View Single Post
Old 11-06-2012, 08:53 PM   #9
crich70
Grand Sorcerer
crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.crich70 ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
crich70's Avatar
 
Posts: 11,306
Karma: 43993832
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Monroe Wisconsin
Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)
Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat View Post
Thanks everyone for all the tips. I'm aware that nano has a tendency to make writing "wordy"; I've been having amusing conversations about it. For example, during a telephone call, I mentioned to Nigel, an old friend, that my nano novel was unnecessarily wordy, with too many adjectives and adverbs, he parodied me with the following:

"As she stared in fearful terror at the gun, she noticed how its straight clean angles contrasted with the beautifully curved organic lines of the predominantly art deco ornamentation of her tastefully decorated living room."

Taking show don't tell a bit too far!

Crich: didn't a similar thing happen to Tolkein when writing LOTRs? One of the main characters started out as a villager who walks into a tavern. (I heard this ages ago, but have never read the trilogy.)

ekster: that's a great way to create characters, I'll give it a try, see if it works for me.

Thanks
Yep, He found the hobbits meeting up with a character called Strider who later became a very important character in the trilogy. Actually though of course "trilogy" is a deceptive term with LOTR as it's really just one continuous novel that was broken into three parts because at the time the publishers felt it would be too expensive to print it all in one volume. Of course with ebooks we don't have that problem. Another idea that occurred to me was astrology. You may find possible combo's of traits for a character by creating a birthdate for him/her and figuring out if they are a Libra say rather than a Scorpio. Also there is a book available through Amazon titled "Tarot for Writers" that (among other things) uses Tarot cards to create characters.
crich70 is offline   Reply With Quote