Tag: writing (Page 5 of 14)

Character Driven Stories With Madeleine McLaughlin Author of BEGGAR CHARLIE

September 12, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Another great MuseItUp author guesting on the blog today. Madeleine McLaughlin is the author of the MG adventure BEGGAR CHARLIE and is here to talk about writing character driven stories. Welcome, Madeleine!

MuseItUp, along with other publishers, likes character-driven stories. So the most important part of any story for the modern writer is the ‘character’ of the characters. It should be easy, right? Every person you meet in the real world has a character. All the writer needs to do is copy, yes? No.

A character driven story means that some personality trait of the character leads directly into the plot twists. For instance, a man who acts mean to someone who then goes to kill someone. The first guy has a problem, the writer gets to decide which one. A bad marriage, etc, something that will explain his character. The murderer has a neurotic character perhaps and the story goes along with that. Not so easy.

All sorts of things can suggest character. I once looked at an old England census of my ancestors and found that Dorcas Fletcher had written down her occupation as ‘Gunsmith’s Daughter’. That could suggest a very loving and proud daughter, secondary characteristics are to the writer’s and story’s taste.

Like the father can be demanding but fair, so she feels secure. Or insecure, whatever the story needs.

A trait in a person you know can be helpful. I’m lucky that I had a family with a lot of characters in it. All you have to do then is use your imagination to ‘visualize’ what your character would do. Not easy. No. Writing is never easy but when you do it right there’s a great feeling of satisfaction and also of excitement that others may like what you wrote them.

Knowledge of psychology is a great help, too. That can help you come up with plot twists and motivations. I have a diploma in Child Psychology so I know a bit about how children develop and what they need to grow up happy. I was able to use this in Beggar Charlie. The need for children to have a home and how they go looking for one when they don’t have one.

In studying child psychology, it’s good to study normal and abnormal, just so you can understand what a character may need.

So if you’re in the writing market of today, you’ll have to make lists. Lists of character traits, even of yourself. Or you can start with yourself. What I Like About Myself on one side, What I Dislike About Myself on another. Do this for other people, too. Then try and juxtapose the lists. One Like list against a Dislike list of another person. Can you think of a story to go with it?

Some writers ‘interview’ their characters. This helps them get a better picture of what they may be going through.

It’s not easy, but as I said, it’s satisfying and even calming. You’ve done something, you’ve created. The best feeling in the world.

BEGGAR CHARLIE blurb:

After begging on the streets of London, Beggar Charlie is kidnapped by press-gangers and given over to a merchant ship. He finds himself in a storm off the coast of China. The captain promises him shore leave and sends him, along with Hickory Dick ashore in the morning.

They find themselves in a hostile environment except for one Chinese boy who is friendly. When a rebellion starts and people start dying around them, they run back to the ship only to see it sink under the waves. Then Hickory Dick hatches a plan to get them all home.

Find BEGGAR CHARLIE at Amazon, the MuseItUp bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and wherever ebooks are sold.

About the Author:

Madeleine McLaughlin was raised in a small city by the Pacific Ocean. She left after she graduated from high school and spent a year in Vancouver. She moved to Ottawa in 1979 and has lived there ever since and has a room mate in an apartment downtown.

After working at all kinds of jobs she settled down to write and has poems and flash fiction, along with short stories published. Beggar Charlie is the second story published by MuseItUp Publishing.

Follow her on Twitter @Madoxane or her blog http://madworldca.blogspot.com/.

Join Me on the Great CT Caper

September 9, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Finally the time has come to let you all know about that collaborative project I’ve been teasing you about. (I know, you’ve just been dying of curiosity, haven’t you?) Drum roll, please…

Join me, 11 other Connecticut authors, and 12 Connecticut illustrators as one of our own state’s cultural treasures is about to go missing. The Great CT Caper is on! The plot will develop as each author tackles one chapter at a time, but it all starts with the missing treasure, which was on voted on by the people. And they selected Gillette Castle!

Gillette Castle was designed by William Gillette, who was actually Sherlock Holmes (on stage anyway!), as a private residence and is now part of a state park. High above the gorgeous Connecticut River, I can’t imagine a better place for a mystery to take place. As part of my research, I’ll be visiting it later this month and I’ll be sure to share my experience here on the blog.

With the Great CT Caper, the Connecticut Center for the Humanities will be the first to publish a state-specific version of a serialized story for young readers modeled after a national one done by the Library of Congress. Starting in January 2015, the story will be published online one nail-biting chapter at a time.

I think it’s going to be an amazingly fun project to work on. I’ve never collaborated on a story with so many different writers and I’m really excited to see what kind of story comes out of it. Have any of you ever co-written or done a collaborative book?

The Inspiration Behind SCAR OF THE BAMBOO LEAF by Sieni A.M.

September 5, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

With all the great talk going on in kidlit with the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, I was super happy when Sieni A.M. agreed to tackle a diversity topic in her guest post for her new YA contemporary romance SCAR OF THE BAMBOO LEAF. Let’s give her a warm welcome as she shares the inspiration behind the characters and setting. And don’t forget to enter the giveaway!

My mother is from a small village in Samoa and my dad is from Portland, ME. They met when he was a Peace Corp volunteer. I was born and raised in Samoa, moved to New Zealand for university, and am currently living in Israel with my husband and two daughters. My husband is ethnically Persian/Australian/Canadian, so our daughters probably have every continent running through their blood. As a result, diversity is a very normal thing in my life so its influence on my characters reflect that normality. It’s simply what I know.

In Scar of the Bamboo Leaf, Kiva is a blend of Polynesian/Melanesian, raised by her aunt and uncle with little knowledge about her parents, while Ryler is an Arab American dealing with racism post 9/11. They’re two young people trying to navigate through life. They learn and grow and have challenges just like any other teenager…bullying, loneliness, heartbreak. Despite all of that they have dreams and aspirations and goals. Although their diversity is responsible for some of their troubles, it doesn’t overwhelm the story. The messages are universal and relatable.

The setting is in Samoa because it is what I know most intimately about and can describe best in detail–the landscape, oppressive heat, the culture, people. It is also not a place most often set in novels, so it has been a joy to share this little corner of the globe to international readers.

SCAR OF THE BAMBOO LEAF blurb:

“Her heart wept when she realized that the hardest part about loving him was the idea that his love was never meant for her.”

Walking with a pronounced limp all her life has never stopped fifteen-year-old Kiva Mau from doing what she loves. While most girls her age are playing sports and perfecting their traditional Samoan dance, Kiva finds serenity in her sketchbook and volunteering at the run-down art center her extended family owns.

When seventeen-year-old Ryler Cade steps into the art center for the first time, Kiva is drawn to the angry and misguided student sent from abroad to reform his violent ways. Scarred and tattooed, an unlikely friendship is formed when the gentle Kiva shows him kindness and beauty through art.

After a tragic accident leaves Kiva severely disfigured, she struggles to see the beauty she has been brought up to believe. Just when she thinks she’s found her place, Ryler begins to pull away, leaving her heartbroken and confused. The patriarch of the family then takes a turn for the worse and Kiva is forced to give up her dreams to help with familial obligations, until an old family secret surfaces that makes her question everything.

Immersed in the world of traditional art and culture, this is the story of self-sacrifice and discovery, of acceptance and forbearance, of overcoming adversity and finding one’s purpose. Spanning years, it is a story about an intuitive girl and a misunderstood boy and love that becomes real when tested.

Find it on Goodreads and Amazon.

About the Author:

Sieni A.M. is a coffee addict, Instagram enthusiast, world traveler, and avid reader turned writer. She graduated as an English and History high school teacher from the University of Canterbury and is currently living in Australia with her husband and two daughters. “Scar of the Bamboo Leaf” is her second novel.

Website: http://sieniam.blogspot.co.il/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/illumineher

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/illumineher/

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T.C. Mckee Author of THE BONE TREATY on Letting Go

August 29, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Another great guest blogger stopping by today! T.C. Mckee is celebrating the release of her YA paranormal THE BONE TREATY and is sharing some wisdom on when it’s time to let go…a hard thing for writers–and really anyone–to know how and when to do. Welcome, T.C.!

First off I’d like to thank Katie for having me on her blog today. Guest posts are way new for me, but I’m certainly having fun.

With today’s post, I thought I’d address the subject of letting go. We all have to do it at some point in our lives. It may be a child you’re sending off to college, your favorite pair of jeans that someone shrunk in the dryer, or a job you saw going nowhere. Maybe it’s something simpler like watching your husband vacuum the bedroom and he’s not doing it the way you would. Not. At. All. You’ve just watched him pick up your decorative rug and place it on your bed…let it go. He’s vacuuming. Pretend you never saw the rug—the very one the dog likes to chew his bones on draped across your slumber spot. No. Never happened. After that, just so you can write your next novel or market your new book (see The Bone Treaty below) he moves on to folding the laundry. How nice. What a wonderful man you’ve married. Then your daughter informs you that Dad is placing the freshly laundered, now folded towels on top of the rug that’s still on top of your bed.

Okay, DON’T let that go!!! We all have limits. Stop that man immediately. One can ignore a rug on the bed when it’s on top of a comforter. You can break that down. Rationalize it. You will not actually touch the top of the comforter while you’re snug as a bug…no worries. I’m gonna leave that sentence unfinished. But…no way should anyone be expected to use towels on your wee parts that have been resting on top of the Dog’s rug. NO! Pat that man on his head, snatch those towels and let the novel go for just five minutes. Your wee parts demand an intervention. They deserve it.

Learning when to let go is so important, and knowing when not to let go is equally just as important. I remember writing the first draft of The Bone Treaty and wanting to immediately toss it out to the world. Between you and me I did. Thank God I called it something else back then. It wasn’t ready. Heck, it was hardly ready for a beta reader. The work continued for years after that moment. The first novel is the hardest one. Don’t know why, it just is. But I think after all those years, all those revisions, all those weak moments I placed my head in the oven, it was all for a reason. I learned so much along the way. I discovered that writing really does take a village. Honest criticism is a wonderful thing because you can grow from it. If no one tells you what’s wrong with your work, you can’t possibly fix it. And I learned that I really need a gas stove if I plan to put my head in the oven in the future.

In the end, or the beginning, I learned when to let go of my WIP. It may not be perfect. Are there flaws? Probably. But without a doubt I did the best I could do on this particular project and the time came when I needed to just let it go and move on to my next story. So that’s what I did.

I asked a critique partner once how we were supposed to know when the time was right to move on. What she said was so true. She told me that I needed to let go when I couldn’t hold on anymore. When I no longer daydreamed about the characters. When I no longer thought about them when I should have been trying to sleep. When I no longer wanted to open the WIP it was time to let go.

So I did. I hope this helps another writer who might be wondering when to just let it go.

You can find The Bone Treaty at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MLN4KQE/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1PG1TMHY7ZCK9PPAHXRC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846

You can visit me anytime on my blog: blog at: http://tcmckeewriter.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/TC-Mckee/229753570369464

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TCMckee

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8296655.T_C_McKee

I’d love to have you stop by and say hello.

T.C. Mckee is the author of The Bone Treaty; book one in the Seal of Solomon Series. She’s also the acquisitions editor of BookFish Books LLC, a small business owner, Great Dane adorer, coffee addict, and lover of random useless facts. T.C. lives with her family in Virginia.

Embarking on a New Writing Venture

August 25, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

The Observation Desk (which you may not know is the official name of my blog) has changed a lot since I first started it back in May of 2008. First of all, I was still on blogger back then and it was more of a personal journal than anything else. I wasn’t always consistent on posting either.

Since I moved to a full WordPress site in June of 2012, the Observation Desk has definitely moved in the direction of being a place for other writers to come and share their thoughts and experiences in addition to my personal journal. I try to keep a nice balance of the two with one of my posts early in the week and one guest post later in the week. I’ve really enjoyed my couple of blog series: Confessions of an Author and Females in YA.

Even after six years of blogging, I’m never sure how personal to get on my posts, but I’ve found that some of my most personal posts have gotten the most response (in both number of hits and in comments). Notably my post called “How Does a Mother’s Love Grow?”, which voiced my fears about having a second child, was terrifying to publish and so uplifting when people wrote nice messages to me in response. And, of course, any time I’ve had big writing news, you all have always responded so kindly to those posts.

So what’s with all this reflection about the blog and when am I going to finally get to the point of the new writing venture that this post title so directly mentions? (Whenever I ramble in a blog post, I always think about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and how Holden had that speaking class and yelling out “digression” whenever someone got off topic.) Anyway, enough digressing…to the point…

Since becoming a mother, I find I have the urge to write about it. Often just little things come to me during the day. And these thoughts feel significant to me and I feel the need to record them. But I’m not much for keeping a physical journal and writing by hand, well, bothers my hand. But this blog doesn’t feel like the right place for these little thoughts either. It’s not that I don’t mind talking about being a mom here (you all know I do that here), but I save my more long-winded thoughts for here.

The more I thought about my desire, which has quickly become a need, to express these little things, the more I realized I needed an easy and quick way to do it. Because I want to do it frequently when the mood strikes and I don’t always want to have to haul out my laptop because, frankly, some days there just isn’t time for that. And when I do haul out my laptop, I want to be able to write and not have to take all my little thoughts and record them.

“Digression!” No, really, all this blabbering is on topic, I swear. So I’ve decided that Tumblr is a good place for these motherly thoughts. I plan on keeping them short, almost poetic in nature. No need for full sentences or even much coherence (which is in short supply when you have little ones). I chose the Tumblr blogging format because it’s well suited for snippets and I think it will be easy to access and update from my phone (which will be key in me posting often on it). I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post daily, but maybe almost daily…we’ll see how it goes.

I’m calling it Observation Mommy and the link is http://katielcarroll.tumblr.com/. My first post will be on Wednesday because that’s The Boy’s third birthday and I thought this was a good milestone to start on. I hope some of you will check it out and visit frequently. Of course I’ll still be posting some motherly thoughts, and the adorableness that is pictures of my sons, on occasion here. But I think this new blog will satisfy that craving I’ve had for more writing about parenthood and kids in a manageable way.

Stayed tuned for more writerly news coming soon as well. I’ve got a fun new collaborative project I’m involved in and will announce that soon. Yay! Any good news for you all?