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Month: August 2024

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Character Creation

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 29, 2024

Let’s Look at the Background of Character Creation

Character creation is rather personal. It depends on how organized you are, and how much you like to plan. So every writer’s character creation will vary. This is what I tend to do. However, my methods are not necessarily the best or the most consistent ones.

Your mileage, when it comes to character creation, will undoubtedly vary. And that is perfectly okay.

Origins for Some of My Character Creation

For me, characters arise in a few ways. One is just that I can ‘hear’ their ‘voices’. Or I might see a face clearly. Lots of situations or activities can create a focus.

One way is, I might walk around my neighborhood and consider what I see. This is whether it’s something from nature or just someone’s illegally parked car. Music in particular can be helpful for this, although it is not absolutely necessary.

For a fanfiction bad girl character I named Pamela Hudson, her personality came barreling in when I heard the Amy Winehouse song, You Know I’m No Good.

And sometimes, characters just appear, fully formed. I tend to consider names in the context of how they sound and what they mean.

Hence a character like Marnie Shapiro Chase came out of nowhere because I liked how her name sounded. Then I worked on putting her together. The same was true of Colonel Craig Firenze. He started off sounding good and I built from that.

For Josie James, I didn’t hear her voice until I changed her name from Jodie James.

Character Creation: Ethnicity

Still other characters might arise out of names and ethnicity. Or even national origin. Jazminder Parikh and Akanksha Kondapalli are both Indian women, but Jazzie is a doctor, whereas Akanksha is an attorney.

I also tend to like someone to be from the southern US. Hence Jeannie Louise Scutter and Patricia LaRue arose.

Characters from the UK might be Dave Shepherd, super-spy, or Dr. Devon Grace. Plus there are also scullery maids Frances Miller and Ceilidh O’Malley. And psychiatrist Dr. Carmen D’Angelo. So it runs the gamut of rich and poor.

In addition, I try to write some characters of races different from my own. These run the gamut from Dr. Elise Jeffries and Dr. Mei-Lin Quan to Solar System President Fankald Williams and her sister, Tamara Woods.

What’s in a Name?

While draping a character around the meaning of their name is kind of silly, it can sometimes help to inspire. I liked the name Ceilidh O’Malley, and it was a bonus that her name means a type of jig.

Hence someone who grew up in grinding poverty had a rather frivolous name. So I gave her the middle name of Aisling, which is Irish Gaelic for dream.

Dave Shepherd didn’t originate as a protector in the Obolonk universe, but as I wrote him, he became one.

Other characters just almost tell me their names. This was certainly the case with Craig Firenze and Kitty Kowalski in Mettle. In Mettle, the two bratty tweens were always going to be Kitty and Mink. Tathrelle was another name that sprang up, for Untrustworthy.

Frances always existed in The Real Hub of the Universe, but her surname started off as Marshall, not Miller. But I ended up changing her name, as a character named Marsh was mentioned too often with her.

Other characters are named for people I know, in whole or in part. The Enigman Cave is particularly chock full of such characters.

It’s everyone from the Chief Veterinarian to a space defender to the Chief Engineer. The Real Hub of the Universe has some, including the Chief of Police. Plus the Ashford baby is named for a man I know from the online writing community.

Character Creation: Time to Show Some Emotion

Characters also exist to make the main character feel something. And this isn’t always something good. Ben Chase exists to piss Marnie off in The Enigman Cave.

Johnny Barnes exists in The Real Hub of the Universe to terrify Ceilidh and force her into action. Jeannie exists in Mettle to anger Craig and eventually make him not feel too bad about getting on a plane.

And one of the reasons Dave Shepherd exists in the Obolonk universe is to help Peri get over Charlie.

Oh, and Bobby Brodie exists to be an uncouth lout. Which he does a little too well.

Plus there are always love interest characters, even if they don’t last. For example, that’s Lex Feldman in Enigmans and Dalton Farouk in Time Addicts, the 2019 NaNoWriMo novel.

Shapiro, Shapiro, Shapiro

As a kind of personal ‘tell’ and Easter egg in my works, every longer piece (except for Untrustworthy, as none of those characters are human), somebody is named Shapiro.

This is even true in fan fiction, where characters Ethan and Rebecca Shapiro (father and daughter) figure prominently in the overall storyline.

The Obolonks series has Greg Shapiro. He’s a wisecracking cop living in Connecticut. The Enigman Cave has Marnie Shapiro Chase, the captain of the spaceship. Marnie’s kind of frumpy and nerdy but also very smart.

Then in Real Hub of the Universe, the name is subtle. Blima Shapiro Taub is a character never actually seen ‘on screen’. Blima is known more for her jealousy than anything else. But I give her a bit of a voice in the short story, The Bride.

In Mettle, Shapiro is Eleanor Braverman’s maiden name. Eleanor suffers from Alzheimer’s.

So you can see that the Easter egg characters are all rather different.

In the November 2019 NaNoWriMo novel, the name shows up as a the married name of Josie James’s older sister, Hayley.

Character Creation: Purposeful Characters

Sometimes characters are necessary to fulfill some purpose or another. Technically, that’s supposed to be the case with all characters (oops!). Either advance the plot or be background exposition.

Hence Noah Braverman’s fellow reporter, Francine O’Donnell, serves to give him a bit of a reason to express his thoughts out loud in Mettle.

Ben Chase serves as Marnie’s foil, but he also makes a big discovery which helps drive the Enigman plot. And I needed Livia Thorson in Obolonks to explain some of the robotics, just as I needed Ned O’Malley in Real Hub to explain how Ceilidh was going to get to the states.

Sometimes purposeful characters come in the form of radio or TV show hosts, or nameless people reading news stories aloud or commenting on them.

How many times have you stood in line at a coffee shop and heard people discuss the events of the day? Even if it’s the sports section or politics or whatever, it can still help to orient readers as to time and place.

In Untrustworthy, Ixalla started off as a kind of explainer character, but then the role grew when I turned her into a revolutionary.

Takeaways

Why do you need a character? Do you like them? Do they drive the plot? Will you kill them off if you have to? Make characters to fulfill these purposes or to add depth and background. Give your story dimension with people who feel real.

Character creation is a personal process. It can be planned and detail-oriented. Or it can be haphazard. You make the call!

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

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Writer Giveaways

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 27, 2024

Giveaways

So giveaways can be helpful when you are first starting out. Because people do not know your writing, they might not be inclined to spend too much on your work. Rather than pricing down to nothing, do one better: give your book away as a prize. Amazon, in particular, makes it easy. And on GoodReads, this kind of a promotion costs you even less.

Prizes

A lot of the internet is gamified these days. So, what do I mean by that? Essentially, instead of simply telling you that your LinkedIn profile needs work, that site gives you a completion percentage. And it also pits you against your fellow job seekers. So never mind if they have your qualifications. The competition starts even if you don’t want it to. And this kind of competing tends to spur people to action.

Hence you can provide your work as a prize for really anything. I provide it as one of the prizes for the 24 Hours of G & T Fundraiser, and I’ll even send a signed copy if the winner is in the United States (where the shipping costs less; otherwise, I try to order my work directly through whichever Amazon applies to them and then pay the exchange rate).

So if you have some sort of event, there’s no reason you can’t raffle off your book. Do it for charity, even. Just, get it out there, and into the wild. The more copies out there, the better.

Advance Review Copies

Now, Amazon has been cracking down on this a bit so proceed with some caution. However, no one is stopping you from giving away your book for free. The issue arises when writers provide a copy of their work in exchange for a review (generally referred to as “an honest review“, as the intention is to get the truth out of the reviewer and not bribe them to shower you with unfounded praise).

Hence instead of doing an even exchange, your best bet is to simply provide a copy and ask that someone review your work if they see fit.

Spoiler Alert: for most people, if they have a free copy of your book and they liked it at all, they’ll usually leave some sort of a review. This is even if it’s just in the form of stars.

Impulse Writer Giveaways

Furthermore, you can always give things away on an impulse. Or during the promotions day at various writers’ Facebook groups, I will offer my book for free. All a person has to do is show me their receipt for purchasing another group member’s work. To make my life easier, I limit the time, usually to just one week.

I ask if someone will review both our works if they want to. And then I send the book and leave it. By the way, I’ve gotten three reviews this way. That might not seem like a lot, but I have also made some friends. And that helps in ways that go far beyond promotions and marketing.

Writer Giveaways and Takeaways

Consider opportunities for giveaways, prizes, and gamification of your work. Yes, yes, I know you want to make money from your work. I get that; I really do! But sometimes you need to lay out some of your own funds to make it all work. Don’t be cheap about this. When the time and conditions are right, give away at least a few copies of your work. Because nothing builds goodwill and relationships better, or faster.

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Writing Needs Editing Part 2

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 22, 2024

Writing and Editing Part 2

For editing part 2 let’s get past acting like your own biggest fan, like we did in Editing Part 1. Time to get out the scissors. Or the weedwhacker, as is the case.

More Editing Part 2 of a 2-Part Saga

So, let’s go to editing Part 2!

Now last time, we looked at some general issues surrounding editing. Although the process may seem daunting, it still must be done. For this post, I will assume you have done the tasks outlined in the first part.

If not, then this methodology will still work. But I think you’ll find you will need to do the preliminary steps anyway. Hence you might as well get them done now. Then it’s on to Editing Part 2.

Spell Check

Maybe it sounds dumb. Perhaps it’s obvious. But you still need to run a spell checker. Don’t have one? Then try a free spell checker online. But if you have a spellchecker in your application, use it.

Understand that certain typos will be a problem. If you type ‘that’ for ‘this’, it will not show up, as those are both real words. Hence your spellchecker provides only a preliminary solution. Have the program ignore names, in order to eliminate them from contention.

Find and Replace

Your find feature is a godsend; use it! Furthermore, if you use names which might have typical typos, try searching for them with ctrl-F.

For example, the main character in my 2015 NaNoWriMo novel had the name of Marnie. Hence I searched for the word ‘Marine’. But I made sure to check on usage before I hit ‘replace’.

This feature also works when you change a character’s name.

Find and Count

Do you overuse some expressions? Repetitive language isn’t bad. But too much of it is dull. Consider usage, and adjust repeated sentences accordingly.

That Attack

My good friend D. R. Perry taught me this one, and I love it.  Have your program count how often you use the word ‘that’. Of course, it’s not a bad word outright. But overusing anything can be dull.

By counting this particular word, you get a handle on your use of certain idiomatic phrases. E. g. ‘he thought that’, ‘she said that’, ‘they felt that that was funny’.

In all three of these instances, the word ‘that’ can be cut without losing any sense.

Synonym Sweep

This time, search for the word ‘very’. As with ‘that’, the word is perfectly fine, despite what Stephen King says.

However, he is right (as was Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society) insofar as it’s a not so precise use of language. What’s better: ‘very big’ or ‘gigantic’? For a children’s book, probably the former. For any other kind of book, it may be the latter.

If you can clip the adverb and instead enhance the adjective with a better synonym, your writing will be more interesting. Stay away from obscure adjectives (e. g. ‘Brobdingnagian’).

Also, your characters can use all the adverbs they like when speaking. But try to cut them in your scene setting, your transitions, and your exposition.

That’s the first half of Editing Part 2. Now onto the second half.

Editing Part 2: It’s Time for the Fat Cutter

You’ve been doing this all along, with ‘that attack’ and ‘synonym sweep’. The idea is to excise unnecessary words. Unlike the former two methods, this one will require some reading. Up until now, everything has been done programmatically.

Now you need to do some digging. But first check how long your chapters are.

There is no hard and fast rule for chapter length, but if all of your chapters are 20 – 35 pages and one is 63, then that one might have some fat you can cut. Or maybe you can just split it into two or even three chapters.

Consider descriptive text and exposition. You need it, but how long does it have to be? Familiar places in the current time period probably just need a few words: downtown Detroit, the Great Barrier Reef, etc.

Or familiar places in the past need more but can still be pretty spare, such as Victorian-era London, or ancient Rome during Claudius Caesar’s reign.

Familiar places in the future need more but you can build on today: 2023 Berlin maybe has taller buildings, 3116 Istanbul might be enclosed in a geodesic dome. Transportation is likely a lot faster.

But unfamiliar places will need more lavish attention to detail. Consider this: metaphors and similes are your friends. The new planet might be as big as Saturn but without rings, and smell like wet dog.

Editing Part 2 of Scene Shifts and Plot Changes

These are much bigger and will take up a lot more of your time. Before you do either, you might want to consider whether your story can be understood by beta readers without doing either. If so, then keep this in mind (maybe take some notes) but don’t do it.

See what beta readers say. Maybe you won’t need to make such drastic changes at all.

Final Read-Through Before Betas

Give it one last read-through. Look for the right words in all the wrong places. E. g. a typo which turned out to be a correctly spelled word, so spellchecker missed it. Those can be devilishly hard to find, so look closely.

Look for sense and ease of understanding. Make sure your plot makes sense. Then kiss your manuscript good-bye (for the time being) and send it off to beta readers.

Post-Beta Readings and Editing Part 2

After betas, Editing Part 2 should be followed by a kind of Editing Part 3. Consider your betas’ advice. You don’t need to take it all, but do listen with an open mind. Do one last read-through and then send your work to a professional editor, if you can afford one.

Why should you, if you’ve done all this? Because you (or I) may have missed something. In addition, all this preliminary work was free. Your edited work will come back a lot faster and cleaner.

Then, and only then, can you consider querying.

Editing Part 2—yep, there was a part 1, as well. See below for the link.

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Want More on Beta Reading and Editing?

If you want more on beta reading and editing, then please be sure to check out the following blog posts:

Beta Reading:

• Beta Reading for Indie Writers
† Beta Reading, Part 2
• Working With a Beta Reader
† Beta Readers and Editors

Editing:

• Writing Needs Editing, Part 1
† Choosing an Editor
† Editing Tips

Next blog post

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Writing Needs Editing Part 1

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 20, 2024

A look at editing Part 1. Writing is why we’re here. But editing is what makes it sing.

What’s this All About? Editing Part 1 – in a Nutshell

Check out editing part 1. If you don’t do any editing, then don’t expect people to read your work.

Unless you normally write six-word horror stories, you are going to need an editor. Everybody needs this service. However, you should edit your work before handing it over to a professional.

In particular, if you are just coming off something like NaNoWriMo,such as #30Day50k, then you need to trim the fat. Because we all pad in order to make word count for NaNoWriMo.

Don’t be ashamed of this! And a lot of it might turn out to be the good kind of fat. In particular, if it helps you introduce a new and interesting character, or set a new scene, or transition a story line properly, it can be terrific.

But you still need to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Everybody needs to do this. And there are no exceptions. So never, ever think that you can just wiggle your way out of this one. Because, spoiler alert, you just plain can’t.

Adding Words

Sometimes, you actually add words in order to edit a story. And that is perfectly fine. If a description was rushed, or a scene feels forced, you may need to add words.

In particular, if you wrote your story with placeholders such as: fix this later or add transition here, you must address those problems!

Getting Started With Editing Part 1

Are you wondering why this post was not added back in November? It’s because editing requires some ‘leave it alone’ time. Frankly, this is too early. Because I highly recommend leaving your work for a full month before tackling editing.

Just, find something else to do during the month of December or the like. Between the holidays and the end of the quarter and the end of the tax year (and up here in New England, you might get some snow to shovel), I’m sure you can think of something.

Okay, Now We’ll Really Get Started With Editing Part 1

So you’ve set your work aside for a month. Your first job is to read your manuscript through from start to finish. Want to take notes? Sure. Or not. This is your show. But read all 50,000 or 100,000 or whatever words.

You’re not a writer, and you’re not reading as the writer. Rather, you are reading like a fan.

In the next article, I’ll show you where to go from here.

Writing Needs Editing part 1 means, yes, there’s a part 2 a-comin’….!

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Want More on Beta Reading and Editing?

If you want more on beta reading and editing, then please be sure to check out the following blog posts:

Beta Reading:

• Beta Reading for Indie Writers
† Beta Reading, Part 2
• Working With a Beta Reader
† Beta Readers and Editors

Editing:

† Writing Needs Editing, Part 2
• Choosing an Editor
† Editing Tips

Next blog post

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Editing Tips

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 1, 2024

Time for Some Editing Tips and Tricks

Here are some editing tips and tricks for you, me, and all the writers we know! And don’t know, too ….

Because if you ever did NaNoWriMo recently, then a few months later was right always about the time you might start to thinking about attacking the editing beast. Or maybe you just didn’t want to look at it yet. And that’s perfectly fine.

However, you would need to edit it eventually. Since professional editors cost money, it will always pay for you to do some of the work early.

Furthermore, if you have beta readers (and every writer should!), then you owe it to them to not waste their time reading an unpolished manuscript.

Of course they should expect some issues as that is why you’re turning to them in the first place. However, a big garbage can full of word salad does no one any good.

Editing Tips: Preliminaries

So first of all, before you do anything else, run spell check. While that sounds simple and obvious, I have beta read for people who didn’t do that first.

Dialogue

Second, check your dialogue tags. So, what are dialogue tags? Dialogue should run one of three ways:

1. She said, “I’m hungry.” Notice the comma before the first quotation mark, and then the period before the second? The first two words are the dialogue tag. The comma is mandatory in this case. And it’s the same thing if you move the dialogue tag to the end. So in that case, you would write: “I’m hungry,” she said.

2. She patted her belly. “I’m hungry.” Notice there’s no comma this time? That’s because the initial sentence is an action; it’s not a dialogue tag at all. Rather, it’s a body language attribution.

3. She growled, “I’m hungry!” The comma is back! And Grammar Girl (as usual) says it best: “Simplicity is the rule in attributives. Many writers try to think for the reader by replacing “said” with words like grunted, growled, demanded, bellowed, cooed, roared, squalled, and simpered. If the tone of the dialogue is not immediately apparent, rewrite the dialogue and not the attributive.”

Make sure your dialogue tags are correct and your dialogue makes sense. Body language attributives are helpful, as they keep a conversation from turning into a festival of talking heads.

Scenes, Exposition, and Description

And third, get into your scenes and anything (or anyone) else you need to describe. But don’t go overboard. Too much description can bog down the action. And too little can leave your readers guessing. So here is where a knowledge of films can help.

Current movies rarely show little transitional scenes like walking down a hall or driving unless something else is going on. And you should absolutely do the same.

That is, if your character starts off at school and then comes home, don’t show the character on the school bus unless that particular scene matters.

Editing Tips: Takeaways

Do some basic editing, at the absolute minimum, before anyone else looks at your work. Respect others’ time and they’ll keep helping you.

I hope these editing tips and tricks helped, because Yes, YOU need editing!

Click to buy Untrustworthy on Amazon

Want More on Beta Reading and Editing?

If you want more on beta reading and editing, then please be sure to check out the following blog posts:

Beta Reading:

† Beta Reading for Indie Writers
• Beta Reading, Part 2
† Working With a Beta Reader
• Beta Readers and Editors

Editing:

† Writing Needs Editing, Part 1
• Writing Needs Editing, Part 2

Next blog post

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