I was asked a question recently that made me smile. It hit all those little things that I work on when creating characters and writing stories, and made me want to gush about the hidden details, the tiny aspects I don’t know if anyone will notice because it might be based on something real that I witnessed. The question asked was: What inspired your supporting characters? How did you come up with their names and personalities? I’m pretty sure I…
I’m deep in the depths of editing my manuscripts from November of last year. I’m reading through them in full, making notes, marking mistakes, and leaving lots of what if questions behind for myself. The idea is that once I’m done I will have a new point to start from on the next draft. One of these manuscripts is small and one is big, as you might have guessed, the smaller one needs the most work. This is the one…
When I begin to write a story, sometimes I have an idea of what my characters will look like, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, the vision that I have is only partial. Perhaps a key feature of the person I’ll be writing about, because it will matter a great deal to the plot. Other times, characters pop up. Sometimes they help move the plot along, the clerk at the shop, the barista in the cafe. Other times they appear on…
Welcome to May’s writing quotes. It took me a bit of time this month to narrow down which ones I wanted to share. I was distracted by the desire to post them all, or at least everyone I put in my stack for this month. My love for words makes it hard to narrow my choices down to just a few. I even had some quotes that had nothing to do with writing that made me sigh with happiness that…