I’m Hearing Voices Week

I am beyond excited that so many of you have signed up for I’m Hearing Voices Blogfest! Cassie and I are both blown away. Thanks so much for participating.

I need time to read all your amazing posts, so instead of posting myself this week I’m off to visit all of you.

Also, check out each others posts. I’m expecting great things :)

-Angie

Dreams. Love em or Hate em?

I recently received a full critique from someone I just love (*wink* by this end of this post you will know who you are), and one note I got was— “Watch out how many dream sequences you use.”

Now, I was floored. I LOVE DREAM SEQUENCES! (If I could have made that sentence written in glitter for emphasis, I would have!) Dreams are some of my favorite things to write and read. It never once occurred to me they could be overdone (I know that sounds dumb as I write it. Anything can be overdone).

In my lovely critiquers defense, I think she’s right about two of them (I have 5 total. Each around 200 words). I’m so glad she pointed it out to me because now she has me thinking.

There is one main reason why I LOVE dreams. I feel like I’m pulling back a curtain and giving my reader a raw peak at my characters psyche. I really believe that deep down most of us know what’s right and wrong and how to solve our own problems. Sometimes a dream can give us a deep insight in to ourselves. Sometimes they are nonsense :)

But now I am freaking out! Is this wrong? Are dreams annoying? Will it keep me from getting an agent? Help! Weigh in! Give me your feedback!

-Angie

I'm too sexy for myself???

The post I wrote for today has been bumped to Monday because I happened upon this video and enjoyed it too much! I hope you do too!

I love that in writing--adding flaws, or at least being honest about character flaws: physical, emotional or whatever, adds to and shapes our characters. We're not going for perfection, we want authentic.

But for the media, flawlessness is the name of the game and now there's the prefect product available to anyone! Check it out:

As promised, here's the update on Angie: She's in surgery today, but will be back on the blog radar Wednesday of next week, so stay tuned! I've passed along all of your well wishes on her behalf - Thank you. I think she's itching to be back in the saddle and I, too, hope she has a speedy recovery.

Have a great weekend!

--Sara

I’m Hearing Voices—Character Blogfest

I’ve been blogging for seven months. I haven’t decided yet whether that feels long or short :) I’ve met so many great people and made unexpected friendships (Wow, this sounds like a eulogy—it’s not).

I thought it was about time I hosted a blogfest. Now, technically this was Cassie’s (Reading, Writing, and Lovin' It!) idea, so we are going to co-host.

Every great story has great characters! So this blogfest is designed to help us flex our character writing muscles through three separate blog posts.

The Posts:

February 6th - Monday: Characters on the couch: Have one of your characters answer the following questions (to make this work to your benefit, choose a character who is the hardest for you to write :) Max 250 words (Not including the questions—only the answers). 

1. What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?
2. What do people believe about you that is false?
3. What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?
4. What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?
5. What do you want most? What will you do to get it? 

February 8th - Wednesday - Dialogue Introduction: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialogue—no backstory, no internalization, just dialogue between the two. Max 250 words.

February 10th - Friday - Emotion Flash Fiction: Emotion is the engine of a story. Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words MAKE us feel it! We want to connect with your character. This will be a challenge in 250 words.

The Prizes: 

Cassie and I decided to pick two winners for each day:

Monday’s Prize’s—

• From me: The Color Code by Taylor Hartman—this book is a fantastic study of personality. It’s simple, easy to follow, and will give you tons of insight into how different personalities interact. I use it all the time. I don't normally like non-fiction, but this is one of my favorites. See description here.

• From Cassie:  Nightshade by Andrea Cremer.  You can check out the description from Goodreads here.  This book so far has been the only book to make me fall for both male leads.  The characters' flaws and their strengths kept pulling me in two different directions the entire way through.  

Wednesday’s Prize—

• From me: A query critique and first 20 page critique.
• From Cassie: A query critique and first 20 page critique. 

Friday’s Prize—

• From me: A full manuscript critique.
• From Cassie: A full manuscript critique.

How to enter:

1. Add your name to the link below
2. Follow Cassie
3. Follow Me—If we don’t already, we will follow you back J
4. Post about the blogfest sometime by January 30^th
5. You don’t have to, but we would love you to grab our button and add it to your side bar. 

There you go. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Come join the fun. It will be awesome!

-Angie

Why should I care?

I just watched a movie that should have been amazing but it just wasn’t. This is what it had going for it:

• Period drama
• Death
• Vengeance
• Romeo and Juliet-esk family troubles
• Gorgeous actors
• Scheming
• War
• Lies
• LOVE

Sounds great right? So what went wrong? The story failed to make me connect with the characters. I could tell that they tried, but here is where the story failed.

Hot is not connection: Sometimes I think writers believe if someone is good looking everyone will like them. This isn’t true. I may melt a little, but unless you give me something more I just won’t care.

Little to no background: I knew NOTHING about the heroine in this story—and neither did the hero. When he confesses his undying love for her, I kept exepexting her to ask him, “But, why do you love me?” Because she was pretty? Boring!

Conflict doesn’t make me care: It sounds so cold hearted, but it’s true—conflict is only interesting if I’m interested in the people who are stuck in the conflict. You can’t throw people into a civil war and call it good.

Too many characters: This movie kept adding in more and more characters that I was supposed to care about. This problem is that with each new addition, time is taken away from the others and I just end up with a whole group of boring people.

I want to care about the characters. I want to cry with them. I want to bleed with them. I want them to win.

What about you? What keeps you from connecting with characters?

-Angie


Side Note: The talented Chantele Sedgwick interviewed me on her blog today. I think I may have made a fool of myself. Come check it out and laugh at me :)

Please Pass The Tissues

Tonight I'm staring at my computer screen through the narrow slits of my swollen eyes. I just finished a movie where I had no choice but to completely surrender myself and cry my eyes out. My hands were tied! It was heart-wrenching, difficult, lovely, romantic, real, and poignant.

Without the swell of background orchestra music, or beautiful panoramic camera sweeps, can our writing invoke the same reactions? How? What do you do to connect to your readers? To drill inside of them and hit a nerve?

Here are some things that were present in this movie as well as other movies/books that I've delved into:

1. Dire circumstances where either the best or the worst in the MC comes to the surface (or sometimes both).

2. Truth. Truth resonates with people. I don't need to travel in the belly of a slave ship to know of injustice and I don't have to be the first person to set foot on a new land to feel the excitement of discovery. I am human and if I can't relate to it completely, I can still be swept away by a well crafted story and empathize with the situation -- drawing on my own life experiences to back me up.

3. Humor. In this movie, humor was welcomed like a cool breeze. It's refreshing and sometimes helps us make it to the next painful plot point. Just as in life, I think humor reminds us of who we are ... giving us just enough motivation to move forward, remembering when things weren't so bad, or so hard or so blurry. Just feeling ourselves smile rejuvenates us and connects us to the story(or character).

4. Rock Solid Characters. This is a no brainer. I can honestly say that I have liked nearly every movie/book that I've seen or read where there's a character that I can actually back up and stand behind. As long there is some redeeming quality, something that assures me that there is a goodness or strength about him/her, I can usually stick it out. On the flip side, I can walk away from any movie/book where the characters aren't believable, likable or at the very least, have some shred of common decency. The plot can be out of this world, but if I can't stand in the character's corner, I'm out.

5. Weakness. In writing good characters and plots, I stand by the old saying, Weaknesses are often our Strengths. Every Superman must have his Kryptonite, right? Giving our characters weaknesses adds depth, compassion, risk, and pain to our stories. It also provides the perfect catalyst for change, growth, fighting, and hard earned triumph. I love it when a good read actually brings me to my feet, cheering for the unlikely, but much hoped for triumph of one who was weak, vulnerable and whose situation was utterly hopeless. Does it get better than that?

There are a dozen more ways to bring tears of joy or heartache to the eyes of our readers; Or at the very least, get them biting their nails, hugging a pillow to their tummy or doing some other equally nervous tick as they lend an hour or so of their time to our stories.

I say bag the background music! If we do it right, we can deliver a gut-wrenching, breath-snatching story that will knock our readers socks off! Do any of you have a secret weapon that you use in writing? What do you do to pull the readers in? What gives your stories more authenticity and depth? ???

--Sara Bulla

Relief

I'm no Art History buff by any means, but I do remember one thing from my 10th grade teacher, Tony Taylor. Relief Sculpture.

'Relief' comes from the latin word for 'raise' (you can all thank Wikipedia for this), but in actuality, artists don't add to or raise the subject, but rather carve out the background.

At 15 years old, this fascinated me. Sometimes little or no chiseling was done on the actual subject and yet, somehow, a face, a figure or a scene emerged. As the background is dug out of the granite or sandstone or whatever, the characters stand out. They come to life.

I've been working on my synopsis and sent it to a friend who knew nothing of my book, it's premise, characters, etc. I just wanted to see if my synopsis made any sense to her at all. It didn't. She was lost. There was nothing to ground her and nothing that held my string of facts together.

I asked her for suggestions. All she said was "background". She wanted me to carve out the setting. She wanted me to anchor my characters to a place or history. She didn't need much, just something to help her visualize an environment where my characters could come off the page and 'rise up'.

She had a great point. I added only two or three phrases indicating place, time, and circumstance, but that provided enough of a backdrop to support my characters and the series of events in my story.

Often sculptors use 'relief' sculpting because it provides strength and stability - especially at weak points in their sculpture, like the ankles, wrists, or neck. I think carving out a solid background, whether spacial or circumstantial, for our characters will strengthen those weak spots that we may find throughout our manuscripts.

So rather than trying to chisel out the details of our MC's, perhaps sculpting a deeper background might inspire them to rise to the surface all on their own. ???? Good luck fellow artists!

--Sara Bulla

Hero or Sidekick?

I just watched a movie where, for a variety of reasons, super heros were placed in one of two categories: Hero or Sidekick.

In our stories do we have heroes and sidekicks? They may not be wearing tights or a cape, but as writers, we definitely use the compare and contrast tool that the sidekick/hero relationship presents. By adding a sidekick to our MC, we open up all sorts of doors for the reader to discover the true nature of our hero or main character. Sidekicks are not only useful, they are often the most likable characters. Think Ron Weasley, Samwise Gamgee and Dr. Watson. These characters were placed next to the MC (Harry Potter, Frotto Baggins and Sherlock Holmes) for a variety of reasons.

1. Sidekicks provide comedic relief. In most cases they are funnier than the MC. Their blunders, jokes, shortcomings, etc. reflect not only on them, but on the MC as well, making him or her, look even smarter or more put together.

2. Sidekicks are usually more down to earth and relate-able to the readers. I connect much more with Ron Weasley than I do Harry Potter ... though I love them both. And the fact that Ron stands by Harry, inspires me all the more to believe Harry, as well.

3. No matter how intelligent or unintelligent your MC is, if you make the sidekick more dense and simple minded, then POOF! Just like that, your MC looks like a genius.

4. The sidekick performs an invaluable service in giving us a peek inside the secret lives of the MC. Sidekicks are usually the MC's one confidant or best friend. Usually MC's come loaded with secrets and dark pasts. But with a sidekick, we writers can showcase all sorts of expository conversations that reveal the true nature of our MC. This helps increase the likability of our MC's and strengthens the bond between them and the reader.

5. Even the physique of the sidekick vs. the hero serves a purpose. We can describe the sidekick and contrast that with the description of the hero. If the sidekick is large and not-too-bright, then perhaps the hero is scrawny and brilliant. If the sidekick is rich and sloppy, maybe the hero can be poor, but clean cut. Whatever the hero isn't, the sidekick is and vice versa. This gives us, the writers, such incredible power. Often a reader's opinion of our hero is shaped by our description of the sidekick.

6. Sidekicks also make great villains. Disgruntled, once-loyal friends who are always in the background, never sharing in the glory or the power that usually surrounds the hero. There are many stories where the understudy or best friend or apprentice decides they've had enough and WHAM! We've got conflict. Now the one person who knows more than anything about the MC, is their greatest enemy. I love it!

If I may use Angie's story as an example (dont' worry Angie, there are no spoilers!), it provides an awesome example of the hero/sidekick relationship. Her MC, Taggert has a best friend, Breck. Not only do these soldiers have fantastic names, they are amazing characters as well. Breck's down-to-earth, open-book friendliness helps us get inside of Taggert's more guarded personality. Much of my initial opinion of Taggert was based on his friendship with Breck. Breck is drunk half the time, usually laughing and always making a joke. He's completely likable and helps increase or decrease the tension as Angie crafts and carves out her story. He's a tool and a handsome one at that.

And so I salute you, Sidekicks, for the depth you bring to our stories and our characters. We couldn't do it with out you!

Do most of you have a 'sidekick' in your story? What ways do they enrich your book? Do any of them literally wear a cape and tights? Just kidding!

--Sara Bulla