Writing 101: Why Your Characters Need a Hobby

When the characters in your book feel more like real people, it’s a lot easier for readers to relate to them. That makes it a lot easier for readers to like your books. It sounds like a simple formula, but it’s not. That’s why it works to use little tricks throughout your books to humanize characters. This is why your characters need a hobby.

Humanizing Your Characters

All of your characters should be three-dimensional. That means they have hopes, dreams, fears, regrets, habits...and yes, hobbies. The more of this kind of everyday stuff you can integrate into your character, the more real they will feel. But you can’t give a character a hobby just for the sake of doing it. Everything you put in your book should be in there for a reason, and that includes the hobby that you humanize your character with.

Writing 101: Setting the Stage

I read about these women in Burma, once. They put these coils around their necks in order to stretch them out, starting from birth. The old women in the village have these long, extended necks with coils wrapped all the way up. I’m not from Burma, so it’s hard for me to comprehend why anyone would do this, but they think that long necks are beautiful. When you’re an author, you have to set the stage for your readers so they can understand your characters. If I’m from New York City, I may not understand what it’s like to be a farmgirl from Kansas or one of those women from Burma. It’s your job to make me understand that. Do it by setting the stage.

Staging the Scene

In the medieval era, the Church officially believed that women did not have souls. Women were not human beings. They were pieces of property, and their worth could be measured against something like a cow or a piece of land. It’s hard for a modern-day woman to understand that world, a world in which women did not often speak their minds and were not welcome to pursue the skills that interested them. Women were not often writers in the medieval era; most of them could not read. So if you’re going to write a book that’s set in that time, you’re going to need to make sure that I as the reader can understand it.

Why Virginia Woolf Walked Away From Life

Virginia Woolf was the product of a broken home, and was raised with her stepfather and several step-siblings. From an early age, she was highly emotional and had trouble coping with the various tragedies that life tossed her way. But Virginia found a way to escape the pain of her mother's untimely death, the tragic shock of her sister's unexpected death and the other sad events that occurred in her life: books. Se was given full access to her father's library, and here she fell in love with the written word. Here, she became Virginia Woolf, the author.

Being Blue

Like lots of authors, Virginia Woolf started publishing her own books. She and her husband purchased a printing press, mostly as a hobby, and pretty soon they turned it into a business. She published several novels using the press.

Virginia Woolf was a prolific writer. She wrote several books in the span of a few short years, and received recognition in her own time as a talented woman of letters.

It sounds like a happy story, doesn't it? Her life was marked by death as a child and young woman, but she discovered a love of words and found her own voice as an adult. She took matters into her own hands, like all the greatest self-published authors, and she made the world notice her. But the story of Virginia Woolf is not a happy one. Like so many others in her family, her story ends in tragedy.

1,000th Post Celebration: 999 Writing Tips, But This Post Ain't One

Jade's Blog has come a long way since we first started in 2011. Together, we've explored punctuation rules and grammar tricks, literary techniques and self promotion. Several guest authors and friends of the blog have stopped by to offer their insights and share their stories. And now, it's time to celebrate all of that -- by giving some free stuff away.

1,000th

Thanks for visiting the blog, whether this is your first visit or your 1,000th. Jade's blog has always been a place for indie and self-published authors, and hopefully it will be here for another 1,000 posts. But without reading, there would be no writing. So to celebrate today's milestone, let's give lots of books and other stuff away!

The Deck of Lies

                                                    FREE sample                        FREE wallpaper

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hope's Rebellion 

                                                      FREE sample                          FREE wallpaper

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Song of the Sea (Saltwater Secrets, #1)

Now with an exclusive sneak peek of Book #2! 

                                                      FREE sample                          FREE wallpaper

a Rafflecopter giveaway

$5 Amazon Gift Card

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Writing 101 Redux: Further vs. Farther

It's not always easy to remember all the different rules of grammar, and that's why you need this throwback Writing 101 post about further and farther. 

Find out how to tell the difference between them, and you'll always use further and farther the right way.

Writing 101: The Unexpected Outcome

It’s a pretty classic story: the underdog team claws and fights their way into the big competition, only to face off against a much more powerful opponent. Against all odds, the underdogs pull together and carry the day. Unless they don’t. Sometimes, the story ends with the unexpected outcome instead. The hero doesn’t always have to win, but if you don’t write the unexpected outcome the right way you aren’t going to win, either.

When the Hero Loses

Look, good guys don’t always finish first in life. The inspiring underdogs don’t always win, the hero doesn’t always defeat the villain, and sometimes the unexpected outcome is the result. But when the unexpected happens and the hero loses, you've got to be really careful about how you end the story.

Writing 101: Who Should You Trust?

Are you a good writer, or a bad one? I’m pretty sure that every single author and would-be author has asked themselves this question. If only the answer was as simple as that. But you’re still going to want to know the answer, and you’ll find yourself searching for validation everywhere. So when you want to test your own storytelling skills, who should you trust to tell you the truth?

To Tell the Truth

Should you keep on climbing that mountain, or throw in the towel? Are you good with dialogue, bad with your narrative, terrible at descriptions or sloppy in your research? You’re going to want to know all of these things at some point, and maybe you’ll want to know them more than once. So who can you turn to for the answer that’s honest? In the literary world, there are many opinions you may want to trust. Should you?

Writing 101: Being An Author Will Drive You Crazy

For some reason, a certain amount of eccentricity is tolerated in artistic people. It’s weird and gross that Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear, but he was an artist. You know how artists are. Some authors famously did really weird things, and people just accept it. But being an author can potentially drive you crazy...as in, actually insane. After all, I’m pretty sure it’s happened before…

The Crazy Ones
If you believe that you must be mad in order to be a genius, there are some authors who were most certainly geniuses. Were they mad to begin with, or did being authors drive them insane?