Friday, July 11, 2014

Friday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts


By: The Fictorians

We’ve all heard the criticism: “Your characters are flat” or “One-dimensional” “Make them deeper, more rounded.”

The problem is, most of the time the people offering that vague advice have no concrete suggestions for fixing the problem. Many newer authors often fall into the trap of trying to add quirks or other surface affectations to try to make the characters appear ‘interesting’. Quirks can be cool, but only if they tie into the character’s real psyche. If not, they’re just weird and don’t help.

In my last post, I explored what it means to have deeper, more complex characters by utilizing Larry Brooks’ three dimensions approach to character development. Today I want to explore additional examples from books and television to highlight what we mean when we say a character has ‘depth’ or is ‘complex’.

First, we need to know our characters, know them better than we know just about anyone else in our life. Think about it – most of the people we interact with are enigmas. We know their surface personalities, and we may know a little about their history, but how many people do we know well enough to imagine them in an extremely difficult situation like the ones we’re going to place our protagonists in, and then feel confident we can predict how they’ll react? The number is probably smaller than we usually assume. We can’t have that ambiguity with our main characters. When we place them in extreme situations, we need to know how they’re going to respond.

Many of the ‘flat’ characters we see are ones where they don’t seem to have a history. They step onto the page with no back-story, no childhood, no past mistakes or triumphs to be reminded about. As a result, we only see the surface of a character but get no insights into why or how they reached that stage in life. These are characters with only that first dimension defined. Fine for secondary characters, but not for central characters.

For example . . .

Read the full article HERE!

~*~

If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:
  1. The Latest Trends in the Indie Author Market [Smart Set] | Jane Friedman http://ow.ly/z0iWv
  2. Novel Rocket: Estimating Kindle Sales From Amazon Rankings http://ow.ly/z1xTm
  3. All Write - Fiction Advice: Top Writing Tips http://ow.ly/z1xWe
  4. Which Comes First: A Facebook Author Page Or An Author Website? http://t.co/hBlkqxVtbA  via @WritersRelief
  5. Mobile Evolution: Millennials vs. Generation X - #infographic | Digital Information World http://ow.ly/z1y3P
  6. Mythcreants » Drawing Character Inspiration From Game Mechanics http://ow.ly/z1y7y
  7. Southern Writers - Suite T: Step Away From Your Writing and Explore Writing Settings http://ow.ly/z1ya3
  8. 5 Key Elements for a Successful Women’s Blog : @ProBlogger http://ow.ly/z1ycH
  9. 7 Lessons Learned While Content Marketing for an Early-Stage Startup - Copyblogger http://ow.ly/z1yeg
  10. BookMarketingBuzzBlog: Pitching The Media: From The Obvious To The Extreme http://ow.ly/z1yg4
  11. Writer Unboxed » Why Writers Are More Powerful Than The Supreme Court http://ow.ly/z1yhE
  12. Revisiting the Four Primary Pillars of Novel Construction | Live Write Thrive http://ow.ly/z1yj7
  13. Studying Ray Bradbury: a beat sheet of Fahrenheit 451 | Nail Your Novel http://ow.ly/z1ylg
  14. Why Tumblr Is Pumped: You Can Now Embed Vine Videos On Your Blog http://ow.ly/z1yoB
  15. Writability: Follow Your Passion http://ow.ly/z1yse
  16. The Kill Zone: Can Storytelling Be Taught? http://ow.ly/z1yCN
  17. Friday Links for Writers 07.04.14 – Quirky Research Sources for Writers #2 | elissa lauren field http://ow.ly/z1yGr
  18. Anne R. Allen's Blog: 12 Dumb Things Writers do to Sidetrack Our Own Success http://ow.ly/z1yHR
  19. Complex Characters - The Fictorians http://ow.ly/z1yNg
  20. Seekerville: Return on Investment: What We Stay At Homes Can Do!!!! http://ow.ly/z1yUa
Happy writing and running, Kathy

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