Writers in the Storm

A few times a year we throw open the virtual doors of WITS and offer up the comments section for your shameless self-promotion. This delightful takeover usually doubles the size of our to-be-read piles with all the great books we find in the comments section. With this pandemic, more reading material is a great summer bonus.

Many years ago, we borrowed the name of this event from the glorious Chuck Wendig. Here's how it works:

• Pimp out somebody else’s work – this can be a favorite author, blogger, post or book you’ve read, a wonderful teacher or just someone who had profound influence on you as a writer or a person. Please limit your comments to one work.
  AND
• Promote one of your projects that you’re excited about – a hobby, a blog, a book, or a new direction your writing is taking you. You decide. Just tell us about it in the comments! (Please restrain your enthusiasm to just one of your WIPs.) The rest of us will jump in and “ooooh and ahh” at you, and likely promote your project even further because we’re just so darn excited today.

We'll start you off with some P&P from the WITS Team

From Ellen

Pimp: Eldred “Bob” Bird’s Karma series, introduces us to writer James McCarthy who evolves from a sheltered man into a sharp investigative journalist willing to put himself in harm’s way. The stories are page-turners with well-developed characters in settings that make you feel like you're right in the middle of the action. These books are a lot of fun to read.

This wonderful series is suspenseful with a sprinkling of humor. The series in order is: Killing Karma, Catching Karma and the soon-to-be released Cold Karma.

Promote: I'm working on my website and would love to get eyes on it: http://ellenbuikema.com/. Stop by and subscribe! I share on topics ranging from writing to recipes to help with children at home. One of the pages on my site is named Ask Frankie. Frankie the Fish is full of snark. People ask Frankie questions and he responds in character. This is great fun for kids.

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From Jenny

My P&P's are actually tied together and I'm pretty excited about both sides of this coin.

Pimp: I've been taking some training through Mirasee, to teach me how to launch a successful online class series, and I can't say enough good things about them. Their knowledge, their hand-holding, their resources (I could build a shrine to their resources) are just top-notch. Founder, Danny Iny, also wrote a rockin' book called Teach Your Gift. (Available on Kindle Unlimited!)

Promote: I spend my days making people, companies and products look good. When this pandemic hit and so many of my pals got laid off, my side hustle became helping them power up their LinkedIn profiles. I've always done these for companies, but I had a blast helping people become more searchable, expand their networks, and get jobs.

Enter Mirasee. They're teaching me everything I need to know to create a "LinkedIn for Success" series of classes, starting with a pilot class. I'm in the research phase, so I'd love a 15 minute no-sales chat with any of you who have pain points with LinkedIn. Let me know down in the comments!

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From Kris (KMaze)

Pimp: If you are looking for a young readers series of books, I recommend checking out Charlie Chameleon and his adventures. Our WITS team member, Ellen Buikema, writes this series which helps children ages 3-9 develop empathy and cultivate insight into their lives. The multicultural stories cover situations children typically encounter like getting lost, moving, starting a new school, making friends, family vacations, working in a team, and dealing with bullies using positive methods. Each chapter ends with one or more activities for children and parents or teachers to do together, related to the actions in the stories.

The first three chapter books in The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon Series are New Beginnings, School Days, and Summertime.

Promote: If you enjoy a fast paced book with a girl protagonist who uses wit and moxy to survive an incoming asteroid, try my recent debut novel: IMPACT, A Young Adult Sci-fi Novel.  Nala Nightingale uses hidden talents beyond her broadcasting training to overcome her wily captor Edison and his mysterious underground world.

This book is written for teens or adult readers who would enjoy an optimistic book with lots of twists and turns. 

Happy Reading and Stay healthy, y'all...
Jenny and the WITS Crew

By Ellen Buikema

Animal characters are created in all genres, either in cartoon-like or realistic forms. They may be walking, talking substitutes for human characters, or reality-based beings that may or may not be augmented with special abilities. No matter how you incorporate an animal into your story, they should be a memorable character.

Choose Your Animal

Some animals will better fit a particular function in a story. In a reality-based fight scene, a snake probably wouldn’t do as well as a dog or a cat.

Say you are writing fantasy and want a reality-based animal to act as a spy. A bird might work well in this instance, perhaps a raven, as was done in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Ravens are intelligent, playful, and have a sense of humor, having been known to perch on snowy rooftops waiting for people to pass by, and then pushing snow on top of them.

When writing historical fiction, consider researching which animals were popular pets of the era so the animals will be a good fit for the story. Jean Auel conducted an immense amount of research for her brilliant prehistoric fictional Earth’s Children series. She incorporated the domestication of wolves in her work.  The main protagonist, Ayla, studies animals in order to hunt for food and learn their habits. Those wolf studies enable her to understand pack behavior and the similarities to the human pack or extended family unit—leading to the domestication of a wolf pup.

One of my favorite animal characters is the dog in Dean R. Koontz’s suspense novel, Watchers. Einstein is a golden retriever, altered at the genetic level by scientists working with the military. This dog has a high intelligence level, psychic ability, and sense of humor along with the characteristics typical of a golden retriever. Einstein functions as a secondary protagonist, a protector, and in a way serves as a comment on human behavior.

Animal stories for children

Children may be more likely to recognize their own traits, the good and the not so good, seen humorously in an animal than written as a child. Frankie Fish, from my Adventures of Charlie Chameleon series is naughty but well meaning. Many children relate to Frankie.

Stories for children often have pets as characters that help their humans learn important life lessons. Sometimes they are a bit like guardian angels with paws. Often the child is the hero but the pet is a crucial character in the story. Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie uses a pup that enables the main protagonist, young India Opal Buloni, to learn how to trust.

One of the oldest forms of children’s literature is the Fable. In these stories, the animal is affiliated with a particular human trait and there is a lesson to be learned. One of my favorites is Aesop’s The Ant and the Dove. The lesson learned is that a kindness is never wasted.

Creating your animal character

Audience

• Is the story for adults or children? Animal characters for teen and adult stories will need more subtlety than animals in stories for children.

Prominence and type

• What is the animal character’s role? The animal characters may be secondary sidekicks (comic relief), protagonists, or antagonists.

Perspective

• Who is the story’s voice? The story may be written from the perspective of the human or the animal.
• Consider physical size. If the character is tiny it will see the world in a much different way than a large one. For example Mouse vs. giraffe; Toddler vs. teen; Toddler vs. Great Dane.

Personality

• The best animal characters feel authentic to the animal type and relatable to the reader. This is true for either cartoon or realistic characters. A cat character may be playful but a little too much affection, like one pet too many, will still get you smacked in most realities. 
• Whichever animal you choose, writing a list of personality traits and quirks will help as you introduce the character to your readers and develop the story.

Special characteristics

• What makes your character different? The animal character may have a similar emotional or physical trait as the protagonist.
• For SciFi and fantasy stories the animal character might read minds or defy the laws of physics.
• Writing a list of special abilities and traits in advance will be useful, especially if there are several characters of varying abilities.

Name

• Your creatures have certain looks and personalities. Names may follow suit. Bandit for one with a mask coloring in the fur, Jester for another with a multi-colored face, Spot, Blackie, Chairman Meow, Dude, the possibilities are many.
• For humor, try a huge dog named Tiny, a tuxedo cat named Scruffy.
• Alliteration works well for animal characters in children’s stories. Black Beauty, Frankie Fish, Tamika Turtle, Mickey Mouse, Peppa Pig.

Backstory

• The background information of the character does not need to be in the story itself, but is handy to know in order to understand what motivates the character. Fictional characters need to feel real. Knowing the backstory helps define that reality.

Goal

• Goals, the driving forces, mold the character’s personality. It may give love to a child, or encouragement to an adult. Whatever the case, subtlety weaving goals into the story adds richness and depth.

Obviously, like a human character, there are many details to consider when writing an animal character. Doing it well will make your story memorable.

Do you have animal characters in your stories? Of all the stories you’ve read, do any of the animal characters still bring a smile to your face or terror to your heart? We want to hear all about it down in the comments section!

About Ellen

by Angela Ackerman

Writers are no stranger to pressure. In fact, the entire process of story creation is laden with it: pressure to craft characters that readers will relate to and fall in love with, pressure to pen a story that is fresh and new, pressure to market the story well so it sells and we can keep doing what we love. No problem, right?

*passes out paper bags*

Got your breath back? Good.

Sure, we all wish this career was a bit easier, but the truth is that pressure puts our feet to the fire and that’s when we do our best work.

The more we know, the better our writing becomes, so today I’d like to help with a specific point in the story that is really do-or-die: the opening.

The start of a story is a massive juggling act. We need to… 

• Introduce main characters in a compelling way
• Show the protagonist’s ordinary life & hint what’s wrong with it
• Make sure genre elements are present so readers know exactly what type of story they are in for
• Pace it tight. In other words, make every word count (and don’t infodump!)
• Intrigue the reader so they feel compelled to read on and get answers to their questions
• Etc. Etc.

Clearly overall goal is to hook the reader, keeping them focused on our book. We can accomplish this by making sure the reader “clicks” with the protagonist and wants to follow them deeper into the story world. The challenge is we only have a limited amount of words to achieve this, and as you can see from the above, there’s a lot of ground to cover. So, a powerful opening means writing smart, thinking economically, and bringing our show-don’t-tell A-game, especially when it comes to characterization.

So how can we fast-track this critical “get-to-know-the-character” phase? Well, let’s look at what we do in the real world when we first meet someone.

Let’s pretend you’re at a neighborhood block party. A new neighbor just moved in next door and so you strike up a conversation to find out more about them. What’s one of the first things you’re going to ask?

“So, what do you do?”

This question almost ALWAYS comes up, doesn’t it? The reason is that in this context, jobs characterize. Like it or not, we tend to size people up and put them in boxes. And a person’s chosen field of work can reveal a lot about who they are.

Let’s say your neighbor says he’s a paramedic. I’m betting you immediately feel safer, right? You know if there is ever an emergency with one of the kids, or an accident of some kind, he’s there. He’s trained, and when seconds count, he’ll know what to do.

As with as your new paramedic neighbor, a character’s job can help your readers make certain associations, providing a baseline of things that are probably true. Here are a few things your reader may infer about a character simply by knowing his occupation.

Personality Traits

Certain traits will make it easier for a person to succeed at a given job. And usually people want to be successful; that’s one reason we gravitate toward careers that play to our personality. So when a reader sees a character working in a specific field, they’re going to draw some conclusions. This gives authors a leg up when it comes to characterization, enabling them to show personality simply by revealing that cast member’s job.

To test this theory, what positive qualities come to mind when you think of a kindergarten teacher? Traits like compassion, gentleness, and patience probably top the list. It looks different, though, for an ER physician, who might be pegged as intelligent, decisive, and calm under pressure. There are exceptions, but certain traits do help make someone a good teacher or doctor or farmer.

Talents and Skills

Every career requires a skill set that goes beyond personality. Talents and abilities are special aptitudes and areas of exceptionality that can make a person good at her job. A chef is going to be skilled at cooking or baking. A bouncer is likely adept at self-defense. When readers are introduced to a professional poker player, they can surmise that the character will know how to read people.

Unless an unmet need or other motivation is steering them, characters will pursue jobs they’re good at and enjoy (just as we do in the real world). Because readers make associations about what it takes to succeed in various occupations, your character’s choice in this area will naturally showcase his aptitudes, no infodumps needed.

Hobbies and Passions

Many careers are born from a favorite pastime. This may be the case for a museum docent who knows every possible thing about ancient South American civilizations and wants to share his knowledge with others. A geologist may pursue that career because he’s spending his free time studying geology anyway, so why not get paid for doing what he loves? This is the reason many people choose a creative or artistic field of work. In cases like these, a career can loudly proclaim the character’s interests and preferred diversions, offering insight into what sets them apart from others.

Physical Details

Some jobs can give readers a hint about the character’s appearance. Models tend to be attractive by society’s established standards. Laboratory technicians wear lab coats. Professional athletes are physically fit. Whether it’s the uniform or expectations that go with the job, an occupation can provide many unspoken clues about how a character looks and behaves at work.

Preferences

Sometimes a character will work in a field because he’s forced to or it’s the only thing available. But when he’s free to choose, a job will usually indicate certain preferences. An outdoor guide will be a nature enthusiast who would rather work outside than in a cubicle. A personal shopper should enjoy shopping. A nanny hopefully likes working with kids. While characters in each career will have their own personal passions, their employment choice will often reveal something about their basic preferences.     

Ideals and Beliefs

Another reason a character may choose a profession is that it aligns with his deepest beliefs. A clergy member may follow this path because, to him, helping people find God is the highest possible calling. A career in the military is often preceded by a strong sense of patriotism and respect for one’s country. Careers like these can immediately say something to readers about the character’s ideals and values.

Economic Status

As indelicate as the subject may be, many jobs are associated with economic status. A character who is a successful lawyer, doctor, or business tycoon is going to read rich while someone in an entry-level or blue-collar position (cashiers, car drivers, babysitters, or bouncers) may be perceived by readers as being less privileged.

Final Thoughts

Even without any fine-tuning or individualizing—which is always a good idea, to avoid clichés or stereotypes—an occupation can suggest many things about a character. And if the scenario is one where the character hates what they do, readers still learn something valuable: the job might reveal a lack (of education or opportunities), showcase their priorities (to provide for their family, to fulfill an obligation, etc.), or indicate a limitation (a physical or mental condition).

Need help choosing the right job fit for your character? Here’s a list of all the professions you’ll find information about in The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers. What jobs do your characters have?

About Angela

Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus and its many sequels. Her books are available in eight languages, are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over half a million copies.

Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site Writers Helping Writers, as well as One Stop for Writers, a portal to game-changing tools and resources that enable writers to craft powerful fiction. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.