One week from today will be NaNoWriMo and I completed my preparation last night. My plotcards are written and organized. My characters and settings are in decent shape. By decent I mean enough has been determined to crank out a first draft. That's the key with character and setting: you have to have enough to make it work. Character Detail For years, I subscribed to the character sheet* level of detail where I had to know everything about their schooling from preschool on up, their allergies, favorite pair of earrings, etc. Filling out these multi-page sheets would take up a lot of my time. My first idea for NaNo this year got derailed by these character sheets too. The problem was that with the focus on creating all of this information about my character so they'd be more three dimensional, I was losing out on these things occurring organically through my writing. Talk about a light bulb moment. When you pare your character development to the bare minimum, your inne...

Or in Alicia's case, everyone loves a bad boy (as we learned from her favorite cliches)! Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you link your blog in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday. Today's Topic- - Who are your favorite literary villains/antagonists, and why? While Alicia is still taking a small blogging break, I (Miranda) am back to help out with today's YA Highway topic! Alicia may be back, so she can add on to my picks or push me aside. But I'm pretty excited because I LOVE villains. I've always sympathized with the bad guy in books in movies. Now would be a good time to once again bring up my thesis topic... but that may bore you all. So here goes! My favorite literary villains/antagonists! 1. Professor Severus Snape - Perhaps I have Harry Potter on the brain from recently seeing part 2, but he is a great antagonist. While I do love the movies (and...

Zombie Thursdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here . Last week's topic was essentially zombie smut (if you're over 18, feel free to go back and read it here ). One of the questions that seemed to emerge in the comments was, "how can you pull off zombie sex?" Our friends the zombies were of course compared to our friends the vampires. One reader mentioned vampires could be believable sexual objects because they can be humanized, but how could a zombie be written that way? I thought this was an interesting point, but I think the answer is quite simple-- really, the same way any non-human character is humanized. Whether it is zombies, vampires, dogs, cats, or animated toasters... we humanize non-human characters all the time. Of course, sex isn't always thrown into the mix with stories, but that brings me to what I feel is an even more pertinent question-- it's not how can you use zombies, but how can you not use th...

Every Wednesday, YA Highway asks their readership a simple question to answer on your blog. Once you answer, you link your blog in the comments for other readers to hop on board. This is Road Trip Wednesday. Today's question : What are your favorite literary cliches? The 9-5 job is (again) kicking my ass, so I only had time to think up one-- The Bad Boy. I've been intrigued with the bad boy since the world got introduced to Dylan Mckay back when pegging your jeans was still in style*. They're mysterious, potentially dangerous, and everyone judges them based off of a few key facts or rumors. What people don't know is that even they externally scream "BAMF!" they have a heart of gold. In order to be a Bad Boy, the character should have one or more of the following characteristics : Rides a motorcycle Has a dysfunctional family where at least one parent has a drinking problem Smokes Smolders. A lot. Has anger issues Detention or suspensio...

Now with television references! As a participant of The Great Blogging Experiment (you should read the experiment name in a loud announcer voice), I'm supposed to talk about creating compelling characters. The most important thing to remember is that your characters can't be one dimensional. They all need to have some depth that helps them be relatable to the reader. Yes, even the spare change guy that tips off your hero in Chapter 3. Of course, not all the characters you come up with will have the same level of depth. The bigger the character, the more levels they should have. For me, the most compelling characters are always the antagonist of a story. This is because as a writer, we're trying to justify why the antagonist* is an ass. Almost by definition, antagonists have to be multi-faceted. After some thinking, all adversaries should have the following 4 levels of characterization. Surface Level. This what we see from jump. They're snarky, malicious, and...