Essays Assistance » fiction

Wooffer – Children’s Tome Re-examination

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:33:05 +0000

Wooffer is a store of thirty-three sharp animal-adventure children stories initially written past Betty Fasig for her family. The center character is Wooffer, a frightening dachshund puppy that “mom”, the prime mover, receives as a hit Xmas gift from her fun-loving family.

A host of animals discernment the pages of Wooffer, including Old Agnes the mouse, attentive and defensive Margaret the hen, Marygrey the expecting rabbit, a proud and likeable peacock named Cho Lee who loves to prance his stuff and falls in fondness with a quail, and greatest friends Ibie the Ibis and Maudie the horse.

The stories are thoughtfully placed in chronological brotherhood, factual down to the season. It even includes a Xmas history! This is a book not far from a puppy that changes the opinions of those round him, wins hearts and becomes a credible, exaggerated friend. Wooffer earns respect from all the animals seeing that miles far and becomes a hint of a legend around the interval he grows up.

Roughly loving, game of and light-hearted, Wooffer also tackles real-life issues from striking, loneliness, gaining courtesy, discerning correctness from what a given is told, getting dissolute, overcoming bullies and more.

Having finished a handful years on a subcontract in my prepubescence, I enquire germs of correctness in the animal relationships and can warrant the strange and wonderful bonds that happen between species. The epilogue provides a dangerous closure close to revealing how all the animals still bring back to the verbatim at the same time area annually and dissipate time with Wooffer and his friends discussing the old times and having modish adventures.

Inserted again are sundry delightful non-professional drawings of existence and adventures on the arable that are unflinching to entertain children. The cover is a photograph of the energy for the vigour description – the author’s dog – which gives a more hard-nosed texture to the book than a characterization or composition could eat done.

The ticket’s underlying theme is that no matter how slight a living soul may think they are, or how grudging of a emotional attachment they may do – they can forge a dissension to the lives of those ’round them. And this is an encouraging thought.

Wooffer is an omitting record for the purpose bedtime stories, but will be unsurpassed enjoyed when reading to groups of children. Written the silva method books free download in such a something like a collapse that the reader can easily characterize the animals and situations with their expression, the engage is indubitable to bring giggles of enjoyment to groups of children. As such, I meditate on Wooffer would be an worthy besides to the bookshelves of libraries, schools, daycare centers and the like.

Top Secret! The One-Year Path To Publication

Essays — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:42:04 +0000

There is a way to virtually guarantee your publication within a single year. No, it has nothing to do with self-publication. This path is not for dilettantes, and will push you to the limit, but it has worked for dozens of my students, and it will work for you.

It is based on writing principles first proposed by two giants in the publishing field, science-fiction writers Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein, over thirty years ago. And no, you don’t have to be a science fiction writer. No matter what your ULTIMATE goal&ndashnovel, screenplay, playwright, or poet, you can adapt this method. It is designed to address literally every major problem you have or might encounter as a writer.

1) Write a story a week, or a story every other week.

2) Read 10X as much as you write.

3) Put your stories in the mail. Keep them in the mail until they sell.

4) Never re-write except to editorial request.

And there you go. Now let’s look back at the steps for a bit of further explanation.

1) Write a story a week, or a story every other week. These can be as short as you wish. No, it doesn’t matter if you want to write novels, or your ideas tend to emerge from your subconscious in long form. If you’re a newbie runner training for a marathon, you’d start by running around the block, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t start by running twenty-six miles, that’s for sure! Everything you need to know to write a book is contained in a short story, and writing 100,000 words of short stories will improve your writing far more than that same 100,000 words devoted to a novel. Scriptwriting? Before you can write a script, you need to be certain you understand storytelling. I mean REALLY understand it, subconsciously. Short stories give you a chance to hone your skills. Poetry? Well, in this case, write a poem a week! Non-Fiction? Sure! Write an article a week!

2) Read 10X what you write. There is nothing sadder than a young writer who doesn’t read for fear of “contaminating his style.” This is complete self-delusion. A writer DESPERATELY needs to read everything she can get her hands on…and of the very best quality. Personally, I read one act of Shakespeare aloud each morning, to simultaneously improve my writing and speaking ability.

3) Put your stories in the mail. Every week, or every other week, one of your stories should be submitted to an editor who pays money for publication. Frankly, it doesn’t matter how much. Money is a very cold equation, something different from pats on the back, cheers, contributors copies or even awards. When an editor cuts you a check, there is a lack of warm fuzzy feelings, and a down-to-earth “will my readers like this” that is completely different from the accolades or criticisms of your writing group or class. THIS is the feedback you need: a check that clears the bank. Get your stories out! And web publication is just fine in this regard&ndashas long as there is money. Even a penny a word&ndashor less!–is just fine.

4) Don’t re-write except to editorial request. Once your story is finished and initially re-written, move on. Don’t re-write endlessly, trying to get it “perfect.” You’ll learn more by writing a new story than re-writing an old one endlessly.

If you’ll do this, I promise you your first sales within fifty stories. At the story a week level, that’s one year! Just one year from today, you could be a paid author. And for any real writer, that should be an idea exciting enough to keep them up late, and get them up early, typing away, knowing that that first acceptance check is less than 365 days way.

Consider Self Publishing in Ebook Format

Essays — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:33:53 +0000

Today, more than every before authors are presented with publishing opportunities that have never existed before. This is not to understate the hard work that authors have to go through to get recognition, write great books, and make a full time living from their passion of expression. However, it is to say that today, due to advances in communications technology, authors can now get their books distributed much easier than they could a decade ago. One very popular way that authors are distributing their work is digitally through ebooks. Digital books are gaining so much popularity that even some of the most popular authors in the world have used it to distribute their books. Stephen King for example published “Riding the Bullet” exclusively in ebook format. When this ebook began distribution over Barns and Nobel and Amazon.com there was so much demand for the download that the servers of these two book giants slowed down almost to a halt. People that wanted to download the ebook were put in a large queue with the hundreds of thousands of other who downloaded the ebook as well.

It’s not only big name authors that are finding success in ebooks. We at Ebook Architect have been helping authors create, market and sell their ebooks online for years now with great success. Many of these people are first time authors and are often amazed with the success of their ebook sales. Below are some of their ebook writing tips.

Don’t underestimate the power of the Ebook

Ebooks are still looked upon as unpopular by many authors who have not yet taken the time to learn about the success within this industry. For example, while the traditional publishing industry growing at the sluggish rate of 5% a year the digital publishing industry is growing at rates between 30% -50%. This means that the opportunities within the publishing industry are growing at a fraction of the rate that opportunities within the digital publishing industry are growing.

To set up an ebook you don’t need to be a tech wizard

Setting up your ebook from the idea conceptualization stage to the selling stage can’t be completed overnight but it is definitely something that can be done by anyone regardless of your technological background. If you can use a word processor then you can create and sell an ebook online. While it is recommended you set up your own website, it is not necessary. There are outlets such as amazon.com, EBay and Lulu.com to name only a few sites that allow you to post your ebook on their servers.

Setting up an Ebook site is virtually costless and you keep 100% of the profits

With traditional publishers you’ll be lucky to see 10% of the profits from your book. With ebooks however, you keep 100% of the profits minus the fees required to set up the site which are minimal. Here is the fee breakdown for ebooks vs traditional books

Ebook vs Book cost

Ebook = Free to create an unlimited number of copies

Book = Approximately $1500 for 200 copies of a 200 page soft cover book

Rights and profit

Ebook = You keep 100% of the profits and rights to your ebooks

Book = You get 10-40% royalty (usually about $2-$5/ book)

With the above examples it is easy to see that for first time authors ebooks make a lot of sense. The risk associated with publishing an ebook is much lower than it is with distributing a soft or hard cover book. Likewise, as an ebook author you’ll keep virtually all of your own profits.

If nothing else, it is something worth consideration. Ebooks may not replace traditional paperback books, but they certainly are gaining popularity at a rate that should make all authors stop to think about how they could use ebooks to their advantage.

The Details Are In The Calendar

Essays — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:33:30 +0000

Like many authors, writing a novel was always an aspiration. When I finally started the process, in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace I had a great story that had evolved from real-life events. Still, the majority of my experience was writing nonfiction, a style that generally called for straight facts with less emphasis on descriptive elements. Exceptional fiction requires authentic details that pull the reader into the world in which the story takes place. I discovered that one of the best ways to do this is to construct the narrative around a calendar.

Wanting feedback on the story, I sent an early draft of the manuscript to an editor I’d learned of through one of my writing groups. While she liked the novel, she noted there was no specific timeline of years or events, and felt the story could essentially be taking place at any time. The editor suggested using a calendar with actual dates and specific years during which the story would be set. By taking this approach, it not only helped me plan the story better, but a historical reference of Jesse Ventura’s election as governor of Minnesota in 1998 or making note of the Aquatennial Festival held in Minneapolis each July could be woven into the narrative and enhance the authenticity of the book.

Implementing her advice, I constructed a five-year calendar over which the story in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace unfolds. The calendar not only worked well as an organizational and research tool, but it also served to focus the book over a definite time period. In real life, the events that inspired Shades of Darkness occurred over a much longer period of time, making for an unwieldy time frame that dragged on too long, offered no sense of closure, and risked boring the reader. By using a specific calendar, those events could be compressed into a much shorter and intense span.

Employing a real calendar also heightened the dramatic effect of the narrative. In a crucial incident near the end of book, Paul Pierson is arrested for domestic battery in a scheme orchestrated by his ex-wife. Threatened with spending the weekend in the county jail if bail money cannot be raised, the scene takes place over the New Year’s holiday of 2000/2001. Only by using a real calendar did I discover that if Paul were arrested on Saturday December 30, 2000 he could be looking at several days in jail. In 2001 New Year’s Day fell on a Monday, and banks would not have reopened until Tuesday, January 2. Utilizing real dates offered the dramatic dilemma of the Pierson family frantically pooling their financial resources to keep Paul from extended jail time.

Working off a calendar can also combat one of the hazards many authors confront &ndash writer’s block. Once I had the basic framework of the novel laid out across a calendar, if I was having difficulty with a particular chapter or scene, I could write another chapter and return at a later point to the problematic area with renewed inspiration. For many authors I’ve known, it can be easier to write out-of-order when the energy strikes than to force a writer to compose a manuscript in linear fashion. A calendar not only helps an author render a vivid story, but can be a useful tool in tracking the progress and consistency of the plot.

The initial version of the calendar was bare bones &ndash an outline of the main scenes that comprised the novel. From there I began writing individual scenes, building on them and incorporating the crucial details, many of which were discovered through research. Those descriptions that make a scene real might be as ordinary as the weather on Halloween or the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence of the Millennium, experiences any reader could relate to.

Details should engage the reader and connect them to the characters, setting, and narrative. This editor taught me a great lesson &ndash that for fiction to truly come alive requires authentic details. For many authors, those details can often be found within the framework of a calendar.

What A New Writer Has To Know About Creating A Character

Essays — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:31:56 +0000

What is the soul of a story? Some people say the plot, some others say the characters. I say, it’s both.

But now, I’d like to talk about characters.

How do you create a character?

Here are some ways used by writers out there in creating the characters in their story:

• Go with the flow

Some writers begin with the first few lines. As long as they can get something interesting for the first line, the rest will follow. The character’s personality grows at the same time the writer builds the plot. It is not actually intentionally created. Some writers like this method because, for them, the process of writing is full of magic. It seems like it’s their hands and mind working together in their subconscious mind. This kind of method is normally used by professional or experienced writers

• Concept the details

Some other writers prefer to deeply know the characters. They must know the whole details about this ‘person.’ They make a list of all the details about the characters. The list contains name (full name and how you call them), age (time and date of birth), height, weight, skin, hair and eye color, hair style, parents’, spouse, children and siblings’ name, address, phone number, educational background, job, good and bad habits, favorite food, book, movie and music. For the previous type of writer mentioned above, this method might seem boring. It seems like all the excitement is gone with the list. But for those preferring this method, it is a good way to build the story, along with the plot.

• Use someone they know

Some other writers prefer to just use a figure they know. They use all basic information about the model, their life, their job, their personality, etc. This is the less creative way in constructing a character.

Try one of those three tips that you feel most comfortable with. Or, try all three then decide which suits you most.

Save The Planet, Hug A Clam

Essays — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:31:33 +0000

It has become obvious to all but the most unrelentingly stubborn apologists for the oil industry that we now stand at a pivotal moment in the history of our planet. As much fun as it would be to make fun of Al Gore’s pretentious drawl and expanding bald spot, none of us can afford to ignore his clarion call for global change. With humankind’s carbon footprint leaving a catastrophic impact upon Mother Earth, it is the sacred responsibility of every citizen to make a change for the better. We can all agree on that much, but the next question is a lot thornier: How exactly do you start?

As in so many vital areas of life, when confronted by a monumental task it is beneficial to start with something small. In other words, begin by taking a “micro” view of your “macro” problem. Numerous studies have indicated that the more we are taught to respect and even love the tiniest creatures, the deeper connection we will feel to the planet at large. So if you’re looking to address climate change in your own way, you might want to start by picking up a copy of Fables From the Mud by Erik Quisling. This book, simple in structure yet profound in implication, illuminates the plight of Earth’s smallest inhabitants in a style that will make you laugh even as your empathy expands.

The first thing you are apt to notice about Fables is the fluid interchange between illustrations and text. This book has been designed with such a graceful simplicity that you could easily read it cover to cover in a single sitting. Indeed, once you’ve gotten a sense of its sharp humor and cerebral charms, you may be tempted to consume the whole thing while in the middle of a crowded book store.

Try to avoid this temptation, as you will find Fables to be a veritable banquet of philosophical speculation and belly laughs. How in God’s name, you may be wondering, can one book offer such seemingly incongruous rewards? The answer to that question is the secret of Quisling’s triumph. He has crafted three distinct but thematically connected tales,focusing on some of the Earth’s least respected inhabitants: a clam, an ant, and an earthworm. Against all expectation, Quisling turns these lowly invertebrates into heroes of truly epic scale.

By infusing so much ambiguous life and recognizably human foibles into its three-pack of protagonists, Fables allows readers to understand these creatures as reflections of ourselves. Laughable as the clam’s frustration with the emptiness of his existence might seem, is our own periodic despair any less ridiculous? It all comes down to a matter of perspective, which seems to be one of Quisling’s primary lessons.

After reading this timeless book, you may find yourself thinking twice before stepping on the next ant you see crossing the sidewalk. He’s a guest on this ailing planet, just like you. And for all you know, he might be in the middle of an heroic struggle worthy of mention in a book Fables From the Mud.

Scams, Schemes, And Shams: Who Can An Author Trust?

Essays — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:00:53 +0000

Authors in their quest to get published can fall victim to scams. Here’s a few tips to help you avoid the traps.

Online Matching Services and Email Blast Programs

These services, for a fee, put your query letter, synopsis and first chapter online. Acquisition editors and literary agents then have the opportunity to peruse the offerings. You have to ask yourself if you truly believe that the average literary agent, who receives 1100 unsolicited queries a year, has the time to look at these websites.

The reverse, or maybe it’s the inverse, are services that have databases of agents and publishers. You specify the genre of your book and up pops agents/publishers who have said they are interested in your genre. Sometimes the agents/publishers have provided their acquisition specs and sometimes the owner of the database has just input the information from other sources.

Finally there are services who will email blast your query letter to agents/publishers. If the participants have agreed to receive the query letters there is a higher probability you will be successful. But, again you have to wonder, with all the unpublished manuscripts out there looking for a publishing home, why would an agent/publisher feel it necessary to sign up for these types of services.

Book Doctors…but are they quacks?

The beginning author wonders: 1) Do I really have talent? 2) Is my book ready to be marketed, or does it need additional work?

One option is to hire an editing service, sometimes called a book doctor. This is not simply a copy editor who checks for grammar, sentence structure, and spelling. A book doctor looks at the plot, characters, dialogue, continuity and flow.

It almost seems like more people making a living selling editing services&ndashbook doctors, script doctors&ndashthan writers earning a living. In screenwriting, it has become an epidemic. Producers who run out of money have even taken up the script doctoring profession to pay the rent while they are “between films.”

Asking another person to re-write your work is problematic. Who knows your story better than you do? It is extremely difficult to evaluate how talented these editors are, to determine if they are really going to improve your work.

Fees for these services can range from several hundred dollars to five or ten thousand dollars.

Remember that all manuscripts need editing. And that one of the publisher’s jobs is to work with the writer on getting the manuscript ready to publish.

Another option is a critique service; this is usually less expensive. They provide a report of their view of what is good and bad about the work, and perhaps its market potential. They are, at best, just one person’s opinion. If the critique service isn’t a publisher, how do they know what will sell and what won’t.

Marketing Services

There are many companies who provide legitimate services to authors in marketing and promoting their titles. Just because a company requires a fee doesn’t mean it’s a scam.

Having said that, if your book is not offered with industry standard terms, bookstores are highly unlikely to stock it, no matter what the marketing efforts are. Your book must be returnable to the publisher through the major wholesalers. It must be offered with 90 days for payment. It must be offered with at least a 40% discount from the retail price. These terms must be offered from the publisher not the author &ndash unless of course the author is the publisher. Keep in mind that the author must own the ISBN, International Standard Book Number to be considered the publisher.

When a marketing company is unconcerned that the terms are not industry standard you should be concerned.

Essence Of Character – Seven Steps To Creating Characters That Write Themselves

Essays — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:26:54 +0000

Creating characters that are believable takes time and discipline. Creating dynamically real individuals and not imposing your own thoughts and impressions upon them is not easy to do, and is often the difference between a novel or screenplay that sits in a closet and one that finds its way around town and into the hands of audiences. Spending your time building your characters before they enter the world of your story makes the process of writing an easier and more enjoyable ride, and creates a finished product that agents, publishers, producers and readers can truly be excited by.

You must first agree to operate from the understanding that the three-dimensionality of your characters is not created magically. Talent equals discipline multiplied by time and you must practice (daily) the art of developing your characters. As a development executive with LA Film Lab Entertainment (a literary development and production company), I have developed a framework to assist you in creating rich and complex characters. The complexity that you desire comes through 1) labeling their desire essences, 2) labeling their fear essences, 3) getting specific about their past, 4) labeling their behavior, 5) raising their stakes, 6) not meddling in their lives, and 7) letting them play. Asking provoking questions in line with these steps, answering them thoroughly, and then repeating the process, provides constant individual growth in your characters that mirrors life. Now let’s take each step in turn:

1. Label the Desire Essences of each of your main characters: The first key to deepening your work is finding the major motivators in the lives of your characters that drive their actions. We all have deep aspirations that drive our choices, our thoughts, our actions and reactions. These needs are what differentiate us from one another and we will refer to them as “Desire Essences.” Some examples of DESIRE ESSENCES are: the desire to be intellectually brilliant; the desire to be socially famous; the desire to hide from the world; the desire to belong to a group; the desire to be loved; the desire to party; the desire to die.

2. Label the Fear Essences of each of your main characters: What is at the root of each of your characters’ darker sides? For every desire they have they should also exhibit the antithetical fear of failing at that desire. These fears will battle their aspirations for control over their behavior. Labeling and understanding the darker sides of your characters is imperative to creating the dimensional and imperfect characters you are after. Some examples of FEAR ESSENCES are: the fear of being stupid; the fear of being ordinary; the fear of being socially exposed; the fear of being rejected by a group; the fear of being loathed; the fear of being boring; the fear of having to face life.

3. Get specific with your Backstory: Human behavior is made up of a string of moments and reactions to those moments. A character’s current behavior is a battle between fear and desire and their immediate choices are made based on very specific (yet unconscious) experiences from their past &ndash experiences that leave imprints much like DNA. Though your characters should be unconscious of these past experiences that are influencing them, you the writer must create these in your preparation of their backstory be fully aware of them. Here is an example of what won’t benefit you vs. what will when getting specific with backstory:

Bad example of getting specific: Rachel is a pretty girl who thinks she is unattractive. She prefers to live in her books as opposed to being with friends or family. Her father has abused her sexually throughout her youth. She hates attention.

Better example of getting specific: On her graduation day, at a party her Mother is throwing for her, Rachel’s sexually abusive father shows up drunk and congratulates her, hugging her too closely, grabbing her rear end with both hands, and calling her pretty in front of a room full of her friends and family. She runs away humiliated and hides in her room, escaping into one of her fantasy books. That night she moves out to stay with a friend and doesn’t tell her friends where she is going. Two weeks later she finds out through another friend that her father died in a car accident. He had been drunk.

In the better example of getting specific, the reader can have a visceral reaction to the words. This is caused by the detail. The generality of the bad reaction is logical, but lifeless. In the better example it is easy to determine what the essences of our leading lady might be: desire to hide, maybe even desire to die, desire to live in her books, desire to be valued for her intellect instead of her body, fear of loneliness, fear of her appearance, fear of the opposite sex, fear of losing a loved one, fear of being abandoned.

4. Describe their Current Behavior: Take the essences and the specific examples you have now created and determine what kind of behavior your characters might exhibit as a result. Don’t limit yourself with these, but rather excite yourself with the possibilities.

Simple examples from our leading lady – a woman who: hides her body; avoids friends from her past; mistrusts anyone who comments favorably on her appearance; desires to control her education and her intellect; avoids alcohol.

5. Raise the stakes: Emotions are extreme. Play in the realm of this extreme when dealing with the fears and ambitions of your characters. These essences are all encompassing; meaning that we spend our lifetimes with them. Don’t cheat your characters by being afraid to raise the stakes as high as you can. Needing to find a precious stone to sell to an art dealer by midnight to raise the financing to save your character’s mother’s house before the bank takes it away from her tomorrow is exciting! Look back at your own life and think of how seriously you take your essences &ndash when your essences are threatened will you fight to extremes to defend them, just as when they are fulfilled, do you enjoy some of your greatest moments in life? Play in the realm of the extreme. Raise the stakes. Your essences are life and death to you &ndash let them be that way to your characters.

6. Don’t meddle: Of course you might be saying to yourself, “How do I not meddle &ndash I’m the writer!” But a truthful story is going to grow from your willingness to let your characters make their own decisions based on how you have defined them (which after these exercises will be in great depth). As their parent, you have to let your children go; this is the point at which your story truly begins. DO NOT MEDDLE IN THEIR LIVES. Continually remind yourself &ndash it’s not about you. You just serve the story. Let your characters make their own decisions. If you ever find yourself not knowing what decision they might make &ndash question your homework and rework their essences, behaviors and stakes until their choice becomes obvious.

7. Let your characters play: Once you have developed several characters by labeling their essences, getting specific, defining their behavior, and raising the stakes, you are ready to begin to let them interact. It’s like the first day at a new school; ripe with possibility. When properly developed, there is no way to predict how your characters will behave in any given situation, but they are so full of life and their own agendas that they are ready to interact with other characters who have been developed to the same level. If you have done the work to get to this place &ndash this is where your characters will begin to write themselves.

Follow these steps to create the richer characters you want to be writing.

Find the Essences:

To find the essences of your characters, you have to look to their history and their genetics. Just like real people, your characters’ current behavior is defined by their DNA combined with experiences you create in their past. We all have the basic fears and ambitions of survival, shelter, and food, so when working on these essences focus on the ones that really drive each character. Consider ethnicity, religious beliefs, and major life events. Address sex, drugs, music, parents, siblings, education, appearance and intelligence for sure.

Start by writing out twenty DESIRE ESSENCES that feel right for each main character. Then determine one polar opposite of each DESIRE to create your twenty FEAR ESSENCES. Go back and toss the ones that you now feel less attached to. Repeat and refine the process until you have at least ten of each for each character that really excite you.

Get specific about Backstory:

Get specific about how your character’s essences have come to be. Create definitive moments in your characters’ lives that detail when these fears and desires were initiated. Come up with five supporting examples of moments in their lives when each of these essences was tested and eventually vindicated in the name of the fear or in the name of the desire. Failure vindicates the fear and success vindicates the desire. Write at least one half page of text supporting each -Yes that will give you a total of twenty-five pages of essence work. Do the work.

10 Essences (a desire and a fear for each) x 5 samples for each = 50 descriptions (each a half page)

Label the Current Behavior:

Using their essences and their specific past, come up with ten sample behaviors for each character. Simple example: a character who has a desire to hide and a fear of being publicly humiliated, has a specific past incident of continually having their pants pulled down in public by a sibling. The current behavior – they might always wear a belt, or might always look behind themselves in a very specific attempt to never be humiliated again.

Raise the stakes:

After looking over your newly created examples, it should be easy to determine some issues that might be going on in their lives that would increase or decrease their stress. A decrease in stress generally excites people to take greater chances, while an increase in stress tends to shorten people’s fuses.

List five possible increases or decreases in your characters stress level.

Don’t meddle and let them play:

Now put two of your fully developed characters into the same room. Implement two or three increases in stress to one character and two or three decreases in stress to the other character and let them bounce off of one another. Go into this exercise with no preconceived notions of what might happen. If you have done your homework, they should affect one another.*

*If you need a jumpstart &ndash add an element that one needs from the other and give the other a strong reason for not wanting to provide what that character needs. Could be tangible or emotional.

Seven Ways To Connect Your Writing And Your Life

Essays — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:47:41 +0000

An important question for any artist is: How can I built a career and simultaneously be true to myself? It’s an important question, and during the twenty years I’ve taught writing, hundreds of students have expressed the belief that success and personal integrity are mutually exclusive.

The Lifewriting

America’s Next Great Writer

Essays — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:54:06 +0000

Every once in a while a writer comes along that demands we take notice; one that avails just the right meter, tempo, and rhythm; one that can engulf us in a story and keep us glued throughout 200 pages; one that offers a style sure to be emulated by his aspiring peers, both of his generation and generations to come.

Nelson Pahl is just that writer.

With simultaneous debut releases, entitled Bee Balms & Burgundy and Two for Tuesday, Pahl flexes a literary muscle short in supply today&ndashone that whispers, “legend in the making.”

Although the hardcover version of Bee Balms & Burgundy won’t hit stores until March, I had the pleasure of reading the pre-release, limited edition eBook version, which is available at .NelsonPahl.com and .IndieMill.com. There, you can even read a sample chapter, to whet your appetite.

Bee Balms & Burgundy is a charming story of latent lifelong love and the quest to conquer all that stands in its way. Nick May is a successful thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur living in Vancouver. He breaks off an explosive, distrusting eleven-month live-in relationship just before he travels home to St. Paul to see his widowed mother. The relationship leaves him cynical about love, to say the least. Once in St. Paul, he discovers next-door neighbor and lifelong pal Mia Lawson, 30, has a couple secrets she’s been dying to share with him. One, unbeknownst to Nick, is that she’s now a post-mastectomy breast cancer survivor, still hoping to conquer her disease. The second secret levels Nick even more.

Pahl not only delves into the oft-taboo topic of breast cancer with literary vigor, but he also revels in it, astutely capturing the female emotions attached to such a dreadful experience. The chemistry between his two main characters borders on the divine, as we ride along upon an always charming but sometimes heartbreaking chariot through Nicky and Mia’s sensual and ethereal yet trying world.

While Indie Nation Magazine bills the book as “…the best love story you’ll read this year,” I beg to differ, slightly; I’ll argue that it might be the best love story you ever read. Bee Balms courageously delves into a subject today’s “socially conscious” novelists won’t go near, and it treats the topic with grace, dignity, depth, and, yes, even endearing sensuality.

Pahl is a wonderful example of why some of America’s best writers now insist on writing for independent presses: A major publishing house would only shackle his rich and witty writing style and subdue his “outside-the-box” storytelling.

Yet, Pahl’s strict and uncommon literary discipline&ndashalong with his hand for sensuous descriptive writing and well-crafted dialogue&ndashmake him one of the very best writers in today’s fiction scene, indie lit or mainstream. His concise and fluid prose grip the reader from the onset, and then move him or her through the story with liberating ease and optimum intrigue. Through his articulate and warm first-person narrative, we see, feel, hear, smell, and taste everything; we live inside his fictional world; we are the characters.

Nelson Pahl’s writing style single-handedly restores my faith in today’s literature. Consider Bee Balms & Burgundy an essential inclusion to any A-list catalogue.

And, do yourself a favor: Say you read him before the world knew about him&ndashor, before he wins a Pulitzer.

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