Hello, everyone ─ and happy last day of August! September’s just around the bend, and I don’t know about any of you, but once those ’ember’s come along I get this cozy feeling inside with images of bread baking, chai, PUMPKINS . . . I could really go on and on. If cooler days are coming, and since it’s inevitable, we might as well focus on the delightful parts, no?

Today I’m going to share a bit about something I recently read in one of my writing books (yes, after seven volumes I’m finally actively studying how to write a novel the ‘right way’). Now, this book I’m reading is called Writing Lessons from the Front by Dr. Angela Hunt, a successful author of over 130 works. She also teaches writing (hence this book), and so far I have found great advice and some real brain exercises. Lots of things to keep in mind that I’ve never thought of before.

So apparently, in writing, there is a method to the madness.

The bit I’m going to share with you today is on ‘tension’, and the concept is that tension must exist on every page in order to keep readers reading. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every page needs to be packed with drama or thrills. The simple concept is ‘unanswered questions’. No, they aren’t supposed to remain unanswered, but stretching out the time between when the question is asked and when it is answered is the tension. It’s like a sandwich:

Question asked  >  time of tension/waiting  > question answered

Say Peter, James, and Martha are hanging out at the top of a cliff (a very precarious venue, by the way) and Peter falls off the edge into the ocean thirty feet below, to the abject horror of his compatriots. IS HE STILL ALIVE? (question asked). James and Martha can’t see him so they race to the shore at the bottom of the cliff (waiting), where they find Peter in the surf.

Let’s stop there for a moment and talk more about the waiting period. Sure, it’s fine enough to say that they ‘raced to the shore at the bottom of the cliff’, but that in and of itself is not a very tense moment. So what do we do? Trip them up! Place obstacles in front of James and Martha to slow them down, frustrate them as they try desperately to get the shore in time ─ if it’s not already too late, of course. After all, hitting the water from a thirty foot drop is perilous. Not to mention that Peter can’t swim, as Martha hysterically informs James while they dash forth. (There could be several reasons why James was never in the know about Peter’s inability to tread water, but that’s not where we’re going at the moment).

We have our first ‘obstacle:

• Peter can’t swim

Let’s add some more trouble:

• The vegetation at the back of the cliff is thick ad tangly, slowing their descent.
• Maybe they find a sudden drop in the slop and they have to decide whether to risk jumping or backtrack to find a different route.
• One of them slips on a randomly discarded banana peel and takes a tumble (earning some scrapes and bruises, of course).

That is some ordeal! Who would be so rude as to throw away their banana peel like that? (Maybe Peter tossed it after they ate their lunch?) Battered and breathless, James and Martha break through the mini crucible to the beach, struggling to run through the shifting sand, and finally make it to the water. James spots the orange shirt first, bobbing in the foamy brine, and hastens to pull his friend out. Behind him, Martha is close to tears. Battered by the waves, James can’t determine Peter’s condition, so the two of them haul his limp form to the shore. He’s cold to the touch, but couldn’t that be just from the water? Martha can’t find a pulse, but she’s shaking too much to rightly tell. James pumps on Peter’s chest and slaps his face.

At this point the question of ‘Is Peter still alive?’ remains unanswered. Right about now would be a good time to insert a section break or end the chapter, when the tension is highest ─ just before the question is answered. This would prompt a reader to forge ahead and find out whatever happened to Peter. Were I evil, I could stop here and refrain from telling you until my next post, but I’m not always as heartless as I’ve been accused of being and will answer the question:

James was on the verge of giving up when Peter’s body convulsed. Salt water spewed out of his mouth between gasping breaths and lung-raking coughs. Martha burst into tears, and James felt dizzy with relief. Etc, etc. The point is PETER IS, IN FACT, ALIVE!

In summation, the space between when a question is asked and when that question is answered is the home of ‘tension’, the fishing line that tugs on a reader to keep reading in order to find out what happens.

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To learn more about Dr. Angela Hunt and her plethora of books, visit her website  — and add some titles to your reading list on Goodreads!

When I began my writing venture, I never really studied on how to go about it, taking with me only my fervor for the story and a basic understanding of creative writing from a middle school course. I never dreamed about taking into account the technicalities of the art, at the time it hardly even crossed my mind. I started out with a basic plot of events I wanted to take place and then delved right in. For me, everything kind of just came together as I went, and that first draft proved a massive learning experience on so many fronts. So, so many. With so many things going on, I developed a deep and lasting appreciation for timelines.

Timelines are vital, whether your story spans a few hours or a few centuries. Listing everything that happens in chronological order is monumentally helpful in keeping track of the goings on; it keeps you from getting bamboozled and making mistakes that will cause the very bloody murder of your story. For lack of it, my own would have perished in a most piteous mess of inconsistency.

I once read a blog post somewhere listing a few different ways in which to timeline, and there really are an infinite (okay, maybe not infinite, but there are a lot) of ways you can do this. One is to simply list the events with bullets or numbers, and another is to set up a timeline on the computer. What I have done is something perhaps a little more eccentric. My bedroom has ample ceiling space, so I took a spool of twine (it was on hand) and strung it up there from one end to the other and then clothespinned note cards with dates and what happened in that year. It spanned well over a hundred years and recorded the big points of my characters’ lives (color coded, even) leading up to the actual story itself. (I only took it down so my awesome new windows could be put in).

And that’s just the one timeline I made. The other, which records the events of the story itself, is laid out in an old calendar from ’09 that I never used and had on hand. It’s great because it has the day-by-day layout that I needed to keep track of, along with the seasons. It also helped me see better the events of the sub-plots so I could rearrange everything so it all flowed smoothly.

So, setting your world in order is a golden nugget of the profound wisdom of the word sages from past ages. And in addition to all its usefulness, timelines are also a great way to see your progression, and that is a huge boost in confidence and morale. Sometimes writing is a rough road of rocks and sinkholes, so it’s always good to have something to show you where you’ve been and all there is to look forward to.

Greetings, and happy mid-April! Now that spring has officially sprung, the work around here is beginning to burgeon as rapidly as the daffodils! Clean-up and preparations for planting are in the works and quickly approaching, and in the midst of all this we’re helping to plan a wedding ─ all on top of working on two books at the same time.

Lost your breath yet? Some days! It’s all coming along swimmingly, though. Volume 7, the FINAL volume in this saga, is making progress. I’ve finished the drafts and pre-printing edits and am ready to print out the manuscript. With only a little over two months left, I’m praying we can get everything sorted out in time (!). I will have more information, such as the cover and synopsis and all that exciting stuff, for you soon, so be looking forward to that ─ I certainly am. I’m really happy about the cover and can’t wait to show you . . .

Anywho, today I’m going to talk about characters once more (because they are such an intrinsic part of any story, they warrant a lot of care and consideration. Parents brag about their children, authors yammer about their characters). The topic/ tip I have for this post is: when developing characters, work with them. Familiarize yourself with them. This is something I’ve learned over the past (what, is it five years already? Wow), and while it may be common knowledge in the writing community, I’ve discovered that I learn quite a few things the Hard Way.
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I think the way you’re supposed to go about writing a story is to scheme your plot and develop your characters before you really get into the nitty-gritty of punching words onto the page. Did I? Pft! No. When I began this project o, so many years ago I did very little in the way of character development and just skipped ahead. I didn’t do character profiles, getting any sort of idea who these people were, and I didn’t know much about them.

However, as is per usual, the more time you spend with a person, the more you’ll get to know them. They open up to you and you notice things about them as they interact with their environment, the people around them, and their circumstances. This is how I learned who my characters were, and only after a couple of years did I get into the whole ‘character profile’ thing. I’d never looked into character outlines until a couple years ago, and there are as many different formats as there are people who use them, ranging from basic information (name, gender, eye color, hair color, etc.) to far more in depth details (phobias, neurosis, favorite book/song, and the like). The outline is basically just a list of questions to answer about your character to help flesh them out.

The chart that I currently use is pretty extensive, ranging from physical appearance, mentality, education, relationships, thought processes, habits, quirks ─ all sorts of things ─ and in truth I don’t always go into those details (right or left brained? Beats the bananas out of me), but I did like a few of the more thought-provoking questions that have pushed me to really consider certain aspects of these people that I never thought about before. They also give me an opportunity to answer the ‘why’ questions that are hidden underneath, and that wee three letter word is the meat and bone of everything. Yes, they may wear that, like this, hate that, but those are surface details. It’s they why they wear that, like this, hate that, no matter how trivial it may seem, that turns a caricature into a person.

But you won’t find much of any of this out until you work with them. That, at least, is how it worked for me. I learned about them as they traveled and fought and survived, as they thought at night when they couldn’t sleep, or were forced to make snappish decisions, or how they occupied themselves when they were bored. Pushed into corners, stranded all by themselves, crowded by other people or burdened by their expectations ─ each and every experience brings out the truth of a person, things that can’t come honestly while just trying to answer a question.

And here’s another thing (and it’s kind of a confession, too, I suppose). When I first began, I had characters that were simply there for a headcount (horrible, right?). They were kind of like NPCs (non-playable characters, in video game lingo), just there for the sake of it, but as we went on this journey they up and decided to prove to me that they were real people, too, with histories, hopes, fears, and purpose that helped drive the story. (Thock, Fwip, Bill, and Kai’Tor were all originally 2-dimentional characters at the start, can you see how they didn’t like that? Yeah. Bill and Kai’Tor were supposed to be dropped off at Udalak and never heard from again, and we all know how that worked out!)

So, through all this garble, I suppose what I’m trying to say is this: developing your characters beforehand may be a good starting point, but to learn who they really are and how they tick, you’ve got to work with them. Little by little they’ll turn into real people and not just ‘the hero’, the ‘sidekick’, the ‘villain’, and the ‘fillers’. They’ll become real to you, and therefore they’ll become real for your readers. So don’t be afraid to start writing even if you don’t know your cast all that well, you’ll get better acquainted as you go, and by the end they’ll seem like old friends.

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Don’t forget, there’a giveaway running on Goodreads for the 4th volume in TJT, The Memory Quest – the volume where the truth about the king and current events is revealed, to much horror and dismay. All villains begin somewhere, and sometimes they weren’t always villainous . . .