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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Memoirs, Organization and Research, Point of View and Character Development, Prompts, Theme, Purpose and Outcome
The Significance of Memories
Every life has common themes that repeat themselves over and over. One of my own most common themes is a love of animals, so when my writers’ group chose Favourite Toys as their prompt this week, it got me thinking… What was my favourite toy as a child? Of course, there were many…the roller skates that repeatedly steered me towards every crack in the sidewalk, leading to skinned knees and copious tears; the pogo stick that bounced me straight into a pile of fresh dog poop; and the bicycle my parents bought for me — an unexpected gift and a total, wonderful surprise. But the…
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Creative Writing, Point of View and Character Development, Structure and Plotting, Training, Lessons
It’s All About The Why’s
Often, an issue that confounds writers is finding they’ve written themselves into a corner or dead end. They wind up stuck, not knowing what happens next or how to resolve the problem. Invariably, this comes from not paying attention to the Why’s. Why would the character do something like that? Why can’t he just…whatever? Where does he go from here? This indecision is usually based on a lack of understanding of the character’s psychology — his motivations, which are based on his flaws and emotional wounds, his deepest fears and his goals, his secret desires and his limiting beliefs. Every action the character takes has a motive, and it can’t be just that the…
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Writing Your Life as The Hero’s Journey
You want to create your memoirs or autobiography. You want to write about your life, but it seems like a series of unrelated incidents, random events happening one after another. However, If you look closely, you can see where certain choices and decisions were the key points where your life diverged from one path to a different one. Each of these “inciting incidents”, to use a fiction-writer’s terminology, had a profound effect on you in one way or another, but at the time, you didn’t see them or the effect they’d have on your life’s journey. The Hero’s Journey is a formula for writing fiction that was identified and…
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The Great Mistake…What Were Your Life Lessons?
Life Lessons or Failures? Do you recall your biggest mistake? Your greatest failure? How did it impact you and what knowledge did you gain from it? How did you react? What would you do differently now? In life, our biggest failures can often lead to our greatest triumphs. We tell ourselves, if I hadn’t made that mistake or if a particular event hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be who I am now. I wouldn’t have what I have or know what I know. If not for this, I would be a different person entirely. Everyone has these thoughts All of us can look back and say, “if I hadn’t done that…” …