In writing your screenplay or novel or play, you must have a star. This is the person who fascinates you enough to write all those countless words.  When we have a tightly written manuscript, it means we have become fascinated with a certain person in such a way that we actually live through that character.

What do we mean by “live?”

To live in a fictitious or real word our daily bread is “conflict” or in the writing jargon, what we call plot. This simply means that two people are at odds over a certain situation. It can be little or big—but a battle is there nonetheless. The two people can argue over which movie to go see or which restaurant to visit or maybe your landlord wants his rent and you don’t have the money to pay him.

You can climb higher on the conflict ladder and that’s where two people are in a life and death struggle or clash. You certainly don’t want to go to see a film or read a book where everyone is in complete harmony and peace with one another. How boring that would be.  Even Walt Disney films have tons of conflict in them. The wolf versus the three little pigs, for example. He wants to eat them and to do that he has to blow their houses down.

Conflict, as I have mentioned, is just another name for plot. Thus in a sense, we could go further by saying that the word plot is called “entertainment.” It is why we spend our money. We love nothing more than dissention. The higher the dissention, the more interested we become.  We have names for each of the two opposing people involved: Protagonist or our hero, who generally represents the one of the two we’re rooting for; Antagonist who is the rival or the one we call the villain or heavy.

The battle these two wage against one another is based on a series of choices. In dealing with the bad guy, the good guy has to always come up with a series of choices: diplomacy, logic or as a last resort war  The bad guy also has a choice of dealing with the good guy: shooting him, throwing him off a cliff, tying him up. Choices on both sides and carrying them out make up your storyline. The more difficult the choices, the more you get involved in the story. You proceed like this for most of your tale until you tease us by making it look like the bad guy is about to win. Then all of a sudden due to some ingenious choice, the good guy wins and vanquishes the bad guy. The end.

So, there you have the writing profession in a nutshell.  This brings us to the specific category known as a “good writer.” This is a person who can hold you on the edge of your seat via interesting choices. You can’t put the book down or you are completely enthralled by the film. This means you’ve done your job well. Your characters have had to deal with a ton of conflict in their personal lives and have had to make many interesting choices for good or bad.

Writers who have lived lives full of choices are able to pass those moments along to us in a realistic way. In other words, they have the “life experience” to pass them along in a meaningful way. These are writers who are thought of as gifted. More than likely though, life has been a big hors d’oeuvre tray to them.  They have actually tasted life. Bad writers dream of life and philosophize about it. Boring. They are trying to impress you by using big, rarely-used words and long, complicated sentences. They are snobs and intellectuals who are peddling more sizzle than steak.  These people hang out more in writer’s workshops than in life’s alleyways. Conflict to them is something to avoid at all cost.  Unfortunately tons of them are out there clogging the works for real writers.

Most good writers don’t have “writer’s block.”  They realize that if their project becomes sluggish , they should just add some more conflict. Agatha Christie said that in her writing if things slowed down, she always introduced another murder.

Bad writers in the first place are not friends with conflict and, therefore, always seem to be experiencing writer’s block. Now, you see why. They haven’t had enough conflict in their lives to be able realistically to relate it to others.

I heartedly recommend you “live” a lot if you intend to write. It will not only fill up your years with fun but could even fill up your pocketbook. Cheers!

Some of the first things new writers are told is to write what you know, and to show, and not tell. Russian playwright and author Anton Checkhov is credited with having said “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass,” underscoring the latter. Showing can be a powerful tool when used with discretion, but all too often new authors forget to do this, preferring instead to paint their word pictures with broad strokes rather than choose a finer brush.

I’ve often written about how writing is a construct, something artificial made to seem real. Everything authors do, from creating and recreating setting, penning plot, and/or developing character and dialogue is not real. Everything about any given scene is there for a purpose; the trick is to add them subtly so they seem happenstance.

To read more, see http://eliseabram.com/glints-of-light-on-broken-glass-the-art-of-showing-in-writing/

    I almost hate telling people that I'm a writer because almost every single one of them immediately asks the same stupid question: "Where do you get your ideas from?"

    If you meet a chef do you ask him/her, "How did you decide what kind of food you like to cook?" Do you ask the major league baseball player, "How did you figure out how to catch that third-inning fly ball?" Would you ask someone, "Why did you decide to fall in love with that woman?"

    You don't open a web page or tap your smart phone to find a list of people you will love or food that you want to cook or stories that you want to write. We all encounter large numbers of people and events and some resonate with us and some don't. Who knows why?

    Every time I'm about to start a new book I have to ask myself what story I want to tell. For me, the answer is always based on the emotional situation I want to explore – revenge, redemption, betrayal, perseverance, whatever. In order to get my level of energy up I need to find the emotional core to the story I'm going to write.

    I liked the idea of a decent, courageous lawman willing to do whatever it took, no matter the personal cost, to bring a gang of ruthless killers to justice and that idea became Shooting Crows At Dawn.

    I liked the idea of child mistakenly thought dead rescued through the innate decency of an ordinary person and returned safe to her family and from that idea arose The Concrete Kiss.

    I liked the idea of a technically smart but socially clueless young cop being mentored by a skilled detective in the hope that someday the kid could himself become a great member of the Murder Police and from that notion came Death Never Sleeps.

    I first need to find some emotional situation that excites me and then construct a story around that idea. Every writer is different. Lots of crime novelists like writing what I call "puzzle stories," books with complicated plots and clues. There is a crime. There are lots of suspects. The killer may or may not even be on the suspect list. The detective follows the threads until, eventually, he or she finds the culprit.

    I could write a book like that but I won't write a book like that because there's no excitement, no emotion, in it for me. For me, it's just work. I may as well be digging a ditch. There are plenty of writers who love writing puzzle books, who enjoy figuring out the clues and the plot twists. Good for them. I enjoy reading books like that. I just don't enjoy writing them so I immediately cross all kinds of pure puzzle stories off my list.

    Getting back to the "where your ideas come from" question, it's not so much how you think up a story. It's more about looking at that list of story ideas and then deciding which one you think you will enjoy writing versus all those other stories you could think of that would be drudgery to write.

    Where do those story ideas come from? The same place that a chef gets the dinner menu and the artist gets the subject for his/her painting. They all come from the individual's imagination. If you don't have any imagination then you aren't going to be much of a fiction writer, painter, chef, musician, etc.

    Maybe people who ask the question don't have much of an imagination. Maybe it's like someone who can't add 11 + 19 in their head asking the accountant how he knows that the answer is 30. He just does. That's how his brain works. But here's the crucial thing: the real trick is not coming up with the correct total. It's figuring out which numbers to add together in the first place.

    –David Grace

I recently attended the RomCon in Denver. The cost of travelling, accommodations, registration, food reached to nearly $2,500. Was it worth it?

So far, I’d have to say in monetary return – no. That is, unless the connections I made translates into a sudden burst of sales at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Not likely.

In terms of a useful experience, maybe. The speakers ranged from terrible to great. The organization of the event could have been better. The accommodation was poor (I froze in some of the lecture rooms and my room flooded from a leak in the ceiling, etc.) Did I have fun? I’ll explain later. Did I learn anything? Not as much as I hoped.

What was good:

1. I met some amazing authors
   • Barbara Vey, http://barbaravey.com/aboutbarbara/
   • Cherry Adair, http://cherryadair.com/
   • Rebecca Grace, http://www.rebeccagrace.com/index.html
   • Jennifer Zane, http://jenniferzane.com/  http://jenniferzane.com/cover-design/
   • Marsha West, http://www.marsharwest.com/
   • Debra Holland, http://drdebraholland.com/
2. Excellent presentations on character development, plot workshop, cover design workshop, the value of independent publishing, and writing sex scenes.
3. Entertainment: My favorite event was the Mimosa Madness. Authors participated in a social event wherein participants had to complete a bingo-like card. The fun in finding the author to match the description on the card made way for a crazy and zany hour of getting to know everyone. The prizes were terrific. And the mimosa, yummy!
4. Facility (Crown Plaza Airport): food was tasty and served quickly

What could have been better:

1. Speakers should stay on topic(some speakers strayed off topic half the time)
2. Speakers should allow time for questions
3. Audio / visual equipment in working order
4. Sound system improvement (echos distract and make comprehension difficult)
5. Ensure lecture room temperatures are comfortable
6. Improve registration – ensure registrants are greeted upon arrival and understand procedures (I arrived Thursday early evening but no one had info or handouts; the next morning the registration felt chaotic)
7. The book signing event could have been two evenings instead of one short event.

One of my favorite memories:

I met Kasi and Jerrie Alexander, fellow authors published by Omnific Publishing

The worst:

My main goal was to gain insight into marketing techniques. Lo and behold, that was the worst lecture. The author talked about her experience with online dating service. I waited for the real meat and potatoes on marketing. It never came. Ugh!

The second biggest disappointment was attending the “Birds of a Feather Reader Chat & Book Giveaway.” When I entered the room and discovered piles of books on each chair, I felt overwhelmed with the generosity. This event was led by a rep from the Book Reading Gals. Casual is good but being sloppily dressed in front of your guests is an insult. After a USA chant (not being American, I felt out of place, again), the rep began to mention book titles and author names. Her favorite expression was ‘OMG’ or ‘Oh my God,’ but I don’t recall hearing why any of the books rated the ‘OMG’. This went on for the entire hour as she strutted within the circle of attendees. The attendees were mature people and deserved more than ‘OMG.’

Did I have fun? I did until the insult.

During an event someone pointed to me and told the room full of people that I was from Canada. She turned her back to me, then made a statement ending in ‘eh.’ Everyone thought it was humorous, except me. Until that point I felt just one of the many people enjoying the day. After that, I felt like an outsider and disrespected.

I’m attending one more writer’s convention this year. It’s the When Words Collide in Calgary, Alberta, August 8-10. The cost will be small as it’s only a short drive from home and a bunch of us authors are sharing the cost. Finger crossed this event will prove to be worth it.Life of a Writer