AUTHOR SKYPE WITH THE AMAZING CHRISTINE HAYES!!!!(the takeaway!!! DUN! DUN! DUN!)

Todayness we were able to skype with the awesome face of Christine Hayes, author of Mothman's Curse, which, if you haven't, please read it.

YOU WILL READ THIS AWESOME BOOK!!!!

Any of the ways (Ways of the any?) here is the awesome (very summarized) answers that she gave to our questions! 

• On Writers Block: Take a walk, do writing prompts, or just sit down and force yourself to write. 
• On Fan Fiction: Fan Fiction is good practise.
• On Writing a Story Idea, Writing the Beginning, Getting Stuck in the Middle, then Getting Another Shiny Story Thing But Actually Finishing the First One: If you love it enough you will go back to it until it is done. Also, set goals, like, "I'll do two pages of this story today". 

We humbly thank with humbleness with all humbility in the most humbleded way possible Christine Hayes for taking the time to talk to our small group of crazy writing people! 

Many stuff,

Chrys!!! 

Writer's Club Fall 2016

Aloha to all the peoples creepily reading over my shoulder (I'm looking at you, GRAPE!) and you weirdos on the internet. Don't be on the internet all day though. Get a life. Any of the ways, tis is I, Chrys! Who is Chrys, you may ask? Well, I did just say it was me, so that's obvious. The description of me right now is that I became one of the Bloggers for our amazing authors' club just today and I have the maturity of a chipmunk high on magic mushrooms tied to a pair of rollarskates with a cell phone.
Okay, now Imma do a thing of stuff we're doing this Writer's Club sessiony thingy:

• Character Development--How Characters change and whatever. 
• Other Kinds of Writing-- Including, but not limited to:
• Screenplay
• Graphic Novel
• Picture Books
• Stage Plays (basically the same thing as a screenplay, but who cares?)

And, of course our...

• Author Skypes--We call an author while they're supposed to be writing and stuff. Perhaps that's why character's deaths are worse... Hm... Nah, we like them worse! The shnastier and more gruesome, the BETTER!!! 

Anyways, that's it for now. Keep Writing and all that inspirational mojo.

WE IZ OUTNESS!
MUCH PEACE, YE ALLS!!!

Author Skype with MarcyKate Connolly

We had a really fun author skype visit with MarcyKate Connolly, author of the middle-grade fantasy books, Monstrous and Ravenous.

 She gave us the following writing tips:

• If you want to publish, you should get a literary agent.
• It takes time and lots of trial and error before you can publish a book.
• Plotting and pacing are very important, and it takes trial and error and listening to critique partners to get it right.
• Writing is rewriting. Many people don't like to revise and rewrite, but that's what most of writing is.
• When giving critiques, it helps if you say something good first, then make a suggestion, then say something good again. This is called the sandwich method.
• To help with pacing, you can use a plotting tool like Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet
• There are lots of places to find critique partners online, like AgentQueryConnect or AbsoluteWrite.

Thank you so much, MarcyKate, for taking time to talk to us!

Staying Focused

When talking about focus, there tends to be a spectrum between scattered and obsessed. When you are scattered, you have a bazillion stories that you are working on simultaneously in your head. When you are obsessed, you have one story. One idea. For months. Maybe years.

Obviously this doesn't cover all cases, but in general it is a good system of classification.

So the trick is to break out of what you are and do something new to freshen things up. So if you are scattered, pick one idea, nail it down, and make a goal to see it finished. If you are obsessed, put down what you're working on, and try something new.

Writing Exercise: Write down ten ideas. If you are closer to the scattered, write down ideas you've had. If you are closer to obsessed, write down new ideas. If you are closer to scattered, pick one of those ideas, and make a goal to finish it. If you are obsessed, try writing one of the new ideas.

In the end, once you've mastered your brain and all, you'll probably want a type of mindset called relaxed focus, or "scattersessed" in which you have one main idea and a bunch of others floating around in the semidistance. Not close enough to interfere, but close enough to get the attention that they deserve.

Keep writing!

HORROR

Fear is universal. Fear is one of a human's base instincts. Fear is felt by everything. Fear is something that all can share and enjoy. Readers love feeling this most base of emotions.
When you are writing fear, you also have to keep in mind the reactions of the characters. The characters have to be feeling the same fear that the audience is feeling.

Some reactions that are common and help your reader understand that they should be afraid are:

• Screaming
• Worrying
• Cowering in the corner
• Shuddering
• Avoiding the danger

Remember all of this, but beware. Writing can hurt you. Often your brain can't tell the difference between what is happening to your characters and what is happening to you. Writing can hurt you as an author, and it cal also hurt the reader. So be warned, don't make it too gruesome or scary.

Keep writing!

Prologue

Before the beginning, there was a prologue. A prologue is a written section of the story that gives background information on the world, the characters, and/or add some extra exposition.

The word "Prologue" above a section of writing tells the audience that this is extra exposition. A prologue is NOT chapter one, and is not a part of the linear story. With or without the prologue, the story should make linear sense.

A prologue can give you an extra hand in getting the audience to know the world and characters. If the book is a sequel, you can use the prologue to tie off loose ends from previous books.

Prologues can be a legend or folk tale from the world. They could also be what happened seven years ago, or shorter, or longer, or whatever. A prologue is a part of the story that isn't part of the main storyline, so with that in mind, you can do anything, except...

PROLOGUE PERILS

Your prologue must be consistent with the rest of the story! No magical prologue and then modern rest of the story. And if you're doing something exciting in the prologue, you'd better keep the tension at the same level in Chapter 1. A prologue is not where the main story starts. It may be the initiation of the story, but it is not where the story itself starts. I cannot stress this point too much, for it is one of the greater pitfalls.

Another thing, don't drop characters from the prologue. If you get the audience to like the character, keep the character, cause if you don't, the audience gets mad. Always tie in the prologue to the main storyline, otherwise YOUR PROLOGUE MAY BE UNNECESSARY.

Thank you to all that came this week, and I'd like to see those who couldn't come on Tuesday come next week. Especially our secretary, because I need her to take notes on the lesson so I can write these blog posts.

Keep Writing!
~Colin

In the Beginning...

Being the beginning of the school year and the beginning of this year's Writer's Club, we started with the lesson about beginnings.

In the beginning of a story, you can add a prologue to give background with the world or some of the characters.

The beginning can also have a hook, to draw the reader in. The hook must have a problem, raise a question, have something unusual, and/or make a promise.

Something to be sure of, it is best to include the character, setting, and conflict in the first page.

The beginning should be simple, and make enough sense for the reader to continue reading smoothly. You need to introduce everything that you need for the story in the first chapter. And you need to start when things start changing. You need to start when the story starts.

Important Information: There will be no Writer's Club next week!

The Year Plan

Welcome to the beginning another year of Laie Young Writer's Club! This year we will have leadership positions to keep order and organize the things that need to be done.

- President: The fearless leader, calls meetings to order
Current President: Micah Curtis

-Secretary: Takes attendance at meetings and writes stuff down
Current Secretary: Annie Aldrich

-Communications Officer: Sends reminder e-mails and writes on the blog
Current CO: Colin Carlson

-Mascot: Symbol of the glorious Writer's Club
Current Mascot: Awesomesauce the Unicorn

-Anthology Editor: Works with the mentor to edit the Laie Young Writer's Club anthology
Current Anthology Editor: Chrysanne Houghton

For all those mentioned above, welcome to office! If you have arguments as to who should really be in office, mention it in the comments below, we will listen to your opinion.

This last writer's club, we talked about the plan for the year. We currently have 33 lessons planned. If there are any that you wish to have yet are not mentioned here, please post it in the comments.

-Humor
-Betrayal
-Death
-Comedy
-Tragedy
-Jedi Council/Evil Doer Sydrome
-Fiction
-Character Development
-Endings
-Middles
-Beginnings
-Animals
-Process
-Monsters
-Invented Creatures
-Villains
-Horror
-Writer's Block
-Side Kicks
-Minor Characters
-Character Goals
-Annoying Characters
-Staying Focused
-Disabilities (Magical and Non-Magical)
-Genius Characters
-World Building
-Character Names
-Technology
-Puns
-Irony
-Weapons
-Post Apocalyptic

These lessons will not necessarily be in this order. But these are the lessons we will be doing this year. There is some space left, so if you want to learn something about writing that isn't on here, then post it in the comments below.

Keep Writing!
~Colin

Make it through the MIDDLE

What's the hardest part of a book to write? Most of our club members agree, it's the middle! The beginning is the fresh and exciting part of a new story, the end is a terrific climax, but then what do you do about the morass in the middle?

First of all, you've got to keep in mind what the middle of a story is for. Here's what we came up with in our meeting:

• Rising action
• Getting to know the characters
• Letting conflicts brew
• More obstacles!
• Preparing for the CLIMAX
• Discovering backstory

So how do you keep the reader's interest through the middle of the story? Here are a few tips:

Pinch and Turn

Move your plot along with pinches and turns. A pinch is something that makes things harder for your characters. A turn is an unexpected change in the story, something that alters the character's plans. Don't let your characters have an easy ride through the middle, or your reader might feel like its time to put down the book and go and make themselves a ham sandwich.

Vary the Tension

You've seen that plot diagram that shows the rising action climb in a nice steady, straight line toward the climax? Well, forget it. That's BORING. While you want there to be an overall climb in tension toward the climax, you've got to have some ups and downs. Let your characters enjoy small victories, or get a moment or two to relax. But then drive the tension upward again with a pinch or a turn. Sorry, characters, nothing personal, we've got a job to do!

Try/Fail Cycles

As you move toward your climax, keep in mind that you don't want your character's final confrontation to be his or her first try! Whatever awesome thing your character pulls off at the climax, it should be something that your character attempted in the past and FAILED. For a character's success to be truly satisfying to the reader, that character should have tried at least twice before and failed in both attempts.

Pitfalls in the Middle

Here are just a couple of things to avoid in the middle of your story:

Useless Scenes

Okay, seriously, if a scene doesn't do anything, then leave it out! Sure, you can write it if you feel like it, but either cut it out of your second draft, or make it move the plot. Also beware of scenes that are exclusively for character development or setting description. You can always, always find a way to make those scenes contain events that are vital to the story, and unless you do, your reader is going to go for that ham sandwich and may never pick up your book again.

Inactive Characters

Make sure you give your characters something important to do during the middle of your story. Don't let them take a vacation just because the wonderful climax you planned for them is still a hundred pages away. At every point those characters should have plans and should be doing everything they can to carry out those plans, and you as the author can be pinching and turning things upside-down to upset those plans as much as possible.

Marvelous Middles

So enjoy writing the middle of your story. Some of the most wonderful moments can take place in the middle. It's a time to totally immerse yourself in the world and the characters of your creation.

Keep writing!

Horror Happens

The world is full of nasty, scary, horrible things that can kill you, or worse. So we've all been wired with some powerful programming to keep us out of danger. It's called FEAR, and it's one of the most basic, powerful emotions we have. Not just humans, but just about everything that can move knows what fear is.

As a writer, you can use this to your advantage.

Readers enjoy a good scare. If you want to create a horror story, start by thinking about what people are naturally afraid of. We came up with a long list that included things like darkness, mean dogs, unexpected noises, monsters under the bed, and Elmo.

When you write a horror story, you create a cycle of ANTICIPATION and DELIVERY. Let the reader know something bad is coming. Churn up some gut-twisting anxiety. Stretch it out, make it worse and worse, and then, bam! The bad thing happens, in all of its horror. And it had better be even worse than expected or your reader isn't going to experience the same anticipation next time. Once one horrible thing happens, you can continue to build up for the next horrible thing, all the way until you get to the climax of your story. Throughout this cycle, remember the importance of escalation. You don't want the scariest thing to happen at the start of the story. You want to save the worst for last.

One of the worst tortures for readers is seeing a character that they care about make a bad decision that puts them in danger. This works not only for horror stories, but for any kind of story. Nothing makes a reader scream, "NO!!!" like a character who does something stupid that you know just can't turn out well. Be sure your characters make a few poor choices, and then slam them with the full consequences.

Just a final word on endings. It's a convention of the horror genre to have an ending in which the woodsman shows up to rescue Red and Granny, or the monster just falls off the Empire State Building and dies, or some other resolution that really had nothing to do with the actions of the main character. In a way, that's fine, since the point of horror is that something really bad is happening and we're powerless to stop it, so if we're powerless to stop it then something has to swoop in and save us. On the other hand, this kind of ending can be a little unsatisfactory. Consider your other options, like having your characters come up with some clever way to fight the horror that is stalking them, or, on the other hand, you could let the horror win.

Happy Halloween and keep writing!

Creative Story Lines

You don't want to write the same old same old story? Let's get creative with story lines.

First, here's a basic story line. This is about as basic as it gets:

Character Wants Something

Character Gets What She Wants

The End

Okay, that was boring. We can't let the character just have whatever she wants! We need some obstacles.

Character Wants Something BUT there is an OBSTACLE

Character Makes a Plan

Character Overcomes Obstacle

And Gets What She Wants

Still too easy. But we've got options. Maybe when our character tries to overcome the obstacle, she makes things worse! Now her goal is even farther away. Or perhaps while she's making her plan, other obstacles show up that she has to tackle first. Overcoming each obstacle now becomes its own short-term objective.

Are you starting to see the possibilities?

Now let's look at what can happen as our character meets each obstacle.

She can either overcome the obstacle, fail to overcome the obstacle, or even make things worse! Overcoming one obstacle can cause other obstacles to come up.

Through the story, as she meets each obstacle, your character will have some triumphs and some setbacks, but at some point she will come to a major crisis point. Here's the biggest obstacle of them all, and if she can get past it, her heart's desire will at last be in reach.

Now you have to decide if you want your character to succeed and get everything she wanted, to fail and lose it all, or some interesting combination of the two. She might only get some of what she wants. She might get everything she wanted and realize she didn't really want it. She might totally fail but realize she actually wanted something else instead. What are some other possibilities? Think about it. That's where the creative plotting comes in.

To create even more possibilities for your plot, give your character more than one objective, and have the various obstacles work together in interesting ways. Include other characters and their objectives, and interweave them all. Have the characters help each other, or get in each others' way, or have to fight each other to get what they want, or even choose to sacrifice what they want so someone else can reach their goal. Your character can even change objectives throughout the story. It works best if the goals start small, then get bigger as the story progresses.

The combinations are endless!

As a writing exercise, we created potential story line charts. Here's how. Take a sheet of paper and write the following things in a column down the middle of the page, leaving plenty of space between each:

Your character's name and what the character wants

How the character gets what the character wants

Final Outcome

Now, start drawing branches. Under what the character wants, you can list several possible obstacles. Choose a few, and note what your character will do to overcome them. For each obstacle, make more branches. A success, a fail, and one or two alternatives, perhaps even a change in objective.

After your character finds a way past all those obstacles, there comes the final obstacle. What happens now? Make some branches and explore the possibilities. Do the same with your final outcome. Is your character happy now? Or sad? Or has nothing really changed?

Once you have several possibilities mapped out, go back and pick the best ones. The key to being creative is to spend some time thinking about what you're doing. Don't go with the first idea that pops into your head, but work with it a while. Ask yourself what might happen if things went a little differently. Give yourself options to choose from.

In conclusion, whether you use the most basic plot on the planet, or you come up with some fantastically clever and convoluted story line, it won't matter a bit if your reader doesn't care about your characters. If the reader cares, you can walk your characters through the most straightforward plot and get away with it. But if you can make your plot interesting, creative, and challenging, all the better!

Keep writing!

Editing for Teen Writers

At the Laie Young Writer's club, we mostly emphasize just writing. Write stuff. Lots of stuff. Then come and read it to us. We love it all!

But someday you're going to want to be a professional writer. And that means you're going to have to deal with...

EDITING.

Some writers are really good at editing, and even like to do it. Others hate it. Whether you love it or hate it, know this. You can not edit your own work and get it up to the quality you need for publication. Sorry. That's the facts. You're going to need someone else to help you.

On the other hand, you are able to take your own raw material and make it much better. In fact, you ought to do some of your own editing before you get a professional involved.

Let's talk about four different kinds of editors

1. Acquisitions Editors - An acquisitions editor works at a magazine or publishing company. Their job is to read stuff and decide if it is even worth editing. Not only are they looking for awesome writing, they want awesome writing they can sell.

2. Content Editors - These people make sure the setting, the characters, and the plot are the best they can be. They don't worry about the spelling errors, they just make sure the story rocks.

3. Copy Editors - The copy editor is the person who checks to see that the main character's best friend who has brown hair in scene one doesn't suddenly have blond hair in chapter seven. They may even check your historical or geographical facts and let you know if you've made a mistake. Oops!

4. Line Editors - Now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty and check every word, every sentence, every punctuation mark to make sure this manuscript is ready to print and share with the world. Line editors correct grammar and spelling, and point out those awkward passages you really ought to reword.

Right now, you may not want to think about editing your stories at all. Write them, write a lot of them, share them with your friends, then put them away someplace. But someday, you'll want to put on your editor hat, and follow these four steps. First, ask yourself if this story you wrote is worth working on. Will other people enjoy it? Can you sell it? If the answer is yes, then see if there's anything you can do to make the story better. Once you've done that, you'd better make sure everything is consistent. Last of all, check your work for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Then you'll be ready to send it out and start the whole process all over again!

One word about traditional vs. self publishing. In traditional publishing, you're going to send your work to an acquisitions editor who will decide if it is worthy or not. In self-publishing, YOU are the only acquisitions editor you get. You decide if your work is worth hiring someone to do content, copy, and line editing.

Keep writing!

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!

Comedy

This week's lesson, by Colin Carlson, got serious about comedy.

The most basic kind of humor is mockery. Poke fun at things. It's a great way to relieve tension and bring a smile to your reader's face, even if the overall tone of your story is serious.

There are plenty of different varieties of humor that you can use in your stories. Here are a few:

• Irony (see previous lesson)
• Grim Comedy - making light of subjects that are usually somber and serious, like death.
• Parody - making fun of other fictional works. Parody is so great, we should probably do a whole lesson on it later in the year.
• Slapstick - pain is funny. No, seriously, it really is.
• Puns - poke fun at the language, create a juxtaposition of meaning. For good puns, timing is everything. You want the reader to realize it's a pun a split second after it hits. For bad puns, timing doesn't matter. There's no good time for a bad pun.

Now on to a more serious subject. What if the jokes in your book just aren't funny. That's really serious. Humor is an important tool to bring your audience into your story. Most people like it. How do you repair a broken funny bone?

First of all, in general, if your characters are laughing at the jokes, your reader is not.

Some stories are just plain silly and funny. "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" tends to fall into this category. Other stories are epic but also have funny parts. We all agreed that "Avatar the Last Airbender" fell into this category. As a whole, we prefer epic stories with lots of funny parts.

If your main character is always joking and never takes things seriously, that makes it very hard for the reader to take the story seriously. So what do you do? Assign the job of funny man to a side character, commonly known as the comic relief.

Also remember that humor is a cultural thing. Different groups of people find different things funny. You have to target your audience with the right kind of humor.

Make your readers laugh. Make them cry. But you don't want to make them cry when you were trying to get them to laugh.

Keep writing!

Betrayal

Want a great way to raise tension in your story? Add a dash of betrayal. Or maybe a whole scoop. Far more damaging than what an outside enemy can do, nothing turns everything upside-down like having a character we trust stick a knife in someone's back.

Thanks to Laie Young Writers' club member Micah for giving us some hints on betrayal:

1. It's got to be quick and unexpected. If betrayal is suspected, the other characters will do something about it. Unless they're stupid, or being manipulated by the author, or both.
2. It has to be reasonable. You can't have just anybody randomly betray the other characters in order to make the story more interesting. If the reader's favorite character turns out to be a traitor and it is handled badly by you the author, all you're going to do is make the reader mad. On the other hand, if you do it right, you can make the reader love that character even more.
3. How do you do it right? Step one is motivation. The traitor has to have a reason to believe that betraying their allies will actually produce some kind of benefit. 
4. Step two is reaction. The other characters should be devastated by the betrayal. If they're not devastated, it wasn't really a betrayal, was it?

So try out some treason. As Uncle Iroh says, "It's more fun!"

Irony

What's irony all about? Most simply put, irony happens when there's a gap between what's stated on the surface and what's meant deep down at the heart of things. It's a powerful force in storytelling, so know it and use it well.

In our lesson we talked about four major kinds of irony, with examples. There are other types of irony, but these are the ones we see most often:

• Verbal Irony - this is where you say the opposite of what you mean. Suppose your friend drops a hammer on your foot and through your tears and clenched teeth you say, "Oh, no, that didn't hurt at all." That's verbal irony.
• Dramatic Irony - this kind of irony happens when there's an audience who knows more than the characters do. For instance, if a character is making what he thinks is a good decision, but the audience can see it's a really stupid move, that's dramatic irony.
• Situational Irony - in this kind of irony, someone does something in order to get a certain result, but it turns out to be totally counter-productive. Sort of like pumping up a slightly under-inflated car tire, only to make the stem valve blow out, and thus the tire becomes completely flat. Yeah, it's happened to me.
• Cosmic Irony - in this kind of irony, the universe itself seems to be out to thwart your intentions. For example, we could try to save the world by putting a stop to global warming, only to unwittingly plunge the planet into an ice age.

Next week's lesson: Betrayal 

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

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a great summer and that you're ready for a fantastic writing year! First off, here are the rules for the La'ie Young Writers Club:

1. You may have 10 minutes to read your writing, or 5 minutes to share either a book you've read or something you are working on. Readers who did not read the week before get priority, then readers who had a turn the week before, then people with something to share.
2. Do not interrupt someone who is reading or sharing.
3. After someone reads or shares, make positive comments only, unless the reader asks for feedback. Asking the reader a question is okay.
4. Take turns to make comments or ask questions.
5. For author skypes we are on best behavior. These wonderful, busy people have taken time out of their schedule to visit with us, and we need to treat them with the greatest respect. Author skype visits will begin at 3:30 to allow us to gather and think of good questions.

Here are the results of our lesson brainstorm session:

Building interesting characters
Irony
Poetry
Humor
Editing
Drama
Creative storylines
Middles
Food
Betrayal
Natural Disasters
Killing the POV character
Tragedy
Playwriting
Mystery
Adventure
Fantasy
Foreshadowing
Outlining
Weapons
Science Fiction
Romance
Magic
Illusion
When bad guys turn good
Death & Resurrection
Competition between characters
Dialog
Naming
Settings

NEXT WEEK: Building interesting characters. Come prepared to talk about what you think makes a character interesting.

How to Describe Characters

In the old days, it wasn't unusual for an author to spend a whole page describing a character. People like Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens would create pictures of characters so sharp you could count the hairs on their toes. In fact, I'm sure if Charles Dickens knew about blood types, he would have told us what type of blood David Copperfield had.

Nowadays, people like to get to know a character without the author stopping the flow of the entire story for a lengthy description. To capture a character in a few sentences, put a clear and vibrant image in the reader's mind, a writer has to relate what distinguishes that character from everyone else, what their core personality trait is, and where that character fits in the cosmos.

J. K. Rowling excels at characterization. Here's all the descriptive prose we get when Harry meets Draco Malfoy:

...a boy with a pale, pointed face... (distinguishing physical traits)
He had a bored, drawling voice. (personality)
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley. (place in Harry's world)

Put that together with Draco's dialog, which clearly shows his snobby personality, and he's perfectly captured in only a few words.

Later on, we meet Hermione:

She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.
She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.
She said all this very fast.
"Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it," said Ron.

And here's the Sorting Hat:

On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat. 
This hat was patched and frayed and extremely dirty.
Aunt Petunia wouldn't have let it in the house.

What I like best about these descriptions is that besides listing a few physical traits and giving clues about the character's personality, each character is assigned a place in the universe. For Harry, Draco is another Dudley. Hermione is that girl you hope you don't get stuck with as a lab partner. The Sorting Hat is something Aunt Petunia wouldn't have let in the house (which since we're not on Aunt Petunia's side makes us love it at once).

NOW YOU TRY:

Here's your writing exercise. You, too, can create a whole fictional character in only a few sentences.

1. Make a list of physical features. Pick two or three that are the most significant for that character.

2. What is this character's core personality? Can you show them doing something that demonstrates this trait?

3. How does this person fit into the cosmos? What is this character's place in the world? What category does this character belong to? Who or what would the reader be reminded of if they met this character?

Now put it all together. Write a short paragraph, with dialog if you like, introducing this character that includes the key physical features, some action that demonstrates the character's core personality, and a sentence that ties this new character to something in either the reader's or the point-of-view character's past experience, giving the character a place in the cosmos.

Post your writing exercise in the comments, if you dare.

Dialog 2: Humor

For our lesson this week, we started out by thinking of some characters who have really funny dialog. Make a list of your five favorites. Then think about what makes their dialog funny. Here's what we came up with:

• absurdity
• personality quirks
• banter between characters
• expressing an unusual worldview
• juxtapositions
• awkwardness
• making unexpected connections
• bringing things back up - running gags
• wit
• cleverness
• surprise

As with any humor, there is no way to tell beforehand what dialog the reader will find funny, and what dialog the reader won't. You have to experiment. Write something funny, give it to ten people, and see if they laugh. If most of them do, keep it. If not, try again.

One thing to remember, if the characters are laughing, the reader usually doesn't.

Writing humorous dialog is an attitude. Let your characters unleash their inner funny.

Keep writing!