Tag: write

Conflict: (wo)Man versus…what?

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I (Lara) am going on vacation! Sort of…moving isn’t really relaxing, is it? To get notified of when WriteLaraWrite is returning, be sure to subscribe to the blog, follow on Twitter, that sort of thing. (Use the buttons on the left column)

In lieu of a post this week, and to get you through the next couple of weeks while I pack up and move across country, I am going to send you fine people over to PaperWings Podcast!

PaperWings Podcast is a podcast and blog for comic writers and illustrators. They’ve got some really awesome posts about storytelling over there, and their recent posts about conflict are so good, I’m not even going to bother to write about the topic right now. Some people call it laziness, I call it resourcefulness and spreading the love. Chris and Lora are great people, and I think you’ll enjoy their words.

Without further adieu, here’s the series on conflict from PaperWings:

See you in a few weeks, my darlings! I will try to update when I can, but no promises until a few weeks from now. We will definitely be back to speed in August, so long as I have Internet. Or a babysitter so I can find some Internet.

Character Profile Worksheets

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These character packets will help you organize your characters’ traits in one central location.

Have you ever written a character who had short, lustrous hair in chapter one and frizzy ankle-length hair in chapter fifteen? Okay, maybe not. But perhaps your character had gray eyes in one chapter and green ones in another. Or maybe his or her last name changes halfway through the book.

Collect all of your information together with these worksheets in lieu of scraps of paper and sticky-notes all over your office, kitchen, computer, and sister’s house. Continue reading →

Story Berg and Goal Boat: A Lesson in Backstory (and Goals)

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This is Part Two in the Write, Edit, Repeat Character Series.

Backstory. What’s backstory?

Backstory is whatever happened to the characters before the story starts. It’s the stuff that the writer knows (or discovers), but what doesn’t show up in the story that the reader is reading.

Backstory is the reason we have Pottermore. Rowling had so much backstory that she could make an entire interactive experience for her readers out of it. An obsessive fan base and millions of dollars to create it doesn’t hurt.

Anyway, the most logical visual for backstory is an iceberg. All the stuff under water might be interesting, in fact, it might be really really good. But if it isn’t absolutely necessary to drive the story forward, then it doesn’t need to appear above water, in the finished piece. Continue reading →

Characters: MBTI continued

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Last week I gave you a little “quiz” to use to figure out the Myers-Briggs of you or your characters.

This week I am giving you another little helpful chart about eight divisions of the MBTI types. As before, please see the official Myers-Briggs page here, or read more about typing on blogs dedicated to typing. Again, these are my favorites: Which MBTI Type… and  MBTI Types.

Below you will find a downloadable reference I created for the sixteen MBTI types divided into eight groups of two. I gave examples of fictional characters that, I think, embody those types. In real life, people are complex and may not fit neatly into one of the divisions. (I certainly don’t.) Fiction imitates life, so well-written characters are pretty complex, too. See my note about Hermione Granger following the images. Continue reading →