Daily Archives: October 6, 2008

Look for unique ways to describe typical events

Make note of this on your micro SD chip: always remember to look for unique ways to describe common events. That helps set your work apart from the rest. I love using an example from my college writing professor, Terry Davis. In one of his manuscripts, he has a man get into a moment of …

October 6, 2008 – 3:12 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The power of specifics

Learning the specifics of your characters is important before you put pen to paper. You might be able to recite certain speeches you want them to deliver, or their motivations and backstory, but is that enough? Those are your big payoff moments, but it can take sometimes 200-300 pages to build up to the earliest …

October 6, 2008 – 3:03 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in creativity | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Don’t be afriad to be weird

One of the things I find some writers struggle with is a fear of creating characters who are “too weird” to be “believable.” Whenever I hear this, I love to have them sit down and watch the two-hour movie debut of the old and short-lived ABC TV mystery, Twin Peaks. There’s no one weirder than …

October 6, 2008 – 2:56 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A hope-full setting

As I’ve dug into writing my Pizza Delivery Mystery novel, Thirty Minutes Or Less, one of the fun things I’ve been able to do is create my own fictional setting. Although based heavily on places I have lived, this setting is a mixture of enough of them that I’ve fictionalized it. My novel will be …

October 6, 2008 – 2:48 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Settings are key

One of the things that has been driven home to me by reading the novels of Charlaine Harris is how important setting is to the success of a novel. It is the uniquess of Harris’ Bonne Temps, Louisiana, setting for her Sookie Stackhouse novels that helps to make her vampire-centric mysteries uniqe from Laurel K. …

October 6, 2008 – 2:37 AM | By Craig Hansen | Posted in Tips on getting published, writing | Tagged , , | Comments (0)