Hello again, fellow writers!
Ahh--Spring! Isn't it wonderful? A great time to go out and dig in your garden and get those wonderful veggies started for your own salad bar in the months to come.
But Spring also brings tax time! I like doing taxes about as much as I like rabbits who chew on my plants. Since I'm a writer that left-brain/right-brain thing is working against me when I try to do my taxes. This article on Taxes for Creative Writers helps, even though I'd much rather be out in my garden.
Speaking of the garden, I'm still hard at work on my magnum opus,Dreams of the Salad Bar. Last month I found ways to make my villain, Carl the Cauliflower, less of a pale, colorless character. Now I have to take on the rest of the plants. I'm so glad to have found help--where else?--on the internet.
When I saw Writer Magazine's article on Where Do Characters Come From by David Galef, it made me think a bit about my own star vegetable--the eggplant. Am I really putting part of myself into her? If so, perhaps I can make her deeper by tapping into my own thoughts and emotions. For advice on how to do that, I referred to Making Your Characters' Thoughts Dramatic by Stephen Delaney. And since I was already working on tweaking dialogue, I found Jane Lebak's article, Your Character's Language on the QueryTracker blog to be very helpful. And Beth Hill's thoughts on Variety in Character Voices gave me some good ideas on how to do it. Now I think I can present a deep (aubergine), well-rounded eggplant for my readers. Now I just need to remember How to Use Quotation Marks, and I'll be all set.
Not all of my vegetables can be so fully developed, of course. I felt bad about that until I read about E. M. Forster'sCharacter Types. I can't claim that my broccoli measures up to any of his characters in Howard's End, but I'm still learning. And this Character Arc Worksheet is helping me along the way.
But with all this work on my characters, I'm afraid my story might not measure up. Is it too predictable? Do I have enough action? Fortunately, I found help with those questions as well. Writers Digest offers 5 Tips to Help You Pick Up the Pace, along with 5 Simple Steps on Creating Suspense in Fiction. Then I found Writing Pace: Crackling or Grinding? Now I'm raring to go. Along with Larry Brooks's Secret Weapon of Storytelling, T. N. Tobias's advice on10 Ways to Create a Plot Twist, and Loni Emmert's Push it Off the Edge, I'm in business.
Now If I just had more time to write. Happily I found 5 Ways to Add Hours to your Writing Day. I'm already doing #5, but I can't wait to try the rest of them.
Sometimes when I look at how much I still have to do with my manuscript I become discouraged. I know that as hard as I work at it, Dreams can sometimes be a nightmare. So I was encouraged when I found Eugene Cross's thoughts at Glimmertrain on "A Powerful Sort of Doubt." Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to pull this off after all!
Happy writing, everyone! .
Betty Wryte-Goode
Betty Wryte-Goode is a writer, mother, and wife who lives in the Lehigh Valley. Her passions include writing, reading, shopping, and exploring the internet. Betty is always looking for writing tips, so if you have any you would like to share, please send them to her through our Submissions/Contacts page, with the subject line, "Attn: Betty."
Mixed Up Words of the Month:
Hoard vs. Horde
Hoard is what people do when they don't want to run out of something--usually something that is scarce, valuable, or treasured. It means to amass a large quantity of something.
Fantasy writers use this word to describe the gold accumulated by dragons.
Hoarders are people who are interested in acquisition and retention of things--as seen on T.V.
Horde, when used as a noun, means mob, crowd, or large group of people or animals. As a verb, it means to assemble into a horde or large group.
So, when the end of the world comes, you might want to hoard canned goods--and a good can opener--before hordes of
scavenging mutants get them all!