in my way as I fixed all the mistakes in my book. And let me tell you there were quite a few. My 137,000 words are now 86,742. It took me six months but my book, Rescued from the Dark, is now a published novel and I owe a lot of my success to the help I received at Savvy Authors.

Now for a little humor. I never realized I had to know how to write before I could write a book. I had no idea what POV meant and didn’t know whether I was writing in first or third person.

Just a little example of how inexperienced I was:

Now don’t laugh

I watched the mist clear as the sun came up. Walking through the streets of Dayton was eerie in the morning for me. He moved up the street as the hooded figure moved closer.

I stopped at the corner and waited as he moved closer. “What do you want?” His face was covered as he talked.

“I want you to stop interfering. Leave my family alone.” Because if you don’t leave us alone you will be the next to die.

I know, cringe, I did.

I have mixed in first person, third person, head hopping, telling instead of showing. I could go on, but you get the idea. To think, I had 27 chapters written like this. And you wondered why it took me six months to fix what I did wrong. I commend my instructors for their patience.

So If I were to give any advice to someone who was thinking about writing a book I would tell them to make sure they knew how to write and send them to the Savvy Authors site. It has everything they will need to make their first story one that others will enjoy reading and not cringe after the first page. : )

Bio: Lynda Kaye Frazier is an avid reader of romantic suspense and started her writing career with a dream. A cliche, but it’s true. She works full time at a Cardiology clinic, while writing her own novels at night. She grew up in Pennsylvania, but now lives in Arkansas where she enjoys the four seasons without a long, cold winter. She has five children and three grandchildren that she adores. Other than spending time with her family, her favorite things to do are writing, reading and listening to music, but her most favorite is going to the beach. Surf, sand and a good book, her stress relief.

Join the Savvy Authors admin and volunteers as we tour the blogosphere in anticipation of the launch of our improved and updated website. We are excited to share our love of Savvy, and all writing communities, with each of you during the summer months. Below is a list of stops we’ll be making – please feel free to stop by and say hello! (and definitely check out the new look of our site)

May 27th – Melinda B. Pierce on Author’s For Life http://authorsforlife.org/under-construction-by-melinda-pierce/

June 10th – Ella Gray on The Speculative Salon http://speculativesalon.blogspot.com/

June 12th – Elizabeth Gibson on Maggie’s Meanderings http://maggiemeandering.blogspot.com/

June 19th – Sharon Pickrel on Pen of the Dreamer http://calisarhose.com/chit-chat/

June 21st – Riley Darkes on Writing Secrets of Seven Scribes http://secretsof7scribes.wordpress.com/

June 25^th – Leslie Dow on A Writer’s Musings http://constancephillips.com/blog/

June 24th – Angel on The World in My Hands http://angel-leigh.com/blog/

June 28th – Marilyn Muniz on http://www.marilynmuniz.com/

July 1^st – Lynda K. Frazier on Guelph Write Now http://guelphwritenow.com/ <– You are here!!

Rescued From the Dark

She has no memory of their love…

Kidnapped by terrorists and sent into a drug-induced coma, FBI intern Mercy Kingsley awakes with no memory of her ordeal—or the intimate interlude that got her pregnant. Convinced her child was fathered by her ex-fiancé, she walks away from the only man she has ever loved, determined to make things work with her ex, a man the FBI suspects is implicated in her abduction.

He knows the truth, but no one will listen…

FBI undercover Agent Jason Michaels remembers what Mercy can’t and those memories are breaking his heart. Forced to keep his distance from his lover and their unborn child, Jason risks his life to protect Mercy from a cell of international terrorists who want the secrets locked in her memory and have vowed to get them, no matter the cost. Can Jason convince Mercy to trust him until she remembers their past, or will he lose her to a man who’ll trap her in a nightmare world of darkness from which there is no escape?

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BFYANMK
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rescued-from-the-dark-lynda-kaye-frazier/1114500674?ean=2940016369129

Cindy here again!

Thanks so much for being here, Lynda! I’m afraid to go back and look at the first book I wrote. I know it’s horrible and needs a lot of work. But this convinced me I can fix it, even if it does take me six months.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Engaging your reader

By Cindy on June 28, 2013

It’s Friday! Welcome to the GWN blog. Today we have Mary Marvella talking about engaging your reader.

Here’s Mary!

I gave my first ever workshop to a group of writers early in June. I did my first ever PowerPoint presentation. I do not play well with computers or other technical stuff, but I managed to create slides of participants’ beginnings with my comments and suggestions added. Most of the writers made the same mistakes. They summarized. They didn’t draw me in or make me care. When I explained they needed to create scenes so I could experience them with their characters, the writers seemed surprised.

When you have a story to tell you need to decide who is telling the story and how that character feels. Then you must show me how that character feels, hears, smells and tastes.

Example:

Billy was always in trouble. Telling.

When Billy wasn’t tying his daddy’s shoes laces together while he slept, he tormented the cats by tying bells around their necks. Showing some.

Billy crept up on his daddy sleeping in his recliner and snoring away. Daddy smells like cigarettes and sweat. As carefully as he could, Billy tied the stained tennis shoe laces, glancing up to make sure no one was watching him. His stomach did a funny dance until he finished. Still silent but laughing inside, he slipped around a corner and waited.

Do you want to know what happened? Not telling.

Even memoirs needed scenes.

Stories and nonfiction books must have take aways to make me want to read. If I can’t relate to the feelings of the characters or the author in some way, I will stop reading. I must feel there is a message for me somewhere in the pages, even with children’s stories, or especially in children’s stories.

As an editor, I need to feel something as I read. Let me into someone’s head or I’ll be bored. Engage me and I’ll read all night!

Check out Mary’s website: www.MaryMarvella.com
Mary blogs here: www.pinkfuzzyslipperwriters.blogspot.com

Cindy here again!

Thanks for being here, Mary! The third example was definitely more engaging.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Stories with spine

By Cindy on June 25, 2013

Welcome to the GWN blog! We’ve got a great post today from guest Jayne Barnard about stories with spine.

Here’s Jayne!

Any story, whether long or short, literary or genre, staged or sung or read aloud, has a plot. The plot, or the dramatic action, is composed not only of actual actions, but also the motives for those actions. Motives arise from inside characters; actions take place outside them, in locations. Organizing characters, actions, and motives into suitable locations, and then setting them in the highest-impact order, can seem confusing and overwhelming.

Think of the story as an animal: a hamster if it’s a flash fiction, a brontosaurus for a very long novel. What the shortest and longest of animals have in common is a spine, a series of vertebrae, through which the nerves flow as one continuous unit. In a story, the nerves are the through-lines: characters and questions that draw the reader along from beginning to end. The vertebrae are individual scenes in that longer story, protecting the through-lines while presenting the necessary actions and motivations to readers in a logical and entertaining order.

So what is a scene? At its most basic, a scene is action that takes place at one time, in one place, and moves the story along convincingly to the next plot element. It is, in effect, a single small story in a stream of small stories, each revealing an action, one or more motives, and something of the characters.

As a complete story in itself, a scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A vertebrae has a beginning (flanges), a middle (the smooth ring of thick bone), and an end (different flanges that interlock with the beginning of the next vertebrae). The story’s beginning flange is a reason for the characters to be at that place at that time. The action in a previous scene (or in off-page back story) brought these characters to this place at this time; the action in this scene will bring the same characters, or other ones, to a new place and/or time where a new scene will start.

In a beginning, some small action or line of dialogue raises a question in the reader’s mind, gives the characters a reason to interact with each other, and sets the scene rolling. The action might be as small as Character A ringing a doorbell. As over-used as this example is (much like answering the telephone or waking from sleep), it instantly raises two questions: what Character A is doing at this door, and who will answer the bell?

The middle of the scene advances and protects the core of the story. What grows the strong middle is conflict. Each character wants something, even if it is only to be left alone by another character. The conflict between their wants knits the scene together. Assume Character A wants answers to a question. Character B doesn’t want to give them. B evades or lies. A presses. B repeats or changes his earlier response. Sometimes one of them appears to be gaining, only to have a reversal occur that puts the other ahead.

The beauty and challenge of the middle is not to make it too easy, either for the characters or the reader. Keep the reader guessing. Entice them to use all they have learned about the characters and the core story up to this point, to try to figure out who will win this small struggle. The more the reader invests in an outcome, the stronger the middle will be.

The end is the payoff for the character’s – and the reader’s – efforts. Did A get his answer? Did the reader guess right, or wrong? Perhaps neither A nor B achieves their goal. That type of ending is the most frustrating for readers, but can be the most compelling. Use it too often, or too obviously, and the reader’s frustration will outweigh their engagement with the larger story. However it ends, there must be flanges to hook onto the next scene: new questions arising from the answers received, new places to go, new ideas to be incorporated or old ones eliminated.

At its simplest, a scene is action that takes place at one time, in one place, and moves the story along convincingly. At its most complex, a scene also sets a mood, reveals hidden aspects of character, delves deeper into the larger story’s central question, and has enough dramatic tension to draw the reader’s eyes forward almost without their conscious awareness. In theatre, the writer provides the dialogue and a few action cues; the rest is provided by actors, set designers, lighting and costume technicians. In prose, the writer provides all of the above. The intensity or apathy with which the point-of-view character notices his surroundings can incorporate all the work done by set and lighting on a stage; the clothing a character wears reveals much about them to the other characters and to the reader. Light, dark, sight, sound, scent, texture, and colour all help to evoke a mood, reveal a character, and enhance awareness of the central story question.

If you can build a single solid scene with a beginning, middle and end, you can write any length of story. Make each scene, each small story, as strong as it can possibly be, linking it to the one before and leading to the one following, and there is no limit to what you can achieve: flash fictions with a single strong vertebrae, short stories with four to ten, novellas and novels with as many as you need. They’re all built on the length and strength of the spine.

Photo credit: Cliff Erasmus

Calgary author Jayne Barnard has been writing award-winning short fiction for more than twenty years. Recent stories, such as the Bony Pete-winning “Each Canadian Son,” focus on mystery and suspense, often with a historical setting. A BA in Theatre and three summers writing and acting for children gave her a deep appreciation for the power and beauty possible in a single scene. Stringing many scenes together gave rise to “When the Bow Breaks,” a novel-length crime manuscript that was shortlisted for the Unhanged Arthur in Canada and is now shortlisted for the Debut Dagger in the UK. Like her Facebook page for a chance to win dagger-themed prizes. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jayne-Barnard-Author/466822683406124

Cindy here again!

Thanks for being here, Jayne. Great post. I’m going to have to go take a look at my scenes again.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Never give up

By Cindy on June 24, 2013

Welcome back to the GWN blog! We’ve got poet Jo Anne Myers here today talking about not giving up on your artistic talent.

Here’s Jo Anne!

For as long as I can remember, I have had an artistic flare-whether that be for writing, painting, sewing or drawing. I recall as a child how much I enjoyed drawing. The writing came later. My seventh grade English teacher was Mrs. Henderson-a young mother and wife. She gave us a writing assignment and after gifting me with an A+ told me I should consider writing as a career. She meant as a journalist. I did not take her advice to become a journalist (one of my many misgivings). My mind went toward other things as many young girls dream of-a husband, home, and family of my own. I put my love for writing and painting on hold for years. I unfortunately married a man who like my mother never encouraged me to be artistic. It was not until my children were grown and I no longer had a husband, that I went back to my first love-art. I got a late start, but always encouraged my children and others to partake of artistic endeavors. I now have four books under contract with Melange Books, and three publishing houses vying for my biography true crime novel, “The Crime of the Century.” So my words to you all, is that no matter what road you choose, never forget your passion, and always keep it close to heart. Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from enjoying your natural talents. You might need to put art on a temporary hold, but don’t ever give up on it.

Poetry Cover
My newly released poetry collection, “Poems About Life, Love, and Everything in Between” is a poetry collection that provides a glimpse into the heart, mind and soul, of its author. It is a heartwarming read, written with love and respect for others. Some poems were written in times of sorrow, other poems were written in times of joyous celebration. Life if like that.

“Poems About Life, Love, and Everything in Between,” is available at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/147837022x

My upcoming novels from Melange Books are:
“WICKED INTENTIONS” a paranormal/mystery anthology
“LOVES’, MYTHS’ AND MONSTERS’,” a fantasy anthology
“FLAGITIOUS,” a crime and paranormal novella collection

Other books soon available:

“THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY,” a biography true-crime
“TWISTED LOVE,” a true-crime anthology
A poem from Jo Anne:

SOMETHING EVIL STIRS

Something evil stirs in my town.
A growing unrest.
A defiant unease, a growing anxiety.
Moving ever so softly, like whispers on the wind.

This thing comes swiftly.
No warning-as silent as breath.
Drenched in malice, it nears.
A friend to chaos, sloth and death.

So quick-a malignant mass.
Leaving behind the useless and morally dead.
So forceful, that many become chaff.
Consuming everything within my town.

It fed well-as always.
Until the next time-devouring all.
Slipping into homes, like fog on the bay.
Youthful disenchantment suffocates all.

Beware the beast is red as fire.
A mass of hate and poison.
Our dictators battle the war with little success,
for the King and his court, squabble like school boys.

Only harmony will sooth the beast.
A legion of unity, to succeed is needed.
Something evil stirs.
I am ready-standing tall and strong.

I draw strength from within.
Honor rules my mind.
Courage stirs my desire to win.
For the beast is-procrastination.

About Jo Anne: Jo Anne hails from the famous Hocking Hills region of southeastern Ohio. She has worked in the blue-collar industry most of her life. Besides having several novels under her belt, she also canvass paints. When not busy with hobbies or working outside the home, she spends time with relatives, her dogs Jasmine and Scooter, and volunteers her time within the community. She is a member of the Hocking Hill’s Arts and Craftsmen Association, The Hocking County Historical Society and Museum, and the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center. She believes in family values and following your dreams.

Visit Jo Anne’s website: http://www.booksandpaintingsbyjoanne.com
Visit Jo Anne’s Blog: http://www.booksandpaintingsbyjoanne.com/page2

Cindy here again!

Great message, Jo Anne. It’s a reminder to me to get back to my painting as well. I miss it.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Writing convincing villains

By Cindy on June 21, 2013

Welcome back to the GWN blog! To end the week we’ve got Melanie Atkins here talking about creating convincing villains.

Here’s Melanie!

Thanks for hosting me today. I really appreciate the opportunity to share with you about some of my favorite characters: Villains.

Villains are characters we all love to hate. They raise our blood pressure and keep us on the edges of our seats. They can also make or break a story. When I hear the word villain, I think of evil, followed closely by vicious and cunning, and I immediately picture Hannibal Lector, the king of all villains, and Ralph Fiennes’ creepy, convoluted character in Red Dragon, a man whose utter brutality puts Jack the Ripper to shame. To me, those two signify the epitome of evil; they are both sick, twisted men with an inherent drive to kill — and in Lector’s case, to taste his victims’ flesh.

Of course, all villains aren’t psychopathic serial killers. Many are mob bosses, drug lords, lunatics, dirty cops, evil co-workers, ghosts, or even demons (in paranormal mysteries or suspense) …whatever works for each particular story. No matter the nature of the villain, however, his or her character must be just as deep and well-developed as that of the hero and/or heroine.

Important points to consider:

All characters have a history. Why does a psychopath kill? Did the mob boss takeover the “family” by force, or did he inherit his position? What single event shaped the villain’s life? Does he despise his mother because she locked him out of the house night after night so she could spend time with an endless stream of men? Did he watch his sister die? Or did he find his brother’s body after he overdosed on crack cocaine? One must know the answers to these questions and more before starting to write. Making a villain shallow and lifeless or using a caricature in his place can kill a good book.

Do your research. If your villain is a psychopath, make him believable. I highly recommend reading Roy Hazelwood’s Dark Dreams and The Evil that Men Do and Mind Hunter by John Douglas. If your villain is a mob boss, learn about the Mafia — but don’t impart too much information. You want to make your story real, but dropping in too much detail will slow the pace and bog down the plot. Keep it simple.

Villains may be inherently evil, but they still possess good traits. The serial killer stocking shelves at the local drug store might love dogs or enjoy watching flowers grow. The mob boss intent on taking over the hero’s business may also love opera. Or the drug lord importing cocaine and funneling it into a major city might be doing so in order to allow his wife to travel once they retire. Don’t forget to make your villain a complete person…it will deepen them and make their character much more interesting to the reader.

Evil characters also have principles. The best villains draw a line and refuse to cross it. A serial rapist in one of my books attacks women, but also states that he doesn’t do children. Another villain feels sorry for his captive and gives her water when she’s thirsty. His empathy for her grows even deeper once he learns she’s a rape victim like his sister, and he’s tempted to let her go. Still another kills to uphold his family’s honor and breaks down when forced to shoot his own brother. Villains are people with emotions…just like you and me. Make them real, and reap the benefits.

Looks can be deceptive. Evil often wears a pretty face — think Ted Bundy. The handsome, cheerful boy-next-door who mows lawns for extra money might also be a knife-toting, anger-filled serial rapist who stalks women late at night when the moon is full. Or the assistant chief of police could be using his job as cover while importing heroin into the country to sell to the very people he’s sworn to serve and protect. Or the smiling, perky do-gooder in the office down the hall who secretly covets your hero’s job might do anything to get it, including falsifying records and setting your hero up as the bad guy. These scenarios are intriguing and make the villains seem real.

Even evil men need a goal. Give your villain something for which to fight, such as a strong desire for notoriety or admiration, a need to right a wrong, either real or perceived, or the urge to gain a feeling of self-worth. He may seem to only be after money, but his need for it must go deep. Give him a good reason to kill, steal, rape, haunt, or stalk.

Villains must engage the hero and heroine in a battle of wills. He must be a worthy opponent who grows more cunning as the book progresses. In order to ratchet up the suspense, one must put good vs. evil in an escalating battle that results in the ultimate climax. A shootout, a fight to the death using hand-to-hand combat, or maybe even a frightening car chase filled with chills, danger, and excitement. You and I both know that good will prevail, but it’s important to keep the reader guessing.

Romantic suspense requires a happy ending. Make sure that good prevails and that the villain pays for his crimes — maybe even with his life. Be sure to avoid melodrama and make his demise believable. If he doesn’t die, send him to prison or make him suffer in some other awful way. Don’t let him simply disappear. You want to give the reader closure. (Unless, of course, you plan to write a sequel and decide to allow your villain to escape, like in Silence of the Lambs).

Keeping the above list in mind, write to your strengths and do whatever is necessary to keep the action moving and to make your story believable. If your serial killer has no soft edges, so be it. Not every person can be redeemed. Your story is just that: Your story.

Develop your characters, do your research, and create villains worthy of fighting your heroes and heroines — and you’ll have stories people will clamor to read. Remember our friend Hannibal Lector, the villain everyone loves to hate? The man is pure evil. Yet he makes that book all the more believable because he is so real. He’ll never be forgotten, and neither will your villains — if you do your homework before sitting down to write.

I did my best to make the psychotic villain in my latest single title release, Blood Bound, as creepy and realistic as possible. He’s a serial murderer with serious issues, mainly thanks to his not-so-loving mother.

Blurb:

BloodBoundCoverArt72dpi Fueled by grief after his fiancée is brutally murdered, Detective Sam Walker focuses on finding her killer — a calculating predator who binds books with human skin. Dani Barrington, the newest member of NOPD’s Victim and Witness Assistance Unit and a survivor of another frightening attack, helps him discover the terrifying link between the monster’s known victims. Despite his anguish, Sam is struck by Dani’s strength and determination, especially when her inquisitive nature makes her the killer’s next target. He must find a way to protect her or risk losing the one woman who can bring his dead heart back to life.

The book is available at the stores below and at many other online outlets:

Desert Breeze Publishing: http://bit.ly/YK0XZe
Amazon: http://amzn.to/11YpUFM
B & N: http://bit.ly/XuKnAj

Visit Melanie’s website: www.melanieatkins.com

Cindy here again!

Great tips, Melanie. The serial killer in my current WIP loves cats.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Resources to Help You Tap That Emotion

By Cindy on June 19, 2013

Welcome back to the GWN blog! Today’s post is from C. Hope Clark about one of the most important aspects of writing. Emotion.

Here’s Hope!

Your character is hiding, and the antagonist knows she’s hiding. He’s speaking to her, taunting her, trying to make her commit to revealing where she is. He’s standing here. She’s standing there. Now . . . how do you show the fear without her saying, “I am so afraid!”

Writers fight hard to demonstrate sincere, realistic, credible emotion in their writing. The type of emotion that makes one cry, scream, or cringe at the words on the page is not lightly written. Many writers miss the mark by not rewriting enough times, or miss the opportunity to really milk a scene by hurrying to reach their word count when slowing down, breathing deep and reaching way down inside themselves can make a good moment turn great in a story.

How do master writers master their displays of emotion into stories? Are they that in tune with their feelings? Are they that sensitive? Emotions initially emanate from an author’s heart, but the interpretation of that feeling into the best words isn’t as easy as it looks. That’s why writers today often fall back onto resource guides for hints on how to write emotion more keenly, precisely, or memorably.

As an author and a freelance writer, I’ve learned to use several emotional guidebooks to generate better beats, thoughts, or behaviors for my characters, stories, and features. Yes, my regular thesaurus could fill the bill, but the following guides make the job a bit easier, especially when you aren’t sure which word to look up.

The Emotional Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression – by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Written by two authors of mainly the young adult genre, The Emotional Thesaurus jumpstarts your efforts to nail the right emotion. Take the example above. The emotion is Fear. Flip to the page for Fear and you’ll find its definition, physical signals of fear, internal sensations of fear, mental reactions, cues of acute or long-term fear, and cues of suppressed fear. Using examples from The Emotional Thesaurus, under Fear, our protagonist can: have her hands turn clammy, gasp in pain, flinch at a noise, shake, get dizzy or blind rapidly. She senses things moving too quickly to process or has flawed reasoning. She could fight the fear with a smile, overreact with anger or reply in a joking manner. So many options for such an outstanding key moment!

Building Believable Characters – by Marc McCutcheon

Writer’s Digest Books released this guide over a dozen years ago, but it’s still a grand source of character revelation, used by thousands. It leads you how to develop your characters, to include a thorough questionnaire. However, the bulk of the book consists of a Character Thesaurus, with 35 pages assigned to Facial Expressions, Body and Vocal Language. Learn which words and mannerisms best depict a particular emotion. Let’s use Fear again, relating back to the example. Our protagonist can stare saucer-eyed, stare catatonically, turn ashen, twitch facial muscles, or sense a wave welling up from her belly. The wonderful part about this book is that you not only learn emotional triggers, but you also gain tips on describing dress, personality, face and body, dialect, homes and names to best represent your character.

Writer’s Guide to Character Traits – by Dr. Linda Edelstein

This guide tends to get into character descriptions, but its format lends itself to emotional study as well. Learn how characters can react and display their emotions when it comes to being criminal, being sexual, being an adult, being a child, facing hard decisions, entering love, reacting to sudden change, using verbal vs. nonverbal communication. See how your character would react to varied situations, or what would drive her to abnormal behavior.

Readers read stories for the emotional tug. The best plot and the most complex characters mean nothing without the reader feeling the words. A thesaurus is a must-have, of course, and serves your purpose most of the time, but the time will come when a synonym won’t do. You want phrasing, visuals, and reactions as well. That’s why you need an emotional reference guide at the ready. And, of course, be willing to mark them up and dog-ear the pages. These are guides that remain on your writing resource shelf for as long as you’re in this business to write a solid tale.

BIO:

C. Hope Clark is author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series (Lowcountry Bribe, 2012; Tidewater Murder, 2013; Palmetto Poison, 2014), published by Bell Bridge Books. She is also founder of FundsforWriters.com, selected by Writer’s Digest for its 101 Best Websites for Writers for the past 13 years. Her newsletters reach 40,000 readers each week. www.fundsforwriters.com / www.chopeclark.com

TWITTER – http://twitter.com/hopeclark
FACEBOOK – http://www.facebook.com/chopeclark
GOODREADS – http://www.goodreads.com/hopeclark
PINTEREST – http://www.pinterest.com/chopeclark

Cindy here again!

Great resources! Thanks so much for being here. Checked out your Twitter bio. My fiancé is a MENSA member too.

Happy writing!

Cindy

Gordon’s 50-Year-Long Bullfight

By Cindy on June 17, 2013

Hi everyone! Thanks for stopping by the GWN blog. Today Gordon Rothwell talks about the story that was fifty years in the making.

Here’s Gordon!

I have always been a fast writer. When I was a Creative Director and copywriter for various advertising agencies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley years ago I was asked to come up with ideas fast. To think on my feet. And try out ideas from every kind of angle.

I often got my best concepts standing in the shower, with hot water blasting the back of my neck. And I made certain to always keep a pad and pencil handy on a table next to my bed, just in case I came up with a winning idea my sub-conscious supplied when I was fast asleep.

But some ideas or stories take a long time to develop.

Take that bullfighting tale of mine, for instance.

the seventh bull cover art It’s called The Seventh Bull, and it was just recently introduced by MuseItUp Publishing in Canada. That idea took a long, slow time to happen.

I guess it all began back in 1940 when I was a little boy sitting mesmerized in a darkened movie theatre watching Tyrone Power, in a glittering suit of lights, facing down a raging bull with only a small red cape and a sword. The crowd in the movie shouted:

“Ole΄! Ole΄! Ole΄!” as Power taunted the beast and spun away like a ballet dancer.

That film was 20^th Century Fox’s Blood and Sand. Watching it really hooked me. And it led to my becoming a lifelong bullfight aficionado. Over the ensuing years, I kept developing my interest in bullfighting. I collected numerous works about it by such writers at Ernest Hemingway and Kenneth Tynan.

I stuffed plenty of cardboard boxes to the brim with magazine tear sheets about bullfighting, photographs, and articles like actual banderillas (those long wooden sticks with colorful paper ribbons and a barbed steel point).

Soon after my marriage in the mid-1950’s I was drafted into the American Army and sent to France. While on leave there my wife and I attended our first live bullfight in Barcelona. It turned out to be far more exciting “live” than the way it was portrayed in any film or a book. Images and thoughts about bullfighting stirred in my brain then, but nothing actually took solid shape.

It wasn’t until 1960 that something happened that got me to thinking seriously about writing a bullfight story. I was working in Los Angeles at North American Aviation, doing public relations brochures and articles on the Apollo Moon Mission Program. A fellow writer, who was a big bullfight fan, told me a major event was about to take place to the south in Tijuana.

Antonio Ordoñez, the number one matador in the world at that time, was going to make his first appearance outside of Spain. Ordoñez had been featured in a three-part article in LIFE Magazine written by Ernest Hemingway. The article told about a mano-a-mano duel between Ordoñez and Luis Dominguin, a darling of the press and Ava Gardner’s current beau.

A group of us from the aircraft factory went down to Tijuana. That experience proved to be surreal. Especially the partying at the local Sierra Motel. It offered some unforgettable sights. There were beautiful women in skin-tight toreador clothing and flat-brimmed gaucho hats clapping and dancing to flamenco music provided by a small mariachi band.

Laughing and chatting movie stars like Mike Connors of MANNIX on TV, Diane Baker and Cesar Romero sat at tables around a dance floor. And a smiling Gilbert Roland, with white sleeves rolled up and a leather sheath on one forearm, beguiled a legion of female fans with outrageous bullfight tales. Much of that dramatic scene made its way into my short story, The Seventh Bull, over fifty years later.

Writing is a funny process. Here I am, an advertising copywriter who made my career out of fast thinking and snappy headlines for over 20 years in the San Francisco Bay area, taking half a century to produce one exciting bullfight tale.

Go figure.

About The Seventh Bull:

Robert Dunne, a once respected journalist, is now a drunken hanger-on following a famous bullfighter on tour. Paco Garcia’s fans call him “The Matador Who Can’t Be Killed.” Robert hopes to get on the bestseller list with a book that will reveal the mystery of Paco’s ability to avoid “death in the afternoon. In Tijuana, Paco fires his beautiful agent, Dolores, despite her warnings. In a dramatic bullfight, Paco cheats death yet again and thrills the crowd. But at a party after the fight, the matador drunkenly falls off a high diving board and breaks his neck. Robert suspects foul play by the agent. When he confronts Dolores, she seduces him with promises of fame—but is he willing to pay the price?

About Gordon:

man and dog dreamer Gordon Rothwell was born in Seattle and got a BA in Journalism from the University of Washington. As an advertising copywriter—one of the original Mad Men— he wrote material for over 100 major firms in California, including PR for the Apollo lunar space program. He received numerous awards including a CLIO (the Oscar of advertising).

He’s also a sportswriter and screenwriter, and many of his screenplays have won and been finalists in the Motion Picture Academy’s Nicholl, Acclaim, Chesterfield, Hollywood Symposium, and FADE IN competitions. He’s published articles and stories in numerous men’s magazines as well as youth-oriented publications like BOY’S LIFE.

He enjoys the fanciful and macabre on screen and in books. Gordon now lives in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, surrounded by a loving family and one sweet pit bull named “Dreamer.” Mr. Rothwell’s blog address is http://olddognewtricksblog.wordpress.com. And he can be contacted as Gordon_Rothwell on Twitter.

Find his story here: Muse It Up, Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble.

Cindy here again!

Interesting story, Gordon. You have me beat with how long it’s taken to write a story. 🙂

Happy writing!

Cindy

What’s That Word Again?

By Cindy on June 13, 2013

Welcome to the GWN blog! Thanks for stopping by. We’ve got Michele Drier here today talking about homonyms.

Here’s Michele!

A few years ago, a friend of mine set out to read The Brothers Karamazov, a book she hadn’t touched since college, some thirty years ago. I was impressed—and to tell the truth, a little chagrined—because I’d never wanted to do that.

When I ran into her a couple of weeks later I asked her how the reading was going.

“I gave it up,” she said, “too many words!”

I suspect that people who try to learn English feel the same way—we just plain have too many words!

We’ve come by a lot of it through conquest. First the Celts were taken over by the Romans. Then the Romans ceded to the Angles and the Saxons. Then the Normans showed up, bringing an early French with them.

When England was empire-building, the language absorbed words from North American tribes and Hindi and Urdu and Swahili and from other places where the sun never set. The result was a vibrant, flexible and growing language that adopted words by the bushel basket.

Today, we have more words than any other language on earth. The Oxford Dictionaries list definitions for some 230,000 words, including derivatives, but in May 2011 the Global Language Monitor estimated that there were 1,010,650 words; the one-millionth being “web 2.0”.

Whether 230,000 words or one million words, it’s clear that we have boatloads of words at our disposal.

So where does that bring us? Why, to homophones!

Homophones are those words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings, and English is rife with them.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been noting the homophones that crop up newspapers, books, flyers, ads and casual writing such as emails.

I’ve seen:

“high heals”—one assumes that the writer meant tall shoes, not extraordinarily tall doctors;

“She sighted the reference”—I suppose she could have seen it, but I think the writer meant “cited” or it may have been “sited”;

“here, here”—used as an acclamation, the writer probably meant “hear, hear” not a geographic description;

“he peaked into the room”—he became the top? Or did he “peek” by quickly looking?

When I was a newspaper editor, I had one creative, inquisitive, wonderful reporter who was the Queen of the Homophones. Several times a week (weak), she’d create the most amazing word pictures. The things holding back the rivers were levys, and the city council leveed a new tax. (I also had a copy editor who thought the past tense of the verb “seek” was “Seeked”, as in the headline she wrote: “Fugitive Seeked by Police”. Not quite a homophone, but a lovely construction, all the same. Luckily, she never had to write a headline about the Sikh temple.)

I suspect that we have creeping homophones because of the English language According to Bill Gates. This is a syndrome we all fall into; relying on spell check, grammar check and autocorrect to proofread for us.

But anybody who’s ever looked at the site “Damn You Autocorrect,” should know that the computer uses probability theory, not linguistics or language usage, to complete a word. And though there may be many useful things that spell and grammar check picks up—beyond its annoying habit of marking every contraction and any use of the verb “to be”—there is no way it can correct for most homophones. “Take a bow,” meaning to acknowledge praise, is different from “Take a bough” meaning to take a tree branch, but either is a logical English statement.

There is comfort here. As a writer, I know that, for the nonce at least, I can’t be replaced by a computer. It’s my eye that will find the correct “write/right”, there/their”, “where/wear” or “here/hear”.

Even reading what I’ve written two or three times doesn’t always catch all the homophones, let along all the types, mispellings or wrong verb tense. (In the previous sentence, there are two typos not caught and one misspelling that was.) So read, read, read what you write and know that we, too, have too many words.

Maybe we can go visit the Brothers Karamazov by crossing the Bering Straight (one of my favorite headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle!).

Don’t get piqued when he peeks at you from the peak, just

Write on!

Michele Drier was born in Santa Cruz and is a fifth generation Californian. She’s lived and worked all over the state, calling both Southern and Northern California home. During her career in journalism—as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers—she won awards for producing investigative series.

Her mystery Edited for Death, called “Riveting and much recommended” by the Midwest Book Review is on Amazon and the second book in the Amy Hobbes Newspaper mysteries, Labeled for Death, will be published in June.

SNAP_4_BOX_SET Her paranormal romance series, SNAP: The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, is available in ebook, paperback and audible at ebook retailers. All have received “must read” reviews from the Paranormal Romance Guild. SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story and Danube: A Tale of Murder are available singly and in a boxed set at Amazon, B&N and Kobo. The fifth book, SNAP: Love for Blood rated 5 stars, is now out. She’s writing SNAP: Happily Ever After? for release in fall 2013 and a seventh book later in 2013.

Visit her website: http://www.micheledrier.com or facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/AuthorMicheleDrier or her Amazon author page, http://www.amazon.com/Michele-Drier/e/B005D2YC8G/

Cindy here (hear) again!

Loved this post, Michele. Errors like the ones you mention make cringe when I see them in newspapers and magazines. I shake my head when I see them in corporate emails. 🙂

Happy writing!

Cindy

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