Category: Creating Characters
On Writing YA and Adult Thrillers
Guest Blogger: James Phelan SURVIVOR is the second installment in my ALONE trilogy for Young Adults. It follows a 16-year-old protagonist, Jesse, in a post-apocalyptic setting in NYC. The trilogy started because I’d already written 3 adults thrillers and was contracted for 3 more, and needed a different writing challenge. …
An Obsession with the Past
Guest Blogger: David Morrell Novelists sometimes find themselves stuck with what John Barth calls “fill in the blank” writing. A character walks into an office, which needs to be described. If it’s an attorney’s office, there’ll probably be law books and photographs of the attorney’s family or maybe of powerful …
Seriously Funny
Guest Blogger: Jill Wolfson The four novels that I’ve written for the middle-reader and the young adult audience all deal with heavy topics – foster care, unemployment, depression, death, medical emergencies. In COLD HANDS, WARM HEART, I actually killed character – a likeable teenage girl – in the first chapter, …
When did you first make Miss Dickinson’s Acquaintance?
Point of View is Not Always a Good Compass For the Truth
Guest Blogger: Anne Greenwood Brown I love writing in the first person point of view. Somehow, telling the story how one character perceives it helps me channel that character’s emotions and capture a unique voice. I think first person works particularly well with YA fiction, where the reader wants to …
The Haunting World of Scowler
Young Adult author Daniel Kraus was kind enough to answer a few questions about SCOWLER, his latest release. Daniel “is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and filmmaker. His debut novel, THE MONSTER VARIATIONS, (Random House, 2009), was selected to New York Public Library’s “100 Best Stuff for Teens.” Fangoria called his …
The Secret Lives of Characters
Guest Blogger: Hilary Davidson While I while writing my first novel, I discovered that characters and their histories take up as much real estate in my brain as close family and friends. More, really, because I didn’t have to think about the long-simmering antagonism between two friends unless I’m inviting …
The Bionic Man is Here
Food Trucks and Hoarding
Guest Blogger: Lisa McMann I admit it. I love reality TV. I love the thrill of SURVIVOR, all the cooking shows, especially THE GREAT FOOD TRUCK RACE, and I am strangely fascinated by shows about people’s obsessions, addictions, and dark secrets. I’ve even been on a reality show called SEARCHING FOR …