Category: blogging

Diary of a New Writer 4 – Location, Location, Location!

~ Meg ~ 24 Comments

(Here are parts one, two and three, if you missed them)

*Disclaimer:  This is not an exhaustive how-to for novel writing, just a few things I learned along the way.

What does the realtor always tell you when you’re shopping for a home?  Yep.  Location, location, location!  The same is true when considering where to set your novel.  Are you a sci fi or fantasy writer?  Then you have some extensive world building to do.  Planets, terrain, space stations, artificial environments – the components of a fictional world are complex.  This is why I am greatly in awe of writers like Frank Herbert who wrote the Dune series imageand JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy

World building for a contemporary romantic suspense novel, however, is not such an arduous task.  Nevertheless, there are some things to consider when deciding the location for a novel.

 

  1. How important is the location to the plot?  In other words, could this same story take place anywhere or only in the setting you’ve chosen?  For an overly obvious example, Tony Hillerman wrote about the Navajo Tribal Police on the reservation in the American Southwest.  He could not have set those novels anywhere else.  Duh.
  2. Are you very familiar with the setting you’ve chosen or not so much?  For example, if you live in Dallas, Texas and you set your story in Montreal, Canada, you better be prepared to do your homework.  Now, if you lived in Montreal in the past, you should be fine, but if you’ve never even visited, be careful!  Nothing can ruin a good story like screwing up the details.
  3. Let’s say you decide to set the story in a fictional location.  Not a bad idea.  It gives you a lot of room to get creative.  However, when constructing your locale, you need to be consistent.  You can’t say that the post office is next door to the police station in chapter 1 and then say it’s across the street from the police station in chapter 6.  Make yourself a map, keep a detailed list of the businesses and places of interest in your fictional town or city:  places like restaurants, parks, the city hall, shops and public transportation (if there is any).  image
  4. What about the time period you’re writing in?  Philadelphia in 1776 versus Philadelphia 2015?  Again, do your homework.  My worst nightmare:  having an expert read my book, find the mistakes and blab all about it in an Amazon review!  So don’t be lazy, be thorough!

There are more details to consider, of course, but that’s an overview.  In my case, I decided to go with that old epitaph, I mean adage, of ‘write what you know’ and set my story close to home.

I don’t live right in Doylestown, but I live about 20 minutes away.  D-town is a quaint/hip town with lots of great restaurants and shops.  It has train service to Philadelphia which gave me any easy way to write the city into the story, too.  I used actual businesses and made a few up.  A good rule of thumb is not to write about a real business if you don’t have something nice to say about it.  It you need a crappy restaurant or a nasty shopkeeper, create one and don’t piss off your neighbors!

Anyway, I don’t care who you are, you are not going to possess all the knowledge you’ll need to write your book.  There will be a minimum of research you will need to do.  So what about that research?  Where do you go to find stuff out?  That’s next!

Images courtesy:  wackenhutco.com, ieet.org, buzzfeed.com

Fabric Art Fabulous! Guest Post

~ Meg ~ 9 Comments

In the upcoming weeks, I will be featuring some guest posts and/or interviews.  This week, I am very pleased to introduce you all to my friend Nichole who blogs at wildboho.  She is a super talented fabric artist and I am dying for you to see her stuff and hear about her art.  Without further ado, here is Nichole…

I’m pretty sure you could title this “Tales from an Accidental Artist,” because that’s exactly what I am! I currently run Wildboho on Instagram, which is a collection of my hoop art and stitching capades. I did not intend to do this with my time, and in fact, I did not take to sewing easily in life. Sewing was something that my mom did fabulously and I, unfortunately, did not. I grew up dabbling in any form of craftiness that didn’t involve a sewing machine. Although she could not pass her sewing skills onto me early in life, she did pass on a love of fabric. I loved fabric but just didn’t know what to do with it. Several years ago, I started experimenting with fabric layering and embroidery and I was instantly hooked.

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What I created and put in hoops, at first, was met with “what are you supposed to do with the hoops?” I began posting pictures of walls filled with a mix of art and hoop art and it began to catch on. 

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Other artists were also experimenting with this form of art and soon “hoop art” was a standard form of art and I am rarely asked anymore what someone is supposed to do with their hoop. It’s very exciting to be able to create individual and unique pieces of art that have travelled further internationally than I have ever travelled…I like to think that there are little bits of me in places like Australia, Spain and the UK! Follow along with me on Instagram for lots of behind-the-scenes shots of my embroidery art!

Diary of a New Writer (3) Creating my characters

~ Meg ~ 21 Comments

(Images courtesy vulture.com and zap2it.com)

(To find part one, check here, for part two, check here)

Where were we? Ah, yes!  I had the idea for my basic plot and a main character whose story I wanted to tell.  I even had a good opening scene.  However, as I began writing, I realized there is more to crafting a novel, than just putting words down on the page.  As I mentioned in the last installment, my main character, Jen, had family, friends, a job, and a new man.  Where did she live?  What did she do for fun?

To get started, I wrote down the general plot outline, a quick synopsis of where I wanted the story to go.  My outline would evolve from rather basic, to more and more detailed, as I started writing and new ideas emerged.  You don’t have to have every detail of the story worked out before you start writing, but at least have a foundation on which to add layers.  Next, I started a list of all the people who would be close to Jen:  her father, their longtime housekeeper/Jen’s surrogate mother, her two best friends, her new love interest, and his family.  More would be added later.

One primary task was to give them names.  How do you choose a name for a character?  Some of my names came from deceased relatives, old family friends, and the ever useful behindthename.com website.  For whatever age your character is, you can check this website to see what names were popular the year they were “born.” For choosing surnames, I carefully watched TV show credits, paid attention to the last names of athletes, people in the news and even place names.  Then, to make sure I wasn’t using the name of someone already famous, I would google the name to see what came up.

Remember how my inspiration for Jen came from Jennifer Lawrence?  Well, I figured the same thing might be helpful to do for the other characters in the story.  Who would I cast to play Jen’s father?  Her best friends Joni and Desdemona?  The handsome Tommy Quinn?  (That’s Eddie Cahill from CSI: New York; he was just about the only reason to watch that show.)  His equally handsome brothers? (Remember Colin O’Donoghue from last week?  He’s Tommy’s brother Graham.) To keep track of them all, I started a Pinterest board  which you are welcome to check out. Having a face to associate with each character was extremely helpful to me.  I could visualize the actors in the situations I created for them.

 

The next thing I did was break out the 5×7 index cards.  I know that’s a little old school, but I also wrote most of the story in my fancy notebook, too!  Each character needed a backstory.  The backstory wasn’t necessary to the plot of the book, but it helped me determine how a character would act/react in a particular situation.  So on the index card, I wrote their age, their physical description, what they did for work, how they related to Jen.  Also what was unique about their personality?  Were they sweet and kind?  Cranky and short tempered?  Quick witted and funny?  Energetic and capable?  Athletic, artistic, shy, outgoing, confident?  Each character’s card contained their biography; the more important the character, the more detailed the biography.

The plot outline is filling in, my index cards are piling up and I’m a couple of chapters in!  The longer the story becomes, however, the harder it becomes to keep track of what happened when, who said what to whom and so forth.  I needed a way to quickly reference the flow of the story.  The solution?  A timeline spreadsheet.  I also needed to decide where my novel would be set.  A small town?  A big city?  What part of the country?  Would the location be real or imagined?  Those are the subjects for next time.