R.M.F. Brown's Blog

March 12, 2013

A simple guide to creating characters

What do a parrot, an eye patch, and a wooden leg have in common? Pirates? No, cheap and easy ways to create instant characters.
It always amazes me when creative writing courses talk about giving 'depth' to your characters as though they were submarines. They talk of emotions and complexity. Pants to that I say!

I'll mention no names, but we're all familiar with those books that take an age to describe a minor character, only to have him vanish without a trace.
Similary, we're all familiar with the cut-out characters of cheap thrillers and the stereotypes that seem to stink the place up.

My method is to go straight down the middle and offer the best of both worlds. To do that, we'll concentrate on the simple stuff, the obvious stuff.

So you have your character, for the sake of simplicity. we'll call him X.

Now, let's give him a backstory

1. Accent - where does he come from? Is he home or somewhere else? Why is he away from home?

2.Facial scars - how did it happen?

3.Disability - he's in a wheelchair. How did that happen?

4. Is he tall or small? Did people give him nick-names because of his height?

5.Wedding ring? How long has he been married? No wedding ring - what happened?

And so on and so on. Now, not every character will have a scar on their face, and not every character will be married (or want to get married) but the principal of creating characters is so simple, it's a wonder why people need to blog about it or offer creative writing classes about it :)
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Published on March 12, 2013 06:15 Tags: advice, creative-writing

February 20, 2013

The 3900

The Chinese philosopher, Confucius, was once asked: how long is a life? One breath was the reply. No more. The length of a life boils down to 3900 books. Now, 3900 might sound like a new and upcoming sci-fi TV series, but it’s actually based on an average person living to the age of 76, who just so happens to read a book per week. On the face of it, 3900 books doesn’t seem a lot.

Upon learning of this fact, my initial reaction was one of despair. My extensive canon of literature (my gloried library in other words) boils down to Dan Brown, Fantasy masterworks, and various graphic novels that entail such words as ‘zap’ and ‘pow.’
Oh dear… imagine my disgust, and embarrassment upon learning that I had only read one of the all-time classics, and in all honesty, I didn’t know ‘The Three Musketeers’ counted! When my learned friends found out about this, I was berated for ignoring the classics, painted as some sort of philistine. Apparently, your high school English teacher was right. You should have ploughed through ‘Catcher in the rye,’ you should have been put off literature for good and endured ‘Far from the madding crowd,’ and if you knew what was good for you, ‘Ulysses’ should have kept you in on a Saturday night! Instead, like every teenager who has ever lived, you were lured away by the promise of cheap alcohol and good times.

On reflection, however, the figure of 3900 books is a golden opportunity to re-visit your reading habits. There is always a sense that you ‘have’ to read a book, rather than wanting to read a book. Whenever annual polls on the 100 best books of all time are published, it is depressingly full of the usual suspects and anybody that dares question this is as popular as a return ticket on the Titanic! That is not to say that these works are not without merit, but instead of becoming swayed by orthodox thinking, read what you like. As long as you read freely and with pleasure, it should matter not if your preferred book of choice is Roger Moore’s biography, rather than James Joyce.
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Published on February 20, 2013 02:48

December 3, 2012

Nano: the morning after and the dreaded editing

Congratulations, you've gotten through November with that novel you always wanted to write. Breathe that feeling in deeply, let the energy flow. Savour it for a few days.

Now the come down. Before you are hundreds of pages of text and thousands of words. Flicking through, you spot mistakes left, right, and centre; deflation sets in...

Well, worry not. This is a natural reaction, honest. What you have before you is your rough cut - now you need to do the fine tuning, but you needn't be alone.

Break it down into chunks, do a few thousand words every day. Get your friends to look over it as well.

Sometimes you can't see the woods for the trees and an extra pair of eyes always helps, especially when it comes to spotting the difference between here and hear, bare and bear.

Take comfort in the fact that even the professionals sometimes get it wrong.

Editing is a daunting task, but remember you only get to edit once you've finished a book. That's right, you've finished a book.
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Published on December 03, 2012 04:41 Tags: editing, nano, writing

November 12, 2012

How to write a novel: Part 4) Putting it all together

So you've got a great idea, great plot, characters can out Shakesphere Shakesphere, and you're ready to go. So, what now?

The answer to that is simple - write. A 60,000 word novel requires at least three months on average, and that's before you factor in trivial stuff like your life, DIY at weekends, your partner and kids etc etc taking up your time.

Being faced with a blank page or screen is daunting, being faced with blogs, books, creative writing courses and the views of a million different experts on how to write a book, is not easy.

Now, to save you from that misery,to save you from spending two years in a creative writing course, and to cut through some of the bull spouted by these views, I'll offer my tuppence worth. And it is as simple as this: just write. There is no right or wrong way to write a novel, and not every novel has to be written with a view to selling millions of copies and having it turned into a series of blockbuster films.

Get those words down on a page. And if it is a steaming pile of brown stuff, don't worry. You've written that novel, and at the end of the day, that is an achievement in itself.
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Published on November 12, 2012 07:35

November 7, 2012

How to write a blog: part 3) Character

Another bitesize installment...

For me, writing characters is probably the most difficult part of any book. Coming up with a plot is easy - you can steal it from books where the copyright has long expired, but characters are another matter.

Now, every type of character that has ever been, has probably been done better, centuries ago. Then there is cliche. You may think your evil, one eyed villian is as unique as sliced bread, but I'll bet there's a lawyer out there drafting a lawsuit to send your way.

So what to do?

My advice would be to start simple. Body parts are easy. Things like missing limbs, scars on the face, etc provide instant backstory.

The law of polar opposites is another way. If you admire a character in a book, just make your character the complete reverse. Thus, Hannibal Lecter becomes an uncouth, generous, gentle soul. It's as easy as that. remember, this is art, not science, so when in doubt, just make it up.
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Published on November 07, 2012 08:29

October 30, 2012

How to write a book: Part 2) Losing the plot

Is plot important? Traditionalists may think so, but James Bond films never had much of a plot, and here we are 23 films later.

And of course, anybody who has ever read a James Joyce book will think plot is something medieval courtiers did in their nine to five jobs!

More to the point though, I would always recommened a rough outline of how a story is going to progress. For example, if your story involves a character who wants revenge on the evil overlord who killed his parents, the outline would be thus:

1) Evil overlord burns village
2) Parents killed
3) Hero escapes
4) Hero travels the land
5) Hero meets Jedi master
6) Hero becomes swordmaster
7)Hero wanders the land again
8) Hero confronts and defeats evil overlord
9) Hero lives happily ever after

Now, we've all read this book a hundred times, or in my case, written it a hundred times. But the most important point is not to get bogged down with detail in your plans. As sure as I have a hole in my backside, a new idea will come to you mid-novel, and you'll be left floundering as to where to put it.
Stay flexible, and don't get hung up on plot. The great authors never did.
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Published on October 30, 2012 03:56

October 25, 2012

How to write a novel: Part 1) 90% Graft, 10% Craft

"The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work" - Vince Lombardi

I love cliches, and now that The Guardian (a UK newspaper) has recently published a guide to writing a novel, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon with my tuppences worth.

First things first. If your not prepared to put the work in, get the hell out of here and stop clogging up the world of publishing for the rest of us!

Secondly, how much work should you do every day? A 1000 words, 5,000 words, 10,000 words?

Continuity is the key. 500 words every day is better than 1000 words every three days. After a few days, you'll be surprised how much you've done, and this often spurs people on. The national novel writing competition is a good way to set a target.

Secondly, be flexible. It's ok to skip a day if you have more important things to do like work or baking cakes.

Now to the crux of the argument, if it's all about work, couldn't you get a monkey to bash some keys and write a novel? After all, where's the thought process?

Let me tell you thinking is a dangerous thing for a writer to do. Just write, let instinct take over. Build your skeleton and put the meat on later i.e the fine tuning. Once you've got your framework done, then you can fine tune.

Now get out there and start typing.
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Published on October 25, 2012 05:42