Write a Day-in-the-Life of Your Character - Mar Preston

In my current, and as yet untitled mystery, I changed the killer in the middle of the book. No one knew but me, until my editor commented that the killer was unconvincing.  He just seemed to float in the air until he pounced on the victim. It made me think even harder than I’d already done to finish this book.

Yes, he was unconvincing because I didn’t really know him—and it showed. 

Time for character sketches.  Yes, he grew more real to me in writing five or six pages about him. But I still couldn’t nail him to the paper so I tried another technique which I’d read about.

I used the third person omniscient point of view. It went something like the following. Character name is an early riser, waking as the newspaper slaps up against the front door, setting his two Rottweiler’s barking. Coffee first, then the dogs get fed. He made a pot of organic, fair trade coffee from Kenya and poured it into a blue ceramic cup. 

And it just came as though I was taking dictation. Whew! Where did the Rottweilers and the fair trade coffee come from? I don’t know. It just happened.

In writing your own day-in-the-life you might discover a female character wears jeans and a red scrunchie in her thick, curly hair. She goes to the office and snarls at a co-worker. And on it goes. You can’t write fast enough to keep up with your imagination. Whoops, a contradiction. Suddenly you’re writing that she loves her job. Now you’re off in another direction.

Just keep writing. One character attribute that you uncover will be stronger than another. Simply said, you get further and further into your character description and a better idea surfaces.

I’ve always trusted that the psyche has an unlimited supply of characters and plots for me to use. I needed to make friends with her and ask for her help.

And once again, she came through. 

I've written three short eBooks on the subject of writing your first mystery.  The first one is available FREE on my website at http://marpreston.com

The Importance of Titles by Christine Duncan

Anyone who ever wrote a fifth grade essay knows about the importance of titles. Authors take it as a matter of fact and usually spend some time thinking about them. In the world of the net and especially the blog, titles become….crazy important. This fact was brought home to me on my other blog. As I am the administrator there, I see what brings in our traffic. Over and over again, a few titles get hits consistently, every week: How to really scare someone. (It scares me that that gets so many hits.) How to make a really good bad guy. Senior sleuths. Make your Reader Cry. This has led me to more than a few thoughts about titles, over and above the idea that there are a bunch of people out there who want to be really,nasty,scary. First, the overused but really apt KISS principle applies here. Keep it simple. Tell us what you’re going to write about.. Practicing this may come in handy later if you ever meet an agent in a bar or an elevator at a conference. You’ll be able to tell them about your work in progress in one simple sentence and hopefully make some sense. Also, try to think about how a reader might search for your post on Google. If you were looking for information, how might you put it. Apparently from my admittedly limited experience, adding how to something is a good way to do it. For instance for this post, I thought about writing, how to write a great title. And if I had figured out a guaranteed way to do that, I would have. Some authors want to intrigue the reader, hoping to lead them on. But think about your own limited time and what you do on the web. Many a night, I get on Facebook to figure out what my family is doing, do a quick check of my blog, and then maybe do a quick search engine check of whatever it is I heard on the news and want to know more about, or some problem, like a water heater leak or the like that I want an answer for. I’m not here to be intrigued. I’m here for answers. And I don’t think I’m alone.