Monday, March 7, 2011

What Did He Say?

NOTE: Once again, this is the kind of high-quality blather you're missing not being a member of the Targhee Writers Blog. Send me an e-mail at misterfweem(at)yahoo.com to sign up.

The next bit of “Their Hearts Run Cold” is going to be either slow in coming or discombobulated with the rest of the novel and the one that preceded it. I’m going to try for the former, because the latter just begs to be fixed later, and why write something to be fixed later if I can write it correct right now?

It all comes down to the author needing to know his or her characters, their behavior, how they have responded in the past, while preparing the reader for how they might respond in the future.

It’s Seth and Altus. I’m trying to make them more in-depth. And to do that, well, Altus isn’t necessarily going to do something bad because he’s a bad guy, but rather something bad is going to happen despite him being a good guy after all. I just have to remember how much of a bad guy I’ve made him previously so his sudden flip-flopping can be explained. And do it without the customary twelve boxes of introductory material.


Used under the fair use doctrine for educational and commentary purposes.

This is important because if my characters act in contradictory ways, I want it to be purposeful, not because I’m a moron and forgot what one character did when I put them in a different situation. This is probably rudimentary to the best novel writers, but since I’m not a member of their august panel, I have to learn things the hard way.

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