Tag Archives: Creating Characters

Seashells to Story Pages – Joy Writing

Writer Motivation, , , ,

Seashells to Story Pages – Joy Writing. Make Summertime Writing Time. Summer is collecting season. We collect sea shells at the seashore. We collect bargains at yard sales. We collect flowers in golden fields.

We also Collect Experiences. Each summer experience has a story at its center. Collect summer experiences. Collect Your Summer Stories.

Summer Up Your Imagination. Try this Creative Writing Inspiration. Describe a perfect summer day – sunrise to sunset. Gift your current story hero with this perfect day. She will love you for it.

Brainstorm Ways to Turn her Very Right Day Very Wrong. Struggling heroes make your readers worry about what will happen in your story. Strong storytelling is all about trouble and struggle. Make your hero struggle.

Embrace Your Sultry Summer Side. Summer Storytelling Ideas languish all around you. Sharpen your awareness. Keep Yourself Creative. Keep your stories steamy. Here is a Sultry Summer Creative Writing Exercise.

A Slow, Deep River Slides toward Roaring Rapids. Wild weather threatens. A treacherous storm approaches. Our pulses quicken. We hear the thunder crash. We watch lightning split the darkened sky. Strong storytelling is all about danger.

This Tumult is an Unwelcome Surprise for Your Hero. Her sunny summer mood tangles into dread as the wind thrashes. Her day is drenched and drowned by the downpour and whipped into frenzy by powerful gusts. Like Sally Field in Places in the Heart.

Suddenly Your Hero is in Real Peril. To make matters worse her enemy appears. They clash in their own stormy confrontation. Your hero must save herself. Write a Startling Summer Scene about this confrontation.

Supersize Your  Summer Story Energy. Be resourceful. Turn up the temperature. Then turn it up some more. Give everything a bolder boost. Strong storytelling is all about plunging your hero into hot water.

Her Life Drama is Intensified by Danger. Whatever happens in your hero’s life vaults her threat voltage to maximum amps. What specific events and shocks set her summer simmer blazing?  Seashells to Story Pages – Joy Writing.

Immerse Yourself in Summer Sensations. The sights. The sounds. The scents. This is Writer’s Inspiration Season. Inspire yourself. Splurge your senses. Bring your hero’s most vital self to its most heightened life. Like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.

Transport Your Hero to a Secret Summer Spot. Something magical happens there. Or something horrible happens there. Kindle your Storytelling Imagination. The flames of story heat mount higher. Write what their glow illuminates for you.

Story Up Some Simple Summer Pleasures. An unexpected event occurs at a summer fair or festival or on what your hero thought would be a quiet day. Her heroic quest in your story is impeded by this event – drastically so.

Maybe Your Hero is Walking along a Deserted Shoreline. She finds a mysterious message in a bottle. What does it say? What does it compel her to do? What peril does it propel her into? You are Collecting Summer Experiences. Collect hers.

Celebrate Your Summer Memories. Summon forth Summer Journal Ideas from your personal past. Luxuriate in Summer Nostalgia Writing. Resurrect a summer friendship that changed your life. How did it begin? Where did it lead?

Lend Your Summer Friendship Memory to Your Story’s Hero. Let it change her life like it changed yours. Or – revisit the most unforgettable thing that ever happened to you in summertime. Visit it upon your hero. She will not forget it either.

Summertime is Company Time – Good Company. Who was your happy summer company? The person you would most like to spend your summer with?

Summertime is Company Time – Bad Company. What was the worst summer encounter you ever endured? Why specifically was it so terrible? Introduce these good and bad visitors to each other.

Your Favorite Summer Friend Becomes Your Story Hero. She meets your terrible summer encounter person. Make this an electrified clash of characters. Capture their powered-up collision in an intense  scene.

Suss Out Some Summer Secrets. Strangers possess strange secrets. Sit yourself down in an outdoor café. Set yourself in nosey parker mode. Ask yourself whom among these people is hiding a sinister secret. What is that secret? What makes it sinister?

Send Your Wicked Imagination Soaring. Observe what happens and Record it in your Writer’s Journal. It’s okay for writers to eavesdrop. You are not being rude. You are Studying People for Your Stories. This is Your Writing Work.

Sizzle Up a Summer Romance. You are still in a public place. Still Observing and Recording. Ask yourself whom among all of this humanity would your story hero fall in love with. Imagine them as summer lovers.

Make Sparks Fly Between Them. Why are they drawn to each other? What could drive them apart? How will they reunite – or not? Summer Romance Writing. Satisfy yourself superbly. You will love writing about love.

Make Summer Writing Your Storytelling Sunshine Time. Some think of summer as a lazy interlude. But you have done good work here. Your imagination has flown and flourished. You have set your story pages on fire with summer heat.

Your Writer’s Journal is Full and Flush. Lots of strong material for future storytelling. You have gathered Summer Story Starters. You have added to your Summer Collection of Story Ideas. You have fed Your Writer Self a fine picnic.

Meanwhile Enjoy the Season. Find a yard sale. Seek out the sea shore. Pick yourself some posies. Relax on a lakeside evening. But never neglect your Storyteller’s Journey. Make summertime writing time. Seashells to Story Pages – Joy Writing.

FYI – More Summer Writing Prompts and Exercises.

  1. Imagine a summer tradition for your hero’s fictional family. An annual gathering event. How does it bring them closer together? How does it drive them apart?
  2. Your hero is spending the summer in an unfamiliar place. How does the change affect her? What happens to her there? How does she react to those events?
  3. A summer road trip goes terribly wrong, for your hero and others. What challenges do these travelers face? How do they overcome these challenges – or not?
  4. Your hero has a summer job or assignment that she hates. What happens? What does she learn from this experience? How does this experience change her life in your story?
  5. A summer heat wave leads to unexpected adventures for your hero. What are they? How do they affect her? How do they affect your story?
  6. It is a hot, humid summer night, and your hero cannot sleep. When she gets up to seek some relief, something dramatic happens. Tell the story of that happening.
  7. Your heroine jumps into cold water on a very hot day. When she does that, something startling happens. What is this startling occurrence? What happens to her after that?
  8. Your hero attends an elegant and special summer meal. What makes this meal so special? What food is served? Who is there? How does your hero interact with the other guests?
  9. Invent a legend or ghost story. Have your hero tell it on a stormy summer night. What happens after that? How does what happens relate to the story your hero told?
  10. Create a summer writing prompt or exercise of your own. Send it to me in the Comments section following this post. I cannot wait to read it, write it, share it.

Keep on Writing Whatever May Occur.  https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Former Editor and Literary Agent. Author of 15 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells.

Joy Write with Alice. https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Follow Alice’s Substack at https://aliceorr.substack.com/

Experience Joy Reading. Alice’s Summer Novel. A Year of Summer Shadows. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2. Available HERE.

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Praise for A Year of Summer Shadows. “A must-read for lovers of romantic suspense.”
“Alice keeps you wanting to read faster, then when you finish the last page, you want more.” “Another fast-paced Alice Orr thriller involving murder, family secrets, friendships and plot twists against the backdrop of a slow-building yet intense love story.” “Orr’s characters come alive on the page.” “A Year of Summer Shadows is of my favorite books.”

Alice’s Suspense Novel Series. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Five intense stories of love and death and intrigue. Available HERE.

Praise for Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. “Romance and suspense at its best.” “I highly recommend this page-turner series.” “Twists and turns, strong characters, suspense and passionate love.” “The writing is exquisite.”

Ask Alice Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know? About your writer experience. About telling your stories. Ask your question as a comment following this post.

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Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing

Storytelling, , ,

Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing. Pat Conroy is one of my favorite storytellers. He said this. “One of the greatest gifts you can be given as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.”

Let’s Modify That. One of the greatest gifts you can be given as a writer is to be born into a conflicted family with family secrets. In my experience that statement encompasses just about all of us.

My Family is Conflicted. Sometimes explosive. My family harbors secrets.  Your family is most likely conflicted too. Your family may harbor secrets. Do you have a family story – funny or dramatic or painful – that you have always wanted to write about?

Joy Writing Prompt. Write a scene where a long-held and protected family secret is revealed at a holiday gathering. How does each family member react? Whose version seems most true or untrue? Include compelling scene elements – action, dialogue, description, tension.

Conflict is the Essence of Strong Storytelling. I prefer to refer to Conflict as Struggle in this context. Struggle is the essence of strong storytelling. Ergo. Look homeward angels. Family is where the fodder is. This storytelling fodder is waiting for you to turn it into story magic.

Families Bristle with Serious Struggle. My family. Your family. Everybody’s family. Take a moment right now for this exercise. Make a list of the intense struggles you have heard about or witnessed or participated in from your family history. Each is a story throbbing to be told.

A Family Memory Patchwork. How do separate members piece that patchwork together? An incident occurs in your shared past. Am important incident. Maybe a traumatic one. The details sear your consciousness. You compare notes.

Memory Details may Differ.  Have you ever compared memories of a family event or incident with another person in your family? How did your recollections coincide? How did they differ?

Joy Writing Prompt. Select a family event – a wedding or funeral or birthday gathering. Describe the event from the point of view, and in the individual voices, of three different family members. How do their memories of the event compare and contrast?

Test This Premise Further. Grab your list of intense family struggles. Choose one. The more fraught and traumatic the better. List the family members involved in that struggle. Which do you think would agree with your recollection of the incident? Which do you suspect would disagree? Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing.

Discrepancies Can Be Benign. Like they usually were with my late brother Michael and me. We would tease each other and make jokes. But only with the not-so-touchy bits. Nostalgia rather than gut wrench. The dreaded stories we mostly did not mention.

Dreaded Stories are Danger Zones. We tiptoed around them like quicksand. One wrong step and we could be sucked down with no hope of rescue. Rescue from what? Rescue from the collision of my version of reality and his and from the powerful confrontation that might erupt between us as a result.

Joy Writing Prompt. Write a family story that no one wants to talk about. In your story, someone brings up this episode that has previously been silenced. What happens when this revelation occurs? What emotions and conflicts arise? Be specific and detailed.

Every Family has Dreaded Stories. Your personal list of family struggles is a catalog of danger zones in your history. Each struggle is a bed of quicksand. Each is a collision of points of view waiting to happen. Each is a potentially bloody battleground. All possess story power.

This is Fertile Ground for the Storyteller in You. Who in your family do you tiptoe around for fear of your colliding truths? What conflagrations have you barely survived when one of those toes slipped into the memory mine field? Which would make the most dramatic story? Which family member’s perspective would be most challenging for you to write?

Joy Writing Prompt. Two siblings remember a childhood incident very differently. Write a dialogue where they argue about what really happened in that incident. Reveal their emotions by way of their manner of speaking.

Family Fueled Storytelling is About Emotional Truth. You have your emotional truth. Other people have theirs. Each truth is valid for that person. Have you written stories about real people and events? How did you handle emotional truth – yours and theirs?

Intensify the Story You are Writing Now.  Hot emotions. Cold hearts. Hotter clashes. Colder calculators. You have encountered all of these somewhere in your life. Slide them into your story. Use them to bring your characters and your scenes to life on your pages.

This is Toxic Territory in Real Life. Tell these stories as fiction. Reimagine all of the physical details. Personal descriptions. Locations. Times and dates. Anything identifiable. Retain the emotions. They are where your intense, powerful, dramatic story material really resides

Joy Writing Prompt. Write an intense, powerful, dramatic scene where a family member leaves home under difficult circumstances. What is said? What is left unsaid? How, specifically, does the family cope with their absence?

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Struggle Boils through My Own Stories. Through roiling Riverton, tempestuous families collide and conflict. How much of that has been inspired by real-life experience? Let me just say this. I agree with Pat Conroy about complicated families. I am grateful for the gift to my writer self. Family Fuels Fiction – Joy Writing.

FYI – More Family Fueled Writing Prompts and Exercises.

  1. Make a list of the most intense struggles and conflicts you have witnessed or experienced in your family. Choose one and write a brief summary of the event from your own perspective. Write a paragraph (or more) from the perspective of another involved family member (or more).
  2. Choose a family member you know well. Invent a fictional character inspired by them. Change name, appearance, and circumstances but keep their core emotional struggle.
  3. Write a conversation between two of your family members who are tiptoeing around a “danger zone” topic. Focus on subtext. What are they not saying? What emotions simmer beneath the surface?
  4. Write a short piece where each paragraph is a different member of your family’s recollection of the same event. Let the discrepancies and overlaps create tension and reveal character.
  5. Choose a strong emotion that you personally associate with a specific family memory – anger, joy, grief, jealousy, etc. Write a fictional scene that captures this strong emotion. Include characters who will best populate this scene and a setting that will best accomodate it.
  6. Create a lifelong creativity writing prompt or exercise of your own. Send it to me in the Comments section following this post. I cannot wait to read it, write it, share it.
  7. Create a family fueled writing prompt or exercise of your own. Send it to me in the Comments section following this post. I cannot wait to read it, write it, share it.

You possess storytelling magic. Keep on writing whatever may occur.  Alice Orr.  https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Former Editor and Literary Agent. Author of 15 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells.

Visit Alice’s Joy Writing Blog. Whether you consider yourself a writer or not you have storytelling magic in you. Learn to shine in the light of that magic and make it your own at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Follow Alice on Substack — https://aliceorr.substack.com/

Alice’s Novel. A Time of Fear & Loving. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5. Experience Joy Reading. Available HERE.

A Time of Fear & Loving

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

Alice’s Suspense Novel Series. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Five intense stories of love and death and intrigue. Available HERE.

Praise for Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. “Romance and suspense at its best.” “I highly recommend this page-turner series.” “Twists and turns, strong characters, suspense and passionate love.” “The writing is exquisite.”

Ask Alice Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know? About your writer experience. About telling your stories. Ask your question as a comment following this post.

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Here’s Looking at Your Story Character

Storytelling, ,

Here’s Looking at Your Story Character. Let’s Go to the Movies. I use films as storytelling examples more often than I use books. Because more of us have seen the same movies than have read the same books. Some movies have produced story character icons in our culture. Rick Blaine played by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca is one of those icons.

Let’s Lay on Time Setting Drama from the Start. Casablanca came out in 1942. The world was immersed in the horrific drama of World War II. The film opening taps directly into that with a map of Europe and then Northern Africa running beneath the credits.

Let’s Lay on Place Setting Drama Too. Maps were very significant then. They played in theater news reels. They appeared in newspapers alongside stories of heart-stopping events. Battles. Troop movements. All in places that represented life and death to a 1942 audience.

Let’s Set the Stage for Your Dramatic Character. Rick has not yet so much as shown his face and we are already on the edge of our seats. A story’s opening has a lot of work to do. A hero character has a lot of weight to carry. How do you confront these challenges in your story?

Let’s Begin with Your Dramatic Opening. Picture your potential reader checking out the sample pages of your story online or scanning them in a bookstore aisle. You get one chance to make this first impression. You must not squander that chance. Here’s Looking at Your Story Character.

Let’s Plunge Your Hero into Trouble. Start with a situation where your hero feels as if their current world is being yanked out from under them. For Rick – Ilsa returns. She is the lover from the past who broke his heart. From this point on his life will never be the same again.

Let’s Make Your Hero Struggle. A struggle begins at your story’s opening. Something dramatic is already in progress. Casablanca uses Rick’s history for this. He must struggle against past hurt and present anger. Consider doing something like that in your story.

Let’s Create High Stakes for Your Hero. Something crucial is at stake for your character and for others too. Decisive action is desperately needed. Dire circumstances will result if your character fails to fulfill this desperate need. Rick must save a war hero from deathly peril.

Let’s Make Success a Long Shot for Your Hero. Obstacles to your characters purpose are already evident at the beginning of your story. Formidable obstacles. Powerful confrontations are inevitable. Rick is pitted against Nazis. Put your character in truly intense danger also.

Let’s Make Your Hero Decide to Act Anyway. Your character recognizes the danger and would prefer to avoid it. But somebody must do something. Nobody else steps up. Your hero makes a conscious decision to act. That decision sets your story in motion. Like Rick in Casablanca your hero must save the day – and they both will. Here’s Looking at Your Story Character.

AliceOrr. https://www.aliceorrbooks.com. Teacher. Storyteller. Former Editor and Literary Agent. Author of 15 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells. Blogging here for writers. “What A Character! How to Create Characters that Live and Breathe on the Page.”

Alice’s Memoir is titled Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. At the beating heart of this moving story a woman struggles. All her life, she has taken care of herself. Now she faces an adversary too formidable to battle alone. Available HERE.

Praise for Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness: “I was lifted. I highly recommend this book as a can’t-put-down roadmap for anyone.” “Outstanding read. Very, very well written.” “Honest, funny, and consoling.” “Ms. Orr is a fine, sensitive author and woman. I have read other books by her and am glad didn’t miss this one.”

All of Alice’s Books are available HERE.

Ask Alice Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know about how to discover the strongest story characters you have in you? Ask your questions in the Comments section at the end of this post. Alice will answer.

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