Rebekah’s Comments (group member since Dec 31, 2016)

Rebekah’s comments from the Help For Writers group.

Characters are like fruit trees. They have their own beauty and their own evil.
Interesting characters have a diverse personality, with depth and memories. They cannot be too good or too bad. Balance, again, is key. So here's a list of the basics, to try and make it a bit easier.
1) Know where your character comes from.
The background to ANY person is what makes them who they are. Remember throughout all of this, you need to make them realistic and believable. So give them dark pasts or happy backgrounds, parents who are no longer together and parents who are still happily married. Do they have bossy siblings they despise or look up to?

2) PERSONALITY
The most obvious, and some would say, the most important of all in creating interesting characters is WHAT THEY ARE LIKE as a person. Think about what she/he does and also why she/he does that. Is she quite straightforward , and is that because of her uptight family? What quirks does she/he have? List their bad and good qualities. That is important.

3) Secrets are interesting.
Giving your character a secret makes them more intriguing for the reader, and also more life-like. This obviously just a suggestion, but ask yourself this: Are you not more inclined to read about a character with a secret than one you know everything about?

These are just a few suggestion, please comment if you would like to hear more. To finish, I'd like to quote Google (yes, google!) : "It takes skill and insight to breathe life into stock characters, something too often dismissed by those who disdain genre fiction as inferior."

DONT FORGET TO LIKE, COMMENT, AND BECOME A MEMBER!

Admittedly, it's from me, but it's there.... So yeah, here is the link to my first Chapter to a book I'm working on entitled Francesca Foxx. The first chapter is here : https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Check it out and comment what you think below. I welcome constructive criticism and so hope you guys like it. If you do, I'd love to here why and if you don't at all like it, I want to know why, so that I can work on those points next time! Thanks for reading and remember - If you want to take part in the Chapter Challenge, all you have to do is message me.
Help For Writers ⭐️

Let us know who you are, what you enjoy reading and writing, where you're from and anything else you'd like to share! If you're stuck, use the questions below as a guideline;
1) Your name and where you're from.
2) Are you currently writing any books? (if you are, let us know if they're available to read under the section 'Creative Writing' on GoodReads & of course, the title!)
3) Who inspires you? Be it an author, celebrity or even your mum, we want to know who you look to for guidance and who keeps you going!
4) Any advice for people currently struggling with their writing? Remember; that is what Help For Writers is all about - helping each other out in all our writing ventures and offering support!
Finally, thank you so much for visiting and becoming a member,
Help For Writers ✰

Hello Burt. First of all, we're really sorry its taken this long get back to you! Secondly, thank you so much for telling your problem and using Help For Writers! Now, about your problem; It sounds like a very interesting, compelling plot that you've got there! An antagonist can be an individual person, a group of people or even an event. Remember that creative writing has no rules! An antagonist is only meant to be a dilemma of some form that the main character/s face and your antagonist(s) is in the form of real life issues/problems posed to the same man. We don't think that this at all strange, as lots of books have varying ideas when it comes creating an antagonist! If you're still unsure and feel that one person should solely become the antagonist, why not try creating someone in the government as the main antagonist? It could be absolutely anyone whom you perceive to be suitable enough to fill that role! So overall, no, NOT having one person as the main antagonist is not at all strange...and remember (we've said it earlier, but it is really important!) creative writing has no rules. We hope that this helps you, and once again, we're so sorry for late reply! Thank you for getting in touch! :-)

Q&A Authors

Hi Guys! This is a new section that we will be naming ‘Q&A Authors.’ Each week or so, we’ll find interviews from different authors, looking for specific questions they answer about how to achieve the best writing skills. Please make sure to comment down below who you'd like to see in this section and we’ll make sure to get through all of them.
This is just an introduction to this new section (we’ll try and figure out how to put these different pages into different files), and the official No.1 Q&A Author interviews will begin March 1.
We look forward to hearing your requests and also learning from the many, many great author out there!
Help For Writers ✰
PS, Remember to check out the new Challenge - Cant wait to see the results, and its a good way to get your writing out there as it will be featured on the home page!

A setting is literally the thing that sets the scene for your characters, and normally, the setting is what can sometimes be the stage, so to speak, for your characters actions. We cannot Imagine a character on a blank page, so we must describe their surroundings to make the reader feel as though they are involved in what's taking place in the book. In Part I, we will be looking at how to describe a rural or a countryside setting. (If you'd like to see help on any different type, please comment below.) Here are a few ways that will help you describe your rural setting.
Know What You're Talking About -- To be a good descriptive writer, you must know what you're talking about. It's no good describing what the country is like if you've never even been there. Granted, that isn't always physically possible, but there are other ways we can 'visit' the countryside. First, we can read up about places we'd like to visit. Second, we can watch videos set somewhere like what we want to write about. Finally, we talk to other people who HAVE been to these places, as there's nothing like first hand knowledge!
Magpie-ing Ideas Isn't Always A Bad Thing -- I had a literacy teacher who always used to tell us to Magpie, Magpie, Magpie. If you don't know what I'm on about, here's the origin; Magpies are birds that had a habit of pinching anything that took their fancy. Normally, they'd keep it for a while, and then discard of it, interested in some new gem they discovered. And that's what we can do. If we read a sentence (possibly when we're doing number 1 (see above) and reading up about the place we want to write about) there's nothing wrong in pinching that sentence, as long as no paragraphs are taken out. For example: an advertising brochure might say this about a rural town, The quiet, picturesque town of Lona is perfectly placed between the rugged hills of the Lake District and the quaint villages of Granger. Now, if it put this into my book, describing the setting, I'd say this: Mia found Lona to be a quiet, picturesque town that was conveniently placed between the rugged hills of the Lake District and the quaint villages of Granger.
Thank you for reading, let me know if you found this helpful by commenting the smiley face emoji ( :-) , or the sad face if not :-( . All content is mine, and no copyright infringement has taken place during this discussion. Thank you once again for taking the time to read. I am watching the Poll on the Home Screen of Help for Writers, and more discussions are coming soon ;-) .

An atmosphere exist in everyday life and living, and to make out books more realistic, it is imperative to provide the correct atmosphere. There are multiple different genres that may be appropriate for our scene ; tense, romantic, humorous, light, but how can we weave them into our writing to be more realistic and true to life? Here are a few things to think about when creating a certain atmosphere in your writing scenes:
1) Hold a feeling or Image in your head that you want portrayed.
HOW CAN THIS BE ACCOMPLISHED? If we have a goal atmosphere already in our head, then our only problem dips creating it. For example, say I ant to create a dark, intense scene, I would need to think of what this scene would look like or feel like to my character in order for it to be realistic. ( That's a word that comes out quit often - Realistic- but really, that can make or break the book. ) So, in my dark scene, I might have a vision in my head of a dark night, of lampposts fizzling out in the streets, or of dogs howling on the mountainsides. I now need to inculcate that into my writing, by describing the things just mentioned (SO USE IMAGERY) and by making my character feel things that would normally be felt in a dark scene (fear, dread, worry, maybe even anticipation) .
EXTRA TIP : Try listening to wordless music that suits the atmosphere, jolly music for a happy scene, intense music for a frightening scene etc ...
2) Include realistic details.
HOW THIS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED: Reality includes lots of things that sometimes may pass is by without a second goance, the way the trains work, or how children grow up so fast. If the character notices things like this, it makes them more human. We must also think about how actions are accomplished. Sometimes it can be difficult to write about your character being chased or on the run, but if we've experienced that very experience, it'll be a lot easier. So why not act out what your character is going to do? This will make you understand what needs to be written down, and what the character would be thinking at that time.
I hope that this has helped, please remember to post comment on any tips or advice you'd like on a certain subject. If you're struggling with something writing-related, just let us know, and we'll do our best! Thank you very much for reading, and make sure to become a member :-))

Well, I think we all know the struggle - wanting to create a character that people actually like! II found this one on Pintrest, looked it up and discovered that it actually had a really good idea in it. It's only small but Itll most definitely help, and I'm currently tryna think of a way I can include it in my writing. Here's the link if you'd like to check it out yourself.... http://thequietwritersdesk.blogspot.c...
(This is not intended to break copyright laws , and this is not a sponsored discussion)!
Let me know in the comments what you think and if you have your own tips! (That'd be great if you do! Lol) :-)