Tag Archives: Writing

Ebenezer Scrooge – What A Character!

Storytelling, , ,

Ebenezer Scrooge – What A Character! Scrooge is the writer’s ideal holiday gift. He comes with the kind of bountiful writing that unwraps straight into your creative heart. That is why Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of the best known and most popular stories in the world. Ebenezer teaches us how to get a dusting of that magic on our own storytelling shoes.

Ebenezer Scrooge has a Universal Theme. He is a holiday sparkling example of “How the Mighty Have Fallen.” Many of us create such characters ourselves. Dickens – the master storyteller – shows us how and why to move even deeper. Past a character’s downfall and on to “How the Mighty Have Fallen then Been Dragged Back Up Again.”

Ebenezer Scrooge is All About Redemption. In fact his story is one of Dramatic redemption because of the depth of the depravity pit into which he has plunged himself. His personal brand of human depravity has to do with compassion. He doesn’t seem to have any.

Ebenezer Scrooge Appears to Be Irredeemable. His perpetually scowling face. His heartless behavior. How scornfully he regards the caring world as a humbug. All are keys to his reader appeal. The more seemingly impossible the character’s redemption – the more dramatic the story. And drama – plus power and intensity – is the wellspring of storytelling success.

Ebenezer Scrooge is the Poster Boy for the Character We Love to Hate. Deep-down mean. Unrepentant. He betrays his beloved sister by disowning her son. He abandons his devoted fiance. He all but freezes his hardworking clerk out of their threadbare counting house. Nonetheless Dickens creates a believable protagonist – not a cartoon. Ebenezer Scrooge – What A Character!

Ebenezer Scrooge is Old Buddies with a Ghost. Not a happy and harmless Casper type ghost. A chain-clanking – shrieking – terrifying horror named Jacob Marley. Dead set – pun intended – on rattling Ebenezer out of his complacency into awareness of the doom he inevitably faces.

Ebenezer Scrooge Must Change. This is his story goal. It is also his problem – his inner conflict. He does not want to change. He is absolutely committed to his bad old ways. Dickens must dredge up some mega-dramatic story twist to reach Ebenezer’s darkly damaged soul and tell a powerful tale.

Ebenezer Scrooge is Haunted. A Christmas Carol is a redemption story but it is also a ghost story. Our heartless hero is forced by phantasms to witness himself. His past retreat from human feeling. His present coldness. How he affects other people and his world. The dire consequences ahead for him. Meanwhile the ghosts guide Ebenezer through fear to remorse and his own humanity.

Ebenezer Scrooge Rackets Us Relentlessly Forward. We tumble through tumultuous adventures at a whirlwind pace. We barrel toward a foreboding future – the vision of an untended grave. We race to keep up. All the way to the redemption of our formerly fallen hero. The perfect storytelling payoff.

Ebenezer Scrooge Does Not Disappoint. He gives us story satisfaction to the max. Joy so unrepressed it transforms his stony face into laughing eyes and a glorious grin. Generous deeds. Goodness and light. Life celebrated in every direction for everyone – including us. To which I say. Ebenezer Scrooge – What A Character! Thank you Mr. Dickens and “God Bless Us Every One.”

“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill. “You possess storytelling magic. Keep on writing whatever may occur.” Alice Orr  https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

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.

Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Former Editor and Literary Agent. Author of 14 novels, 2 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells. She blogs for Writers at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Celebrate the Season with Alice’s holiday novel A Vacancy at the Inn – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 3. Available HERE.

Praise for A Vacancy at the Inn. “Grabbed me right away and swept me up in the lives of Bethany and Luke.” “Undercurrents of suspense move the story along at an irresistible pace.” “The Miller family is rife with personality quirks, an authentic touch that demonstrates Alice Orr’s skill as a writer.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”

All of Alice’s Books are available HERE.

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What A Character! How to Succeed as a Writer of Stories

Storytelling, , ,

What A Character! Publishing success for the Storyteller – especially the Commercial Fiction or Memoir Storyteller – is all about the characters you create. Which includes the character that is You in your memoir. Storytelling success is all about how much you can make your readers care – deep in their beating hearts – about these characters you create.

Are You Working on a Novel Now? If so – do you have a single main character? A specific character who is your hero? Most successful stories have one main character hero who gives your story focus. Agent-Editor-Reader interest is best captured by a single strong hero. By hero I mean a character who is gender variable – male or female or nonbinary or whatever.

Are You Working on a Memoir Now? There are many reasons to tell your real-life story. First among those reasons is to introduce us to your Hero. You are the Hero of your memoir. You are the center of your story which definitely deserves to be told well.

Have You Named your Hero? Name your main character up front – at the beginning of your story’s creation. Naming gives your character substance and makes her more real for you. If you have not yet named your character – do so as immediately as you can. A strong hero requires a name. The strong hero of your memoir is a character named “I.”

Why is a Strong Hero So Important? Because of what happens when we read about a strong hero’s joys. Because of what happens when we see her hopes and dreams and determination in action. Because of what happens when we witness her admirable qualities in practice.

We Understand that She will have Something Important to Lose in this Story. We do not want her to lose this important thing. Why? Because her strong portrayal leads us to identify with her. We are tied to her – as one human to another. In her strength we see the strength we strive to possess in ourselves.

Identifying with Your Strong Hero Makes Us Care about Her. Specifically – we care about what happens to her. Why? Because she is who we hope to be. She is who we are on our very best days. Her fate could be our fate if we lived her story. And – What a Story! that is.

Why is this Caring So Important? Because when we care about your character and what she wants – we have become emotionally involved in your story. We have an emotional stake in what happens in your story. Especially in what happens to your main character – your hero. In your memoir we must care about your hero named “I.”

Our Caring – Our Emotional Involvement – has Hooked Us into Your Story. Making your reader care is the most powerful story hook you could ever create. And the more we care – the more solidly your story hook is set in us.

Your Job as Storyteller is to Create a Character We Care About. A character we care about not just a little but a lot. A character we care about Intensely. That is the first and most important step you must take if your goal is to write the most Intense and Dramatic and Powerful story you have in you. And what better goal could a storyteller possibly have?

My Job is to Guide you toward that Electrifying Story. Which is why I will follow this post with many more about this very topic. Why? Because I believe there is nothing more crucial to your writing success than having readers say about your hero – and each of her companions – What a Character!

Alice Orr Says – You Possess Storytelling Magic. Keep on Writing Whatever May Occur. https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

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

Alice Orr has published 14 novels, 3 novellas and a memoir so far. She wrote her nonfiction book No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells as a gift to the writers’ community she loves. Her novel – A Year of Summer Shadows – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2 – is available HERE.

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Praise for A Year of Summer Shadows: “Alice keeps you wanting to read faster, then when you finish the last page, you want more.” “Orr’s characters come alive on the page.” “A Year of Summer Shadows has moved up to one of my favorite books.”

All of Alice’s Books are HERE.

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Story Characters We Have Seen Too Often

Storytelling, , ,

Story Characters We Have Seen Too Often.  I once made a wish that I would never be bored. When life turns chaotic, I sometimes think better of that wish. But, most of the time, boredom is something very few of us enjoy. Especially not your readers. Especially not boredom with your story characters.

A Character who is More a Type than a Person can Put Your Reader to Sleep. We have read him too many times. Her behavior is too easily predictable. They are monotonous to the max. Imagine how true that is for an editor or agent, confronting submission after submission, brain deadened by hackneyed characters at every turn.

The Spark of Your Story is Snuffed Out by such Functionaries. A cliché does even worse. The crusty, but benign older gentleman. The doddering, but foxy grand dame. The good-hearted prostitute. The down-at-the-heels detective with a bitter edge. Feel free to add more dullards to the list.

These are Types, Known Mainly for a Pair of Characteristics. They inevitably behave according to this two-dimensional signature. They possess limited life and no real emotional depth. Any appendage that comes with them, a  bothersome pet or broken-down car or endless peeve, is a functionary also, adding nothing of substance to the forward movement of your story.

The Usual Purpose of these Characters is to Impact the Hero in Some Limited Way. Beyond that, they have no meaningful significance. This limited role does not justify their presence, if you mean your story to have substance. The last thing you want to create is a narrative populated by stick figures who essentially have no real clue why they are there. Worse still, your reader has no clue either.

Your Purpose is to Give Each Character, however Minor, a Soul. He lives in your reader’s consciousness beyond his few scenes in your story. You may portray only brief moments of her life, but they are real moments. He is not on of those Story Characters We Have Seen Too Often. She enriches your story and deepens the complications surrounding your hero.

As the Storyteller, You must Know  Each Character Well. Even the minor character. You must feel her as a living, breathing being. Then, borrow a slice of that breathing life to insert into your story. Do so at a juncture where this character encounters the conflicted circumstances of your hero and affects those circumstances in an important way.

Here are a Couple of Characters who Accomplish None of That. First, meet Lucy the airhead. Worse than out-of-date in today’s take-charge woman world, she is constructed of cardboard. She is too often overly sexy in a wide-eyed, ingenuous way. She blunders into catastrophe and stays there until she is rescued, usually by a man. Like I said, out-of-date.

Another Character in Need of Update is Cal the Commitmentphobe. We have definitely seen too much of this guy, especially in romance and women’s fiction. His character signature is that he refuses to get into a meaningful relationship, no matter what. He has been burned in the past, blah, blah, blah. He loves his freedom, blah, blah, blah. Cal is a cliché.

I Suspect You Know What is Lacking in these Characters. And also lacking in others like them. Their behavior has no depth. Their motivations are commonplace and shallow. They are familiar because we have unfortunately encountered them before in way too many stories. Once again, feel free to add your own cliche examples to the list.

Police Your Work for their Possible Presence. Choose to improve these story slackers or eject them. For example, with some re-thinking, Cal could become a three-dimensional man. Lucy, however, may be beyond reclamation. Let her rest in peace on the rejection pile. Make certain your story isn’t languishing, by way of boredom, beside her, among Story Characters We Have Seen Too Often.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

ASK ALICE Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know – in your writing work and in your writer’s life? Ask your question in the Comments section at the end of this post.

Alice has published 16 novels, 3 novellas and a memoir so far. She wrote her nonfiction book No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells as a gift to the writers’ community she loves. Her  novel – A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a free gift for you HERE.

A Wrong Way Home

Praise for A Wrong Way Home: “The story twists and turns masterfully into danger and romance.” “I highly recommend this page-turner which is romance and suspense at its best.” “The writing is exquisite.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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