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Blog Talk Radio Show
The Birth of a Character
When you are writing a story, one of the most important elements of the story is the characters it contains. Without interesting characters to help drive your story forward, the reader will lose interest and stop reading. Henry James, one of the founders and leaders in the realism school of fiction, went as far as to say, “Character is plot.” Since character is so important to writing a story, how do we make the characters in the story come alive on the page for the reader?
In the Words of Mark Twain
Author Mark Twain, while best known for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is also known for being a literary critic. During a period of time in his life when he needed to help make ends meet financially, he started writing reviews of other author’s works for newspapers. In 1865, he famously wrote a review titled Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses. Twain maintained that there were 19 rules governing literary art in fiction and that Cooper had violated 18 of them.
The First Page
Your goal when writing a story is to get the reader to turn the first page. If they don’t want to turn that first page, then they won’t read your story. You have approximately three paragraphs to get the reader involved and to make them want to turn that page. So, how do you get your reader hooked in those first few paragraphs?
Storytelling Methods
So far, I have been able to share with you what I would call an overview of writing. How to set up your environment, some tips on how to get the ideas flowing, and things of that nature. Now we need to start discussing some of the nuts and bolts of writing. This is where we get to break down what we’re writing and identify what it is that we’re doing and then we’ll be able to make some decisions as to whether it is effective or not.