Worderella Writes

Inspiration from Clever Television

I’m an information junkie, and I blame that on my belief that everything has an influence on my writing. Because of this, I choose my television and movie choices carefully (most of the time). If I listed my favorite tv series, a pattern of character-driven plots will emerge (The Office, Gilmore Girls, 30 Rock…), which makes sense because my fiction is character-driven. Maybe I should watch shows that are more about the plot, so I don’t have blindspots? In any case, today I’m writing about one show and one movie that inspire my creative juices, and I hope you’ll share yours!

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Developing Villainous Characters - Part 3

Give your villain/character a fatal flaw.
There are multiple movies that showcase this trick (Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone), and often it is the fatal flaw that brings the villain to their downfall, rather than the hero being the ultra-smart, ultra-handsome hero that we know he is. It adds complexity if the villain is the reason why he doesn’t win.

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Developing Villainous Characters - Part 2

For part two, we’re going deeper into the mind and actions of the villain. We’re going to try to see the entire plot from the villain’s perspective, push ourselves to the limits, yet attempt to moderate how far we push our villain’s actions. So let’s get going! First and foremost, here is something that really helped me get into the mind of my villain: I suddenly realized that…

The villain in your story is the hero of his own story.
We always hear how we should write each scene from a single point-of-view, that is, no head-hopping to get multiple perspectives within a single scene. This fact helped me realize that, if I were to switch around each chapter so that I told the story from the villain’s perspective, rather than the hero’s, I would have a greater, more realized understanding behind the villain’s actions.

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Developing Villainous Characters - Part 1

Due to finals, graduating, and spending time with the extended family, I’ve missed about 75% of Eliza’s villain month over at Tales of a Fantasy Scribbler. I did want to participate, but couldn’t commit due to my, uh, other commitments. So here is the first of my three-part series on developing villains, as my way to contribute.

First, research villain archetypes and decide which is the basis for your villain.
To do this, read Stella Cameron’s wonderful villain archetype summary or Tami Cowden’s sixteen villains, and pick your villain’s basis to your heart’s delight. Every character, and therefore villain, most likely fits some sort of generic archetype, at least to help you begin molding.

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Villain Month

Since I cheated my usual schedule and made my real post yesterday about finishing First Draft B, I’m dedicating this post to a fellow writer-blogger, Eliza W, who’s dedicating her blog to a month of developing villains in fiction.

Jump over, take a look, join in!

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Five Tips on Character Building through Adversity

We don’t remember Scarlett O’Hara for her beauty, we remember her because she survived countless marriages, a war, childbirth, poverty, sickness, the end of the world as she knew it, and heartbreak on a monumental scale. And she’s flawed, boy, is she flawed. And a brilliant character. You either love her, or hate her. So how do you make your own Scarlett?

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Book: North and South

Margaret Hale, a English southerner who migrates to Milton, a northern industrial town, is shocked by the working and living conditions of the cotton mill workers who provide the wealth of the young man her father tutors, Mr Thornton. Her determination to help the mill workers puts her at odds with the charismatic Mr Thornton, who dismisses her concerns as the ignorance of highly-bred woman who cannot understand the political and economic reasons why things are the way they are.

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Beta Males Revisted

Just a quick entry to let you know about an interesting discussion that’s happening at Redlines and Deadlines about beta males in fiction/romance.

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Book: Wildford’s Daughter

Emma Wildford, seeing how her society-addled mother ruined her parents’ marriage, decided to live with her practical-thinking father when her family split apart. But now that Emma is interested in marriage, she finds her father jealous of the idea. Both the sensible Captain Ringan and the opportunistic Mr Critchley show interest in Emma, confusing her, and so she turns to her friend Mrs Fry. With Mrs Fry’s help, Emma looks past the immediate pleasures the Regency period to visit the miserable female inmates of Newgate Prison, showing her just how lucky she is, and who she really has feelings for.

I actually found this book in my library while looking for Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Marquez’s book was out, for the curious, so I picked up this one). I’ve never read a book by Manners before, but I really enjoyed this. Some characters are flat, but the majority are flush, amusing, and heartening to read.

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“Gender Genie” saves the day

So about a week ago I read about an author who was having trouble with her hero’s voice… that is, she couldn’t seem to make him actually sound like a man. And then she remembered a great online tool created from an actual study in which some academics discovered men and women do, in fact, speak differently: The Gender Genie. They even came up with an algorithm that predicts whether the person speaking was a man or a woman.

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