HOW TO “UP THE STAKES” FOR YOUR MAIN CHARACTER

Don’t be afraid to make things hard on your characters. You should always come up with several different problems to choose from. Who knows; you may even throw numerous dilemmas at them at once. Think about the type of story you’re writing and the genre you want to work in: What kinds of problems do characters usually have in these stories? How can you make your story different from the rest? Serious problems and goals will be crucial in helping to drive your story forward, so you’ll want to make them good.

IDENTIFY CHARACTER MOTIVATION
People—and characters—tend to move toward pleasure and away from pain, so consider:

    •     Are your main characters moving toward pleasure or away from pain? Or both?
    •     What reward awaits the hero in the end?
    •     What is motivating the hero to press on?

I need motivation!

Don’t just give a generic reply like, “The hero wants to save the village from the bad guys and avenge his friend.” Go deeper than that. Ask yourself, “Why does he want this?” Your answer should relate to your character’s core traits, flaws and goals. For instance, “The hero needs to feel needed. He needs to save the village to prove his self-worth, and he wants to feel the satisfaction and power of avenging his friend’s death.”

Now we have a much deeper level at work. The hero is moving away from the pain of low self-worth and toward the pleasure of being needed and powerful, as well as toward the pleasure of earning admiration from everyone in the village. Doesn’t that give you a bit more to write about?

What if your character just wants to have the satisfaction of doing the right thing? Still, ask yourself: Why?

    •     Because the character’s mother told him to always do the right thing? (He wants to please his mother and be worthy of her love.)
    •     Because the character wants to make up for something he did wrong long ago? (He seeks forgiveness so he can leave the pain behind him.)
    •     Because the character wants to believe that good always prevails? (She needs to feel like order has
been restored so she can avoid the pain of uncertainty and happenstance.)

Can you guess whats next?

Find the deeper meaning. Of course we’ve all seen the old story in which a hero slays the dragon to win the hand of a princess, but why does he bother? This princess is usually someone who refuses to accept any man, but is forced to marry the slayer of the dragon. She’s considered unattainable. But if he attains her, he’ll win so many other things besides her hand—does that include self-esteem, admiration, money, power? You decide, of course. These are all rewards the hero can be seeking, but each one implies different reasons for wanting to attain it.

INSERT CLIFFHANGERS
Cliffhangers can really beef up a sagging story, and they’re great for when you find yourself without any obvious next steps. How will you keep the reader interested? It can seem so daunting.

The answer is to come up with an event and delay paying it off. Set up the event so that the reader truly doesn’t know whether or not things will work out. There has to be a question in the reader’s mind about what will happen. Some classic cliffhangers include:

    •     The ticking clock (when the hero must do something in a certain amount of time and we don’t know if it’s possible to accomplish it).
    •     The character on the verge of making a hasty major decision (perhaps she doesn’t have all the information yet and we want her to wait, but it doesn’t look like she will).
    •     The interruption, either in the form of another character or an event that throws the heroine off track (the heroine is about to find her husband upstairs cheating with another woman when her neighbor stops by to talk, keeping her downstairs, and we don’t know if she’ll go upstairs and finally learn the truth; ringing phones and tea kettles usually fall into this category, and for this reason should be avoided).
    •     The unexpected problem just when the resolution seems on the horizon (the hero and heroine seem likely to get together, which would mean “the end,” when all of a sudden numerous problems are dropped into their laps, and we now question if it will ever work out).

The goal here is to leave the reader wondering about what could possibly happen next, so that she won’t be able to put the book down. You have to be careful that you make this seem seamless, though. It has to feel natural and organic to the plot; otherwise, the reader will get upset with you and feel manipulated. (Hey, if it were easy, every book would be a page-turner!) You are creating anticipation in the reader. This anticipation has to be paid off at some point.

So when and how do you cut back to the cliffhanger? That’s another choice you have to make on your own. You don’t want to wait too long, or it will seem as if the entire plot has come to a screeching halt. If you go back too quickly, you will lose your opportunity to keep the reader hooked. This is why writing is an art form. You have to feel the story, feel the pacing, understand the genre and make these decisions. 

You can watch a dramatic TV show to see how they use cliffhangers before commercial breaks or watch some movie trailers to see how they try to entice you into the theater.

INTENSIFY THE MAIN PROBLEM
Starting your story with a compelling problem is only the first step. You’ve got to keep upping the ante, intensifying the conflict as the problem continues to grow and grow. You do this by weaving in believable and nuanced barriers, complications and situations.

This is bad!

    •     Barriers occur when the character tries something that doesn’t work. The action is stopped for a moment and the reader wonders, What will the character do?
    •     Complications are action points that don’t pay off immediately. The hero is busy with the main plot line and all of a sudden a new element, character or conflict drops into the mix.
    •     Situations simply are using one of the dramatic predicaments to move the story forward and add tension.

Pull out any outlines and plot worksheets, and review your story problem’s charted course. Now, deepen the well by adding in a mixture of the three different types of conflict just described. Push yourself and see what happens.

Don’t feel too bad about making life harder for your characters. Sometimes we just love our characters too darn much! Other times we identify with them too deeply. This is what makes conflict such a chore. You don’t want your heroine to face having her son hit by a car; you just can’t bring yourself to write it, but you know in your gut that it has to be done. You know the story calls for it, or something like it. Remember: You are doing your entire story—and your character—an injustice if you don’t write it.

Go forward and win!

Logline Service

I have been getting a lot of request for loglines. I give different prices . Since I have so many requests for this service, I decided to set a single fix price.

Logline: $5.00 Flat Fee

A synopsis or summery is required. It well be used to form the logline. The logline is just one line.

Screenplays

Critique: $50.00 Flat Fee, 

 Includes evaluating the basis elements of a script

•  Introduction
•  Development
•  Climax
•  Conclusion
• Character development 
•  Mid point development

Critiques also provide suggestions for improvements and enhancement. 

Payments are made by Paypal or cashier check by mail.


Other services are at regular price.

Query Letters: $25.00 Flat Fee  

Editing: $45.00 Flat Fee

•  Evaluating formatting to industry standards
•  Spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc.

Turnaround time:

Editing: 2 weeks

Critique: 2 weeks

Query Letters: 2 weeks

Feel free to contact me at ahicks4298@msn.com.

Feel to call me at (360) 696-4298. Ask for Frances.

I also critique and edit books. I am currently organizing the service prices for working on books. If you are interested in me critiquing or editing a novel you have written, feel free contact me.

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HOW TO WRITE INTRIGUING MALE AND FEMALE CHARACTERS

by Leigh Anne Jasheway |

Men and women are different. There, I said it.

Can you see the difference?

Now let me go even further out on a limb. Chances are, if you’re female, you write like a girl, and if you’re male, you write like a guy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that … unless, that is, you’d like your writing to be read by members of another gender, or you’re trying to create characters of the opposite sex. If so, it might just help to have a better understanding about how the other half thinks, acts, reads and writes. 

Linguists, sociologists, behavior specialists and functional brain researchers have documented gender’s effect on almost everything, so it’s natural that it plays a role in how we write and what we’re attracted to as readers. The ability to use language that has appeal outside your own gender can boost your success as an author; take the U.K. bestseller Holly’s Inbox, which has often been compared to Helen Fielding’s runaway hit Bridget Jones’s Diary. The name on the cover of the book? Holly Denham. Its real author? Bill Surie, who wrote for his female audience so convincingly that readers had no problem believing the story had been written by a woman. And then there’s J.K. Rowling, who is so good at transcending gender (and age) that her books are devoured by girls and boys (and women and men) by the millions.

If you haven’t considered the impact of your own gender on your writing, it’s time to start. By educating yourself about how men and women differ, you’ll be able to better understand your audience, broaden your writing’s appeal and make educated choices when it comes to language, story and style—no matter what you’re writing, or who you’re writing it for.

TALK THE TALK
If you’re writing a romance novel, you know your audience is primarily female; if you’re working on an exposé about steroid use in baseball, you assume you’ll have mostly male readers.

But when most of us sit down to write, we’re really just thinking that what we have to say will grab any reader who finds our topic interesting. We don’t usually pay enough attention to how something as simple as choosing our words can attract or turn off prospective readers.

At a recent writing workshop, I critiqued a manuscript on mind mapping. The topic usually fascinates me—but this piece used decidedly masculine language, from the chapter titles to the metaphors, complete with references to NASCAR, rocket launchers and drill sergeants. Because I didn’t relate to these examples, I wasn’t drawn into the manuscript. In fact, I felt almost excluded.

Gender-specific terms aren’t always immediately obvious; there are plenty of seemingly ordinary words and phrases that are much more likely to be uttered by one sex or the other. A woman is three times more likely to use the word “gorgeous,” for example. And when men do use it, it’s typically only to describe a woman—not a baby, a pair of shoes or a piece of chocolate cake.

So let’s start with some basic guidelines. No matter what you’re writing, if your intended audience is female, make sure to include plenty of personal pronouns—“I,” “you” and “we”—and descriptive terms. If your intended audience is male, on the other hand, trade in pronouns for articles—such as “a,” “the” and “that”—choose active verbs, limit adjectives and include concrete figures, like numbers. Observe the stylistic differences between these two statements: “I’m sorry we’re late; we had a flat tire on our way here,” and, “The tire blew when we hit 70 on the freeway.” Chances are you can tell right away which sex is talking in each one.

When you want to appeal to a mixed audience, review your writing with an eye for instances in which the language skews toward your own gender. When you find them, make revisions to include a balance of wording that caters to the other sex as well. Pay special attention to your analogies; if you’re writing an article on choosing energy-efficient appliances, for example, and you compare a refrigerator to a sports car, counter later in the piece by mentioning that the dishwasher purrs like a kitten. Or opt for gender-neutral analogies, such as this one from Wendy and Larry Maltz’s The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography: “Don’t think of [the six steps] like stepping stones across a creek, but rather sections of a bridge …”

WALK THE WALK
No matter what you write, one of the earliest decisions you’ll make is how to approach your topic. Gender should definitely play a role here. Whether they’re watching a movie, reading a novel or consulting a self-help article, men generally prefer to see something accomplished—a battle won, a dog trained, a disease conquered. Women often favor a focus on the relationships and emotions behind the story—what happens to the family left at home while the spouse is off fighting the war, what it’s like for the dog to learn to sit and stay, how to handle the strain of caring for an ailing family member. This helps explain why recent surveys show that women read approximately 80 percent of all literary fiction and most self-help books, while men are more likely to read history, science fiction and political tomes.

At a writing workshop I recently taught, I asked my students to write a paragraph about what it would be like to be an astronaut during liftoff. Once they were finished, I asked them to write another paragraph from the perspective of someone from the opposite gender. Both the males and the females writing from a male perspective emphasized the thrill of the ride (“I felt like I was straddling a 200-ton bucking bronco headed into the cosmos!”) and the sense of accomplishment of being chosen for the mission. The women and men writing from the female perspective focused on being separated from family and friends (“Will the kids remember to feed that cat?”) and having doubts about the whole decision to go into space.

Here’s an example from an exercise in a college English class in which students were paired up and asked to craft a story together by taking turns writing alternating paragraphs. With one particular team,
the gender differences became glaringly (and amusingly) obvious:

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl …Meanwhile, Advance Sgt. Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an airheaded bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago …

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychologically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him …

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live …

The female writer focused on the emotional issues she felt were vital to her heroine—even when to do so, she had to kill off Advance Sgt. Harris. The male writer, on the other hand, did everything he could to move the action along and cut out “extraneous” details.

The lessons are clear if you’re writing for a single gender, but what’s a writer to do to be more inclusive of both men and women? Where there is yin, balance it with yang. Janet Evanovich does this exceptionally well. Her most popular novels feature Stephanie Plum, a bail bondswoman who works in a male-dominated industry but does her job with a characteristically feminine style (relying on friends, trying to be a good daughter, taking care of her hamster, mulling over her intimate relationships, etc.). Employ Evanovich’s method: If you choose a female approach to a topic, bring balance by incorporating more masculine elements, and vice versa.

DRESS THE PART
Sociologists suggest that the female focus on nurturing relationships and the male compulsion to get the job done not only affect what we’re interested in, but the way we use language—and, naturally, the style that appeals to us on a page. Take these recent reviews of two movies meant to speak to very different audiences. ForMotherhood: “If you are a mother, if you know a mother, if you have a mother, this is the movie for you”; “The best comedy about being a mother in modern America today. And a must-see for every father, too”; and, “Sweet, charming and frantically funny.” Notice how the language conjures up images of not just motherhood, but also friendship (“if you know a mother”), daughterhood (“if you have a mother”) and fatherhood. The adjectives let us know the movie will focus on someone women can relate to: an overworked mother trying to keep her sanity in today’s fast-paced world. Contrast this with reviews for Law Abiding Citizen: “A taut thriller”; “A breathtaking thrill ride”; and, “This is one fight to the finish you won’t want to miss.” The language here is sparse, action-packed and absent of real detail. What is the movie about? We’re not sure, but we know there will be car crashes and things blowing up.

Style differences are especially important to understand if you’re writing dialogue. One of the most difficult undertakings we face as writers is putting the right words into our characters’ mouths. Recognizing differences in the way the genders communicate can help you create more believable, engaging characters that will ring true for your readers. Linguistic research has found that women are more likely to state preferences rather than demands (“I would like a glass of wine”), start a sentence with a question (“What do you think about … ?”) and use apologetic language even when being decisive (“I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to lay you off”). Men, on the other hand, use more commanding and aggressive language (“Grab me a beer”), and are more likely to pepper everyday conversation with less accommodating phrasing (which can include things like sarcasm, put-downs or references to “taboo” body parts). Studies have also shown that men don’t divulge much personal information in everyday conversation, while women frequently do.

To help illustrate these differences, let’s look at two real-life writing samples, both on the topic of exercise. The first is from Amy Gallo’s “Whittle While You Work,” which appears in Self online: “This is our kind of on-the-job training! Daniel Loigerot, a Pilates instructor in New York City, designed these moves to help you tone all over in about 10 minutes using a resistance band and chair.” The second is from “Gut Check,” an unattributed piece on the Men’s Fitness website: “If you fail both tests, you need more core work. Simply perform the tests as exercises, three to four times a week—doing one to two sets for 50 percent of your max time for each—before you do any other lifts. Hartman also advises that you not use more than 20 percent of your body weight on any lift until you achieve a passing score. That may seem drastic, but your core will get up to speed quickly, and you’ll immediately be able to lift heavier.”

First, compare the style of the titles: “Whittle While You Work” to “Gut Check.” As you might guess, in the first piece, the style is soft and sounds helpful. In the Men’s Fitness article, can you feel the author goading the reader to be competitive? The reader may have already failed some tests; he needs to “achieve a passing score” so he can achieve his goal to “lift heavier.”

If you’re writing for a single gender—whether you’re penning an instructional piece or working on your novel-in-progress—don’t shy away from integrating these style differences into your work. They may seem subtle, but you’ll be surprised at how much careful attention to these preferences can boost your writing’s appeal to your audience.

Of course, we’re not all the same in our differences—I’d be willing to bet you’re thinking of plenty of exceptions to the above points right now. It’s true that not all women think and behave alike, and neither do all men. But just as young adult writers research the specific needs and behaviors of teens and tweens, and romance and sci-fi novelists work to understand what makes their audiences different from the rest of the reading world, all of us should consider gender issues before tapping out those first few words on our keyboards. When you do, remember these words, from Edward Abbey: “It is the difference between men and women, not the sameness, that creates the tension and the delight.” 

 Need a list of unusual traits, quirks, flaws and strengths to make your characters unique and lively? Consider:

Writer’s Guide To Character Traits

Go forward and win!

Logline Service

I have been getting a lot of request for loglines. I give different prices . Since I have so many requests for this service, I decided to set a single fix price.

Logline: $5.00 Flat Fee

A synopsis or summery is required. It well be used to form the logline. The logline is just one line.

Screenplays

Critique: $50.00 Flat Fee, 

 Includes evaluating the basis elements of a script

•  Introduction
•  Development
•  Climax
•  Conclusion
• Character development 
•  Mid point development

Critiques also provide suggestions for improvements and enhancement. 

Payments are made by Paypal or cashier check by mail.


Other services are at regular price.

Query Letters: $25.00 Flat Fee  

Editing: $45.00 Flat Fee

•  Evaluating formatting to industry standards
•  Spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, etc.

Turnaround time:

Editing: 2 weeks

Critique: 2 weeks

Query Letters: 2 weeks

Feel free to contact me at ahicks4298@msn.com.

Feel to call me at (360) 696-4298. Ask for Frances.

I also critique and edit books. I am currently organizing the service prices for working on books. If you are interested in me critiquing or editing a novel you have written, feel free contact me.

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Screenplays Wanted: Discounts On Entries In Any Screenplay Contests

Hello everyone, If you plan to enter a screenplay contest and would like to have your script proofread or critique by a fresh pair of eyes, I am offering a discount on my  service: Edits: $43.00   Contest discount Critiques: $53.00   Contest discount Edit and Critique Combo: $ 65.00   Contest discount ****************************************************  Not entering a contest but need help with your writing?         Try my services at regular prices. Film Scripts Service Edit and Critique combos: $75.00 discount flat fee. Edit - covers proper formatting, grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure. Critique - cover the follow:  -Introduction - Development  -Climax  -Conclusion  -Character development  -Mid point development Turnaround time is 3 weeks Edits and Critiques will continue to be offered separately if a writer just wants one or the other. Edits: $48.00 flat fee - covers proper formatting, grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure. Turnaround time 2 weeks Critique: $58.00 flat fee -Introduction - Development  -Climax  -Conclusion  -Character development  -Mid point development Turnaround time 2 weeks Query letter Service I provide query letter writing service for scripts and books. Query Letter: $28.00 flat fee Turnaround time 2 weeks Book Consulting Service I only provide Critique service for fiction novels. Why fiction only? Because fiction is my strong point. Critique: $87.00 flat fee Turnaround time 3.5 weeks I do not edit books. I only critique them. Editing books requires a lot of time consuming detail. Payment Payments are made by Paypal. If you do not have a Paypal account, payments may be made as cashier checks or money orders by postal mail. If you are interested in my services, feel free to contact me at ahicks4298@q.com or call at (360) 696 - 4298 I will be happy to work with you. *********************************************** Film script format, writing film scripts, screenwriting services, coverage service, screenplay formatting margins, screenplay writing, screenplay format example, Search terms: screenplays, screenwriting service, edit and critique service, writing screenplays, screenplay format, loglines, query letter, film scripts, movie scripts, screenplay format, screenplay synopsis, script synopsis, treatment, proofreading service for writers, novels, writing services, fiction writing, film script format, writing film scripts, screenwriting service, coverage service, screenplay critique service, screenplay format margins, screenplay writing, screenplay format example, free writing tutorials,   script consultant, screenwriting jobs, film production companies