As writers know, the goal of any book is to make the reader FEEL. We want them to empathize with our characters, feel pulled in by the events and become immersed in the story. When a reader’s experience is emotional, it becomes meaningful, transcending mere entertainment.

Characters are the emotional heart of a story. Why? Because through them, writers can remind readers of their own emotional past.  It becomes an intimate, shared experience that bonds them together.

Sure, readers have probably never been terrorized by a serial killer, vampire or demon in their own lives, but they know what it is to feel terror. Likewise, a roguish yet handsome highwayman has likely not pursued them in a roar of love and lust, yet they know what love and lust feel like.

As people, we have an unending spectrum of emotional experiences. We know sorrow and confusion, humiliation, fear and pride. We have experienced satisfaction, confidence, worry and dread. As writers, it is up to us to convey these feelings through our characters so that our description awakens deep and meaningful memories within readers.

Showing what a character is feeling can be difficult for writers. Here are 3 tips to help ensure readers share the character’s emotional ride:

1) Prime your readers

Spend a bit of time early on showing what has led to your character’s emotional sensitivity. Let’s say themes of betrayal are key to your book & the character’s ‘dark moment.’ If you alluded to a past betrayal by the main character’s mother in a scene before this point, then your heroine seeing an old toy from her childhood will become an instant trigger for those past feelings.

2) Focus on what causes the emotional reaction

Sometimes the best way to bring about an emotional moment is to describe what is causing the feeling. For example, let’s say Alexa likes Ethan, the boy next door. She is trying to work up the courage to show him she wants to be more than friends when she spots her rival Jessica at his locker. If you describe how Jessica touches his arm when she laughs, steps closer as he speaks, fiddles with her low necklace to draw his attention to her cleavage, etc. then your reader will feel that jealousy build even without showing Alexa’s thoughts or physical cues.

3) Think about how you might feel

If you are drawing a blank on how to show what your character is feeling, think about how the emotion you’re trying to describe makes you feel. Dig into your past to a time you felt embarrassed, or angry, frustrated, excited…whichever emotion is the one your character is currently facing. What sort of thoughts went through your head? What did your body do? Did you openly show how you felt through gestures and body language, or did you try to hide it?  Then, decide if some of your experience can be adapted to your character. Emotion is strongest when it comes from a place of truth.

For more tips on emotional showing, have a peek through your Emotion Thesaurus, or browse the tutorials and expanded Emotion Thesaurus (15 new entries) at One Stop for Writers.

 

Image 1: Republica @ Pixabay

Image 2: PDPpics @ Pixabay

The post How To Share Your Protagonist’s Deepest Feelings With Readers appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS™.

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As writers, we all want to encourage a powerful bond to form between our audience and the protagonist so that readers care about the hero or heroine and root for them to succeed. How we do this is through empathy, which is a feeling of understanding and connection that comes about when we successfully put the reader into the character’s emotional shoes.

The Power of Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a necessary element to building empathy, but like all powerful things, it is a blade with two sides. On one hand, as people, we connect to displays of vulnerability because it gives us a glimpse at what lies beneath the mask a person wears day-to-day. When someone reveals a truth, an emotion, a deep belief or their biggest fear, they expose their heart to someone else. The willingness to be vulnerable (a necessary ingredient for love and intimacy, for example) is about saying, “this is who I am. I am sharing this real self with you.” It is self-acceptance and courage at the highest level, the purest form.

But vulnerability means being open, and that means risk. We’re going out on a limb, opening ourselves to whatever comes. Pain. Emotional wounds. Judgement, blame, criticism, rejection, humiliation, exploitation, and a host of other things no one wants to feel. This is why it is human nature for people to try to avoid feeling vulnerable and to act strong, even when we are not.

To create credible characters, we want to mirror the real world. This means that like real people, most characters will resist showing their vulnerable side, too.

Do you see the conundrum here? We need to show readers our character’s vulnerable side to help empathy form, but as mirrors of real people, the character will fight us, refusing to let down their guard and acknowledge their soft spots. What a head trip, right? Here we thought we authors were in charge, but nope.

Luckily, authors tend to be, er, sneaky. (Okay, okay, manipulative.)

When our characters are being all alpha tough and refusing to let people in, we can turn once again to the real world for help. Some situations just make a person feel vulnerable. There’s no choice. So, if we identify “universal triggers” for vulnerability, it won’t matter how stubborn our characters are. Simply by deploying a trigger, we’ll be able to place them in a situation that leaves them feeling exposed.

Through their actions, their thoughts and by making them look within at their greatest fears, readers will see a POV character’s soft side. Better still, because these are real world events, readers themselves will know exactly how the situation can lead to that feeling of vulnerability.

Here are some ways to make your character feel – and appear – vulnerable, whether they want to or not.

Through not knowing what will happen next.

People crave control, of having  power over what the future will bring. Take that away and you are left with the feeling of not knowing, of having no influence or say in the outcome. By placing the power in another’s hands through choices, actions and decisions, you rob your character of control. The resulting feelings of frustration, anxiety and even despair are all ones that reinforce vulnerability. Readers have all felt a loss of control at some point and so will deeply identify with the character’s range of feelings.

Through the mistakes they make.

Despite our best efforts, we all make mistakes. Not only do we hate it when one happens, we tend to beat ourselves up about it, growing frustrated and disappointed for not being smarter, stronger or better. Characters who make mistakes feel authentic, and it humanizes them to readers. Besides, mistakes create great plot complications & conflict!

Through personal failures.

Not succeeding at what one has set out to do is one of the most heartbreaking moments an individual can experience, and it is the same for our characters. A hero’s personal failure, especially one that has repercussions for others, is one way to break down those steel walls and show our hero as vulnerable and human.

Through a death or loss.

A deep, personal loss is never easy. Often a person only realizes what they had or what something meant when it’s gone. Again, this is a universal feeling, something all readers can identify with. Written well, seeing the hero experience loss will remind readers of their own past experiences. Death is final, but other losses can be potent as well. The loss of hope is particularly wounding.

By having one’s role challenged.

Whatever the character’s role is (be it a leader, a provider, a source of comfort , etc.), having it challenged can be devastating. Roles are tied to one’s identity: the husband who loses his job may no longer be able to provide for his family. The leader who made a bad decision must witness the resulting lack of faith from his followers. The mother who fails to keep her child safe feels unsuited for motherhood. When a role is challenged in some way through choices or circumstances, it creates self-doubt, making the character feel vulnerable in a way readers identify with.

By casting doubt on what one believes.

Each person has set beliefs about the universe, how the world works, and the people in it, allowing them to understand their place in the big picture and instilling feelings of belonging. When knowledge surfaces that puts trusted beliefs into question, the character suffers disillusionment, a powerful feeling that can make them feel adrift in their own life.

Disillusionment is an emotional blow and everyone has suffered one at some point. This can be a good way to trigger that feeling of shared experience of vulnerability between character and reader.

By experiencing fear or worry for another. 

This ties into that loss of control I mentioned above, because one directly or indirectly has a lack of influence over circumstances affecting a loved one. Fear and worry can also create road blocks about how best to proceed. It’s one thing to take risks that only affect oneself, and another to take risks that will impact others. The paralysis a person feels over what decision to make when it impacts relationships is an experience readers understand.

By having one’s secrets brought out in the open. 

Secrets are usually hidden for a reason and are often the source of guilt or shame. When one’s secrets are revealed, the character is stripped of their security, and they believe others will view them differently as a result. Readers can empathize with this raw feeling of being exposed. (This link has lots more information about secrets.)

Showing vulnerability is all about emotion, so if you have it, pull out your Emotion Thesaurus the next time you want to find a unique way to show, not tell, that feeling of being exposed.

As you can see, there are many other ways to bring out a character’s vulnerable side. What techniques do you use on your cast of characters?

 

Image 1: Foundry @ Pixabay

Image 2: RossandZane @ Pixabay

The post Grow Reader Empathy By Showing Your Protagonist Feeling Vulnerable appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS™.

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Sometimes in the middle of a deadline, along with the joy of making art for a book that you are completely over-the-top excited about*, there's an urge to break out and try something new.

A few months ago I cracked open a sketchbook, new ink, a tiny set of travel paints, and a bunch of watercolor pencils I'd been meaning to play with for a long time. The goal was only to make small, quick drawings of whatever was floating around in my head at the time, and to keep it loose. (Must squash that perfectionist beast that makes you tighten up and question every mark on the page!) Each is only about 3" square.

This exercise has turned into relaxing little breaks that fit in the crevices of my day between other projects. Also, it's FUN! You might want to try it sometime.

Here are some of the drawings. I also post them over on Instagram...

*The book is CHARLES DARWIN'S AROUND-THE-WORLD ADVENTURE (Abrams, 2016), coming out in October! Woohoo! (More about this, soon!)

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I don’t know about you, but I love reading books where the author encourages me to draw conclusions that are wrong. Case in point–untrustworthy characters who I trust anyway. Like all writers, I am ultra aware of character cues and actions as I read, so when I’m led astray and find out someone I believed to be good really isn’t, I want to cheer and tell the author, “Well done!”

Tricking readers in this manner is difficult.

In real life, all of us are body language experts. At least 93% of communication is nonverbal, meaning we are very adept at ‘reading’ other people by their mannerisms, gestures, habits and voice changes. In books, this skill allows us to pick up on nonverbal cues which communicate a character’s emotions. Plus, if we are in the dishonest character’s POV, we also have access to their thoughts and internal visceral sensations (heartbeat changes, adrenaline shifts and other uncontrollable fight-or-flight responses). All of this means that tricking the reader can be very tough.

There are several ways to make the reader believe one thing while another thing is true.

One technique is the red herring. This is where a writer nudges a reader in one direction hard enough that their brain picks up on ‘planted’ clues meant to mislead them. So for example, let’s say I had a character who was a pastor and youth councilor for his church and he spent his weekends working with homeless teens, trying to get them back into group homes. The reader will begin to get a certain image in their mind.

If I then further describe him as slightly bald with a bad taste in fashion (imagine the kind of guy that wears those awful patterned sweater vests) but who has a smile for everyone he meets, it’s a good bet that I’ve disarmed the reader. They’ve written this character off as a nice, honest guy. Even though his life is all about the church, no way could he be the one stealing cash from the collection box, or the man having affairs with depressed women parishioners, or playing Dr. Death by administering heroin to street teens, right?

Another technique is pairing. Similar to a red herring, pairing is when we do two things at once to mask important clues. If, as an author, I show my friendly pastor leaving an alleyway at night and then have a car crash happen right in front of him, which event will the reader focus on? And if later, the police find another overdosed teen nearby as they interview the pastor about the accident, commending him from pulling a woman from the wreckage before the car could explode…would the reader put two and two together? If I did my job right, then no.

A third technique is to disguise aspects of his “untrustworthy nature” using a Character Flaw. After all, no one is perfect. Readers expect characters to have flaws to make them realistic. If our nice pastor (am I going to go to Hell for making my serial killer a pastor?) is characterized as absent-minded with a habit of forgetting names, misplacing his keys, or starting service late and flustered because of a mishap, later when the police ask him when he last saw dead teen X and he can’t quite remember, readers aren’t alarmed. After all, that’s just part of who the character is, right?

When your goal is to trick your readers, SET UP is vital.

If the clues are not there all along, people will feel ripped off when you rip the curtain aside. Make sure to provide enough details that they are satisfied you pulled one over them fair and square!

What techniques do you use to show a character is untrustworthy? Any tips on balancing your clue-sprinkling so that the reader doesn’t pick up on your deceit before you’re ready for them to? Let me know in the comments! 

Image: lllblackhartlll @ Pixabay

The post The Subtle Knife: Writing Characters Readers Trust But Shouldn’t appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS™.

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A Look Inside One Stop’s Templates & Worksheets

As you can imagine with an online library, there are many nooks and crannies to explore. One of my favorite places is up in The Stacks where we keep our Templates and Worksheets. (click to enlarge)

Pictured above is the Character Fears Template. By following the prompts, you brainstorm a character’s secrets, failures, greatest mistakes, relationship issues, wounding events, situations he avoids, the lies he believes, etc. so it uncovers the thing he fears most…which, in Character Arc, is the very thing he must face and defeat to become whole and achieve his objective or goal.

Templates are easy to use. You can fill them out right at One Stop and the information transforms into a helpful “wheel” showing how everything ties together. This is terrific for planning and plotting, and will also help keep you focused on your character’s motivation in each scene. Once a Template is created, you can save and access it onsite, or export it to your computer for printing. Try creating one for each character in your book!

(We’re also building new ones as we go, so if you have an idea for a template or worksheet that you’d really like to see, make sure to submit your Wishlist Idea through the CONNECT button at One Stop.)

If you aren’t a member yet, don’t worry! You can register at any time for free and poke around. Go check out the Templates and Worksheets for yourself, and see what you think!

Happy Writing,

Angela, Becca & Lee

The post Inside One Stop For Writers: Unique Templates & Worksheets appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS™.

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In 2012, I wrote a post at Janice Hardy’s blog, Fiction University. In it, I shared what I believed to be the key to success:

Making your own luck.

Here’s an excerpt:

Make Your Own Luck.

Yes, that’s right. These four words hold the key to your success. Read them again, and cement them into your brain.

Each of us knows how to work hard at writing. We read, we study, we write. We join critique groups, network and find mentors. This is the biggest part of success. But often hard work alone isn’t enough. We can hang there on the cusp, feel the air vibrating with greatness. Yet it dangles just beyond our fingertips.

This is where we need to do something that many of us don’t like. Something that goes beyond our writerly, keyboard-between-me-and-you selves…move out of our comfort zone. We need to learn to Make Our Own Luck.

It would be nice if Success would be decent enough to slide over an inch or two and meet us, but life doesn’t work like that. So we need to grab it. And how we do that is by filling in the blanks:

If I could ____, then it would help me succeed.

If I could catch the eye of an agent, then it would help me succeed.

If I could build up an audience online, then it would help me succeed.

If I could launch my book well, then it would help me succeed.

Whatever your “blank” is, instead of thinking that it’s too hard to do, or something out of your control, I want you to remember to Make Your Own Luck.  (Full article.)

I ran across this article on focusing on things we CAN do rather than stressing about things we have no control over, and as I reread it, it was like traveling back in time. We had just released The Emotion Thesaurus. I remember I was so…nervous and worried, I guess, but also determined. Nervous about how my first book would go, worried people would think I was some sort of fraud with no fiction books under my name, determined to do my very best to get over my self-doubt and launch the book well.

In the original article I talked about my fear of public speaking, but how I knew putting myself out there was an important step toward my future. So I had signed myself up to give a presentation at a local conference to follow through on making my own luck.

Now, it’s 2015. How has this idea of “making my own luck” worked out?

—The Emotion Thesaurus

• closing in on 85,000 sold (in English)
  
• 2 foreign editions under contract, 1 more in the works

–Two more books published, The Positive Trait & Negative Trait Thesaurus, bringing sales up to 126,000. And then a free booklet, Emotion Amplifiers, adding another 14,000

–Becca & I forming a second company to launch One Stop For Writers creative brainstorming software on Oct. 7th, in partnership with one of the key developers of Scrivener

And that public speaking thing? Where did that go?

An invitation to speak in Australia, of all places!

(And next year Becca will come to Canada as we have been invited to teach a workshop together, another cool milestone for us both.)

I am not listing any of this to say, Wow, look at me! I’m sharing this because I absolutely 100% assure you, THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT ME. I’m Joe Writer, just a girl with a keyboard. Like anyone else.

And if I can step outside my comfort zone and make my own luck, so can you. In fact I hope you are, right now. If not, I urge you to get out there and do something that scares you, something that challenges you to your core. Not only will you discover you are stronger than you thought, it will be good for you in the long run, and each small step forward leads to another, and another.

Where do you want to be in three years? Let me know so I can  cheer you on–I know you can do it.

Image 1: Belezza87 @ Pixabay

The post Writer’s Key To Success: Make Your Own Luck (Case Study) appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS™.

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Hi everyone! Because it is crazy town in Angela’s house as she tries to keep up with deadlines and prep for Christmas, she’s giving a past Seekerville post some new love. Please read on to better understand why compelling Heroes (and Heroines!) MUST have flaws!

When we see the word Hero, we think heroic, which is ironic because our protagonists are usually anything but at the start of a story. Instead they are often jaded, lost or incomplete in some way, toting along a collection of flaws and false beliefs about the world and themselves. But that’s okay, because characters that fascinate readers most are layered, complex, and most of all, human. Brainstorming flaws can be difficult—which faults to choose, how many to give them and why, but here are ten reasons why all heroes need them.

1) TO CREATE REALISM AND EMPATHY:

In real life, people have faults-no one is perfect. It stands to reason that for a character to be believable, he also must be flawed. Readers are people too, ones who are as prone to poor choices, mistakes, and overreactions due to their shortcomings as our hero is. When they see the fallout created by a character’s faults,  they empathize, knowing just how it feels to screw up. And as the character learns more about himself and works toward overcoming his flaws to reach his goals, the reader will cheer him on because the desire to achieve self-growth is universal.

2) TO UNDERSTAND BACKSTORY:

To write a compelling character, it isn’t enough to slap a few attributes and flaws into their personality and then throw them at the story. Fascinating characters come about by understanding who they are at their core. If you know a character’s flaws, you can brainstorm their past to better understand what experiences made these negative traits form. Backstory is valuable to know (for you as the author, not to dump into the story) because it helps you plot out what motivates them, how they will behave (their choices, mannerisms, pet peeves, etc.), and what they avoid to keep from being emotionally hurt. Knowing these details means you’ll be able to write them authentically, making them real to readers. (If you would like help brainstorming your character’s past, I recommend trying the Reverse Backstory Tool.)

3) TO CAUSE RELATIONSHIP FRICTION:

When everyone gets along, a story flat lines. Flaws act as sandpaper in a relationship, rubbing characters against one another to create delicious friction. A flaw vs. flaw (sloppiness pitted against a perfectionist) or a flaw vs. an attribute (inflexibility vs. free-spiritedness) both build tension and conflict which draws readers in, quickens the pace and raises personal & relationship stakes. For more detail, here’s an article on How to Create Friction In Relationships.

4) TO CREATE CONFLICT:

Flaws mean blind spots, biases, pet peeves and irrational emotional reactions to name a few. All of these things cause the hero to mess up along the way, creating conflict. A story road paved with mistakes, misjudgements and poor choices amp up tension at all levels, and make it even harder for the character to succeed. The antagonist can turn the hero’s mistakes to his own advantage, becoming an even greater threat.

5) TO PROVIDE A BALANCE:

If a hero has too many strengths (positive attributes), not only will he come across as unrealistic, it will be too easy for him to succeed. This makes the story predictable because as conflict pops up, there are no flaws to hamper the hero’s efforts or create setbacks, and he will always win. Readers want to see a hero struggle, because it makes the victories so much sweeter. Failure is also important to a character’s  arc: he must hit bottom before he can succeed.

6) TO REVEAL EMOTIONAL WOUNDS:

Flaws bloom into being as a false protective measure when a person suffers an emotional wound. Why false? Because while they appear to “protect” a person from bad experiences (emotional pain), they actually hold back growth and damage relationships. Take a girl who grows up with parents who have high standards. They only bestow affection when she proves herself to be the best and so later in life, she equates anything less than perfection as failure. She may become a workaholic, inflexible, and overachieve, all to protect herself from feeling low self-worth at not measuring up (thanks for that, Mom and Dad!). Flaws are guideposts to these deep emotional wounds, something every author should know about their characters as it ties directly into Character Arc (see below).

7) TO GENERATE INNER CONFLICT:

Inner conflict is the place where the characters faults (flaws) and negative thoughts (I’ll never be good enough, I’ll never find love, I’m not worthy, etc.) reside. Good story structure dictates that a protagonist’s flaws should be counterproductive to achieving his goal and that his negative thoughts should sabotage his self-worth. These things are what the hero must face about himself and change. Only through subduing his flaws will he have a chance at achieving his goal.

8) TO BE A FORCE FOR CHANGE:

Flaws get in the way at the worst times, pressuring the character to act. Let’s say our hero is determined to take control of his family’s struggling company, but he’s notoriously irresponsible. To keep the business afloat, he must apply himself. His desire to not disappoint the people counting on him force him to take a hard look inward at his own irresponsibility, which he must change to succeed.

9) TO ENCOURAGE SELF-GROWTH:

As I mentioned before, one of the core needs of all people is to grow as a person. Growth is tied to happiness and fulfillment, so if your characters has flaws, small ones or big ones, showing him overcome them allows him to feel satisfied and happier, and will resonate with readers who are on their own journey of self-improvement.

10) TO COMPLETE THE CHARACTER’S ARC:

Flaws shouldn’t be random—each flaw forms from a negative past experience. In Character Arc, there should be at least one core flaw that stands in the character’s way (see inner conflict) of achieving his goal. For the character to win (his outer motivation) he must face his fears, deal with the emotional wounds of his past, and see that achieving his goal is more important that the risk of suffering another emotional wound. Only by subduing his core flaw and banishing his negative thoughts can he be free of fear. This necessary self-growth will help him find the strength needed to achieve his goal.

What types of flaws do you burden your character with? Is it a challenge for you to find a way for him to overcome these flaws?

 

Image: PublicDomainPictures @ Pixabay

The post 10 Reasons Why Your Hero Needs Flaws appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS.

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Today we’re taking a field trip to touch on something all writers struggle with at some point: story doubts. It might come about because of a less-than-enthusiastic reaction from a beta reader, or after requests for fulls go nowhere. Maybe you have rewritten your opening 9,000 times or have three drafts of your novel, all told from different points of view, and still feel uncertain which version is the right one.

Doubt – soul crushing worry that we are not capturing our story well enough – can not only snuff out a novel, but the writer’s spirit as well.

Jenny Nash has some excellent insight into this pool of doubt, and how to swim through it to write deeply from passion, telling the story as only the author can.

I’m a book coach, and all day long I have writers coming to me who want to work out the Where and What and How of their story. Many of them are in the midst of some kind of writerly anguish: they have a pile of agent rejections, or they are 2/3 of the way through their 23rd draft and they’re still not sure the book is working, or they got to the last scene and suddenly realize that nothing has happened in the last 150 pages so there’s nothing to resolve. They are not sure how to move forward or even if they should move forward. They are, in other words, full of doubt, and somewhere along the line, they have come to believe that the way out of that doubt and that anguish is to focus like a laser beam on these Where, What, How questions:

Where should my story really start? What needs to happen in the middle? How is the best way for it to end?

Nine times out of ten, they are asking the wrong questions. Instead of Where, What, and How they should be asking Why? – and not even about the story itself, though that is an extremely powerful exercise, too*, but about themselves as writers.

If you’re anything like me and almost all the writers I work with, your story has been haunting you for quite some time. It keeps you up at night. It nags at you when you are reading other people’s stories. It pops into your head at times when it is least welcome. It wants to be told. 

It can be extremely useful to know why you think it’s haunting you. I actually believe that not knowing the answer to why is one of things that holds a lot of writers back. They know they like to write, they know they’re good at it, they know they have a story to tell, but they don’t know why it matters to them, or what, exactly, it means to them.

As a result, they write a book that doesn’t ever really get down to anything real and raw and authentic. They write pages that skate along the surface of things. And if there’s one thing readers don’t need, it’s to skate along the surface. That’s what the Internet is for. And cocktail parties. And the line at Costco.

Listen to Simon Sinek’s TED talk on how great leaders inspire action. It’s 18 minutes long, but even if you listen to the first 6 minutes you’ll get it. The main point of the talk is this: “People buy things because of WHY you do them, not because of WHAT you do.”

Writers want someone to buy something from us as much as the folks over at Apple and Nike. We do! Even before we talk about dollars and cents, we want readers to buy that we have something important or entertaining or illuminating to say. We want agents to buy that our idea is generous and alive.

So all this work you’re going to do on WHAT your book will be? It often all hinges on WHY you want to write it — on why it is haunting you, on what captivated you from the start, on what the spark was, on why you care so much. If you can articulate that, it will probably unlock the story in very powerful ways.

In 2002, literary agent Ann Rittenberg gave a speech at Bennington College that sums this up beautifully.

            What kind of writer can make characters [you care about]? I think the kind of writer who is not afraid to access the deepest places in himself, and is not afraid to share what he comes up with… I see plenty of writing that has kernels of good in it, but it’s hedged around with so much tentativeness, or uncertainty, or excess, or stinginess, that it doesn’t allow the outsider — the reader — in… Yet when I read something that speaks to me, that absorbs me, that remains vividly in my head even when I’m not reading it, I’ve been intimate with the person who wrote it before I’ve even met him. This isn’t to say I know anything about him. I only know he or she’s the kind of writer who’s willing to explore the deep essence of character….

That’s the kind of writer I am guessing you want to be. So how do you get there? Ask yourself the following:

• Try to recall the moment your story came into your head. What took root in that moment?

• Why does it matter to you? What does it mean to you? It wouldn’t have stuck in your head if it didn’t mean something and matter to you – a lot.

• Have you been shying away from the truth of that moment – out of fear of how raw it is, or how powerful it is? Let yourself to get closer to it.

• Let that truth inform your story from beginning to end. Let it be the engine that drives your narrative forward. A story that has a single driving force tends to be a story that has a solid beginning, a gut-wrenching middle and a satisfying end.

• *Ask why of your characters, as well. Why do they care about what they care about? Why will it hurt them not to get it? Why are the afraid? Why can’t they do what they know they should? Why did they do what they just did? Why did they cry? Why, why, why. It can be the key to great writing.

Jennie Nash is a book coach, the author of eight books, and the creator of the Author Accelerator, a program to help writers break through procrastination and doubt and write books that actually get read. Check out her free resources: a free 5-Day Book Startup course, a free weeky trial of the Author Accelerator and weekly lessons on writing in the real world at jennienash.com. Also check out The Writers’ Guide to Agony and Defeat, and sign up to win a free coaching session.

Do you struggle with story doubt? How do you move past it? Let us know in the comments!

The post Overcome Your Book Doubts By Asking WHY appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS.

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I have a confession. *whispers* I’ve never been interested in writing short stories. I put so much planning and research into my writing that it always seemed like kind of a waste of time to write something so…short. But after hearing Ian Martyn’s arguments in favor of short story writing, I can absolutely see his point. As a matter of fact, I think I’m going to recommend his Inspiration Word exercise to my writing group…

In one of my blogs, I advocate blog writing as a tool for improving your writing, whatever your genre or subject. However, today I want to champion short story writing, and also the reading of short stories. I think too often these pieces are dismissed as less important than full-length novels—somehow frivolous or not worthy of our attention.

I’m a member of a writing group, and at the end of every session we are given a word. We can write whatever we want, and occasionally I have experimented with poetry, which for a fiction writer is always an interesting exercise. However, most of my efforts result in short stories. Some of the stories on my site come from those inspiration words: Weather Vane, Dancing, Pickpocket, Watching. I have numerous others, some of which I am trying to edit and submit to competitions and others that I will try to publish.

So as an author, why should you spend your precious time on short stories?

1) They’re fun. I mean it, they are. In my writing group, we’re given a word and one week to produce the goods. (OK sometimes I get behind, but never mind). For me, the result turns out to be about 1500 words long; I think the reason for this is because with a piece of this length, there is enough room to explore a topic without distracting me too much from my other work. Anyway, after some wracking of brain cells I get the first inkling of an idea and then run with it. For a writer, that’s great. Enthusiasm for writing any story is usually greatest at the beginning. When writing shorter works, you get to feel that energy more often—energy that will often transfer to your other writing projects.

2) They provide the opportunity for quicker feedback. Because short stories don’t take as long to write, you’re able to share more often with writing groups or critiquers. This means you get feedback faster and can more quickly apply what you’ve learned during the process. If you’re not a member of a writing group, pass your short story around to friends and family and ask them for feedback. It’s a little easier than having them review something you’ve worked on for months. Also, non-writers will find a shorter piece less daunting to critique, and they’re more likely to be honest, especially if you tell them you’re ‘experimenting’.

3) They provide the chance to experiment. Short stories provide the opportunity for you to try out new ideas, writing styles, even different genres, to see if they work. It’s hard to do this with a novel, because you’re often too invested to feel comfortable experimenting. I’ve read science fiction short stories by a number of authors including Asimov and Alistair Reynolds, and I’m sure this was their goal (in part) when writing these successful pieces.

4) They provide more outlets for getting your work out there. Earlier, I mentioned my intent to enter some of my short stories in competitions. I also intend to submit more to magazines. If you are inspired to write short stories or you have a few already gathering dust, why not do the same? What have you got to lose? If you’re successful, you’ve gotten your name out there. Even if you don’t succeed, you’ve gotten valuable experience polishing a piece for publication, and that’s good practice for when you’re revising your novels.

5) Reading short stories gets the wheels turning. Take time out from reading novels to try short stories. It’s a great way to sample different ideas and styles, learn, and get inspiration. In the ‘Inspiration’ section of my site I list Robert Silverberg’s ‘Science fiction 101’, in which he reviews some classic sci-fi short stories, explaining why he thinks they’re so good. For anyone writing short stories in this or any genre, I would recommend taking a look at these. Then pick out other writers’ shorts to check out. And don’t forget all the short story magazines; there are many out there in all genres

So that’s five reasons why I think writing (and reading) the humble, often overlooked short story is such a good idea. Which makes me realise that I now need to go away and work on a few more for my site. Perhaps you’ll read then and make a comment.   If you have short stories on your site, let me know. I’ll try to have a look and comment in return.

Ian Martyn lives in Surrey in the United Kingdom. Following a degree in Zoology he spent thirty years working in the pharmaceutical industry. On leaving to become a consultant he was determined to complete and publish those science fiction stories that he had started and were rattling around in his head. He has now published two of those stories, Project Noah and Ancestral Dreams on Kindle, available through Amazon. You can find more about Ian Martyn, his books, and blogs on his website.

The post The Power of The Short Story appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS.

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We’ve all experienced it…the curtain to consciousness opening, and with it, the realization that the best story idea we’ve ever had is carefully unraveling with each passing second into wakefulness. We grab something–anything–and start writing down a the images, thoughts, character tics, plot snippets and world building details before they can escape.

After a shower, a coffee, and if we’re lucky, some form of breakfast that doesn’t have the word “leftover” in it, we sit down to reread our brilliance. And often, the only word to describe what we see is gobbledegook.

It’s disheartening, because we feel that heart flutter, that sense of knowing that a gemstone resides within the clatter of words. But if our dream catcher fails and the images seem no more than disjointed fragments, how can we turn what we’ve collected into something usable?

I’m turning the blog over to author Anthony Metivier, visiting us from Germany, because he’s pondered this very question and has some great ideas to share. Please read on!

It’s well known that if you want to consistently remember your dreams, you need to write them down each and every morning.

This practice used to be a pain back in the day of pen and pencil, especially if you slept with another person.

Today it’s as simple as iPhone and the Plain Text app syncing the words to Dropbox faster than you can thumb them in.

With that problem solved, the question is: how do you get the dream material you’ve recorded into the form of a narrative, a compelling story that people will actually want to read?

A lot depends on exactly how you dream, but it seems to me that irrespective of whether you see narrative shards or full blown scenarios, all dreams serve the same function as Tarot cards spread out on a table before the interpreter’s eye.

As Doktor Freud once taught us, dreams provide the basis for association and the more dreams you have, the more associations to the dream you can make. Recent advances in psychology have worked to demonstrate that dreams probably have no meaning, but that doesn’t suggest that dreams can’t be interpreted and mined for narrative treasure.

Thus, imagine the following scenario:

You wake up and write down everything you can remember from the cinema of your sleep. Because you’ve been practicing “dream writing” for awhile now, the dreams tend to blossom large in your mind and you have no difficulties capturing full portraits of your night time activity.

Instead of looking for a story within the dream itself (which is also a perfectly reasonable and wonderful thing to do if the material is present), look at the dream you’ve written down and its images and let your mind free associate. You might come up with a completely new story or find yourself reflecting on something from your past. It could be something for yesterday, last year or a decade ago.

Using the most prominent association that comes to your mind, examine it for the following characteristics of compelling narrative:

• Does it involve a driving desire that is in conflict with a critical need (like wanting a home with a white picket fence but needing to be a better parent before that house can have any authentic value and serve as a home)?
• Does it involve being trapped or imprisoned in a particular social situation (job, family, etc.)?
• Is there a dilemma in which many options offer themselves as possible solutions without any of them being particularly desirable?
• Has a crisis forced you or someone in the association to take action?
• Did the action lead to some kind of confrontation?
• Did any sense of self-revelation or a better understanding of the self emerge?
• Was there a resolution?

Although the disconnected fragments of a dream may not contain these elements, the episodes our dreams sunder in our minds for association often will. Exploit these and then combine them with the intense imagery of your dreams to make narrative magic.

To give you a case study, during a recent trip to Athens I dreamed of a pregnant woman with a butterfly tattoo on her cheek getting out of prison. She approached a throbbing wall made of human bones and flesh, behind which a dragon was spouting flames. She gave birth to her child and held it up to the wall, which immediately disintegrated into pieces.

When I woke up, I wrote the dream down and immediately started associating it with whatever came to mind. After a few seconds, I arrived upon the Berlin Wall and started to think about a futuristic alternative world in which people are kept out of East Berlin instead of being trapped in it.

I had also recently seen my girlfriend buy a lottery ticket, something that shocked me because I never would have suspected she was a gambler. For whatever reason this came to mind during the free-association, it gave me the idea of having some kind of lottery involved in how people get into this new version of East Berlin.

The next step was to take the scenario and answer each of the questions given

The result:

A basic sketch for a visually intense novel I drafted over the next two weeks tentatively called Electville. Using nothing more than my dreams, random associations and my iPhone, I crafted the basis for what would become a rich first draft, most of which was also drafted in bed upon awakening.

The sexiest part of this kind of practice is that it builds what you might call a self-interfering feedback loop. What I mean is that you create one novel-sized plot from a dream and then continue dreaming while working on the novel and still writing down your dreams on a daily basis. Although it doesn’t seem to provide more dreams that richen the novel drafting process, it does seem to compound the intensity of the dreams so that the idea-generating aspect get more and more intense and the depth of the outlines and sketches that emerge become a treasure trove for future exploration.

Even if unused (as most of our ideas ultimately must be), these outlines and sketches are like the gold coins in a pile you never spend because you always have enough to sustain yourself from the surface. And yet those coins you do pick from would never be so evident to your fingers and agile in your imagination if it weren’t for the unspent coins supporting them from below.

This I have learned from making dreams the horde of gold that supports of all my fiction.

Anthony Metivier is the author of Lucas Park and the Download of Doom, How to Remember Your Dreams and founder of the Magnetic Memory Method, a 21st century approach to the Memory Palace Method that makes memorizing foreign language vocabulary, poetry, and the names of the important people you meet easy, elegant, effective and fun.

The post How To Mine Your Dreams For Story Gold appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS.

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I recently read a Huff Post psychology piece on Turning Negative Emotions Into Your Greatest Advantage and immediately saw how this could also apply to our characters. Feel free to follow the link and read, but if you’re short on time, the rundown is this: negative emotions are not all bad. In fact, they are necessary to the human experience, and can spark a shift that leads to self growth.

And after reading James Scott Bell’s Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between and attending a full day workshop with him a few weeks ago, I can also see how this idea of using negative emotions to fuel a positive changes fits oh-so-nicely with Jim’s concept of “the Mirror Moment.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s look at what a mirror moment is.

Mirror Moment: a moment in midpoint scene of a novel or screenplay when the character is forced to look within and reflect on who he is and who he must become in order to achieve his goal. If he decides to continue on as he always has, he will surely fail (tragedy).

If the story is not a tragedy, the hero realizes he must either a) become stronger to overcome the odds or b) transform, shedding his biggest flaws and become more open-minded to new ideas and beliefs. One way or the other, he must better himself in some way to step onto the path which will lead to success.

Jim actually describes the Mirror Moment so much better than I can HERE, but do your writing a BIG FAVOR and also snag a copy of this book. (It’s a short read and will absolutely help you strengthen the character’s arc in your story!)

To see how the two tie together, let’s explore what leads to this essential “mirror moment.” Your hero is taking stock of his situation, realizing he has two choices: stubbornly continue on unchanged and hope for the best, or move forward differently, becoming something more.

The big question: what is the catalyst? What causes him to take stock of the situation? What causes his self-reflection?

The answer is not surprising: EMOTION. Something the character FEELS causes him to stop, look within, and make a choice.

Let’s assume this isn’t a tragedy. If this moment had a math formula, it would look something like this:

Emotion + look within = change

So what type of emotions are the best fit to encourage this necessary shift toward change? And are they positive emotions, or negative ones? Let’s experiment!

Common positive emotions, taken right from The Emotion Thesaurus:

Happiness + look within

Happiness is contentment, a feeling of extreme well being. If one feels good about themselves and where they are at, it doesn’t encourage a strong desire for change, does it?

Gratitude + a look within

Gratitude is thankfulness, an appreciation for others and what one has. Because again, gratitude creates contentment, feeling “full” and thankful, it doesn’t make the best catalyst for change. However, if you were to pair it with something like relief (such as being given a second chance), then  gratitude over being spared something negative could lead to resolving to change.

Excitement + a look within

Excitement is the feeling of being energized to the point one feels compelled to act. On the outside, this looks like a good candidate for change, but it depends on the type of excitement. Is the “high” a character feels something that distracts them from self reflection (such as being caught up in the experience of a rock concert) or does it inspire (such as the thrill of meeting one’s sports hero in person)? If one’s excitement propels one to want to become something better, then change can be achieved.

Satisfaction + a look within

Satisfaction is a feeling of contentment in a nutshell. It is feeling whole and complete. As such, looking within while satisfied likely won’t lead to a desire to change anything–in fact it might do just the opposite: encourage the character to remain the same.

Common negative emotions, again right from The Emotion Thesaurus:

Fear + a look within

Fear is the expectation of threat or danger. Feeling afraid is very uncomfortable, something almost all people wish to avoid. Some even try to make deals with the powers that be, so deep is their desperation: if I win this hand, I’ll give up gambling, I swear. So, combining this emotion with some self reflection could definitely create the desire to change.

Frustration + a look within

Feeling stymied or hemmed in is something all people are familiar with and few can tolerate for long. By its very nature, frustration sends the brain on a search for change: how can I fix this? How can I become better/more skilled/adapt? How can I succeed?

Characters who are frustrated are eager to look within for answers.

Embarrassment + a look within

Embarrassment is another emotion that is very adept at making characters uncomfortable. Self-conscious discomfort is something all usually avoid because it triggers vulnerability. When one feels embarrassed, it is easy to look within and feel the desire to make a change so this experience is not repeated.

Shame + a look within

Disgrace isn’t pretty. When a person knows they have done something improper or dishonorable, it hurts. Shame creates the desire to rewind the clock so one can make a different choice or decision that does not lead to this same situation. It allows the character to focus on their shortcomings without rose-colored glasses, and fast tracks a deep need for change.

*  ~  *  ~  *

These are only a sampling of emotions, but the exercise above suggests it might be easier to bring about this mirror moment through negative emotions. But, does this mean all positive emotions don’t lead to change while all negative ones do? Not at all!

Love + a look within could create a desire to become more worthy in the eyes of loved ones. And emotions such as Denial or Contempt, while negative, both resist the idea of change. Denial + a look within, simply because one is not yet in a place where they can see truth. Contempt + a look within, because one is focused on the faults of others, not on one’s own possible shortcomings. Overall however, negative emotions seem to be the ones best suited to lead to that mirror moment and epiphany that one must change or become stronger and more skilled in order to succeed.

So there you have it–when you’re working on this critical moment in your story when your character realizes change is needed, think carefully about which emotion might best lead to this necessary internal reflection and change.

(And of course, we profile 75 emotions in The Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, so that’s just one more way for you to use it!)

 

photo credit 1: Dhinal Chheda via photopin cc

photo credit 2: nowhere Zen New Jersey via photopin cc

photo credit 3: stephcarter via photopin cc

The post Story Midpoint & Mirror Moment: Using Heroes’ Emotions To Transform Them appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS.

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• Set up a business
• Paid for a professional edit
• Hired a cover designer
• Outsourced formatting to a HTML goddess because the book is full of links and redirects
• Test-marketed it with a select group of writers & used feedback to strengthen

	SW	iTunes	CS-Amazon.com (PRINT)	B&N	Kindle (Amazon.com)	Kindle  (Amazon Euro)	Kobo	PDF	Total
May	17	10	243	62	412	25		102	871
June	13	19	503	66	905	50		89	1645
July	13	22	887	78	1334	77		76	2487
August	13	33	893	56	1297	103		60	2455
September	10	32	1036	53	1282	151	21*	47	2632
Total:	66	116	3562	315	5230	406	21	374	10090

• Winning Top 20 Best Blogs For Writers with Write To Done a few months before The Emotion Thesaurus released. This raised our profile significantly, and at a critical time.
• Once sales started climbing, Amazon would send out mailers to people who purchased writing related books, and sometimes The Emotion Thesaurus was listed as a ‘Those that purchased X might also like’ pick.
• A price war between B & N and Amazon. For the last week of September, the two duked it out, lowering the book’s price daily until the discount put it under 10 bucks. Average sales nearly doubled for print (although sales dipped that week for Kindle).

• Not soliciting endorsements. We didn’t do this in advance of publishing the ET because we were worried about being turned down, worried about getting the cold shoulder because we were newcomers and new authors. Now more than ever we are seeing an acceptance of SP, and of Traditional authors making the leap. Endorsements probably would have helped us greatly and so moving forward we’ll be seeking them out.
• Not believing in ourselves enough at the start. I think we wasted a lot of energy on doubt because we hadn’t published before (except in magazines) and we were afraid that while we felt The Emotion Thesaurus added value, others would not. The response to The Emotion Thesaurus has been nothing short of phenomenal and knowing that Illinois State University is using it in their Creative Writing curriculum makes us incredibly proud. A self published book going to University...who would have thought?

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You may already know Five Dials, a (mainly monthly) literary magazine published by Hamish Hamilton, one of Penguin's imprints. If you don't, you probably should - the magazine is free and promotes work from both emerging and established talents.  Over the years it has featured a diverse collection of literary fiction and non-fiction from the likes of Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru and Noam Chomsky, amongst many others.

The Five Dials team is going to start guest blogging here on The Penguin Blog - all their posts will be in the FiveDials category (we're literal minded in many ways...) so you can easily find them in the future.  And here's the first.

*****

At Five Dials, we rarely know what's going to happen when we start putting together an issue. While assembling our 25th issue, which you can download here, we were offered the chance to hold a contest. Actually, it might be a stretch to call it a contest. It's more like we became, albeit briefly, a literary orphanage trying to find safe homes for lost children. The children, in this case, are a collection of beginnings by Vancouver-based short story writer Zsuzsi Gartner.


A while ago, we implored Zsuzsi to send in a new story for the issue. Instead, she offered up something better, both for us and for you. Below this introduction you'll find a list of beginnings to Zsuzsi stories - and, trust me, 'Zsuzsi stories' are a genre unto themselves. The scenarios come from her imagination - there's no doubt about that - but the middles and flourishes and endings will have to come from yours. These are, after all, orphans, and they deserve a good life somewhere in the world, even if it's far from their place of origin. Zsuzsi included her mailing address at the end of the fragments. I've been told she's off email these days, so aspiring writers will have to send a postcard instead. Get in there fast. Each beginning can only be adopted once. Zsuzsi even mentioned she'll send back adoption certificates to each lucky parent. The caveat: we'd like to see the resulting stories. Send Zsuzsi a postcard telling her which beginning you've chosen, write the thing, and send it to us. Who knows? We may include it in our next short fiction issue, nestled amidst names like Frank O'Connor and Lydia Davis and D.W. Wilson.

 1) The Time I Tried: Then there was the time I tried to get my life made into a television series but failed. Everything ordinary happened to be in great demand. “Let’s hear what the ordinary people have to say,” that anchorman, the one everyone trusted, would say.

 

2) Karl: You would think they’d talk about money all the time. That’s what you’d think. All the time, endlessly, like a broken record, non-stop, ad naseum, infinitus spiritus amen. But they don’t. They talk about anything but. You have to make them sometimes. Get them to confront the incredible magnitude of their good fortune. Shove their faces into the enormity of it. But gently.

That’s Karl’s job.

 

3) Sperm Donor: The first time he saw the child he was startled that the boy looked nothing like him. My son.

 

4) Corner Office: Things were supposed to be different with Corner Office, brudder. Just wait ‘til Corner Office, I kept telling Twyla as her tears dripped onto the suction line offa l’il Felix’s shunt (every-so-often the generator goes and then it’s DIY), everything thing will be better when I get to Corner Office. If you could see l’il Felix now, with his flappy hands and cruxifying smile, oh your heart would surely urk.

 

5) Chastity: Sometimes they appear in great bunches, streaming down the street like a circus parade. Sometimes just out of the corner of your eye, when you’re not thinking about anything much. The women and their wild beasts. Can’t they give it a rest?

The nuns are the worst.

 

6) The Third Sister I: The barbarians are chewing. Chew chew chew all summer long. Blood pools on their plates, just the way they like it. The mothers wear halter tops; the fathers take off their watches; we run barefoot in the street, a thick seam of tar bubbles in the centre of the road and sticks to our feet. There are no boys on this block, except for spindly Johnny Falconi who hides his shovel teeth behind his mother's orange curtains. Girls run rampant, no boy could survive here. We run low to the ground, knees bent, hands dragging like monkey paws so that they don't see us. They are the barbarians. We see them through their haze of cigarettes and BBQ smoke and choked laughter. We watch our backs.

 

7) After Almadovar: What grown man can say that he married his own mother, and that although heartbreak was involved, no-one disapproved?

 

8) St. Elizabeth of the Miracle of the Roses: Anastasia Nagy is on a rampage. The boy, honestly he’s just a boy, they’ve chosen to play Zoltan is horribly unsuitable. It’s like casting Macaulay Culkin to play Heathcliff. She claims she can see the peach fuzz still gleaming on his cheeks. She writes fire and they give her green fruit! She burns up the telephone lines and is truly inconsolable.

 

9) The BBQ Nun: She came to us from Kansas City with smoke in her habit, shorn hair glinting copper. She came with her guitar and her firm belief in penance and her expertise in all things eschatological, although the latter was more of a private preoccupation than a part of her duties at Sacred Heart. She came with her talk of judgement, but there was always a kind of smile on her face and she even made the idea of Hellfire seem like fun.

 

10) The Third Sister II: The third sister with her bare skull like a crystal ball, but milky blue. When Betty and Lydia want to touch it she makes them pay. Sometime in pennies, sometimes in blood.

 

11) Lawn Boy: They say that if a house is on fire and a woman has to choose between her child and another – her husband, her lover – she will choose the child.

What if I told you I would choose differently?

What do you think of me now?

 

 

For Adoption Papers Write to (and please specify which opening/s):

Zsuzsi Gartner

c/o 1424 Commercial Dr.
PO Box 21513 LITTLE ITALY

VANCOUVER, BC V5L 3X0/V5L 5G2

CANADA

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Tomorrow I will be working with researcher Charles Limb in his research on creative improvisation. Me and a few of my MICA illustration colleagues were invited last week to come to Johns Hopkins and draw while having our brains scanned. Ummmm, yes, please! It’s my Sheldon Cooper dream come true.

Mr. Limb gave a TedTalk last year on his research with jazz musicians and rappers. The premise is the same…perform with a controlled piece and then perform while improvising a piece while in an FMRI scanner. The illustrators that are participating will draw photographs exactly as they see it and then draw caricatures of that photograph. Controlled action versus improvisation.

Here is a video of Mr. Limb’s TedTalk, “Your Brain on Improv”. I will post thoughts on my experience tomorrow~

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Here is today’s rockin’ drawing from rockin’ Lexington Market. Below are a few experiments with Crayola and watercolor. Me likey.

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Somethin' I been workin' on. I've been trying a slightly different style with this, just for the fun of it. Well, I guess I'm drawing characters the same, but the way I color it is somewhat different.

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Ever since I got this new tablet, and since I figured out to make a Photoshop brush that would mimic the texture of scratch board, I've been wondering if I could make an entire scratch board illo in the computer. Today, I gave it a shot. First I did the sketch, all with the tablet in Photoshop:

Just like in real life, I started out with a light line, with lots of rough shapes blocked in, etc. Then I went over it with a slightly darker line to better define the final shape.

Then, I reversed it (so it was white instead of gray) and placed it on a layer above a layer filled with black (which represented my scratch board). Using the stylus and my super special brush, I painted with white on yet another layer above all that, "scratching away" the black I didn't want, just like the real thing.


I have to say, I think it turned out pretty darn close to reality! After that, I colored it the way I usually would in Photoshop and viola!


To be honest, it's kind of a weird feeling to know that, if I chose to, I really don't need to ever buy real scratch board paper again, or use that big, chunky scratching pen or buy new tips, or make a mess on the floor with a fine layer of black dust. Weird...

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I couldn't wait to try an illo with the style I mentioned last time, so I tinkered with one today. I needed a character and I like moose... mooses... meese—whatever. Anyway, it's pretty different from I normally do with scratch board, but I really like the way it turned out. (Click to see it bigger.)

I think the grain of the wood is a bit too small to get a good feel for the texture on the moose himself, except on the hooves. But otherwise, I can't wait to try another one.

Whaddaya think?

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I was at the Science Museum last weekend with my kids, and I got to looking at one of the installations I illustrated/designed a while ago. Something about it really intrigued me. I probably didn't think too much about it at the time. Sometimes you just get in the mode of cranking stuff out and you don't have time to really dote on it.

But then, after some time has passed, and you go back and take a good look at it, you realize one of two things: 1) Man, that was terrible. I wish I could just hide that from everyone, or 2) Hey, that actually turned out pretty good, I think.

This was a case of the latter. It included about 4 animals illustrated in a way I hadn't tried before or since, and I really liked the way it turned out. I dug up the old files and took another look at how I built them (I'm including some here, click to see them bigger).



Pretty simple, really, but it had a "feel" that I liked. (There were also type treatments that I liked.) Since that particular exhibit had a focus on "wood", I used a collection of wood texture I had purchased online years earlier, and also promptly forgot about.



Well, now I really, really, really wanna make a picture book in this style. I don't know if I would go as realistic in my depiction of animals, but I would definitely use the same technique. So who knows, maybe when PiBoIdMo is over, I might have an idea that will fit it.

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I took the trolls from the other day and gave them a little color. Still playing with brush settings and my stylus to see what kind of look I can get.

I'm also trying to be a little more "painterly" with these, meaning that, rather than flat blocks of colors, I'm working a little "chiaroscuro" (to dig up an old art school term) with mid tones, cooler shadows and warmer highlights.


I also lightened the "ink" outlines, gave them a little bit of a brown hue and let it multiply on the color layers, just for the heck of it.


I don't know. I may try a full illustration like this (with or without trolls) and see where it takes me.

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A whipped up this portrait for children's author Laurel Snyder ("Any Which Wall," "Penny Dreadful," "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains") the other day because A) there's no reason why authors can't have cool, custom Twitter/Facebook avatars like illustrators do, and B) I wanted to experiment a little with coloring, particularly with my new tablet and stylus.

Since I can now vary the weight and opacity of each stroke with a stylus, I wanted to take a stab at creating more of a watercolor look. I tried more subtle shading, both in the "white" areas but also on the black line art.

I've actually tried something like this before, but a long time ago. I had forgotten what it looked like until I looked at some of those old pieces the other day.

Funny how I never seem to be satisfied with my process. Always tinkering...

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As some of you may remember, I've been plagued by the concept of trolls for some time now. I've been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them: a story, a comic, what?

The main thing that has eluded me is I can't figure out for the life of me what I want them to look like. Possessed by the muse last night, I did some sketching. Mostly because I wanted to try "inking" something with my new Wacom Intuos 4 tablet, just to see how it looked and how it felt to ink something digitally.

Well, I had a blast. I think they came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I like that they're still rough, but I like that I don't have to mess with pens, scanning, getting rid of pencil marks, etc.



Just for the heck of it, I shaded them a with a little old school half tone patterns that I completely masked and then "painted away" the mask where I wanted the dots. Give it a rough feel, too.

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I have had a streak of excellent reads the last few months! Only one book I reviewed did not make this recommend blog. Maybe that supports my theory that the best writers are writing for YAs.

Robin's first book, Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature, was a 2008 BBYA book, and FAT CAT is on the fast track to be a winner for next year. Catherine, Cat, is a brilliant teenager with a knack for scientific inquiry, which is put to the ultimate test during a yearlong science project to be judged at a high school level fair in the spring. Through the luck of the draw, Cat draws a picture from which she uses herself as the primary scientific experiment and observation. This project is anything but ho-hum. Amanda, Cat's best friend, is beside her all the way. I want Amanda for my best friend. Along the way, Cat discovers that she has become a "guy magnet" and has a crash course in repelling guys. Cat has to face a four-year hurt by her former best friend, Matt. She cooks her way into the hearts of all around her. But does she win the competition? Does Cat understand what has happened to her?

I liked Cat; her focus, her commitment to herself. And what does her story come wrapped in: a funny, well-paced story that YAs will love reading.

ENDERS' Rating: *****

Robin Brande's Website (I suggest following her website if you are a writer).

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Recently my sixth graders began researching ancient civilizations, and one topic which seemed to excite them was the inventions created thousands of years that we still use today. That's not surprising; children, after all, are born creators. So what better way to end the school year than by giving students opportunities to be artists and inventors?

Recommended Books

The best way to get students excited about invention is to provide loads of fabulously illustrated books on the topic. One of my new favorites is A Native American Thought of It: Amazing Inventions and Innovations, by Rocky Landon and David MacDonald (Annick Press). By now we all know that moccasins, canoes, and snow shoes were invented by Native Americans, but how many of us knew that these amazingly adaptive people also created syringes, diapers, and hockey? This inviting book contains lots of awesome pictures and just enough information to get students hooked.

Equally exciting is the companion book The Inuit Thought of It: Amazing Arctic Innovations by Alootook Ipellie and David MacDonald (Annick Press). In a land where it rarely gets above freezing, and much of each apart of the year is spent in either 24 hour darkness or light, you need to be pretty clever in order to survive with the limited resources nature provides. In addition to being fantastic reads for an invention theme, both of these picture books fit in well with the theme of survival.

Invention, of course, goes beyond rudimentary survival. Later scientists and inventors would seek to improve upon the ways that people live and work. Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind the Peace

1 Comments on Exploring Invention with Picture Books, last added: 5/18/2010

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