Character Madness and Musings

I'm a little late on this one. I pulled a prompt, then decided to make Thanksgiving the prompt, and had no idea what I wanted to write, so now I'm at the end of the week, and this part of the holiday season is over. I've always thought Thanksgiving and Christmas were special days, because for some of us, it's the only time our families get together. My son and his family are separated from me by more than a thousand miles, and working out the time and funds for travel is always debatable. I think that's true for a lot of people these days, so this thought is truer than ever. My husband and I stayed home this year and spent the holiday with friends. We talked about the last year, friends we lost, some recently, and others that moved away. There was also a lot of conversation about the past, what we're doing for the rest of the season, and what we hope for next year. All good things to talk about. It was a lot of fun, but I still missed seeing the rest ...

Spoiler Alert! I never did work on last week's blog prompt. I love this weeks topic because I have so many favorite characters. Here are a few of them:  Merlin, from Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, Merlin from Mists of Avalon, Ichigo from the Anime, Bleach, and Rurouni Kenshin, from another anime named after him. But my favorite character is Lucivar Yaslana, from Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series. I'm big on studying characters. I love to see how the writers brought them to life, and what makes them great.The one thing all of these characters have in common is that they are forced into situations they don't want, and their construction is outside the normal box we place 'types' of characters in. Anne bishop takes characters that are ultra powerful, and gives them a thorn that makes them weak. Her story is the only 18+ on the list, but her storyline and characterization is awesome. She took a Christian theme and applied it to a world of darkness wher...

Time lines. I guess I should clarify. I'm not talking about the date your manuscript is due, but the time line in your story. I know not everyone is affected by them, but they have been one of the biggest hurdles in my writing career. This hurdle can arise when you are dealing with characters who age throughout the story; time passages, time travel, and in historical fiction, as well as other situations. The first time I dealt with this problem was my very first story. I've mentioned Pretentious, before. I'm publishing it now as a serial, but it's been on the back-burner for years since I've been focused on my fantasy stories. Last time I mentioned it, I had to go on a quest to learn how to infuse emotion into the story. This time, my characters meet in high school, and grow up together. Events and friends ages all needed to match. Ironically, One of the issues was my main character and his sister being the right ages to support where each of them were ...

I think this topic is an important series, so I want to add to it, and I had a list of topics, but managed to accidentally delete it while not paying close attention. That habit in itself is a hurdle, but I went looking for writer's tips just to find a new topic for today, and it only took me seconds to find it. When you have a question or problem with your writing, who do you ask? This is a tough question. There is so much information out there. Some is good, and some is not. What works for one may not work for someone else. So what can you do? I can't give you a solid answer, but will give you my opinions, and explain what worked for me. My first hurdle was a scene in my first manuscript. It was a sad break-up between my main character and his girlfriend. It should have been heart-wrenching, but it had the emotion of a rock. It didn't occur to me to turn to the internet, so I kept rewriting. When I first started writing I took a creative , and screenwritin...

This week's blog prompt was about 'hurdles in writing'. Hurdles we faced, and how we overcame them. It sounded dangerously close to the writer's journey, if you read that last week, but there are hurdles that weren't there. Things that seemed less important, so I didn't think of them, or they weren't mentioned, and while that's true in some cases, I think this hurdle was pretty important. Here is the link to my blog prompt group if you want to join us. We're on facebook, and I pull two new prompts from a jar every Monday.  Blog Prompts  It's old fashioned, but fun, and our blogs are never neglected unless we're over the top, busy. Today's hurdle is criticism When you take classes specific to novel writing, or even creative writing courses, you have your classmates to critique your work. I remember the very first time my creative writing teacher addressed critiquing. There were people arguing like cats the following week. I w...

So What Makes Paranormal... Paranormal? In an age when writer's are asked to place their work in a specific genre, which genre do we choose? Just to name a few genres we have; paranormal, dystopian, steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, supernatural, epic fantasy, etc... There seems to be an army of option all bleeding into one another and making for a confusing decision. I'll spend the next few paragraphs giving you a better idea on what defines the paranormal genre and separates it from all the others. First the actual definition of paranormal as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. "PARANORMAL - very strange and not able to be explained by what scientists know about nature and the world." Still not super clear, right? As writers I think we have done a better job by narrowing in on a more thorough answer. Novels tagged as paranormal have been written in our modern day world with the introduction of paranormal elements such as; werewolves, va...

The Writer's Journey was the blog prompt for my group last week, and since this week's would have been a little redundant for me, I decided to take on my path as a writer. Authors and Screenwriters are as unique as snowflakes. If you asked the same question to hundreds of writer's, Every story would differ. So here is my journey in the blanket of white. I tend to be a scattered person. That's one of the reasons I plan my stories. When I get a new idea, it often comes like a download with numerous characters and lots of scattered plot and subplot information. I think my writing journey has been very much the same. Years ago, a friend asked why I didn't write. I always had a book in my hands, and would sometimes read for days with minimal interruptions. Secretly I wanted to write, but I didn't really believe I had the talent to do it. The seed had been planted, but it would be years before I broke down and took my first creative writing class. I remem...