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Showing posts from October, 2011

Happy Halloween

This is my point in the year to stop and think of loved ones who have passed on. It's also a time to look back at what I've achieved this year and forward to the good things ahead. However you spend today, have the best of times. Happy Halloween.

Let them grow

One piece of advice that is often offered by creative writing books and courses is to nail your characters before you begin writing. Work out their name, their age, how they look, where they were born, what their attitude is to marriage, etc, etc. The list is endless. For a long time, I followed this advice and attempted to write my characters into the details and personalities that I had so carefully written down and crafted beforehand. Do you know what happened for ninety nine per cent of the time? I wrote cardboard cutout characters who fell apart under the rain of conflict and time. I now understand that I was taking the 'get to know your character' advice too literally or too naively at least. What the advice should be is 'work out the details of your character's life that you need to begin writing'.  The difference between this and the 'nailing of characters' is that with my version, there is room for your characters to develop and grow as you the wr