Did you miss me? Being gone for two weeks makes for a long wait between my postings.
I just got a message from a man looking for help with his writing. Someone had referred him to me as thinking I could help him with his career. I felt inadequate as his writing goals seemed a lot higher than mine, but I tried to help and referred him to this posting.
However, by the time I wrote back to him, his message disappeared and I felt frustrated not being able to respond and maybe even help him. If this person was you, please contact me again, or comment below.
For today's post I though I would talk a little about characters. I for one, prefer to read about someone who feels real, verses cardboard characters.
So, how do we do that? Many novels are about magic or science fiction where the main character's only purpose is to save a world or something like that, but in the meantime we don't really get acquainted with the main character. In a book titled "How to Write Best-Selling Fiction," by Dean Koontz, he makes few comments that I feel are of value here. He says:
"Your lead character doesn't have to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and he doesn't have to stop speeding bullets with his bare hands, but he darn well better know the difference between right and wrong, and he better be kind to animals, and it sure wouldn't hurt any if he brushed his teeth regularly...
"If your heroine is a beautiful actress, a fine painter, and engineer, a cabinetmaker, a superb cook, a daring test pilot, a whiz at electronics, a doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian chief, don't you think you ought to humanize her at least to the extent of giving her a zit on the end of her nose?"
I know these sound a bit flippant, even humorous, but there's a lot of truth there. Your characters must be real if you expect to write "best-selling fiction."
So, how are your characters developing.
In my novel, "Bridgetown High," I tried my best to develop all the main characters, even to the point of going into the heads of Jeff Marino, the antagonist as well as Mark Wilkerson, the protagonist. I think I succeeded. Reviews of "Bridgetown High" have almost always been positive and one of the main things reviewers point out is the realism of the story and its characters.
So, until next week, keep working on your novel and take a minute to read mine, if you haven't already https://www.amazon.com/dp/1680583093/ and it would be great if you would write a review to help Amazon and Goodreads to rate my novel at a level it is worth. The higher my ranking the more likely my book is to sell, and you can say you were a part of it.
Thanks to all of you for making this effort a success.
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