October Tip: The Main Characters Readers Hate

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Our main characters are important. (I can hear you, "How important are they?" ;-) Without them, our readers have no door into the story, no way to experience the plot and setting. There are many ways to craft these important people. (Yes, they are 'people'! If they aren't real, who would want to spend any time with them?)

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There are also a lot of ways to mess them up. Anne R. Allen has a great post on five ways writers mess up their Main Characters. If your MC falls into any of these categories, you need to rethink them.

•  Mary Sue: The character who embodies the author's secret wish fulfillment. Readers find them too good to be true. And they're right.
• The Special Victim: These characters are never at fault for their predicament and they're never the one who saves themselves. My take on this type of MC is to say 'ho hum.'
• Perfect Pat: This character can do no wrong, reacts to everything with perfect gratitude, perfect skills, and is loved by everyone. Really? Again, this is a boring character.
• Looky-Loo: When the protagonist is there to tell the story, never affecting the action, you have a Looky-Loo. The story would be better from a closer POV, in my opinion.
• Literal Larry: This character is the one that tells every last event in their life until all the story is is one of unimportant, mundane action.

Now for the hard part? Just where in this list does our MC fall? I'll admit that my main character has been in danger of being Perfect Pat. I've had to dig into her dark side. Yes, my dear, sweet retired teacher has a dark side. She's a bit judgmental at times. She has a wicked temper that she doesn't manage to control all the time. And she's been known to blurt those little questions that we're never supposed to ask one another. Oops! And hurrah! Every time she falls into the less then perfect category, she grows another layer, another reason to cheer for her to climb back to her better self.

So, where does your MC fall? Are you looking at one of our feeble five? Or do you have a red-blooded person leading your story?

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Next Week: Mini Book Reviews with everything from women's and literary fiction to an upper middles grade tale. See you In the Shade! ;-)

September Writing Tip Week: How To Start Your Novel

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We all know that the first 250 words of our novels can make or break getting an agent, publisher--but most of all--readers. So, how do we make sure our beginnings are pulling readers in? Thanks to the weekly Industry News from Women's Fiction Writers Association, I found a great blogpost on Anne R. Allen's blog. In it her guest, Janice Hardy, analyzed four failings of opening pages.

1. Having too much backstory and information
2. Crafting a one-dimensional scene
3. Using a fake opening
4. Having a lazy protagonist

Our next step is to analyze the way we usually open. I have to admit I'm most prone to including too much backstory and information. Cutting out the fat and saving it for later is a challenge. Thankfully, I've been a member of writing groups who have helped me see all the necessary bits that needed to be cut. My buddies at the Books and Writers Forum have been the victims readers of many of my failed attempts. 

So, I invite you to weigh in. What do you think about the first 250 words of FRIENDLY FIRE?

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A cloud of sweet baby powder tickled my nose as Jen’s daughter Kayleigh helped a toddler to the serving tables. I hugged my arms to keep from grabbing the child from the teen and burying my nose in his bright silky hair. So many little foster children and none of them would spend Mother’s Day with their moms tomorrow.
 
How many times had my best friend Rosemary told me I needed to get out and back into the swing of things? Her constant concern chafed like a new shirt.
 
The foster family respite party wasn’t what she had in mind. All these poor children. So, what had I been thinking to choose this party of all places? Yet, here I was, pushing cookies, home-baked of course, on grade-school kids at the church’s foster family party.
 
Though I wasn't a mother, I knew the look of children whose parents were MIA. The tall thin blond at the end of the table was a poster child for them all. Her shoulders hunched as the noise of little children at play ricocheted off the fellowship hall’s block walls. Of course she was a foster child, too. But, unlike the others, she wasn’t playing. She didn’t even have a plate of goodies. Her only movement came from her curls that were caught in the current from the air conditioning.

My Tom, God rest his soul, would have sat cross-legged on the floor playing games with the kiddies or giving piggy back rides like some of the men were. We’d poured out our love on other people’s children for over thirty years in our classrooms. Now all I could do for them was bake cookies for them.

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Here's another nifty link for you. Check out The Secret of How to Make Your Book Un-PutDown-able.

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Next Week: September Mini Book Reveiws!

Hard Nut Scenes

We've all struggled with them. Hit them with all the brain power we can muster. And still, they just lay on the page, mocking us. You know you've had one, or twenty. (That's being conservative. ;-)

You know those scenes that are just not quite right. It's a scene you know you have to have to tell the story you're writing. So, what do you do about it? 

Check out this discussion on the Books and Writers Forum.
Here's a list of the suggestions made by the various writers. 

1. change the venue of the scene
2. explore alternative choices of action
3. give yourself more time
4. change POV for the scene
5. play with phrases to hunt for the kernel
6. pretend it's written and write the consequence scene
7. look for issues in the story that make the planned scene is not viable and decide if you need to  abandon this scene.

Now, which method will work for you? Or me? I have hard nut sitting on my desk right now. It's a booger and I need it to open up. Wish me luck! ;-)

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Useful Links!

I've got a bumper crop of links for you, too!

Check out Anne R. Allen's Ten Commandments of Social Media Etiquette for Writers  There's a lot of good info here.

From Writer Unboxed, try The Art of Creating Memorable Villains Whatever Your Genre

Besides you might be writing crap and that's okay. Read Charlotte Rains Dixon's The Benefits of Writing Crap to find out why.   ;-)

Have you ever heard to start in media res? If you want to know what it really means and how to do it, check out Kristen Lamb's Starting the Story "In the Action"...

Also check Kristen Lamb's post of Character Arcs.