Filler

"I don't want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time." -Dean Kamen

Sometimes
you have things
in your stories
that aren't
important.
Just like the
way I've broken
these lines up,
we add things that
aren't important
or we stretch
things out
to make it look like
we've done more
than we actually have.

Don't waste time. Don't waste words.

Kirah

Interaction

"A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day." -Bill Watterson

There are a lot of ways to tell what a character's like; by his habits, routines, and internal thoughts. All of those are important, but the way they react to people and their world really defines who they are.

Orson Scott Carr said it best, so I'll paraphrase what he said: 'The more characters you have, the more interactions you have. If you just have two characters, you have two relationships: A to B and B to A. If you have three characters, you have to write about six relationships: how A reacts to B, A to C, B to A, and so on. We don't treat everyone in the exact same way.' (To see exactly what he says, look at the introduction to Speaker for the Dead.)

But how do we interact with our world? Well, some people are passionate about politics and always have an opinion on it. Others are indifferent. We have varying levels of obsession for everything, from tracking its every movement to absolute hatred. Keep that in mind. If you need to similar personalities, like two strong girls, give them different hobbies and hatreds. It can help you and your reader to keep them distinct.

Hope it helped,
Kirah

Goals

"You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures." -Charles C. Noble

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted; I've been up at BYU.
Everyone has goals, right? Some of mine are to memorize eight or ten songs and play them in front of people, to get down my serves for tennis, and to do a lot of writing this summer. A lot of best-selling books open with a character's goal, such as Katniss's goal to survive, Harry's goal to escape Dudley's torment, and Percy's goal to graduate from seventh grade without getting expelled. None of these books scream it; we get to watch the characters fulfill the goals. (That's also an excellent example of showing, not telling.) Then we get to watch the characters succeed or fail in achieving that goal. Harry escapes Dudley and goes to Hogwarts, Katniss is doomed to a violent and painful death, and Percy is expelled.

Give your character a goal. One part of my book that I enjoy writing is that every character blocks another character's objective. For example, Ambrr and P'eter want to find Evelyn, but they can't get her because Stark is sheltering her. And Evelyn wants to get home, but if P'eter and Ambrr find her, she'll never get there. And that's just the beginning.

Goals are an easy way to give your character a bit more dimension. Try to keep it consistent with their personality. Good luck!

Kirah

Odd Inspiration

"I don't believe in writer's block and neither should you. Writing is a job just like anything else. The guy at Subway isn’t allowed to get sandwich block, you shouldn’t let a word drought keep you down." -Sean Platt

I have to admit, inspiration is odd and unpredictable. But, as I have said, my writer's block finally broke, and I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And stared out the window. For the record, that is a great way to spend an airplane ride. Plus I finished reading Shadow of the Hegemon.

But my real inspiration for writing was a book called My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. There is no other book in the universe that created such a burning desire in me to create: to show darkness and light, to rise and plummet, to change and learn, to destroy and remake. I have this continuous urge to write. I have to finish Stark's backstory before I start Realms; I don't even have to have it edited. It just has to be done. I know that much.

I have had a lot of odd inspirations. Realms came from two sources: Take Two (an easier version of Scrabble) and a picture. The picture was of a boy with black hair and wings and blue eyes that lived in the clouds. I had actually been imagining things with people like him in it before, where the plot centered around two halfbreed boys who never quite fit in. I did that quite constantly, creating characters from pictures or video games and using them in my imagination.

Then I was playing Take Two with my cousin, and we were determined to build the whole puzzle with only names. I accidently spelled Peter like Pieter. My cousin first pointed it out, and I jokingly said, "Yes, Pi-eter!" (pronounced Puh-eater) "His dad wanted a dog named Pip; and he was the compromise!"

Now, two years later, there is a character with blonde hair, blue wings, and wide blue eyes (I stole the idea of having wider eyes from my friend, who had super big eyes back then). His name is P'eter- simplified from Pi-eter to make the pronunciation consistent with the spelling. He is also a halfbreed: half human, half Realmer. His father is determined to keep P'eter quiet so that his political career can excell as far as it can, even though it's illegal to have a halfbreed son. Oh, and they live in the Third Realmhome. In the clouds.

So, is there such thing as a stupid idea? No. Just write, and enjoy what you're doing. As long as you love what you're writing, what else matters? You can go back and make it perfect later; for now, just enjoy yourself. And don't forget that.

Kirah

P.S. I will be gone Thursday-Saturday. I might not be able to do much posting during June because I'll be gone a lot.

P.P.S. Here are some writing quotes to provide you with some inspiration if you need it. I have only read a few, but I enjoy them. Tell me what you think!

http://ghostwriterdad.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Inspiring-Quotes.pdf