Relaxing Evening Working

 

I’ve been sitting here carrying out my final edit and read through of the first Talia novel. On the television I’ve got the Syracuse vs Boston College basketball game on while listening to Queen on my Ipod. All in all, it’s been a very calm and relaxing evening while I’ve worked.

See, some writers say they need to lock themselves into a room with their computer/typewriter and not speak or see another living soul. I’m not quite that way. Oh, I’ll go to a different room but I’ll listen to Itunes while I write and who the artist is changes with my mood.

Tonight has been really fun because I enjoy basketball and watching it. Before I got diagnosed with Bipolar I was on track to be a successful coach, so I end up looking at things as a coach would. And the best part? I don’t have to worry about being fired if I make a wrong call! J

Either way it’s a fun night for me and now I’ll go back to work on my Athol novel. Once this Talia novel is finished, I’ll turn my attention to editing the short story that brought the little teen assassin to life. This, I hope, will get published in a magazine, but I’m concerned that at 9.6k words it might be too long. With any luck I can edit it down, but I’m not sure if I can find a way to remove 2k to make it a “normal” short story length.

Writing Interesting Characters

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I see lots of posts about how to make a character interesting and not just a cardboard cut out. That’s a tricky question to answer because there’s many ways to do that.

Dialogue is one thing in a writer’s arsenal to accomplish the task. How does he or she speak to others and is the clean or potty mouthed? Is there lots of sarcasm? All of them display personality.

Actions are another option. How does she behave? Does she get mad easily? Never upset? Cold as Ice?

Narration can also help you.

Best thing is a combination of all the above. Characters are sums of their parts-just like we are as people, so keep that in mind when creating your characters.