Character Mapping for Juicy Characters

When you think of any great novel, what you usually remember is the characters. When they're done well, a powerful character will stay with the reader, as if they were a real person, and their story will be a story that resonates as universal -- one that readers identify with. Great fiction is almost always driven by the protagonists, and how they cope with the situations that they encounter through the plot. Every author needs to know how to create good characters. Great characters need to be real, engaging, and motivating; they need to keep the reader reading. They need to touch something in the reader; so that they are remembered.

So what, exactly, is characterisation? Put simply, characterisation is about peopling your story and fleshing out those people. Or better still, characterisation is about driving a story thorugh the response and development of your characters. By showing the reader your character in-situ, having conversations, responding to their environment and the changes they go through, and through other character's responses to them, the reader begins to visualise and understand them.

The term characterisation was introduced in 1894 as a literary term meaning a "description of essential features." Novelists like George Eliot, Flaubert and Balzac, and William Dean Howells were all writers who wrote stories where the plot was grown out character development: where character transitions or arcs were the focal point of the story. There are a range of methods that writers use to bring their characters to life. Some of these are as simple as giving them a relevant name, describing your characters, and having them perform in situations, in effect, illuminating your characters' outer life. Other techniques are much more subtle and complex and involve revealing, through action, reflection, psychology and impression, your characters' inner life.

Although whole books can, and have been written on this topic, creating a character map is a really good way to creating more juicy, interesting characters and thereby improving your stories:

If you're a visual person, why not cut out magazine pictures and paste them onto an A3 sheet, with a few details about each of your key characters. This might include not only what they look like, the clothing they wear, how they hold themselves, and the sorts of accessories or accoutrements they might gather around themselves. The resulting map could end up being quite a good visual cue for you to work with as your story develops. If you choose famous actors and actresses, you'll have a head start on the casting call for the movie which results from your book.

If you're not a visual person, then there are other good tools, including Excel, Mind Map, or just MS Word. I particularly like Mind Map (there are many open source mapping tools out there including:

The Brain: http://www.thebrain.com/c/personalbrain/?c=32, and
Free Mind: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Whichever tool you use, you'll want to begin by creating a summary box or heading for each of your key protagonists, antagonists and the more prominent minor characters. Then under each of those headings, describe them, including things like what they look like, age, sex, hair, eye colour, scent, names and nicknames, politics, personality, etc.

After that you can go deeper into the internal life of your characters and the world they inhabit, teasing out their wants, needs and desires, intelligences, flaws, beliefs, motivations, history, etc, and how tht maps to the key points in your story - the character arc.

Whether you use tools, or just define your character with pen and paper, a thorough understanding of the characters and their journey in your story is the key to good fiction.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the  novels novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Asssessment, and in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a number of poetry books including the recently released Sublime Planet.  Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com.  

Building a Writer's Portfolio

Building a Writer's Portfolio

Guest Post by Joan Whetzel

Freelance writers, new or old-hat, need writing portfolios as an addendum to their resume. The published writing samples contained in their writer's portfolios, like the artwork in the artist's portfolio, is a way of sharing their body of work with prospective employers. Having their writing clips collected in one place - a portfolio or e-portfolio - keeps their writing samples available at a moment's notice.

What to Collect

It's best to keep all writing samples old and new. However, once the writer's list of writing clips expands beyond a certain point it is no longer practical to carry them all in their portable portfolio. Older samples are best archived. When does a writer begin archiving writing clips? When is the cutoff point? That's a decision best left to each author. But keeping an index with each year's clips or samples, will help writers find older writing clips that may be appropriate for showing to future employers. (You know, that travel article you wrote 3 years ago? Your next employer is looking for evidence you've written travel articles).

For freelance writers just starting out, and who have few if any articles published, volunteer to write as many freebies as you can afford until your begin having clips with your name on them. These include local neighborhood newspapers with small budgets, favorite causes, startup magazines and e-publications, screenplays or stage play scripts for startup production companies. Even blogs can fill a writer's portfolio. It's advisable even for published writers to write freebies on occasion just to keep your name out there, especially when paid writing opportunities are on the lean side.

Anything that has your byline, a publication name, and a publication date (if possible) is fodder for the writer's portfolio. For freelancers who can write on a number of topics, or in more than one genre, can sort their portfolios by topic or genre to be used for different jobs, matching the clips to the job being applied for. Setting up your own website and/or blog site is an ideal way to showcase your web skills as well as your writing skills, and acts as a way for potential employers to locate and contact you as well as place to provide links to your writing published on other websites - all for little or no cost.

For clips published in print, keep one entire copy of the publication with your story printed in it as evidence of which edition the story was published. The publication shows the publication number, the name of the publication and the date as well as the writer's byline. For stories published on websites, print a hard copy of the article which will show the website name, the URL, the writer's name and date that it was published (in most cases). If you print it out the same day it appears on the website, the printing date appears at the bottom of the page next to the URL. Keep an index of all stories written, categorized by website, and be sure to include the URL to link to that story. You may have to go through the index occasionally to see which stories are still available online, and which ones have been deleted or archived by the website.

How to Carry Writing Clips to Jobs

Writer's Portfolio - The Paper Version: Purchase a 3-ring binder, preferable one that zips closed and has handles to carry it (check office supply stores). Insert clear plastic slip sheets meant for carrying 8.5x11 inch pages or 8x10 inch photos in a binder (also available at office supply stores).

Make 2 to 3 copies of each print or e-clip, and place them the plastic sheets. The 2 to 3 clips for story #1 go in to the first plastic slip, the copies for story #2 go in the second plastic slip, and so on. They are ready to carry with you. Save one of the plastic slips for copies of your resume and a second plastic slip for types references.

Writer's Portfolio - The Electronic Version: Scan in paper publication writers clips to your computer and store them in a folder on your hard drive and in a secondary location like a thumb drive or a CD, to be kept separate from your computer. If need be, sub-categorize them by publication, topic, or genre.

For stories published online, keep an index file by e-publisher that includes story name, month and year of publication, and URLs for each story. Also keep a copy of your story where you wrote it on your word processing program and saved to computer before copying and pasting it to the e-publisher's website. Keep these stories in folders by publisher, with sub-folders categorized by month and year of publication. Save these files to the hard drive and to the secondary source (thumb drive or CD). Make sure these files include any photos you uploaded with your stories. Keep a hardcopy of the word processing document along with the downloaded copy from the website.

Electronic Sharing of Your Writing

Since you indexed the URLs for your stories, you can copy and paste them to an e-mail body to send to potential employers. They can also be pasted to your blog or website either as links or as references that others can copy and paste into a search engine to look up. This is a way of turning your personal blog or website as an online writer's portfolio. The URLs for your e-stories can also be added to print articles, newsletters, etcetera, for readers to type into search engines.

The advantages of having an online writer's portfolio include: not having to provide paper copies, or go through the cost of mailing them and the stories in your portfolio can be viewed in their original format rather than faxes or copies. Among the disadvantages? E-published stories are ready and waiting for someone to plagiarize, which is becoming a real problem. How many times have your researched a subject online and found the same article, word-for-word, supposedly written by three different authors - or more? There's also the problem of virus's being transmitted either from an e-publisher's website or across e-mails. With this in mind, some potential clients or employers may prefer to have a paper copy of stories from your portfolio rather than an electronic one.

Producing Appropriate Clips for Job Applications

Whether online or on paper, keep your clips organized so that you can find your articles by topic, category or genre. That way you can provide copies of specific stories to match the clients' or employers' expectations and needs. Don't put all of your stories in an online portfolio. Separate the stories by genre, subject or category and linked to a button on your site. Provide readers with the only the best 2 or 3 stories under each genre, subject or category button.

Send links to your stories or e-mail attachments as self-promotion to potential new clients or employers. Try to have a variety of samples that show the different writing styles that show off your writing skills - ads, articles, newsletters, promotional material, press releases.

Periodically update both your paper and online writer's portfolios, archiving older articles and replacing it with newer material. As your writing career progresses, your portfolios will expand and your writing skills mature exponentially. Creating and updating your writer's portfolios seem like daunting tasks, but they are necessary ones. And if you make a habit of regularly updating both portfolios, you will always be ready when new clients or employers come calling and looking for new writers with current and exciting writing samples and a wealth of experience.

By Joan Whetzel
http://joanwhetzel.blogspot.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joan_Whetzel

MORE ON WRITING

Is Series Writing for You?
Freelance Writing – What is a Sidebar?
Finding Names for Your Characters

What is Your Favorite Reference Book?

I rely on my old favorites, The Little, Brown Compact Handbook, Self-Editing for fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King and the Flip Dictionary (better than a thesaurus sometimes).

But I’m always preaching “feelings” to my students and editing clients. What is he feeling here? What is her reaction to this? How does sad (happy, angry, frustrated) feel? I sometimes have to stop my own writing and think about how to describe a feeling in a way that’s not over-used, trite or clichéd. You can only have your character’s stomach clench a time or two before your reader begins to suspect he or she has an ulcer.

So, recently I downloaded The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writers Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Angela and Becca host The Bookshelf Muse, an award-winning online resource for writers that offers a number of different thesauri to aid authors in their descriptive writing efforts.

This is an excellent resource for prompting your creativity in expressing feelings. It gives the definition of a word, for example, “Anger.” Then it follows with a list:

• Physical signals, such as flaring nostrils or jerky head movements
 • Internal sensations: such as sweating or the body heating
• Mental Responses: irritability or taking inappropriate action
• Cues of acute or long term anger: skin problems, ulcers, etc.
• Cues of suppressed anger: false smiles, sore muscles and jaw

I keep this handy reference on my Kindle for PC so it’s always right there when I get stuck.

~~~~~
A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing, and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

~~~~~

Come out the Gates Fast

In track and field competitors are coached to "come out the gates fast". What that means is to get an early lead or start strong. Writers need to do the same thing. There is nothing worse than having a really good book to share with the world and being unprepared to start strong on your launch date. There are a few things you can do to ensure a great start...

Start simple: We all know that you need to start with a well-written book that has been professionally edited and has a professional cover. You don't want to throw some art work together or have "your friend" who loves to read check it for editing mistakes. Invest early and reap benefits later.

Ask early: Any author with a plan will work on obtaining advanced reviews. You can do this in online groups, from friends and previous readers or request advanced reviews on social media sites, your mailing list or celebrities.

Budget: Every marketing plan has to have a well thought out budget. Here are just a few ideas of what you might want to include:

• Budget for paperbacks ( giveaways increase exposure )
• Marketing budget
• Editing and/or design expenses (BC's/promo items/cover art)

Plan: Prepare a list of "to-do" items and a checklist to figure out what you need to complete

30-60 days prior to launching your book consider the following list:

• CREATE BOOK TRAILER (make sure it is captivating)
• SCHEDULE A BLOG TOUR  (organize your online presence)
• SCHEDULE IN-PERSON EVENTS (at local bookstores or other locales)
• SELECT ADVERTISEMENTS  (stick to your budget)
• CONTACT MEDIA   (shoot for the stars)
• REQUEST REVIEWS   (ebooks and paperback reviewers)
• CONTACT BOOK CLUBS   (past contacts and potential book clubs)

Don't forget to have fun with it and start strong...Finish strong too!

RL Taylor is an award-winning fiction author with five novels released to date. His newest writing venture is a series of non-fiction books on style, etiquette and self-improvement for men and women who want to help the men in their life. 

Click here for a free copy of The Gentlemen's Code which Esquire.com featured as recommended reading.

Web: http://www.livelikegentlemen.com

Fiction: http://www.rltayloronline.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rltheauthor

Protagonist PLANNING YOUR NEXT STORY: PART 5

Protagonist   PLANNING YOUR NEXT STORY: PART 5

Subjects we’ve covered are: PREMISE, the PLOT POINTS andCOMPLICATIONS, SCENES, the MEATY5 (story’s heart).

Today you will discover who your PROTAGONIST is. You may think you know him/her, but when you finish with today’s questions, he/she will feel like your best friend.

For those who might not know, the protagonist (protag) is the one about whom the story is told; he/she/it solves the problem. The protag doesn’t have to be the ‘good guy’. You can have a bad protag, as long as the story is ABOUT that character and they are the one facing and solving the problem (remember, no conflict/problem=no story).

So, you probably have some idea who your protag is at this point in the story development. But you may not know enough INNER DETAIL about him/her to keep them from becoming a flat character. Here are some ways to get to know the character.

Complete a Character Worksheet. There are tons of these available online or you can email me and I’ll send you some I use.

List 10 of the worst things that could happen to the character. How does he/she respond?

For example, Rayna is captured by the Peacers at age 13. She thought she was ‘safe’ from having to go to the Gestortium. But an evil lady turned her in out of revenge. What does Rayna do? She recalls her father always telling her to “Be invisible.” So she goes along, but watches for her chances to escape.

Next list 10 of the best things and how the character responds.

What are the character’s Internal Conflict? We all have it. Sometimes out internal conflict becomes so overwhelming we can hardly function—and some can’t function so they get sent to prison or a mental facility or check out with drugs/alcohol/sex/shopping. So, what conflicts does your character deal with besides the ones thrown at them in the story?

For Rayna:

Who is she?

Why is her hair red, eyes green?

Why are these taboo in society?

Why can’t she love Trae and express that love openly?

Of course, being a young teen, she has many more issues, but you get the idea. Keep brainstorming EVERY POSSIBLE conflict you can think of from all aspects of the character’s life. Some of them may NEVER be used in the story, but it helps you know them better.

Which of the character’s viewpoints change throughout the story and in what way? The protag MUST grow throughout the story or they become flat, like a paperdoll. So, decide what the character is supposed to learn and how and why. It’s called Character Arc and is similar to the Story Arc but for the protag. Ask him/her—let them tell you.

Mine: Rayna starts out quiet, subdued, listening to Da’s “Be invisible” as a result of living with taboo features. But as the bully pushes, she has to begin standing up for herself then her friends. Finally, she is pushed too far and decides that being invisible may not be the best answer for her.

Lastly, answer these questions:

What is his/her greatest weakness? Who is he/she hurting?

What does the character want? Need?

What does he/she know at the beginning? Middle? End?

What is he/she wrong about at the beginning?

What will he/she learn at the end?

Next month, your Protagonist’s Backstory.

Thanks to K.M. Weiland’s Outlining Your Novel

Rebecca Ryals Russell, a fourth-generation Floridian, was born in Gainesville, grew up in Ft Lauderdale then lived in Orlando and Jacksonville with her Irish husband and four children. Due to the sudden death of Rebecca's mother, they moved to Wellborn, near Lake City, to care for her father, moving into his Victorian home built in 1909. After teaching Middle Graders for fourteen years she retired and began writing the story idea which had been brewing for thirty years.  Within six months she wrote the first three books of each series, YA Seraphym Wars and MG Stardust Warriors. The world she created has generated numerous other story ideas including two current works in progress, SageBorn Chronicles based on various mythologies of the world and aimed at the lower Middle Grade reader and Saving Innocence, another MG series set on Dracwald and involving dragons and Majikals. She is finishing a YA Dystopian Romance which has been a NaNoWriMo project for three years. She loves reading YA Fantasy, Horror and Sci Fi as well as watching movies.  Read more about Rebecca and her WIPs as well as how to buy books in her various series at http://rryalsrussell.com  You may email her at vigorios7@gmail.com

On Capitalizing Articles, The Beatles, and Why Authors Might Want to Avoid Wikipedia

I feel compelled to share with you (again) my feelings about Wikipedia. This time my take on the big Wiki is a little more wideranging. Now it's about Wikipedia, the Beatles, editing, and your book. My inspiration is an article The Wall Street Journal. Not too long ago, it ran a full-page feature story on the—in my opinion—idiocy-factor of Wikipedia.

But let me back up. In the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter I suggested that authors might install themselves on Wikipedia. Sometimes we need a dose of good marketing fun. Imagine feeling as if our author selves had made it sufficiently to be listed in an encyclopedia! I also thought it might give our self images a boost. And, of course, our credibility. I listed myself right after my first novel was published and it was a ball. I have a journalism background, so I was very careful to use strict journalistic ethical standards, avoid adjectives and adverbs, etc. To make a long story short, it didn't work out so well. You can read the sordid details in the second edition of The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) where I revised my recommendation.

These days I suggest that writers only attempt using Wikipedia as part of their branding campaign if they have a bona fide publisher (by Wikipedia standards and it's anyone's guess what those standards might be!)who will do it for them and if they are not sensitive writerly types. In other words, you might enjoy it more if you have a really thick skin.

Then along comes The Journal article that tells about the very long running disagreement between Wikipedia "editors" on whether or not The Beatles should be "the Beatles" or "The Beatles." They have apparently been disputing this monumental punctuation and marketing choice issue, a debate "playing out behind the scenes" where apparently most of their debates are carried out which says something about their editorial transparency.

The Journal notes that Wikipedia has some 85,000 active editors "defined as those who record at least five edits per month." And they talk (and argue!) using a little edit link at the top of each page. According to The Journal, one editor claims it is getting worse because of "an overabundance of testosterone running around the pages." (About 90% of Wikipedia's editors are male and a huge percentage—more than half—of those editors say they've been in an argument with other editors in the last few months. And the arguments were on monumental issues like whether or not an image of cow tipping portrays this activity of rural youth appropriately. And, of course, on the Beatles issue.

I'm open to the idea that disagreement may in the long run lead to the accuracy of entries. In fact, that's the whole idea behind Wikipedia—that the truth (and full story) of any issue will eventually filter to the top and the dregs will filter away.

But that testosterone thing? Let's—to avoid argument over terms—call it authoritarianism or cases of terminal self-righteousness. It keeps those very things from happening, to say nothing of wasting time that would be unacceptable if the market place if those "editors" were being paid a salary or by the hour. Of if they had been selected on the basis of expertise rather than frequency.

What the Beatles issue boils down to is a style choice. (To learn more about style choices you may want to refer to my blog on editing at http://thefrugaleditor.blogspot.comor to The Frugal Editor at http://budurl.com/thefrugaleditor or Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande at http://budurl/grammarsnobs). And to branding.

If The Beatles wanted to use a capital "T" as they did on Ringo's drum and other advertising, then that branding should be honored when their name is used. That is their name. We all get to choose the names of our businesses, books, or bands and we get to choose how to capitalize them. The New York Times uses the "The" as part of their name and it's capped to indicate that. So does The Wall Street Journal. But that's rare. Most newspapers don't.

Perhaps Wikipedia needs firmer guidelines for their "editors." Perhaps those guidelines should include choosing a reliable style choice manual like Chicago Manual of Style (http://budurl.com/ChicMan) for their editors to follow.

Perhaps Wikipedia should have some guidelines for who they accept as editors apart from how often they contribute. Or separate out those who line edit from those who contribute content. And maybe requiring some editing experience would be a good idea. I mean, it wouldn't hurt this site to pay some writers or editors for their expertise.

These guys, maybe including the 10% of them who are women, need some reigning in when they hold power over which authors are acceptable to be included in their online encyclopedia—or which editors get to hold sway over the Beatles' brand. Of course, because of the disagreement, Wikipedia could just ban The Beatles from their book! They've been known to do that to authors.

Note: Sometimes you see "The Beatles" in this little rant. Sometimes you don't. That's because in my personal style book, I cap the "The" when I'm referring to the actual titles of the band and don't when I'm referring to something that belongs to The Beatles like their brand. Sometimes the choice is hard to make. I don't think it's worth getting into a frenzy over.

So now you know all about the relationship between Wikipedia, The Beatles, Marketing, Branding, and Punctuation. You know why authors might want to avoid such dilemmas altogether.

~Submitted my multi award-winning poet, author and book marketer Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Learn more about her at http://howtodoitfrugally.com.
 

4 Tips to an Effective Subscriber Opt in Email Box

You’re an author. You have a book published or self-published, or you’re in the process of writing a book or ebook.

If this is the case, you no doubt have a website set up. If not, you’ll need to get one up as soon as possible.

With a website in place, you’ll want to promote what you have to offer by bringing traffic to the site. You can do this through article marketing.

So, far so good.

But, what do you do with the visitors who come to your site? Will a one-time visitor buy what you’re offering?

First time visitors most likely will not buy what you’re offering, so you need to grab that visitor to be sure she returns and so you can develop a relationship with her.

To grab a visitor, you need to get that visitor’s email address, with permission of course. Having the email address allows you to send weekly (or more often) newsletters or information emails. To get an email address onto your subscriber list, you will need a subscriber opt in box.

Well, let me backtrack a moment. First, you need to have an email service, such as iContact or Aweber. The email service you choose will have the tools for you to create a subscriber list and opt in box.

Okay, so now you have a website and you have the code to an opt in box that will go on your site. You’re right on track.

Now the question is: where do you put the opt in box?

4 Tips to an Effective Subscriber Opt in Emzil Box

1. Research shows that opt ins must be readily visible upon landing on the page and should be located on the upper right-hand side of the page.

2. Some studies also show that an orange colored opt-in box coverts better than other colors. I’m not sure about that though. But, you can easily test it out by changing the color of your opt in. If you’re not afraid to tweak the HTML code to your opt in, go into it and change the code for the background color.

You can check out the two sites below to get an idea of what color codes are and what’s available:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp
http://www.colorpicker.com/

You might also do an online search for “color codes.”

3. Let the visitor know his email address is secure. Make sure you have wording, either below your opt in box or adjacent to it, that assures the visitor his email address is safe and secure.

4. Along with having your opt in on your website, for higher conversion you should create a separate opt in landing page.

There you have it: Four simple tips to create a more effective email address list opt in box. 

If you'd like even more email marketing tips that will show you exactly how to create and build your subscriber list, check out:

 EMAIL MARKETING RIGHT V2

~~~~~

Karen Cioffi
Award-Winning Author, Children's Ghostwriter, Rewriter, Coach
Author-Writer Online Platform Instructor

~~~~~

MORE ON BOOK MARKETING

Email List - 10 Giveaway Freebies to Get Readers to Opt-in
What is an Author Platform and How Do You Create It?
Kindle Select – What Works and What Doesn’t

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