Character Chart FAVORITES Color: Music: Food: Literature: Expressions: Book: Quote: Expletive(s) (swears): Mode of transportation: HABITS Smokes: What? How often? Drinks: What? How often? SELF-PERCEPTION One word character would use to describe self: One paragraph description of how character would describe self: What does character consider best physical characteristic? Immediate goal(s): Long range goal(s): How does character plan to accomplish goal(s)? How character react in a crisis (calm/panic/etc.)? Jewelry? Owns a computer? © (c ) copyright 1990-2011 Rebecca Sinclair ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Authors Note: I worked hard on this. ~ Permission is granted to LINK TO the Fiction Writers Character Chart. ~ Permission is granted to print out a copy of the Fiction Writers Character Chart FOR PERSONAL USE ~ Permission is NOT granted to copy and/or use the Character Chart in print and/or electronic form (including the internet) without express written permission)
10 Days of Character Building: Interview - PoeWar This is Day 5 of 10 Days of Character Building The character interview is a chance to explore both a character’s background and voice. It is an exploration of a character’s opinions, experiences, goals and attitudes. The basic method of conducting an interview is simple. You ask questions and then, as the character, answer those questions. Interviews come in many forms, and you can get as creative with them as you like. You may also pose the interview as a police interrogation, a job interview or a therapy session. One of the real benefits of the interview method is that it can be a free flowing and natural process. Here are some interviews of authors to get you in the mood:
CALLIHOO Writing Helps--Feelings Table Character Feelings You can describe your character's feelings in more exact terms than just "happy" or "sad." Check these lists for the exact nuance to describe your character's intensity of feelings. SF Characters | SF Items | SF Descriptors | SF Places | SF EventsSF Jobs/Occupations | Random Emotions | Emotions List | Intensity of Feelings Tami Cowden | Author I am happy to say that The Complete Writers’ Guide to Heroes and Heroines is now available on Kindle! And even better – so is Fallen Heroes: Sixteen Master Villain Archetypes! What are the Sixteen Master Archetypes? The word "archetype" was coined by Carl Jung, who theorized that humans have a collective unconscious, "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.... a kind of readiness to reproduce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas...." The observations my coauthors and I made are that there are recurring character types who have starred in story after story, entertaining and informing the human experience for millennia. At his or her core, every well-defined hero or heroine is one of the respective archetypes. But beware when trying to decide what archetypal family to which a character belongs. I am serious – what the character does is not the defining element. “Any archetype can do anything – the question will always be why.” Top
Rogues To me, names have power, and finding the right name is essential for a book. I also need to find names that fit the period. This doesn't always mean that it'll be one of the "ten most popular" of the time, but it needs to be believable. So, when I started writing medieval novels, I went looking for medieval names. The following is a list of names collected as I researched the period, names of monarchs and nobles, or of people mentioned in court cases and other documents. Below I give a frequency of occurrence list for the fourteenth century kindly supplied by Arlene Sindelar. Please note that some names are place and period specific. Men's names. Women's names. The most popular female English late medieval names are (in order of frequency in the attorney rolls of 1329-1340) Alice (overwhelming) Joan (including Jane), Agnes, Margery, Isabel. For interesting reading on this subject, check out Back to the site menu
How To Publish a Book & Writing tips & Five steps to follow in writing a novel & How To Publish a Book - StumbleUpon Writing a book is no easy task, it is a complex process which involves planning, discipline, and time. Writing your first book can get tricky because it is not always obvious where you should start from. Here are five steps you can follow when writing your book. 1. It’s tricky to decide exactly what you want to write about. 2. Let’s say you’ve decided to write a fantasy book. 3. Again, this isn’t easy, and most writers are unsure of exactly how the plotline will unfold until they have written the first five chapters of their novel. 4. So now that you have an idea of your fantasy world and the plot, it’s time for the hardest part: sitting down and actually writing the book. 5. The final step is proofreading and editing your book over and over again. (This is a post by our new intern Ivelina Dineva) (Image by Meul (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons)
Character Chart for Fiction Writers - EpiGuide.com If you're a fiction writer -- whether you're working on a novel, short story, screenplay, television series, play, web series, webserial, or blog-based fiction -- your characters should come alive for your reader or audience. The highly detailed chart below will help writers develop fictional characters who are believable, captivating, and unique. Print this page to complete the form for each main character you create. IMPORTANT: Note that all fields are optional and should be used simply as a guide; character charts should inspire you to think about your character in new ways, rather than constrain your writing. Fill in only as much info as you choose. If this character chart is helpful, please let us know! Looking for more character questionnaires / charts?
Gothic Names Short Treatise on Anglo-Norman Personal Names It is a common misconception that medieval English naming practices centred on a relatively small number of personal names. While this is indeed true for the later medieval period, the Anglo-Norman period (which lasted from the Conquest on down to the beginning of the fourteenth century or so) provided a much larger variety of available and relatively common personal names. While certain of these were more popular than others, they did not dominate naming practices to the extent that names such as John, Thomas, Richard, and William for guys and Anne, Elizabeth, Cecily, and Margaret for girls did in later centuries. Furthermore, the popular names in the 13th century did not necessarily maintain their popularity in later years. You will notice the popularity of saints' and Biblical names for both sexes. I will not say much about surnames except to note the two most common forms. Cartulary of Blyth Priory, R.T. Men's Names Women's Names
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. The blank white page. Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” Finding a really good muse these days isn’t easy, so plan on going through quite a few before landing on a winner. There are two things more difficult than writing. It’s so easy to hide in your little bubble, typing your little words with your little fingers on your little laptop from the comfort of your tiny chair in your miniature little house. It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer. Available in print withThe Best of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Web Resources for Developing Characters When developing characters, many writers use personality traits that they see in themselves and in others, such as friends, family and celebrities. A new source of material and information that can help you develop characters is the Internet. The Internet offers some unique resources for character development, such as psychological testing websites, baby name databases and other reference sites and databases. These websites certainly weren't created for writers developing characters; nevertheless, these site are extremely useful for writers. This article will help you locate some of these useful resources, and give you some tips about how you can use them to develop your own characters. Psychological Resources Psychological websites can help writers learn the underlying principles of behavior that motivate or cause people to act as they do. Biography Resources Biography resources can be a great help to writers. Naming Characters Other Resources Developing Characters
Medieval Favourites - British Baby Names image by Jeff Cottenden Castles, Knights, Jousting, Longbows, Wimples...lovely evocative images that the Middle Ages conjure. And the best thing? Medieval names are just as enticing as the era they hail from. "Medieval" technically encompasses an entire century of European history: the fifth to fifteenth. So many different names were used across this era, and Britain alone had a huge variety of lingual influences. But by the twelfth century England was united; the Normans ruled and had also conquered parts of Wales. With a pool so small it is difficult to define any of the names used at this time as "popular," but we can see certain names being used again and again for many different people. Here are the favourite choices for medieval parents from the twelfth to fourteenth century:
10 Ways to Start Your Story Better The sentence you are currently reading has the potential to brand itself indelibly upon our cultural consciousness and to alter the course of Western Civilization. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But what author doesn’t dream of crafting an opening line that will achieve the iconic recognition of “Call me Ishmael,” or the staying power of “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth …”? In writing, as in dating and business, initial reactions matter. This post is by Jacob M. So it’s unfortunate that opening sentences frequently receive short shrift in writing workshops. Think of every opening line you write as a pebble tossed down a mountainside: The stone may jolt back and forth within a limited path, building up force, but the trajectory of its initial release largely determines its subsequent route. Here are 10 ways to do it. 1. This need not lead to elaborate or complex openings. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers’ Conferences:
Establishing the Right Point of View Establishing the Right Point of View: How to Avoid "Stepping Out of Character" by Marg Gilks Return to Characters, Viewpoint, and Names · Print/Mobile-Friendly Version "Dalquist was shaking with rage, tears streaking down her face. 'Get out,' she whispered. Yikes! If you can see what's wrong with this excerpt, congratulations. What's wrong with the above excerpt? Paragraph one is ambiguous. Every scene should have only one POV character, and everything must be filtered through that POV character's perceptions. But, isn't it so much easier just to tell the reader what character X is thinking, rather than trying to show it in ways the POV character (and thus, the reader) can see and understand? Let's look at that again, and we'll see a hint: isn't it so much easier just to tell the reader what character X is thinking, rather than trying to show it in ways the POV character can see and understand? Yup: "show, don't tell." Yup: characterization. "Lexas didn't turn around. Find Out More...
ze and zir | Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog What is a gender-neutral pronoun? What does English need a new pronoun for, anyway? Many people have expressed the need for a singular gender-neutral third-person pronoun: that is, a pronoun to use when someone’s gender is unknown or when the individual is neither male or female. Over the centuries, hundreds of new words, or neologisms, have been proposed, with the vast majority being abandoned by all but their creators. One of the biggest problems facing the adoption of a new gender-neutral pronoun is the lack of unity and organization among supporters of the idea. The title of each pronoun links to the first few pages (and concluding paragraph) of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, available for free from Project Gutenberg. This table was taken and edited from this Wikipedia page. 1. Ease of pronunciation: 4/5 Distinction from other pronouns: 4/5 Gender neutrality: 4.5/5 Although relatively obscure, this has become my favorite contender. 2. 3. 4. 5. What’s next?