Summer Symposium 2011

No, it’s not a new children's program to learn how to read. As writers we know the power of words. We've read books or short stories or heard songs that moved us. It could have been the characters, the premise, but I can guarantee you it was the words the writer used to make that character so real or the premise crystal clear or that song hit the right nerve.

When I started writing; like all new writers, I just wanted to get my ideas down in grammatically correct sentences. I had some killer sentences here and there and managed to get kudos from some contest judges. But I didn't fully appreciate the power of a well placed word.

No.
It isn’t a word we as women say very often.
“Could you bake a cake for teacher appreciation?”
“Could you drop off these flyers at the printer?”
“Could you volunteer for this committee that will insure you have no life for the next year?”
You get the point. Now all of you repeat after me, “No, I’m sorry I can’t do that.”
Stop there.

For the last few years I have been a 'has-been'. But I must start at the beginning. French is my first language. It was therefore natural that my first novel would be in French since I had already published articles in France. Fugue dans le Grand Nord was soon published (pen name Eve Combroux) and two more books commissioned. However it ends here. Hachette bought my publisher and killed the line. In fact with the upheavals in the publishing industry, romance publishers in France simply disappeared, leaving Harlequin in translation as the only romance novels source.

In Part I we looked at “big picture” plot elements using screenwriting techniques from Syd Field’s The Screenwriter’s Workbook. Once you are confident that these elements are sound, its time to look at Sam Smiley’s list for the small picture plot issues from his book, Playwriting: The Structure of Action: balance, disturbance, plan, obstacles, complications, sub-stories, crisis, climax and resolution.

Balance is just a different way of referring to the set up. It’s a state of being for your characters—in balance—before the disturbance occurs which upsets that balance. This can also be the inciting incident, but it isn’t always. Remember that the inciting incident “hooks the action in a new direction.” The disturbance might just be the first salvo for your character.

How do you bring a great character to life? Great characters are born in your imagination, and they come out of your needs as an author. They’re who you need them to be in order to move your plot along. Here are a few tips on creating great, memorable characters: First decide who or what you need them to be. Let’s say you have a newly-wed couple and they are about to meet his mother. Who do you need her to be? Nice and accepting or not-so-nice and a troublemaker? Will she accept her son’s new wife, or cause conflict between them? It’s your choice. Who do you need her to be?

Distinctly and emphatically, we become more ourselves as we age. As you likely know, someone over the age of fifty is hard to push around. For that reason and others, the age of fifty-plus is a great time to start writing or to re-begin anew. There’s no better time for writing at one’s full power.

I started writing in earnest at 13. A crucial turning point for me came when I was 48. By that time, I’d spent 25 years as a freelancer, published a couple of books and written for a lot of national magazines and big newspapers. I was also having huge trouble with my second novel, and I was discouraged and burned out, feeling as if I’d hit a dead-end with my peculiar story of a 400 pound American woman living in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.