Cassie Beebe, author of fascinating, moral complex, compelling romance novels, kindly agreed to help me out with a guest post while I deal with Macron’s declaration that we can all work from home and educate our children at the same time because we are French!!! Happily, not only did Cassie step into the breach, she wrote an article chock full of new ideas for how to create characters that I intend to immediately steal – I suggest you do the same. Cassie’s latest novel, Moving On, is available on amazon by clicking this link.
Without further ado, here is Cassie herself. I’m off to 16personalities.com (you’ll know what I mean in a minute)
So you want to write rich, captivating characters, eh? Well, boy, have I got some tips for you!
Characters have always been an aspect of storytelling that has come naturally to me. They live in my mind, roaming free, living their lives and being themselves, and my job is simply to reflect that accurately on the page. But for my most recent novel, Moving On, things were different.
When I first began the writing process of this book, I had a surprisingly difficult time. The words weren’t flowing as naturally as they had in previous works, and I knew that the source of my mental block was the simple fact that I didn’t know these characters. They hadn’t become full, deep individuals in my head yet, and given that that usually happens naturally for me, I had no idea how to force them to develop. So I did something I had never done before: I made in-depth character sheets for each of my main characters and prominent side characters. I learned a lot through this process, and I’d love to share some of my discoveries with you. Hopefully these tips can help enrich your characters as well.
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Link :Amazon, Goodreads. Price: £4.99
This book is aimed at intuitive writers, or “pantsers”, who don’t know anything about story structure and find themselves getting lost part way through a project. By learning a little about structure, the author says they can help you become more productive and prolific than ever before by finding a middle way between “meticulous story plotting and full on organic writing.”
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Links: Amazon, Price: £9.99
After more dead Kings than a speed-chess tournament, the infamous giant Robert of Artois is finally able to place his cousin Phillipe of Valois on the throne and become effective regent of France. Having lied, cheated, forged and murdered to make his way here, Robert expects his just reward: the contested title to Artois to finally be ripped from the hands of his malevolent aunt Mahaut (also a liar, cheater, forger and murderer) and placed in his own.
However, things rarely (if at all) seem to work out for the throne of France, and Robert may be about to discover that this time of his greatest power is also that of his greatest weakness.
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My novel Dead Moon had a bit of an incredible February. For a start, a sudden rush of sales sent it to #2 in the Amazon charts for Alien Invasion, Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian Science Fiction – which was an amazing feeling. At the same time, the inexhaustible Anne Cater of Random Things Through my Letter Box organised a mini book blitz where four brave bloggers, all of whom had very different tastes and approaches to literature, took a bold step into the workings of my brain. Here are some excerpts from what they had to say, and links to their excellent blogs/bookstagrams.
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Links: Amazon, Goodreads, Price: £18.99
Art and Authenticity is a collection of essays exploring the ideas of authenticity, originality and replication in art. Across a wide range of periods and contexts it looks at both the empirical process of establishing if a work is “authentic” in the sense that it is correctly attributed, but also how a piece of work can be authentic in terms of creative originality, or if a copy can be authentic or not, as well as how this impacts the art markets and the wider art world.
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