Uncategorized

Chain Anchors to your Characters

e] by Eric

Help your readers remember who’s who by anchoring them.

Here’s the problem. I read some books very slowly. I might read chapter 2 on Monday and not get to chapter 20 for a couple weeks. So that side character with Very Important Information who the detective spoke to in chapter 2 will be forgotten by the time I get to his reappearance in chapter 20.

Characters that come and go like this are important, but can also be confusing. If you’ve ever been 2/3s through a book and had to stop and say, “who is this guy?” then you know what I mean.

Anchroing is an excellent way to remind readers who a character is. That is, give them a memorable quality or two that you refer to whenever they reappear.

In Starside Saga I do this with all my side characters. Fallo has a single black catterpillar eyebrow and he’s ugly. In the early books Henley wears a knit cap, and has fiery hair. Marlow has a “salt and pepper” beard. The Cloak has a “wolfish grin” and a black cloak. Ragin Keel has white hair and pale complexion. Quinn is raven haired and is constantly reaching for her shadline dagger. Flaumishtak has hair that flows into tendrils of smoke. Nax has white chin and feet. Lop is portly and always wants food. Oly hisses at Kila pretty much every time he appears. Bazron’s scales are so black, he is an absence in the air. Klayne has a charming smile and looks like a king.

You get the idea.

For main characters like Fallo and Henley, these qualities aren’t as important in later books because readers are very familiar with them. But early on, they had to be tagged repeatedly to anchor who they were in readers’ minds.

Anchor with visuals: A scar, a tattoo, a unique quality to their posture or their hairstyle, a hat, a narrow nose, a birthmark, an absence of eyebrows, a mannerism.

Anchor with sound: a penchant for cursing under his breath, a wheezy voice, a nasally voice, the whistle of breathing through his nose, a habitual cough, difficulty breathing, a tone of certainty, uptalk, someone who speaks so softly you can’t hear them.

Anchor with smell: soapy and herbal, distincted perfume, sweat and livestock.

Anchor with taste or touch: harder to do with characters, but I would never say impossible. A man could have leathery skin (which is a texture visual that serve two senses at once) or hair as soft and light as eider down. Referring to the taste of lipstick after a kiss or even taste-related smells. “His garlicy whispers made Jack recoil and cover his nose.” Or “Mindy leaned over him at the cafeteria table, interrupting his conversation with Autumn. She snapped her wintergreen gum and whispered too loudly: ‘You asking her out?'”

That wintergreen detail would be all you needed to remind readers’ who she in ten chapters later.

To give dimension to your more important characters, give readers more than descriptive details or behaviors. You introduce them with anchors that you repeat, then begin to add new ones. But most importantly, give them a unique voice in dialogue.

A character that always makes an innappropriate joke.

A character who responds in one or two words.

A character who always speaks in compound sentences.

A character who uses euphemisms to be overly polite.

A character who expresses intolerant attitudes and leaps to violent conclusions.

A character who insults everyone.

A character who says things that rhyme.

A character who expresses weariness.

A character who uses slang, or dialect.

A character who uses clichés.

This is what makes writing fun.

So, anchors aweigh!

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

Screeching to a Halt? Hit the Gas!

e] by admin

A writer’s momentum often slows right at the 1/3 point of their novel. Here’s what to do if that happens to you.

I’m writing this on November 10th, which marks the 1/3 point of NaNoWriMo.

If you’ve been writing 1667 words/day, that means your manuscript is 16,667 words long now. And that marks the 1/3 point of a 50k word novel.

And that is exactly where many writers experience their story slowing down, or even grinding to a halt.

In the first 3rd of a novel, your main character is reacting to external events. This is where the detective is reacting to the murder and collecting info; this is where the lass becomes smitten with the laird, the shepard is chased from his village by pillaging orcs. This is where the main character is on the back foot.

If you find your writing bogging down, it’s time to reignite your creative mind and get those sentences coming again.

Your main character needs to make a decision and do something proactive.

That’s all you need to know. Don’t overthink it.

Your creative mind sometimes resists big decisions. Why? Because big choices cut off options. They force your character past a point of no return.

This is why your confusion and frustration with your novel is so often a direct reflection of your main character’s confusion and frustration with her situation.

When she doesn’t know what to do, or when everything she’s tried has failed, her motivation flags too.

For you as a writer, just as it is for your main character, this is a turning point. Marshal your will, call upon allies, urge your subconcious to look at the problem from a new angle, dig deeper. Your hero’s journey, is your journey.

And this is why I keep repeating the Bradbury mantra. “Write. Don’t think. Relax.”

Write the next sentence, and the next. The resistence you feel is your character’s resistence. Your job is to keep pushing pushing her toward the brink where she must make a choice.

She will, and the writing will race ahead.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

Stomping on Landmines

e] by admin

Don’t let fear of grammar errors or style “don’ts” stop you.

The landmine problem kept me from writing for decades.

Yes. Decades.

I didn’t write because I was worried about the landmines of grammar, prose style, adverbs, tropes, clichés, passive verbs, and on and on.

I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I didn’t want to write a whole novel just to have some editor laugh at me, or worse, dismiss my work entirely.

I gained this fear by reading about all the mistakes beginning writers make. It was so overwhelming, I simply gave up before starting.

But here’s the truth: fiction does not require us to obey the textbook. Artistic license allows us to punctuate according to our own style.

Grammar is a convention. And following those conventions is good, because it helps the reader understand. But read any popular thriller. They are filled with fragmentary sentences. It’s is a stylistic choice, to create a specific effect.

So let the words flow how they will. Allow them to cast their spell, to manifest your story in your own mind. If you’re not confident with commas, don’t worry too much about them. An editor will suggest changes later to make sure you’re achieving your goal.

Write by ear. Cormac McCarthy rarely uses commas at all, and he doesn’t even put quote marks around dialogue. I don’t reccomend that, but it’s a valid choice.

Your prose style will develop over time. And you will learn the fundamentals of grammar by having your manuscript edited by a copyeditor.

Never stop writing just to look up a grammar rule.

Why do I say this?

The most important thing is the story, not the manuscript.

You are going to revise your manuscript later. You will take care of punctuation; you will trim the excess and add in details as you shape your story. You can study grammar rules at a different time.

Writing should be discovery. When you begin tinkering with the buts and bolts of a manuscript you switch over to inventing. That sort of thinking sees errors and mistakes where there aren’t any. Pretty soon you’ve broken a story that was working just fine.

The first thing writers break is their own unique voice. They apply The Elements of Style like an Instagram filter and suddenly their writing begins to sound “professional.” That’s not good. Because “professional” means boring.

So go onward bravely. The landmines are not real.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

Pen Addict: Affordable picks to get you hooked

e] by admin

I’m not even ashamed of it. I love pens and pencils and empty journals and planners and pretty much anything that involves putting words onto paper. (Typewriters? Oh, yes indeed!)

If you get the pen bug, you might start getting pulled into ever more expensive and exotic choices. But if you simply want really good inking experience, here are my recommendations.

The Pilot G2 Shown here in a variety pack of colors. My favorite version of this one is the black ink. These provide a silky smooth writing experience, with good coverage and no skips.

I tell you a secret: I hate the red one. Not because there’s anything wrong with the way it performs. I just hate red ink. It means I made a mistake or I wrote a typo or a grammatical error. Or that I did any math assignment ever. 😛

The G2 also come as refills that can go into many other pen bodies.

PILOT G2 Premium Refillable & Retractable Rolling Ball Gel Pens, Fine Point, Assorted Color Inks, 8-Pack Pouch (31128)

Rotring 600 is my choice for a pen on the go.

The metal body and knurgled (I know it’s “knurled”, but I like my typo better) grip makes it the perfect field pen. It won’t slip out of your hand. It’s also fairly small in the pocket. The cartridge it comes with is good, but when used up, replace it with any standard Parker refill (like the Polot G2!)

Lamy Safari Fountain Pen: This is always my recommendation for fountain pen newbies. They are affordable and the cartrdiges have decent ink in them. Once you get used to a good fountain pen, watch out. It can lead to a deranged obsession. I had to put a moratorium on new fountain pens several years ago because it was getting out of control.

These come in several colors if you don’t like charcoal. Like red, white, and blue.

If you don’t know what size nib to try, I recommend choosing a medium at first. If you like your pens to be very fine, then go ahead and try the fine. I can’t write with larger nibs because my handwriting is fairly cramped and my letters all blob together.

Fountain pen ink is another huge adventure. There are so many colors and sheens. If you want to dive off the deep end, go to Goulet Pen Company’s website and try their “ink drops.” They send little sample vials of different colors to try out before you invest in a whole bottle.

Skilcraft Ballpoint Pens are the official pens of the US Government and manufactured in the US by Nation Industries for the Blind.

Check out this infographic from their website. I have a box of these and they feel fairly cheap in the hand but they do perform way better than the Fisher Space Pen, in my opinion (although I have a couple of those as well because they are “dope” too.)

The Top 5 Fantasy Books my Readers say got them started

e] by Eric

#1 The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

This is my shocked face. 😐 Readers mentioned this most often as the first fantasy series that set them on the road of a lifelong obsession with fantasy.

I don’t think much needs to be said here. This is the beginning of epic fantasy as we know it.

I have read them all several times. The Hobbit trilogy was interesting, but not quite up to the standard set by the LoTR movies.

The Hobbit | The Lord of the Rings

#2 Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

This was a close second, by the way. Now I know that some people will quibble and say that this is really science fiction, but there are dragons, so I’ll allow it. In truth, much of science fiction is fantasy. Star Wars is a prime example.

I re-read Dragonflight last year and quite enjoyed it. It was much more serious than I had remembered.

Dragonriders of Pern for Kindle

#3 Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

This one surprised me. But after I thought about it a while, it startd to make sense. For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, these books were a huge influence because they came out of the Dungeons & Dragons world. Aside from some choose your own adventure books, these were the first novelizations that matched well with the D&D rules.

Also, dragons! And people riding dragons.

These were quite fun novels, but I have never re-read them.

Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Book 1) on Kindle

#4 The Shannara series by Terry Brooks

Elves, magic, and hugely long novels. What’s not to love? I remember reading these starting in eighth grade. I was (and still am) a bit of a slow reader and those books took me forever to finish.

I read the first three or four of these. More books came out later that I never got around to. I tried to re-read Sword of Shannara a couple years ago, but it just didn’t hold me.

There was a Shannara TV show for a while that I never watched and never will.

The Shannara Trilogy for Kindle

#5 The Dune Saga by Frank Herbert

Wait! This is science fiction! But in truth, this one actually didn’t surprise me because Dune is the bestselling science fiction novel of all time. And while there is advanced technology, a galactic empire, and interstellar travel, Dune has a very fantasy-like flavor.

I have re-read Dune a number of times. A new Dune movie is coming out soon. I’m skeptical but hopeful. I have not liked the previous attempts to bring the book to the screen.

Dune Saga for Kindle

A few honorable mentions

Peirs Anthony’s Xanth novels: A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth #1) on Kindle

CS Lewis’s Narnia: The Chronicles of Narnia Complete Set for Kindle

Issac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: Foundation Trilogy for Kindle

David Eddings’s Belgariad: Belgariad Five Book Series for Kindle

Patricia A. McKillip’s Riddlemaster of Hed