The Bold Faced Liar Creative Writer award!

Hey Readers,


Guess what? I just got an award! Yay!
It's The Bold Faced Liar Creative Writer award!

And it's all thanks to RaShelle for giving it to me. Who is RaShelle you might ask?
RaShelle is a gourmet chef that can make Gordon Ramsay cry in defeat.
RaShelle is a negotiator that can convince bank robbers to free their hostages in exchange for a pack of chewing gum.
RaShelle is someone who never needs an umbrella because it's against the laws of physics for rain to fall on her.

But seriously, RaShelle is a creative writer with an awesome blog: http://rashelleworkman.blogspot.com/

...and she can tame dragons with the sound of her voice.

Thank you for the award, RaShelle!



To be able to accept this award, one must now do the following:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link to them.
2. Add the award to your blog.
3. Tell six outrageous lies about yourself and one truth.
4. Nominate four creative liars–I mean writers–and post links to them.
5. Let your nominees know that they have been nominated.


Here are my six lies and one truth about myself. Can you spot the truth?

1) I hate coffee

2) Danger is my middle name

3) I once met the Old Spice guy

4) I've seen every episode of Star Trek

5) Dogs bark at me when I wear purple

6) I once went to Stonehenge

7) I have a pet chinchilla


Now to pass this award on to 4 other people:
Cassay
Monica
T.S. Bazelli
J.C. Martin

Congratulations!

Thank you to all who read my blog,
John Smith

P.S. - To be able to write fiction, you must be able to tell a lie.

The Thirteenth Chime!

Finally, it's Friday the 13th (Aug 13, 2010). Today is the day that "The Thirteenth Chime" by Emma Michaels is officially released! Yay!

Right now, you can hop on over to Amazon and buy a copy of the book. Plus, if you enter the code (before Sept 1st), you can get $1 off the price.

To find out more about this book, click here

Creating Characters

Every plot needs a good character to move the story along. But how do writers create characters? Well, I don't know about other writers, but my style is more plot oriented. I come up with a plot to the story, and then I create a character afterwards to make that plot move along.

For example, if your plot has to deal with killing monsters and vampires, then a kick ass slayer type of character is what you need.
If your plot is about a war of wizards, then maybe an ordinary kid who later becomes a powerful wizard will be the right character for your book.

!Alert! : Creating characters just to move a plot along can make your characters really passive. Readers want to read about a character that takes an active role in the story. So you must develop your characters until they can move around on their own, even if you take the plot away. (This is one of my weak points as a writer. My characters tend to be on the passive side. But I'm learning).


Another way to create characters is to just use a stereotype. There is nothing wrong with using stereotypes in a story. I know that it's a cliche, but some authors do it all the time, especially if they have to write about tons of characters.

For example, a few of JK Rowling's characters in her series, "Harry Potter", are stereotypes. Like, the gentle giant, the wise old man, the comic relief, the friend who would betray, etc... Those types of characters could be found in many other books.
However, I'm not saying that Rowling's characters are just stereotypes. They might have started out that way, but since Rowling is a master at character development, her characters have grown out of the old cliches and become so much more. So a good starting point in creating characters are by using stereotypes.

These are the two methods that I use to create characters. The characters in my novels were created after I made my plot. And some of my characters are just stereotypes, like the goth, the jock, the spoiled rich girl, the comic book geek, etc... (this sounds like the setting of my story is in a high school, but it's not). However, my characters have evolved over the months and years since I first thought of them. And I think that they're great characters, except for the one that I'm going to kill.


So happy writing to all you writers out there,
John Smith



P.S. - After awhile, the characters kind of come to life on their own. Their personality starts to evolve and break out of the stereotype, little by little. But that's okay. Sometimes this could make your character more real and dynamic. So don't try to restrain and force them into the image in your head. You'll be fighting a losing battle.

Flying Monkeys, Please?

My birthday is today! I'm now 21! And the only thing that I want for my birthday is over 123 flying monkeys (and by flying monkeys, I mean followers) to join my army. Is that too much to ask?

"Fly, Fly, Fly"
-the Wicked Witch of the West

Thanks to all my flying monkeys!

Mockingjay tour

Are you excited as I am about "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins? The book is set to be released on Aug 24, 2010, and she's doing a tour for her book.

Scholastic has revealed the dates of her tour here.

Is she going to be at a city near you?

My Horcruxes

If you've read Harry Potter, you'll know that a horcrux is something you put a part of your soul into so that you can never completely die. He who must not be named managed to split his soul and put it into 7 things.

So I'm going to ask you. If you could pick any 7 things in the entire world to make your own horcruxes, what would they be? Mine would be:

1) My laptop

2) One of my Harry Potter books

3) My black/yellow spider hat

4) My left shoe

5) My Ipod

6) Starry Night painting by Van Gogh (because it's surrounded by security, making it hard for my enemies to get their hands on it).

7) A copy of my novel (if I ever get it published)


What would your 7 horcruxes be?

Placeholder Names

I haven't really been working on my novel much lately. It's not because I have writer's block. I just decided to go back to my outline and change things a little to make the story more consistent. And when I looked over my outline, I came across something I learned awhile back but never blogged about.

So let's talk about character names.

When you write an outline for your novel, you describe scenes and the things that happen. You write about how your main character does this, then he chops off this guy's head, then he goes to have a tea party, etc... You write about many things that happen to the main character.

And your main character is important. Not only that, but all of your characters are important. And so each and every one of them has to have the perfect name for your novel. And what do you do? You spend weeks and weeks thinking of the perfect name. The name that absolutely fits your character's personality.

Let me tell you... this is a waste of time. You might think that you're making progress on your novel, but you're just being lazy. For example, in my novel, I have 6 or 7 important characters. And before I even started writing the novel, I wasted about 2 months looking up names for my characters. During those 2 months, I didn't make any progress on the story at all. And the story is the most important thing.

So don't make the same mistake as me. Focus on the story. But in the mean time, just use placeholder names for your characters. Placeholder names are just any old name you use for your characters. For example, just call your characters "John" or "Sarah" etc.... Any name would do. The point is to not waste time worrying about the names of your characters.

The only time you should worry about those names are when you're doing the final draft for your novel. Otherwise, it's just an excuse to be lazy (which I'm guilty of).

So that's my advice. Focus on the story, and not the character names. Just use a placeholder name in the mean time. Also, don't procrastinate.

By the way, for any future novels I might write, my placeholder name for my main character is going to be "main". Seriously, I'm just going to call him "main" while I write about him.

Happy writing to you all,
John Smith



P.S. - If you want to know the names I've come up with for my characters while I was being lazy, check out my "Works in Progress" tab.