Give them pleasure—the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare. ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Thursday Writing Quotes ~ Hitchcock
Give them pleasure—the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare. ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Nuggets for March
Help for getting a handle on your inciting event
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/your-books-inciting-event-its-not-what-you-think-it-is/
Jennifer Crusie has a tendency to ramble a bit but she has some thought-provoking ideas about how to create chemistry between characters
http://arghink.com/2016/01/questionable-character-chemistry/
Fight scenes are tough. Maybe this will help.
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-write-realistic-fight-scenes-2/
Seems like everyone wants in your pocket, especially when you reach the promo stage, so it's nice to find something that makes life easier at a reasonable price.
http://www.molly-greene.com/bookfunnel-low-cost-ebook-giveaway-hosting/
You've probably seen them. The pictures with quotes from the book. Here's how to create them.
http://buildbookbuzz.com/how-to-create-shareable-images-with-quotes/
Here's another site for creating pictures with quotes
https://buffer.com/pablo#
This is one I want to try when I have the time. It's a preview widget from Amazon.
http://www.darcypattison.com/marketing/preview-widget/
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/your-books-inciting-event-its-not-what-you-think-it-is/
Jennifer Crusie has a tendency to ramble a bit but she has some thought-provoking ideas about how to create chemistry between characters
http://arghink.com/2016/01/questionable-character-chemistry/
Fight scenes are tough. Maybe this will help.
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/how-to-write-realistic-fight-scenes-2/
Seems like everyone wants in your pocket, especially when you reach the promo stage, so it's nice to find something that makes life easier at a reasonable price.
http://www.molly-greene.com/bookfunnel-low-cost-ebook-giveaway-hosting/
You've probably seen them. The pictures with quotes from the book. Here's how to create them.
http://buildbookbuzz.com/how-to-create-shareable-images-with-quotes/
Here's another site for creating pictures with quotes
https://buffer.com/pablo#
This is one I want to try when I have the time. It's a preview widget from Amazon.
http://www.darcypattison.com/marketing/preview-widget/
Thursday Writing Quote ~ Foster
"The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go out and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly, believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don't know enough about the subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That's why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-old men either have self-knowledge or they're never going to get it, while your average sixteen-to-eighteen-year old kid is likely to have a long way to go in the self-knowledge department." ~ Thomas C. Foster
Thursday Writing Quotes ~ Chekhov
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov
Neon Villains
The need to make villains look villainous. It's practically an instinct. We want to make sure the reader knows not to like this character, so make sure he's not just ugly on the inside, we also make him ugly on the outside. And not just ugly but fugly.
He may be badly scarred or he may be so oily kids could use him as a Slip N Slide. He's likely to have a crooked nose from it having been broken, thick lips, and bad teeth. And if the hero or heroine get close enough, he'll almost undoubtedly have bad breath. In days long gone, he'd also be twirling a mustache.
If you read this description of a character, you're going to know before he even opens his mouth to sneer some diabolical threat that he's the villain. It's like putting a neon sign on their forehead that flashes: villain.
I see it all the time, and not just from newbie writers, but from writers who should know better. Writers who would never dream of using tired cliches like "cute as a button" or who would call you out for writing a Mary Sue heroine will write these neon villains--these Snidley Whiplashes--without a second thought.
And that's a problem. Because if you're writing the first thought that comes into your head--the first thought about anything--you're writing a cliche.
I'm not the first person to notice this obviously. It's a TV Trope which means it's been done to death.
But it's always much more interesting to play against type.
If you're tempted to write the ugly villain, consider how would it change the readers' perceptions if, instead of making the villain unattractive, he was even *more* attractive than the hero. Would it change your story for the better? Would it give it more depth and texture? I don't see how the answer could be anything but yes.
The attractive evil holds a different kind of horror because what's appealing on the outside covers a rotten core.
The reason serial killers are so scary isn't that they kill lots of people--okay, that's part of why--but it's because they never look that scary. Their neighbors always say things like: He was a quiet guy who kept to himself. It's terrifying to think these monsters might live next door or work in the next cubicle. Ann Rule, who's made a career out of writing about the worst of the worst worked with Ted Bundy at a Seattle suicide prevention hotline and had no clue. How scary is that? (And isn't there something ironic about a serial killer trying to talk people out of committing suicide?)
Think about the shiver that would walk up your spine if you found out that the quiet, nice-looking guy who works next to you had a hobby of picking up women on the weekends and killing them. Imagine if he'd invited you to have a drink with him one Friday night, but you didn't go because of some lame commitment you couldn't get out of.
Isn't that more interesting that if you always thought he was evil because he was just so . . . unattractive?
And here's the deal, if someone looks like a villain, people tend not to trust them, so they have less opportunity to put whatever nefarious plans into actions. This is something con men have understood from time immemorial.
I'll leave you with one last thing to think about, and this is a true story.
There was a woman who worked at the same place I did years ago whose husband had a storage unit in another state. In their marriage, she paid the bills, and she paid that bill every month for at least a couple of years. Until she finally decided it was ridiculous to keep on paying for a unit that obviously didn't have anything in it they couldn't live without. So she stopped paying for it. Just stopped. Without telling her husband. A few months pass. Then the police show up to arrest her husband because they found his last wife's body in the storage unit.
Can you imagine her shock?
I'll guarantee you she wouldn't have married her husband if she'd thought he was a villain, and one assumes she found him at least a little attractive. At least before the arrest. But if he'd looked like a villain and the world worked the way it does in the stories I'm talking about, everyone would have said, "You should have known" and the story would be less shocking. And less interesting.
So make sure your villains aren't cliches. Your readers will thank you.
He may be badly scarred or he may be so oily kids could use him as a Slip N Slide. He's likely to have a crooked nose from it having been broken, thick lips, and bad teeth. And if the hero or heroine get close enough, he'll almost undoubtedly have bad breath. In days long gone, he'd also be twirling a mustache.
If you read this description of a character, you're going to know before he even opens his mouth to sneer some diabolical threat that he's the villain. It's like putting a neon sign on their forehead that flashes: villain.
I see it all the time, and not just from newbie writers, but from writers who should know better. Writers who would never dream of using tired cliches like "cute as a button" or who would call you out for writing a Mary Sue heroine will write these neon villains--these Snidley Whiplashes--without a second thought.
And that's a problem. Because if you're writing the first thought that comes into your head--the first thought about anything--you're writing a cliche.
I'm not the first person to notice this obviously. It's a TV Trope which means it's been done to death.
But it's always much more interesting to play against type.
If you're tempted to write the ugly villain, consider how would it change the readers' perceptions if, instead of making the villain unattractive, he was even *more* attractive than the hero. Would it change your story for the better? Would it give it more depth and texture? I don't see how the answer could be anything but yes.
The attractive evil holds a different kind of horror because what's appealing on the outside covers a rotten core.
The reason serial killers are so scary isn't that they kill lots of people--okay, that's part of why--but it's because they never look that scary. Their neighbors always say things like: He was a quiet guy who kept to himself. It's terrifying to think these monsters might live next door or work in the next cubicle. Ann Rule, who's made a career out of writing about the worst of the worst worked with Ted Bundy at a Seattle suicide prevention hotline and had no clue. How scary is that? (And isn't there something ironic about a serial killer trying to talk people out of committing suicide?)
Think about the shiver that would walk up your spine if you found out that the quiet, nice-looking guy who works next to you had a hobby of picking up women on the weekends and killing them. Imagine if he'd invited you to have a drink with him one Friday night, but you didn't go because of some lame commitment you couldn't get out of.
Isn't that more interesting that if you always thought he was evil because he was just so . . . unattractive?
And here's the deal, if someone looks like a villain, people tend not to trust them, so they have less opportunity to put whatever nefarious plans into actions. This is something con men have understood from time immemorial.
I'll leave you with one last thing to think about, and this is a true story.
There was a woman who worked at the same place I did years ago whose husband had a storage unit in another state. In their marriage, she paid the bills, and she paid that bill every month for at least a couple of years. Until she finally decided it was ridiculous to keep on paying for a unit that obviously didn't have anything in it they couldn't live without. So she stopped paying for it. Just stopped. Without telling her husband. A few months pass. Then the police show up to arrest her husband because they found his last wife's body in the storage unit.
Can you imagine her shock?
I'll guarantee you she wouldn't have married her husband if she'd thought he was a villain, and one assumes she found him at least a little attractive. At least before the arrest. But if he'd looked like a villain and the world worked the way it does in the stories I'm talking about, everyone would have said, "You should have known" and the story would be less shocking. And less interesting.
So make sure your villains aren't cliches. Your readers will thank you.
Thursday Writing Quote ~ Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 guidelines for a great story1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Thursday Writing Quote ~ Gaiman
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. ~ Neil Gaiman
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