Recently Aimee @ To the Barricade! blogged about classic books that aren't boring. She covered a lot of awesome books and I enjoyed her post so much that I decided to do one as well and add a few books to the "classic but not boring" list.
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As a writer, you want your stories to connect to your readers on two levels. One level is the intellectual: the events in your story should make sense in the world you've set it in and your readers should be able to see logical connections between the events. The other level is the emotional; your readers should be able to relate to what your characters are feeling and should feel a full range of emotions themselves as they read the story.
I know I'm not the first person to have this idea and in fact I'm stealing it from other blogs, but I'm starting a series of short posts about common writers' mistakes. These posts will be a bit like my writing prompts: short and sporadic. If you see one, it will mean that either I'm too busy to write a longer post, or I've just read a book with that particular gaffe, or simply that I'm being lazy (because it's easy to write about someone else's mistakes).
Gemma @ Chasing Daisies tagged me for this one and since I'm a complete bibliophile, I'm more than happy to take it on.
No rules, evidently; so here we go. One of the best ways to make characters believable is to make them complex. A simple character often comes across as a cardboard character--someone simply filling a role in the story without having his own personality, purpose, or goal. Much to my frustration, I've found this to be true too often with my own characters, so here are some of the things I've learned while trying to fix this problem.
After sifting through various character inspiration boards on Pinterest in a vain attempt to bolster my flagging motivation for my story, I've begun to realise why authors so often spend too much time describing their characters and why their characters still seem flat and boring in spite of it.
Most of the boards I came across were full of pictures of celebrities or supermodels in tight suits and awkward poses. While I have nothing against celebrities, I don't think a hundred pictures of Sebastian Stan give you good inspiration for a character. Here's why: it makes you focus on the what not the who.
No.
Or that's my opinion anyway. But I know it's become more popular recently to end a book on a cliff hanger, especially in a series, so let's look at some of the pros and cons of ending a book on a cliff hanger. |
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AuthorA. M. Potter Some other great blogs...
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November 2017
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