By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • 0 Comments

How to Bring Your Characters to Life

Some people may try and tell you that creating characters for your novel is as easy as selecting an age, gender, hair colour, and goal. But it’s not that simple. If you want your characters to compel readers to care about them enough to read your entire novel, then you have to do a lot better than create a few generic character features. You have to imbue your characters with enough life that they reach out of your novel and yank readers into their world, taking them on an adventure they’ll never forget. Here are four tips to help you achieve this:

Avoid cliché characters

A cliché character is someone who fills a certain stereotype. The Knight in Shining Armour is an example of a cliché character. This type of character is strong, brave, ridiculously good-looking, and runs around saving Damsels in Distress—another type of cliché character. He is also incredibly boring and predictable. Now I’m not saying that your story can’t have a good-hearted knight in it. But if it does, you need to break free of the Knight in Shining Armour stereotype by adding a twist. For example, instead of your knight being fearless, he could be terrified of water because when he was a boy his father tried to drown him along with his mother. Or maybe he’s a knight who doesn’t believe in violence. Small details like this add more depth to your character.

Show don’t tell

Yes, I know, that phrase is repeated on a daily basis to writers, but it’s great advice for bringing your characters to life. Instead of telling readers that your protagonist is hot-tempered and hates ice-cream, show them. Have your protagonist toss an ice-cream cone on the ground in disgust before kicking over the ice-cream vendor’s cart. Showing readers what your character is liker rather than telling them will help readers see them as people rather than as words on paper.

Give each of your characters a defining feature and mannerisms

Generally in novels, there are a wide range of characters whom readers are expected to keep track of. If you’re giving each character a standard description of hair and eye colour, then your readers will probably see your characters as a blur, struggling to differentiate each one. To avoid this, you should give your characters a defining feature, an attribution that sets them apart such as always smelling like jasmine, having oily lank hair, or having an obsession with wearing diamante headbands. Once you’ve worked out your character’s defining feature, you should consider what mannerisms they have. Why are mannerisms important? Because everyone has mannerisms—little habits they’ve developed over the years such as twirling their hair when they’re thinking. These little details really help make your characters more realistic. Some examples of mannerisms include: tilting head slightly to the right when listening to someone talk, fiddling with necklace when nervous, smacking lips together when eating etc.

Give your characters a life story

This is where the magic happens. This is where characters transform from words on paper into three-dimensional people. If you do this part correctly, you’ll know because your characters will outgrow you. They will cut themselves free from your pen and tell you what’s going to happen from now on, instead of the other way around—much like a defiant teenager who’s had enough of you controlling their life.

So how do you do this? By asking questions, lots and lots and lots of questions. The basic questions to start with are what is your goal? Why is this your goal? What’s holding you back from achieving your goal? These questions establish the basic foundation of a character; they reveal the character’s purpose and their motivation behind it. While these questions are enough to create a character, they’re not enough to bring a character to life. For that you need to ask more personal questions; you need to imagine your character has an entire life outside of your story and find out what happens in that life. Ask questions such as what are your flaws? What is your happiest childhood memory? What is your biggest regret? What’s your favourite hobby? What are your pet peeves? And for each question you ask, you should always ask why, because it provides the motive and tells you more about your character. For example, if your character answered that their favourite hobby is painting, you can assume they’re creative. But if you ask them why it’s their favourite hobby, they might answer that it’s because their mother was a painter before she died, and that painting offers a connection to her. So instead of your character just being creative, you learn that they had a close relationship with their mother and painting is a way for them to try and re-access it. These little defining details are really what bring a character to life.

A great way to flesh out your characters and uncover their life story is to fill out a character development worksheet. This way instead of you coming up with questions, you can just answer the ones provided for you. A simple Internet search will provide plenty of character development worksheets. Not every question will apply to your character, so only answer the ones that are applicable. 

Sarah, Editor at Aurora House

By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • 0 Comments

How to Battle through Writer's Block

You’ve woken up, eaten breakfast, and have sat down in front of your laptop. You open the file titled Best Selling Novel and push open the door in your mind that grants you access to the fictional world you’ve spent the past few months creating. You poise your fingers above your laptop’s keyboard, ready to glimpse what happens next in your story. But fog swirls around you when you step through the door, concealing your view. You stumble forward, calling your characters’ names. But only silence greets you.
This horrifying scenario is known as Writer’s Block, and symptoms include:

  • Staring at a blank Word document for extended periods of time
  • Banging your fists against your keyboard
  • Frequent trips to the kitchen and bathroom (aka procrastination)
  • Slamming your laptop shut
  • Yelling
  • And, in severe cases, crying

Now having Writer’s Block is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s generally guaranteed that you’ll suffer from Writer’s Block at least once in your life—okay, probably more like several hundred times. One day, after spending weeks pouring words onto paper, you’re going to sit down and find that you’ve got absolutely nothing to write. Not a single word. Your mind is a complete blank. But don’t worry, there are ways to re-trigger your muse and gain access back into the world you created.

  1. Walk away

Staring at a laptop screen and willing words to appear may work, but it will most likely give you a headache—or make you want to toss your laptop over the balcony so you don’t have to stare at that blinking cursor in Word, which you’re pretty sure is mocking you. It’s better to walk away and do something else, because your subconscious mind is an amazing thing and will continue working on bypassing your Writer’s Block while you go for a run, clean the house, or even just sleep. If your subconscious manages to succeed in spying the next section of your novel, it’ll send you a memo—also known as a light bulb blinking to life above your head.
 

  1. Grab a pen and paper

If you’ve been typing your novel on a laptop, I recommend changing to pen and paper. There is something freeing about scribbling in a notebook. Probably that you can write without Word being a Grammar Nazi and underlining every second word in red or green, making your feel like you never should have graduated Year 1 English. Instead you can focus purely on the story and avoid being distracted by highlighted spelling and grammar errors—things you can correct later.
There’s also the added bonus that you can sit down and write anywhere when you’ve got pen and paper, like the beach or an isolated cabin in the woods, and you never have to worry about your pen’s battery dying like you do with a laptop.
 

  1. Try free writing

Free writing is basically where you write and write and write and write. Don’t panic, there is a time limit on how long you have to write for. I generally find 10 minutes is a good time to start with. All you have to do is set a timer, focus on your story, and keep your pen moving until the timer runs out.
It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you write something. If your mind is a complete blank when the timer starts, then write my mind is a complete blank over and over again until something else pops into your head—hopefully the next chapter in your novel. But if the best you can come up with is Charlotte likes ice cream sundaes sprinkled with chocolate flakes that’s fine. Set the timer for another 10 minutes, and you’ll probably find your mind is a lot clearer, enough to squeeze out one sentence that triggers a tidal wave of words to shatter your Writer’s Block.
Now before you run off to start free writing, there are a few rules:

  1. Keep writing until the timer runs out.
  2. Do not correct any spelling or grammatical errors you make—throw out basic English rules for this exercise. No one will read what you write but you, so don’t be embarrassed.
  3. Do not re-read anything you’ve written until the timer runs out.
  4. Have fun. Free writing is all about letting go and unleashing your subconscious.

I know sometimes it feels as though Writer’s Block will never pass, and that you’ll have to move your novel into a folder marked Dead Projects, but I promise it will. One day a vortex will open in the sky and suck up the fog surrounding you, revealing the fictional world you created as well as your characters. You just have to be patient.

By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • 0 Comments

How to Battle through Writer’s Block

You’ve woken up, eaten breakfast, and have sat down in front of your laptop. You open the file titled Best Selling Novel and push open the door in your mind that grants you access to the fictional world you’ve spent the past few months creating. You poise your fingers above your laptop’s keyboard, ready to glimpse what happens next in your story. But fog swirls around you when you step through the door, concealing your view. You stumble forward, calling your characters’ names. But only silence greets you.

This horrifying scenario is known as Writer’s Block, and symptoms include:

  • Staring at a blank Word document for extended periods of time
  • Banging your fists against your keyboard
  • Frequent trips to the kitchen and bathroom (aka procrastination)
  • Slamming your laptop shut
  • Yelling
  • And, in severe cases, crying

Now having Writer’s Block is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s generally guaranteed that you’ll suffer from Writer’s Block at least once in your life—okay, probably more like several hundred times. One day, after spending weeks pouring words onto paper, you’re going to sit down and find that you’ve got absolutely nothing to write. Not a single word. Your mind is a complete blank. But don’t worry, there are ways to re-trigger your muse and gain access back into the world you created.

1. Walk away

Staring at a laptop screen and willing words to appear may work, but it will most likely give you a headache—or make you want to toss your laptop over the balcony so you don’t have to stare at that blinking cursor in Word, which you’re pretty sure is mocking you. It’s better to walk away and do something else, because your subconscious mind is an amazing thing and will continue working on bypassing your Writer’s Block while you go for a run, clean the house, or even just sleep. If your subconscious manages to succeed in spying the next section of your novel, it’ll send you a memo—also known as a light bulb blinking to life above your head.

2. Grab a pen and paper

If you’ve been typing your novel on a laptop, I recommend changing to pen and paper. There is something freeing about scribbling in a notebook. Probably that you can write without Word being a Grammar Nazi and underlining every second word in red or green, making your feel like you never should have graduated Year 1 English. Instead you can focus purely on the story and avoid being distracted by highlighted spelling and grammar errors—things you can correct later.

There’s also the added bonus that you can sit down and write anywhere when you’ve got pen and paper, like the beach or an isolated cabin in the woods, and you never have to worry about your pen’s battery dying like you do with a laptop.

 

3. Try free writing

Free writing is basically where you write and write and write and write. Don’t panic, there is a time limit on how long you have to write for. I generally find 10 minutes is a good time to start with. All you have to do is set a timer, focus on your story, and keep your pen moving until the timer runs out.

It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you write something. If your mind is a complete blank when the timer starts, then write my mind is a complete blank over and over again until something else pops into your head—hopefully the next chapter in your novel. But if the best you can come up with is Charlotte likes ice cream sundaes sprinkled with chocolate flakes that’s fine. Set the timer for another 10 minutes, and you’ll probably find your mind is a lot clearer, enough to squeeze out one sentence that triggers a tidal wave of words to shatter your Writer’s Block.

Now before you run off to start free writing, there are a few rules:

  1. Keep writing until the timer runs out.
  2. Do not correct any spelling or grammatical errors you make—throw out basic English rules for this exercise. No one will read what you write but you, so don’t be embarrassed.
  3. Do not re-read anything you’ve written until the timer runs out.
  4. Have fun. Free writing is all about letting go and unleashing your subconscious.

I know sometimes it feels as though Writer’s Block will never pass, and that you’ll have to move your novel into a folder marked Dead Projects, but I promise it will. One day a vortex will open in the sky and suck up the fog surrounding you, revealing the fictional world you created as well as your characters. You just have to be patient.

By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • • • • • • 2 Comments

The Importance of a Manuscript Assessment

Let me guess, you’ve just finished writing your novel after spending the past year pouring your soul into it—writing it, then editing it again, and again, and again. You think it’s perfect, an absolute masterpiece that will be hailed alongside the works of Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling. There’s nothing left to do now but publish it, right? Wrong. A writer can’t objectively edit their own work because they’re too close to it, and are blind to their own flaws. This is where a manuscript assessment comes in.

What is a manuscript assessment?

A manuscript assessment (also known as a critique, appraisal, or a structural report) is where a professional editor/assessor reads your manuscript as a whole, paying close attention to your story’s structure, character development, plot development, pace, setting, consistency etc. The assessor will give you a written report on what’s working and what needs improvement. Basically, it’s instructions on how to make your novel the best it can be.

What about family and friends?

Perhaps you think your manuscript is perfect and doesn’t need an assessment because your family and friends have read it and told you you’re a writing genius. Well, I hate to break it to you, but family and friends are unreliable sources. This is mainly because they probably don’t want to hurt your feelings, but also because, unless they’re an editor, they haven’t been trained to read a manuscript critically. This means they may miss things such as characters who lack depth, or overuse of passive voice—the types of things that generally determine whether a manuscript is ‘just okay’ or ‘totally addictive’.

What about copyeditors and proofreaders?

Maybe you’re paying to have your book published, and the publishing package you’ve purchased includes a copyedit and proofread of your manuscript, which you think is enough. Yes, having your manuscript edited is a crucial step, but it’s not the same as an assessment. A copyeditor and proofreader’s job is to focus on strengthening your sentences and correcting grammatical issues. In other words, they look at the manuscript piece by piece rather than as a whole, so you’ll have polished sentences, but your story might have pacing issues and plot holes.

What if my work really is perfect?

Some of you might still be reading this and thinking you’re the exception. You know your work is perfect and think paying an assessor will be a waste of money because your report will come back with one sentence: “This is an absolute masterpiece; don’t change a thing”. Well, the cold, hard truth is that that never happens. No work is ever perfect. I admit to being arrogant once and thinking my manuscript was perfect. I sent it off to an assessor expecting to receive an email back telling me how good my manuscript was, and that the assessor had forwarded it on to every literary agent and publisher they knew.

That wasn’t the case.

My world crumbled when I received my assessment. My manuscript was bathed in red ink and my report was seven pages long, informing me that my characters were flat and my world needed more development—plus there were about a hundred other issues that I needed to address. I was crushed. I’d worked so hard on my manuscript, it just couldn’t be true that it still needed so much work. Once I recovered from my shock, I re-read my assessment and it was as if the assessor had gifted me with new eyes. I suddenly saw all the flaws they were talking about, and I couldn’t believe I’d missed them. How had I been so blind? That’s what a manuscript assessment does: it gives you fresh eyes, so you suddenly see that your protagonist has no depth, or that your plot has no direction, or even that the island your story is set on was growing coconut trees at the start, and halfway through your story they changed to palm trees.

Assessments are for serious writers

At the end of the day, the choice is yours if you want to pay for a manuscript assessment. But if you’re really serious about being a writer, then an assessment is worth every penny. You’ll not only get instructions on how to make your manuscript the best it can be, you’ll also discover what your writing flaws are such as overuse of passive voice, wordy sentences, telling rather than showing etc. Once you know what your writing flaws are, you’ll be able to avoid them and become a better writer.

If you decide to have an assessment performed on your manuscript, Aurora House offers this service. Information can be found here https://aurorahouse.com.au/publishing/manuscript-assessment/. If you’re still not sure about paying for an assessment, Aurora House also offers an assessment of your manuscript’s first two chapters, or 5000 words, which will help you decide if you should pursue a full assessment. This service costs $80, and you will need to submit a synopsis, plus the contents (all chapter titles), and word count. If you would like more information about manuscript assessments, please contact Aurora House through the contact page: https://aurorahouse.com.au/contact-us/.

By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • 0 Comments

How to Write a Novel in Five Steps

So, you’ve woken up after dreaming about a dragon who convinces a witch to transform them into a human, and you think wow, what a great idea for a novel. You leap out of bed and dart towards your laptop, eager to put the story forming in your head onto paper. But you need to STOP and take a deep breath because writing without any pre-planning rarely ends well.

Writing a novel is like running a marathon. If you don’t bother training for the marathon and simply show up on the day expecting your enthusiasm to push you through to the finish line, you’ll probably collapse after four kilometres and crawl away in defeat. Or, in your novel’s case, move it permanently into your Unfinished Folder after running out of things to write 10,000 words in.

But don’t worry, with a little pre-planning you can avoid your novel turning into a short story. Just follow these five steps:

Step 1. Establish the foundation of your story

A story is made up of three basic components: a protagonist, a conflict, and a setting. Everything else in your story—theme, other characters, climax etc—is built around these three things. So before you start working on a story outline, you need to answer the following questions:

1.  Who is my protagonist and what is their primary goal?
2.  What or who is preventing my protagonist from achieving their primary goal?
3.  Where and when is my story set?

As an example, let’s apply these questions to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The answers would look something like this:

1.  Harry Potter, an eleven-year-old wizard, wants to find and protect the Philosopher’s Stone.
2.  Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard, who wants to steal the Philosopher’s Stone for himself.
3.  Contemporary Surrey, England, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Yes, it’s that simple, so grab a pen and start scribbling answers.

Step 2. Research
If you’re like me and have been traumatised by writing 50,000 essays over the years, the word ‘research’ probably makes you want to lock yourself in a dark cupboard and start rocking back and forth while muttering never again. But it’s okay, doing research for your novel is a lot more fun than reading fifty textbooks on Ancient Greek politics.  

So how do you research? Well, it depends what you’re researching. If your novel is set in Medieval England, then I’d start with history books. If your novel is set in contemporary times, then you should visit the locations you plan to set scenes in, or look up pictures. If one of your characters is a teenager, then go somewhere that teenagers hang out and observe the way they talk and act—but try not to be creepy. No one likes a stalker.

Now maybe you’re reading this step with a smug smile planted on your face because you’re writing a fantasy novel set in a world created purely from your imagination. No research required. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’ve probably got more research to do than anyone because you have to build your world from scratch. This means you have to work out everything from the different types of trees that grow (if any) to how the world’s inhabitants greet each other, which means doing research for inspiration. Some things to think about include: vegetation, customs, clothing, transportation, dialect, weather, calculation of time, technology, food, building materials etc.

Step 3. Write an outline

All you need to do here is write a basic story arc—map out the main points in your plot. Now some writers like to write detailed chapter outlines, but I find when I’m writing that sub plots form, and characters develop a life of their own, veering away from my original plot. So I recommend keeping it simple: work out the key points in your plot and let your fingers fill in the rest.

 

Step 4. Allocate time

This step is crucial; you need to set aside time to write every day, even if it’s only for fifteen minutes. Now some of you might be shaking your heads and thinking I’ll write when I feel like it. And it is possible to write a novel this way, but it’s also a lot harder. Writing every day helps you connect with your story and allows your story to flow more freely. Where as if you’re only writing once a week, you’ll find it harder to become absorbed in your fictional world.

Think of writing like this: the world you created has a wrought iron fence around it, and the only way to get through is to unlock the gate with the key your imagination has created for you. If you walk up to that gate every day, the key will slip into the lock and the gate will click open. But if you only show up from time to time, the key will work at first, but as more time passes between each visit, the lock will rust and your key won’t turn as smoothly as it once did. And then one day, the lock will snap your key, forcing you to walk away and never look back.

So if you want to maintain access to your world, allocate a daily time to write, and don’t worry about reaching a word goal. When I tried writing to a daily word goal, I started dreading writing because instead of letting the story flow through me at its own pace, I was forcing the words out, dragging them kicking and screaming from the back of my mind before they were ready to come out. And it honestly doesn’t matter if you write 2000 words a day or 200, as long as you’re writing.

Step 5. Write. Write. Write

Okay, so now you can dart to your laptop and start writing down your brilliant story. The first draft is all about writing with abandon. Don’t worry about perfect sentence structure or spelling at this point. Just focus on transferring your story from your imagination to paper. Once you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to start your second draft, which is all about revising: correcting grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and ensuring the story flows smoothly. For your third draft, focus on addressing any problems with big picture things such as plot pacing, character development, and overall structure. And for your final draft, perform a proofread, paying close attention to any inconsistencies.

And that’s it. You’re finished. Congratulations, you just wrote your first novel.

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Keeping Your Manuscript Safe

It is amazing how quickly and easily manuscripts can become confused, especially with different versions of the same one. If you have more than one copy of a manuscript, make sure they are all well labelled and even dated to ensure mistakes will not happen. There would be nothing worse than sitting for hours, writing or editing, only to find that you have been working on the wrong version. I have a system which I find works quite well:

1. When adding the file name to your original manuscript, make sure you add the word ‘original’ into the title. And then put that copy away if its complete, keep it as a reference. It will also safeguard against any unexpected happenings. Make a new copy to work with and number and/or date it. (I prefer to number it).

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Writing with Inspiration

Where does it come from? What happens when one suddenly gets a ‘lightbulb’ go on? You can be anywhere, and it can happen at any time – day or night.

Although I am an editor and publisher, spinner and knitter, I have never considered myself a ‘writer’. But there are occasions when inspiration just happens and a whole lot of words will appear in my head, crying out to be documented on paper. Writing for me is a thing of ‘inspiration’ and hopefully, I’ll have pen and paper handy to write it down as once its gone, it never seems to reappear. Or at least, not in the same way. It comes and goes, and usually very fast. One minute its kind of just tumbling out, then next – whooosh, gone. I envy those authors  who can just call it up at will, its something that many of us would love to be able to do…

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