Tuesday's Writer's Tip - More on Characters - Actions and Reactions #MFRWauthor #BooksWeLoveLTD #Action #Reaction

There is another way of making your characters leap into being in the reader's mind. Action and Reaction are vital elements to understand. How often have you heard someone say "He or she isn't acting in character." So this is one of the ways you need to look at your characters and make sure they stay in character all the pages of the book.

When something happens around your character, how do they react. Are they angry? Do they retreat? What emotions are stirred inside? You need to know how your character will react to the good and bad things of life. One of the ways of doing this is of course knowing your character very well. We all react to different things in different ways. So do characters. But for the characters there's little room for ambiguity. Feeling one way today and another way tomorrow about the same thing can make the character's reactions seem wrong. Sometimes I have this problem with my critique group. They think about how they would feel about something and want the character to feel that way. Some characters feel differently from the general public.

After you have their reaction, you need to think about how they will act. Will they become physical, retreat, just do nothing. Any of these reactions will show something about the characters. Action means taking steps and thinking about what to do. Sure an action can seem like a spur of the moment but but not necessarily so. But it can also be a triggered response and the writer needs to know what is behind that response.

So as you write the scenes of the book, you need to think about all the characters involved in the scene. The scene may not be in their viewpoint but how they react can be seen through their body responses, their dialogue. So think about reactions. Then think about action. What will the main character do? The other characters in the scene, what will they do? Reaction and action make your character seem alive, but make sure they stay in character.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Cause and Effect and Beyond

Wouldn't it be wonderful if each cause only had one effect. The problem is that often there are more than one cause that creates an effect. In real life, often there are many causes that produce an effect. When writing fiction, the writer must examine the cause and see what effect they are looking to show the reader. John kisses Mary and she slaps his face. The kiss is the cause and the effect is the slap. The author needs to explore further. In real life, everyone may know why Mary slapped John. They know the people involved in the incident, especially when Bob kisses Mary and she collapses in his ar,s. So while a cause has an effect, the writer needs to go further. But where?

What the writer needs to know and show the reader is Why. What reason did Mary have for slapping John or for passing out in Bob's arms. The writer also needs to know why John kisses Mary. Did he expect the slap? Did he expect her to be happy? Expectations are the reasons people act in certain ways. That his expectations weren't met, at least it seems that way. After the slap, both he and Mary will have follow up reactions. Thus stories are woven. By looking at the cause, seeing the effect and exploring the reasons for the effect and going on to explore the expectations and the reactions, the story is woven word by word action by reactions until the story reaches the end.

Writing Hints -- Tags

When writing dialogue, letting the reader know who is speaking is a good idea. There are things about dialogue that I'll deal with at a different time. This is about speaker identification.

Using things like he said, she asked, he answered or responded are the easiest way but so often this falls into a pattern and the writer decides to get clever and to use different words. Sometimes the choice of the tag word seems silly. He hissed is one I find funny unless the writer has used a lot of words with esses. The funniest one I ever read was "Let me go," she ejaculated. I kid you not this was in a manuscript I was critiquing. One problem with using other things to avoid using said, a word many readers skip over, is becoming so clever the reader wants to see what interesting new word you're going to substitute and the story is lost.

There are ways of avoiding these and one is showing the speaker taking some kind of action. "I will not go with you." Mary crossed her arms on her chest.
Mark glared. "You certainly will." This devise can be especially useful when there are a number of people in the scene. Nothing confuses a reader more than having to figure which character is speaking.

Now we come to adverbs. He said angrily. She said coyly. The use of adverbs with every tag or with many of them also can annoy a reader. Adverbs are best sprinkled in very, very small doses. Instead of adverbs, show how the person is speaking by an action or a choice of words.