Virtual Book Tour Launches
My virtual book tour for From Mountains of Ice launched yesterday with the premiere stop at the blog of friend and colleague, Paul Lima, a freelance writer who is an unstoppable force. You can read the interview at: http://paullima.com/blog/?p=810 By all means leave comments and feedback.
Paul has re-issued a book of his own with a fabulous new cover (if I do say so myself — I designed it), which I’m sure new and intermediate writers of fiction will find inspirational and filled with practical exercises.
Differences often become apparent as the characters come into conflict, attempt to resolve conflicts and move forward on their journey. These differences help the reader keep the characters separate in their minds. The differences also allow the reader to become engaged with characters as individuals or to feel conflicted over which character(s) to invest emotional energy in. If the reader cannot invest emotional energy in your characters, they will abandon your story.
Have characters started to raise their heads in your writing?If so, use the exercise below to try to develop your characters.
Character Exercise: Pick two characters you have created. Place your characters in the scenario below and have them interact. You will not use all the attributes the have; you may even discover things you don’t know about them. The point is to get to know your characters well and, in knowing them, make them credible and interesting when they appear in your writing.
The Scenario: Your characters are the only two people in an elevator when the power goes out. The elevator is stuck for about 20 minutes. What do they do, how do they react, what do they say (or not say) to each other?
Feeling claustrophobic? Use the elevator scenario to see where your characters take you. Then feel free to put them into different situations to see how they react and evolve. For instance, you can have them stranded on the top of a mountain. (How did they get there? Is it important?) Or have them meet in a bar. Or perhaps they are working out beside each other at the gym. Or put them in bed together…
Try them in scenes that make sense, based on who they are. However, also put them into scenes that are totally out of character, so to speak, in terms of where you would expect to find them.
Keep the scenario to two characters; work on creating two distinct characters—each with their own voice and their own quirks. See if you can take two characters through a situation to a climactic moment.
Speaking of voice, try having them talk with no narrative interruption. Use dashes to distinguish changes in vocabulary, but don’t use any “he said” or “she said” and don’t describe them in any way or describe any actions they might be taken. It would go something like this:- Oh God, I don’t believe it. I hope it’s only temporary. I’ve got to get to the ninth floor by noon.- I ride these elevators every day; this always happens.- It happens every day?- No, but often… It never lasts more than a minute. I can see by my Blackberry that it’s 11:55. You should be fine.- Can you put that in writing for me?- No, but I can email it to you…
(re)Discover the Joy of Creative Writing contains dozens of other creative writing exercises that will help you kick-start your creative writing and keep you going.