by Liz Bureman |
There are a few characters that we’re all familiar with in television and literature. Most lawyers are terrible people, the black guy who lightens the mood in a horror movie will die first, the high school head cheerleader will be catty (unless she’s the main character), and any pair of cops will have one who goes by the book and one wild card.
These character archetypes, when they’re not main or central characters, can tell the reader a lot about what type of story to expect. They’re referred to as stock characters.
by Liz Bureman |
Part of storytelling is creating something memorable. You want your readers to remember your characters, the world that you’ve created, and what happens to those characters in that world. This is nothing new; back in the earliest days of storytelling, before we had the written word, those who were responsible for the oral tradition had to make sure it was preserved.
One of the most effective ways to enforce memory is through repetition, and so one of the most common storytelling techniques was born: the Rule of Three.
by Guest Blogger |
Close your eyes and imagine you’re walking through the streets on a foggy day. The fog is so thick that you can’t see anything around you—just your feet on the pavement and the dull gray tint to the haze.
You can hear your feet walking along, and you detect distant voices. Are they calling out to you?
by K.M. Weiland |
I always hated the whole idea that something as inherently artistic and, well, instinctive as writing fiction could (or, worse, should) be forced to adhere to structure. The notion is so non-intuitive as to be dumb.
Structure = formula = cliché = what’s-the-point?
No way I was going to try to stuff my creativity into the strait jacket of a preset structure created by some tweed-jacketed nincompoop out there in literary land.
Needless to say, I resisted the whole notion of structure for years.
And then, one day, I actually learned what structure was.
by Joe Bunting |
People read books for the stories, but it’s the characters they fall in love with. Audiences particularly seem to enjoy pairs of characters: Romeo and Juliet, Kirk and Spock, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, Watson and Holmes, John Paul White and Joy Williams.
When developing loveable characters (or hateable characters), storytellers have two primary methods of characterization: what a character does and every other character in a story.
The foil, in particular, is effective at breathing characters to life. This device in use since God made a bet with Lucifer in the Book of Job, and it shows up in many of the most popular stories today.
What is a foil and how can you use them in your stories?
by Guest Blogger |
You’re a writer, and you’re also a person who has some family, friends and acquaintances, which means you’ll eventually have to reconcile a basic conflict: Writing about the people you know without ticking them off.
Writing about people you know can get uncomfortable quickly. A fiction writer might say, “I hope my boss doesn’t realize I made him the ruler of the underworld in this story, or I might be looking for a new job soon.” Or “When this is published,” a nonfiction writer might worry, “some of these people might never talk to me again.”
Just changing names or a few details here and there isn’t enough to successfully address these issues. (Even writing only positive things doesn’t always work!) Here are five less-conventional ways to get what you want on the page without getting disowned by your family, dumped by your friends, and most importantly, losing the essence of what you’re trying to say.
