Naming Convention

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Ely0604

How do you name your characters?

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It is a question I have seen quite a few times, so I’ve decided to share my process and hopefully get a few tips from you in return.

Some characters may come to you fully developed and knowing exactly who they are, name and all, simply looking for a voice to tell their story. For those characters that are waiting to be born and molded, naming them can be as complex and intimate as naming a child. In essence, these characters are your children, they are your brainchildren. Here are a few methods that I use when naming characters:

1. I know you: Sometimes characters can remind us of people that we know; be it their physical description or personality traits. When this happens, I play on the name or nickname of the real person that I know. For example, if a character reminds me of my neighbor “William”, I might name them “Bill” or even “Liam”.

2. You mean…: If a certain character trait stands out to me, I might surf baby name websites looking for names that fit those traits. If my character is the leader of a group in the story, I might name them Aleph, Fallon, or Harlod depending on their gender and which one “speaks” to me most. A more obvious and literal example of this is the seven dwarves from Snow White.

Dopey

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3. You look like: There are times when I can see the character’s “image” clearly in my head. When I get a sense of things like nationality, complexion, eye color and/or stature, I might do an image search online for actors/actresses or models that fit the mold. If I find someone that undeniably resembles the image I have in my head, I will either use that person’s first name or play on the name the same way I do in #1 above.

4. Randomize me: When all else fails, I will use Scrivener’s name generator. It is a great tool that allows you to narrow the results based on things like gender or nationality. You can also choose whether you want only first names, surnames or a combination of the two. It even gives you the option of using alliteration or setting the obscurity level. Do you want a basic name or something off the wall that fits perfectly in a sci-fi novel? If I am looking for a full name (first and last) I tend to mix and match the results rather than using a name exactly as generated.

What are some methods you use to name your characters? Are your methods similar to mine or do you have a few tricks of your own?

My Weight and Me

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Ely0604

Oh my goodness, is it Wednesday already? With so much going on, I nearly forgot to post this week’s blog. While I haven’t been working on the edit like I should be (I know, I know, shame on me), I have been writing everyday. So, rather than blathering on or slapping something together haphazardly, I’ll share with you a new piece that I wrote just yesterday.

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This tale is not a love story

It’s the ongoing saga of my weight and me

My weight and I, we go way back

We fuss and we fight but not matter what,

We stick together, through thick and thin

We have our ups and our downs,

But my weight, she’ll never leave me

No, really, I can’t get rid of her

I think she’s stalking me

I’m telling you, she’s crazy

I’ve tried everything I can think of

But she’s hard to shake

Diet and exercise,

Yeah that’s all well and good,

But one wrong move

And she’s all over me again

She’s a tricky little thing too

I caught her hiding in my spare tire

So I girded myself, ready to deflate it,

But when I wasn’t looking

She hopped into my trunk

Where she stayed out of sight

Until one day I noticed,

My jeans were rather tight

Hold on a second,

This isn’t so bad

She’s starting to compliment me

So how can I stay mad

Now my weight and me,

We’re on better terms

I’m still not too happy with her

And I’ll keep her in my sights

But for now she’s alright

So long as she’s got my back

The Trouble With Vampires

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Ely0604

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You know that feeling you get after a good run, where you struggle to catch your breath? How about when something scares you so much you feel like your heart is going to beat right out of your chest? Changes in breathing pattern or heart rate are great ways to convey what your character is experiencing without spelling it out in detail for the reader. The trouble with vampires, they don’t breath or have a heartbeat.

I’ve written before about “writing what you know“. What I know, is that feeling when you see someone special and it makes your heart flutter. What I know, is how a kiss or a touch can take your breath away. What I know, is what it feels like to be so angry you need to take deep, calming breaths to slow down your pounding heart. When I’m writing, my first instinct is to make my character sigh, gasp, bestill her beating heart, but then I remember, she’s a 200 year old vampire. Everything I know is completely irrelevant to her. But does that mean I should scrap everything I’ve worked on so far and stick to writing what I know? Absolutely not! After all, what is fiction, if not the imaginings of an author and our imaginations can take us to places we have never been before.

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Anytime I run into this issue, which is quite often, I need to delve deeper into my memory. I need to remember beyond the shortness of breath or the increase in heart rate that are so dominant. I need to think back to the other queues my body offered when I was angry, excited, in love, etc… Among these queues are the butterflies in my stomach, the stiffening of my muscles, the flushing of my cheeks. But wait, flushed cheeks are caused by a blood rush and again, not relevant to vampires. So deeper still, I must dive.

My hope, is that in doing this exercise, I will find a way to connect with my readers on an even deeper level. It forces me to go beyond the quick and easy. I find myself analyzing real life situations as they are happening or directly after so that I can remember every nuance and incorporate it into my writing. It’s forcing me to remember feelings that I haven’t felt in a while and reminding me that, unlike my main character, I am actually alive.

What Type of Writer Are You?

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Ely0604

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Everyone has their own reasons for writing. Some people use writing as a way to purge their minds of all the thoughts constantly running through their heads. Some do it to fight for a cause. And some are in it strictly for the money.

The Ugly Side of Writing offers a look at the six types of writers and the famous authors that fall into these categories. One person can fall into multiple categories. I, myself, feel that I fall into “The Weird Recluse” category. That’s not to say that I think I am a literary genius, but this is the one that I can actually identify with; locking myself away and writing in seclusion is how I work best.

I envy “The Space Cadet”, the writer that can journey into a fantastical world and transport their readers there along with them. My own writing is so grounded in reality that I find it difficult to create completely new worlds or languages. How I would love to create something as wonderfully, magical as The Princess Bride or something out of this world like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I just don’t think I have that in me.

While it would be nice to be able to make a living doing something that I enjoy, I know that I could never be “The Greasy Palm”. Despite the fact that I spend my days earning a living by working in finance, it is not something that motivates me to write. I’m not a networker, people person or schmoozer.

“The Ray of Sunshine”, seems to me, to be a mix of “The Space Cadet” and “The Greasy Palm”; a perfect balance of creativity and business. This is the marketable writer, the one that can deliver not only on the writing, but on the business of writing.

“The Angry Young Man/Woman” is passionate. They find something they believe in and use the written word to fight for that belief. Like me, their writing is based in reality. The reason I don’t believe I fit into this category is that my writing is not trying to create awareness of a cause. I am not trying to open anyone’s eyes to the world around them. In fact, I try to do the opposite. I try to offer a world that the reader can escape to, however non fantastical it may be.

“The Bitter Failure” can likely start out in any of the other categories. Writing takes perseverance. There will be many more no’s than yeses along the way and not everyone that aspires to be an author can handle the rejection that comes with sending their work out into the world. This kind of rejection can easily break a person’s spirit, causing them to become bitter and angry.

What type of writer are you?

The Dam Has Finally Burst

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Ely0604

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A few months ago, I started to notice that I was becoming numb. I don’t mean physically numb, but rather, emotionally. Although mentally and intellectually, I knew I should be feeling certain things, those feelings just weren’t present. I felt disconnected instead, like someone had flipped my emotion switch to the off position. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but I was usually in a bad place when it happened in the past.

I’ve made quite a few changes in my life over the last three years and it has not always been easy, but the struggle has been well worth it. After several setbacks in my journey through life, I’ve finally gotten myself back on track and have made great strides, especially in the last year. So I should be happy; things are looking up now. While I am not unhappy, I am not happy either; I’m simply, unfulfilled. Why? Because I am an impatient person and I focus more on the target that has yet to be reached, rather than the progress that has been made towards reaching that target. Where most people are encouraged when their dreams begin to take focus over the horizon, just beyond their reach, I become disheartened because I can’t reach out and grab them.

Knowing this about myself, I have been striving to learn to be more patient, to appreciate the journey that will eventually get me to my destination, to stop and smell the roses once in a while. I’ve always tried to focus on the positive in any situation, but impatience superseded positivity every time. I think it is this constant struggle that finally “broke” me and left me in an emotional limbo, unable to feel anything at all.

With this numbness, came the inability to write. I wanted to write more than anything, but I would just sit there, staring at the words on my screen, unable to connect with them. Looking for a trigger, I tried everything I could think of to evoke some emotion. I watched movies and listened to music, but nothing seemed to help.

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And then something happened. I’m not quite sure what the catalyst was, but I felt something, other than numbness. It was like a dam bursting. Everything that had been bottled up for months, now flowing so freely and fiercely, that it couldn’t be ignored; my emotions so open and raw, changing so fast, I felt like I might be bipolar.

In the midst of all this renewed emotion, I came across someone, that for some inexplicable reason, arouses within me a feeling of inspiration. I don’t know this person personally, although, I see them from time to time. It’s an odd feeling, having a complete stranger be your muse. On the one hand, you want to get to know them, but on the other, fear of breaking the spell makes you keep your distance. After this brief encounter, I walked away feeling the urge to write. I didn’t have any idea what I would write, I just had the feeling that I needed to get back to work.

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The next day, I woke up and even though my immediate reaction was to close my eyes and go back to sleep, I had too many ideas running through my head. Grabbing my idea book, I started jotting them down. The next thing I knew, an hour had passed and I’d written several pages. Am I writing steadily again? Not quite, but the fact that I am writing at all is a good feeling. So to whatever brought down the dam blocking my emotions and to my living, breathing muse, thank you for making me feel again.

Procrastination Station

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Ely0604

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I love to write. The feeling you get when you see your story come together, your world take shape and your characters come to life is incomparable. So why is it that lately, I find myself procrastinating?

This past weekend, I took my own advice and stopped making excuses. Finally getting some real work done on the edit of my first novel, I managed to get through three chapters in one day. That may not sound impressive, but it’s more than I have written in quite some time.

Despite the fact that I am in the midst of a highly time consuming project at work, my goal has been to continue working on the edit every night, riding on the momentum I built up over the weekend. Since I enjoy writing, that shouldn’t be too hard, right? Wrong.

Here’s the problem:

During the day, my job is so time consuming right now that I barely have time to run to the bathroom or grab lunch. When I get home, I need to make dinner and I make a point of sitting with my kids, going over their day, getting updates on school, etc… Then, I head upstairs to my sanctuary and this is where things go awry.

Full of intent, I grab my Mac to get to work and always find some way to get so distracted that I almost forget to write. There are emails to be read, social media sites to catch up on now that I don’t have the time during the day, research to do; you get the picture. Then of course, there is the fact that extreme quiet unnerves me, so I turn the television on and get caught up in what I’m watching or I put music on and get so into singing along with it, that what I’m reading/writing isn’t sticking and I end up going over and over the same thing and I don’t make any real progress.

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I know, I know, excuses. I end up procrastinating so much that by the time I focus and get back to the writing, I’m so wiped out that I’m passing out on my keyboard. Nevertheless, I keep trying. One day I’ll find a cure for my procrastination, but today isn’t that day.

The Very Definition

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Ely0604

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I’ve been doing this writing thing just long enough to notice that any time I encounter another writer for the first time, aside from the usual bio info exchanged, the most common question is, “What genre do you write?” After a few of these exchanges, I quickly realized that I didn’t know the different genres as well as I thought I did. Genresofliterature.com offers a nice concise list and brief definition of the different genres currently defined*.

Nonfiction Genres

Nonfiction

Factual writing. Writings that convey factual information and are not primarily works of the creative imagination.

Example: History of The American Economy (textbook)

Narrative Nonfiction

Also referred to as creative nonfiction, literary journalism and fact based story telling, adapting some of the features of fiction (creating a narrative persona, setting scenes, presenting interesting characters, creating the look and feel of a setting, telling a story) to the purposes of journalism.

Example: Prince Harry Ending US Visit With Conn Polo Match (news article)

Essays

Short nonfiction prose piece; an short analytic, descriptive or interpretive piece of literary or journalistic prose dealing with a specific topic, especially from a personal and unsystematic viewpoint.

Example: Boyhood Dream Came True A Czech Taxidermists Success Story (Photo Essay)

Biography

An account of somebody’s life written or produced by another person

Example: Audrey In Rome (Audrey Hepburn’s life story as told by Lucca Dotti, Ludovica Damiani and Sciascia Gambaccini)

Autobiography

An account of somebody’s life written by that person

Example: My Beloved World (Sonia Sotomayor’s life story as told by Sonia Sotomayor)

Speech

The ability to speak. The act of communicating by speaking

Example: The Gettysburg Address

Fiction Genres

Fiction

Literary works of imagination. Novels and stories that describe imaginary people and events.

Example: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Drama

A serious play written for performance on stage, television or radio.

Example: Romeo and Juliet

Poetry

Literary works written in verse, in particular, verse writing in high quality, great beauty, emotional sincerity or intensity or profound insight.

Example: The Raven

Fantasy

The creative power of the imagination. Commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme or setting.

Example: The Princess Bride

Humor

Writings and other material designed to make people laugh. The quality or content of something that elicits amusement or laughter.

Example: Sh*t My Dad Says

Fable

A short story with a moral, especially one in which the characters are animals. A story about supernatural, mythological or legendary characters or events.

Example: The Tortoise and the Hare

Fairy Tales

A story for children about fairies or other imaginary beings and events, often containing a moral message.

Example: Snow White

Science Fiction

Fiction based on futuristic science. Fiction based on science, usually set in the future, that deals with imaginary scientific and technological developments and contact with other worlds.

Example: Dune

Short Story

A work of prose fiction that is shorter than a novel.

Example: The Tell-Tale Heart

Realistic Fiction

Resembling or simulating real life. Interested in, concerned with or based on what is real or practical.

Example: Because of Winn-Dixie

Folklore

Traditional stores and explanations passed down in a community or country.

Example: Paul Bunyan

Historical Fiction

Narratives that take place in the past and are characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.

Example: Johnny Tremain

Horror

Something that causes a very strong feeling of fear shock or disgust.

Example: The Shining

Tall Tale

An exaggerated, unreliable story.

Example: Pecos Bill

Legend

A story that has been passed down for generations, especially one that is presented as history but is unlikely to be true.

Example: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Mystery

An event or situation that is difficult to fully understand or explain. Typically a detective or crime novel.

Example: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Mythology

A group of myths belonging to a particular people or culture that tell about their ancestors, heroes, gods and other supernatural beings and history.

Example: The Lightning Thief

Fiction in Verse

Full length novels with plot, subplots, themes, with major and minor characters. The narrative is usually presented in blank verse (unrhymed poetry)

Example: The Cat in the Hat

The list provided by genresofliterature.com is only the tip of the iceberg. Within each of the genres listed above, are several subgenres that define a work of literature at a more granular level. It is also possible for a single piece to fall into multiple categories.

Do you have a favorite genre to write? How about a favorite genre for reading? Are they the same?

*Unless otherwise specified by a link, all definitions obtained from Bing Dictionary

What’s Your Excuse?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Ely0604

We all do it. At some point, we put more effort into making excuses for why we can’t write than we do actually writing. How many are valid reasons and how many are nothing more than hot air?

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Top 10 Excuses (according to litbridge.com)

I feel too exhausted to write.
I’m feeling overwhelmed emotionally.
I don’t know what to write about.
There is just no time in the day.
I’m too distracted by the internet to write.
I’m distracted by video games, sports or TV and don’t want to write.
My writing is terrible and I’m not in the mood to do it anymore.
I have too many ideas and I don’t know where to focus my energy.
I don’t know if this is what I want to write about.
I would rather hang out with my friends, family members or spouse.

10 Reasons Why You Can

Writing does not have to be a marathon event. You don’t need to sit down for hours at a time in order to make progress. If writing is something that you are truly passionate about, push yourself beyond the limits you think you have and when your body tells you that enough is enough, then you know you’ve truly exhausted yourself.
Writing can be a form of therapy. Put that emotion into your writing and use it to purge yourself of the overwhelming feelings.
Write about anything that comes to mind. The simple act of writing can help trigger inspiration.
Again, you do not need to set aside long periods to write. Write whenever possible; scribble down notes every chance you get.
While the internet is important for research, you need to limit the amount of time you spend surfing the web. Whenever possible, keep your writing time and your research time separate.
If you have time to play video games, participate in sports or watch television, then you have time to write. It comes down to prioritizing what is most important to you.
Your writing will not improve without practice. The more you write the better you get. It is also possible that as your own biggest critic, you are being far too harsh on yourself.
You need to start somewhere. When there are a multitude of ideas in your head, start with the one that is occupying the most space. You do not need to focus all of your attention on one project at a time. Make notes or draft an outline for some of the less pressing ideas so that you can reference them when you have more time to devote to them.
You won’t know until you try it. Writing has a way of evolving. What we conceive does not always resemble the finished product. If you make an attempt and you find that the subject matter really doesn’t appeal to you after all, you might find that the simple act of writing helped to spark a new, more appealing idea.
The two things need not be mutually exclusive. Write for your friends, family members or spouse. Or better yet, write with them. Having the support of those around you can be the biggest incentive to get the work done.

What are some of the excuses you come up with for not writing?

Getting to Know Your Characters

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ely0604

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Before you can truly tell their stories, you need to really get to know your characters. Most people might think, as their creator, you would know your characters better than anyone else. But as most writers can attest, characters are not “created” so much as they are met.

Having never taken a creative writing course in my life, I am not going to go into the technical roadmap of character development. There will be no numbered dos and don’ts list. I don’t pretend to be an expert, I just share what I learn through trial and error and try to put into layman’s terms the reasoning behind it in hopes that I might make someone else’s journey slightly smoother than my own.

If your approach to writing is anything like mine, outlining consists of a very high level summary of the story jotted down in a few sentences along with random notes of stray thoughts that can come at any given time. You have an idea of the overall concept of the project, be it a short story or novel, but there is no in depth scene by scene outline. As a “percolator” (See Pantser? Planner? Percolator? blog post) you don’t create a roadmap that you stick to when writing, but you also don’t just come up with a story and bang it out without any prior thought process.

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When writing a novel, it can be quite easy to become inconsistent if you don’t have an outline. You might find yourself asking questions like “What color were Amy’s eyes again?” “Did Bob grow up in Michigan or Minnesota?” Simple questions that when you first set out to write, you have a clear and concise view of the answers to. But throw in a few more characters, a couple of locations and a plot twist or two and it can be easy to lose track of the answers that were so clear in your mind last month or even last year when you first started writing. You get so deep into the story that it can be hard to remember what happened a chapter or two earlier. And if you are writing a series, you want to be sure to keep things consistent from one book to the next, because trust me, even if you don’t notice, the readers will.

Please don’t tell me I have to create an outline, you might be pleading right about now. If you are, don’t worry, the answer is still no (at least, not for the story). What you will need to do, is create character bios. A character bio can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. The pertinent information that you should included are stats like, name, age, height, weight, eye color, etc… I would also suggest that you put anything that is important to the story line.

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For example, if your character is a pro athlete and has been traded several times, you want to keep track of the various teams they played for and the years they played for those teams. If all of this information is kept in an easily accessible place, you will avoid the hassle of trying to skim back through the story to find this information again and again when doing consistency checks.

If you use a writing software like Scrivener or Celtx, they come with handy character bio templates.

Character Sketch Template in Scrivener

Character Profile Template in Celtx

I’m sure if you are using some other writing software, it will have a similar feature available. And for anyone that uses a word processing software like Word or WordPerfect, there are templates available for those too.

I also find it helpful to add a picture or pictures of people that fit the vision you have of the character. This can make the characters seem realer and more relatable, making the job of conveying their story easier.

When I first started writing my series, I thought that character profiles were just nice to have. But the further I got into the story lines, the more I saw their added value. Other than using the bios to keep track of stats, they can also help to remind you of the character’s personality. Would Jennifer really go sky diving if she is afraid of heights? Is it believable for Joe to profess his love for Melinda when he normally has a hard time talking about his feelings? I think you get the picture.

What are some tricks you use to get inside of your characters’ heads?

Off Kilter

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Ely0604

Image courtesy of Penywise morguefile

I have been asked what I am currently working on, so I thought I would share with you what has been going on. Over the last two months, I haven’t done much work on my novels. Having offered up my first novel for a beta read and deciding not to continue working on the third novel until I finalized the first two, for fear of creating an inconsistent mess, I turned my focus to the second novel in the series. I would sit down with a broad vision of what I wanted to happen and words would make their way onto the page as I tried to build the bridges I needed to reach my destination, but something just didn’t feel right. Something just kept gnawing at me, preventing me from making any real progress and for the longest time, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

Even after getting feedback from the beta readers, I wasn’t gung-ho about getting back to work like I had hoped. I thought that maybe I just needed to stew on the feedback and work things out mentally, but it wasn’t that simple.

Image courtey of Arthur Tress blogspot.com

Other than a few notes here or there, I had absolutely no drive to write and it was making me so anxious that I didn’t know what to do with myself. So, when faced with a case of what I like to call “writer’s dunce”, I did what I usually do; I turned to reading as a means of clearing my head and gaining a fresh perspective. After reading three novels, I still didn’t have the urge to jump back into my work and I still hadn’t pinpointed the source of the problem. Normally, before I’ve even finished reading one novel, I’m filled with ideas and the urge to get back to work, so this was troublesome.

In addition to reading books, I started reading critiques and discussion boards, not only on the books I was currently reading, but on others in genres similar to my own work, that I had read in the past. Some of the discussions helped to bolster my confidence that I was doing some

things right, avoiding some of the pitfalls that caused the most grief for readers of my intended genre. I think somewhere along the way, I subconsciously began to realize why I was having such a hard time continuing with my own work. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me, but the more discussions I read, one by one eliminating the doubts that were clouding my thoughts, the clearer it became. My problem, it would seem, is that I had completely lost the essence of what I was trying to achieve.

I had set out to write a vampire story laced with romanticism. What I ended up with, was something altogether different; a romance novel with a vampire twist. My main character was a watered down version of who I wanted her to be, of who she is, epitomizing the weak, dependent females so often featured in romance novels. This was not what I had wanted at all and the further I had written into the story, the stronger this theme seemed to weave its way into my novels.

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How could I be expected to keep writing when my work was starting to get on my own nerves? I think that somewhere deep inside, my main character was trying to tell me that I wasn’t writing her story correctly. Sure, the events were unfolding as they should, but I hadn’t painted her in the the right light. Vampires are meant to be hardcore; so dark that they terrify you, but at the same time beguile and intrigue you.

Now that I have identified the problem, I need to work out how to go about fixing it. It seems that I have quite the challenge ahead of me.