Drawing from the Well
Queries: 49 (+0)
Rejections: 34 (+0)
First Eighth
Chapter 3 of 89
Scene 14 of 498
Word Count: 3318 (+1728)
Yeah, yesterday was a good writing day. I got my mojo back. I’ll talk deeper about why below, but I’m amped up again. I had an artificial stumbling block I needed to overcome and I finally forced myself to roll over it. And look at that, I doubled my word count. Amazing how that works, huh?
Filling the Well
The Bible: 76%
The Handmaid’s Tale: 25%
Blue Lily, Lily Blue: 24%
Miraclist: 20%
Yep, I started ANOTHER book in the midst of the others I’m reading. I mentioned yesterday that I met a fellow writer. Well, I went and bought his book (because we have to support each other) and it is engaging. I read most of my flight last night and got through 1/5 of the book *snap* just like that. I’m looking forward to chowing down on the rest of the book as soon as I can.
Polishing the Well
It’s Friday the 13th! For me, historically, these have been super busy but uncharacteristically lucky days. So far, today has been super busy without any luck one way or the other. On the upside, I’m back home. I was in Irving, TX the last three days for management training (which was phenomenally helpful) which drained me quite a bit. I’m working to catch up, but it’s a lot. I’m ready for a (hopefully) rejuvenating weekend.
Well Chat
Another Way to Add Flavor
Three-dimensional characters are difficult to pull off. Oftentimes, I end up with one- to two-dimensional characters as I try to take those traits sufficiently deep to be believable. That said, as I design new characters, I’m starting to look for finer details that can make the characters come alive. One of these is their rituals.
We all have habits. You get up in the morning and there is probably an order to how you do things. For me, it’s rise, use the restroom, dress, son to school, wake daughter, write, daughter to school, coffee, BEAST breakfast (that’s bacon, egg, avocado, sourdough, and tomato), check e-mail, visit with my wife, morning huddle call. If I start a weekday any other way, I’m off kilter for hours.
I’m not saying you should lay out a character’s daily routine on page two. Far from it. But there are things that you can reinforce to bring the character to life. How do they react when they’re nervous? Bite their lip? Go shifty-eyed? Paw at their hair? Cross their toes? It could be anything, but if your characters do different things when nervous and you use those to define them, they become more recognizable and more real.
Some of the best things I can think of to give your characters idiosyncracies to bring them to life are annoying habits, favorite foods (or foods they HATE), personality traits they like (or HATE), positive traits, negative traits, and turns of phrase that are at the point of tics. Things like that make characters come alive. That and memorable physical attributes. I still remember precisely what Tasselhoff Burrfoot looks like.
So that’s what I’ve got for you today on this Friday the 13th. Just as some people have movie marathon or salt-throwing rituals on a day like today, so too should characters do weird things for weird reasons. It makes them relatable. And that makes your novel better.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG