Writing During the School Year

  It's the time of year that stores are pulling out their overly-cheerful “back to school” signs and I'm frantically trying to hide from reality. School tends to eat up enough time that things like drawing and writing and baking get pushed to the weekends. However, if you want to be a novelist, it takes more dedicated practice. These are some of the tricks I'm going to use to keep myself writing through the school year.

1. Have a word count goal. Even if it's just 100 words a day, I'm still writing something. It doesn't even need to be on my novel, although that would be preferable.

2. Work on something, even if it's not writing. Brainstorm to get myself out of whatever corner I've written myself into, work on an outline for the new idea that won't leave me alone, write in a character journal – something writing-related, at least, even if I'm stuck with writer's block.

3. Variety. School is already drudgery, no matter now interesting the subject matter, and there's no better recipe for writer's block than making writing drudgery too. If I just can't bring myself to work on my novel, I can play with a different character or try out my poem skills.

4. Drabbles. Incredibly useful little pieces of writing generally between 100 and 500 words. Not even a short story, just a scene. Find a list of prompts and use one. Explore how your characters react in the most outlandish situations you can conjure up. Who would they be if they were members of Starfleet? Who would be a jedi and who would be the bounty hunter if they were Star Wars characters? What would happen if the medieval story becomes a sci-fi story, or vice-versa? What would happen if the main character died? How can I apply the principle I just read about on that writing blog?

5. Accountability partners. Few things are more inspiring than the fact that you can't get the next bit of your friend's story if you can't send her the next bit of yours.

6. Schedules & timers. For a horrible procrastinator like me, leaving writing for when I feel like it often ends with me having written nothing for weeks. Getting on the computer to write often ends with me browsing pinterest. Setting a timer for ten or twenty or thirty minutes helps me keep focused, while a schedule motivates me to get it done.

  This is what works for me. It won't work for everyone, but it's always good to have a plan. What are you going to do to keep yourself writing?

What is a Character?

When I'm looking for something to read, the first thing that catches my eye are interesting covers and

engaging titles. Then I turn to the back of the book or the inside cover and skim the summary. At that point, I don't care who thinks what about the book or if the writer is a New York Times bestseller. What I'm looking for is an adventure, one on which I will follow someone through peril and hardship to victory.

So the deciding factor on whether or not I will read the book is the main character (MC). Many people have the same criteria. A unique plot or clever prose might be enough to satisfy some, but it takes a good MC to bump the story up to the next level.

There are a lot of criteria that can be applied to a good MC. He needs to be likeable. He needs to be the catalyst that moves the plot. He needs to have a character arc – to learn something through his struggles in the story. He needs to be relatable. It can all be summed up in a simple statement:

The character needs to be someone who we can learn through.

It's been said that readers live a thousand lives. If that's the case, that means we're learning the lessons that the characters do. It follows that an MC must be, first, someone who has something to learn (and presumably learns it), and second, someone we are willing to follow as he or she learns.

If you've been studying character building for a while, you've probably come across the terms “Mary Su” or “Gary Stu.” If not, it's a nickname for characters who are too perfect, whether in their looks or personality or both. This violates the law of relatability and eliminates any meaningful character arc, which in turn prevents the development of a quality plot. Finally, readers just don't like them. Perfection doesn't exist in the real world, which makes images of perfection feel false and radiate an aura of “holier-than-thou.” Most people aren't willing to learn from someone they don't like. A perfect character also doesn't provide an opportunity to learn in an intrinsic, meaningful manner, since perfection is where learning stops.

This means that a good character is a character who is flawed. Not suffering from clumsiness or a stutter or an ugly nose, but flawed with things like rage or hate or greed. Deep flaws that cause major problems. But still, the basic principle of a “likeable” character means that there must be other traits to balance out the flaw. A character who struggles with anger can still be loving or generous or unselfish or all three. Once again, readers must be willing to follow the character through that character's learning, which means that there must be – at least – strong hints of that character being someone worth following. The current trends toward antiheroes and outright villains as main characters may seem to contradict this principle, but I'll address that later.

Finally, the character needs to learn. Where's the point in following someone through the story if he never reaches the end of his character arc? Or if he never has an arc at all? There might be things happening, but without emotional stakes in the main character's development, the story doesn't have a heart.

All writing teaches something. It's your responsibility to teach the right things in the right way, and the best way to achieve that is to teach your characters and let them teach the reader.