When Your Characters Take Over

What in the heck do we do when our characters take over the story? (Don't tell me they don't, because they do! LOL) This most often happens to me when I am in the flow, when I allow the story to tell itself. When I go back to reread and edit, sometimes it is as if I am reading it for the first time. I have no clue what I wrote, but it seems to work. This is the good side of my characters taking over the story.

The bad side comes when they stop me from writing, when they insist that their character needs to do something else, be somewhere else, interact differently with the other characters - and they are adament about getting their way! Sometimes I can do what they want, other times I have no clue how to create their version of life.

When I have no clue how to create their version of life, I generally end up going back to the beginning of the story, and editing it to fit the storyline that my characters want. 

Bottom line - we need to honor our characters, who they are, how they act, what makes them tick. If our characters are real, the story will be real ... and will more than likely sell!

(c) October 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission of the author. 

Writers & Social Media

As writers, what do we need to know about social media? Bluntly put, we need to know how to use it! We need to be able to get our name and our personality out there, we need to be able to build an audience before we get our work out there. Once we get our work out there, we need to be able to market it.

Each social media site works a bit differently. I do have a personal site, that carries all of my diverse interests.

I have one account on Twitter, and I share my thoughts, links to my work (books and blogs), as well as commenting on an sharing posts that have something to say.

On LinkedIn, I do the same thing. I share my thoughts, links to my work, comment on and share posts that have meaning, as well as putting up the occasional article.

On Facebook, I have a personal page that I keep private, as well as a professional author's page, and a page for my wellness blog.

I do three blogs a week - an author's blog, a wellness blog, and a blog for my flash fiction.

I also have a monthly newsletter that I put out through Mail Chimp, devoted to anything related to writing.  

Another important equivelant to a social media site is to create an author's page on Amazon, where all of your work that is published through Amazon, whether it is published by a brick and mortar publisher or self-published (Kindle Direct Publishing). 

(c) September 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission from the author.

Beginning, Middle, & End

All stories need a beginning, middle, and end. Otherwise, we are wandering around aimlessly, gathering information but not necessarily having the knowhow to put that information together into a cohesive picture. 

So how do we take the story that we carry in our head and make it come alive on paper? We have to create a strong beginning, a middle that developes both the characters and the storyline, and an ending that pulls it all together and leaves the reader wanting to read more.

A strong beginning makes a promise to the reader. I write mysteries - my promise to my readers is that their time will be well spent reading my books, that they will relate to and enjoy the stories, and that they will have a great time intellectually trying to figure out who did what to whom before the end of the story.

The meat of the story is the middle - where characters are developed, clues are dropped (I write mysteries, remember!), conflict rears its ugly head, and the storyline begins taking twists and turns.    

The ending litrally pulls all of the twists and turns togther, and makes sense of them. What you promised your reader is taking form. It is a logical conclusion, in line with both the story, who the protagonist is, and what their beliefs are. 

How do you feel about your story?

(c) September 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission of the author.

Book Cover Art

Writing books for me is enjoyable - dealing with the cover art is not! My brick and mortar Tarot books had their covers done by my publishing company (Schiffer Publishing Ltd.). The first book that I co-authored with my friend Brad Tesh featured a teapot on the cover, and we ran a contest to find a teapot that would work for us. That was really fun! ("Seek Joy ... Toss Confetti") The second book that I co-authored with Brad he really had to work to make the cover art fit the self-publishing parameters. We both cussed a lot! ("Invisible Me - Journeying Through The Soul") Other books I have simply used text on the cover, as opposed to any images.

I have a three book series that I have just started writing. (Okay - I have been writing it for a while, but am still less than half done with the first book!) Since metaphysics is deeply involved in the plot, the possibilities for amazing covers are there. And I do want the three covers to fall in line with each other. I have an artist friend by the name of Andrea Aste that I am going to ask to do those covers. His work is mind-blowing! You can find Andrea here. 

Why obsess over a book's cover? Because what the reader sees first is the book's cover. This is what will initially grab their attention. Then it goes one step further, and sends sneaky little messages about the content of the book. The cover of a mystery book will look a lot different than a romance book, or a police procedural. A little thought given to a cover can exponentially increase the sales for your book!

(c) September 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited wihout written permission from the author.

It's All In The Details!

As writers, we want our stories to hold together well, and to make sense. Keeping track of all of the pertinent details about storyline, protagonist, and supporting characters for a stand alone book is one thing, doing the same for a series of books is even more difficult. We don't want something that we have a character say or do in book five be at odds with something they said or did in book one!

There is more to the details than we think. We not ony have to keep track of what our characters are saying and doing, we have to keep track of how we are presenting their environment, and how they are reacting to their environment. If we reference something from another era, we need to make sure that it reflects that era. Historical events need to be reflected as they happened, not as however we feel they fit into our storyline.

If we do something as simple as moving a paragraph, or an entire chapter, to another location in our story, we need to make sure the information fits, and makes sense. We also need to make sure that it is not repititious, and that the information we are moving is not needed in any of the chapters coming before it. (i.e. If we move Chapter Six to Chapter Ten, we need to make sure that Chapters Seven and Eight do not depend on any of the information from Chapter Six.)

The way that I track information in my writing is through the use of a Book Bible. Everything can be noted here - character history, storyline, what happens when - you name it, it can go into your Book Bible.

Writing is a joy, but if we want to sell our writing, and develop a following, we need to pay attention to the details!

September 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission from the author.