Author Skype with Tui Sutherland

We had a great visit today with Tui Sutherland, author of the Wings of Fire series, which are some of the Laie Young Writers' favorite books.

Tui gets to write stories about dragons all day. We wanted to know how she got such a great job! She told us she started out working for a publishing company, and eventually got to help edit the Warriors series. She wrote some of the Seekers books under the Erin Hunter name, and now she has her very own series, Wings of Fire. Book six is about to come out, and she gave us a sneak peek at the new cover. It's spectacular!

We asked Tui what it's like writing animal characters. She said she has a set of dragon models on her desk and she used them to help remind her of the sort of things dragons can do, like flick their tails or flap their wings. With the Seekers series she had to keep in mind that bears can't describe things by comparing them to things that humans have. For instance, a bear can't say something is "as big as a dinner plate." Even though her characters have animal bodies, she always writes them with very human emotions.

For others writers who want to write animal fantasy, Tui suggested spending time with whatever kind of animal they're writing about. Once when she was writing about dogs she got a job as a dog walker so that she'd get more experience with different kinds of dogs. We enjoyed meeting the two dogs at her house who joined her for the skype visit.

Tui said that the most stressful parts of being an author were deadlines and the thought of doing book signings and school visits. Deadlines we can understand, but we all had so much fun with her skype visit we hope she's now feeling great about her upcoming book signing tour.

We were excited to hear she's got another Wings of Fire series planned, and we tried to get all sorts of details out of her, but she was very careful not to give us any spoilers.

Thanks so much, Tui, for your visit! We can't wait for Wings of Fire Book 6!

How to Build Awesome Characters

In this week's lesson, presented by Chrysanne, we discussed how to pack your characters full of awesome.

• Is there something you're interested in, that you know a lot about? Chances are, other people will find it interesting too. Make your character interested in that same thing, and use their knowledge and interest in your story.
• Give your character an interesting, unusual, and best of all, painful backstory.
• Personality quirks are always fun.
• Readers love a character with awesome skills.
• Interesting supernatural powers can also lend awesomeness to a character.
• Characters need weaknesses and fears too. Use a little imagination and come up with something interesting. Is your character afraid of peacocks? Maybe they always fall asleep during movies.
• Possessing an awesome object or weapon also adds awesome to your character.
• Interesting characters deserve interesting names. We'll have a lesson on naming characters alter in the year.
• What's your character's favorite animal? Food? Sport? Activity? Choose something unusual, interesting, and awesome. Sure, you could go with dog, pizza, soccer, and playing video games, but how about sea scorpions, tom kha gai, ski jumping, and kite surfing? Which character would you rather spend a whole story with?
• Give your character a unique response to situations. What does your character do under stress? When angry? When sad? Don't be afraid to make it something totally unique.
• When building a character, keep in mind that most people have a gap between the way they perceive themselves and the way that others see them. This discrepancy between internal self and external behavior can be the source of all sorts of awesome.

Now that you've built an awesome character, make their awesomeness important to your plot! Use their traits, skills, knowledge, and interests to move the story.

Next week's lesson: Irony