Tips & Answers to Qs

A NOD TO THE MASTERS OF THEIR CRAFT ON WRITING

Anne Rice

“Write…write and write and write. If you stop, start again. If you feel blocked,

write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again.

Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.”

“Write the book you would like to read. Write what is interesting to you.

Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found.

Ask yourself what book would be exciting to you and create it.”

“Write about what hurts. Go back to the memory that causes you conflict

and pain and that makes you not able to breath and write about it!

Explore it! Go where that feeling is, don’t be afraid of it.”

“Critics are a dime a dozen. Anybody can be a critic. Writers are priceless.”

From the Editor's Desk

Lions and Tigers and Bears – oh, yeah

For those of you who don’t write or read paranormal or fantasy fiction, we’re talking about the lion, tiger and bear within, and we don’t mean shifters, we mean the character of your MCs.

Everyone has a core ferocity, some of us are shyer about sharing it while others wear it on their sleeve, literally. Have you seen some of those tats?

What ferocity lives inside your MCs? Some professions seem to define the ferocity – warrior, soldier, police officer, firefighter – and the MCs behave accordingly. But the better, more complicated MC is a firefighter who hates the smell of smoke. The police officer who can’t stand the feel of metal. The warrior who’d rather read Byron than fight. The nuance to the ferocity is what makes a character interesting and draws the reader in.

The timid librarian who winds up wielding a katana to save the hero is a classic example of an MC finding their inner ferocity, but let’s not be so obvious. Some introverts read suspense, horror, or who-done-it stories possibly to find their courage, possibly to test their mental prowess on a make-believe battlefield. Some extroverts hide behind their fingers when they get scared watching a movie, or don’t watch the movie because it’ll give them nightmares. Yet, they put on a uniform and go out every workday to protect and serve.

It’s the go-figure, head scratcher behavior that layers the MC’s character, and that makes them human and vulnerable. Fear is not doing the thing that scares you. Conquering fear is heroic. When you envision your MCs, what strength do they draw on? The steel in their spine can come from a wonderful upbringing filled with good examples of what day-to-day courage looks like: the big city bus driver who puts up with everything humanity and traffic can throw at her and comes home every night and helps her kids with their homework. Or the abandoned foster kid who is bounced from one home to another, and, at an elementary school assembly where a dance troupe performs a scene from Swan Lake, feels a fire in his belly and swears he’ll become a ballet dancer no matter what.

How you play with your MC’s core ferocity is part of the fun you have as a writer. Creating the layers that hide the real person within who shows themselves only to their one true love is the beating heart of romance. Dig in, make an emotional mess. Readers will eat it up.