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Posts tagged ‘characters’

Sep 13

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Two tips to build characters and jumpstart your plot

How well do you know your characters? If you’re stuck or blocked in your writing, it may be a signal that you have more to discover.

Speaking at a workshop sponsored by the Nevada chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Susan Brown, author of “Hugging the Rock” and several other children’s books, said when she gets blocked, it helps to learn more about her characters. That in turn helps her raise the stakes of her story.

Brown suggested these writing exercises:

Tip 1: Write letters to your characters and then have them write back.

Through letters, Brown has learned interesting nuances about her characters that led to new plot twists. Read more

Sep 6

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Three ways to use word riffs

One of my favorite writer’s tools is to practice word riffs. To me, word riffing is like playing a musical instrument (of course, that’s where the term riffing comes from). I’m learning to play guitar and one of the things I like to do is randomly strum away, making up my own little songs (often sung to my cats and starring their names—they just love that).

First, some tips for word riffing:

  • Make it fun and playful. Don’t make it serious—if the right word doesn’t come this time, know that it will next time.
  • Use a timer and write fast without stopping. This helps keep me focused and to the point. It allows me to go deeper and find more gems. I set my timer for 5 to 7 minutes.
  • Let it all out—first, you have to dump the garbage to make room for the treasures. Think of decluttering your office space. Once you get rid of the clutter, everything seems to flow better, doesn’t it? It’s the same thing with your brain. Write down everything that comes to your mind—the dumb words, the clichés, etc. If you don’t, you’ll just be storing it to come out later.
  • You can use word riffing for a phrase as well as one single word. Though I find focusing on one word at a time easier and more fun! Read more

Aug 29

Getting inside your character’s mind

Recently, I read Jacki Lyden’s memoir again, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir. I don’t normally read memoirs more than once. But I wanted to re-experience her word riffs and stream of consciousness writing to see if I could find a way to use these tools to go deeper into the minds of my own characters.

Lyden tells the story of growing up and living with a mentally ill mother. Her parents divorced when she was young and, after her mother marries a doctor who turns out to be controlling and abusive, she begins to speak to God and believe that she is the Queen of Sheba.

The author writes the lines below in response to a letter from her mother, who says that she was really never mentally ill, and that her behavior was the result of the prescription drugs her doctor-husband gave her. Lyden writes:

“Never crazy. It never happened to you. Ant Trap Zap! It never happened to me. We’ll throw out those old pages and get some new ones at the K Mart. There is a life I’d like you to try, size six. We can always take it back if it doesn’t fit. You will be a housewife heroine, pushed into adversity by a demanding doctor-husband and prescription drugs, and I will be free forever from the taint of your insanity. Prescription drugs, I tell my friends confidently. Misdiagnosis. Miss Diagnosis. Clodhopper attendants, Nurse Ratched on the case. Dolores naked and chained in a pit. Lions and tigers and bears.” Read more

Aug 15

Buck, the movie: how your characters reflect you

Last night I saw the documentary Buck about horse whisperer Buck Brannaman. This movie is not just for horse lovers. It’s a touching story of hope and humanity—how one man overcame the pain and horrors of his early childhood and turned that experience, with the help of loving foster parents, into helping horses and their owners. Instead of repeating the cycle of abuse his father perpetrated on him, Buck found a way to transmute that pain into love, understanding, patience, and compassion.

Buck is a modern-day cowboy version of Gandhi.

The film shows Buck at work—his 40 weeks on the road each year traveling from town to town putting on horse clinics for the locals, showing them how to communicate with and handle their horses. The film shows us where Buck comes from—his harsh early years where he developed the survival skills and insights that eventually set his personal philosophy. We also get to see him working on the set of the movie the Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford.

What does this story have to do with writing? As writers, we’re constantly on the lookout for good characterization, setting, dialogue, etc. This movie has it all—but there was something else I learned about being a writer. Read more

Aug 10

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Create memorable characters instead of cardboard cutouts

As writers, we don’t want characters who are empty shells, cardboard cutouts. As young adult author Libba Bray says, “You don’t want characters to be blank slates filled in by the reader.”

Author of Beauty Queensand Going Bovine to name a few, Bray spoke at the 40th annual Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Aug. 5-8.

It’s hard to create a plot with interesting twists if your characters are boring and don’t react in interesting ways, she said. So how do you create compelling characters? Try these techniques: Read more

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