Kaye Dacus's Blog, page 59

Be Your Own Casting Director: Creating a “Casting Book”

In the previous post, I mentioned that one of the methods of character casting depends greatly on creating a “Casting Book.” This isn’t necessarily a “book,” though; for me, for many, many years, I had two four-inch-thick three-ring binders—one for men, one for women—in which I had a page/pages for each Real World Template (RWT). […]

Be Your Own Casting Director: 4 Methods of Character Casting

If you’re not someone who is “into” character casting or even that much into writing the physical descriptions of characters, you may be wondering: Why Worry About Looks? After all, we’re writing stories, not casting a movie or play. Right, but see, here’s the thing: too little description can leave readers struggling to connect while […]

Character Development for Visually Oriented Writers; or, Be Your Own Casting Director

Does your computer monitor look anything like this? . Do you have a wall or bulletin board in your house like this? . Do you get a story idea and immediately start one of these? . Do you have files on your computer like this? . Have you ever sneaked a photo of a complete […]

Costume Drama Thursday: Winter’s Tale

I thought maybe it was time to reintroduce this weekly feature, although a little less intensely this time—by simply sharing a video or two (trailers, odes, tributes, etc.) to some of my favorite costume dramas from over the years. Here’s one of my recent favorites. Title: Winter’s Tale Historical Setting: New York, Early 20th Century […]

Writing Tip #10: YOU Are Your Best Source of Motivation

There are going to be days (weeks . . . months . . .) when we don’t feel like writing. We may sit in front of the computer for an hour and write six words—and then delete three of them. Or during our designated writing time, we find that’s the best time to scrub the […]

Writing Tip #9: Write your passion—but keep an eye on the market.

There are two pieces of advice you’re bound to hear at just about every writing conference or group you’ll ever attend: First, write the book of your heart; second, if you want to sell, make sure you know the market and if the genre you’ve chosen to write is selling. And that brings us to […]

Writing Tip #8: It’s Okay If What You Write Stinks

One of the main reasons so many would-be writers never get further than being would-be writers—people with bits and pieces of started, but never finished, manuscripts hidden in drawers or secret files on the computer—is because they’ve let something that all of us who write know paralyze them and keep them from moving forward with […]

Fun Friday–Men in Costume Dramas Tributes

It’s time for some Men in Costume Dramas tributes. It’s probably also time for me to break out some of these movies/miniseries and re-watch them. Our first is set to one of my favorite songs, “L-O-V-E” by Nat “King” Cole and features Richard Armitage as John Thornton in North & South and Matthew Macfadyen as […]

Writing Tip #7: MAKE LISTS

As you all know, for many years before I changed careers and started working full-time in academia, I worked as a freelance editor to support my career as a full-time writer. One of my jobs was a copy-and-content edit of the first novel in a trilogy. The editor asked me, in addition to the in-document […]

Single Adults Officially Outnumber Married Adults in America—Except in Church

According to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Unmarried American adults outnumber their married counterparts for the first time since the federal government began tracking that data in 1976″ (Li, 2014). As I’ve written before, though, even before the unmarrieds outnumbered the marrieds in this country, they were sorely underrepresented in the […]