Debby Mayne
Author and speaker
Character Psychology 101
by Elizabeth White
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Need an Agent? What to DO!
by Tamela Hancock Murray
Once you agree to work with an agent:
Tamela Hancock Murray is an agent with Hartline Literary Agency.
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Plot vs. Character: The Age Old Question
by Tara Randel
What's more important to story, plot or character? The answer is up to you, depending on the type of story you write. There is no right or wrong. In all fairness, a compelling character is the most important element of your story. However, it is up to you to decide if you are writing a plot-driven book or character-driven book. Here is one way for you to decide—look at the driving circumstances of your story; specifically, look at your opening scene.
Ask yourself if there is an outside event serving as a catalyst that causes your protagonist to act. If so, chances are, you are writing a plot-driven book. One example of a plot-driven book is if a killer is after your main character or your character is falsely accused of a crime she didn't commit. Romantic suspense leads to this type of plot-driven device.
On the other hand, is your character choosing to make a change? Then chances are, you are writing a character-driven book. Maybe you have a protagonist who decides to move away from a dead-end job to better her life or a woman decides to re-enter the dating world after several years of loneliness.
Next time you want to decide on plot or character, ask yourself these questions: Are outside events causing the character to act, or is my protagonist deciding to make a change or achieve a goal? As you make your decision, depths of the story you hadn't even thought about might come to light
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Creating Compelling Characters
by Shelley Galloway
Though there are many keys to writing a compelling story, one of the most important is strong characterization. No matter how good the plot or writing, if the characters are not strong and complex , the book will not be successful.
Though character charts and journal writing can create multidimensional characters, they sometimes are too time-consuming for me. Instead, I try to focus on a few aspects of each characters personality to play up in my novel. This includes secondary characters as well. Though readers might enjoy a romance if the hero and heroines journey is satisfying, they'll only return to the series if other characters in the novel come across as memorable.
One of my favorite secondary characters is Daphne Reece, the mother in my seven book "Finding Love" series for Avalon. Though Daphne finally has her own romance in Finding Love Forever, she is featured in every novel in the series.
Daphne's character lends itself to three components of crafting an attention-grabbing character. The first is in the details. Pick a few characteristics, both emotional and physical, to play on. Does your hero have a quick-fire temper? A square jaw? A dimple or a scar? Does your heroine have a love of chocolate or shoes? Does she stutter when she's excited? Have pretty hands? These specific details will not only create interest for your reader, but clarify his or her personality in their minds. Daphne was fond of capris and matching sandals.
Making characters flawed is also something I try to incorporate in each of my novels. No one is perfect, and it's certainly hard to relate to a character who is. Daphne Reece was nosy and meddling. My heroine in The Good Mother is another example of a complicated, imperfect heroine. She's impatient and on the skinny side. Neither take away from the goodness of her personality, but instead illustrates that she has obstacles to overcome and areas where she wishes there was improvement.
Finally, each character in your book should have something they care deeply about. It doesn't have to be something huge and serious; sometimes a small, seemingly insignificant goal can create a connection to readers just as powerfully. In Cinderella Christmas, my heroine really wanted a new pair of shoes. In my western, Suddenly, You, my heroines goal centered on wanting to belong. I've had secondary characters care about their jobs, children, their hobbies, and their pets in different novels. In Daphne's case, she cares about her children more than anything, and is willing to step on people's toes to help them find love.
Compelling characters add depth and dimension to novels. By adding a few well thought-out details, an author can create a truly memorable romance.
Shelley Galloway is the author of over fifteen novels for a number of publishers. Her books for Harlequin American Romance have made the Waldenbooks bestseller list and won the prestigious Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award. Her latest, The Good Mother, will be on shelves in October. In summer of 2008, Shelley will be launching a new series for Avon Inspire, writing as Shelley Shepard Gray.
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Nuts and Bolts of the Business
By Margaret Daley
I wanted to discuss some of the "nuts and bolts" of this writing business. Here are some of my observations and lessons Ive learned over the twenty-seven years I have been writing.
1. Talent is important but equally or more important is perseverance with some luck thrown in.
2. Rejection is part of writing and sending your work out. We have to learn to move on and not let it stop us from writing. I have seen some very talented writers give up because of rejection (refer back to number one). Have a support group to help you through the rejections. We all need it from time to time. You should see my file of rejections!
3. Set a schedule to write. If not, it is easy to get sidetracked. Life happens.
4. The second sale is often harder than the first. It doesnt get any easier after you sell the first book. The good part of this is that it keeps you on your toes and hopefully makes you a better writer. Dont stop trying to improve your craft.
5. Deadlines are important to make. I cant stress that enough. We are professionals and want to be treated as professionals.
6. Networking is important and can open doors for you whether it is through a conference, chapter meeting or online groups.
7. Critique groups can be good but remember the book is yours ultimately and you have to decide what advice to take or not take.
8. No agent is better than a bad agent.
9. Learn when to give up on a project and move on to a new one. I have heard of some writers working on the same book for years--polishing and polishing it. Learn to let go.
10. This business is subjective. One editor may not like your writing while another may. So dont give up on a project because of one rejection (refer back to number one).
11. This business is cyclical. What is popular today, may not be tomorrow.
12. Take time for yourself and be aware of the signs of burnout. Stress will take its toll on you and your family.
13. Think twice before quitting your day job. This business is so unpredictable. I realize a day job can get in the way of writing sometimes (I have one) but there is value in having a job outside the home. I have gained a lot from working that I use in my writing. I interact with students and people which have enriched my writing and observations.
14. When something is bothering you about your book, listen to that inner voice. I have found it is usually right whether it is a plot element, the structure of a sentence, or a piece of dialogue.
15. Have fun with your writing. It will show in your work.
16. Research. It shows if you don't. But don't feel you have to put everything in the book that you discover when you research. That shows, too.
Margaret Daley has sold more than fifty books. She writes for Steeple Hill Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense.
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Identify Your Writing Profile
Written by Lisa Mondello
After years of struggling with the way that I write, I've come to realize that all writers fall into one of 4 writing profile categories. Understanding which type of writer you are can help you write more efficiently.
Linear Writer
This is the type that I always admired. A linear writer writes an outline, starts at the beginning of the story on page one and writes chapter by chapter. After each chapter, she revises, gets the chapter in good shape before moving on to the next chapter. When shes done with the book, all she has to do is a read through to tweak words here and there and shes done.
The Plotter
The plotter is someone who loves to immerse themselves in every detail of the story. They will spent long hours getting to know their characters. They fill in long character charts that tell them everything from the hero and heroines favorite color to what they had for breakfast that morning. This is all before theyve written a word of the manuscript. Plotters love to find out everything they can about the story before they write.
The Pantser
The pantser is the writer who sits down at the computer and doesnt know where her story is going to take her. This is very exciting as some writers like to discover their characters the same way the reader does. Some writers feel stifled by outlines and lose interest in a story if they know too much about it. Unfortunately, if the writer doesnt know where shes going with story, she may spend a lot of time wandering about on the page while she tries to find the story.
The Puzzler
Like the name implies, the puzzler writes their story like a puzzle, writing scenes out of order and then piecing them together to make the story whole. Puzzlers usually see scenes of the story very vividly and feel the need to write them down before they lose them. They see the beginning, the end and some of the scenes in the middle. How those scenes transition from one scene to the next is another story. Thats for them to piece together.
Although writers might favor one type of writing profile, most writers are really a combination of two of the above types. Knowing how you write can help you choose the best way to organize your writing and write more efficiently.
2007 Lisa Mondello
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Creating Conflict in Romance
by Gail Gaymer Martin
Some people complain that romance conflicts seem to drag on forever and then conclude on the last couple pages, leaving the reader with an unreal feeling and a sense of disappointment. Sometimes conflicts do drag and a good conversation could solve the problem, but if the author has developed a deep-seeded fear or need inside one of the characters, it makes sense. If you look in your own heart, you will probably think of something you did in your life that is a real secretsome guilt or shame issue, something you know the Lord had been utterly disappointed in you. These are issues which we don't easily admit and sometimes they become the molehills to mountains situations.
But most conflict isn't just an argument or problem easily solved. Conflict must come from something deeper. It often begins in backstory, twisting the character's psyche, affecting the characters goals and motivation, and driving them forward without commonsense sometimes. Many such conflicts deal with spiritual issues.
Conflict can come from two people wanting the same thing and only one can have it - or two people wanting the same thing but in a different way. It can come from fears that people don't want to admita woman who's hidden a rapehighly fears how her relationship will be with a man. Someone with the inability to have children will not want to fall in love with someone who deserves to be a father or motherand this will hold them back. Even if the other party says it doesn't matter, it matters to the one who's to blame and the issue is complicated more if the character saw a marriage fail because of this problem in another couple. Conflict can come from two people who fall in love and each have a career in different areas of the countryestablished jobs they don't want to leave and each hopes the other will give inor they fight against falling in love for that reason. The problems can appear simple, but when this job is something the character struggled forif it provides him or her a sense of identity and purposethen giving it up can lead to martyr-ism (if that's a word) and ruin a marriage.
We have to look inside the minds of a character to see how they are viewing the problem with their own set of complexities. Just as emotion is complexnever clear cut, neither is conflict. It has a multitude of issues that feed into the problem that makes is a "big" problem where in your personal life, it seems so simple.
Still it's the authors job to provide enough depth to a conflict to make it real and to bring out the emotion of the situation so it makes an impact on the reader and touches them in a way that they can relate to the struggle and it is vital for characters to change and grow throughout the book just as we change with each experience. This makes the characters real and it makes the conclusion realistic.
As far as story dealing with an unbeliever as a major conflict, I avoid conversion stories. I often have a weak Christian whose struggle is due to something happening in his past that knocked his faith on a tiltand as he struggles the tilt becomes less and less until he realizes that the Lord has been waiting for him with open arms. Then the story conflict can draw to a conclusion with realism
Because of the nature of conflict, especially in a pure romance (not romantic suspense or a romance in women's fiction), when a character says I love you, it's pretty much the end of the book- so sometimes the solution seems fastbut if the author has built up to this, then it works. I have used the "I love you" from one character and a "no" from the otherin the heart it's a yes but something holds the character back from willingness to submit to the love they feel. Many things can hold us back, and I mentioned a few of them earlier.
Gail's new book released in December 2007 for Writers Digest - Writing the Christian Romance - covers conflict well, so this article only skims the issues, but remember, conflicts, like emotion, must be layered and deep and realistic. Gail Gaymer Martin is an award-winning author, who writes for Steeple Hill and Barbour Publishing with 40 novels and over one million books in print. Visit her website and check out her For Readers pages. Look for her Writing the Christian Romance book from Writers Digest to learn the techniques for writing that genre.
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To Emote, Or Not to Emote? You'd Better!
By Kristy Dykes
It happened again this weekend. Saturday, we celebrated a parishioner's 70th birthday, complete with clowns and a cookout, and Sunday, we comforted the bereaved at yet another funeral (my husband is a pastor). Fun times. Sad times. Happy times. Grieving times. Up and down we go, my husband and me. Roller-coaster emotions. We feel the joys—and hurts—of our parishioners. We grieve with them, laugh with them, rejoice with them, cry with them, pray with them, love with them, as well as on them. I experienced a totally new level of emotion at Sunday's funeral when I learned this: when the grave diggers dug the grave for the elderly woman, they found an infant's casket! No marker. No records. No way to know who this baby was.
A wave of sadness gushed over me as I thought about a set of young parents burying their baby in this country church cemetery in the "boonies," miles from anything and anybody. Curiosity washed over me, then. Did they do it illegally? Legally? Why did the baby die? Was it sick? What kind of sickness? Born dead? Could they not afford a marker? Sheer sorrow surfaced when I thought, Was it a young girl—or her family—who secretly buried her baby as she tried to hide the evidence of her "sin"?
Novelists need to learn to emote as they write. Webster's says emote means "to give expression to emotion," and emotion is defined as "feeling," "excitement," "disturbance." Emotional means "arousing emotion."
If that's one thing I have down pat, it's to emote. When I was growing up, people used to say my grandmother had empathy. Nana called it "crawling into the skin of others and feeling what they're feeling." I inherited that from her.
My first work of fiction is "I Take Thee, A Stranger," a novella (short novel) in American Dream (sold out and out of print). It's about an arranged marriage in 1885.
As I wrote it, I asked myself, "How would I feel if I had to marry a man I'd never met, because it was the only thing I could do after my lad of a husband died, mere months after we came to America from Scotland? If I didn't, I would wind up in a house of ill repute. What would it be like when I saw this strange man for the first time? How would I feel when I exchanged wedding vows with him? What would I do or say when I walked into his house? Saw his bedroom? Our bedroom now?"
Just thinking about it made doodads run up and down my back. Of nervousness. Fear. Squeamishness.
I was sure my character, Corinn, experienced all of that, too. (To a novelist, our characters are living and breathing; that's how I knew how she felt.)
As I wrote, I transferred the emotions I was feeling to her. She was relieved when he gave her a separate bedroom. She was hurt when he ignored her week after week. She was angry when he was stern with his little girls. She was happy when she came to love his delightful children. She was unhappy when she came to love him...because he rebuffed her.
You get the picture.
For some authors, this comes naturally. For others, they struggle. Sometimes, I have to tone down my characters' emotions. For example, they are too down, or too thrilled, or too... whatever.
Readers have been enthusiastic about my writing.
After reading "I Take Thee, A Stranger" in American Dream, a reader said, "This isn't the kind of fiction that you just read. You feel it, and you want to read it over and over."
A great compliment!
Another: "You have a Stephen King flair. You drink me into your story in the first few pages."
One of the highest compliments: the heroine in my historical novella in Sweet Liberty is an embittered former-slave-now-freewoman in the South in 1859. As I created her, I said, "Lord, let me crawl into Winkie's skin and feel what she's feeling. Let me know what her life as a slave has been like. Let me feel her bitterness...and her joy."
A reader wrote, "Are you black? Or do you just have a special gift of empathy?"
I said, "Thank You, Lord."
Reading these letters helped me develop my brand as a fiction author:
"Fiction you can feel...lights, camera, heart!"
A former newspaper columnist, Kristy Dykes is an award-winning author of 10 Christian fiction titles as well as over 600 articles in many publications, including two New York Times subsidiaries. Some of her titles have been on the Christian best-sellers list and the Top 20 List at christianbook.com. Her novella, "Angel Food" in Kiss the (Cook) Bride, won Third Place in the 2007 Inspirational Readers Choice Contest (FHL), and her novella, "Reunited" in Wedded Bliss?, won Third Place in the 2006 Book of the Year Contest (ACFW). Kristy was voted to the 2004 Favorite New Authors List at Heartsong Presents. She's taught at many conferences and two colleges and enjoys speaking for women's and writers' events. She and her husband, a pastor, live in Florida.
http://www.christianlovestories.blogspot.com
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COMMONLY MISSPELLED WORDS
a lot believe calendar cemetery
definite(ly) gauge guarantee height
its/it's jewelry noticeable perseverance
personnel precede receive receipt
separate sergeant than/then their/they're/there
vacuum weather/whether weird
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First or Third Person?
by
G. Miki Hayden
Is it better to write in first person than third?
Either first or third works equally--depending on what you're comfortable with and what you feel best suits the story. People make a bit of a deal about the difference, but I see virtually no major advantage to one over the other. Both forms sell and both are admired by readers. I have never heard an editor express a preference for either first or third person and I have asked a few what they are looking for.
That said, I personally find greater latitude in creating a character in third person. More can be described from outside the character, as well as attributed to him or her in an impersonal manner. Third person also avoids almost forcing the presumption onto the reader that the "I" of the protagonist is the author's own voice. This mental association of the "I" with the author can cause those finding the narrator a bit of a jerk to become rather annoyed at you, the mere writer. But this is minor, because those same traits will come through, anyway, and the author will often be "blamed" for the character's failings.
Can I write a prologue in third person and then convert to first person for the rest of the novel? Otherwise, when can I change the point of view? I'm confused.
By all means write a sort of prologue, even if you don't call it that, in third person, then switch to the main body of the story in first person. I say "even if you don't call it that" because some readers and editors hate or fear that thing called "the prologue." They have unbending prejudices against the device and strict rules for limiting it. Therefore, you might want to make the prologue your first scene in chapter one, instead.
One of the worst things you can do is switch point of view within a scene. You can change POV when you go on to a new scene, however. You might try to tell me that Nora Roberts interrupts her scenes with the parking meter's point of view, but how Nora Roberts writes doesn't matter. She can and you can't. That's because she is a proven bestseller.
When you are in your character's head, remember, you can't know anything the character himself doesn't know. You can't know why the other person does something and you have to make sure that a guess about what that character feels is merely the POV character's guess. ("I supposed he wanted to ask me out.")
Short stories are usually, but not always, from a single point of view. In a novel, that depends. Some are from one point of view and some are from many points of view. These are different styles intended to achieve different goals.
G. Miki Hayden, author of Writing the Mystery (now in its second edition)
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WRITING RIGHT FROM THE HEART
2005 By Andrea Boeshaar
Author, Literary Agent
As with any art form, the artist has to love his or her gift. If he's a photographer, he has to enjoy taking pictures. If the artist is a painter, she must love color. If the artist is a writer, she must love TO WRITE.
However, I know many writers who don't really love to write; they love to be published. While seeing your work in print is definitely the result of long, hard work, it doesn't make anyone a writer.
Editors can spot desperation a mile away. Literary agents can too. So if you're feeling desperate about getting a novel published, perhaps you need to sit back, relax, and re-examine your motives for writing. Do you love it?
Writing, like any art, is a God-given gift. But that gift must be honed, crafted, and perfected just like a pianist must practice everyday before she's ready for the concert hall. The first novel you write might not be the first novel that gets published. The second novel might not be the one that gets published either! And the novel you write out of desperation is sure to be a flop. Don't write what you think or you heard editors might be buying right now, although it is a good idea to stay in touch with your market. This industry is in constant change. Your best bet to getting published is to write that which is weighing heavy on your heart.
Whether its a novella or full-length women's fiction, I put my heart and soul into each story I write. If I write a 50,000 word Heartsong Presents novel, I put the same kind of effort into it as I do a novel that's double the size. The same is true with my nonfiction essays. My husband and I joke around saying that I probably earn -$5 an hour on my writing. Obviously I'm not it in for the money.
I write books and nonfiction articles and devotionals because I LOVE TO WRITE! What's more, I love to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ with my gift. To me, the most awesome reward is hearing how God moved in readers' hearts as they enjoyed one of my books.
Can you say the same thing? What's your motive for writing? Does the story you're working on come straight from your heart? What's your purpose for writing? If you're merely after fame and fortune, I can assure you there are easier, faster ways to accomplish that goal. Writing is a painstaking business. It requires time, time, and more time! Occasionally, I sit at the computer with out-of-focus eyes because I've been working so hard and so long.
I really do love to write!
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