be the story

Discovering Character Secrets from Your Relatives!

Much of the time, we treat relatives as obligations: “Yeah, but what can you do? He’s family.”

This year, during the holiday break between December 25 and January 1, the kids and I and Grandma and Grampa piled into a rented minivan and trekked 7 hours to southern New Jersey… where the aunts and uncles and first and second cousins reside. And while I was there, I finally understood why Brothers and Sisters makes me laugh.

But the biggest epiphany I had… (Read more…)

How to Beat Writer’s Block: The Definitive Course

Today, Holly Lisle releases her definitive course, How to Beat Writer’s Block. But as an affiliate of Holly’s web store, I’m making a special offer available only to you and others who are reading this blog post.

For those who order Holly Lisle’s How to Beat Writer’s Block through my affiliate links at the bottom of this post, I’m offering two freebies of my own. (Read more…)

Character Ideas Through Substitution

Here’s another way to generate character ideas. Substitute one reaction for another. We all tend to make our characters behave like ourselves or like people we know. So let’s say I’m a computer geek who tends to be shy and reserved, except when I’m talking about computers. Then I’m talkative and outgoing. They say, write what you know. And if I can work these feelings into my character, the character will be more realistic. If I want a character who is different than me, I can feel these same reactions, but apply them in different situations.

For example, I could create a character who is passionate about horticulture or some other subject. He’s quiet and reserved, but ask him about plants and suddenly he’s a fountain of knowledge and amusing anecdotes of our green leafy friends.

Or I could create a character who is generally outgoing by drawing on my own outgoing side and by looking to people I know who are also outgoing. Think of the behaviors they exhibit. But this character has a different background, different passions, different fears, different needs than either I or my friends. She will behave differently than us in the same situations, and she’ll behave the same in different situations.

There are only a few different ways we respond to the world around us. But we each respond differently, with a different mix of these ways, depending on the context. There are only a few character reactions. And a character reaction only becomes a characteristic in a situation. By supplanting reactions and situations, you can produce different characters, each of which is a completely realistic new personality.

Better Character Ideas: Throw Two Away

Here’s a simple way to generate better character ideas, or story ideas of any sort. This isn’t so much a source of story ideas as a way to improve existing ideas. You can do the same thing with setting, plot, or whatever story idea you need. It’s exceptionally simple. Just throw the first two ideas away.

“What?!” I can almost hear you saying. “You want me to throw away my ideas?”

(Read more…)

A Necessary Step to Creativity

The brain is a marvellous thing, the most complex organ in the human body, and the most important for everything we do. Why do we so often treat it like a drill press?

During my years as a software engineer, I’ve seen more brain abuse than I care to think about. (How’s that for irony?) And I’ve even committed a little myself.

(Read more…)

Where to Get Character Names

After all my bellyaching about how little character names really matter in the grand scheme of things, here are some of my favorite on-line sources for character names.

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How to Handle Too Many Ideas

Keep an idea journal. For your stories, for your blog or podcast, for your business, for your personal development, keep an idea journal. It’ll help you in more ways than you might expect.

(Read more…)

Where to Get Character Ideas

I’ve discovered a new source of character ideas, at least for me. Anyone can get ideas in the same way, even if not from the same source.

(Read more…)

The Secret to Naming Characters

This is something that pops up from time to time on the writing boards: How do you choose names for your characters? Writers are desperate for a magic formula, a secret for coming up with perfect charcter names. Well, I have it.

(Read more…)