People have real flaws so why don’t characters?
What all of this means is that readers will put the book down if they don’t identify with, sympathize with, or want to be like, characters in the book. If the reader has no emotional investment in any of the people in the book, then they don’t give a crap about what happens to your protagonist. They won’t want to see the antagonist get his (or hers) in the end. They won’t care whether the love interest blossoms into a relationship. They simply won’t care – no matter how good the plot is. You can have a fantastic plot driven by flat, unbelievable, caricatures (not characters).
3 Illegal Acts That Will Ruin a Scene
Acts against Motivation, Acts against Rules, Acts against Soul – If a character in your scene does any of these things, it will jar the reader out of the book and possibly convince them never to return.
The perfect is the enemy of the good
Voltaire has a very famous quote, “The perfect is the enemy of the good” … I can remember this quote and pull myself out of the pit of self-loathing. I can repeat that quote over and over again until I finally decide that it is more important to allow the story to escape my soul unhindered than it is to ensure that it is edited, pristine, and perfect upon release.
10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling
Just when I think all hope is lost and nobody feels the same way I do about the decay of the English language, I run across a few comics from one of my favorite sites, The Oatmeal.
The First Rejection
Technorati Tags: publication,rejection,writing,courage So I’ve received my first rejection letter. Note that I said “first” and not “a” or “the”. This is an important distinction. Throughout the career of any writer, the reception of rejection letters is going to be commonplace, with a few notable exceptions for people who are lucky and talented enough to [...]