Before closing out another year, it’s good to take stock of what got done, and what the year ahead will look like. Then next year, we can giggle at how off-base all my hopes and predictions were :) The biggest accomplishment this year was saying so-long to my full-time job, and taking up writing as my new full-time (and then some) pursuit. I mostly already talked about stuff I did in 2014 here, at the six-month anniversary of said leap….
(Image credit: Imagebase.net) As you work on scenes- especially those in 1st person or 3rd person limited- it’s essential to nail down the character whose perspective you’re working from. I’ll call this the point-of-view (POV) character. You have to write from that head. You have to convey the sights, feelings, thoughts, and actions that are available to them. In the process, it’s easy to forget about doing the same for all the other characters in the scene: I’ll call them…
Short answer: caffeine and neuroses! How much are your characters an extension of yourself? This is a longer spectrum than one might think. At first blush, it might seem binary: either a character is based on you, or s/he isn’t. If s/he is, there’s a chance s/he’s the dreaded Mary Sue: a character who is 100% you (or what you wish you could be). Mary Sue tends to crop up in fanfiction, and is generally disliked. Why? Because when an…
(Image credit: Photos Public Domain) I’m an introvert who no longer works a traditional full-time job– so when my spouse goes out of town, I happily bunker in with my laptop and grind away. I added about 5-6K words to my manuscript in rewrites, drafted an article, drafted blog posts- waking up early each morning and falling asleep late each night. Friday, I picked my spouse up from the airport. With delays and weather, we didn’t get home until after…
(Image credit: Photos Public Domain) With National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo) wrapped up (heck no I didn’t participate, though it feels like I did- 29,000 new words added to my manuscript in the past couple of weeks!), it seems an apt occasion to explore what’s good and bad about the word count goal. The Word Count Goal Is Great On its face, it just makes sense. It’s the easiest possible way to quantify writing and measure progress. Most people…