Fiction – Page 15 – WRITE TIME AND AGAIN

Character Flaws

Posted on January 18, 2021 by L. M. Montes

What holds you back? What is one of your character traits that works against you more often than you care to admit.

Are you:

Stubborn
Anxious
Naïve
Arrogant
Selfish
Paranoid
Gullible

When I was younger, and for many years, I was very naïve. I hadn’t had the experiential knowledge of many things that would have allowed me to make the correct decisions. In other words, I hadn’t learned anything about life. Worse yet, it took me a while to get past that naivety. Some individuals learn life’s lessons quicker because they are willing to rely on new information without letting their own opinions get in the way. Well…I wasn’t one of those people. I had a stubborness to me which made me more headstrong than most. The result is that I didn’t listen to good advice. Because I didn’t listen, I ended up hurt (not physically, but a lesson learned type of thing). It cost me financially at one point. That was one instance. Another example came in the form of a relationship. I became involved with someone I had no business getting involved with. I let my heart guide me and not my common sense and certainly not the advice of others to the contrary.

I should have listened to what others were saying. I should have listened to that conscience of mine. But I didn’t. I truly though I knew better. I learned my lessons in the end, but it took a long time to get to that point. It shouldn’t have taken that long, but it did. The silver lining came when I FINALLY learned. When I learned my lesson, that’s when things started to change for the better. I now knew how to avoid those missteps. I knew what to look for. My story changed and the ending was GREAT.

My character flaws at the beginning were naivety and stubborness. Over the course of my life (or story), I was presented with challenges that created setbacks based on my own behavior (character flaws). In the middle of it all, once I ended up hurt, these instances made me rethink what I was doing. I was able to go back in my mind and go over what wasn’t working, THEN I was better able to correct and attack my issues head on and take them in a more positive direction by changing my behavior. THIS IS THE PATH YOU MUST TAKE YOUR CHARACTERS ON when you are writing you story/novel/book. The character flaw(s) in your main character is a large part of what carries them on their journey throughout the story. If they don’t learn anything by the end of the book, how are they able to overcome the antagonist?

Writing

Let Your Light Shine

Posted on January 15, 2021January 15, 2021 by L. M. Montes

We all have something to say, and how we say it is unique to us. No one else can say what we want to say in quite the same way. Let’s say for example there are two different people writing on the same exact topic, and they don’t put their names on their paper. They give them to you (you’re blind folded when they give them to you so you don’t know who gave you what), and you read them. Will you be able to tell which paper came from which individual? One’s personality comes through in their writing. If you don’t know the writer personality, would you still be able to tell? Whether or not we know someone doesn’t take away from the fact that their writing is still unique to them.

This uniqueness is your voice, your light. Who you are comes through on the pages. Whether you’re writing in one character or in more than one, your words are the words that are bringing the story to life. Don’t hold back for fear someone might not like it, because, truth be told, there’s always someone out there who won’t. That’s part of life. Put your all into your work. Put your light into it and let it shine.

As a side note here, if you are editing someone else’s work, be careful to not change too much because you run the risk of inserting your unique style into their work, then it won’t be theirs. You don’t want to take away from their voice/style. A better idea would be to suggest the type of change that’s needed, and let them to the changing.

Fiction

Your Odyssey

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by L. M. Montes

Photo by Enric Cruz Lu00f3pez on Pexels.com

Everyone has an odyssey of sorts. If you are still in your 20’s, your odyssey is still in the beginning stages. If your are older, say in your 50’s, your odyssey is still in progress, but you have quite a life journey up to that point even more so.

We all have experiences that lead us somewhere. Maybe yours led you exactly to the point at which you wanted to be, even though how you got there wasn’t the road you wanted to take. Or, maybe it was. If you’re a writer, your odyssey is chucked full of material from which you can choose to include in your story. This goes along with a post I did earlier that talked about writing what you know. Today I want to touch on the variety of events in one’s journey/odyssey. I’ll use my own as an example.

My odyssey is in 2 parts. The first part started out in the beautiful state of Michigan, which is where I’m from. There isn’t a lack of places to camp and swim because of the huge coastline due to the lakes we have access to year round. As a result, my family camped quite a bit. The explorations, hiking, bike riding, fishing, and swimming added to the adventures. One summer at the age of 16 was the last camping trip me and my family went on together. An incident happened involving me. A moment of tragedy can happen in an instant but last a lifetime. This began the beginning of my second odyssey. From this point forward there was much I had to overcome, and it wasn’t easy. I, like many human beings, made right decisions and wrong decisions. These decisions helped me to learn and grow from. They gave me something to reflect on and use in order to mature and end up at a place in my life that leaves me saying to myself, “I made it. The journey was rough, but I made it.”

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still decisions and mistakes to be made, but at least now I have some concrete lessons to base my decision making process on. I’m more informed. Even more, I have something I can reflect on by using these experiences in my books, which is what I did in my novel The Triunix of Time. The book isn’t about my life, but some truths lay within it. In your stories, you will embed your own truths, as many writers do. What I found by doing this is that these bits of truth enrich the story itself because you are leaving your mark. Your feelings regarding them come through to the reader by way of your story characters, your descriptions, and the like.

Don’t use all of your odyssey in one story/book (unless you’re writing an autobiography). Use them as they apply to the story you’re writing. This way, in future books/stories you will have more to use.

Social

COMING SOON

Posted on January 12, 2021January 12, 2021 by L. M. Montes

Coming in February, my novel, The Triunix of Time, will be on sale here on my blog. See details below.

Format: Paperback
Price: $12.50 – This is HALF OFF the regular price of $25.00 on Amazon.
Special Feature: Each book will be a signed copy.

Fiction, Writing

Inspiration

Posted on January 9, 2021 by L. M. Montes

What inspires you? Is it a beach somewhere? Is it on a balcony overlooking palm trees and a beautiful garden? Is it on your couch at home in the comfort of your living room and your imagination? I’ve done my story writing at my kitchen table a few times, but truthfully, it’s difficult for me to be creative that way. I love being comfortable, so on my couch it is. If I’m writing while at a beach or outside at a park, I’d rather take my writing journal and put pen to paper. We all have our preferred modes of writing. What’s yours?

Another way to find inspiration is to use Pinterest. Yes, Pinterest. I do this. I have private boards for my fiction writing use. In each of these private boards I have sections for each type part of my story I’m working on.

These sections include:

Setting
Characterization
Artifacts
Vintage clothing
Gems

For great information on how use Pinterest for your writing, click the 4:45 minute YouTube link below.

I would love to hear about what inspires you and what your favorite places to write are, so please feel free to comment.

Characterization

Character Flaw

Posted on January 8, 2021 by L. M. Montes

According to Wikipedia, a character flaw (sometimes called a fatal flaw) is as follows:

Character flaw – Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Character flaw
In the creation and criticism of fictional works, a character flaw or heroic flaw is a bias, limitation, imperfection, problem, personality disorders, vices, phobia, prejudice, or deficiency present in a character who may be otherwise very functional.

How do you choose a character flaw for your main character? That is up to you. I centered it around the story. Once you choose a flaw, how do you use it within the story? Is it just there throughout and that’s all and the character goes about their business within the story and never learns anything from circumstances or their actions, etc? If that’s the case, do we even have a story? No. Not really.

The protagonist in your story is supposed to learn along the way. Their character flaw inhibits this at first, but gradually he/she comes to realize they need to change in order for their mission/goal/quest to succeed. By the end of the book they will have overcome this flaw.

Example:

Let’s say you have a main character named Molly, who’s in high school. Her flaw is that she’s timid/shy. She doesn’t like confrontation or violence and prefers to avoid it at all costs. She doesn’t like to hurt the feelings of others, so she avoids situations where she might have to speak up and maybe make people angry. Therefore, she doesn’t speak up for herself either. So, how does she learn to overcome this and become stronger inside? How does she get others to stop picking on her? How does she speak up for the truth and defend her friend Johnny?

In the above example, you have to get Molly from point A to point B to point C to point D; point D being the end of the story where she finally speaks up and gets over her shyness. Getting from one point to the next will involve a series of events called trials and errors that will serve as learning opportunities for her grow, but she can’t do this without these trials and errors.

Fiction

Knowing

Posted on January 7, 2021 by L. M. Montes

We’ve all heard the mantra ‘write what you know’. Well, what do you know? You might get stuck here, and the reason I say this is because you may not think you know enough. Trust me when I say, you do. You have a whole lifetime of experience to use in your writing. You don’t necessarily need to know anything about any one thing in order to write what you know.

In my book The Triunix of Time I have lots of real life experiences included in the story. No, I’m not going to tell you which ones (LOL). There is also included in the story dialogue from conversations I had with others; snippets. Then, the icing on the cake, embellishment. Yes, use what you know and have fun fictionalizing it and building on it.

Here’s an example:

We’ve all had at least one favorite summer; maybe more than one. What made that summer your favorite? Maybe you spent it at the beach most often and you met a new friend, or maybe you spent two weeks of it with a cousin on a farm. Yes, lets use the farm experience. Cousins are a lot of fun. If you have cousins, and I’m sure you do, you know what I’m talking about here. Let’s say you want to write a mystery, but you don’t know what to use as it pertains to setting, characters, etc. Use your experience with your cousins on their farm. Let’s say you and your cousin found a wallet in the barn while cleaning the stalls. It ended up being your uncle’s wallet. Let’s fictionalize that a bit. Maybe you and your cousins were in your early teens. Write a YA mystery involving a bag of wallets you found in a hay loft in a small barn you were both told to stay out of. You were caught by your uncle’s friend when he walked in and heard someone up in the loft. You and Johnny in your haste put the bag of wallets back in a rush and call out. “Just getting some hay for the horses’ stalls.” And on the story would go. Do you see how you could create something wonderful from one experience? By the way, feel free to steal this idea.

Fiction

Book Trailer

Posted on January 5, 2021January 5, 2021 by L. M. Montes

Tora is a headstrong career driven woman who sets out to find the truth about her parents and discovers a family secret that goes back to the Magi. #WritingCommunity #amwriting #5amwritersclub #story https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_VZn8cHRmi/?igshid=xs2v2u2qv6c9

Fiction

The Triunix of Time

Posted on December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 by L. M. Montes

The Triunix of Time

Characterization, Characterization

REAL Characters

Posted on September 23, 2020 by L. M. Montes

In a previous article I wrote about creating characters for your story. I mentioned in that article that your characters must be as unique as possible. I also illustrated two lists of characteristics a writer can use to create characters. I am going to list them again here as a reference for you. There is a good reason, I promise.

Eye color
Hair color
Height
Weight
Ethnic heritage
Age
Birth date
Religious beliefs
Hobbies
Favorite color
Physical description
Political beliefs
Favorite music
Style of dress
Educational background
Description of home
Contents of wallet (this can say a lot about a person)
Habits

Digging Deeper

Strong character trait
Weak character trait
Best childhood memory
Worst childhood memory
One line summary of their personality
What triggers certain moods
What is their ambition
Sense of humor
What is his/her greatest hope
Character’s paradox
Character flaw
How does he/she see himself or herself
Philosophy of life

My goal in this article is to discuss HOW to use these traits to make your characters memorable and standout; to make them real. First, it’s one thing to describe in a story what a character’s traits are. It’s quite another to put this description to action. See examples below.

eg. 1. John had brown hair and blue eyes.
eg. 2. John swept his fingers through his brown, sweaty hair. He had been running the better part of an hour. His breathing labored, so he bent forward, leaning his hands on his knees. He blinked his blue eyes as sweat seeped into them. No matter though. The runners high is what he strove for, and he accomplished that.

As you can understand, example 2 gives a clearer picture of John. It makes him stand out as a human because we “see” him, and we come to know that he enjoys the sport of running. We readers can identify with him and how he’s feeling. Here is another quick example. Say your main character has a habit of cracking his/her knuckles. Don’t just mention in the story that they do this. Use this habit in an action. Maybe he/she cracks their knuckles when their nervous, or maybe it helps them think more clearly. Hey, you never know.

Another way we can use character traits to make characters real is to make one of those traits part of the story itself. Take religious beliefs for example. Maybe your story is about two people who are at odds with each other because of their religious beliefs. In the end they make it work somehow. Or, your main character may have a unique sense of humor. Work this into the plot. Use it to distract the antagonist at some point. Again, you never know.

Lastly, I’d like to hit on character flaw. THIS is a trait that every protagonist (and antagonist) must have. It’s what moves your main character forward and helps with their inner growth. I’m referring to the character arch here. The protagonist could have a character flaw such as being severely stubborn, to the point that their stubborness gets in the way of them accomplishing their goals. Yes, your MC will learn how to overcome this by the end of the story (that topic is for another blog post). BUT, it also makes them more real, allowing he/she to stand out.

In closing, how well we depict our characters in our stories depends on how we use their information to their advantage. Rich, well “seen” story people will give your reader a reason to come back to the story and want more. So, let’s give them something they will never forget.