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Creating Strong Characters—Some Typical Challenges

Writing Tips

Guest Post by Jack SmithWrite and Revise for Publication

To write a publishable novel, you must cover a lot of bases.  This means handling a number of fictional elements seamlessly.  Chief among these is creating a strong protagonist, one that is believable as well as compelling.

It’s one thing to speak of a strong character in the abstract, another to create one in a novel.  If you’re like most writers, you continuously face any number of challenges, and since each novel is different, each set of challenges is different.

There are, of course, some standard character issues every writer eventually faces.

And so let’s mull over some of these . . .Continue reading

Your Novel’s Language: How Can You Beat the Blah?

Writing Tips

Guest Post by Jack SmithWrite and Revise for Publication

You have an interesting and compelling premise for your novel.  Your logline is snappy and fetching.  Your characters are complex with complex relationships between them.  Your plot is lock-step, every thread tied up.  Your setting is interesting.

Yet the writing itself isn’t working—it seems drab.  A sample of ten to fifty pages will most likely not get past the agent or editor.  Great idea, but needs considerable work.  Give this thing some flair.

And so now is the time to do some major fine-tuning on the language itself.

What can you do?  There are probably fifty things, but consider two general areas:Continue reading

Setting: Context & Picture

Writing Tips

Guest Post by Jack SmithWrite and Revise for Publication

When we think of a novel, we think of a story.  We think of characters moving through time, growing due to conflict, coming ultimately to some sort of realization, undergoing some sort of change—maturing in some way.  We think of plot.  We think of theme.

We also think of setting.  One thing that makes some novels memorable is a richly developed sense of setting.

A novel must have some sort of setting, or physical environs, where characters move and have their being.  Two questions come up.  1.) How important is setting in a given novel? 2) How do you go about creating setting?  The second question is related to the first because in some novels, if setting is not a major force, you shouldn’t do very much at all.  But if setting is really important, and if it’s important to create strong visual pictures of place, you have a choice of depicting it with a few brush strokes or really describing it in vivid detail.  Continue reading

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