Peeps and Predicaments – What’s Happened to Your Character with Whom

Storytelling, ,

Peeps and Predicaments. What’s happened to Your Character with Whom. A couple of posts ago, I wrote “Create Captivating Characters.” The post before that was about how to write a great main character. I keep harping on character creation because characters are the heart of strong storytelling. If you make your characters come to life on the page, they will make that heart beat with a rhythm that captivates your reader.First, we discovered why your main character is so important.  Your main character’s story is what connects you with the reader, the avenue by which you draw her in and make her care. Once you have made her care, she is hooked, and that narrative hook is essential to writing a successful story. The reader must become emotionally involved with your character, not just a little, but intensely.

Next, we examined how to make your readers care so much about your character. Then, we dug deeper to make your reader care even more. How to tie us emotionally to her fate, until we long for only good things to happen to her. Which means that you, as a storyteller, must frustrate our hopes for her by making bad things happen to this character you’ve seduced us into loving. I never said your job as a writer was to be kind to your characters, or to your readers either.

Now, we move not only deep, but closer in to the individual person your character will be. You accomplish that by conjuring a context for your character. Peeps and Predicaments. What has happened to your character in her life, especially her Predicaments, physical, emotional, psychological. Plus, the people who had the first, huge effect on her life, her most pivotal Peeps, those who loved her and wished her well, as we do, or may have failed to do so.You need a single, specific main character to do this work, and you must give her a name. Naming your character gives her substance and reality, especially in your own consciousness as her creator. Crafting the very specific substance and reality of your character’s context is your goal at this stage of character creation. The context of your character as a person, the details of which may or may not appear in your story but will immerse you in her humanity.

You must delve into the central self of your character by becoming her. Here’s how. Respond to each of the following questions in the first person, using “I.” Respond as your character, not telling us about her but being her and speaking in her voice. Concentrate on how you, your character, feel about each question. Answer more from your character’s gut than from her head. Be specific, avoiding theories and abstractions altoge­ther if possible.

This is where the fun happens, the magical mystery tour of yourself as your character.

  • What family member do you consider yourself closest to, and what would you say is the deepest, most true reason for that closeness?
  • What member of your family are you most distant from? How did this distance begin, and why does it persist to this day?
  • What was the most memorable experience of your childhood? Recreate the scene if you can.
  • What is the most important memento you have saved from your growing-up years? Why have you saved it for so long, and where do you keep it?
  • What incident in your life made you most angry?
  • When in your life were you most frightened?
  • What is the single thing you most yearn for in life?
  • What is the saddest thing that has ever happened to you?
  • When in your life were you most happy?

Please, respond at length, in writing, of course. Once you have done so, you will find yourself somewhere very special, under the skin and among some of the most inner secrets of your character. Your character has opened herself to you. She has done so because you cared enough about her to become her and ask her most crucial questions. She has spoken from the deepest part of her heart into the deepest part of yours, and you have listened.You and your character have become one being. Your souls have melded to become the place from which you will share her secrets, speak her truth, and write the very best story of her you have in you, perhaps the very best story you have ever told. I, for one, can’t wait to read it.

Bonus Exercise. Become one with the famous characters in the above pictures. Ask yourself, as each character, “What do I want?” Celie in The Color Purple? Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby? Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R –

Amanda Miller’s life is full of Peeps and Predicaments. Experience them yourself in Alice’s latest novel, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

 What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving: “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet, Alice!”

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Conference Connection – How We Bond with Our Writers’ Tribe

Writers Life, ,

Alice Orr Books at Liberty States Conference Conference Connection. How We Bond with Our Writers’ Tribe. I am just now emerging from the fog of a writers’ conference. Why a fog? Because that’s what the misty airlock feels like between conference world and my daily world. A sweet fog of adjustment before re-entry. Why sweet? That is a more complicated question. The sweetness of the fog is a carryover from the sweetness of the experience and the many nectars of its ingredients.

We leave our daily world behind. This is the essential first step toward making the Conference Connection. My personal sweetness recipe begins with the hotel stay. I’ve long maintained that room service and maid service are among the supreme triumphs of this or any culture, with the twenty-four-hour lobby snack corner running a close third.

We open up from our solitary selves. Writing is a self-on-self pursuit. We sit in a room and commune with our muse. As fiction writers, we converse with folks who only exist inside our heads. Sometimes we stare at the wall, and we do it all alone. Thus, we can become a bit in-grown. Like musty bedding, we require occasional airing to remain fresh. There are few more refreshing opportunities for a writer than making a Conference Connection.

We fall in among our Tribe. Which brings us to the sweetest ingredient of conference ambrosia. Writers, writers, and more writers. In corridors and workshops. At informal get-togethers and more formal ones. Talking, laughing, debating, sharing. Writers everywhere, on furlough from the trenches, encouraging one another to fight through the obstacles we all inevitably encounter. This is the beating heart of the Conference Connection, and it is Us.

We celebrate ourselves and one another. My entrée into Liberty States Fiction Writers Conference 2018 was an impromptu gathering in the hotel lounge. I had been invited to join by my old friend, Sandra Barone. She introduced me to Christine Akins Clemetson, who immediately became my new friend, as often happens at writers’ gatherings. Christine had huge news to share. She’d just signed with a literary agent. Joy and wonder shone from her slightly dazed smile, encouraging and inspiring us all with a magical Conference Connection.

We learn. We learn. We learn. From workshops, keynote talks, forums and, most of all, each other. Author, teacher, maven Chris Redding took time from her busy day to share her marketing expertise. Amazon algorithms are incomprehensible to me, but Chris pierced that darkness with enough light to set me on a more fruitful track. She also reminded me of my own mantra, Do It Anyway! She didn’t have to bother with any of that, but she did it anyway. Such generosity is the gold which is mined for each of us when we make a Conference Connection.

We Book Fair. Book signings can be humiliation hell. I once signed next to Nora Roberts. R for Roberts, O for Orr and OMG. The Ps and Qs knew enough to stay away. But at Liberty States, the O section sat me with long-time author friend L.G. O’Connor. Sweet indeed. Because book signings can be heaven.

We know that these events aren’t about selling books. These book signings are about being there, showing up, sitting behind a propped-up copy of your latest publication. Or dreaming of the day when you’ll have a propped-up copy of your own to flaunt. Either way, we smile ear-to-ear and heart-to-heart amidst our tribe, linked to one another by our Conference Connection.

Is there a downside? Maybe the case of Crammed-Brain Syndrome many of us take with us from hours and days of workshops and panels. Or the soft brace you wear on your wrist after scribbling like crazy in your notebook to capture every morsel of information. But we can handle that and then some, in return for establishing a Conference Connection.

We re-enter our individual writers’ lives better off for the experience. We have shown our shining faces to the writing world. We have hugged old friends and discovered new ones. We have been embraced by the spirit of our community and participated in a powerful ritual of our tribe. Plus, last but far from least, we’ve had fun.

So, here I am, post-fog. I made another solid Conference Connection, and, best of all, I bonded yet again with how blessed I am to do this writer thing.                                                 Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

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A Time of Fear & LovingConference Connection and her writers’ tribe have a lot to do with Alice’s joyful experience of her career and her novels. Don’t miss her latest, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

 What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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Create Captivating Characters – How to Heart-Hook Your Reader

Storytelling, ,

Create Captivating Characters. This is what all writers want to do. No doubt about it. The doubt arrives when we come to the How. How do we Create Captivating Characters to inhabit our stories? How do you make them inhabit your story?

Success for the storyteller is all about the characters you create. I’ve said that already in my last post, “Tell Strong Stories – How To Write a Great Main Character.” This is especially true for the storyteller of commercial fiction. The writer who must attract readers in large numbers.

We must Create Captivating Characters who possess the storytelling power to enthrall those readers. These characters captivate because our readers care about what happens to them. Before we explore how, specifically, to make that caring occur, let’s pin down your basics.

If you’re working on a novel now, where are you in that process? Are you at the beginning? If not, let’s imagine you are – either at the beginning or near it. Let’s put Beginner’s Mind to work for us and start from scratch as we explore how to Create Captivating Characters.

First of all, do you have a single, specific Main Character? Most successful stories have one main character. A first among equals who gives the story focus. Reader interest and agent-editor interest are best captured by a single, strong protagonist.

Have you named your single, strong protagonist? Give your main character a name up front, when you begin creating the story. Naming gives characters substance and reality, especially in your own consciousness as their creator. Even though that character name may change later.

If you are not working on a novel now, choose a character from someone else’s story. Use that character for the exercise to come in this post. Feel free to change that character from the original author’s version. My personal choice would be Scout Finch, daughter of Atticus, in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Why is a strong main character so important? Because when we read about his joys, his hopes and dreams. When we witness his admirable qualities in practice, or sometimes the qualities we less readily relate to, as with Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we recognize that this character has something important to lose.

We don’t want this strong main character to lose this important thing. The strength of his portrayal has invaded our imaginations. We identify with him as the valiant person we wish to be. We identify with what happens to him. We’ve been hooked in the heart because we care.

The more we care what happens to your character, the more solidly your story hook is set in us. You are succeeding most spectacularly as a storyteller when you create a character whom we will care about not just a little, but intensely. The way we care about, even weep for, Celie in The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Make us care about your character, then make us care even more. Start by answering this question for your main character, or the character you are working with today. What, specifically rather than in general, makes us care about this character as she is currently portrayed?

Now, what can you add to that portrayal to make us care even more about her? You have created a character we already care about. We are emotionally tied to her fate. We hope for only good things to happen to her. To make us care even more, you must frustrate our hopes for her.

You must make bad things happen to this character we are growing to love. Circumstances must block her from what she needs. Circumstances that are scary for her must arise. Physically scary and emotionally scary obstacles must explode onto her path.

In other words, you must put your main character into Trouble and Danger. You must make her fate uncertain, preferably perilous. Put her on a roller coaster ride. Most crucial to your success as a storyteller, put us, as your readers, on this thrill ride with her.

Plunge your main character into hot water, then turn up the heat. You have made bad things happen to her, now you must make those bad things worse. Mercy is inappropriate here, no matter how much you have come to love her, as have the rest of us, your readers.

Intense, dramatic, powerful events make your character intense, dramatic and powerful. Trouble and Danger are intense, dramatic and powerful, especially when they inflict themselves upon someone you have made us care about – a lot.

This is the How – How to Create Captivating Characters. Intense, dramatic, powerful characters are Captivating Characters. They captivate us because we can’t take our eyes off them. We can’t take our hearts off them either. We care too much for that to be possible.

Create Captivating Characters and you will have us hooked. We will be hooked by your characters and by you as their author. We will prove how captivated we are by – drum roll please – buying your next book. And, that is something else all writers want. No doubt about it.  Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingAmanda Miller Bryce is a captivating character. Find out why in Alice’s novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Meet Amanda HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/