A Year's Worth of Blessings

Happy New Year everyone, and Best Wishes for a wonderful 2011. Check back in next week for more writing tips, and other Life's Little Adjustments. Be safe!

Characters Make Your Story

Many writers create character studies before they start their story. However, this can be done at any time that you're ready. After you have the right name for your character, think about that person and write down all of the following:

1.  Physical Description
2.  Mannerisms
3.  Background
4.  Outer and Inner Motivations
5.  Can you find a picture in a catalog or magazine that resembles your character?
6.  Date of Birth
7.  Education
8.  Traits, make them unique to this person you're creating.
9.  Certain phrases this person uses; the reader will automatically know who's speaking.
10. Likes and Dislikes
11. Passions, secret or otherwise
12. Flaws (to be overcome)
13. Pet Peeve
14. Habit that he/she is trying to break.
15. Characters must be true to their own past and their beliefs.

This is enough to work on for today. We'll come back to character creation next time.

More Tips on How to Create Suspense

I hope you're enjoying the writing tips. Here are the last five for creating suspense:

16.  Description should add to the story.
17.  Start the beginning with ACTION. The backstory can be told throughout.
18.  Most importantly, readers must care about the people in your stories, or none of the
       above will make a difference.
19.  A character has a vulnerability that will make resolution difficult.
20.  Don't generalize... BE SPECIFIC!

Still More Ways to Create Suspense

Here they are...

11. Build suspense step by step. As one question is answered, pose another.
12. "A moment of tension requires an economy of words."  LaVyrle Spencer.
13. Replace passive verbs with active ones.
14. Never waste the reader's time by actions or dialogue that do not push the story forward.
15. Action scenes require shorter sentences.

In a few days, I'll post the final five ways to create suspense. Stay tuned...

Promises Kept

I was reading some of my old blogs, and I promised to talk about Character Studies. I'll do that when we're done creating suspense, I promise.