Shape Your Dreams
What are our dreams? Where do they come from? These are questions that most of us will ask at some point in our lives. Here at the DreamAnvil we believe that the answer is that our dreams are a continuous wheel. A circle of creativity that only ends when the dreamer stops dreaming. It is our logo, it is my own creative process and I… →
Week two brings with it the first realizations that what you are doing is hard. It also brings with it the realization that you can do this. There are moments when everything feels right and the words dump right out onto the page. Then there are days that you can hardly muster more than a few paragraphs. This is where the road starts to get… →
What is a plot? Plot is what actually happens in your story. This seems simple enough, most of us have a series of events that we want to portray through our stories. We have a narrative we want to express and to share with others. However, we must be careful how we go about showing that narrative because plot is one of the easiest ways to ruin a novel.
So last week I mentioned that we should develop our settings as if we were developing our characters. I am sure some of you asked “Well how do I develop a good character?” Well I am glad you asked, lets try and answer that shall we! To write good characters your have to know what they are composed of. Most of our literary heroes are brave, selfless, good with a sword, trustworthy and graceful, others heroes tend to be exact opposites of these. A good character is a very subjective thing, ask a table of ten writers who their favorite literary protagonists are and you will get ten different responses. This is because a good character is as complex as anyone you might meet on the street one day. There is no set of attributes that will automatically make your hero come alive. There is no magic formula for making perfect characters.
How many really great stories have you read where the characters didn’t interact with the world around them? How many tales have been spun where the world is just as memorable as the characters? Have you ever completed reading a book in a series only to jump right into the next one, excited to see what you will find next? Today I wanted to start off by talking about setting and why it is so important to your novel.
The first mistake people tend to make after they have their brilliant idea is to assume that it is indeed brilliant and perfect and utterly infallible. I am here to ask you to consider that perhaps it is not. The creative idea you have is just an idea at this point. It is a start, but if you want to make it a reality you… →