Point of View and Character Development
Well-written, compelling characters keep your readers immersed in your story, unable to put it down. In autobiography, you are the main point of view character.
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Karma and Character Development
Karma’s a bitch!” We hear that all the time. Somebody does something good, they get good karma. Something bad happens to someone, it’s because they have bad karma. It’s justice, retribution and balancing the scales of right and wrong. Right? Wrong! Karma is commonly understood to mean our actions, words or deeds and their outcomes. But I believe that this interpretation is specious. Karma’s more profound than that. Believers in spirituality come a little closer. For them, karma refers to the spiritual circle of cause and effect, often called the “Principle of Karma”, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that…
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Emotional Significance
or — How to Manipulate Your Reader’s Feelings Over many decades of reading, I’ve come to realize that one of the most powerful things a writer can do to keep a reader glued to the page is to create a deep yearning to be in the story and experience the emotions that the story’s characters feel. Running like an underground river beneath the needs and desires of the characters we create is the reader’s need for something only the character’s experience can provide. We read in order to become a part of the story world, to escape the everyday and immerse ourselves in an environment that satisfies something we…
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Creative Writing, Organization and Research, Point of View and Character Development, Structure and Plotting, Training, Lessons
Cause and Effect
One of the most effective ways to create a compelling plotline with a strong narrative drive is to make sure your cause and effect chain remains unbroken. What do I mean by the cause and effect chain? In stories, as in life, things happen because other things happen. If you fall down, you skin your knee. Your knee would not be injured if you hadn’t fallen down. That’s cause and effect. In stories, cause and effect are a kind of glue that holds your story together. Without it, your story is merely a collection of random incidents and your reader eventually becomes bored because things happen for…
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Lying to Yourself — Self-Integrity 101
“This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.” — William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” Self-integrity What does it mean? Is it the meaning of the Shakespeare quote above, or does it mean something more, something deeper? Perhaps it’s our conscience, speaking to us in the “still, small voice” about right and wrong. Perhaps it’s our core values telling us about our most profound self-identity. Or perhaps it’s a limiting belief, attempting to keep us safe in trying times or confusing circumstances. Or maybe it’s a lot simpler than any of those. Maybe…
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“Kindness is Never Wasted” — Anonymous
At this time of year, most people’s focus is on Valentine’s Day, and while romantic love is a valid point of interest, there’s another point I think makes a lot more sense for us to celebrate. February 17th is “Random Acts of Kindness Day”, and to my mind, is a much more relevant and valuable quality of being, as well as a better focus for our behaviour. In fact, why limit it to one day a year? Why not build a habit of doing one kind thing for others every day? Think about it…when we engage in an act of kindness, either as giver or receiver, we experience…
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When It’s Okay To Act Out
Okay, so you’re writing away and you have no idea what motivates your main character (or yourself at age twelve). Or you can visualize your MC’s best friend, but you can’t hear her voice. Or you’ve finally finished your fifteenth draft and you’re ready to share with your beta readers or your writing group or your editor or (gulp!) your publisher, but you have a niggling feeling there’s something missing. Take a step back and try a couple of editing techniques that are a little different. When we read, we tend to “hear” the words in our heads. If the story’s well-written, we “see” the…
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How Not To Be A Wimp
Using Blind Spots and Limiting Beliefs to Power Your Memoir In my memoir classes, one of my favourite things to do is ask questions of my students to get them thinking more deeply about their stories, their characters and ultimately themselves. One of my students brought up the topic of fear of success the other day. She mentioned that she had a crippling fear of being successful, ie. “a public figure”. When I asked her what she thought was scary about that, she couldn’t tell me exactly, although, for her, it was tied up with public appearances, maybe interviews or readings of her work. They terrified her. It came down…
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Just Who Do You Think You Are?
One rainy day many years ago, while I was still in college, I was stomping along the street, resentful and annoyed, on the way to buy some milk since nobody at the house had even considered what happens when you use up the last few drops. Somehow, it always ended up being I who ran these little errands, and I was sick and tired of it. Suddenly, out of the blue, I heard a voice in my head say, “I am me.” Wait, I thought and stopped walking. What does that even mean — I am me? I know that. Who else could I be? The words held vague overtones of self-awareness, integrity,…
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The Song of the Spoken Word
Music surrounds us. Throughout human history, it has played a big part in our communications. But only in the past 100 years has it been available to everyone all the time. Before this, only a few very wealthy patrons could enjoy music in their homes, and only if they knew how to perform, play an instrument or hire someone to play for them. Every religion has used music to praise a variety of gods, (entertainment being a large part of their attraction for the general populace), and indigenous peoples have all had their own styles of music, often used to communicate over long distances, to appease the spirits and to ward off…
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Creative Writing, Organization and Research, Point of View and Character Development, Productivity, Prompts, Theme, Purpose and Outcome, Thoughts, Opinions and Philosophical Discussions, Training, Lessons
Questions and Answers
How NOT To Write Your Memoir Most people, when they start to write their memoirs, think they have to stick strictly to the facts, that their story has to be a list of the things they did, in the order that they did them. This simply isn’t true. It leads to the belief that they have to write their entire history — an autobiography, which, for most people is messy, disconnected and hard to follow. This means that they end up with a list of dry, dull facts, like some kind of desiccated checklist that may reflect the events of their lives, but doesn’t say much about…