Writing 101: When Characters Grow Backwards

As you experience things in life, you learn and change because of them. This happens to the best book characters, too. Great books have character development...but there’s no rule that your character always has to improve as a person. Sometimes, characters end up growing backwards before they can start moving forward.

Lessons Learned

As an author, it’s your job to put your characters through awful situations. Give them what they want and take it away. Make them fall and hurt themselves at the wrong time. Reveal a terrible betrayal. Some characters take in all this badness and become better people because of it. But, some don’t. People don’t always improve through life. Some of them pick up more flaws as they go along. This is what I like to call growing backwards. It can be a lot of fun to write, if you can make your readers hang around to read it.

Writing 101: How Do You Compare to Other Authors?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like to delve into the background of famous authors. I want to know when they started writing, how they got published, if they did anything weird in their spare time, even how much money they had when they died. But that’s a bad use of my time, because I inevitably start comparing myself to those other authors. Do you ever catch yourself doing the same thing?

Stacking Up

For a little while there, I was totally obsessed with author origin stories. One author in an interview talked about how she started writing a short story. Then, she said, the next thing she knew she had a 200,000-word book. Yeah, right. Reading stories like this used to make me feel bad, because I sweat to put 200 words on the page most days. So I stopped comparing myself to them. And now, I feel better.

Famous Authors Who Died Broke

Lots of authors don’t find fame and fortune during their own lifetimes, even some of the biggest names you’ve never read. It’s hard to believe, but all of these famous authors died broke.

It’s Not About the Money (Because You Won’t Make Any)

Book writing is not a money-making game by any stretch of the imagination, unless you’re J.K. Rowling (but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read this blog, so I think we’re safe there). Most authors, even the ones who manage to achieve a lasting legacy of fame and readership, actually pass from the world in relative obscurity without much money in their pockets. All of these famous names did, though you have certainly read at least one -- if not all -- of their books.

Secrets in the Sea

Book 2 in the Saltwater Secrets trilogy is coming out soon, so you'd better catch up on the story right now. This weekend only, you can download Saltwater Secrets, Book 1: Song of the Sea. Get it FREE at Dropbox.

I always knew who my mother was. I always knew where I belonged. And I always knew I wanted to be on the water, like my dad.

…Until I was forced to go out into the water, anyway. Out there, you feel really lonely. But you’re never alone. There is more life and emotion under the waves than most humans will ever see, more than I could have ever imagined. Down there, it’s an entire world of rage and hate, love and hope. It’s a world of fear.

It’s a world of war.

Once, my mother told me she would sing me a song of the sea. But under the waves, the only music I ever heard was the sound of screams.

Writing 101 Redux: That, Which, Whom

Do you know when to use that instead of which? What about the difference between whom and who? 

Get it all figured out in today's Throwback Thursday Writing 101, and get your grammar perfect.

Writing 101: Breaking Up is Hard to Write

Characters in books are made to fall in love, aren’t they? It happens so often, in fact, that there’s an entire book genre that’s just about characters falling in love. It’s nice to fall in love, and it’s nice to write about falling in love. It’s even nice to read about, and that’s why it gets written about. But in the real world, that shining coin has another side: the breakup. This is a very hard thing to write, but you can’t always avoid it. So flex your typing fingers, and get ready to break some hearts.

We’ll Always Have Chapter One

Sometimes break ups happen on the page, too. There are a few different ways to write it, and I’ve rarely seen it done well. But it is a fact that when characters fall in love, a break up can always happen later...even if it’s only a temporary one.

Writing 101: The Rules of a Trilogy

There are book series, and then there are trilogies. The three stories that make up a trilogy are a series, but they have to be much more than that. If you write your own, are you going to follow the rules of a trilogy?

It Comes in Threes

There are many great book and movie trilogies out there. “Star Wars,” which is both, is a huge fan favorite. I’ll hold up “Back to the Future” as an example of a perfect trilogy any day. But if you really want to know the rules, there’s a movie trilogy you can watch to discover most of them: “Scream.” When it comes to writing your trilogy as a series of three books, the greatest trilogies ever told can help guide you through the specific rules that are now considered to be a requirement.

Maybe You'll Be Like Jane Austen, After You Die

If you've ever seen "Becoming Jane," you've been exposed to a few lies about the author's life. The truth is, no one really knew or cared about Jane Austen when she died at age 41 -- other than her immediate family and friends, of course. She'd published four novels then...all of them anonymously. Austen didn't achieve fame until many years after her death, in fact. So you can always hope for that, if things don't work out while you live.

This, and Other Dark Thoughts

If you have a bit of a dark streak, like I do, then that should serve as a sort of weirdly comforting thought. Jane Austen's books were written by "A Lady" as far as the reading public is concerned. Her brother Henry revealed her name only after she died, when he published "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey."