  Short Stories
This week: Mind Your P's and Q's Edited by: Shannon  
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Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week.
Make sure you read all of this week's edition for your chance to win a merit badge AND 25,000 gift points! |
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Mind Your P's and Q's:
How profiling your protagonist produces quality prose prone to leaving your competition quaking in their Quarks
The following editorial was inspired by DRSmith  . Thank you, doc!
About fifteen years ago I enrolled in a home study course titled "Writing and Selling Short Stories" by Writer's Digest School (I don't believe they offer such extensive, in-depth mentorships these days, but Writer's Digest University does offer many worthwhile online courses ). I LOVED it! My personal instructor was author Carol Cail, and I can't begin to tell you how much I learned from her. She read, edited, and personally responded to each and every story I wrote, and the pittance I paid for the priceless experience and knowledge I gained was money well spent.
Included in the course was something I still use to this day: the Character Profile Sheet. Those of you who have never profiled your characters before may wonder what information to include and what to leave out. What do you, the writer, need to know? I think a more appropriate question is what don't you need to know? You are God. You breathe life into your characters, and like God, you should know everything there is to know about each and every person who populates your story, even their deepest, darkest secrets. You may not use all the information, but it's nice to know it's there if you need it.
The more you know, the easier the writing is.
Over the years I have tweaked and molded the profile sheet to suit my particular tastes and needs, and it's the end result I'd like to share with you today. You can use what you like and disregard the rest. I also recommend personalizing it. Add the things you like to know about your characters and remove what you don't. Remember, this is a tool designed to make the writing of your story easier, so make it your own.
Okay, so let's get started, shall we?
 Character name
Where did his name come from? Does it have any significance?
Does your character have a nickname? If so, how did it originate and does it have any significance? How does the character feel about it?
Where was he born and when? Does he still live there? Why or why not?
Are his parents living or dead? How do they get along with your character? How long has it been since your character has seen them? If they play a role in your story, consider making character profile sheets for them.
Does he have any siblings? How many? Are they older or younger? Male or female? How do they get along with your character? Do they live near or far away? How long has it been since your character has seen them? What do they do for a living? If they play a role in your story, consider making character profile sheets for them.
What does your character look like? How does he dress? How does he feel about his age and appearance? Is he athletic? Lazy? Slim? Overweight? Does he have any distinguishing marks (scars, tattoos) or piercings? If so, what are the stories behind them?
What does your character enjoy doing in his spare time? Does he have any hobbies?
What would a stranger, meeting the character for the first time, notice about him?
What special mannerism, habit, interest, or other personal trait could serve as a "character tag" for this character?
How does he feel about where he lives, his occupation (whether work, school, housekeeping, etc.), and where he's going in life? Why did he choose his particular line of work?
What important childhood experience still affects him now?
What do his friends or family like/dislike about him most?
What is the greatest source of strength in his personality? What is his greatest weakness?
Who is important in his life right now?
When he meets a problem or difficulty, how does he react?
What kind of problems does he tend to run into?
What does he do too much of? Too little of?
What success(es) is he most proud of?
What failure(s) would he be most embarrassed to have people know about?
How did he spend the week just before the point where your story will begin?
What would he like to change about himself or his life if he could? If he really made that change, would he be as happy as he thinks he would? Why or why not?
What else is important in understanding who the character is?
You'll be amazed by what is revealed when you complete a profile on your characters. Suddenly a living, breathing, fleshed-out, well-rounded person emerges right before your eyes. It's much easier to write about someone you know than it is a stranger, right? Get to know your characters inside and out, then write about how they spend their days so we can get to know them too.
Thank you for reading.
 Now here's your chance to win a merit badge AND 25,000 gift points! What would YOU like to read about in my next edition of the Short Stories Newsletter? Send me your suggestions! I will accept ideas until 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday June 29, 2010, and the one that interests me the most will be the topic of the editorial on July 21, 2010 as well as the winner of a Creativity merit badge + 25,000 gift points. There is ONE RULE, however: Rather than entering your idea in the feedback section at the bottom of this NL, send it to me via email (any entry not sent to me in an email message will be disqualified).
Good luck!
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Discovering the fountain of youth presents a unique problem.
#1600048 by Jeff  |
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Last month I posed a challenge. I said, "Now here's your chance to tell us about that one right book. Respond to this NL with your favorite passage (one paragraph or less) from your favorite book, and remember to include the title and author. All of your responses will be featured in next month's newsletter, but my five favorites will receive a READING merit badge ... and those who include a description of how reading has made them a better writer will receive a gift point bonus to boot!"
The following is in response to "Short Stories Newsletter (May 26, 2010)" :
Free_Rip  : Good newsletter. Choice of books is very important. A good passage from a great book: from The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel: "No snow had filtered in to betray the season. It was as though the time of harvest had been captured and held in suspension, preserved in the still cold forest." Nothing too dramatic, I just like the author's eloquent style. I agree reading has a large impact on writing. I read books similiar to the style I write and don't think it is a coincidence. I see parallel structure used, see writers purposefully making their protagonists dubious to get a point across, see the lead-up to a twist and learn to build them myself. In fact, I remember once, before a creative writing test, we were reading some of the pieces that had failed. I went to the teacher, handed the booklet back and said I'd rather be thinking about how to write well than how to write badly when I was taking the test. Good times!
Lee: Namaste! : My passage comes from The Essential Rumi (trans. Barks): "For a drunk, peeing is an absolution. Lord take these impurities from me." Of course reading helps my writing. The most basic and valued skill set is to read and write.
lazymarionette: "When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading in it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking." ~ Anne Spollen's The Shape of Water. I recently read this book and it immediately became one of my favorites. The way the narrator sees the world is so ... eye opening and thoughtful. The description is wonderful, so not only did it change the way I approach the world (and thus my own writing), but it improved my imagery.
Ashley : From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said: 'If you please, draw me a sheep!'" I love the detail in this passage, as well as the innocence of the Little Prince.
billwilcox: Hey Shannon. Wow, a damn good newsletter. We are so on the same page when it comes to reading and writing. Thank Bob, we don't have to do 'rithmatic too.  " Thanks, Bill!  Glad you liked it, and thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment! (((hugs)))
Zeke : I just finished a great book by Steve Martini titled The Judge. I guess what impressed me most was his attention to background detail in his scenes.
atwhatcost: "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail." H.D. Thoreau from Walden or Life in the Woods. I loved it when I first read it as a teen, although life was so opened, it was impossible for me to do. In my working life, it's helped me declutter my house and to-do list at work, as well as kept me away from uselss multitasking. Now, older and disabled with much less money, it reminds me to keep shaking off the unnecessary. It has been something to strive for, not yet accomplished, but this path has helped me in ways never imagined when I first read it.
Christine Cassello : How can one pick a favorite? I am very much like you. I am reading Brooklyn because it was the "One Book, One Chicago" choice and sounded interesting, but it is not really holding my attention well.
DRSmith : Are you listening people? Good, cuz Shannon did a great job of droppin' a knuckle 'tween our eyes with: "I read because I love it, but reading has definitely made me a better writer. If you don't 'read widely,' how will you know good writing when you see it? How will you know bad? How will you recognize either in your own work?" Not gonna rehash the read-read-read directive, but if it helps, I sometimes equate to a golfer I once knew. He was literally obsessed with the game, but terrible; couldn't break a hundred with a sharp pencil. Yet, virtually every day he was on the range before hitting the links, chopping at ball after ball. Yes indeed, with all the daily practice, he mastered the worst swing in golf though in his eyes, he was sure a few more balls would git it done. He could see par, baby. In a one man show, gotta love your own game, right? Read! Aw, thank you, Doc! I appreciate your very kind comments. (((hugs))).
Jeff : I recently read The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie and couldn't put it down. Here's an excerpt: "Jezal was almost sure that had been some kind of insult, but he was too busy trying to think of something witty to pay it too much mind. He knew he would have to speak now or spend the entire day in embarrassed silence, so he opened his mouth and trusted to luck. 'I'm sorry if I seem dumbfounded, but Major West is such an unattractive man. How could I have expected so beautiful a sister?' West snorted with laughter. His sister raised an eyebrow, and counted the points off on her fingers. 'Mildly offensive to my brother, which is good. Somewhat amusing, which is also good. Honest, which is refreshing, and wildly complimentary to me, which, of course, is excellent. A little late, but on the whole worth waiting for.' She looked Jezal in the eye. 'The afternoon might not be a total loss.'"
Doug Rainbow : The question was where is Dunder Miflin, the paper company in "The Office," located. While the branch office in the series is located in Scranton, Pa., the company headquarters--the location of the company--is New York, N.Y. I claim the only correct answer to the question posed. Actually, the challenge was "The first person to respond with the name of the company The Office employees work for and where it's located (city and state) will win a TRAVEL merit badge." I myself am employeed by a company in Boise, Idaho. If someone were to ask me where I work, I would say the company's name in Boise, not the corporate office in Plano, Texas.
Kelsey Jo : From Fell by David Clement-Davies: "'Look at mushrooms of zee forest,' said Ottol thoughfully. 'Beds of fungus and lichen. Fields of gorse and bracken, vere a million living zings breed and grow in secret. Do not zee other Lera feed on zem to live? Has darkness not a power too?'"
Joshiahis : Do you keep books in the  bathroom as well? My wife says that's a problem I need to fix. Well ...
Merry_Mikey  : "He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'" (Frodo Baggins, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of The Ring, telling his friends how Bilbo had often cautioned him about traveling). I've lost count of the number of times I've read The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and have enjoyed each read-through immensely. This particular passage, though, seems particularly apropos in light of our common pursuit: writing. Once you've set pen to paper--or fingertips to keyboard--if you're not careful, you may find your plot and/or characters taking off in entirely unexpected directions (a completely normal phenomenon during NaNoWriMo, or so I'm told)!
Ladyoz : "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. More than anything, reading is nourishment for the imagination. It can open our minds to bright new ideas, provide unexpected insight into human nature, and give us access to grand vistas we may not otherwise be able to experience. Reading has given me a heightened appreciation of the technical aspects of good writing, and I have developed a more critical eye when editing my own work. Reading has made me understand that good writing is more than just telling a story to exorcise my own demons! Thanks for another great newsletter.
Brandon : Here's one of my favorite passages from book two of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three: "They had a screaming match in the hall, Henry standing there in an old pair of khakis with his packed duffle bag in one hand and purple rings under his eyes, Eddie wearing nothing but a yellowing pair of jockey shorts, Henry saying, 'You don't need me around, Eddie. I'm poison to you and you know it,' and Eddie yelling back, 'You ain't going nowhere. Get your ass back inside.' And that's how it went until Mrs. McGursky came out of her place and yelled 'Go or stay, it's nothing to me, but you better decide one way or the other pretty quick or I'm calling the police.' Mrs. McGursky seemed about to add a few more admonishments, but just then she saw that Eddie was wearing nothing but a pair of skivvies. She added: 'And you're not decent Eddie Dean!' before popping back inside. It was like watching a jack-in-the-box in reverse." Reading hasn't only made me a better writer, but it's what made me decide to be a writer to begin with. Before I started really reading novels, I only wrote poetry, but now after finding a love for reading novels, I've found that I want to become a novelist. I don't think I'll ever be as good as my favorite authors, but after reading the mediocre books I know that I have the talent in me to be an above average writer.
jaya : Hi Shannon! That's a novel challenge, choosing my favorite passage. Here's one of mine: "Gradually the rains became lighter and less frequent, and earth and sky once again became separate. The rain fell in thin, slanting showers through sunshine and quiet breeze. Children no longer stayed indoors but ran about singing: 'The rain is falling, the rain is falling. Alone Nnadi is cooking and eating.' Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was and why he should live all by himself, cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna's favourite story where the ant holds court in splendour and the sands dance forever." From Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
LJPC - the tortoise : I loved your newsletter and the exciting MB challenge. Unfortunately, English paperbacks are rare on the Red Sea and cost double. All the reading I do is right here on WDC. I learn new things all the time and hope I can help those people I review, too. My favorite quote is "The successful writer is the one who didn't give up." I have no idea where it came from. It's important to me because it gives me hope and inspires me to believe in the possibility of miracles if you just try hard enough. Thank you for inspiring so many on WDC with your stories and newsletters. The quotes from Chekov and Capote were really brilliant! Food for thought; a feast for the soul.  Aw, thank YOU, Laura, for your support, encouragement, and friendship. (((hugs)))
PhillipV : "I dreamed once that I was stranded on a planet of the whitest sand. And the sky was white. That's all there was--me, spilling drifts of white sand as wide as oceans, and a burning white sky. I was alone. And small. After days of wandering, I could smell my own rot, and I knew I'd die in these drifts of white under a hot sky, and I prayed for shade. And eventually it came. And it had a voice and it had a name. 'Come,' Darkness said, 'Come with me,' but I was weak. I was rotting. I couldn't rise to my knees. 'Darkness,' I said, 'take my hand. Take Me away from this place.' And Darkness did." Dennis Lehane, Darkness Take my Hand. The words of others have intrigued me, influenced me, and inspired me for as long as I have been able to read. From classics such as This Side of Paradise to less known works such as Shadow of the Moon, I have been able to experience entire worlds, and I have learned an incredible amount about writing. Every book I have ever read has taught me something, good or bad. I have learned to describe setting, build characters, create worlds. And everything I know came from another's writing, that of a master or a novice. Each sentence I have read has opened up worlds, bridged the gap, helped me to improve as a writer.
kitespen: The paragraph that grabbed me lately is from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest."
junyaslove: This is from Nora Robert's The Winning Hand: "'I am a coward.' She said it defiantely, tossing up her chin in a challenging gesture that contrasted with her words. 'I'd rather agree than quarrel, rather run than fight. But that's why I'm here isn't it? Here with you, about to become wealthy. Cowardice works for me.' 'He can't hurt you, Darcy.' 'Of course he can.' Lifting her hands, she gave a weary sigh. 'Words hurt. They bruise the heart and scar the soul. I'd rather be slapped than battered with words.'"
Angelica Weatherby-Happy 2025  : I don't know anything about writing, but I do know how to read. :-d Great newsletter! Thank you! Glad you liked it.
Helen McNicol : My mother recently gave me a book to read ... a real brick, 876 pages, called Into The Wilderness by Sara Donati. My first thought was, Oh my God, how am I going to get into this? I've never before been hooked on a book at page 1, and I can go even one better on this one--I was hooked by the first sentence: "Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead, and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise."
Cassie Kat : Oh this sounds like fun! My favorite book, without question, is The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George. It was tough to choose just one passage (and it didn't help that the book was almost a thousand pages long!), but this one grabbed me yet again as I leafed through the pages: "I would read the poetry late at night, when my attendants had left me and only the oil lamp kept me company. Then the poetry felt different from the way it did when I went over it with my tutor. In lessons I paid great attention to my translation, and to verb forms. Now, by myself, I could exchange all that and feel the faint, humming thrill of the words themselves."
Lorien : My favorite recent read was Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In The Castle. The book is haunting and gripping, and I read it straight through in one afternoon. This is the opening paragraph: "My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead."
Zoe Graves : I honestly can't remember the book or author, but this line haunts me: "She felt a thrill run through her that was only part terror." I know it's about some girl who likes dangerous guys type of book because that's my favorite kind of book, and also what I like to write. I know EXACTLY what that little terror/pleasure thrill feels like, and I get to feel it every time I write my own story of dangerous/ forbidden romance. It kind of tickles.
JACE  : I was required to do a biography book report in the 8th grade. I chose Jules Verne, and was infatuated by his ability to tell a story. I believe my desire to write, including the ever-present background in my stories, was influenced by Verne. Reading The Mysterious Island in my final year of college, one phrase in that book reached out and smacked me upside the head: "The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of man's superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world." -- The Mysterious Island, Ch. 57. I discovered a passion that would stay with me. Recently I returned to that passion of writing something others would enjoy reading. I now work toward a goal of being published, one I know I'll achieve one day.
Servante : Moby Dick by Herman Melville: "As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul." Reading has given me freedom similar to when you first remove your bike's training wheels. A new sense of mobility opens up that enables one to fly rather than stumble.
Man, what a wonderful collection of favorite passages from books I'll soon be adding to my to-do list! Thank you all so much for taking the time to respond with your entries. I had a VERY difficult time choosing the winners (I loved them all), and I don't want to keep you in suspense any longer. So without further ado, please join me in congratulating this month's merit badge challenge winners!
 lazymarionette
atwhatcost
Ladyoz
PhillipV
Lorien
And the following people each received 5,000 gift points for sharing how reading has made them better writers:
 Free_Rip
lazymarionette
atwhatcost
Ladyoz
Brandon
PhillipV
JACE
Servante
Thank you ALL for participating!
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Short Stories: June 23, 2010 Issue [#3770]
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