Of Thoughts and Characters by Konnie Enos

When I last wrote a post, I was in Boston visiting my second born child. Since then, I’ve returned home, celebrated the birthday of my third born, and spent a considerable amount of time updating our checkbook registers, not to mention planning this month’s budget.

Of course, there is also all the sleeping I’ve been doing. First because of jetlag. Or maybe that was because I spent over 24 hours awake in my effort to get home. Then I have apparently gotten a slight cold. The only annoying part is feeling like I need to throw up.

So, with everything going on, I have not thought about the fact I had to post today, for days. In fact, though I was remembering it was my turn this week, I somehow missed that it was already Wednesday until my middle of the night trip to the bathroom. Thankfully, I have an alarm already set so that I’ll have time to deal with it. I crawled back in bed assured my alarm would wake me up in time.

What I hadn’t planned on was I’d turn my alarm off and go back to sleep. I think the only thing that woke me up was realizing Xavier had just jumped off my bed and Jerry wasn’t in it. Of course, then I had to set up my laptop, open Word, then stare at a blank page for a minute.

Then the alarm saying it was time to feed the pets went off. Thankfully, all I had to do was turn that one off because Jerry was already dealing with it. But knowing I had only about a quarter of my post written and now less than an hour to do it in didn’t help.

Neither did Jerry trying to talk to me. I was right in the middle of a thought, and he threw me right out of it. Worse still, I had no interest in obsessing over what he was fixating on now.

I told him I was busy and to leave me alone, which he didn’t do, and I had to repeat that at least three times. I finally yelled at him again then focused on my screen hoping re-reading the last paragraph would get me back in the flow of my thoughts again. Jerry accused me of reading again.

“No! I’m writing! I told you I was busy. Leave me alone.”

He finally left me alone.

Then I was again stuck trying to stimulate ideas again, which is something I’ve been spending a great deal of time thinking about recently.

One thing I know about good stories is they always have some obstacles that the main characters must overcome somehow. You have to find the right roadblocks to throw up for them so that your story is interesting and believable.

But there is also the issue of not using overworked scenarios, trite storylines, or stereotyped characters. At one point, I also noticed that far too many of my characters had the same features. Short leading ladies is one I use far too often.

I do understand it. If you are writing from what you know, then using characters you can emphasize with makes sense. Knowing this, I’ve tried hard to vary my leading ladies, though I’m afraid they are all still short.

But another thing I’ve noticed is the tendency to stick to similar story lines. All of them seem to have the exact same, or similar elements in them. Some of those being the ages, physical characteristics and even the talents or activities of the main characters. But it could also be the types of obstacles they face. Or even the names you choose.

Now, obviously, you’re going to stick to the elements of the genre you’re writing so things like the obstacles they face are probably going to be similar. However, the characteristics of your characters don’t all have to be from a template.

You’re leading ladies don’t all have to be petite any more than your leading men must be tall dark and handsome. Personality traits and talents can also be quite varied.

Though the one I find the hardest is naming all my characters. If you are writing sci-fi or fantasy you can make up names. For anything else you have to find names that fit the era and the story.

From experience, I know the first names you’re going to pull out of the hat are ones with which you are most familiar. Anything else and you need to do some research just to name them.

So, I find myself wondering how other writers overcome the issues of their characters, in their different stories, all feeling like they’re from a template.

How do you vary your characters?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Writing Male Characters by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Recently, while browsing the internet, I came upon a blog post about bad writing tips for women writing male characters. Of course, I was interested because I’m Konnie’s go-to person when she’s having trouble with her male characters. And I use male POVs a lot. I wanted to make sure I was doing it right, because, you know, I am a woman.

For starters, the post is at howtodothewritething.com and it is titled, “If You’re a Woman Writing a Male Character Avoid these Bad Writing Tips.”

From the title, I was afraid that I might be using bad writing tips.

I am not.

Actually, I’ve never even heard these bad writing tips the author mentions.

So far so good.

I particularly like what he said about emotionless robots. But then I am a fan of Data. Heck, I am a fan of Spock! Then there is also Seven-of-Nine, too.

However, when I read that, for some strange reason I started thinking about a female character in a certain sci-fi series. Said character is emotionless, or rather appears to be. She is a well-written and pivotal character for the series. And I promise, she isn’t totally emotionless, she just hides her feelings really well.

And if you want to read this story, I am afraid it isn’t published yet; I just know the author oh probably better than anybody else, certainly longer.

The author is Konnie. Enough said.

There is some exceptional advice in the aforementioned post, so it should really be a must-read for everyone.

And no, Konnie, it is not going to help you with the issues you usually have with male characters, but I am still right here!

However, the best tip I read in this post was about being true to your character. A tip that is helpful for any character you are writing.

I have no idea how many times either Konnie or I have said to the other, “He/She wouldn’t do that!” while talking about a character the other one has written.

I do it most often when it's Konnie’s male characters, and she’s said it a few times over my less strong female characters. I’ve said it more than Konnie has.

She has in fact only helped me with a couple of female characters I described as timid and or fearful. Clearly, I don’t know how that would work. Without Konnie, I wouldn’t have been able to write them.

Konnie has trouble with her male characters constantly.

“Uh, no, a guy would not say that.” “Uh, no, a guy would not react that way.” Yeah, I say those two a lot.

With Konnie, she’d be saying, “(insert character name) would not react that way! She’s shy/timid/fearful, you need to fix this.”

As you can see, her comments are specific to a character whereas mine are more gender related. I’m not saying I haven’t made character-specific comments, but more often than not Konnie’s issues with male characters are more gender related than character-related.

My few issues with my female characters have always been character-related rather than gender.

Sometimes I actually wonder why I get my male characters so right.

Is it because growing up, most of my friends were guys? In those younger years, I remember one girl who was for a short time my best friend, but she had like five or six big brothers and no sisters. We got along great until my family moved, again.

And the one person who was my best friend for the longest time was my cousin, Jon.

It only changed when I hit puberty, and I no longer liked “cops and robbers” and other rough-and-tumble games.

And it isn’t like I haven’t doubted if I have my characters right. I have doubted. One time an older male friend of mine didn’t like a scene I’d written where three buddies were discussing each other’s choice of a spouse. The older gentleman said no decent man would disparage their friends’ women in that manner.

The only thing is they were not really disparaging their friends’ choices, they were merely saying they wouldn’t have picked that person.

I got so worried I hadn’t written the scene in a believable manner I finally broke down and read the scene to my husband to see if he thought they were acting out of character. I figured he was a better choice because he was in the age group of the characters during the time of the story.

Tom informed me it was totally accurate. Actually, what he was, “Guys do talk like that.”

How do you handle writing characters of the opposite gender? Do you need help? Or can you usually manage?

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Computers and Heat by Konnie Enos

There has also been so much going on this week that I haven’t even thought about opening Word to do any sort of writing until today.

I believe that I mentioned my old computer had died and I ended up having to share a computer with my son and husband. At first, this wasn’t a big deal because they rarely use it, and I was only using it when necessary. Basically, just doing finances and dealing with our blog posts.

However, I eventually got back in the groove of working on my writing. Specifically editing. I started by reading though and working on the edits to my fantasy. This did take a week or so with starts and stops but this isn’t that long of a novel.

Then I started editing my sci-fi. This is five books long. I’ve been working on them long enough that the first one didn’t need much editing. The second one needed a little more but was nearly perfect too. When I got to the third one, I had to make some needed changes as well. Changes which I had to continue working on as I worked on the fourth and fifth one so that the story flowed well through all the books.  

Now the fourth book needed some work on getting to the right finish for it. I’d already written it, but it wasn’t in the fourth book. Mostly because I’d ended it in the wrong place and put it in the fifth book instead. I fixed that.

Now, although I had most of the story for the fifth book, it was missing needed elements and scenes. Not to mention I’d deleted about two chapters from it to finish the fourth book. So now I was doing both writing and editing. Not to mention still going back to book four and sometimes book three to correct the flow of the story. And I did okay on getting all that work done but I only made it to the exciting last day of the story before I hit some roadblocks. I have the ending of the whole series but not the ending for the storyline in the fifth book, so it still needs work because I don’t know the best way to end that storyline yet.

Anyway, after hitting that snag, I realized I’d been neglecting important things like keeping up with balancing our checkbook register. So, I was still on the computer a lot.

This is where the men in our household started to get frustrated with my using the computer all the time. My son wanted to play his VR games and my husband just found more reasons to use a computer rather than his phone.

My son was relatively easy to deal with since he’s a night owl and usually wanted it when I was going to bed anyway. My husband, however, was getting on my nerves. He’d say he needed the computer as soon as possible so I’d stop working on whatever I was doing, often trying to fix the last book in my sci-fi series, and he wouldn’t even touch the computer for hours. Several times he didn’t get on it at all that day.

I decided it was time to figure out replacing my computer, so I didn’t have to share with him. The issue was, I didn’t have four hundred dollars for one. My son helped me find one that was small, light, refurbished and under two hundred dollars. I’m still getting used to the size of the keyboard. It also lacks a ten-key pad so I will probably have to get one to plug in since I use the ten-key for so much. (Our finances being a big one.)

Anyway, while I was waiting for my computer to arrive, my daughter contacted me, wanting me to come see her. Money being what it is, and our far too recent issues with large unexpected, but necessary expenses, we didn’t have anywhere near enough money to cover round trip airfare for me to go to the other side of the continent and back. It took a few days for us to figure out a flight for me. In the meantime, my new computer arrived so I could take my own with me instead of taking the shared one.

Now I’m at my daughter’s place trying to type on a keyboard that is clearly smaller than what I’m used to and some of the keys aren’t in the same position as I’m familiar with. Delete and backspace being the two most obvious ones that I must hunt for when needed.

The temperatures here are also higher than I anticipated. I should have packed my shorts and worn my sandals. Such is life.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Blank Pages and Story Prompts by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

You can’t fix a blank page. But what do you do when you are faced with one? I don’t know about other authors; I just know me, and I hate facing the dreaded blank page when I have no idea swimming in my head.

The blank page isn’t a problem when the ideas are flowing, I fill that page and then some lickety-split. When the ideas are not flowing, well that blank page can be daunting.

And why am I stuck on this?

Because I am faced with the dreaded blank page and no ideas this morning, why else?

Of course, there are ways to combat this. The easiest of which is free writing. The exercise where you set a timer for five minutes and then write down everything that comes into your head during that time.

The first time I did this exercise, in a high school creative writing class, I wrote that I didn’t have anything to write for the first couple of minutes, and then the words started flowing.

Not the greatest stuff, but as you can’t fix a blank page, at least I had something to work with, which is way better than staring at a blank page!

Another way to combat this problem is using story prompts, which can easily be found online. I find them all the time on Pinterest. Some of these are lists of three things to include in your story while others are single ideas, phrases, and even sentences to start off your story.

This is actually how I started the sci-fi I’m working on. A writing group I was in at the time had a prompt challenge, where the leader put up a group of prompts and we had a week to start one or more stories from those prompts. We shared what we produced at the next meeting.

I can’t remember how many prompts I used, but I remember the most important one. It’s morphed since then, I added some detail, but it became the opening line of my sci-fi until I realized that the scene in my hero’s POV, which I wrote after that scene, actually happened before the first scene I wrote, so I switched them around.

That prompt was still the start of what is looking to be a nice sci-fi series. I am working on book two while still occasionally tweaking book one, and I do have ideas percolating for book three. At this point, I have title ideas for four books, but I have a feeling I might need five books to finish the story. Mostly because I have two male heroes, and both their stories need telling.

Admittedly they are twin brothers, and the first book opens with the younger twin searching for his missing twin, which is really becoming quite a good read, if I do say so myself. It is the third book where the older twin becomes the main hero. I’m obviously not there yet.

But as the fourth book is supposed to be about the downfall of the villain they are fighting in the first three books, I’m now thinking I might have to have a fifth book to show the happily ever after of the heroes. Might. As I haven’t written that part of the story yet, I really don’t know.

I do know I need at least four books.

I’m working on it.

With Nano coming up, I might just start the third book then.

Wish me luck!

Then again, I started book one from that prompt during Nano a few years ago. And I actually wrote enough then that I started book two! As in I wrote over 90,000 words in that one month that year!

That was the best year I had yet.

This brings to mind the year Konnie actually wrote just over 50,000 words one November. Inspiration hit her and her family was mighty peeved at how much time she spent on her computer writing that month.

Konnie has never officially participated in Nano, never registered and after that one time, she has a good excuse not to.

Oh, and that book she was inspired to write. It is now the first book of her five-book sci-fi series!

I should point out that Konnie started her sci-fi years before that prompt session which started my sci-fi. A fact that all the other participants pointed out. It was high time I wrote a sci-fi too.

So anyway, now both of us have an epic sci-fi we are working on, but we also both have other stories on which we are working. What we both have always written is sweet romances. In fact, Konnie started her book as a sweet romance, it just morphed into a sci-fi.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!