I was helping out with dinner the other night.
Okay, so all I did was pull the leaves off of the cilantro. But still!
While pulling off those leaves, my mind suddenly began to crank and turn as it usually does when I'm right in the middle of something messy...
And a scene was born.
Mind you, this is for book three. Not TWO, but THREE.
Just so we're clear on that.
But the scene was so powerful, and the images formed in my mind so effortlessly, so seamlessly. I was floored.
Then, I had to talk to two people in particular. First being my husband. It involves Black Rose, the character he had created and allowed me to use for these books. Then I had to hop on Facebook and message my friend Liz, because it involves Laria, who is her baby.
Would they do something like this?
The response was affirmative. Which made it even better, because that means I know these characters (and people) that well. But I suppose it really shouldn't surprise me when a powerful scene plays into my mind, yet it always does.
I'm very thankful to have this gift. I'm also very thankful that I finally got over my initial shyness and have decided to share my gift with all of you. It is something I told my daughter, once, when she was hit with nerves about performing in front of people. (She sings and plays guitar.)
I told her, "Honey, you've got an amazing gift. But no one will ever know unless you share your gift."
So if you're just getting into the writing biz, please share your gift. Even if you inspire just one person, then it won't be for nothing.
Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label characters. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
World Building Wednesdays: Characters...
Where would your books be without characters? Boring, actually. Too much information tends to put people to sleep. I have issues with my own writing where I want to put in so much information because there is so much I want to share, that I bore the reader.
I actually bored myself once.
Just once.
Anyway, back story is best utilized through characters and dialogue. Lots of people have said it and I had to learn how to do this.
But everything still falls flat if you don't have interesting characters. Your characters have a story to tell. That is why you are writing!
But how do you get such diverse characters? How can you create well developed characters? How do you get the reader to love those characters?
Give them a voice. Give them a soul.
How many writers out there feel like their characters are a part of their family? Feel like they are literally your children. You did give birth to them and their idea, after all.
No, no. No need to call the men in the white coats. If you deny you have conversations with your character you are a liar. LIAR! Oh and your pants are on fire...
I talk to my characters all the time. Explains a lot, doesn't it? But this is how they tell me their story, this is how I learn what direction to take. When I get stuck, I can't keep writing something else because I'm distracted and can't focus on it because I am listening. I am waiting for the moment when said character whispers in my mind.
"Are you ready to listen?" they say. They remain quiet for so long because I get focused on their story and I just write it all out, listening in on their conversations, putting it all down on paper so I can share it with you, my reader. But they get real quiet once in awhile and suddenly, I've hit a brick wall. I stopped listening to the character tell their story and have gone off on my own tangent. I hit a road block and then they swagger up to me, all cocky and smirky.
"This is how it is supposed to go, got it?" they tell me. "I don't want it to go this way, because that isn't how it is supposed to go. This is my story after all, you're the intruder here. Just write down what I tell you."
That's a good way to get good characters. But diverse is something else altogether. I've said it dozens of times before. Go. Watch. People. But don't get arrested, for pity's sake! Stay in a public place, listen in without being a stalker. Watch people when they think no one is watching them. Oh, the things people do. Like pick their nose and wipe it off under a table in a restaurant.
I kid you not.
These are real people, your characters. You have to develop them, give them their personality. You have to give them their strengths and weaknesses, their skills, their flaws. Give them that eye twitch when they are stressed. Make them chew their nails. Make them grab a toothbrush to bite down on before their mom pulls out the peroxide to clean yet another one of their scrapes from falling off a bike. (Yes, I did that ALL the time.) Give them a sense of honor, purpose and above all, the sense of humor to deal with life. Give them passion, give them love and the hatred and jealousy that sometimes goes along with it. Make them petty, selfish people or make them compassionate givers. Make them hate life or love it, make them your best friends.
Seriously. Who better to pattern your characters off of then your friends and family? Aren't most characters an extension of ourselves? Of who we are right here and now in the physical realm and also who we most desire to be? What kind of person would you be if you were stuck in the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece? What kind of person would you be if you were rich beyond your dreams and didn't ever have to worry about money? What kind of people would your children be? Spoiled? Good-natured? Greedy? Killers or healers? What if you had nothing?
Think about all these aspects because the events in your life make you who you are. So once you know the ins and outs of the human psyche, you can begin to create stronger characters. What makes people do the things they do? What gives them their drive and motivation or their laziness? What events will affect your characters and how will they react? How would you react?
If your characters don't seem believable to you, don't feel like a part of you, then you need to go back and work on them again. Make them shine! They're going to tell you a great story if you give them half the chance.
I actually bored myself once.
Just once.
Anyway, back story is best utilized through characters and dialogue. Lots of people have said it and I had to learn how to do this.
But everything still falls flat if you don't have interesting characters. Your characters have a story to tell. That is why you are writing!
But how do you get such diverse characters? How can you create well developed characters? How do you get the reader to love those characters?
Give them a voice. Give them a soul.
How many writers out there feel like their characters are a part of their family? Feel like they are literally your children. You did give birth to them and their idea, after all.
No, no. No need to call the men in the white coats. If you deny you have conversations with your character you are a liar. LIAR! Oh and your pants are on fire...
I talk to my characters all the time. Explains a lot, doesn't it? But this is how they tell me their story, this is how I learn what direction to take. When I get stuck, I can't keep writing something else because I'm distracted and can't focus on it because I am listening. I am waiting for the moment when said character whispers in my mind.
"Are you ready to listen?" they say. They remain quiet for so long because I get focused on their story and I just write it all out, listening in on their conversations, putting it all down on paper so I can share it with you, my reader. But they get real quiet once in awhile and suddenly, I've hit a brick wall. I stopped listening to the character tell their story and have gone off on my own tangent. I hit a road block and then they swagger up to me, all cocky and smirky.
"This is how it is supposed to go, got it?" they tell me. "I don't want it to go this way, because that isn't how it is supposed to go. This is my story after all, you're the intruder here. Just write down what I tell you."
That's a good way to get good characters. But diverse is something else altogether. I've said it dozens of times before. Go. Watch. People. But don't get arrested, for pity's sake! Stay in a public place, listen in without being a stalker. Watch people when they think no one is watching them. Oh, the things people do. Like pick their nose and wipe it off under a table in a restaurant.
I kid you not.
These are real people, your characters. You have to develop them, give them their personality. You have to give them their strengths and weaknesses, their skills, their flaws. Give them that eye twitch when they are stressed. Make them chew their nails. Make them grab a toothbrush to bite down on before their mom pulls out the peroxide to clean yet another one of their scrapes from falling off a bike. (Yes, I did that ALL the time.) Give them a sense of honor, purpose and above all, the sense of humor to deal with life. Give them passion, give them love and the hatred and jealousy that sometimes goes along with it. Make them petty, selfish people or make them compassionate givers. Make them hate life or love it, make them your best friends.
Seriously. Who better to pattern your characters off of then your friends and family? Aren't most characters an extension of ourselves? Of who we are right here and now in the physical realm and also who we most desire to be? What kind of person would you be if you were stuck in the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece? What kind of person would you be if you were rich beyond your dreams and didn't ever have to worry about money? What kind of people would your children be? Spoiled? Good-natured? Greedy? Killers or healers? What if you had nothing?
Think about all these aspects because the events in your life make you who you are. So once you know the ins and outs of the human psyche, you can begin to create stronger characters. What makes people do the things they do? What gives them their drive and motivation or their laziness? What events will affect your characters and how will they react? How would you react?
If your characters don't seem believable to you, don't feel like a part of you, then you need to go back and work on them again. Make them shine! They're going to tell you a great story if you give them half the chance.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
If You Could Be...
If you could be any of your favorite television characters from a show, who would you be?
I'm such a huge fan of Charmed. I have every single season on DVD. I'm such a geek. Of all the characters on that show, I would love to be Piper Halliwell for a day. It isn't just about her cool witchy ability to freeze things or blow them up. Although, that would be a super bonus! It's just her total personality.
She was the middle sister for so long, trying to keep the peace between her oldest and youngest sisters, Phoebe and Prue. Of all the sisters, she was the only one who did not like being dragged into being a witch, but ended up being the most proud of her heritage. She still fought against it, don't get me wrong. She just wanted to be normal, have a normal life.
She went from being the middle sister to the oldest and struggled to carry the family through the rough times. But she was strong willed, funny as hell and cute to boot. I admired her character. I think she was one of the best written ones on that show. I liked them all, but Piper was my favorite, I connected with her the most.
So if you could be any of your favorite T.V. characters for a day, who would you be?
I'm such a huge fan of Charmed. I have every single season on DVD. I'm such a geek. Of all the characters on that show, I would love to be Piper Halliwell for a day. It isn't just about her cool witchy ability to freeze things or blow them up. Although, that would be a super bonus! It's just her total personality.
She went from being the middle sister to the oldest and struggled to carry the family through the rough times. But she was strong willed, funny as hell and cute to boot. I admired her character. I think she was one of the best written ones on that show. I liked them all, but Piper was my favorite, I connected with her the most.
So if you could be any of your favorite T.V. characters for a day, who would you be?
Monday, August 6, 2012
How I Write Fantasy...
I'm going to be writing up some posts in the next several weeks in regards to my views of writing fantasy and more importantly how I write fantasy. Things I have worked on, things that took me a long freakin' time to create. Now, this may or may not help you if you are a fantasy writer, time will only tell. Most fantasy writers take so long in writing their work because of all the world building they have to do. Others just wing it.
So what, first of all, does world building include? Well, that depends on how far you want to get into it. Here is what my world building included:
* Magic
*Kingdoms
*Laws
*Creatures
*Characters
*Money
*Gods and Goddesses
These are just the main things. In each of those categories, there are numerous sub-categories. I had to make lots of decisions regarding the list above.
In making decisions on my world, in general, I had to start out with some pretty mundane stuff regarding the sun, moon, stars and so on.
Might sound silly to you, but in writing fantasy, you're here to think outside of the box. I literally came up with several choices on those basic things and rolled the dice. Not kidding! I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, so I pulled out all my dice. Six sided, four sided, twenty sided and I rolled, baby!
My world has two suns. If you think this might be a hot climate, it isn't really. The second sun is really, really tiny when you look at it up in the sky of my world.
I have one moon in my night sky and of course, my stars make up their own constellations which had to be written down in folklore and the like. I even have a story about the moon. I'm still working on the constellations and the stories associated with them.
So, over the next several weeks, I'll be posting things about my world and choosing from those categories above. Bear with me, as I worked on this world for well over ten years and it still isn't done or is it perfect. I'm constantly adding to it and changing things, but most of what I have is set in stone and is here to stay. So I hope you enjoy what I have to share!
So what, first of all, does world building include? Well, that depends on how far you want to get into it. Here is what my world building included:
* Magic
*Kingdoms
*Laws
*Creatures
*Characters
*Money
*Gods and Goddesses
These are just the main things. In each of those categories, there are numerous sub-categories. I had to make lots of decisions regarding the list above.
In making decisions on my world, in general, I had to start out with some pretty mundane stuff regarding the sun, moon, stars and so on.
Might sound silly to you, but in writing fantasy, you're here to think outside of the box. I literally came up with several choices on those basic things and rolled the dice. Not kidding! I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, so I pulled out all my dice. Six sided, four sided, twenty sided and I rolled, baby!
My world has two suns. If you think this might be a hot climate, it isn't really. The second sun is really, really tiny when you look at it up in the sky of my world.
I have one moon in my night sky and of course, my stars make up their own constellations which had to be written down in folklore and the like. I even have a story about the moon. I'm still working on the constellations and the stories associated with them.
So, over the next several weeks, I'll be posting things about my world and choosing from those categories above. Bear with me, as I worked on this world for well over ten years and it still isn't done or is it perfect. I'm constantly adding to it and changing things, but most of what I have is set in stone and is here to stay. So I hope you enjoy what I have to share!
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Speaking With My Muse, Part Two...
When you're trying to fall asleep.
When you're nowhere near your computer and have no notebook and/or pen or even a recorder.
When you're driving!
When you're at work, in the middle of a meeting.
When you're in the shower and just got all soapy.
Seriously, what do you do!?
I was in the middle of my paper route this morning and suddenly started a dialogue between my character that I've been trying to figure out since last night. Nothing meshed, nothing worked. Then I started talking to myself in the car.
It's like I was speaking in tongues... If any other driver had seen me, they would probably assume I was on a cell phone ear bud thingy.
Or not.
So what do you do in a situation like any of the above? Me, I admonished my characters like they were kids acting up in the back seat. Then everything got quiet. I felt bad.
They'll be fine.
I apologized with a chocolate eclair.
What do you do when the Muse strikes you in the oddest of times and places?
Friday, October 21, 2011
Character Names...
And how the heck to come up with them!
Laura over at Writing Unleashed left a comment for me the other day. She wanted to know how I come up with fresh names in fantasy and story ideas.
Well. Let me tell you! ::Rubs her hands together gleefully::
I have a couple of name generators I go to. Seventh Sanctum, Rink Works, Serendipity, etc. They're all very good, but Seventh Sanctum is my fave by far. But half the time a name in their list sort of works for me. Others are perfect. But even if I use a generator, I still want to make my names unique. So when I saw 'Bassin', I thought... ooh! Alabassin. He's my young prince and Kayta's love interest.
Speaking of Kayta, she was my original Dungeons and Dragons character. When coming up with her name, I used my middle name, Kay, and added the 'ta'. She's been around since I was 19.
Nightshadow was a character in Cosrin, the online role playing game, and she was an assassin there as well. I just figured she was good at hiding in the shadows and wore clothes black as night.
When trying to rename some of the characters from Cosrin for my books, lots of names just came off the top of my head. Like Talaver (Tale uh ver), Farrehn (Far ehn) and Vendras (Vehn drahs). I just plucked those out of the ether. Same with Senweis (Sehn ways).
Now that list I showed the other day of what not to do when writing fantasy, I said a couple of them applied to me. One was "don't use an apostrophe in a name". Well, bugger that, I have a couple of names like the world itself is named Eir du'Brusai (Air do brew sigh). Kayta's last name is Ni'adzul (Knee add zool) and Alabassin's is Li'endrin (Lee en drin). I also have a continent named Istlandu'us (Ist land us). Those sort of came off the top of my head as well.
Now Nightshadow is an assassin and part of the D'raetus Pastiniir (There's that apostrophe again) and it is pronounced 'dee ray tus past ih near'. They are the elite of the elite as far as assassins go. I got that name mixing Latin and Drow, a form of Tolkien's Elvish language. I have translator sites for those. There are lots of things I used Latin and Drow for. Some names I don't want to use the traditional and go for the mix. When I wanted to call my wizards something else, I thought of the Magi and decided to spell it 'Mahjii'.
A friend of mine came up with the name Kefferlings (kehf er lings) for my elf cat race. My husband came up with Dargorians (Dar gore ee ehns) for my humanoid dragon race. I think I got Firlochians (Fur low key ehns) off of a generator. I didn't think Firlochian sounded much like a name and more like a race.
As for story ideas? I'm going for a somewhat generic plot with this trilogy. Tyrannical king wants to gain more power and is trying to wipe out the only force that can stop him, which happens to be Kayta and her family and armies. An arranged marriage where the intended groom would rather be married to another and a few more twists and turns I won't mention because it will spoil it. I also have another book in the works that will focus on Black Rose. He was my husband's character from Dungeons and Dragons and we've made him a champion of a deity. He'll be fighting an Elemental, in this case an Earth Elemental, that accidentally stepped into the summoning circle of a Mahjii and got possessed by a powerful demon. You'll have to ask my husband how he came up with that one.
Okay, so sorry to ramble on! But hope that answers some questions.
Laura over at Writing Unleashed left a comment for me the other day. She wanted to know how I come up with fresh names in fantasy and story ideas.
Well. Let me tell you! ::Rubs her hands together gleefully::
I have a couple of name generators I go to. Seventh Sanctum, Rink Works, Serendipity, etc. They're all very good, but Seventh Sanctum is my fave by far. But half the time a name in their list sort of works for me. Others are perfect. But even if I use a generator, I still want to make my names unique. So when I saw 'Bassin', I thought... ooh! Alabassin. He's my young prince and Kayta's love interest.
Speaking of Kayta, she was my original Dungeons and Dragons character. When coming up with her name, I used my middle name, Kay, and added the 'ta'. She's been around since I was 19.
Nightshadow was a character in Cosrin, the online role playing game, and she was an assassin there as well. I just figured she was good at hiding in the shadows and wore clothes black as night.
When trying to rename some of the characters from Cosrin for my books, lots of names just came off the top of my head. Like Talaver (Tale uh ver), Farrehn (Far ehn) and Vendras (Vehn drahs). I just plucked those out of the ether. Same with Senweis (Sehn ways).
Now that list I showed the other day of what not to do when writing fantasy, I said a couple of them applied to me. One was "don't use an apostrophe in a name". Well, bugger that, I have a couple of names like the world itself is named Eir du'Brusai (Air do brew sigh). Kayta's last name is Ni'adzul (Knee add zool) and Alabassin's is Li'endrin (Lee en drin). I also have a continent named Istlandu'us (Ist land us). Those sort of came off the top of my head as well.
Now Nightshadow is an assassin and part of the D'raetus Pastiniir (There's that apostrophe again) and it is pronounced 'dee ray tus past ih near'. They are the elite of the elite as far as assassins go. I got that name mixing Latin and Drow, a form of Tolkien's Elvish language. I have translator sites for those. There are lots of things I used Latin and Drow for. Some names I don't want to use the traditional and go for the mix. When I wanted to call my wizards something else, I thought of the Magi and decided to spell it 'Mahjii'.
A friend of mine came up with the name Kefferlings (kehf er lings) for my elf cat race. My husband came up with Dargorians (Dar gore ee ehns) for my humanoid dragon race. I think I got Firlochians (Fur low key ehns) off of a generator. I didn't think Firlochian sounded much like a name and more like a race.
As for story ideas? I'm going for a somewhat generic plot with this trilogy. Tyrannical king wants to gain more power and is trying to wipe out the only force that can stop him, which happens to be Kayta and her family and armies. An arranged marriage where the intended groom would rather be married to another and a few more twists and turns I won't mention because it will spoil it. I also have another book in the works that will focus on Black Rose. He was my husband's character from Dungeons and Dragons and we've made him a champion of a deity. He'll be fighting an Elemental, in this case an Earth Elemental, that accidentally stepped into the summoning circle of a Mahjii and got possessed by a powerful demon. You'll have to ask my husband how he came up with that one.
Okay, so sorry to ramble on! But hope that answers some questions.
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