Recommended Reading

I've been rereading Donald Mass's "How to Write a Breakout Novel." It and Stephen King's "On Writing" are my two most favorite books about writing ever.

Donald Mass's book is amazing in that it cuts to the chase, lets you know how to complicate the heck out of your story, or to simplify it, to make it break out.

Example:

Do you have a large cast of characters in your story that all seem important, but really the story doesn't hing on their well-being? Well, why not combine two characters together? Like, say the pizza delivery guy could also be the high school student that has a crush on your main female protagonist. Rolling two less important characters together can make a decent story with "ho-hum" secondary characters into something that's really interesting, by keeping the depth in all the characters. And it's less for you to have to remember.

I really love this book, and seriously, if you want to be better at what you do, you need to read this book. Granted, some of his predictions about where genres are going isn't exactly on par, since the book is a few years old, but his advice is timeless.

I highly recommend it.

Finally a use for those Advanced Math Classes

I was explaining a dilemma I had with my wip to my mother. Character A couldn't be next on stage because I needed her free to check on Character D later on. I couldn't have her on stage because I needed her to observe a person in the audience. So that left her as either first on stage or last. Since my character wasn't popular enough to be a headliner, the only option was for her to be first. During this explanation my mother interrupts to point out that it was sort of like an algebraic equation (she's more mathematically inclined).

"You have to get both sides to balance for Character A."

"Oh like B+C -A=Death"?

"Exactly", she then adds, "Well, you finally found a use for those Algebra classes." ::Insert foot stomping cackle::

Writing Equations, who knew!

Happy Easter, Y'all

And It is time for Happy Bunny.

Not that I'm in a bad mood or anything, but I just love Happy Bunny, just because it's funny. And I'm in a good mood.

I'm probably in a good mood beause I got some great news from my publisher that Unified Souls was now available at Fiction Wise, and it's doing rather well over there. Which always makes me giggle a bit.

And Happy Bunny makes me giggle.

So I thought, for today, I'd put the two together... :)

The Cast Party Sucks

Ever picked up a book, went "Oh, this sounds wonderful!" and start reading and say "WHOA, hold the phone... who is this?"

I know I have. Vicki Blake posted an interesting one about this over at Romancing The Blog today. I can totally feel her pain.

Getting a book, thinking it sounded wonderful, then reading it and thinking "I just don't like this character. I just don't like her," can totally ruin a good book for me.

What is my biggest pet peeve?

Even the characters with the worst self opinion need to come out of their hatred of themselves to revel in the fact that they're actually in love/lust/trust with the hero.

I hate reading books where the heroine is so down on herself/so untrusting that she wont' give the hero that one significant piece of the puzzle that'll make the story fall into place.

I don't do Too Stupid/Stubborn To Live heroines. They just don't do it for me.

What kind of characters don't work for you?