EPUBBING with NICOLA FURLONG

Intro: I occasionally teach a writers’ workshop at our local Camosun College on how to write a mystery novel. The students eat it up, telling me that they’re learning lots of practical and usable tips and techniques, so I thought I’d offer bits and pieces of the workshop in my Friday Mystery Writing blog posts.

The information is gleaned from my little non-fiction e-book primer called Youdunit Whodunit! How to Write Mysteries and offers my tips, techniques and information suitable for crafting of all types of genre writing.

So, even if you write romance, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, please keep reading and learn with us crime writers.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Part 17)

The last group of posts have focused on the point of view (POV) from which to tell your tale.

Most recently, we’re moved into creating the people who populate your story. I nicknamed this step: Haven’t We Met Before?

There are three types of CHARACTERS who populate fiction: Major, Secondary and Minor.

Obviously, your major characters are the most important and require the bulk of your thoughts, so take some time and get to know them…intimately.

This is simplified if you ask a lot of questions, moving from broader basic information, to more intimate details and finally into fun and quirky stuff. In episode 16, we began by musing about personal details.

You’re Invading My Personal Space

Today, we did deeper and get even more personal.

Armed with your budding characters, begin to flesh out their temperament and PERSONALITY TRAITS, choosing four interesting ones that help determine speech patterns, thoughts and actions.

These four traits will help you bring your character to life when you are writing their dialogue, movements, reactions and feelings.

Consider PRIME SUSPECT’S Detective Superintendent Tennison’s qualities; she’s pig-headed, acerbic, driven and insecure. (more…)

Intro: I occasionally teach a writers’ workshop at our local Camosun College on how to write a mystery novel. The students eat it up, telling me that they’re learning lots of practical and usable tips and techniques, so I thought I’d offer bits and pieces of the workshop in my Friday Mystery Writing blog posts.

The information is gleaned from my little non-fiction e-book primer called Youdunit Whodunit! How to Write Mysteries and offers my tips, techniques and information suitable for crafting of all types of genre writing.

So, even if you write romance, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, please keep reading and learn with us crime writers.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Part 16)

The last group of posts (most recent: ) have focused on the point of view (POV) from which to tell your tale.

Most recently, we’re moved into creating the people who populate your story. I nicknamed this step: Haven’t We Met Before?

There are three types of CHARACTERS who populate fiction: Major, Secondary and Minor.

Obviously, your major characters are the most important and require the bulk of your thoughts, so take some time and get to know them…intimately.

This is simplified if you ask a lot of questions, moving from broader basic information, to more intimate details and finally into fun and quirky stuff. In episode 15, we began by musing Tombstone details.

You’re Invading My Personal Space

Today, we did deeper and get a little more personal by diving into answers for these personality queries:

• What are their key values?

• What’s their inner motivation: why is she or he doing what she or he does? The answer to this shapes the story.

Strong motivations stem from potent emotions or inner wounds, like undying love, obsessive hatred, blind ambition, envy, grief, vengeance. Characters with conflicting motivations are more interesting.

• What are their hopes, fears and dreams?

• What are their hot button issues? Their health? Their finances? Their relationships?

• Why are they like this?

• What do they like and dislike?

This outta take you a while; it’s challenging work but should be fun. After all, these are YOUR people. So…how’s it feel to be their creator? Pretty cool, eh?

If you found this of interest, you may wish to see the previous How to Write a Mystery novel posts.

…Of course, there’ll be MORE how-to write a mystery tips and techniques continued in the next Friday post as we push further to develop the three types of characters that commonly populate genre fiction in: You’re Invading My Personal Space, Part 17.

Intro: I occasionally teach a writers’ workshop at our local Camosun College on how to write a mystery novel. The students eat it up, telling me that they’re learning lots of practical and usable tips and techniques, so I thought I’d offer bits and pieces of the workshop in my Friday Mystery Writing blog posts.

The information is gleaned from my little non-fiction e-book primer called Youdunit Whodunit! How to Write Mysteries and offers my tips, techniques and information suitable for crafting of all types of genre writing.

So, even if you write romance, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, please keep reading and learn with us crime writers.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Part 15)

The last group of posts (most recent: ) have focused on the point of view (POV) from which to tell your tale.

Now, we’re moving into creating the people who populate your story. I’ve nicknamed this step: Haven’t We Met Before?

There are three types of CHARACTERS who populate fiction: Major, Secondary and Minor.

Obviously, your major characters are the most important and require the bulk of your thoughts, so take some time and get to know them…intimately.

This is simplified if you ask a lot of questions, moving from broader basic information, to more intimate details and finally into fun and quirky stuff.

So in the next few posts, we’ll do just that:

First, ponder some Tombstone Questions to bring life to your gumshoe:

• What’s their name? Avoid confusing the audience with more than one character with same initials or similar names.

• How old are they?

• Who are they?

• What do they look like? NOT a photographic representation, just bits to help the reader’s imagination. You don’t want them to be disappointed when your story becomes a hit movie, do you?

• What do they sound like? Do they have an accent? An interesting vocabulary or vocal tic?

• What do they do?

• Where did they grow up?

• What was their childhood like?

This outta take you a while; it’s challenging work but should be fun. After all, these are YOUR people. So…how’s it feel to be their creator? Pretty cool, eh?

If you found this of interest, you may wish to see the previous How to Write a Mystery novel posts.

…Of course, there’ll be MORE how-to write a mystery tips and techniques continued in the next Friday post as we push further to develop the three types of characters that commonly populate genre fiction in: You’re Invading My Personal Space, Part 16.

Find out further information or how to purchase my mystery-writing primer e-book, jam-packed with ways to immediately improve your writing, by clicking Youdunit Whodunit! (only $2.99 US)

Intro: I occasionally teach a writers’ workshop at our local Camosun College on how to write a mystery novel. The students eat it up, telling me that they’re learning lots of practical and usable tips and techniques, so I thought I’d offer bits and pieces of the workshop in my Friday Mystery Writing blog posts.

The information is gleaned from my little non-fiction e-book primer called Youdunit Whodunit! How to Write Mysteries and offers my tips, techniques and information suitable for crafting of all types of genre writing.

So, even if you write romance, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, please keep reading and learn with us crime writers.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (Part 14)

The last group of posts have concentrated on the story structure of a mystery novel. Been there; done that. Now we’re onto developing characters or as I like to think of it: Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

In the initial post on character development, I introduced an essential question: Who’s telling your story? You can have more than one storyteller but for our purposes, we’ll stick to one.

You need a point of view (POV) from which to tell your tale. There are two common POVs in fiction writing: First Person, which we discussed in a previous post, and Third Person.

LEMME TELL IT MY WAY: In this Point of View, the writer chooses to tell the story from more of a distance by narrating with “He said” or “They said”. Today, I’m finishing my discussion on POV by offering a couple of cautionary notes.

In the most recent posts, I offered some reasons to choose Third Person POV; and introduced all of the three main viewpoint types: the Limited Multiple POV, the Limited Detached POV and the Know All/Omniscient POV.

One challenge for the newbie writer when using any Point of View is to maintain the appropriate viewpoint and not switch mid-scene. Once you’ve chosen your point of view, STAY in that person’s mindset for the entire scene or chapter.

If you wish to tell a scene from another player’s POV, go ahead; just make sure that the reader is witnessing each chunk of the story from a single POV at any one time.

How NOT to write Multiple Third Person Point of View

Consider the following example:

John stared, unable to take his eyes off Emily’s disfigured face. Her nose was deformed, her eye sockets bulged and puckered skin twisted her cheeks. He swallowed, trying to gain time.

Emily stiffened. John’s reaction wasn’t new but how does one get used to that look of horror? With an effort, she held his gaze, concentrating on his gray eyes, willing him to break away first. And when he did, she felt a beat of power and then the heat of shame.

So, what’s wrong?

Our point of view changes within the same scene, that’s what. First we are in John’s head, seeing and feeling from his outlook and then we immediately switch to Emily, watching and reacting from her perspective…all in the same paragraph. This POV mishmash is a major no no and will have agents and editors after your head.

I know, I know, a number of best-selling authors break this rule but if you do, understand that you do so at your peril.

Like the old adage: you’ve should first follow the rules before breaking them.

If you found this of interest, you may wish to see the previous How to Write a Mystery posts.

…Of course, there’ll be MORE how-to write a mystery tips and techniques continued in the next Friday post as we move on to developing the three types of characters that commonly populate genre fiction in Haven’t We Met Before? Part 15.

Find out further information or how to purchase my mystery-writing primer e-book, jam-packed with ways to immediately improve your writing, by clicking Youdunit Whodunit (only $2.99US!).