A Time for Celebration

This is the time of year for looking back on things we've accomplished in the last 12 months, and  we're happy to report on the "birth" of a pet project we had been discussing for several years. It's great to watch a project finally come to fruition.

Sue and Becky are the proud “parents” of Dottie, the Writing Mouse, who made her appearance this year in the form of two teaching books for beginning and intermediate writers.

 

We named her Dottie as she loves those three little dots when writing and we couldn’t very well call her “Ellipsis.”  That’s no name for a cute, lovable mouse.

 

Anyway, with Dottie in mind as the teacher, we put together the lessons we had created for our many on-line classes and organized them in DIY form and called the whole series, Let’s Write a Story.

 

The first book, Seven Ways to Plot, came out at the beginning of the year and can be found on Amazon in both print and ebook formats.  

 

Dottie’s second book, Creating Memorable Characters,  came out in the summer and is also now available in both formats and up on Amazon.

 

It was amazing to us how much time it took to give “birth” to Dottie. We had thought it was just a matter of putting together our lessons we had written, edited and perfected over the years in various writing classes.

 

But no, many other steps were involved--all of which took months to do. In actuality, it was sort of like taking lamaze birthing classes. Covers, as well as back covers had to designed, decisions on what the formatting layout should look like, ISBN numbers to buy, editing and proofing to do and redo as simple as sometimes the “trees in the forest” got overlooked or misplaced.

 

And now, that a new year is upon us, we look forward to announcing the imminent birth of Dottie’s third child, with lectures drawn from our most famous and well-know teaching class The Plotting Wheel.

 

Conceiving the idea was pretty simple, but like going through the pregnancy it was a long and difficult process. Many hours were spent on getting the information written just right so there can be no misunderstanding from a would-be writer picking up the book and setting out to use it as a learning tool. Once that was done we had to work on editing the book and that has taken loads of patience and consideration. Needless to say, we're still working on it.  

 

But never fear, just as a 40 week pregnancy finally comes to an end, so will our work on The Plotting Wheel book. It should be available this spring. We hope you'll watch for it. It’s a bundle of information that will help any writer, in easy steps, with plotting their book.

We hope your year has been busy with writing projects and we wish all our readers the best in the New Year.

The Joy of Brainstorming

There is nothing in the world of writing that can beat good-old-fashion brainstorming session with another writer when it comes to creating ideas for a new book.

Nothing!

Take for example the next subject we are working on for our Dottie series of teaching books.  Villains. That’s right. Villains. How to create them, how to give them interesting personalities and how to kill them off.

But, and isn’t there always a but, we were stymied on how to explain the differences between a full-blown, really nasty villain such as a psychopath and a run-of-the-mill villain, such as a petty criminal. Then there are the antagonists and the anti-heroes who might play a role as villain. How does one tell the difference between all these levels of villains?

Sigh.

The answer: we brainstormed the problem over a tasty breakfast at our favorite working/eating restaurant.

 

First we stated the problem which was how to explain the different types of villains and how they were created. Of course that is two problems, but they are interconnected or at least they seemed to be.

 

SUE: I think we should divide the villains into two groups. Start with the classic villains such as sociopaths, mentally unstable folks and throw in the witches, aliens and monsters. Then we can put the lesser villains such as the antagonists into their own group.  

 

BECKY: No, I don’t think that is the way to do it. Let’s look at how these villains can to be villains. Were they born villains or did their environment turn them into villains? Think about the monsters, beasts or aliens - they have no choice. They are simply born that way, but the others, such as say a terrorist or even a bully, were they really born that way or did their environment and other disturbed people turn them into villains?

 

SUE: Hmm. Interest point. We should start at the beginning. Ah, I’ve got it. Let’s start with a lump of clay.

 

BECKY: Clay? You’ve got to be kidding.

 

SUE: No. Clay. Let’s take this lump of moldable clay and see what we can do with it. Okay?

Here we go. Clay is clay right? So we can safely say that some villains are like clay. They are simply born or create that way from the get-go.

 

BECKY:  Got it. This would include aliens, beasts, witches… all those villains that can NOT changed or those where NO change is possible. And let’s throw good old mother nature into this category. She does what she does because she is born that way.

 

SUE: Right. But now we take that lump and put it into a nasty or evil environment and what happens. The clay turns into a nasty or evil villain.

 

BECKY: But there are other factors that influence our formation of a  villain. Science and technology and other people. Environment, it seems to me, is only one factor in molding this villain into what he/she will become.

 

SUE: Right! Some villains are born evil, while others, may be born with evil tendencies, it depends on their surroundings, which include both environment and people to nourish these minds and turn them into villains

 

BECKY: And depending on the level of rage or hate thrust upon our lump of clay, this will determine their level of evilness.

 

SUE: By George, I think we’ve got it.

 

And we did. That's how we'll be working on categorizing our villains.  Brainstorming depends on the give and take of the writers and the ability to change directions, open their minds to new ideas and in general, to simply go with the flow.

 

Look for our next book in the Let’s Write a Story series, Creating the Villain, which will be out in the winter of 2017.