Kat Duncan's Blog, page 10

Grammar Basics

Grammar and Style Basics class starting August 1st with Outreach International

Come join me for a series of lessons that will expand your writing skills in amazing ways! Here's what a recent student had to say after taking this class:

The first thing that struck me about Kat was how clear and entertaining her lessons were. She has a great sense of humor. And smart, smart as a Mensa member chowing down on a limitless pill while checking out a cheat sheet. The second thing that struck me, her feedback and examples were amazingly on target, as was her dedication. A hot data bed of writing insights! Third, I noticed every novel I was reading showed real world examples of the techniques she described, to the point I thought these bestselling authors may have studied with her. Likely, she studied them. Either way, she delivered me the three piece dinner of knowledge when I’d only been snacking on the hungry man meals. Lastly, and most importantly, I saw my writing improve dramatically. I would highly recommend every course I have taken that she has taught and there are several. Want style, character voice, hooks. -Adam

 

Grammar and Style Basics
August 1, 2013 - August 31, 2013 with Outreach International RWA - Registration link

What's a style or a voice and where do I get one? Whether you "get" grammar or not, your style and voice come from how you use grammar. This grammar-based style-enhancing workshop is for writers who don't "get" grammar or for those who think they don't want to get it. Proper use of grammar and style makes a story flow smoothly, page after page. Poorly constructed sentences and paragraphs ruin the pace of your novel and make editors and agents pass up your manuscript. Let me guide you through a review of basic grammar terms, punctuation and capitalization, some clever ways to combine sentences and sentence pattern techniques you can put right to use the day you learn them.

A Lesson from Maass

A Lesson from Maass

Moments in Time

Immersing ourselves in another world is one of the pleasures of reading a well-written novel. How can you capture the world of the story and the lives of its characters in just the right way? It's a matter of selecting individual moments to freeze for the reader.

 

Examples

One author uses the details at hand along with the drunken rush of kissing imagery to suggest a moment suspended in time. She does not describe emotions, be evokes them by saying what they are not: not loneliness, not sorrow, not worrying, not anger, not missing the departed. Kissing is the opposite of that. We see exactly what she means. This frozen moment is warm because it captures the out-of-time feeling of kissing.

 

An extremely fine distinction between one place and another is drawn by another author. He describes one area where people "owned" and another where people "rented". He does not even need to define what they owned or rented. We know. Why does the author even bother to delineate the difference between the two places? Because it becomes a difference in attitudes. The difference between justice as a badge and justice as a baseball bat.

 

Another author uses a brief pause in a train journey during wartime Poland and provides a piece of incidental detail to freeze a unique moment. It is only a few days into the occupation of Poland by the Nazis, yet already the people have begun to adjust to the new reality. They are newly flexible. Their experience has not yet hardened with long oppression. They are defeated, yet it is the early days. The author further evokes the atmosphere as the character stops for a coffee on a cafe terrace. It is the ordinariness of the autumn day that is described, but it is the unordinariness of the situation that is evoked. Before rationing, before restrictions in one's occupation, before the walling off of the ghetto, before the deportations to the concentration camps. The author gives us a snapshot of the minute, the mood, the public shrug of acceptance, the remoteness of far-off politics, the sunny stillness in the cafes and plazas.

 

Another author gives us a moment of American social history and relates it to what is happening to a character during one childhood summer. It goes to show that elegant prose isn't the key to success. A great story is, and capturing a story's social context is one way to give it a sense of resonance. Ripples that spread outward and lend a story a sense of larger significance.

 

Whether it is suspending a single moment and isolating its emotional details from all other moments, or whether it is capturing the shifts in the public mood from one week to the next, or whether it is picking up the social nuances that make one place different from the place next door to it, freezing a moment in time is a highly effective way to heighten the reality of the story. How do you delineate these in your current manuscript? Can you identify six passages in which you go beyond simple scene setting to capture the flavor of a moment in time, the feeling of an historical era of the uniqueness of a place like no other? If not, is there any reason not to put that stuff in?

 

Please join me at Savvy Authors for more useful story techniques. This next Maass Session includes exercises on pitching. Click here to register...

Subplots

Subplots

Subplots are whole new aspects to conceive, insert and blend into your premise. They can add not only word count, but can have an echoing effect on the conflict, theme or premise you choose to write about.  Subplots do not typically slide along independently of the main plot, because that fragments reader attention. This type of subplot can work in fiction, however. So, if you have an idea for a side-by-side story, don't abandon it just because it's rare.

For most other stories you will want the subplot to weave in and out of the main plot, intersecting, impacting and affecting the main plot and vice versa. So you must first figure out the reason the subplot would intersect with the main plot. To do this, let's borrow a technique from Donald Maass. Try listing your main and secondary characters and their goals, maybe add setting locations and see where these characters will cross one another's paths. Now, think of ways the secondaries can interact to shed light on what the mains are doing, help the mains, or make trouble for the mains. Or think of ways the mains can spin off ideas the secondaries can work with that will come back to haunt them later.

The impact of subplots should be indirect, but powerful. Subplots are very often about contrast. They shouldn't repeat the events of the main plot or only be there to provide comic relief. They should offer an alternate perception of the main conflict. Common subplots involve personal relationships of the mains. For example, in a detective novel, the detective is busy trying to find the serial killer before he strikes again. A subplot for him is his relationship with his girlfriend. Maybe she's pushing him to get married and because he can see the effects of a bad marriage in the profile of the serial killer, he's resisting the idea. The subplot impacts the main story.

A good subplot also embellishes a main story in a number of ways. The subplot can convey the theme because the main character may be too busy with action. A main character whose goal is to  explore the Amazon River can be busy tangling with large snakes and lack of fresh water, while the subplot could have to do with negotiating with his belligerent native guide, who resents the intrusion of the explorer as much as he needs the work the explorer provides. These two story threads clash at the point of fighting for survival, which highlights the overall theme of man against nature and man against human nature.

A subplot can deepen characterization by exploring a main character's relationships and growth. If the main character is busy trying to persuade a record company to give him a contract for his rock band, the subplot could highlight the interactions between the band members that make it difficult for him to hold the band together long enough to record something. A subplot can work to show a contrasting point of view on an issue. The main character could be a privileged rich kid trying to win the love and approval of his disinterested parents while the subplot of the kid's best friend is about a poor kid from a loving home who wants to earn lots of money to help his family.

Subplots can also create and enhance the believability of plot twists. If you have plot elements that may be a bit difficult to believe such as a city guy who successfully escapes from the mob to start a new life, a subplot involving the mob still looking for the guy makes us believe he escaped successfully and at the same time adds tension as we wonder whether the mob will catch up to him as he tries to learn how to get along in his new small town neighborhood where people are kind and trusting.

Subplots need beginnings, middles, and ends, so don't just throw them in without thinking about plots for them. Just as your main character needs a goal and conflicts, the characters involved in your subplot need goals and conflicts. To take our example above of the mob, the mob sends a seeker to find the escapee. His goal is to find and kill the escapee, and he will be faced with obstacles he must overcome. He may also grow and change as a character, have his own climax where he makes a life-changing decision that resolves his conflict and, in turn, affects the ending of the main story.

Subplot events can occur offstage so that they don't take away from the main plot's action. In this case, they would be referred to, or be covered during introspection or dialogue rather than be live blow-by-blow scenes. They more often take place on-stage, especially if you want to push the main plot in a direction it might not be able to otherwise go. For example, when getting a secondary character to team up with a main, it might be necessary to give him his own subplot that forces him to take a chance with the main in an attempt to resolve his conflict.

Subplots should end right around the time when the main plot does and the resolution of one should ideally set up the resolution of the other. Most subplots, in one way or another, are about the contrasting and conflicting values of characters. As you think about your main characters and their goals, and then about their opposition and the opposition's goals, you may naturally have a nice, clean story conflict. But it's rare for any conflict to be black and white. There are always subtle nuances, the grays of the situation, to be explored. Subplots are a great way to enhance the flavor of your theme without going crazy trying to weave bits of complexity into your main plot.

Got questions about subplots? Ask away.

Interested in some fresh ways to handle dialogue click here for my Savvy Authors - starting next Monday, June 17th!

For some just-in-time ideas on how to handle pacing click here for my July workshop at Hearts Through History RWA workshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Things and Little Things

Calling All Authors - who want to write incredible characters! Here's a tip from one of my upcoming workshops:

What can you do to make a character unique and memorable? Big things and little things.

Big Things

Memorable, larger-than-life characters do big things. They do things that we ordinary human beings only dream about. This means they could be doing things like saving entire nations, standing up for a local or personal injustice or just mouthing off to the boss the way you'd love to but know you can't get away with because you'd lose your job. You can help your readers live vicariously by creating characters who CAN get away with these kinds of extraordinary feats. When you think in terms of big things, let the character do the thinking for you. For big things take advantage of the character's internal thoughts and feelings. Thinking big and dreaming big are usually things characters do with their internal thoughts because saying them aloud can bring on ridicule from other characters or give away the character's ultimate plan to overcome an antagonist. You can start generating big things by finishing these sentence starters for your characters:

"I will always..."

"I would never..."

For example, suppose your character thinks, "I will always keep this cottage in the family." or, "I would never sell this family heirloom." Then, under pressure and conflict your character must give up the family cottage or sell the family heirloom. This is a big thing. A thing that shows the reader the extent to which the character has been pushed to the extreme level to resolve the conflict. Big things like this rivet readers because they wonder what they would do in a similar situation.

Little Things

Look through the ordinary to find the unusual in your character's experiences. Notice I didn't say to look past the ordinary as in look for something out of the ordinary or something extraordinary. That's the big thing (see above). Instead start with something ordinary, something any reader could connect with and use it as a lens to look through to find the one small thing that points to the character's inner conflict, or if not a conflict then an outlook. A view the character has of himself and what he wants to do right now, or a feeling the character is wrestling with. Often this is an attitude or emotion the character knows he must overcome in order to become a better person or to reach a goal. Most of these are internal things. The little things that have, over time, become obstacles to the character's success or happiness.

For example, what if it's a holiday and the character's family is exchanging gifts. He fusses and is reluctant to open his gifts. "I do it later." Or "You open your gifts. I'll wait." Or "Not right now. I want to eat dinner first." It's a little thing. An ordinary thing. Any character should be able to handle this situation. Just open your gifts. Everyone else is opening their gifts. Eventually, the character is persuaded to open his gifts. He smiles and nods his thanks. What is the reason this character is having so much difficulty with gift-opening? Perhaps it is not explained, but when you read about this scene you will understand that something is bothering this character. You will want to know why he's reluctant to open his gifts.

Your character's voice will come through strongly if you pay attention to these big and little things.

For more great lessons (and personalized feedback on your work) register for my upcoming workshops on Character Voice or Dialogue at Savvy Authors.

Guest Barbara Longley

Please welcome my guest Barbara Longley and her book The Difference a Day Makes!

[image error] Blurb

Ryan Malloy has lost it all. After his fiancée dies in a tragic accident, he enlists in the army, only to lose his best friend in a roadside bombing. Wracked with guilt and grief, Ryan finds life unbearable—until a job offer from his former commander gives him a glimmer of hope. And in the tiny town of Perfect, Indiana, the man who thought he had nothing left to live for meets the only woman who can tempt him into risking his battered heart one last time...

Paige Langford has it all: wealth, beauty, and ambition. But when her boyfriend’s betrayal leads to the loss of her job and her reputation, she retreats to her brother’s rural Indiana home to regroup. There she meets Ryan Malloy, a gruff, hard-drinking loner whose surly temper can’t hide the haunted misery in his eyes. He is everything Paige never wanted, yet he may be exactly what she needs—if only they can overcome their personal demons to forge a love strong enough to save them both.

Review

Tired of the same old, same old romances? Looking for something emotional and edgy, but not violent and full of villains? Look no further than Barbara Longley's The Difference a Day Makes. Ms. Longley is adept at making a reader care deeply about characters who are, in fact, worthy of caring about. Ryan Malloy has been piling blame on himself since the tragic day that took his fiance from his life forever. He's full of relentless guilt and mental pain, but has a chance at pulling himself out of his suicidal slump when his former Army commander offers him a job. Paige Langford knows what it's like for Ryan because her brother suffered from PTSD, too. And Paige is suffering from her own brand of guilt and blame after her first brutal foray into the corporate world. These two butt horns the moment they meet, each pushing the other to confront the demons that haunt them and each holding a helping hand out to the other in a desperate hope to live a life worth living. Even though this was the second book set in Perfect, Indiana I didn't feel as if I'd missed anything by not reading the first book. However, after getting a taste for Ms. Longley's ability to tug at my heartstrings, I'm definitely going to want to let her take me back to Perfect again and again.

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Follow the Rest of Blog Tour:
4/23/2013 Reviewing Shelf
4/24/2013 The Dan O'Brien Project
4/25/2013 Long and Short Reviews
4/26/2013 Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews
4/26/2013 SECOND STOP Voicu Mihnea Simandan
4/29/2013 It's Raining Books
4/30/2013 Writer Wonderland
5/1/2013 Harlie's Books
5/2/2013 Wickedly Wanton Tales
5/3/2013 Tinasbookreviews

Please comment for a chance to win one of two randomly drawn $10 Amazon gift cards!

Tour by Goddess Fish Promotions

New Release: Ali's Victory

April 5th, 2013, save the date!

My latest release is coming out on April 5th and it's free for 3 months through the Amazon KDP Select program.

 

Escaping a killer, Ali Granger crashes a stolen boat onto a remote harbor island only to be confronted by a two guard dogs and a man with a shotgun. Her terror is compounded when she learns her boss, a medical advocate fighting drug companies, has been murdered. Now she has no choice but to pick up where her boss left off and expose the supplement Antaqx for the addictive, lethal drug it is.

Ever since Ben Dewey was forced out of the limelight of wrestling entertainment, he's been trying to make amends to Rick, his best friend and partner. When blonde bombshell, Ali Granger, crashes on his doorstep, she brings with her evidence that could help Ben atone for all his personal losses. Can he convince Ali to lose her heart to him before the evil man behind Antaqx knocks them both out of the picture?

 

Excerpt:

A bullet thunked next to her. She yelped and moved faster. A second shot grazed her leg. The sting of pain made her clamp her lips shut. She crouched and ran, making for some low bushes and trees ahead. Finally, some cover from the hovering death above. The helicopter's lights raked the trees at the edge of the shore, then it swung away.

She blew a low breath and swiped at the blood streaking down her leg. She heard shouting and a door banging. There was a huge house lit all around with floodlights. Maybe the owners could help.

Then the guard dogs came bounding toward her.

Snarling and barking, they galloped toward the woods where she hid. A man followed them, walking across the open lawn that separated the shore from the house.

The helicopter circled back. Hovering over the trees, its light played back and forth through the bushes trying to find her. She made a small, pathetic whimper and curled up into a ball. This was it. The end. Which would it be, the dogs or the helicopter?

The helicopter's spotlight spread around her and stopped. She didn't even try to move. Gunshots sputtered next to her. Then two shotgun blasts split the air overhead, pinging against metal. The helicopter fire stopped, and the aircraft swung away.

Ali didn't dare breathe. The dogs were snapping branches as they bounded through the brush. With a snarl, one of the dogs leaped onto her. She flinched, expecting the painful crunch of sharp canines, but a second later, her face was wet with the dog's gentle lapping as it whined affection at her. The second dog approached, wagging its tail.

Dazed, she looked up into the double barrel of a shot gun. And the shirtless hunk of a man who held it.

"Some guard dogs you turned out to be," the man growled. "And what the hell are you doing on my island?"

Interview of Arlene Webb

Please welcome my guest today, Arlene Webb!

KD: Congratulations, Arlene, on the release of your book, Falling for Water, available now from Decadent Publishing. Tell us a little bit about Falling for Water.

AW: I got a message from another author who was excited about a new series from DP geared toward people who prepare for all sorts of problem scenarios, wondering if I wanted to write something and I was thrilled to give it a go. Falling for Water is a romance suspense novella about a couple caught up in something you can’t always anticipate, finding love.

KD: What did you enjoy most about writing Ray and Cassi's story?

AW: The chemistry between them.

KD: Falling for Water is one of the books in a series called the Prepper Series. Can you tell us more about the series?

AW: The series involves character or characters who like to be ready for whatever life throws at them. Be it a hurricane, power outage, world war, whatever. But as everyone knows some things, such as falling in love, pretty much blindsides you.

KD: Tell us a little about what a prepper is. Did you know much about preppers before you wrote this story?

AW: I think most people are preppers to a certain extent, by readying for curve balls, but some people really have a handle on it. And no, I had never heard the term before.

KD: What attracted you to the Prepper Series from Decadent Publishing? How did you come to choose water as a topic for this book?

AW: The enthusiasm of Heather Bennett (DP owner, editor, author, reader), and being included with two of the best writers I know (DL Jackson and Barbara Elsborg). Why water? It tops the list for survival needs, and I’m a water snob. I use a distiller. There’s nothing like a cup of Earl Grey not flavored by pollutants.

KD: You write in more than one genre (paranormal, suspense, erotica). Tell us what you like about each and why. Which genre did you first begin writing in?

AW: When it comes to writing, I’m not a prepper. I don’t think ahead other than knowing it must have a happy ending. That leaves me open to all genres. Paranormal throws the what-if door wide open. The genre I prefer as a reader is suspense because there’s nothing like that edge of the seat ride, and erotica means if the scene calls for intimacy, I don’t have to close any doors.

KD: What inspired you to begin writing fiction?

AW: Boredom. I took creative writing classes in college, but it wasn’t until I was handed a retail florist shop to run that I became addicted to creating worlds.

KD: Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you write every day? Do you find it difficult to switch from writing one genre to another?

AW: I write every moment I can around work, beta reading for critique partners, and needing to sleep. Nope, if the idea and then the characters call for it, I can go with the flow of any genre.

KD: Where can readers purchase your book?

Decadent Publishing http://www.decadentpublishing.com/product_info.php?products_id=701

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Water-Prepper-Romance-ebook/dp/B00AV2FM2I/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_7

Nook:  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/falling-for-water-arlene-webb/1114050348

KD: Where can readers find you on the web?

http://arlenewebb.blogspot.com

http://www.arlenewebb.com

https://www.facebook.com/arleneannwebb

https://twitter.com/Arlene_Webb_

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3448136.Arlene_Webb

 

*****

Excerpt:

He stared at her, his expression wary. “And I’m thrilled you’re so into evolution, variation, and moving toward different things. I…er…just wondered, do you have a problem with saliva?”

“Saliva? What the hell are you talking about?”

He smiled. Not slow and lazy, not sweet and gentle, but the wolf smile she’d seen at the bar. “You admitted a thing with water right away. So what I’m hearing is no, I love saliva. Go ahead and slap me, and…maybe I’ll stop.” He grabbed her, yanked her up, and took her lips with his.

Ray tried for gentle and slow, but the moment his lips locked onto hers it felt like he had to make this the kiss of a lifetime or she’d slip through his fingers and disappear. She’d either run screaming from yet another bully who took advantage of a vulnerable state, or she’d fall through the cracks of the justice system and out of his reach.

From his mouth to hers, he yearned to dive in fast and hard, plundering with his tongue until she opened more than her heart to him by confiding an intense trauma. He wanted the supple and beautiful body rolled over him as well.

He deepened the kiss, and his heartbeat pounded faster and faster as the tension left her shoulders. She melted into him, soft and sweetly yielding to his aggressive hardness, and she began kissing him back.

His careful exploration, the tip of tongue easing along the seams of her mouth, forced his lust into an easy, steady climb as lips meshed, escalating on the roller coaster scale to maybe a five, a first-time kiss like when a boy walks a girl to her door.

Forget that. It was no-hold-back time. He was too into the taste and feel of this woman to strive for less, and he had to bring her over the edge with him. Plunge down and down into the world-is-about-to-end type kiss. A kiss that’d stay with her, marking her as his own.

*****

Water.

What Cassi thought was a simple obsession with clean water has taken over her life. When she orders a distiller online to replace the one smashed by her abusive boyfriend, she gets more than she bargained for.
Enter a man with a badge, hunting a terrorist, and Cassi is his number one suspect. Not only is she struggling with her fixation on pure H2O, she has to prove she’s not the one he’s looking for—only she kind of wishes she was. Before she knows it, Cassi is in over her head.

Justice.

Ray had everything, until a random crime ends badly and he’s left to hold to his grief or make changes in his life. Charming his way into people’s personal business—slapping on the cuffs as needed—gives him reason to get up in the morning. When he falls headfirst into another chance at love, he must take the plunge without hesitation or risk losing more than his heart.

As the pair join hands, sparks fly as well as bullets, leaving Cassi and Ray to wonder if the universe could right itself. Will the past reach out and drown their chance for happiness?

*****

 

For more information about Decadent Publishing authors, books, and their submissions guidelines, visit www.decadentpublishing.com. 
Decadent Publishing is current accepting submissions in all sub-genres of romance, including their ongoing series'.

 

*****

AW: I’d love to pick a commenter at random to give an e-copy of Falling for Water, so please leave an email address.  

Thank you, so much, Kat for hosting me.

KD: Thanks so much for joining us at Write About, Arlene!

Guest Blogging Interview

Check out my interview on mentoring over at Maggie Blackbird's blog: http://maggieblackbird.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/interview-with-a-mentor/

Character Flaws

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In classic literary analysis, a character flaw is an internal character weakness that brings conflict to the character's world and sometimes brings about his downfall. Shakespeare's Hamlet has a character flaw in his indecisiveness. Because he can see all sides of the issue of his father's death, he cannot make a clear decision about whether and how to strike back at his enemies. Character flaws are important because they show the basic humanity of the character, making them accessible for readers to relate to them while they may still be portrayed as "larger than life". It's easy to tag the character with major flaws, for example: he's a loner, she's a leader, he's a wounded soul, she's a survivor.

My advice is not to think big here, but to think small that becomes big. Connect with your reader first. Readers connect with small, specific things better than with big broad themes. For example: he compulsively stirs his coffee thirty times, it drives her crazy. Why does he do it? It primes him to think about his daily to do list. He needs to do it. What does this generalize into? He needs a moment of lead time before he makes decisions. On the other hand, she makes snap decisions, and he hates that she doesn't take the time to think. Do you see room for growth and understanding in each character? Plus, some great conflicts?

Because stories depend on characters and readers connecting with those characters, the best stories have characters that despite their flaws are easy to connect with or are unusual or special in some way. As an author you can make use of a small flaw such as a mannerism or habit to reveal character and give the reader a focus for connecting with your characters.

We see human mannerisms every day, and since they are so common, we may no longer pay attention to them. If you become adept at describing mannerisms in words and you infuse your characters with unique mannerisms, your readers will make stronger connections to your characters, making it easy for your readers to visualize the story events as they happen.

Think back to when you were a student in elementary or high school. Recall some of your teachers, recall how they walked around the room, how they engaged the class, how they spoke. In high school I had a chemistry teacher who called everyone "babe", boys, girls, other adults, even the principal. "Hey babe. How are ya babe? Okay, babe this is what we're going to do today." After a while you just shake your head and ignore it. Or, stow it away for use in a future book.

Go to a sporting event, lecture, or just hang around in any public place and you can observe useful mannerisms to put in your books. Look for: tapping fingers, wiggling feet or legs, chewing cheeks or lips or nails, flipping hair out of eyes, running fingers through hair, cracking knuckles, pursing lips, puffing breath. Listen for: repeated words and phrases, unvoiced hums, clicks and other noises. If you don't have time to go out to observe, choose a film and watch it with the sound turned off.

Personal habits are what make us who we are. They are ways that we approach problem solving, ways that we handle stress, ways that we goof off. Many of our personal habits developed during childhood. Some could even be attributed to genetics, since mannerisms and habits are often shared amongst family members.

Your main characters should each have at least one identifiable mannerism or habit that is unique to them. Preferably, the mannerism or habit will reflect their character and put them into conflict with other characters. It doesn't matter whether your character's habit is long standing or more recently acquired, or whether it is a good habit or a bad habit. It does matter how you show it and how it affects other characters or impacts the story.

Evaluate the meaning of your characters habits. What does the habit say about the type of person your character is?
Is it an addictive habit? One that he can't shake?
Does it change him from a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde or the reverse?
Is the habit something the character learned to please a parent or mentor?
What is the function of this habit? What does it do for the character (good or bad)?
How detrimental is the habit to the character?
Is it second nature to him? Does he do it without thinking?
How regularly does the character perform the mannerism? What are the circumstances?
How does the habit affect other characters? Does it drive them crazy, or is it comforting?
Does the habit highlight a talent or strength?
Has the character ever tried to break the habit?
Is this a new habit the character is working on?

Answer some of these questions for your character to help connect this small habit to the larger picture of who your character is and why he behaves the way he does. A small habit often indicates the beginning of a larger problem. The small character flaw is what makes it possible for your reader to connect with your character and that can be crucial to your story.

For more lessons and practice with characters and their flaws, check out my upcoming class:

You are What You Say

February 1, 2013 - February 28, 2013 with Outreach International RWA - Click here to register
This workshop examines the elements needed to reveal character through dialogue. Using character development techniques you already know such as goals, motivations and backstory, learn how to reveal strong characters through their words and connect those words to other elements in your story. Successful novels have an increasing amount of dialogue over narration, forcing dialogue sequences to do more and more of the work of telling the story. Learn how to reveal important information about characters, turning thoughts, appearances, and actions into spoken words. Workshop includes lessons on using dialogue to build tension and anticipation, reveal story secrets, enhance setting and hit readers in the gut with emotion. Includes lessons on dialogue tags, and blending dialogue with narration. Examples from bestselling novels offered as models. This workshop includes a 1-hour chat with the author midway through the workshop

Self-promotion for Hermit-Crab Authors

[image error]Hey, you knew it would one day come to this, didn't you? If not, then you're still dreaming. Shh....don't wake those painfully shy authors from their blissful dreams. They'll find out soon enough it's not possible for publishers to do all the promotion necessary to introduce a book to the reading public. Let's talk quietly while they sleep on. Another reason for talking quietly is that I know most of you who are reading this are pretty shy, too. You probably don't go around gushing constantly about your latest book or carrying extra copies in your trunk just in case you manage to make a sale somewhere along the way during your daily activities. (If you do, good for you!).

It has come to this: self-promotion. You've got to get out there and sell yourself and sell your books. If you get cold sweats just thinking about self-promo for your books you are not alone. Many authors, even well-known ones, have to work hard to get the word out to the book-buying public. Building your readership doesn't happen accidentally, nor does it have to give you nightmares. Here are several low-cost ways to jump into self-promotion without yanking yourself out of your comfy little introvert shell.

First, let's be honest and say up front that your publisher will do very little to promote you. A collective ad in a genre magazine (maybe), sending out review copies (only if it's a hardcover book), and the occasional promotional product giveaways are the rare promotional pushes new and mid-list authors get. Don't count on featured space in bookstores, author signings, or multicity book tours until you are earning lots of money for the publisher. So, what can you do from the comfort of your introverted little shell to promote your books?

At a minimum you'll want a website, some social media links and an email. Your website can be pretty simple, the kind you can set up using templates provided by your website hosting company. You'll want a page that tells a little about you and what kinds of stories you like to write. You don't have to post a photo of yourself. Post one of your doggie instead. Readers love pets. Many authors these days use an avatar instead of their own photo. Another page on your website should list the books you have for sale. You'll want to have the book cover, a blurb and maybe a short excerpt. On that same page provide purchase links to your publisher and also to popular sites like Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Other pages, such as a blog, a page with links to your favorite authors or other sites relevant to your writing are optional. You'll want to provide a way for people to contact you, so have a page with your Facebook and Twitter links as well as a contact email or contact form. Other great social media portals are places like Goodreads or Shelfari where you can share your favorite books and learn about what your friends are reading. Spend some time each month sending free copies of your books to review sites, asking them to review your book. There are many review sites out there and it may take months for reviewers at those sites to get around to reading and reviewing you, so don't wait. If you've got extra cash on hand, you might consider having a book trailer made.

You will also want to promote you. This is not as easy. If you're too shy to go out to your local bookstores or library and far too shy to even think about doing promo by newspapers, TV, or radio, then you have to count on building your readership through online means through your website and social media links. One good method for building your name recognition and getting readers to visit your site is to go on a blog tour. Look for a blog tour promotion company such as Goddess Fish Promotions who will arrange a tour for you, contact all the blog sites and send you the interview questions or blog topics you will need to write. If you're too shy even for this, then you can arrange tours that review your book or simply display your book cover and blurb with purchase links.

There's one more way you can promote yourself and your books without exposing too much of your sensitive side: promotional items. Promotional items, imprinted with your book cover, logo or website can be mailed off to be distributed at writer's conferences, workshops and meetings, libraries, bookstores and book clubs. Most readers are only too happy to receive a professionally-made and practical item. With promotional items, quality counts. If you are going to go to the expense of providing these items to potential readers they have to look professional. If you don't know anything about design and layout, hire someone who does.

Promotion is cumulative. The more you do and the more regularly you do it, the more it builds your name among the readers who are out there. In the meanwhile, perhaps you can learn to overcome some of your shyness and then more promotional opportunities will be available to you. Of course, the most important component of promotional success is to write the best books you possibly can. Most of your energy should be devoted to writing and writing well.