In Part 2 of my interview with Angela Ackerman, co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus and host of Writers Helping Writers, we talk about how to use details to write great characters, immerse readers in your story, and even figure out your plot.
Links:
Writers Helping Writers: http://stada.me/whw
One Stop For Writers: http://stada.me/osfw
This month’s theme is Love: It’s Not Just For The Ladies. I’m going to be looking into all kinds of love and how our characters feel, express and reject it. Starting with this week’s writing prompt.
Write three, linked mini-stories about two people who love each other.
Each moment illustrating one of the three aspects of enduring love: Intimacy, Passion & Commitment.
Each section highlights a different moment.
The overall story charts their relationship.
It can be hard to write endings (So many logistics! So tired from writing the whole story!), but the ending is the thing that sends your reader off into the world feeling good about your story…or deflated because you let them down.
In this week’s episode I talk about the importance of endings, and a powerful way for you to think about them so you can delight your reader.
Also: I talk about StoryADay’s writing prompts for November and my impressions of the 2019 edition of the Best American Short Stories anthology, edited by Anthony Doerr.
LINKS:
Penny For The Guy Writing Prompt
A writing prompts about openings & endings
How did you get on yesterday? Did you write a story?
Remember, set your own rules, and stick to them. If you miss a day, don’t try to catch up. Just keep moving forward!
This begins a week of prompts designed to get you to play with form.
Short stories are not mini-novels and they needn’t read that way.
Jump around between characters in this one. Jump around in time. Do whatever you need to, to give your story three distinct sections and three different emotions.
Make sure to make your characters sound like real people, not actors on a stage reading soliloquies.
Go!
Check back every day for more prompts, and don’t forget to come back and leave a comment to celebrate your writing successes, every day!
For audio only, subscribe to the podcast
Today, Angela Ackerman invites us to think about our character’s past emotional trauma and how it affects them in the present.
This is a really useful exercise for deepening any character in any length of story. Use it for a character from a novel, or for the character in a short story. It can’t help but make your story more rich.
And remember: emotion is the key to a reader connecting with your story.
Emotional trauma is an experience, or set of experiences, that can change your character in fundamental ways, altering their personality, embedding fears in their minds, affecting their ability to connect and trust others, and steering their needs and desires during your story.
Write about a wounding experience from your character’s past that changed them into who they are today.
HINT: most wounding experiences involve someone close to the character as it is the people closest to us who are able to do the most psychological damage.
For emotional wound ideas, try this list: https://onestopforwriters.com/wounds
Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker, and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: a Writer’s Guide to Character Expression and four other bestselling writing guides. A proud indie author, her books are available in five languages, sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors and psychologists around the world.
Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site, Writers Helping Writers, as well as One Stop For Writers, an innovative online library built to help writers elevate their storytelling.
http://writershelpingwriters.net/
https://onestopforwriters.com
Following up on the recent theme of emotional writing prompts, here’s one that’s good for a laugh.
Write A Story That Features Laughter
Tips
Go!
Continuing a trend from last week and the week before, here’s another prompt that leads you into plot via your main character’s emotion.
Write A Story That Features Anger
Go
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Continuing on from last week’s prompt about a character experiencing an emotion, this week we’re focusing on Joy.
Write A Story In Which A Character Experiences Joy
Go!
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
A supportive group of committed writers, who meet virtually, support each other’s efforts, and inspire each other.
Registration for 2024 open now-June 8, 2024
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
