The Fantasy OC

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Writing a bit of fantasy to pass the time? We’ve got a few tips on how to make the most of your fantasy characters – starting with physical appearance:

  • Describe the physical characteristics like you would any character. They are meant to be unique in their own fashion and should be done with thorough detail. Don’t forget, they’re living in a very different world than us – as a human, the character may appear very out of place in a village of Elves or Dwarves, for example.
  • What about that scar across the bridge of their nose? Or that burn which covers half of their torso? Sometimes having physical tags on a character can add more backstory to them. It gives them something to talk about with their newly found companions or old friends. Or it just adds more to their bad ass-ery.
  • Let’s say you have a character who is a witch. Does this character have a wand? What kind of wand is it? Sometimes with a generic character build, your reader will find it boring to read: “She carried her wand on her belt like a fashion icon.” Of course, there must be something special about the wand. Maybe it’s a sharpened twig from the forest where her coven has survived? Any way, any generic characteristic of the character whether physical to their body or something like a wand – should be given its own description as well.
  • Last but not least, make sure to give your character a standalone name. Something that rolls off the tongue nicely, makes the reader remember them, but also isn’t too much.

Back to Basics: Exclamation Point

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The best way to emphasize emotion in dialogue is to throw one or two (or 800) exclamation points into your manuscript or text. All joking aside, you realistically only want to use this point in moderation. Using too much of a good thing becomes dramatic and we want your writing to create the drama, not the punctuation.  It’s always good to know when to use this magical point that effortlessly invokes emotion in the person speaking and in the reaction from the receiver:

  • At the end of a sentence:
    It should never be followed by a period or question mark. Some, if not most, writers use the question mark paired with the exclamation point to bring light to an exclamatory question. We hate to burst your bubble on this one, but you only need one or the other.
  • In the middle of a sentence:
    As always, if a quotation ends in an exclamatory manner, I know I would usually throw in a comma to continue the sentence. Lo and behold, the comma is not necessary in this situation.
  • As a part of a titled work:
    Use the comma when the title of a book is yelling at you…this is the only time!

This week’s lesson is short and sweet and straight to the point, but wait… there’s more (or there was more)! Did you know there is a punctuation mark combining the question mark and the exclamation point? It’s called an interrobang. The interrobang came and went as quickly as you turn the page of your favorite novel, but sometimes we think we should bring it back!

Misleading

here to distract.pngAre you new to writing a mystery novel? Well, here’s your friendly reminder: use your red herring. A red herring is not only a dried smoke herring (that isn’t naturally red) but is a term that describes a mystery novel’s best friend: a distraction to the reader. By building a strong red herring in your story, the more believable the distraction will be. Your reader will be shocked when the real culprit is revealed.

Concrete Is The Best Foundation

Wislawa Szymborska:

“You’ve managed to squeeze more lofty words into three shorts poems than most poets manage in a lifetime: ‘Fatherland,’ ‘truth,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘justice’: such words don’t come cheap. Real blood flows in them, which can’t be counterfeited with ink.”