Tag Archives: Creating Characters

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. In my experience that statement encompasses just about all of us. My family was conflicted. Sometimes explosive. Your family was most likely conflicted too.

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. The storytelling fodder 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. Important. Even traumatic. The details sear your consciousness. You compare notes. You discover that those details differ from one family member to another.

Test This Premise. Grab your list of intense family struggles. Choose one. The more fraught and traumatic the better. Take a moment right now for this exercise. 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 often were with my late brother Michael and me. We would tease each other. Maybe even jokingly suggest a possible fib. 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.

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 also a potential collision of points of view about that struggle. 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?

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 and powerful and dramatic story material really resides

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

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.

Alice’s Novel. A Time of Fear & Loving. Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5. Experience the joy of 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

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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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May Inspires Your Story Characters – and You

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May Inspires Your Story Characters – and You. May represents rebirth. Fertility. Anticipation of something new. Here it comes. The start of something. A surge of excitement. Listen. Your writer’s heart is beating faster. May is Inspiration. Let’s get inspired!!!

All Things Seem Possible in May (Edwin Way Teale – Author). Let’s create some possibility. Take advantage of the spring weather. Go somewhere public. Pick a person – or a victim – from the crowd. What do they inspire for you as character material?

Spring is When Life is Alive in Everything (Christina Rosetti – Author). Life is alive in this person you have chosen to observe. Life is alive in your writer’s imagination. Let’s imagine. What are they doing here on this particular day at this particular time? As a storyteller you need conflict and complication. Something is upsetting them today? Why are they upset?

May is the Month of Expectation, the Month of Wishes (Emily Bronte – Author). Let’s explore that upset. Give your subject a name to make them more real to you. Call them Jo. Jo has a dream. Something very dear to them. What is that dream? Why is it so very dear?

May More than Any Other Month Wants Us to Feel Most Alive (Fennel Hudson – Author). This dream makes Jo feel wonderfully alive. Let’s make Jo the hero of your story. That means their dream is most likely something you can root for and want them to achieve. Jo’s dream makes you as storyteller wonderfully alive also – ready to soar.

Spring is the Time for Plans and Projects (Leo Tolstoy – Author). Let’s get intense. Jo hopes hard for this dream to happen. Jo desperately needs that or Jo’s life will go terribly wrong. You as storyteller must be a troublemaker. Plunge Jo’s dream into trouble. Make that trouble dire. Disrupt Jo’s plans. How will you do that? Let your wicked imagination fly.

Hope Sleeps in Our Bones Like a Bear Waiting for Spring to Rise and Walk (Marge Piercy – Author). Jo makes a hero’s choice to rise up and fight the trouble you have created. Jo is a bear rather than a bunny. Jo’s story ignites. Struggle erupts. Jo’s desperate need to succeed fuels the flames. Your storyteller’s appetite has a page-turner on its menu for May.

You Can Cut All the Flowers but You Cannot Keep Spring from Coming (Pablo Neruda – Author). Do you write popular fiction? Is your goal a story lots of readers will read and not be able to put down until they reach the end? If so – make that ending a triumph for Jo. By the skin of their teeth after a flat-out exhausting battle – but a triumph all the same.

May is a Month of Magic (Me). Hey. Is that you the storyteller still sitting on your observer’s park bench or wherever? Get on home and start writing. Jo and your imagination and the mighty month of May have given you a smashing story tell. I hope you took good notes. May Inspires Your Story Characters – and You.

You possess storytelling magic. Keep on writing whatever may occur.

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.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/