Character Study

I’m Not a Gossip. But, I Can Tell You Who Is…

February 1, 2012

Are you the type of person who invites Disaster home to dinner?  Have you ever found yourself (be honest, now) of saying one thing… of proclaiming something to be dead wrong, and then going ahead and doing it anyway?
If you are a politician—especially if you are running for a presidential nomination just now—you know what [...]

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What Makes a Book Good?

January 18, 2012

While visiting a friend’s blog, “Tracking the Words: A Yearly Cycle“, I found myself wondering what it is about Book A or Book B that gets me reading, even when the book is long and complex?  Even when the book is put down by critics and “common folk”.
Part of it, I think, must be name [...]

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Character Traits to Use or Abuse

January 12, 2012

Earlier we discussed a fear of asking for help, or more specifically the fear that drives a person to hold back from asking for help in hopes that somehow somebody will intuit the problem and offer assistance.
In real life I think of this as both lazy, and not a little bit sleazy, but in novels [...]

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Larger Than Life, or Every-Day Characters?

January 11, 2012

Some of my favorite novels are peopled with “larger than life” characters.  Take a look at any of the novels in the second half of Robert A. Heinlein, for example.  I often think of his characters like the drawings on old Chi-com posters, feet apart, one upon a rock or other item, hands on hips, [...]

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Still Searching for Humanity

January 6, 2012

What makes a character human?  Could it be as little as describing him or her in “normal” terms, and letting the reader make assumptions?  Frankly, many writers do not go further than that.  These writers are known for creating “Plot Driven” rather than “Character Driven” stories.  So, what?  You ask.
Many of us—perhaps most of us—appreciate [...]

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Situational Idiots

January 6, 2012

Everybody makes mistakes.  I mean, even if you don’t use them all that much, any more, pencils STILL have erasers on them.  In fact, I’d say that among man’s artifacts, nothing points more strongly to human fallibility than a pencil with an eraser.
Keeping this in mind, let us consider the situational idiot.  This is a [...]

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Character Signatures

January 5, 2012

Some years back, when I listed almost exclusively to Talk Radio out here on the Pacific Coast, I found myself marveling at the way one caller spoke.  The caller was a police officer, and he had a most interesting tic.
As he spoke, the phrase, “go ahead and…” kept showing up.  For example, he described telling [...]

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Are Your Characters Busy Enough?

December 29, 2011

We have a pretty good idea what a plot is, but for a refresher, one definition calls it, “…the pattern of events or main story in a narrative or drama.”  An example of a main plot can be found in the goal of Frodo in “Lord of the Rings”.  His is the story of doing the ever [...]

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Mister and Myths

December 22, 2011

If you are female, and easily offended, skip to the next post.  Please

One of the things I hear over and over is that women have it all over men when it comes to multi-tasking… and I’d like to set the record straight on this.
First, there is no such thing as multi-tasking, if your definition of [...]

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Who Actually Sets Out To Be Evil?

December 19, 2011

One of the most difficult things I needed to do in my early writing was creating villains.
You could just draw a bad guy on the page.   You could churn out someone who had no respect for authority, who took whatever he wanted, killed wantonly, and perhaps even had a twisted sense of fashion.  To tell the [...]

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