Focus on the Craft: CHARACTER (45)
- Create interesting characters who don’t sound like you.
- Create a likable protagonist, something the reader can build on.
- Character arc: the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story.
- Establish your protagonist, and other characters as well.
- The ‘ticking time bomb’ is building suspense in the story.
- 3 no-nos of Christian fiction:
- Deus ex machine (God from the machine).
- Ending must be built into the beginning.
- Plant and payoff, don’t plant if unless you’re going to use it.
- No sermons in the middle of a story.
- Bad boy gets saved, end of story.
- Deus ex machine (God from the machine).
- Show, don’t tell. Description is not telling.
Focus on the Craft: POINT OF VIEW (141)
- Establish your POV right away.
- Omniscient POV: in everybody’s head. lazy.
- Third-person POV: he-said/she-said.
- First-person POV: “I” and “me” POV. A great time to choose first person is when you’re writing about someone very different and distant from your typical reader, but to whom you want that reader to feel close.
- Mixing POVs: Choose one character to be the first-person character and use third-person for all the others in the scene/story. Don’t do more than one first-person viewpoint in the same book.
Focus on the Craft: DESCRIPTION (163)
- Every setting, every character must be described fully for the reader. If you can’t imagine the scene, neither can the reader.
- Generic descriptors: stadium, desert, closet and cockpit.
- Establishing shot: what am I looking at? Where am I? Who’s with me? Describe.
- Comparison: Word picture or simile of what the place looks like.
- Lighting:indoor/outdoor, day/night and the weather.
- Detail: Bits and pieces to set the setting. Odd pieces of furniture, plus full sensory sweep. What do I hear,smell, taste, feel and see in this setting?
- Place the players on the stage. Place the players on the stage as soon as the scene starts so the reader will know as if they are in the scene.
- Describe actual places. Get on the web or visit the library for information about the actual location.
- Beats: a pause in the story. Keeps the scene from being rushed, tells the readers the character’s actions.
- Plants and payoffs: don’t plant it if you’re not going to use it. Avoid a payoff without a plant.
Focus on the Craft: DIALOGUE (195)
- Stick with “said” or “asked” and not a myriad of others.
- Great dialogue is layered.
- Great dialogue is right for the character.
- Good dialogue is good for the moment.
- Don’t let characters say things to one another that they both already know.
- Don’t use telling in quotation marks, using back story and surrounding it with quotes.
- Profanity: use euphemisms instead.
Senses: aroma of paint, tar, freshly brewed coffee or jasmine tea. Bring reality to your story, allow the reader to hear locusts chirping, a trumpeter practicing, the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. Offer a taste of the delicate flavor of veal or soggy french fries cooked in stale grease. Sit in a chair that’s coarse and scratchy, or one that’s luxuriously soft. By appearing to senses, you give your story mood, texture and color.