You also know your characters’ pet peeves, the hobbies that they hate, the people that would annoy them the most, and their least favorite activities. Getting even more specific, you know how the things that they like and dislike blend together. How there are certain hobbies or people that your character thinks they dislike but, should they give them a fair chance, they may actually enjoy themselves. The opposite can be true as well, having a character who loves a certain hobby but then, due to overindulgence or other factors, it can become something they despise.

This is where our writing prompt of the day comes in: opposite day. This exercise involves putting your character in situations where they would never normally find themselves in of their own choice. So if your character hates carnivals, write a scene where they’re forced to go to a local carnival. It doesn’t even have to be something that they hate either, it can simply be something they’d never normally do. If you’ve never thought your character would ever be inclined to try pottery, for example, write a scene where they’re taking a pottery class.

Brainstorming the scene or scenes you write for the exercise will allow you to chart out the different habits and nuances of your character. In addition, writing the scene itself will allow you to not only practice showing (rather than telling) the reader about the specifics of character-building, but may also allow you to learn new things about your characters.

Putting your character in scenes they’d never normally find themselves in will allow you to gain new insights about them. As any writer will know, you can plot and outline all you want but often the characters will run away with the plot themselves. So, oftentimes, we won’t truly know how a certain character will react in a situation until they’re actually in it.

Writing Prompt: Pick a specific character from your manuscript (or a character you’re working on) and put them in a scene or scenes in which they’d never normally find themselves. This could mean a setting or circumstance that they would dislike or one that is simply very unlike them normally. How do they react to being in this situation? Why do they react this way? Is their reaction different or the same as what they’d expect of themselves? If it is different, why is that?

The post Writing Prompt: Opposite Day appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

A large part of how that sense of urgency is created is through chapter by chapter cliffhangers. Readers will naturally look to the ends of chapters as opportunities to pause on their reading and, as the author, you want to make that as difficult for them as possible. So by having an important or suspenseful event occur at the end of a chapter, you give the reader incentive to keep your book in their hands.

1) The Hook

The hook is the portion at the end of a chapter that hooks you in and makes you want to continue the story. There are many options for the hook, one of which is a peril cut. A peril cut involves putting the protagonist or another important character in great peril, which is revealed right at the end of the chapter. There are many different ways you can put your protagonist in mortal peril from having them get captured and thrown in a van or having them get hit over the head and blackout. These actions put the story in suspense, making the reader need to continue reading to find out if their protagonist will be safe.

The other option is to make the cliffhanger at the end of the chapter more about character-based or emotional suspense. So this would involve revealing crucial character information at the end of a chapter. Perhaps one character finds out another lied to them or one character finds out another is the perpetrator of villainous events in the story. Or maybe we find out a devastating or otherwise emotionally taxing event has occurred at the end of the chapter.

2) The Bait

Equally as important as the hook is to bait your readers with the first few paragraphs of the next chapter. Think about it, when you’re reading and you get to the end of the chapter and read a cliffhanger, what do you do? You flip to the next page, see what the start of the next chapter looks like, and decide if you’re going to keep going or stop reading for the night. And, as an author, your goal is to make sure your readers don’t put your book down.

The easiest way to hook your reader into the next chapter immediately is with a strong opening line and by directly connecting it to the previous chapter. So if your cliffhanger is that a character gets knocked unconscious, the next chapter should begin with them waking up and orienting themselves with their new surroundings. If the cliffhanger is about a character finding out some devastating information about their friend, the next chapter should begin with what they choose to do immediately after finding out that information.

This becomes much trickier in a novel that switches POV’s, time, or settings. In those instances, you need to establish the POV, time, and setting as quickly as possible while also hooking the reader into these new circumstances. It becomes much easier to put a book down when a reader is hooked into one situation and it switches to another. Make it harder for them with a super strong opening paragraph and by creating a sense of urgency and suspense with each POV, scene, and time period about which you’re writing.

3) Practice

One of the best ways to get good at writing cliffhangers is by avidly reading. When reading, start to pay attention to how an author ends each chapter and begins the next. Notice the different circumstances and techniques used and which ones keep you most hooked into the book.

Once you’ve been paying attention to these details in books for a little bit, begin to brainstorm some ways you could employ them in your own manuscript. Since you’ve likely plotted out your book, what would be particularly good spots to include chapter cliffhangers? Mark those spots and attempt to structure your chapters accordingly.

The post How to Write a Chapter Cliffhanger appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

How people choose to celebrate (or protest, quite frankly) Valentine’s Day can say a lot about them as a character. Perhaps your character is in a long-term relationship, but still refuses to celebrate the holiday remembering all the years that they hated it when they were single. Then maybe their partner chooses to celebrate it anyway, despite their wishes to the contrary. How would your character react?

On the other hand, perhaps it’s a day they look forward to all year and have extremely high expectations for. Will their partner live up to their Valentine’s Day expectations? If they fall short, will it cause some tension with the couple? Is their partner being lazy or are their expectations too unreasonably high?

Then you have the people who are single on Valentine’s Day. Does the holiday make them sad or bitter, causing them to become irritable toward others for the duration of the day? Do they try to make the most of it, inviting some friends over to give themselves a little less traditional celebration? Or perhaps they even focus on self-love for the day, treating themselves to some chocolates, flowers, and maybe even a relaxing bubble bath?

The world (especially when it’s fiction) has a way of surprising people or changing their minds as well. A character could wake up bitter on a day they hate and then a chance encounter could completely change their entire attitude. For example, perhaps your character wakes up Valentine’s morning feeling bitter and annoyed at the romanticism surrounding them. They head to their local coffee shop where they have a ‘meet-cute’ with someone to whom they’re attracted. They end up getting their number and agreeing to meet up later that week for dinner. Suddenly, what started out as one of their least favorite days has turned out kind of romantic for them. Will their new positive attitude hold up for the rest of the day? Or will the romantic bombardment be too much for them to stay chipper?

Writing Prompt: Take a character from your novel or a character you’ve recently created. Choose any year of their life and write about how they chose to celebrate Valentine’s Day that year. Show the reader how they feel about the holiday and their attitude for the day using the actions and plans they choose to make, dialogue, and mannerisms.

The post Writing Prompt: Valentine’s Day appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Where and how you choose to spend your holidays can say a lot about you. Thanksgiving in particular can say a lot about your personality and relationships since it is a holiday that centers around togetherness, food, and family. It can give your readers or even you those same new insights about your characters.

For example, let’s say one year a character elects to go see friends instead of going to their Aunt’s like they normally do at Thanksgiving. This could indicate that they may have a strained relationship with their family right now and that may make a friend dinner have higher stakes and pressure for a fun evening.

On the other hand, perhaps the character just generally has a super combative family. Thanksgiving, then, becomes the perfect setting to bring them together and show all of the different relationships at play and how your character relates or feels about each of them individually. Your protagonist’s extended family may not even be a part of your story or your outline, but exploring a scene like this could unlock an interesting dynamic that may be worth including in your manuscript.

Writing Prompt: Pick a particularly eventful thanksgiving in your protagonist’s life. It could be a year when they were a child or a year that will take place during the events of your story. How does your protagonist spend the holiday? What family members or friends are present and what is the nature of their relationship with your protagonist? What events take place over the course of the evening? What interesting conversations are overheard or which games are played or what does your protagonist learn when catching up with their extended relatives?

The post Writing Prompt: Thanksgiving Dinner appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

One type of event that almost always causes variations of emotions simultaneously is departures. Types of departures can range from a very mild event like leaving a party early to more extreme ones like your character moving to a new city. It could be a character going on vacation, running away from home, leaving a relationship, or simply throwing away a treasured childhood toy. Each of these events can hold within them a varying degree of emotional response for your character.

For example, let’s take something mild like leaving a party early. On the surface, you may think ‘oh, they were just tired now they get to go home and rest.’ As they’re walking home, they’re probably experiencing a sense of relief. They’re exhausted from staying up late, the social interactions with people they barely know, the drunken debauchery, they’re immediate response is probably a sense of relief. But, as they keep walking, perhaps they get a little sad. Their friends were all still having fun when they left, they’re probably experiencing a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out). What’s wrong with them? Why do they have to be such a party pooper? They think to themselves as they continue to walk.

Now, let’s take the idea of a character leaving their life behind and moving to a new city. Bigger events such as these involve an acute sense of grief for characters. They’re leaving behind the life they knew, the people they knew, the life that they thought they would have. Not only do they grieve that they’re possibly losing friendships/relationships, but they’re grieving this version of themselves that would’ve existed in this city. So you may think it’s all tears and tantrums, but your character may also have a hopeful sense of curiosity battling their grief. Who will this new version of themselves be? What friends will they make? Who will they grow to become?

Writing Prompt

Consider a protagonist or a character from your manuscript. What sorts of departures have they experienced recently? What departures have shaped their life thus far? And, finally, what departures will occur to them over the course of your manuscript?

Outline these three scenes, considering the various emotional responses that your character will feel during each event and why. Then, write these scenes and see how they play out!

The post Writing Prompt: Departures appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Average Joe

In any Hero’s Journey, your hero will start off as just another Average Joe. He or she will live in the ‘real world’ or a word devoid of the magic and/or adventure that they’ll surely be seeing later in your book. They’ll start off in a position where the reader can relate to them, whether that be by their housing situation, financial troubles, or just general restlessness. You could also go one of two ways with the mundanity of this person’s life- it could either be something they’re desperate to escape from or something they love and cling to.

Call to adventure

This is the part of the book where the person finds out they’re needed for some kind of quest. The ‘Chosen One’ mentality is very popular here, meaning that they’ve been chosen by some divine being or force and only they can save the world or kingdom or variation thereupon. Whether it be divine–or if they simply find out something no one else knows and need to get the information out there–they’ve suddenly found themselves called to action in a way they never knew possible.

Refusing the call

The hero will always try to talk themselves out of the call to action they’re faced with… at first. Whether their excuse is all of the responsibilities in their life or they like their quiet, simple existence or it’s too dangerous or various other reasons- they are reluctant to say yes. But we all know they do because then there would be no story, right?

Mentor

Gandalf, Hagrid, Wednesday, Tumnus, Obi-Wan, Abenthy…what do all of these characters have in common? They each serve as the mentor that brings the main character into the adventure of the story. Your mentor can have many different types of personalities, but the main thing they should have is a certain level of wisdom that they will impart to the protagonist, kicking them off on their journey.

The Journey

The main crux of any hero’s journey is the journey itself. This adventurous stage of the book will involve changing the hero’s perception of the world, allowing them to meet new friends, forcing them to confront enemies and face obstacles along the way. Throughout this stage, it’s important that you map out each neck of your protagonist’s journey and how it changes him or her along the way. So, for example, let’s say your character faces off with a giant spider at one point. Does this encounter make him braver, facing his demons head-on? Or does it teach him to be more cunning, stealthy, and how to think on his feet? You’ll also want to make sure you establish the ‘final boss’ or enemy that your hero will need to face early on so that your reader will know the climax of the story when you reach it.

Will They Make It?

There should be a point, right before you reach the climax of the story, when your hero and/or their crew experiences a ‘fall from grace.’ This should be where your hero’s biggest flaw ends up coming to a boiling point, causing them to feel like a failure or experience a downtick in their self-confidence. Sometimes the resulting downfall will be your group splitting up or your hero momentarily giving up on their quest. Once they’ve done some soul searching, however, they’ll realize what they must do to overcome their flaws and beat the final bad guy or overcome the last obstacle of the journey.

The Final Boss

This is the part where your hero faces their final, most challenging, obstacle. Whether that be an all-powerful evil magician, hell-bent on keeping the magical realm in darkness or whether it be crossing a boiling bridge of lava over a volcano where a lost magical ring will be waiting, this final neck of the journey should be the most climactic point of the book.

Reward & Resolution

This is the stage where the hero gets what they’ve been after since the beginning of the book. This could be presented as a happy, cheerful moment, but there are also cases where you get what you want and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be or it comes with a price you weren’t expecting. If this is the case, it’ll likely leave your hero with a choice that will affect the resolution of the story. Once your hero decides where his or her priorities lie and how they want their life to be now that they’ve changed so much throughout the journey, your story will lead to the natural conclusion that their choice will give them.

The post The ‘Hero’s Journey’ Formula appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Character Arc

Even though you’re working with a fraction of the page length and word count that novelists work with, short story readers want to see some character arc- at least from your protagonist. If you’re including, let’s say, a group of friends in your short story, your audience won’t be expecting character arc from every single member of the group. That would be a ridiculous expectation for a 30-page story. Simply hone in on your protagonist’s story and brainstorm ways to make sure they’ve changed by the end of the story. Remember, your short story should be selected to take place during a time of character growth for your protagonist. Focus on how the events of the story will change your protagonist as a person- for better or worse.

As few characters as possible

Because your page length is very limited and there’s a lot that needs to happen, you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot by trying to include dozens of characters. You won’t be able to fully realize your protagonist’s development and the plot of the story if you’re focusing on establishing all of these different characters and their unique traits. Not only that, but your readers will be frustrated. Even in a novel, it’s difficult to have several characters introduced at once- let alone in a story less than 1/4 the size.

Emotional Impact

It may not happen often, but have you ever watched a commercial or music video and found yourself bursting into tears? Even though you’ve been viewing this tiny story or advertisement for a mere few minutes, what you watched was so simple and touching with its own little story. You leave surprised something so short could impact you so much emotionally. That’s exactly how your short story should feel. All of the best short stories, similarly to these mediums, hone in on the emotional core of an experience and, because they’re short and can get right to the point, have a way of being extremely touching. Stories like Why the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down and Delicate Edible Birds are just a few of hundreds of stories to use as examples of how to do this well.

Clear theme

Whereas novel writers can touch on several themes or topics throughout their stories, short story writers are encouraged to hone in on one and focus on dissecting it. And it can’t be a general idea like simply love/relationships, politics, or war- hone in on a specific aspect of these big ideas. For example, Jhumpa Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter focuses on the relationship between a couple who suffered a miscarriage and how it affects their relationship.

Less exposition, more action/imagery

Though novel writing will inevitably involve some exposition, in a short story you should include as little as possible. Focus on showing the details of your character’s internal state and their feelings through setting, observations that the character makes, objects they see, people they interact with, and body language. For example, let’s say your protagonist’s dilemma is trying to decide whether they want to have kids. Maybe throughout the story, as they maneuver through life, they observe different kid/parent interactions- some sweet, some sad, some annoying. This way we aren’t being told how the protagonist feels, we get to see them noticing things and their body language or reactions can tell us how they’re feeling about what they’re observing.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Short Stories appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Whose story is it?

A short story is all about creating a satisfying and believable character arc within a finite number of pages. So the last thing you want to do is go back and forth between two POV’s or try to give two characters an arc (trust us, it’s hard enough to do one). Even if you want two characters to be within the central action of the story–even if you want the events of the story to change multiple people in some way–the story should only belong to one character. And that should be the character who is going to be most drastically affected by the events that unfold. Ultimately, if a reader reads your story and can’t answer the question, “Whose story is this?” by the end, you’re doing something wrong.

Why now? Why today?

As we said before, the biggest challenge of a short story is that you basically have to do what a book does in terms of character arc within a short number of pages. Because of this, it’s crucial that you ask yourself- why is this story happening today? When attempting to write a short story, a lot of writers make the mistake of focusing solely on forming an interesting and engaging character and failing to focus on why this day specifically is important to the character’s life as a whole. Character drives plot so of course, it’s important to have an engaging character to carry the story, but the story needs to be happening on an extremely important day in their life.

When reading about this, a lot of writers then make the mistake of thinking that means that a huge event needs to happen in this character’s life. They’ll assume their parents have to get divorced or they need to be involved in a school shooting for the story to be purposeful enough. However, it doesn’t have to be a huge monumental event on the grand scale of things, it simply needs to be a huge monumental event to this specific character.

For example, perhaps the story starts with a character in his fifties and his wife tells him the doctor called to set up a checkup. A reader may assume its something dire, but perhaps this man just has refused to go to the doctor’s for the last thirty years, insisting that they’re wackjobs while secretly just being afraid of finding out something is wrong. Perhaps this is a fight he and his wife have been having annually all of this time. And, by the end of the story, he decides to finally go. To most people an annual check-up with a doctor isn’t life or death- but if it is to the character, then you have a good story.

What does the protagonist want? What is keeping him/her from getting it?

Another core aspect of a short story is character desire. While in a book-length manuscript we say that character drives the plot, in a short story it’s more specifically character desire that drives it. It needs to be made clear right from the beginning what the protagonist of the story wants and they need to want it badly. It’s not engaging to write a wishy-washy character that sort of wants something or might want it, because then the story has nothing at stake. The character has nothing to gain or lose over the course of the events that take place. And to be clear, they can have a negative desire as well. For example, in the above scenario, our main character desperately wants to avoid the doctor–that’s his core desire that drives the plot. In addition, the conflict comes in through whatever forces are keeping the protagonist from getting what they want. For example, in the above scenario, the conflicting force is obvious–the conflict is his wife insisting he go to the doctors.

Choice

Ultimately, the climax of a short story should always be a choice that the protagonist faces. In books, a climax can be a long battle scene or something with a lot of action, but in a short story when the conflict comes to a boiling point it must lead to the character making a choice. And the events of the story up until that point should make it clear what the cost of the choice will be.

The choice can’t be black and white, right or wrong kind of choice, either. It should present two options or paths to the protagonist and we should see that they will gain and lose something no matter what they choose. So let’s take our previous example for instance. Let’s say the story leads to the couple fighting and the wife making it clear that their marriage hangs on the balance of whether he goes to the doctor. In this choice, our protagonist either loses his wife or loses his sense of safety. And he either gains another year of peaceful denial or he gains a wife who feels happy in her marriage.

The post Genre Spotlight: Short Story appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

In this blog post, we’re going to take a dive into the latter and learn more about the protagonist and how this character helps drive your plot and carries your story.

Before we get started, let’s get back to basics and define the term protagonist. According to Dictionary.com a protagonist is “the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work.”

One way to think of the protagonist is the axis to which the entire plot revolves – they are the main character and they shape and define how the story unfolds.  How do you develop a protagonist? Here are three ideas to get you started.

There’s a problem.

This might be a little obvious but the protagonist’s actions will be driven by some sort of problem and it’s a problem that needs solved. Depending on your story, the problem that the protagonist is experiencing should be relatable to the readers so that they can feel as if they are living vicariously through your main character. Think of the problem as being like the North Star for your protagonist and the story will tell how he navigates his way to find a solution.

Humanize them.

Building off of our last point, as an author, you want to make your main character relatable so that your readers can connect with them on a personal level. The goal of building out your protagonist is to make them feel so real that your readers are emotionally invested in their life. To do this, you want to consider all of the moving parts which include but aren’t limited to:

• The character’s backstory. Every person has a past and so should your protagonist. Provide your readers with context as to how they got to where they are today and why they are the way that they are.
• What are they trying to accomplish? We all have goals in life and to make your protagonist feel like a real person, he should have goals too that are supplemented by his strengths and offset by his weaknesses.
• Whether your protagonist is a perfectionist or nonchalant, give him a personality that’s unique and makes sense with the overall story. Tie in some funny quirks or paralyzing fears. These traits will help humanize your protagonist to your readers.

They have questions.

In stark contrast to a flat character, a protagonist should be curious and ask questions that the readers might be thinking. While events will unfold around your protagonist, you don’t want him to idly sit back and watch. Instead, you want him to engage with the world and question why these things are happening. This sort of character will help you move your story along in a way that’s interesting to your readers. A protagonist who is passive and just lets life happen will not grab your readers by their collars and pull them in for more. Give your main character some tenacity and an inquisitive nature; it’s these traits among many that will act as the glue that holds your plot together.

Use these three ideas as starting points to develop your protagonist. Remember, your main character carries the weight of the plot on his shoulders, so make him interesting!

Copyright Dorrance Publishing, 2017

The post How to Develop a Protagonist appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.