doug-lewars

[doug-lewars]

Detectives

It seems almost cliched to have a detective with family and perhaps alcohol problems. This is because many authors firmly believe characters are interesting only if they had deep-seated psychological difficulties. Personally, I think the problem should be the case, and possibly political overhead, but I realize I'm in the minority.

[doug-lewars]

Conflict

Conflict plays an important part in writing but it doesn't necessarily have to be interpersonal. For example, a person can be conflicted over the alternatives in an upcoming decision, or possibly striving against some natural force.

[doug-lewars]

Editing

Some suggest reading your work out loud when editing. It works, but an alternative is to store the doc as a pdf and then have Adobe read it out loud to you. I believe, in more recent versions, Word also has a read-out-loud feature but I haven't seen it.

[doug-lewars]

Canada Day

For those living in Canada who happen to stumble across this post, Happy Canada Day.

[doug-lewars]

Character Names

A simple method of naming characters is to decide on the nationality, and then use any of the appropriate baby name lists on the internet,

[doug-lewars]

Character Links

Sometimes you may find yourself stuck. You need to weave two characters into some sort of relationship - not necessarily romantic - and there's nothing obvious connecting them. This is when you should remind yourself about the six degrees of separation theory. Now of the 8+ billion people inhabiting this planet there's a good chance NOT everyone is related to everyone else by a mere six degrees but the concept is still useful. Start envisioning a chain of relations, friends or friends, colleagues etc. and eventually you'll have the necessary links. Then you can use them in such a way your two characters eventually stumble across one another.

[doug-lewars]

Endings

Most readers prefer happy endings. Some prefer sad and a few merely want the author to stop and let them decide for themselves how things work out. Personally I like happy endings.

[doug-lewars]

Show Not Tell

I'm listening to an audio book in which the author got a little carried away with the show-not-tell mantra. You're all familiar with the who, what, where, when, why and how questions I'm sure. It took this author 23 minutes to get to a single where and what. The old maxim 'nothing in excess' is something to remember.

[doug-lewars]

Experience

Some people demand you 'write what you know'. On the other hand, if I wrote a Whodunit, I'm not sure those same people would want me going around murdering people to gain experience.

[doug-lewars]

Voice

Writing in first person has become very popular these days; however, if you want to develop subplots it's highly problematic. Third person omniscient is fine for subplots but I've noticed many criticisms on Goodreads along the lines of 'I couldn't follow', 'too complicated', 'I couldn't keep track of all the character'. The latter can be solved by adding a table of characters but shifting scenes bothers some readers. Personally I figure there's not much help for it but many authors attempt to adapt their work to their audience's preferences. Third person limited is another approach but it, too, makes subplots exceedingly difficult. It work well in YA books but if you want a complex plot with plenty of characters each working on a separate agenda third person omniscient works best.

[doug-lewars]

Good Work

You know you've done something good when you're editing a book and find yourself becoming absorbed in the story even though you wrote it yourself and there can be no surprises.

[doug-lewars]

Information Dumps

How much information can you provide before it becoming an information dump? Different people have different tolerance levels. Personally I can handle quite a lot if it's well written and the author keeps it interesting but I realize many dislike an explanation at all. Personally, I think if when you edit it, if you find yourself hurrying past one or more paragraphs it's time to stop and make some alterations or even cut out part of it.

[doug-lewars]

Laziness

The beautiful thing about writing is you can do it while sitting on your butt. For those of us who are bone lazy when it comes to manual work, that's a big advantage.

[doug-lewars]

Getting It Down

I've written two scenes neither of which I'm happy with. But that's why editing was invented. Once you get a scene down, you can find faults and correct them. It may be expanding a character's thinking or adding a bit more action or body language. There are all sorts of ways of improving something, but you can't improve on something you haven't got.

[doug-lewars]

Variants

Some words have both British and American variants. 'Sceptical' and 'skeptical' is an example. Unfortunately for me, when I seem them on the page, they both somehow look wrong.

[doug-lewars]

Life After Death?

Someone kindly awarded me a 'favorite' on Smashwords.

Mom passed away over 20 years ago.

[doug-lewars]

Setting

Google Street View is a great way of looking for something you can use as a setting but sometimes it isn't enough. I'm currently using bits and pieces of the University of Waterloo in a story but although everything appears in street view, it didn't quite make sense to me. After all, it's been MANY years since I graduated and things change. So when I learned of a reunion, I signed up and went today. I was able to find things I recognized tucked away among and incredible number of new buildings and additions to old ones. However the Math building, the heart of the campus for me, has been pretty much ruined by the changes they've made. It was most disappointing. In any event I took lots of pictures and can relate what I was seeing on Street View with what I remember so the trip was a success.