Writing Tutorials

  1. Creating Characters

    As usual, there's about fifty gazillion threads about creating characters and other matters. After much thought, and practice, I've come to the conclusion that it isn't as tough as it's made out to be. Characters are much like people, they're born, they live and then they die-just like us. Now their birth can be anything from sitting down and planning a character out to suddenly jumping onto the page without warning. My six characters each appeared a different way. Talia and her three...
  2. Stats To Humble Any Perspective Writer

    [URL]http://taliasworld.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/stats-to-humble-any-perspective-writer/[/URL]
  3. Writing from the Heart

    One of the things I see a lot on writing forums are beginning writers asking about characters. It seems that creating characters is challenging to those who are just starting. In reality, they’re not. The problem most people have is they don’t realize that writing comes from the heart. What do I mean by that? Well, here’s a brief explanation. I created a character named Kate over twenty years ago while I was in middle school and carried her with me until late this past fall. She was a...
  4. Coming this week

    Several blog posts on writing from the heart and how it relates to character building and style of writing. Also, I'll be putting up some information about social networking and what I'm learning is effective and what isn't. I'll link things up when it's ready.
  5. Copy editing your story Part 1

    This is going to be a lengthy set of blogs, so I'm going to post each in individually. A couple days ago, I completed a first edit on a hard copy of chapter one of my novel. This is what there is after edit one. The second part will cover the editing for second round, and the third part will have a closer to finished product. I, and no one has to do it my way, feel it's easier to do these things off a print out then the screen, because it allows me to see how the words aren't perfect. On...
  6. Reworking introductory chapters

    Sometimes when you're editing something just doesn't sit right, and it just sticks in your craw and eats at you. Last night, I had one of those moments while trying to get to sleep. It was nearly 4am EDT before I manged to fall asleep, and my thoughts kept going back to Kate, my MC, and both this book and the new one I'm halfway starting. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out what kept my minding moving so much until it dawned on me. The opening to the first novel's second chapter...
  7. Plot development and POV

    There's a lot of posts about how to run your plot, and how to plan it, and anything from outlines to, as some writers I know do, writing from the end forwards. Each has it's merits, but sometimes I feel writers get too hung up on things. I never have an idea how my novels will end. Kate'll tell me something small, a whispered thought or an action she's done, and the rest kind of falls into place fairly quickly. I'll also admit to not knowing how the two novels I've finished were going to...
  8. Being mean/cruel to characters

    Sometimes in a character's life or development, things need to happen that are mean and/or cruel to allow them to experience a real life. We all have suffered through mean and cruel things in our lives, which have developed us into the people we are, and the same for them. I know it sounds weird, but Kate tells me her entire life as I write her story, and it's interesting to listen to. The amount of mean things that have happened to her is simply amazing, but the character is so vivid from...
  9. Inspiration and how things turn out

    As I write, and weave Kate's back story in, I, and not to toot my own horn either because I hate doing that, have started to realize how ahead of my time I was. I've read "The Hunger Games" and seen the movie, and the "games" were something, albeit with actual gladiators and teams, I thought of while in seventh grade, back in 1986. Now, they'll always be the comments that I "ripped off" Suzanne Collins and in reality it's something I've had in the head for the longest time without the skills...
  10. Ways to help yourself improve

    Along with this site, find a group, preferably a closed, password required entrance one to protect your ideas, within the genre you're writing in to join. Iron sharpens iron, and you can work with people who write the same things, and there's information and viewpoints to be gleaned. The sci fi group I'm in has a man, John Bowers, who's a finalist in the most recent L.Ron Hubbard "Writer's of the future" which is a very prestigious competition to be a finalist in. Plus, you'll find little...
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