Guest post from Melanie Slaugh: Let your characters speak!

Good morning!

Friends, I'd like you to help me welcome a new contributor to the blog:  Author Melanie Slaugh.  Melanie contacted me recently with a list of great blog ideas, and I'm very pleased to share her first one with you.

Methinks, she hears her characters arguing with her in her head just like most of us do!  Enjoy!

3 Reasons to Let your Characters Write the Story

When I first started writing stories, I thought it was all about the plot. I wrote elaborate stories that had many, many twists and turns… and ended up being about thirty pages long. Talk about frustration! But when your characters are nothing more than faceless pawns, how can you write a long story? That’s only one of the reasons that characters are so important. Here are three reasons to let your characters write the story.

1.      Flow –If you are so focused on the plot, you lose track of who your characters are and what they are doing. However, when you know your characters inside and out, the story just flows. What do I mean? Well, the characters write the story. Instead of sticking them in situations where you have to fight to get them to react the way you need them too or explain why they do or say what they do, you simply let them be themselves. Just like people in real life, characters can be odd, strange, and often do things that are inexplicable. When you are comfortable with the characters, you no longer feel the need to explain. It will eventually be revealed just by who they are.

2.      Dialogue –This is something I know a lot of writers have trouble with. How do you write dialogue that doesn’t sound forced or trite? Know your characters and let them speak. They will astound you with their communication skills. And remember that not all dialogue is words. The pauses, the gaps, the unfinished sentences, they all add up to real life sounding dialogue.

3.      Complexity –Last but not least, your stories will gain new complexity. Not just plot, though that will come up, but depth of characters, of feeling and emotion. The important things that make a book readable and memorable. When the characters drive the story, they will interact and connect in ways far more complex and real then you could have ever plotted before you started. Go with the flow and let the plot resolve itself. It will.

There are many reasons to let your characters do the writing; these are only three of them. I have found that I love my stories far more when I love my characters. They may be bad guys, good girls, or chaotic freaks, but when you know them, really know them, and let them loose, you come up with a story you could have never imagined.

Author Bio

Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.

Characters matter...even on Reality TV.

Good morning!
I am a devotee of the show "Survivor." That's not a secret. I was hooked from the start and I've watched virtually every moment of the show's 20+ seasons. Most recently, The Girl and I are watching the few seasons that are on DVD.

I signed up for Netflix, because I wanted to get every season of Survivor on DVD to watch the history of this magnificently popular show all over again. It surprised me that I was not able to get all the seasons. In fact, of the 20 seasons available, I'm really only able to get about six.

In a time when everything from TV movies to the cheesiest sit com get put on DVD, it was a very big surprise that not all the seasons were put on. Still, I've been watching the seasons I can watch, most recently, rewatching the awesome "All Stars" season, which we finished watching last night. But before we watched the finale of "All Stars" we watched episode three of the current season, as it aired on TV.



SPOILER ALERT:

NFL coach Jimmy Johnson got voted off last night. Now, I was very surprised the 66 year old TV commentator even went out there. Face it, Survivor is a young person's game. Each year the cast gets younger, and more photogenic, and the older folks are few and far between. In fact, this season, it's the old folks against the young folks. The age divisions are everyone 40 and up on the old team and everyone 30 and down on the young team.
Yep, 40, according to Survivor, is old.

Here's the problem with this concept. When you're casting a show, a reality show where you want diversity and interesting people, by limiting the age groups right out of the gate, you're just not going to get very interesting characters. And then the show is boring.


Jimmy Johnson was probably the most interesting character on the old team. First of all, the man might be a bajillionaire, and as a Packer fan, I've cursed him out all the years he coached the Cowboys. But as a player on Survivor, the man had skills. He could have done very well if the other completely predictable, completely BORING old farts hadn't voted him off last night. Marty, leader of the oldsters now, is just not that interesting. He's a middle aged white guy who managed to take out the one guy who knew what was what when it came to planning a strategy at challenges. And, since the tribe is old and crippled next to the younger group, without strategy, they have nothing. Personally, looking at the old tribe, the seven remaining members are either frustrated jocks who think they know it all and can do it all, or meek little women who will do what they're told. The old tribe members keep saying they're all leaders in their fields. Well, that's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing boring women, boring, predictable guys, and a losing tribe. (Except for Fire Captain Tyrone, who is funny, and plays things close to the chest. Watch for him to do well.)

That brings me to the younger tribe, or as I like to call them, the rainbow of bad stereotypes. You've got Nay, the PE Teacher who spends a lot of time and energy being loud, rude, and very...what was the term she called herself last night? Oh yes, very HOOD. (hmmmm, an African American woman who is loud and wags her finger at people and is pushy? I think that was done really well before...by Alicia in Australia and All Stars. So Nay is just a copycat, and sort of a mean one at that. Boring.)


And then there's Fabio. That's not his real name, but he has long hair and is sort of pretty. So everyone calls him Fabio. He's also as dumb as a stump, so it wouldn't surprise me one second if he's forgotten what his real name is.

Again, the youngsters pretty much fall into two groups: Boring jocks who think they're going to win and "get with" the pretty girls, and, well, the pretty girls. There is the one girl who has one leg, and I give her a TON of credit for being out there, but other than having an artificial leg, there isn't anything interesting about her. I don't even remember her name.


So I watched the episode last night and thought, "well, the most interesting person just got voted off, and it's only week three." Then I watch the finale of All Stars, which, even thought I knew who would win, was far more interesting and fun to watch.



What's my point in all of this? Even in reality TV, you need good, interesting characters. You need characters people are interested in, characters people care about. Other than Tyrone, who has the best facial expressions I've ever seen, and who is the one person in Survivor who knows to keep his face SHUT at tribal council, there are no interesting characters on this season. Not yet. Maybe some of them will grow on me. Maybe I'll just stop watching this season.

It's the same for writing. If your characters aren't interesting, no one is going to read your book. You could have the most fascinating plot on earth. But if no one cares about the people in the plot, it won't matter. Meanwhile, if you have a skimpy plot, but really interesting characters, you may have success with the book.



TV, movies, books. It's all about the people. I've watched movies that were terrible...but I loved a certain character in that movie, and I cared about what happened to them. I've read books sometimes not because the plot is great, but because I'm really interested in a character. It might seem like the two go hand in hand, but that's not true.



Why was "Gladiator" the best movie of 2000? Not for the movie itself. There have been a million action movies, gladiator movies, war movies. The difference was Maximus. Producers later bemoaned the fact that they killed Maximus, because he was such a strong character they could have made another movie.



Why are certain characters made over and over? "Robin Hood?" Because we love Robin Hood. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter. Robin Hood is an icon that people care about.


Sherlock Holmes is another one. Face it, those books are predictable. You're not reading Sherlock Holmes to see "if" he's going to solve the crime. You're reading, and you're watching the movies, because you love Sherlock Holmes.


So it's the character, my friends. Now go forth and write!

Well somebody's got a case of the Mondays! (aka, Bridezilla marathon hangover)

Good morning!

Took some time over the weekend, since hubby is out of town for the next week, to catch up on some movies and TV that I like to watch, but he doesn't.

Got caught up in a "Bridezilla" marathon. Can't say that was the best use of my time on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, but I did discover that I really, really want to do the commentary or write for that show because 1) it's hilarious and 2) well, there is no 2. It's hilarious.

Shared "Some Kind of Wonderful" with the girl on Saturday in my continueing effort to expose the children to as much John Hughes as possible. My friend Linda has a point in compairing this movie to "Pretty in Pink:" Mary Stuart Masterson makes us cry in a way that Molly Ringwald simply cannot. Bonus, I sported a "Watts" haircut through much of life, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Popped in the trite ditty "The Shrink is in." This Lifetime regular stars Courtney Cox and David Arquette, but they are hardly the reason I watched the movie...and own it, BTW. No, David James Elliott, of JAG fame, is the hot, hot, hot next door neighbor. His comedic timing is surprising, and the movie makes me laugh out loud. Trite, silly, definitely not worth a second look, then again....did I mention he was hot? LOL!

I'm now trying to find all the David James Elliott material I can find. Why? Because he's the inspiration for the hero in my latest novel, "7/8ths time." But, since the character Quinn is definitely not one of America's finest, (ala JAG), I'm looking for films he was in where he was the BAD guy or at least not a clean cut poster boy. Anyone? Anyone??????

Well, I'll keep looking. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know!