Have you ever read a book, or watched a movie, only to walk away thinking “wow, that character didn’t have any depth”? This is a common problem that we see in today’s fiction market place, and there’s a really good reason as to why we walk away thinking that the characters have no depth – because the writer didn’t know enough about the characters. Most writers will immediately write down all of the important information about their main characters, such as name, age, job, ethnicity, appearance, residence, ect, but how often do you think a writer will write down most of this information about their secondary characters? And in many cases they don’t have enough information about their primary characters to give good depth to the character.

One great tip is to know more about the character than you’ll ever write about them. Why is this a good idea? Let’s say we have a character named Sally, and we know that one of Sally’s favorite hobbies is to play chess. Now we may never show Sally playing chess in the story, but we may be able to reference it briefly. Say, for instance, that Sally is watching the primary characters argue, she could say something like “checkmate”. The average reader may not think “ahh, Sally likes chess”, but they will know that Sally understands chess, which, believe it or not, may actually show that she’s an intelligent person, as chess is associated with people who are very smart.

The point is that it’s vital that you know a great deal about your characters. You can even make yourself a spreadsheet and can fill it out for each character. Make sure to put information like favorite foods, friends, phobias, faults, secrets, illnesses, nervous gestures, sleeping patterns, marriage status, religion, and so on in your spreadsheet. This will not only help you to get to know your characters, giving them depth, but will also give you something to reference back to if you get confused with one of your secondary characters.

There are a lot of misconceptions that go around about authors. To see this in action, do a little experiment. The next time you meet someone new and they ask what you do, tell them that you work in a factory (even if you don’t) and see how they react. Then, when you meet someone else, tell them you’re a writer and see how they react. Most people believe that writers are extremely intellectual, and that people who work in factories are not. This is a huge misconception.

You may have a genius working next to you in the factory, just as a writer that you love may not be all that smart. But these are misconceptions that have been around for ages and that are not going anywhere. Because of this people have a difficult time believing that they can become a writer, especially if they’ve never tried to publish something before. They believe the hype, that you have to be a genius to be a writer who can make a living off of it. That is just not true! Some of the most popular writers out there today not only aren’t geniuses, but many of them didn’t even attend college!

If you wake up in the morning and you want to write, then you’re a writer. It doesn’t matter if you’re not established yet, as long as you’re working towards your goal and are writing on a regular basis, you can consider yourself a writer. Publishing an ebook is very easy (thanks to technology!) and you will find that if you opt to do so, you’ll not only gain confidence in your abilities, but you’ll also be proud to call yourself a writer!

The other day we talked about writing books for children. Now we’re going to get into a whole different world – writing books for teenagers and pre-teens. Teenagers and pre-teens are a whole different type of crew when you talk about writing. They are too old for books that were created for youngsters, and too young for books that are created for adults. They need to have stories that intrigue and entice them, but that is much harder than it sounds, especially when you’re dealing with teenage boys.

So how do you write a story that is engaging to teenagers? First you have to figure out who your target audience is. Teenage boys, for example, are into entirely different things then teenage girls. There are some books that appeal to both sexes, but it can be extremely difficult to write a book that is enjoyed by both. Once you’ve figured out who your target audience is, start thinking about what type of story you’d like to write. What appeals to that sex? Girls, for instance, tend to be a bit more interested in stories that have a bit of a romantic twist to them, while guys tend to like stories with more action and adventure.

Once you’ve got a good idea in your head, it may be smart to run it past a teen or pre-teen. Snag one that you know and start telling them about the story. If they start asking questions and seem to be enjoying the idea, you’ve got something. If they don’t seem to be getting into it, ask another teenager, and if that one doesn’t get into the idea, it may be time to start at the drawing board again. Once you find a great idea, though, you can create a teen or pre-teen masterpiece!

When your children are young and you read them stories, it’s easy to think that it would be far too simple to be able to write your own children’s book. All you have to do is to come up with some sort of a good tale, and to be able to rhyme, right? Not necessarily. Any really good children’s book also comes with illustrations, and unless you’re really good at drawing and illustrating, you may find that you have a difficult task ahead of you.

If you’re set on writing a children’s novel, the first thing you may want to do is to find an illustrator. You may have a friend or family member who is a good illustrator, but if you don’t, you can always connect with one using other methods. Some people use sources such as Craigslist to place an ad, while others place an ad in their local paper or at their local community center. It’s a good idea to make sure that the illustrator that you connect with knows how to use Photoshop or some other form of digital editing software, especially if you’re going to be publishing your work online, because it is the fastest way to get your illustrations up with your work.

Once you’ve made an agreement with an illustrator, you can start working! Make sure that your story is one that is interesting to children as well as being age appropriate. It should be something that they have fun reading and that actually engages them, so that they’re anxious to learn more about how the whole reading “thing” works. Writing a children’s book is a lot harder than it seems, but if you get the right combination of things going on, you can create absolute magic!

Remember when you were in school and you were learning about adverbs and adjectives? You know, those little words that enhance a verb or a noun. Back then, if you were to add some adverbs or adjectives to your writings your teachers would give you a gold star and pat you on the head. That is one problem that many writers have. They tend to overuse adverbs and adjectives, creating a jumbled mess of writing that the reader doesn’t want to try to slog through.

If you’re going to be writing, you need to make your readers want to read what you’re writing. That’s why it is very important to make sure that you’re wary of how often you use adverbs and adjectives. For instance, say you were to write something like, “The man left the room”. This sentence may seem incomplete, so you may opt to change it with something like, “The skinny, bald man quickly left the room.” This is fine if the character is important and hasn’t been introduced into the story yet, but if he’s not important and you write that many things about him, and continue to do the same thing throughout your writings, you’ll find that your writers are not interested in reading what you’ve written.

That doesn’t mean that adverbs and adjectives don’t have their place, because they do. Saying “the man quickly left the room” explains to the readers what he’s doing and how he’s doing it, which helps to pull them into the story. Overusing adverbs and adjectives, however, actually takes readers out of the story, which means that they’re much less interested in reading what you’ve written and aren’t getting the gist of what you’re trying to say.

Some say that the hardest part about writing a book is actually writing it. Others, however, disagree. They say that the most difficult part about writing a book is giving it to someone else to read and gauging their reactions. Most writers don’t write for themselves. They write because they want to tell a story to an audience. That’s why the reaction that you get from the audience, the reader of the story, is so important. If you get good feedback, you know that you’ve written something enjoyable. If not, you may feel extremely discouraged.

This brings up an interesting question: should you give your unfinished and unpublished manuscript to a friend or family member to read? That depends on a few things. First, you’d have to find a family member or friend who knew something about literature. It doesn’t mean that they have to be an expert in the English language, but it does mean that they should be someone who reads frequently and who enjoys literature. Second, what type of feedback does the person tend to give back? If they give a “it’s fine”, that’s not going to be of great help to you. You need someone who is able to explain what they liked about your writings, and what they didn’t like, so that you can know what you should keep and what can be improved upon.

In today’s digital age, many authors have wound up in trouble due to giving their work to others to review. That’s why, if you opt to give someone your work to read, you may want to give them a printed out copy, or to make sure that any digital copies you give them are clearly marked with your name or some other identification mark on them.

You’ve purchased a bad novel and have suffered through reading it. You’ve written down all of the things that you think are wrong with the novel (and they may be a lot). Now what do you do? Now you make the bad novel help you to figure out how to write a good novel. Take everything that you’ve written down about the novel and look through it carefully. How could the author have transformed their novel into one that was enjoyable to read? What could they have done to make the plot better, or to make the characters come alive better?

This doesn’t mean that you have to rewrite the entire novel, but it is a good exercise to take a portion of the novel and to rewrite it. The opening, for instance, is a great place to start, because you only have a short amount of time to capture the attention of your readers, so if the novel you read has a bad beginning, figure out how you could fix it. You may even want to ask a friend to compare your opening to the original opening to see what they think about it.

Once you’ve done a few exercises like this, it’s time to use what you’ve learned to take a good hard look at your work. Does your novel have any of the same problems that the bad novel had? Make sure that you’re brutally honest about the situation, because it can only help your book to be better. Figure out, if you have some of the same problems the bad novel had, how you can fix the problems. This step should be made much easier if you did the rewrite exercise mentioned earlier. Can a bad novel help you to write a great novel? Absolutely!