Just a quick blog – some of you might remember Larry from one of my previous blog posts (if not, go here). Well, that was some time ago and I’ve been in that flea market several times since then, but Larry was nowhere to be found. I’ve often wondered what happened to Larry, hoping that if someone bought him that they were taking good care of him and not condemning him for his perverted antics, which he cannot help.

Anyway, I bought a new desk last weekend and had to drive around to the back of the flea market to have them load it up for me (into my mom’s truck, which I nearly knocked off the side mirror on my way to pick up the desk). As I was walking through the dark and dusty back-of-the-warehouse where all the layaway and other random stuff is kept, I SAW LARRY! He was thrown onto a rickety chair and there was a pile of granny clothes tossed on top of him.

POOR LARRY!

I didn’t have my camera with me, but next time I’ll have it and I’ll get a shot.

A side note: The weather is getting nicer! Come on spring!

Ok, off to work I go….

I got an email today from Toadstool Bookshops offering for me to come to their store in Keene, NH to do a book signing when I get published. How awesome!

Of course, a big thanks to my friend Jon for passing my site along! :-)

Anyway, just a cool quick blog.

Happy weekend.

I’m turning this page into a place where I will feature a writer, blogger of literary things, or anyone else interesting of a literary nature.  For now I will do two features a month (will do more or less after I see how it goes) and if selected, stuff about you will be displayed on the page for two weeks. I might do a short interview with you, copy/paste general information about you and/or what you do, from your site, etc. I’ll post a new blog for every featured person and link to it from the many social networking sites I am a member of (MySpace, Twitter, Writer’s Digest Community, etc.).

The Rulage & Stuff:

*All features must have a web site (yes, free sites and blogs are OK).

*Anyone featured must be following me on Twitter.

*Must be writing-related!

*You CAN  nominate yourself!

*Those who nominate others will be mentioned with a link as well  if your nomination is featured.

Follow me on Twitter at @JRedmerski . You can nominate someone here as a comment, or on Twitter – however you want! The first feature will be between January 1st – 10th, and in addition to an entire page of my site devoted to featuring you (or whoever YOU nominate!) the featured will win a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card!

*Judges will be announced soon.

Help spread the word by retweeting this blog! Thanks!

UPDATE 12/20/09 – DECIDED NOT TO DO THIS AFTER ALL. NOT ENOUGH ENTRIES TO DEAL WITH IT, BUT I DO THANK THOSE WHO NOMINATED THEMSELVES.

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Character creation and dialogue are my absolute favorite things about writing.  I was a freeform role player for a number of years and that was how I fell in love with creating characters. I’ve had a lot of practice, and I’ve found that pulling decently crafted characters out of my head is not too difficult (I seem to have a soft spot for evil children characters though-not sure why).

Dialogue.  It’s the easiest and most enjoyable thing for me to write, I guess maybe that comes from being so outspoken in person, and I have a love for studying people I don’t know, how they naturally speak, tone, their facial expressions, body language,  etc. That crazy crack head in the Laundromat intrigues me and instead of shooing him away, I like to listen to him talk to himself.

Yes, I’m sort of a dialogue junkie…and maybe a little bit of a freak?

Anyway, if character creation and/or dialogue are your weaker points, maybe I can help. Of course, I’m certainly no expert, but I’d like to pass on some things I’ve learned and methods that I use.

Characters – What Not to Do:

• Crazy names suck. Almost nothing ruins a book more for me than running across a character with a cutesy made-up name like ‘Jasmaleen’ or ‘Aighymee’ or one of those dreaded fantasy world names like ‘Nemaireri-Cyn’. Even in fantasy books, I prefer simpler names. To me, an over-the-top character name instantly distracts from the story, which is the most important part of your book, right? Don’t pull a ‘Renesmee’….for the love of God.
• Personality stereotypes – avoid them.  If while writing about your character you suddenly feel like something about her is too familiar, sometimes that’s a red flag, so don’t ignore it. You probably already know all about how it’s a bad idea to make your blond character dumb, your main character pathetic because she’s parentless, or your Southern character a country bumpkin. But what about the more subtle things? Watch out for making the blond preppy, the main character sexy, but with that one flaw you have to give him because no one’s perfect (like the dreaded scar on his cheek), or the Southern character that instinctively knows how to ride a horse or bait a hook.
• Action clichés – avoid them, too.  If while writing a scene and something about it screams OVERUSED! OVERDONE! It probably is. For instance, your character quickly picks up a book to pretend he’s reading when he hears footsteps approach. Or, to make it worse, the owner of the footsteps comes in and notices that the pretend reader has the book upside-down. These kinds of clichés pull me out of the story and make the character less real. I remember I’m only reading a story and I don’t like to be reminded of that.

Characters – What to Do:

• Randomness Works – Every character needs something about him that is random. Usually these traits are subtle, but they give your character, character. The young boy that always draws on his shoes, or the teenage girl that can’t control the shaking of her foot while sitting in class. Check yourself out and make note of some random things you do and use one! I can’t sleep with my feet covered and I’m addicted to popcorn. Random little quirks help make us individuals and often they give a character more character better than those prominent traits we give them, like how Ethan loves knives and carries one with him everywhere, or Phoebe is a Goth that always wears black.
• Character Traits – Sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint how you want a certain character to be, or to act. You haven’t thought about that much, but you don’t want to be stuck trying to figure it out when you’d rather just be writing. Here’s an idea that I used for a couple of my past characters: look at this page, choose just one character trait, and go with it. Having an actual list of traits to sift through helped me find and choose one quicker and easier, but also I realized there are many traits that I may have forgotten about, or may have never thought of. A single word can open the floodgates for you.

So, in general, you don’t want a cliché or emotionless and boring character (unless you create one that is supposed to be emotionless and boring, but when it’s intended, it usually works) so take a look at your characters and see if there’s anything about them listed above that could be changed to make them better. In my opinion, characters are what make any story. Description and setting are also important, obviously, but a lifeless character can easily spoil a good scene.

Dialogue is also what makes a character interesting and in my next blog for Part II, I’ll cover it. I hope this helps. Thanks for reading!

Check out my most recent writing-related blogs:
Phase Writers, Born Writers & Evil Agents
Over 100k Words? Cutting is Gratifying

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The road to publication for the majority of writers is a long, painful and ‘subjective’ one (that word you’ll hear so often you’ll want to choke the person sitting next to you). You’re going to finish your novel and be so proud of it you might think you’ll be one of the lucky few to be published soon after. Sorry, but that only happens to people that sincerely go into it with absolutely no expectations, few intentions and maybe even low self-esteem about their writing skill (in other words, it is pure luck). Rarely will someone who thinks they just wrote ‘the next big thing’ break into the business quickly, if even at all. It’s a sad fact: chances are likely about 90% of us will never make a living by writing and even less of us will hit the big-time.

Why is that? And why am I being so damn negative by pouring vinegar on some of your wounds? Well, the reality of the business is harsh, yes, but the other reality is that it really doesn’t have to be that way and you really don’t have to be part of the statistic. It’s still unlikely any of us will be the next J.K. but I think the best ways to be sure you become a published author and at least be able to see your book on a shelf at Barnes & Noble someday are:

• Actually write a book. Do I really need to say that just talking or dreaming about it will never get it written? I didn’t think so.
• Read. Read. Read. A writer that doesn’t read is like {INSERT ANY WITTY SIMILE HERE – ALL WILL WORK}.
• Learn how to write properly. Just because you can tell a good story doesn’t mean you can write one.
• Get some non-biased feedback on your story (mom’s and husbands almost always either sugarcoat the truth, or are blinded by how beautiful you are).  Join an online writers group that offers free critiques and accept their advice no matter how critical.
• Edit. Revise. Edit. I think 1 year of editing repeatedly is minimum.
• Edit and revise some more.
• Get your query and synopsis ready and by that I mean, be prepared to rather be doing something like getting a vasectomy from that guy that lives behind the 7 Eleven, or eating light bulbs. If the query/synopsis isn’t perfect (and this is the only case where ‘perfect’ does exist), you’re screwed.
• Subjective. Subjective. Subjective. (I’m just helping get you warmed up.)
• Not a good fit for us. Not a good fit for us. (Still helping get you warmed up.)
• Get in the habit of knowing that the unopened agent response staring at you from your inbox is a rejection.  And when you do finally get your first send-me-more reply, expect that one to end up in the rejection folder, too.
• Ignore the urge to #1…whine to an agent about how many rejections you’ve received, and #2…tell an agent off even if you’re the best writer to come around since Stephen King or Neil Gaiman. They’ve heard it all before and anything more or less than a thank-you-for-your-time reply to a rejection makes you look bad. Even I am guilty of whining in my blog to an extent (and I have tough skin!), so I know how rejections can affect a person.  Don’t let it get to you!
• Always write something else while submitting the one you finished. Start a new novel and keep the momentum. A finished book is not a vacation unless you’re Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, I suppose. A writer always writes and a successful writer usually has more than one published book under his belt.
• Never give up. This is most important, because it’s the one that separates born writers from phase writers. The majority of that negative list I began this post with (that 90% way up there) are of phase writers. They’re the ones that never get published because they let the road to getting published beat them down and they give up. Of course, that 90% also consists of the severely unlucky, the delusional and the successful dead (those that are discovered only after they’ve kicked the bucket).

I haven’t been published yet myself so I can’t give pointers beyond what I gave, but I can say that once you do finally get published, like with completing your book, it’s still not vacation time! It’ll be time to promote, promote, promote!

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Is your manuscript more than 100K words? If it is, you might be in some way like I was when one of mine was 116K (ouch! I know!). I thought I had edited it down as much as I could. I combed through the story night after night, editing here and there and saying to myself, “I can’t take that out! It’s important! There’s absolutely nothing else I can, or will part with.” And that was that. I refused to budge.

And then a miraculous thing happened. A bolt of lightning came out of the sky and snapped me right in the ass and suddenly I realized there was quite a lot of content I could take out of my story that was, after all, expendable. (That sentence there was way too long, for example!)

Unnecessary Words – Eliminate Them!

The first thing I did was hunt a list of unnecessary words and I found this link, which is a blog posted by @writing_tips. I’m sure many of you already know this (I did too), but go through each word (also ‘very’ and ‘even’, which aren’t listed) and get rid of them wherever possible. Having the list in front of me allowed me to use the Word Find to go through my manuscript and eliminate each one. Even if you’re a seasoned writer, you might realize you’ve used some of those words, regardless. It happens as we do get carried away sometimes. You might not cut many words by doing this, but every one helps and in this case, it helps with more than just your word count.

Kill Her, Even if You Love Her!

The next thing I did was examine my characters more closely. Chances are there is at least one character you can do away with and no one will ever miss it (if more than one, then great!). I used to think this was blasphemy. I loved each of my characters. How could I bring myself to part with one for the sake of cutting words in my manuscript? Easily. I realized that one of my favorite characters (not one I cared the least for and would have tried to cut first) was entirely expendable. Sure, the scene with her was great and she was an awesome character with a lot of character, but when I looked past her and how much I loved her presence, it was only then I knew that she didn’t have an important enough part to keep her. By cutting her out I eliminated close to 3,000 words and it only hurt for a few seconds. Besides, I knew I could use her in another story.

Need and Want – We Must Differentiate!

After that, I decided to start from the beginning again and examine each paragraph differently than all the other times I edited before. Instead of looking for flaws, or sentences that could be reconstructed, etc. I decided only to look for anything (word, sentence, paragraph) that truly had no purpose other than to make me proud I had written something so ‘awesome’. Of course, I emphasize that word with a lot of sarcasm. What I’m getting at is something we all do. We construct neat little sentences we’re so impressed with and we forget that sometimes we don’t need them; we simply ‘want’ them. This alone allowed me to cut more than…wait for it…I cut close to than 6,000 words!

My 116K-word novel was reduced to around 107K and you know what? I felt great! As I re-read my novel for the hundredth time, it flowed better than ever before, and overall I felt good about what I did. Ultimately, I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner! I still need to get the word count down some, but for now I’m good with what I have cut and I have a completely new respect for eliminating content.

So that’s my little bit of advice from my own word-cutting experience.

Most of the time if you’re still over 100K and you think you’ve cut all you can; you’re still in your sentimental zone.

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I got back from my 5-day trip in Chicago a little after 5:00a.m. this morning. I want to start from the beginning, but about all of the horrible Greyhound experiences, I will be brief as I don’t want to sour such a wonderful experience with negativity.

The Brief Bitch: Everything about Greyhound is torturous and I would never, under any circumstances, recommend anyone ride one, ever.

Now that that’s been said, let me start with the city itself. I’ve never been in a big city like Chicago. I’ve never been on a subway, or ‘train’ what have you, and have only seen them on TV and in movies. Brian (who I went to Chicago to see and I will get to that soon) showed me so many things and took me to so many places that I can’t remember everything right off (this might be a long post, but I’m due for a good one anyway!). Well, I absolutely loved riding on the train! Call me silly, but I would give up the use of my car everyday in exchange for hopping on trains that stop and go at stops so fast you have to stay on your toes lest you miss them. I loved watching all different kinds of people go to and from, this way and that, going about their daily lives, iPod buds dangling from their ears, backpacks tossed over their shoulders. Few people ever say much to anyone next to them, yet somehow that quiet mystery in passing between them fascinates me.

I stood beneath so many towering skyscrapers and I welcomed the vertigo with open arms. The Sears Tower (I refuse to call it the Willis Tower – sounds funny even for someone not from Chicago) was like standing under a Titan. Amazing.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

I’m having a difficult time choosing which photos to put up! I only took about 200, give or take, and then there are the ones Brian took, which turned out better than mine did. My camera sucks!

We also went to “The Lake”, which I like to call The Ocean because I’ve never seen a lake so enormous that you can’t see land on the other side. but it was frigid and we could only stay long enough to get a few shots.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

Brian took me to one of his inspirational places and I really loved it there. We both agree that it could do without the graffiti, but the area in general is peaceful.

(Photo by Brian Salata)

Brian took me to the Adler Planetarium where we saw a show called Night Sky Live. It was really nice, as we both are heavily obsessed with The Universe.

I  love this photo of Brian. :-)  It’s so fitting!

But this one, even more fitting! :-D

I look like shit in my newspaper ad, but oh well.

We had a great time.

I also got to meet a longtime friend of mine, Kris aka Sex, Death & Money, who I’ve known online since the role-playing days of MSN. We’ve known each other for about six years.  Me, Brian, Kris and her comical boyfriend (I forgot his name! What is it, Kris?) met up at Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria so I could eat my first pizza. OK, my first Chicago pizza, so technically my first pizza. We hung out for about 2 hours and laughed a lot about how Southern I really am (y’all hush! It ain’t that bad!) and made fun of Twilight and talked about just about everything. It was fun.

Love ya, Kris!

But Chicago was more than a vacation. I went for one reason and that was to meet Brian. And Brian was the best part of my trip. It was a long-awaited meeting, or rather, long overdue and I couldn’t be happier about how it all turned out.  :-)

I’m ready to go back to Chicago!  :-) … :-(

I know I’m leaving a lot out because I’m still zombified from the trip, so I’ll be adding stuff to this blog….

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To Kindle, or not to Kindle? I admit, I was 100% against the thing when I first heard about it (like I was against a cell phone 6 years ago and now can’t live without one), but I simply must have one. Not just any Kindle, but the Kindle DX that’s about $500 bucks. And I intend to get it. I used to worry that any digital reading device would eventually make real, hold-in-your-hand-and-inhale-the-pages books vanish completely. No physical books would mean no intimate nights at the bookstore with my favorite caffeine drink and surrounded by the next best thing to rain. These thoughts not only made my blood boil, but quite frankly, scared the shit out of me.

Not anymore.

I see so many personal advantages to having a digital reading device, especially one with as many features as the DX, for instance.  I won’t go into all the advantages, they would be different for everyone. The point is, I am completely sold on this thing. Nothing can ever replace the feel, the scent or the comfort of a real book and I think that if all physical books were sold from here on out with digital downloads, that would be…perfect.

I’ve noticed they’re already doing that with some DVD’s. I bought Journey to the Center of the Earth (the new one with Brendan Fraser) and it included a code to download the digital version of it. I like that, having a digital backup.

So yeah, aside from my November Chicago trip, I’ll be investing in a Kindle!

A side-note: The movie Dagon and H.P. Lovecraft just entered my mind for no apparent reason. Now I want to watch it.

I am a huge Alice In Wonderland fan and have been anticipating the new Tim Burton version of the film, for quite some time.  And so I logged onto Yahoo! today and saw this:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/need-to-know-alice-in-wonderland.html

I’m so excited, I can’t wait! Johnny Depp, Helena Bonhan Carter, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee….hell, what more could I ever ask for?!

Yeah, so that’s my blog for a few days, or so. I just had to share my excitement. :-)

My friend, Dani, who created the cover for my novel Dirty Eden has recently published his art book with Black Coat Press.  He’s really such an amazing artist and I encourage you to check out his work and buy his book!

Here are some reviews:

“Daniele Serra never ceases to amaze me. Everytime he illustrates a piece of my work he doesn’t just draw a picture, he breathes life and heart into it. He captures the essence of pain, love, heartbreak and redemption on a single canvas. Clearly he has consorted with devils. No man should be this talented!”
Steven Savile,
International Bestselling Author of Silver and Shadow of the Jaguar

“Daniele Serra’s artwork is soulful and enveloping, like a dark, warm hug from a long dead and much loved friend. It draws you into its world until you never want to leave.”
Rain Graves,
Bram Stoker Award-winning poet*

“Daniele Serra’s artistic vision takes the viewer on a trip into some dark, strange, and disturbing places–places where we might not choose to go alone, but are led into willingly with Serra as our tremendously talented guide. ”
Jeff Mariotte, author of Desperadoes, Cold Black Hearts

“Epic, hypnotic, sensuous, dark and daring, as original as it gets . . . If Poe could draw, he’d be Daniele Serra!”
Alexander Besher, author of The Manga Man and the Rim Trilogy