Ask the Author: Charley Pearson
Answered Questions (6)
Charley Pearson
I'd have to say the best thing is getting feedback from readers who liked the story. I know, we're told as writers we should be doing it for ourselves, but it's hard not to enjoy the feeling when someone tells you they were moved, or impressed, or flat-out laughed.
Charley Pearson
If I’m going to be honest, it may be an ego rush. I think have a story that’s worth telling—something others would enjoy reading, or be glad to have read (they’re not always the same thing)—and I get a drive to make it happen. Whether I’m right or not, time will tell. But it would be too hard not to try.
Charley Pearson
Hey, slumps are good. That’s when we get to go hiking in the hills, or play computer games, or read all those things in our towering, wobbly TBR piles. I want more slumps!
Okay, I suppose I should get serious. When I get stuck on a plot, and either have contradictions brewing or no idea where to go next, I try to make a series of short notes on what needs to happen eventually. Move them a round and look for a pattern. Which ones need to precede which, and which ones don’t work at all because those characters would never act that way. Sometimes scribbling on paper works better than typing, and sometimes forcing yourself to sit at the computer and “write anything at all” gets you thinking.
Okay, I suppose I should get serious. When I get stuck on a plot, and either have contradictions brewing or no idea where to go next, I try to make a series of short notes on what needs to happen eventually. Move them a round and look for a pattern. Which ones need to precede which, and which ones don’t work at all because those characters would never act that way. Sometimes scribbling on paper works better than typing, and sometimes forcing yourself to sit at the computer and “write anything at all” gets you thinking.
Charley Pearson
I had the idea for a clever if worrisome bioengineering technology back in college, but it was premature. Now that computers are so much better, I dug it out and couldn't resist using it in a story. The tale includes a recurring theme for me -- pragmatism vs. morality (aren't there at least some situations where ends justify means? Maybe?), plus the idea of someone who decides, dang it, they're going to do what seems right no matter what it costs them.
Charley Pearson
I’m quite happy with my current WIP (work-in-progress), a YA-historical about a Japanese-American girl who infiltrates a WWII Japanese POW camp to free victims of medical experiments. That’s her plan, anyway. My father served in that theater during the war and had PTSD afterward, which inspired me to do a bunch of research on the era. And finding a local Japanese-American born in Tokyo in 1938, with memories of the later war years, really helped. And of course, having a large number of women to serve as beta readers was essential; even raising two daughters and spending hundreds of hours backstage at their ballet studio, exposed to teenaged girls, wasn’t enough to be totally realistic on my own.
Charley Pearson
I put a whole bunch of advice on my website. My local writers group tries to help each other, and I’ve been asked for suggestions so often I decided to pull material together and put it out where it might help anyone. You can find it at: http://charleypearson.com/writer-aids/.
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