Yesterday on Carrie’s blog she talked about a writer worry that happens a lot, which is figuring out when your novel has too many characters.
You should check that out at carriejonesbooks.blog if it’s one of your worries, but here’s a bit more information about making that deadly decision (deadly for your character, not you).
ANOTHER WAY TO DETERMINE IF THE CHARACTER NEEDS TO BE THERE IS TO THINK ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS’ ROLES IN THE STORY.
Protagonist – The main character. It’s the character that the reader likes, loves, roots for, worries about, the character that moves the plot forward and has emotional development.
Antagonist – The naughty one who keeps our protagonist from quickly achieving their goals.
Sidekick – The bestie. The support system for the protagonist.
Orbital – They tend to get the protagonist in trouble even if that’s not their intent. Think Hermione in Harry Potter. She’s the coolest, but her insistence on doing the right thing and being heroic sometimes pulls Harry into a path of uh-oh. The orbital is basically an instigator.
Love Interest – I don’t have to explain this one, right?
Confidante – This is the person the protagonist tells their secrets to. It can be a trusted friend, a mentor.
Foil – They aren’t the villain, but they are the protagonist’s opposite. Think Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter.
Red Shirts – These are the extras. They are hanging out in the background and encountered, but not super important. The Patils in Harry Potter
If you have a ton of one type of character, you can probably delete or combine one.
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Diversify your characters’ roles and consolidate. Don’t have too many characters doing the same thing/serving the same role.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Keep your crew tight. Don’t think the red shirts are the sidekicks.
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
In the random thoughts part of the podcast we talk about Big Foot, wedgies and how you can tell when predators are looking at you.
THREE BIG STEPS TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE GOOD STUFF
There’s a lot of people out there who say that if you write every day you’ll become a better writer and that’s true … sort of. You also need the basics.
If you write every day, but you don’t learn about writing every day then you don’t get to improve. You just write.
And that’s not good enough.
Learning how to write has to do with a few things. And the first step is to know what you want to write.
FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU’RE INTO
Writing an epic fantasy isn’t the same as writing ad copy and that’s not the same as writing poetry. Pick something. It doesn’t have to be your only style, but pick one way first.
LEARN THE TOOLS
Now here’s the fun part. The learning. How do you learn how to write?
Enroll in courses.
Read things like what you want to write.
Watch blogs, listen to podcasts, and read books about craft.
Talk to other writers who do what you do. They might have cool resources too.
Hire a writing coach or editor who loves helping people and not just loves making money.
GO FOR THE GRAMMAR
Yeah. Yeah. We know. Periods aren’t sexy. Most people don’t get turned on by scene structure, but you should!
If your story is awesome, but there is no punctuation or grammar or even sentences?
You’re not going to be understandable to your potential readers. They are just going to stop reading.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
If you like what you read, please heart it below or share it, it means the world to this writer. x0- Carrie
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
In life and in story, you have these things called transitions. Places were things change.
You go from one place to another, one scene to another, one chapter to another, one husband to another, one president to another.
A really good transition is really just a bridge that helps the reader go logically from one section, scene, chapter to another without it being awkward like a bad date or making their brain hitch where they say things like “We were just in space and now we’re at Wal-Mart? What the heck?”
Some people are amazing at transitions.
Some people have awkward transitions.
Some refuse to acknowledge there even is a transition.
But in the writing world, you want them to be smooth and there are a bunch of transitional phrases and words that authors fall back on to help them do that like:
A week later (or whenever)
At the same time
Afterwards
For two weeks/days/minutes
Meanwhile
At night
The next day
The next night
For a month, I cried into the phone
In the morning
When the sun rose
When the sun set
The following Monday/night/morning
Months passed
Weeks passed
When we got back to the office
When they got back home
As the neared the date site
Then there are the phrases that show us a change in location:
They boarded the train
Down the street
Up on the third floor of the office
Over by the water cooler
Back in my living room
The motorcycle was situated
She ran fast through the dark alley
In the hall of the hospital
Outside on my front lawn
And so on. There are a lot more examples of both of these, but we just wanted to give you a quick look at them.
Sometimes though, us writers tell our readers TOO much and it ends up sounding like script or stage directions. Those are things that slow the narrative down and just read a bit awkward or stilted.
It would be a sentence like:
When I arrived at the elevator to go up to the office on the fourth floor, I pushed the button to close the door and rode it to the floor.
Or
They drove to the restaurant and waited in line for their table and she hummed a little bit.
Instead you just want the transition to get us there into the juicy part of the scene:
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at their table, playing footsie under the fancy white linen tablecloth when the giant hedgehog with a man bun stormed through the wooden doors.
Places like the bad examples are not really needed because:
It doesn’t really add to the story.
It doesn’t really add to the character.
It’s unnecessary information.
You really only want things in your story that:
Show your character’s inner state/characterization/choices
Move the plot forward.
Set the reader in the moment.
Story is all about characters making choices, being proactive and moving things forward and showing us who they are by those choices and their dialogue. So, you want to focus on getting the reader to those scenes where people interact and the character has to make a choice that either goes towards or against their main wants. Effective transitions help get us there but also ground the reader in the moment and time of the story in a logical, cool way.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
If you never, get off the couch, you never have a chance for treats from the pantry. If you snap every single time someone strartles you awake, you get less love. Embrace the transitions. They are opportunities for growth, to evolve, to learn new stuff, and potentially get some veggie bacon.
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Seriously. The best books are like wedgies. You can’t ignore them. They get right up inside you and into places they aren’t supposed to go.
And sometimes it’s hard to get them out.
This week Carrie talked to a lot of her writers about how if you don’t long to write your scenes, your readers probably aren’t going to long to read those scenes either.
And recently the New York Times talked to Steve Martin (actor, writer, comedian) about books. He’s allegedly addicted to audiobooks, which is cool.
He said, “I’m also a sucker for the magic of opening paragraphs. I’ll never understand what the sorcery is in literature and movies that engages you immediately and makes it impossible to look away.”
A wedgie engages you immediately.
And a book can do that too, sometimes. But sometimes it’s not like a wedgie; it’s more like a bad 8-hour Zoom meeting about land use ordinances and setback requirements in a town you’ll never visit.
So how do you keep your book from being boring?
You wedgify it. Yes, we made up that word.
HOW DO YOU WEDGIFY A BOOK?
You go all in. Make the conflict as big as possible.
You have dynamic scenes where things happen. Not just the character’s meandering thoughts about Zoom meetings.
You make us care. Wedgies matter because your bum matters.
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Go all in with your stories. Make the conflict (internal or external) huge, presidential huge. But more than that, make us care about who the conflict is happening to.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Commitment is not a dirty word.
We talk about this in our random thought and how David Brooks (the writer) has some issues regarding privilege and class as we all do, but here is something interesting that he wrote in his book, which uses two mountains as a metaphor for our journey and aspirations in life.
Moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments — temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation. When your life is defined by fervent commitments, you are on the second mountain.
David Brooks
That second mountain? It’s not just happiness. It’s joy. It’s as David Schools paraphrases it, “a journey to a moral life.”
And what are those commitments? It’s not just marriage so do not panic! It’s also family, vocation, faith/philosophy, and community.
Schools says:
“Full exploration of material, experiential, and intellectual aims leave you hungry for more, restless from comparison, and lonely in your deepest substrate. It’s exhausting. The self is unable to remain in a state of permanent satisfaction.
“This is what Brooks came to find in his own journey. What then is left? You decide to “settle” for that dirty word. Commitment. Only commitments matter. Paradoxically, they are actually what make you feel most alive and here’s why:
“You love what you sacrifice for. When you give yourself away to someone or something, you find a sense of purpose that isn’t focused on the rat wheels of personal development or self-improvement. Instead, you find an exhilarating freedom that connects with other people on a deeper level.”
David Schools
That’s a pretty big dog tip for life right there. And for you writers listening out there, it is the commitments we have to our book and that our characters have to each other that make the meaningful wedgies.
SHOUT OUT!
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
I have a quick, pre-recorded Teachable class designed to make you a killer scene writer in just one day. It’s fun. It’s fast. And you get to become a better writer for just $25, which is an amazing deal.
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
And one time at the game, her jv coach yelled at her. She cried the entire way home. She refused to cry on the bench because she’s stoic like that.
Carrie talked to the varsity coach the next morning and he said, “Yeah. I had to do damage control on four or five players after that game. He had them all crying.”
It is hard for us to handle my kid crying about soccer.
One because in the big scheme of things it’s not important. But also, having someone yell at you is like having them give you a wedgie. It’s embarrassing, you feel the opposite of awesome and it can hurt.
That’s the thing reality hurts.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote, FINDING FLOW, says, “To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands and potential frustrations.”
Crying because of soccer coaches counts as the reality of the everyday moments.
So does not putting the filter in the coffee maker right so that eight cups of water and coffee grinds spill all over the counter and the floor.
So does getting a wedgie or trolled on Facebook by your Great Aunt Mary’s best friend who thinks wearing masks is a conspiracy sent by aliens from the planet GoodSpa.
So does realizing your WIP is in need of serious help.
Part of improvisational comedy and improvisational life is facing the facts even when those facts suck.
That’s Patricia Ryan Madson’s seventh maxim in her book IMPROV WISDOM is about facing fact.
Carrie really hates facing the facts, sometimes. But she likes the facts (even when they aren’t in her favor) because the facts aren’t lies.
We have to go with what truths we have and sometimes what we have is a middle school jv soccer coach who makes people cry. Or a politician or a family member who does the same thing
Sometimes the truth is a ton of coffee-stained water on the floor or a dog who peed when she woke up and somehow that pee created a big puddle under your king-sized bed.
Sometimes the truth is a WIP that needs serious help. Sometimes it’s a relationship that needs that, a country, a community.
And today, the day, we’re releasing the podcast is election day in the United States and it’s not an understatement to say that the U.S. is having a difficult year and a lot of us are really worried about today.
But worries and wishes? That’s not where it’s at.
As this brilliant woman says,
“Wishing things were different simply wastes time. The improviser can’t afford unrealistic thinking. Instead, she builds bridges over rocky terrain and turns lemons into lemonade. She works with what is actually in front of her, setting aside the temptation to dwell on what is not.”
Patricia Madson
She is so smart.
Now is not the time for just worrying and wishing. It’s a time for action. Write your books. Protest. Vote for your candidates. Create the community and laws and system that seem fair and equitable to you.
But do it. No matter what
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Wishing your story into existence doesn’t make your story exist. Dig in. Write it. Write it now.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Don’t laze around on the couch and let all the other dogs do the work. Bark. Guard things that are important to you. You can’t complain that you don’t get any treats if you never make an effort.
SHOUT OUT
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
NEW BOOK ALERT!
My little novella (It’s spare. It’s sad) is out and it’s just $1,99. It is a book of my heart and I am so worried about it, honestly.
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.
CARRIE’S TEACHABLE CLASS!
I have a quick, pre-recorded Teachable class designed to make you a killer scene writer in just one day. It’s fun. It’s fast. And you get to become a better writer for just $25, which is an amazing deal.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
But wedgies can be sinister jerks that are not just a trope for literature or tv so that us writer people can easily show someone being a jerk.
They happen in real life, too.
There are people who have wedgie fetishes, actually. There is also the occurrence called the accidental-self-induced wedgie.
And they can have consequences!
About ten years ago, a bunch of scientific articles were written about a man, 50, who had some bad back pain. His left leg and five toes on that left foot tingled and were numb.
Why?
His 34-year-old wife gave him a wedgie when he was finally getting up off the sofa. For six years, he had those symptoms if he put his full weight on his left leg.
His wife no longer gave him wedgies, by the way.
What does this have to do with writing you might wonder?
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Something even as simple as a wedgie can have nuance and consequence and as writers we have to look deeply inside our underwear story and see what symbols and actions we’re using. Are we putting a wedgie incident in there because it’s the easy way to show someone being a poop monster? Are we fully thinking out the consequences of our character’s choices and of what happens to a person’s body when they get a really bad wedgie?
Dog tip for life
You don’t have to worry about wedgies if you don’t wear underwear.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
WRITING NEWS
Art News
I’ll be at CoeSpace in Bangor on June 7 as an artist! I know! I know! I’m hyperventilating about it already.
My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can preorder this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON
On February first, I launched my Patreon site where I’m reading chapters (in order) of a never-published teen fantasy novel, releasing deleted scenes and art from some of my more popular books. And so much more. Come hang out with me! Get cool things!
WHAT IS PATREON?
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!
Quick Writing Tip. Ignore my face!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
But wedgies can be sinister jerks that are not just a trope for literature or tv so that us writer people can easily show someone being a jerk.
They happen in real life, too.
There are people who have wedgie fetishes, actually. There is also the occurrence called the accidental-self-induced wedgie.
And they can have consequences!
About ten years ago, a bunch of scientific articles were written about a man, 50, who had some bad back pain. His left leg and five toes on that left foot tingled and were numb.
Why?
His 34-year-old wife gave him a wedgie when he was finally getting up off the sofa. For six years, he had those symptoms if he put his full weight on his left leg.
His wife no longer gave him wedgies, by the way.
What does this have to do with writing you might wonder?
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Something even as simple as a wedgie can have nuance and consequence and as writers we have to look deeply inside our underwear story and see what symbols and actions we’re using. Are we putting a wedgie incident in there because it’s the easy way to show someone being a poop monster? Are we fully thinking out the consequences of our character’s choices and of what happens to a person’s body when they get a really bad wedgie?
Dog tip for life
You don’t have to worry about wedgies if you don’t wear underwear.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
WRITING NEWS
IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!
My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can preorder this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON
On February first, I launched my Patreon site where I’m reading chapters (in order) of a never-published teen fantasy novel, releasing deleted scenes and art from some of my more popular books. And so much more. Come hang out with me! Get cool things!
WHAT IS PATREON?
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!
Quick Writing Tip. Ignore my face!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
