The Covert, Lightening-Fast Way Best Selling Authors Characterize

Best Selling authors use a covert, mind-boggling sneaky technique to dump loads of information on unsuspecting readers--and readers seldom notice.

How do they do this?

Easy. They first decide what type of character they want to dramatize on the page. What personality traits, attributes, or critical information they want to pass on to the reader. Once they've completed this first step, they are ready to apply the secret of lightening-fast characterization.

See if you notice it in this paragraph.

"Ava Hilliard brushed imaginary lint off of her thrift-store bought
checkered dress, squinted through Wal-Mart prescription glasses and squeezed
her knees together tightly as the judges in the front of the ballroom
examined her
scrapbook."

Did you catch it? Read it again. What do the words tell you about Ava Hillard? Let's examine them briefly.

First, we know that Ava might be nervous. Why else would she be brushing "imaginary" lint off of her dress and squeezing her knees together? Second, we know that the dress was purchased at a thrift store. Perhaps Ava is thrifty, or maybe she is poor. We really can't say with this limited amount of informaiton, but we do have more data with which to compare the rest of the story. Third, we know that she is wearing Wal-Mart prescription glasses. These are not Prada sunglasses. Perhaps Ava is not rich. Or perhaps, once again, the author is showing us that Ava is thrifty or price-concious.

Whatever the author's intentions, we have met the covert technique head on. When we read "Wal-Mart" we identify with the store, the experience, and all of the connotations that go along with something bought at Wal-Mart.

Are you catching on? I bet so.

Best Selling authors, like Stephen King, brand-name drop all the time. Thier charcters can be seen wearing Nike shoes, driving Porches, drinking Star-Bucks coffee, etc, etc.

When you add a brand-name to your character's despcription, you gain several positive outcomes:

• 
  
  You help readers identify with the character


• 
  
  You help readers know something about the character's personality or current circumstances (Rich, poor, high class, middle class, etc)


• 
  
  You save precious words describing or showing the same ideas you can get accross in a split-second with this literary short cut.

A word of warning: use this technique sparingly. A character who wears Nikes, sips Star-Bucks coffee and carries a Barnes and Noble shopping bag may seem overblown or comic to your readers. Drop in brand-names sparingly when you want to add some spice to your descriptions without wasting words.

Keep writing.

The Best Seller Secret of Childhood Wounds

Best Selling Authors leverage advances in psychology, human development and other related fields to craft characters that pop with realism and conflict. One of the keys to creating realistic, unforgettable characters is found in the last place many neopyte writers look: childhood.



At the risk of dwindling into a Freudian lecture, let's examine this character-creation technique that might just launch your characters into the best seller catagory.



Every child, no matter how perfect his/her parents, is wounded on the way to adulthood. It's a fact. Sometimes the wounds look more like scars.



Ask yourself:

• What frusterated you as a child?


• What did you hate as a child?


• What left you wounded as a child?

Odds are some of you will be able to answer some of these questions. The difficult truth is that many of our own childhood wounds remain well hidden in our subconcious. However, they most likely affect (for better or worse) our current relationships.

For example, lets say your fictional character was beaten as a child. Do you think this might affect him/her years later? Probably so.

Some wounds are more noticable, physical and sexual abuse of any kind being two of them.

But there are more than one way to wound a child. Our emotional, spiritual and pyschological scars are harder to point out. Which makes them great fodder for your stories.

Here is the bottom line: To make your characters more belivable-and possibly memorablel-consider his or her childhood wounds and how they might affect current circumstances and relationships.

Ask these questions:

• How might my character's childhood wounds make it more difficult for him/her to reach his/her goals?


• How might my character's childhood wounds create additional layers of conflict with other people in the story?


• How might the villian or anatognist use the protagonist or hero's wounds against him or her?

One additional note: Bad guys were often wounded as children, too. How might that play out in your story?

Keep writing.

How Best Selling Authors Create Unique Characters

If you've read my other blogs on character creation, you know several secrets best selling authors use to create timeless, unforgettable characters over and over again. And keep their novels consistently on the top of the bestseller lists. In this blog, I'll reveal another little-known technique you can steal from best selling authors.



It's called Internal or External Processing.



Everyone on the planet processes information, whether its the latest celebrity gossip, a spouses sniding comment, or the boss's lingering hand on your thigh.



When it comes to how we process information, the whole world can be split up into two camps: the internal processers and the external processers.



What does this mean and how can it help you write bestsellers?



Keep reading. Internal processers like to think through information, chew on data, sleep on it before making decisions. They analyze, sort out and conduct mental arguments to come up with their choices. The main thing to know about internal processers is that they do all or most of their processing internally. Thoughts are key.



External processers, on the other hand, process their information out loud. They talk. They use words to sort through issues and to arrive at a conclusion. The key to external processers is that they all or most of their processing out loud with words. Words are key.



So, to create unique characters in your story, consider whether your main characters or minor characters process information internally or externally. Avoid having every fictional person in your story process information in the same way. Mix it up.



To sum it up, internal processers process information inside of themselves; external processers process information outside of themselves.



Keep writing.



C.H. Kokoski

The Sneaky Double-Dialouge Pattern of Bestselling Authors

One of my favorite moments in any story is a well-crafted piece of dialogue. You know what I mean. The kind of dialogue that catches you off guard, stuns you with its simple brilliance, throws a one-two punch at your gut and, maybe-just maybe- even gets a snicker.

Often, the dialogue is written in a very structured, thought-out fashion. Or so it seems. Often, the dialogue follows a similar pattern. So often, in fact, that I feel obligated to pass along this secret bestselling authors (and great writers of any medium) use over and over again with wonderful results.

The dialogue secret is, as I affectionately refer to it, the Double-Dialogue Pattern.

After you learn it, you'll start noticing it in almost every story you read-or watch. Sitcoms. Movies. Short Stories. Novels. Etc.

After you learn it, you might even start to see dialogue in a whole new light. For some of you, it may be like showing you an impossible magic trick in slow motion, revealing the subtle moves that make the trick work.

The Double-Dialogue Pattern might be best illustrated by showing it at work. Let's take the movie, Phenomenon, with John Travolta. One of my favorites.

In the movie, there is a moment of dialogue like I've described at the beginning of this blog. The moment passes quickly, but the dialogue resonates with me for the rest of the movie, and beyond. You can't ask much more of dialogue. It's really only one line.

Here is the line, as I recall it: (A little set up might help. John Travolta is speaking to Kyra Sedgwick, who is sitting in a malfunctioning truck. The attraction between the two is palpable. John is standing outside the truck, desperately trying to show his affection. Kyra isn't having it.)

John: "I'd sure like to get my hands on your carburettor."

Kyra: "I bet you would."

Hmmm....are they still talking about the truck???

That's the power of the Double-Dialogue Pattern. It communicates two messages at one time, the message on the surface (the truck) and the hidden or indirect message (the physical attraction).

Bestselling novelists and other master writers make use of this pattern constantly. The key is in the set up. The writer must first create the two meanings, then craft dialogue that blends them into one line or even one word.

Take, for example, a scene from an episode of the FOX sitcom, Back To You, with Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton.

Here's the set up. Heaton helps her daughter with a school project, which involves creating a visual of the universe. The next scene has Kelsey show up at Heaton's house. Heaton decides to tell her daughter that Kelsey is her biological father. Kelsey is nervous about how Heaton's daughter will react. When Heaton starts to tell her daughter, Kelsey passes out, landing on top of the school project. When Kelsey wakes up, this is what happens:

The daughter: "You crushed my universe!"

Kelsey (to Heaton): "You told her?"



Can you spot the Double-Dialogue Pattern? Yes, it's the word "universe." All that set up for a one-word punch line. It worked. I laughed even as I recognized the pattern. Heaton's daughter meant that Kelsey had destroyed her school project, a visual representation of the actual universe. Kelsey thought his daughter was reacting to the news that he was her father. Classic double-dialogue pattern.

So, in summary, the key to this pattern is:

1. Set up two meanings (ex. The noisy truck and the attraction or the school project and the biological father conversation)
2. Create a line of dialogue that captures both meanings (ex. "I'd like to get my hands on your carburettor" or "You crushed my universe")

Keep writing.

C.H. Kokoski

How Horoscopes Can Help You Create A Bestseller

While I don't believe in the inherent reliability of my daily horoscope, it's amazing how accurately my astrological sign describes my personality. I don't understand it, yet I'm pleasantly amazed.


Astrological signs can do more than provide a brief respite of humor from the often chaotic world. They can also help insightful writers craft bestsellers.


How do they do it?


In my library, I have a book entitled Zodiac Types. The book markets itself as "A sign-by-sign guide to personality, love, career, money and health."


Truly, it's a wonderful resource for character creation. It's not the only tool I use, but it helps.


How does it help?


When you go to create a character or characters, you can browse through the pages of a book (or a website for that matter) on astrological signs. Each sign portrays a different personality. Pick the personality that makes the most sense for the main character(s) in your book. The particular sign can offer lots of interesting color to your character's personality, providing additional insight and perhaps sparking plot twists and turns.


Another way astrological signs can help is by providing you with ready-made character personalities that differ. Most (if not all) of the characters in your story should be different. Solution: give each character a different astrological sign, complete with unique personality. And, wallah, you have a complex set of characters in which conflict is almost a given. Believe me, you could do much worse.


Here are a few websites to consider when creating your next bestseller:


http://www.psychicguild.com/
http://chinese.astrology.com/
http://www.astrologycom.com/




Keep Writing,


P.S.-My sign is Cancer.

How Bestselling Authors Craft Unforgettable Characters Everytime

Harry Potter. Odd Thomas. Alex Cross. How do bestselling authors create unforgettable characters that pull readers by the millions? While I don't have the space in a single blog to pontiferate on the various techniques that make up characters in bestsellers, I want to give you one such technique.


Let's begin by describing what characters in run-of-the-mill novels look like. They look, talk, dress, act, struggle and appear the same. They move with the same set of gestures. They speak in the same manner. They react to the problems of the story in the same predictable ways.


On the other hand, charactes in bestselling fiction differ.


They look different, from the clothes they wear to the the structure of their faces. Some have big noses. Others walk with a limp. Still others have their hair pulled back in long ponytails.


They sound different. They use different words, different language patterns, speak shorter or longer, more or less, with bigger or smaller vocabularies.


They react differently. They each show a different take on the story problem. Some give into the problem. Some fight it. Some try to negotiate with it. Through the actions and reactions of the story people, we (the readers) learn the many facets of the central struggle of the story.


In short, bestselling authors create characters that look, sound and react differently from each other.



We'll discuss characters more deeply in other blogs. For now, let's look at the story you're working on right now, or a future story you plan to write.



Ask the following questions of your story:

• Are the characters in my story all different from one another?


• How are they different in how they look?


• How are they different in how they speak?


• How are they different in how they react to the main story problem or the central story question?

This should get you started.



Until next time, Keep writing.



C.H. Kokoski

The Secret of Variation (Part III)

If you've read parts I and II of my posts on The Secret of Variation, then you now know how powerfully this seemingly simple writing technique can transform your fiction. That's what this blog is all about: lifting you and your writing to the next level.




On that note, in this post we'll examine how variation applies to pace.




Pace, like story structure, is an often invisible element that seperates great novels from mediocre to terrible ones. Pace comes in all shapes and styles. Slow pace is the silent killer of so many promising stories. Fast past is preferable, but an endless breakneck speed comes with its own set of problems.




So how do bestselling authors deal with pace?




Good question. And I bet you alreadly know the answer. Ok, well part of it anyway.




For one, bestselling authors use advanced techniques, like variation, to sqeeze all of the energy out of it. Bestselling authors know that pace, like nothing else, will keep readers reading. A mastery of pace will go a long way in moving your work toward bestseller status.




When readers say, "I read it in one night," or "I couldn't put it down," you're witnessing the impact of a well-constructed pace.




So lesson one is that pace is critical to your success as an author. Lesson two is how exactly to use pace to your advantage.




On with lesson two!




Bestselling authors vary pace by controlling the speed of individual scenes, or groups of scenes. Read almost any bestseller from Harry Potter to the Da Vinci Code and you'll see the genuis of a great pace.




Most scenes in bestsellers are fast: Fast-Fast-Fast-Fast




But not all of them: Fast-Fast-Fast-Fast-Medium Speed-Fast




The key to varying pace is to keep the story fast, but slow down every now and then to let your characters (and your readers) breath. Not too long now. Better a fast story than one that plods along.




Of course, pace relys on a good story with lots of conflict, complications and obstacles for the hero to overcome. You can't have a fast pace with weak story material.




Every story is different. Some novels can survive more medium or slow scenes than others. But I'd be remiss if I didn't warn you that it takes a writer at the top of his or her craft to pull together a bestselling novel from the threads of slow scenes.




How many books have you stopped reading in frustration because of endless slow scenes? Who care about the intimate details of cooking scrambled eggs? I want to know who killed the mayor? How many movies dragged on well past the slow scene limit? Most stories, whether on the page or on the screen, can withstand only one or two, maybe even three, slow scenes.




Consider yourself warned.




In the end, it's better to have a majority of fast-paced scenes, a few scenes of medium speed to relieve the tension, and slow scenes only if God Himself appears to you at your computer and commands you keep them in.







Until next time, keep writing.







C.H.K.