Used in discussing market copy and branding in Discovering Your Author Brand by M.A. Lee
Brand your Books with Classic Tropes
Discovering Characters
Discovering Characters Guideline: One of the hardest things to do in writing
is to create characters that readers will care about,
that will make them have to read on.
Noah Luke
Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.
No, I’m serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.
How are Characters like Houses?
Even in cookie-cutter boxy cliques, characters have individual characteristics, just as the suburbia ranch houses have their garden plantings and the urban row houses have their painted doorways. These small touches create individual homes in neighborhoods.
Some characters enjoy the bright city lights. Some are loners, nestled against a national forest. Characters, houses—each have individual personalities. Some are blingie, with the latest décor while others enjoy the comfort of yoga pants and old sneakers.
As writers, we capture these individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into interior rooms for glimpses of formative baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.
How do we Individualize our Characters?
Our job as writers is to find every detail of our characters then use snippets so our readers will see our characters as they drive through our books. We hint at the foundations while opening doors to their plans and purposes.
Discovering Characters is designed to help writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We’ll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We’ll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. And we’ll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.
Five areas comprise this guidebook.
Just as characters—and houses—are individual, this info is individual. You won’t need every bit. Dip in and out, skim around. When you reach locked rooms, come back and explore to discover the keys to your characters.
- Starting Points ~ offering templates and character interviews
- Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways of discovering characters
- Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc.
- Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs
- Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more
Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.
Worldwide Distribution: Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and more: https://books2read.com/u/3RJrZB
Plot ~ All Writers Need to Know
From September to December, The Write Focus podcast will focus on Plot.
Everything to do with Plot.
Freytag’s Pyramid and the Beats.
Plot Points and Pinch Points and the Complex Plot Structure.
Three-Act … or Four-Act Structure.
Shakespeare’s Structure.
And the best Structure of All, the most adaptable to every writer’s needs, able to be stripped down to the basics or built into cycles for epic length.
We cover it all, every Wednesday as the year cools into autumn and winter.
Information comes from our host M.A. Lee’s guidebook Discovering Your Plot,
with assistance from Edie Roones and Remi Black.
What do writers want from plot?
What do writers need from plot?
As wordsmiths, we writers know that want and need are two different words.
- The want is a circumstance that we writers can control. We want plot specifics to help us craft story and exceed reader expectations.
- The need is a circumstance of obligations from reader expectations of story. While readers may want the comfort of the genre elements (the tropes), they also wish to have their interest and curiosity piqued.
Can we writers deliver on the expectations and the surprises in order to please our readers?
That’s the involved question that our series based on Discovering Your Plot hopes to answer.
Join us.
How to Find Us
Listen on your favorite podcast site: from Apple to YouTube, Spotify and Podbean (my favs), Google Play, Amazon Music / Audible, Samsung and Player FM, Podcaster, the rivals iHeart and Tune-in, and too many to list.
Here are links to the easiest podcast services. Find our green logo and follow.
My favorite podcast is Podbean. https://eden5695.podbean.com/
YouTube direct link to the last playlist on Branding: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7L4OtDk2Bde7LDwQ2l7K8NE
Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=ffeb71ed17c3409d
Amazon/Audible https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/062ecc60-d61c-432a-ad99-8234c1044ef1
ListenNotes https://lnns.co/y_Jg5rpaMNo
Google https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2VkZW41Njk1L2ZlZWQueG1s
Tune-in https://tunein.com/podcasts/p1608565/
The Write Focus presents information on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.
For up-to-date links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .
Defeat Writer’s Block
Don’t fear the great *unmentioned unmentionable* for writers. 
Let’s DEFEAT WRITER’S BLOCK.
How do we defeat Writer’s Block?
- Strategies to tackle that monster.
- Advice from other 15 best-selling writers.
- Detailed explanations to start doing now!
This book comes direct from The Write Focus podcast and its host M.A. Lee.
Suffering every writer’s serious malady of writer’s block?
We may say the mantra “Writer’s Block doesn’t exist”, but something more than simple disruptions and distractions can interfere with our writing, creating insurmountable walls.
The Write Focus analyzes the three most common types and offers solutions to Overcome and Defeat this monster looming over the writer’s desk.
The best solution, though, is Leo Tolstoy’s mantra: No days without lines :: Nulla dies sine linea. Make that your own mantra.
Published August 8.
Ebook from Worldwide Distributors like Kobo, B&N, and more: Find it here.
Ebook and Paperback from amazing Amazon: Also on preorder, available on the 8th.
Audiobook also available (although some distributors may not have the book available for 30 days from publication. Ah well.).
Available Now: Storytel / https://www.storytel.com/se/sv/books/defeat-writers-block-think-like-a-pro-writer-6-8875896
and Libro / https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798988473985
Coming Soon to Apple, Audible, Chirp, Kobo, and more!
Chapters
- Introduction
- Overcoming Type 1: Refusal, easy to defeat
- Overcoming Type 2: Procrastination, difficult
- Overcoming Type 3: Inertia, the worst
- Pro Writers’ Advice, part A ~ 5 best-selling writers speak on writer’s block and how they defeated it
- Pro Writers’ Advice, part B ~ 6 best-sellers talk about writer’s block and strategies
- How One Pro Writer Defeated the Monster ~ Erle Stanley Gardner and his strategies
- More Techniques from Erle Stanley Gardner
- Avoid These Mistakes, part A ~ offered by Judy Delton
- Avoid These Mistakes, part B ~ more to avoid from J. Delton
- Mary Stewart on Writing Flow ~ shared by her in her novel The Stormy Petrel
- Storyteller and Story Teacher ~ Kate Wilhelm’s remembrances on writing barriers
- Burnham Talks Block ~ Sophie Burnham devotes a chapter to writer’s block in her book On Writing
- Whitney’s Solutions ~ America’s first great writer of romantic suspense, Phyllis A. Whitney shares many techniques in her book Guide to Fiction Writing
The book comes from the series of the same name on the podcast The Write Focus, hosted by M.A. Lee with the assistance of Edie Roones and Remi Black. The podcast is a presentation of Writers’ Ink Books.
3 Planners for Writers
Why do Writers Need Planners?
I’m not just promoting 3 Planners here. I have a reason for creating each one.
The #1 guarantee of continual writing success is tracking your progress, with all the successes recorded. We writers have a tendency to focus on our current problems and set-backs.
While every publication is a major success, the daily grind often has us thinking we’re back-pedaling rather than advancing. Tracking our minor successes and checking off our benchmark goals provides us with the incentives we need to keep working.
The Basic Planner: a Word-Count Focus
What helps writers achieve those two goals? For speed, we need to concentrate our mental energies on writing daily. For the long haul, we need to know our projects, current and next and future. When we focus on speed and longevity, we write more than we ever have before.
Word Trekker accomplishes these goals by advance planning for our projects and tracking our words daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
Any hikers out there? This planner is for you. Match those words to the step-count for the Triple Crown of Hiking.
- Pacific Crest Trial > 2,650 miles
- Continental Divide Trail > 3,100 miles
- Appalachian Trial > 2,193
- AT international extension into Canada 1,319 >> 2, 193 with 1,319 = 3,512
One hiking mile = 100 words. As hikers venture along each trail, they trek from state to state. Setting the Triple Crown of Hiking as a writing goal keeps us going through the year.
Much less than $1 a month, this 6 x 9 planner helps you work toward One Million Words in a Year. Click the link to discover more.
Think in Projects Rather than Words?
Plan those writing goals. Nest the projects; hatch as you achieve them. Celebrate victories; analyze challenges. Soar with Success with the Writing Nest.
Long-term goals are easy to set. Breaking the long-term goals into short-term goals helps us slog through the slow times. Those slow slogs can lead us to think we’re not achieving, yet a simple record will keep us motivated to continue on.
Where can we keep that record of achievements, short-term and long-term? A daily system that builds to mid-term benchmarks and seasonal achievements. That system should help us not only record our achievements but also set our long-term and short-term goals.
Sized 8 x 10, this undated planner (priced for $1 a month) lets us start anytime, taking breaks between projects or powering through the year. Click for more info.
The Planner for Newbies
Want to make writing a commitment rather than a hobby? Striving for professional publication rather than wannabe status? The Think/Pro planner helps make the conversion from newbie to writing pro.
$1 a month, this undated planner tracks word counts and healthy habits, offers creativity tips and tax tips, offers progress meters for projects and a weekly inspirational quote from a major writer.
In addition to the weekly spread with a Top 3 Task List are Monthly Reviews & Previews and Seasonal & Yearly Planning pages.
The Monthly Review has a Productivity Tracker and a Progress Meter as well as places to jot down Business Contacts and Expenses. Seasonal Previews ask you to polish the nuts and bolts of your projected words per week and sharpen up the time remaining before your deadline. At the end of every month, the planner offers a record for victories as well as upcoming challenges.
Time to change “Seize the Day” into “Seize the Dream.” For success, we need to Think/Pro. This 8 x 10 planner will help.
Celebrate a Book Birthday!
On this day in 2017, M.A. Lee published Old Geeky Greeks, third in the Think like a Pro Writer series.
We published with one cover. At the end of 2019, as part of the year-long updates to the entire Think like a Pro Writer series, our cover designers Deranged Doctor Design came up with this wonderful cover.
Here’s information for this book. Click the link to Amazon to purchase.
What do these have in common?
Atonement. I, Robot. The 13th Warrior. The Hobbit. Jurassic Park, in all its iterations.
Harry Potter. Ironman. Perseus. Dudley Dooright. Macbeth.
5 Stages of the Hero and the Monster. Blood tragedies. The scariest woman in all literature. Hubris.
These oddly-matched items all have origins in the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The first storytellers discovered many ways to intrigue and thrill their audiences. They laid strong foundations for what worked and what didn’t work. Their techniques are still used, re-packaged as exclusive insights, glittery infographics, three-point seminars, and Wham-Pow webinars urging modern writers to Buy Now!
Old Geeky Greeks: Write Stories with Ancient Techniques presents these techniques in a clear, organized method for writers.
Chapters in OGG cover understanding characters, plot requirements and the oldest plot formula (the Blood or Revenge Tragedy), and such concepts as in medias res and dulce et utile and more, all to solve the sticky problem of audience expectations.
The bright minds of Classical Antiquity first explored that problem, and the answers that they developed are applicable in this age of the internet, special effects, and infographics.
Save yourself the hours spent at seminars and in webinars or scanning social media. Spend that time writing—and study the Old Geeky Greeks at your leisure. Whether writing novels or plays, blogs or non-fiction, poems and songs, this guidebook offers information to improve your writing.
Old Geeky Greeks is a seminar in book form, 28,000 words of time-proven techniques.
Writer M.A. Lee has published 25-plus titles under various pen names since she began self-publishing in 2015. She has over 30 years of experience in guiding college and high school students as they examined, analyzed, and applied these techniques.
Wish I’d Known ~ About Podcasting and Writing
We don’t often take the time to look back, to do a retrospection, a look at What I’d Wish I’d Known before ever starting. We track our accomplishments. Then we diligently write down the small steps that take us to our short-term goals and on to our long-term ones.
If we’re good little bunnies, we check our Master Plan once a year. We should rewrite it every third or fifth or seventh year. I can’t imagine a 10-year Master Plan. After my first five-year plan, I had to drop back from five to three because my plans change so much. I get new information. I clarify my goals I shove things forward that I wasn’t able to accomplish when I first envisioned them through rosy-colored glasses.
Even so—when we do stop and look back, we should consider all we’ve gained, all we’ve learned, and share that with others. Advice along the lines of “Wish I’d Known”.
We have a two-episode Retrospective, first on Podcasting, especially since many people are exploring podcasting as a new endeavor, on May 15. Then on May 22, the Retrospective focuses on Writing.
Decisions. Regrets. We cover them all.
Link to the audio of the May 15 episode: https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/520-wish-id-known-a-podcasting-retrospective/?token=002359eb986dd8adc7af0ec72855c8d2
