Colette Dartford on writing believable characters
culturefly.co.uk – Saturday August 20, 2022
As a reader I have a hundred-page rule, which means that if I’m indifferent to the main characters and what may become of them at that point, I don’t read any further. Some people find this heretical (two members of my book club, for example) but honestly, what’s the point? There are so many wonderful novels out there, and with so little free time, I feel entirely justified cutting my losses and moving on.
It’s quite a different matter, however, when I look at it from the other side, as a writer. Then I am acutely aware that the characters I create must be complex but believable, flawed but likeable, unpredictable but relatable. Not so easy now, I tell myself, staring at my laptop screen, longing for inspiration. The namesake of my latest novel, The Mortification Of Grace Wheeler, is a case in point. Grace is conventional, undemanding, not one to make a fuss. The danger in writing such a character is that initially they may come across as dull and uninteresting. My task is to peel back the layers of her apparent ordinariness and expose the contradictions that swirl beneath. For example, Grace’s husband, Cal, is much older than her and the age gap has become a gaping chasm. A lifelong Tory who voted for Brexit, she considers him staid and old-fashioned, yet when their son introduces his first girlfriend, an exotic creature with multi-coloured hair, a nose stud and tattoos, it is Grace who is quietly shocked and disapproving. Cal finds her an absolute hoot. Similarly, having been raised by a devoted single mother who often struggled to make ends meet, Grace prizes the stability of her twenty-year marriage and the security of her modest but comfortable home.
New Publishing Imprint Listing: Tor.com Publishing
firstwriter.com – Friday August 19, 2022
An imprint for science fiction and fantasy novellas and novels, a line that provides a home for emerging and established writers to tell focused, engaging stories in exactly the number of words they choose. Most titles are available globally in print and DRM-free ebook format.
New Publisher Listing: Mensch Publishing
firstwriter.com – Thursday August 18, 2022
No mission statement nor other worthy but meaningless platitudes. Its aim is simply to help authors reach readers with minimal intervention and maximum impact and to reward them proportionately.
Writing a Romance versus Writing a Mystery
crimereads.com – Wednesday August 17, 2022
Is there that big a difference between falling in love and solving a murder?
Um, yes, there is, especially when writing about love and murder. For me, it’s not just about content but about the craft and process of writing in those separate genres. I find it fascinating that although I’ve been writing for over twenty years, my beginning process for writing cozy mysteries is vastly different than it is for writing in the romance genre.
I started writing romances because I love to read them. It’s not a billion dollar industry for nothing! Comprised of formulaic and original plots, as well as a guaranteed happily ever after (HEA,) the genre breeds voracious readers who want engaging lead characters, a romantic main plot, and that all-important HEA (or HFN—happily for now, which has become accepted in the genre.)
New Publishing Imprint Listing: Red Feather
firstwriter.com – Wednesday August 17, 2022
Seeks to create groundbreaking sacred tools with a purpose that are made with pride, giving honor to the subject matter of each and every project.
New Magazine Listing: Shorts Magazine
firstwriter.com – Wednesday August 17, 2022
Online magazine published four times a year, and includes short fiction, flash fiction, sci-fi, life writing, poetry, essays, science, research, opinion pieces, monologues, drama, top ten lists, photography, featured artists.
New Literary Agent Listing: Beniamino Ambrosi
firstwriter.com – Wednesday August 17, 2022
Represents English-language nonfiction and literary fiction, and authors in translation.
New Magazine Listing: The Soho Review
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 16, 2022
Humor magazine based in New York. Constantly looking for jokes, cartoons, poems, and short stories. Pitch ideas by email.
Unwritten — The crisis in creative writing
honisoit.com – Monday August 15, 2022
When she sat down to craft her debut novel in 2020’s lockdown, months after finishing her undergraduate degree, Diana Reid had never considered a career in writing before. An incisive debut about the interplay of sexuality, feminism, and power at an Australian university campus, Love and Virtue (2021) surfaced to overflowing critical acclaim and was named Book of the Year by the Australian publishing industry in June.
But, in hindsight, it very well might not have been written.
“It kind of terrifies me, actually,” Reid says. “I was so dependent on this very freak circumstance [lockdown] before I actually sat down and opened a blank word document.”
Writers and Liars: On Fact, Fiction, and Truth
lithub.com – Sunday August 14, 2022
I’ve often heard authors say that fiction is merely lies. George R. R. Martin has said that “we’re writing about people who never existed and events that never happened…[a]ll those things are essentially untrue.” Norman Spinrad characterizes these fictional lies as differentiating the genre from “biography, history, or reportage.” The list of writers with this viewpoint goes on and on. There’s even a fiction writing group, for whom I once had the pleasure of being a guest speaker, called the Pocono Liars Club.
It’s not hard to understand this perspective. As a novelist, I do make things up for a living. But I believe the job of the author is to tell emotional truths, and that the best way to do that is rarely by relaying facts and figures or repeating events just as they happened. Journalism and documentaries have an important place and often use the same toolbox as fiction does, however, fiction is uniquely suited to truth-telling because humans have storytelling baked into our DNA. We understand the world best through stories, and these are an incredible way to arrive at something approaching a universal truth.
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