Tuesday's Writer's Tips - The parts of a Story #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #Plot #Characters #Setting #Goals #Motives

 Doing more of my take on writing a book this month. I'll get back to something else later. Stories are made of parts woven together. Making them work can be easy or hard but it's also fun to dream up a world and people it.  Bty world I mean whether your story is contemporary, his torical, fantasy or some other genre, each world is somewhat different from the realitty of the time period. The writer can choose the elements he or she wished to be part of the story.

Plot for me is where the story begins. I always have a series of steps designed to bring the story to the end. Someone once told me or i read it somewhere that a plot is just a plan. I look on it as a road map taking me from the beginning through the middle to the end. When designing the plot, I also am creating the world in which my characters dwell. Some writers through in the political events surrounding the characters. Sometimes I do this and sometimes not. This is the writer's choice.

Characters and here I often depend on Astrology for giving my characters traits and depths. Sometimes the character arrives fully developed during the time I spend at night telling myself a story. There is usually a hero, a heroine and a villain. The villain might not be really a bad one but always one whose goals are different from the other characters. There are usually secondary chaaracters who have a role to play in the story. I try not to make them cardboard characters but give them a bit of life. In doing this sometimes they then want their own story. I spend time looking at their view of the world of their existance.

Setting - This is the world in which the characters exist bu it's also the individual places they visit. The weather always plays a part. The book I'm working on now has seasons that give character to the book. It's an interesting bit of fun. I often forget in the rough draft to put my characters in any setting. Then I must go back and develop their world.

Goals are another part of developing the story. Each character, even the secondary ones have goals. I try to keep the secondary character's goals geared to one of the main characters.  Developing this area often makes me scratch my head. She wnats a man. He hs no desire to marry. These general ideas have to be boosted and changed to the why and the how of the story.

Motimes - This area goes into the characters backgrounds. This is also an area of why does he or she want a particular something.  The motive needs to be clear in my mind as I work on the story.

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Meandering On Monday with Janet Lane Walters #MFRWauthor #poetry

Meander 1 - The Danger of Setting Goals - With my writing and with everything else, I try to set goals. Some are easy to accomplish. Others seem inpossible. There are some I must get to or I'll end up tearing myhair out. Are they dangerous goals. Not really but they mean making phone calls and being put on hold. I do not like to be put on hold. Don't think anyone does but I start going crazy. Another goal that's becoming hard to manage has nothing to do with my writing. But with information I should have given to my publishers, like who do they send any royalties collected after I'm gone. This is a dangerous thing since it makes me face that I will not live forever. I will try to make these goals soon or later.\

Meander 2 _ Last time I talked about a poem called Fruitfly Fourth of July. Haven't found it yet, but I did find some notebooks that had a lot of poems written down. Actually not a single note book but a dozen or more soI thought why not put a poem in my blog everyweek. They may not be great poetry but I enjoyed writing them and some of them are interesting to read. So here goes.

                                                     The Medicine Men
While lying on my bed of pain, I see
A funny similarity between
The men who came to view my body ill
And those whose feathered dance treat the sick.
These moderns come iwth pills and stethescopes
In hopes of curing all my body aches.
The tribal chiefs of yore too had their trucks
And with their magic hoped to drive away
The demons that reside and hide inside,
And yet I wonder as I lay and wait
If there is more success now than once before.

Meander 3 - Moving forward with another draft of the Wizards of Fyre. This seems to be going well and the words they are increasing. I will not have it done when I thought  it would be. Probably a month later but that's what I must do to make sure the story is what I want it to be. Have nearly finished one of the rights' back books and the story is told much better now. Still sexy and still a fun read but some of the things that needed expanded have happened.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Goals for Characters

 Characters do come alive and they become people to a writer and to the reader. The tags give them interest but there comes a time when the character must stop being created and enter a story. So what do you do? Give them a goal.

Goal is what the character wants to achieve. Goal is a place they want to go, an object, a person, anything the character might want. How does one determine what the characters goals might be?  Joe wants Mary. Why? Arthur whats to know who killed Amy? These are goals and there are many goals the character you've been bringing to life may want or need. Determining the why of the what is the next step the writer must take.

What does the character lack in his life? Is the lack generic or specific? The lack is an inadequacy. A lack eats away at his or her ability to control. A lack makes him want to do something to gain his goal. Joe wants love. Then he decides Mary is the one who will give him what he desires. Why did he choose her when he could have picked Lucy or Joan? The reason behind this is that Mary offers him some compensation that makes the goal possible.

To gain the compensation and to reach the goal the character must act. The action is the direction he or she takes to reach the goal. This suddenly brings the character to life for he discovers what is lacking, decides on the compensation an takes action driving toward the goal. Suddenly the character is alive and running off the page.

Meandering on Monday with Janet Lane Walters

Meander 1 Most people are making resolutions for the new year that's on the horizon. I don't make resolutions since to make them is to break them. What I do is set goals and ones I believe I can accomplish during the time. My first goal is to complete Melodic Dreams and also Priest of Toth. Doing that means I'll put four books up for sale. Anything else I complete during this time is gravy and I do like gravy.

Meander 2 Looking back on the past year has seen a number of books put out for people to read. When I looked at the list I amazed myself. Some of them were re-issues but some were new. Here goes. Re-issues Nurse Karen Comes Home, Moon Summoned, Healwoman. All new Shattered Dreams, Rekindled Dreams, Lines of Fire, The Mocro-manager's Murder and A Spicy Seduction.
That is an amazing number but of course some of the books were completed in 2012 so though it looks like I'm revving on all wheels I'm not.

Meander 3 Work is moving ahead on Melodic Dreams and the story has taken a few twists as usual. The end hasn't changed just the way of reaching that point. This story brings in some things that are personal. Years ago I composed music and have lost all the scores somewhere in the mists of time. I did hear several of them performed in public and that was a hoot. So I sort of know what my hero  in this story feels. The other is my daughter, an OT is helping me with those parts of the story. That also is fun.

Meandering On Monday with Janet Lane Walters

This week's reading was devoted mainly to reading David Weber's WarMaid's Choice. I've read the entire fantasy series by him and when I run out of new books to read, I'll read then from beginning to end. I have waited so long for another in this series and was pleased to find this one and continue the adventure with the characters and their fight against evil. It's around 800 pages so this took a week since I read by bits and pieces.

Brings me to meander number two. Fragmenting one's self. I write, read, and do house work in spurts. Amazingly things get done. I think this goes back to when I worked as a nurse with many, many patients to do various chores for. The tendency to do a bit of one thing followed by a bit of another seems to me to be natural. By the end of the day, my goals have been reached and that's what's important. Setting goals and meeting them works for me. I also know if I don't get as much done one day, there's always the next day which may mean doing a bit more,

As to writing, I'm working hard and fast on A Spicy Seduction.. There are somewhere between one and five thousand words to finish. Yesterday, I put a scene aside, a love scene, since my mind went blank. I will come back to it when I see how it has to run. It's a vital one with an important revelation for both the hero and heroine. Once I finish this draft, I'll go back and work it in, following the flow of the story.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Scenes

Back to The Techniques of a Selling Writer bu Dwight V. Swain. This book is so full of advice to writers I'm on my second copy.

Just what is a scene. Like a book, a scene has a beginning, a middle and an end. But there's also more to the scene. The scene helps develop conflict in the story. What it needs is a focus character, hero, heroine or villain. For the scene to work, the focus character needs a goal. This goal may be a segment of the final goal. Say the final goal is to win the love of the character's life or to find the murdreer, to defeat the aliens, or to win over the evil sorcerer. Each scene is a segment of one of these goals, but the scene takes the character step by step to the goal. The goal is what the focus character wants to achieve in this scene. Maybe to fina a clue to the murderer, maybe to get a first date, maybe to learn a particular spell, or find a way to trace the alien ship.

To bring the scene alive there needs to be conflict. Opposing forces always make for interesting reading. Without conflict, the scene falls flat. What is keeping the hero, heroine or villain from reaching the goal of this scene? Sometimes the conflicts aren't strong and if they aren't strong enough the scene falls flat. Bickering between two characters isn't real conflict. Conflict means a struggle. Making achieving the goal too easy for the focus character leaves the scene flat. So build the scene with conflict so the character is headed for disaster.

Disaster is the last part of a scene, When the character succeeds the story is over, even if they win a small concession, this can not solve their entire problem. There must be some kind of doubt that the character faces defeat in the overall scheme of the story. Maybe the focus character appears to win his goal but the opposing character isn't happy with what they have agreed to. This can be shown through the eyes of the opposing character rather than the focus character.

So build each scene as carefully as you build the entire book and if the character seems to win find a way to show the win is only a temporary step on the path to finding the entire goal of the story.

27 August - Week Behind and Week Ahead by Janet Lane Walters

The start of another week and it's hard to believe another week has passed. I have reached the halfway point on Lines of Fire, as far as drafts go and have more than half the wordage I projected for the book. The story is taking shape very nicely. During the coming week I hope to move forward with the goal of finishing the book before the end of the year.

What I have to do this week is work on some promo, read more books for a contest. Sure hope they go better. Sometimes reading for contests is difficult expecially when you find books that you want to won and books you wish had never been entered. But mum's the word on likes and dislikes until the contest ends. I also need to email an editor to learn if she received the book sent over a month ago. And figure how to put my books up on a promo site.

Lately I've been reading on several of my published loops about people being concerned about receiving bad reviews. They agonize over the words someone says about their books. I guess I mostly ignore reviews both the good and the bad. Maybe this is because I've done reviews in the past and stopped doing that because I realized not every book hits me the same way. I also discovered that there were books I loved that others hated and books I hated that everyone loved. Yes, there are people out there that love to trash books, especially those with lots of great reviews. But to let this stop one from writing doesn't make sense to me. The person I have to please with my stories is myself and the editor who sends a contract. Guess this is my rant for the week. I also know nothing good ever comes from writing the reviewer.