Much of what goes into forming villains that gets underneath the audience’s skin is to understand—really understand our story—make sure it is strong enough and then search out those pain points that will likely exist in our readers. That’s how to know what variety of evil will unravel them the most.
Category: Writing
Oct 29 2019
On Writing: Why Mastery Should Matter to the Serious Author
Craft classes and grammar lessons aside, reading helps fill our toolbox. We are artisans, crafting people, places, worlds, and concepts with combinations of twenty-six letters. Would you trust someone to build your house who only owned (and knew how to use) a hammer and saw? Or a doctor who only knew how to wield a scalpel, but skipped learning how to suture?
Yet how many writers are publishing books and they don’t even possess the basic fundamentals of our craft? And are more concerned with a new marketing plan then why people don’t WANT to read their work, let alone PAY to read it?
Sep 30 2019
Do Some People Lack the Talent to be a Successful Author?
Stephen King equates talent to a vein of gold in a mine. One has to do the hard work of digging for the ore, refining, etc. (the nasty work most people don’t want to do). He says if you spend an hour and a half a day writing for ten years, at the end of ten years, you’ll be a pretty good writer. Just as if you spent an hour and a half a day digging, mining, and refining ore, you’d eventually have decent stockpile of gold.
Sep 23 2019
Characters: Audiences Read Stories, but Great Stories Read the Audience
Characters are critical for stories that resonate. Why? Because characters are the conduit that connects the reader, that vests them in the events. We can’t empathize with technology, spaceships, magic, or nuclear submarines. Humans can’t bond emotionally to a place (without the characters as the connection). For instance, we CARE about Lord of the Rings’ …