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Men Behaving Badly: When Heroes Become Unheroic

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

As writers we all love our characters, and we should -- if we don't adore our characters, who else will? But this can blind us to what others -- namely judges and editors and agents -- can see in them.

Story Flow

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

Just recently, a writing friend, who, despite being an excellent writer, is having problems with her story's jerky feeling, asked me: "What do you mean by flow (big wail here!!!)?? I know how to recognize it in other people's writing, but I'm not sure what the specifics are. Is it a technique you can learn, or more a feely, intuitive thing?"

Twisting an Old Plot into a Fresh Idea

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

Read about how to put pizzazz into a tried and true plot.

Emotional Depth 6: Fattening Your Scenes

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

The title here is pretty self-explanatory! How do we go about adding emotional depth to scenes without doing two pages of looooong flashbacks (or, as someone from my last workshop put it, "whining and pining") about the past, or what the hero, my mother or so-and-so did to me 5 or 25 years ago?

Emotional Depth 5: Emotional Sex

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

Yep, I said it: SEX. The hot-and-sweaty, no-holds-barred, tangled-sheets or on-the-floor, down-and-dirty three-letter word that terrifies some of us so bad we write, "put love scene here" on a page and move on in seconds! Yet sex scenes can be so vital to the story (unless you're doing Tender Romance or Inspirational, of course), if they're done right: they can emotionally connect the hero and heroine like nothing else, and raise the emotional stakes so high between them that a reader MUST keep going to finish the story, even if it's 3am!

Emotional Depth 4: Deep Point of View

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:00:00 CST

A skill that leads straight into strong, emotive writing is Deep Point Of View. And I mean deep. This is often a very hard skill to conquer, but it's so effective I felt it needed a whole day's work. Deep POV is an art, because it's putting yourself so totally into the character you basically don't appear (and by this, I mean what is commonly known as "author intrusion"); it's all the character.

Emotional Depth 3: Finding Physical Stimulants

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:30:00 CST

Today, we're finding physical stimulants to finding an emotive response. These are triggers, if you will. Some people feel they need to work in silence, but for me, that's impossible. I need triggers! There are many different ways to trigger emotion, but most of these involve using your senses -- touch, sight, sound, smell -- even taste.

Emotional Depth 2: Bring Your Characters To Life

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:30:00 CST

Today we're dealing with working at knowing your characters, so the emotional depth comes, not just from you, (though that's vital) but also from within them. And if this sounds nuts, it isn't: if you want your book to live, so must your characters! When you learn your characters, they start to "speak" to you, the emotions and the writing flow.

Emotional Depth 1

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:30:00 CST

How many rejection letters have we all had, stating that our writing lacks those two awful words, "emotional punch"? I know I've had more than a few in the past. But it would leave me puzzled for a long, long time. What is emotional punch? People say to write the book of your heart and it will come naturally. But which book, since we love them all, is the book of our hearts?

I believe writing from the heart is definitely a plus...but sometimes it takes more. Think of that "book of your heart" -- any book -- as a whole body: and a body needs several parts to really live. Like we do. So, what makes up the "body" of a truly emotional book?

Risking Emotional Suicide

no@spam.com (Melissa James) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:30:00 CST

It’s happened again. You’ve had another rejection, one of those awful, generic ‘editorial department’ ones we all dread: ‘Your story is well-written and plotted, but lacks the emotional depth and excitement we’re looking for.’

In this article, Melissa James helps you figure out what to do next.