Choose your words wisely, pick words that say a lot in the shortest possible space.  Think about what words really convey full, vivid meanings.   Give a few details.  For instance, does the house in your story merely have white walls?  Or are they antiseptic white, off-white or cream?  Are they freshly scrubbed, has someone put hand-down motifs across the top, or do they sport a host of fingerprints at waist level?  More interesting yet, does your character glance up and see large footprints on the walls two feet above her head?  Honing in on even a detail or two brings an added depth to your setting, in addition to telling something about your characters.

Use all 5 senses.  If at all possible, experience your setting first hand, and if not, use the internet to find pictures and research.  Use forums (nanowrimo is a great one) to ask questions of people who have experienced it.  Travel forums, such as Travelpod are also great tools, where people blog about their travel experiences, in addition to posting pictures.

Writing about Shawn and Allene hiking the Highlands was one thing; being there myself and recording every detail was another altogether.  After being there, I knew the sights of oak trees, sunlight glinting off veins of stones lying on the bottom of a stream, lichen-covered boulders, scrubby grass, shaggy Highland cattle with huge horns, and just how dark it is at night with no street or city lights; the sounds of sheep bleating nearby and the lowing of cattle carrying up the hill from a mile away; the smells of cow dung in the fields and coffee shops and fish and chips in the village below; and the metallic taste of the water from the streams and hot coffee and bridies after a long hike. 

I learned what it was like to hike through heather and moorland, with my feet sometimes sinking down farther than I expected and clumps of heather at times reaching past my knees.  It was not the flat and easy walk it appeared in pictures!  I gained an appreciation for just how cold 60 degrees can be at the top of a Scottish monroe with a stiff wind blowing the whole time, what it’s like to climb in medieval boots, and just how much and for how long muscles ache when not accustomed to such activity!

When creating your own settings, list the five senses–sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste–and spend some time listing as many items in each category as you can, for each scene in your story.  Don’t forget to write down what emotions the setting might provoke.  Research what you don’t know personally.  You don’t necessarily need to use everything you list, but it will help bring the places to life in your own head, which will bring it to life on the page for your readers.

Happy writing!

Authors are often asked how they create their characters.  The answer varies from author to author, from book to book, and from character to character.  Sometimes, characters just walk onstage, so to speak, fully formed, absolutely sure of who they are, and behave exactly as they please, regardless of the author’s intentions.  Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, says this is how Claire Beachamp Randall came to her.  She simply walked into a shack full of Scottish Jacobites and announced herself in very un-18th Century language.  It is how my characters Shawn and Niall came to me.  They simply are who they are, they’ve never been anything else, and I couldn’t make them be if I tried.  Interestingly, this even goes for looks.  I have had the experience twice now, of meeting someone who is the spitting image of the character I’ve been writing.  Not that I had an exact face in mind.  But somehow, sometimes, as an author, you see someone, and you just know: that’s him! 

Some characters walk onstage but are a little less clear.  This is how Angus, in  The Minstrel Boy (Book 2 of The Blue Bells Trilogy) appeared.  He walked up to Amy and gave her coffee.  He has caused me no end of trouble by doing this, possibly altering the entire ending of the series from what I planned.  And yet, he is rather reserved, and I’d spent quite a bit of time with him when one day he announced that he plays bagpipes.  Now, why didn’t he tell me that before? 

Many characters are drawn from real life, modified from combinations of people we know, or saw in passing at the store, or spent a few days getting to know on a job somewhere.  I recently read a quote in Voyager, by Diana Gabaldon, to the effect of writers being cannibals: we take various parts of people we know, mix them together, and let them simmer.  Very true.  Ironically, the quote was spoken by one of her characters.

Then there are the characters that take actual work.  You need a villain.  Your main character needs a daughter.  Your protagonist needs a boss.  And you need to create them.  There are many sites out there with ‘character interviews’ and ‘character dossiers’ of various lengths.  One site I really like is www.storyright.com but there are plenty of them.  These interviews cover all aspects of a character– what does he look like?  Short, tall, heavy, thin, hair color and length, facial hair, neat, messy, what does he wear?  What is his personality like?  Outgoing, talkative, reserved, opinionated, slow to form an opinion, expressive, stoic, funny, serious?  What kind of family did he come from?  What is his education?  When you’ve created the answers to enough of these questions, you begin to get a feel for who these people are. 

You’ll know you’ve done the job well when your characters start to act for themselves and ignore the outline you’ve spent months working out to perfection.  This is a good thing, really!  It means they’ve become real people, to you and to your readers.

No plot? No problem! There are plenty of forums with ideas, and specific threads for plot adoption. Not sure what to do with a plot problem? No problem. Go to the Plot Doctoring thread where plenty of people will give all sorts of ideas for painting yourself out of the corner you may have painted yourself into. Can’t find the information you need on seventeenth century French cooking utensils? Try Character and Plot Realism Q & A.

Need to engage in the time-honored novelists practice of procrastination? Go to the clubs threads. Meet noveling musicians, noveling parents, noveling 30-somethings, noveling Christians, anyone and everyone. It’s lots of fun to meet others who share the same interest. And if you want to get together in person, there are regional groups that arrange write-ins. Small groups get together at local coffeeshops, set up our laptops and type away with our lattes.

And most years, Createspace.com or lulu.com will print and ship your novel for free if you win– which means if you type 50,000 words in November and upload it for verification at nanowrimo.

Hope to see you there!