Tag: characters

Posted in Craft of writing, fiction, Travel Writing, Writing

Conduct Research for Scenes in Your Fiction

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

via How to Research a Location You Haven’t Actually Been To

This blog post above by fellow writer, Helena Fairfax, has been wonderfully helpful to me in writing my novel set in India and on a ship in the Pacific and Indian oceans.  As an example, I wrote a scene in the book of slaughtering a sea turtle for eating aboard ship after watching a YouTube by today’s Aboriginal Australians.

Read the scene below from my book in-progress, Salwar Kameez. I’ve added a few notes to the reader to be able to grasp who the characters are in the scene, because it is out of context for you.

SCENE from BOOK on Butchering a Sea Turtle  Continue reading “Conduct Research for Scenes in Your Fiction” →

Posted in Craft of writing, fiction, Writing

Does my novel pass the Bechdel-Wallace test?

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

I just learned about the Bechdel test (or Bechdel-Wallace test, as Bechdel prefers to call it to credit her friend, Ms. Wallace) from Andrea Lundgren’s recent blog post. This test requires in fiction or movies that 1) two women be present and named 2) talk to one another 3) about something other than a man.  Continue reading “Does my novel pass the Bechdel-Wallace test?” →

Posted in Craft of writing, Writing, Writing exercises

BUILDING TENSION

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

A WRITING EXERCISE THAT HELPS BUILD TENSION

Open your thesaurus; go to any letter in the alphabet. Pick words from that letter that prompts questions that may help you think about your characters, plot, setting, dialogue, actions, emotions, and especially tension. Then for every word, develop a question that can push you deeper into your story, hopefully building tension in your book, story, or scene.  Continue reading “BUILDING TENSION” →

Posted in Craft of writing, Memoir writing, Writing

A writing exercise for insight into your memoir’s main characters, you

Posted on by Rhonda Wiley-Jones

BACKGROUND for the EXERCISE 

“The stranger at the heart of my journey is me—transformed.” — Joseph Dispenza in his book, The Way of the Traveler (p. 97)

Dispenza suggests in his book that the people we meet in our travels can serve as mirrors of ourselves in what we portray to the world. Or these folks, whether strangers or not during our adventures, may contain qualities that we lack and wish we had. For our memoir, this is one way to gain insight that we need to write a more textured and full-bodied story of our life. So try this.  Continue reading “A writing exercise for insight into your memoir’s main characters, you” →