Have you ever had to inflict pain and suffering onto one of your much loved fictional characters?

Have you ever reluctantly tipped a bucket full of life crapover two characters who have just found true love and as you you were doing it felt like you were betraying two old friends?

Have you ever struggled with your emotions while writing a scene where your character suffers and that scene ends up lasting only a few unbearable tiny paragraphs?

Before I published my debut novel Instructions For Falling In Love Again characters in my stories rarely suffered.

If I did have to inflict pain on a character it would last a paragraph at the most and then I would spend 3 lengthy chapters making things up to them.

I have been known to write a paragraph of character suffering and then at editing stage revise the hell out of that…

Male and female serialists differ in many ways. By the end of this post, you decide who’s more ruthless.

The media attaches cutesy nicknames to female serial killers, like Giggling Granny, Jolly Jane, or Tiger Woman.

For males they use epithets that beget terror, such as Night Stalker, Flint Serial Slasher, and Jack the Ripper.

With female serialists, however, the victims never view her as a threat until it’s too late. Thus, it’s a mistake to underestimate a woman hellbent on murder.

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As a writer, we have the craft to create worlds, characters, and their stories. Inside our heads, those stories run like an all-singing, all-dancing movie. (Well, they do in mine…) but do our words convey this same effect for a reader?

Often, we are so close to the story we have created, it is hard to spot where we may need to make changes, add or remove items, spot crutch words (Oh, I have compiled a list, a mile long, of mine).

This is where editing comes in.

And as an Indie author, I remember the mind boggling at the different aspects of editing; the different stages that your book baby goes through, to become a polished piece of prose, ready to be presented to the world.

With this in mind, I am delighted to invite professional editor, Claire Jennison of Penning and Planning to step up and give us…

Writers Helping Writers:

Not sure how much brainstorming needs to go into each character? You’re not alone.

It’s a struggle for many, and unfortunately, there’s no single “right” answer. It really depends on the character’s importance in the story, their function or role, and the writer’s own process.

A rule of thumb might be to dig as deep as you need to in order to understand what is motivating them in the story.

But honestly, what does that look like?

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Writers Helping Writers:

As I mentioned in my last post, knowing exactly how much to brainstorm when it comes to character building can be a question mark.

How deeply you need to plan depends on the character’s roleand importance, and the writer’s own comfort zone.

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