Inventing Reality Editing Service

How to create a memorable protagonist

Often the secret to writing a good story is to create a memorable protagonist. After all, usually the most relatable element of a book for readers are the characters. Readers will see something in the protagonist that matches who they are or who they wish to be. Indeed, years after forgetting the story’s plot and its message, readers will remember the characters and their best lines.

At the very least, in the here and now a memorable protagonist will keep readers engaged in the story and turning pages.

So what makes a character memorable? A quick survey of the most famous protagonists finds that many of them share similar traits:
• Problem solver – Memorable main characters don’t just sit around spouting witty one-liners. They actually get off their duff and take action. They solve the problem that set the story in motion. They let the minor characters be the chair jockeys.
• Surprises – Rather than do everything by the book, a memorable protagonist is willing to surprise readers by doing the unexpected. These wild acts need to be consistent with the character’s values and previous decisions. A wily character, for example, may initially go by the book but there needs to be a hint or two that he’s unconventional, such as when playing a harmless game like chess or cards with a friend.
• Internal conflict – Readers can relate to main characters who struggle over the ethics of a decision or who have inner fears that must be conquered. This makes the character more real. But just as a commander may doubt if he’s capable of leading, so to be the hero of the story he must take decisive action when necessary because of one trait he does not have qualms about, such as dutifulness.
• Striking detail – Some small item about the character – a piece of jewelry she always wears, a scar, a catch phrase – should stick in readers’ minds. This detail sets your protagonist apart from the other characters and if done correctly reveals an incredible amount of information about his or her personality.
• Walks out of step in his world – Interesting protagonists may hold positions of power because of their superior talents and skills, but they almost always are out of step with it. They are too young or too old, they disagree and frequently bend the policies, they find themselves unable to connect with those who fit nicely into it. This creates a layer of tension between the protagonist and those he works or deals with.
• Feels passion – In real life, we experience a variety of emotions every day. Your character also should show a range of emotions throughout the story to make him three-dimensional. Perhaps most importantly among those emotions is that the character should feel passion for some value or person, for example believing that those unable to protect themselves should be protected by those who can or a captain who loves his ship as if it were the woman of his dreams. This passion drives his decision-making.
• Possesses a past – Though you would almost never tell a character’s backstory, your character should have one. Other characters in the story should know this backstory and perhaps even will mention it in passing to help give readers a sense of the protagonist’s personality. For example, a secondary character might say, “I’ll never forget the time he passed that guy to win the L.A. Triathlon – on a hill no less!” to show that he never gives up. You don’t need to say anything more about the race; in fact, to do so slows the story but providing information that doesn’t help to move the story forward.
• Lives a life beyond the story – Give details that infer the protagonist’s personality but don’t necessarily lead us to resolving the story’s central problem. For example, the type of food the protagonist eats or the decor he selects for his room shows a lot about him. A willingness to try something he’s never tasted before suggests he’s adventurous. So also might an expensive wooden model of a sailboat as well as sailing pictures. That he enjoyed the canh chua and that a sailboat is never used to capture the villain is immaterial; the point is that the details tell us something about the character’s personality that is vital if he is to resolve the story’s central problem.

When developing a character, these seven qualities are much more significant than his favorite color, eye color, childhood pet, highest degree or any of the other usually trivial features. Don’t spend time focusing on the unimportant when what your story most needs – and your readers most desire – are his values, internal conflicts and passions.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotations about Imagination in Writing

“To imagine is everything.” - Anatole France

“I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.” - Stephen King

“Writers fly with imaginary wings.” - Melody Robinette

“The imagination of creative thought can be a crazy place,this giving reason to write it down to try and make sense of it all.” - Helen Ingram

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Knead a troubled mind to peace by writing

After a day of heavy lifting that leaves muscles aching, a good back rub often ensures you feel better again.

And when your mind starts racing, getting stuck in repetitive, negative thoughts that just won’t go away, so writing can serve as a good mental massage that soothes your stressed head.

Just ask any diarist or journal writer.

How does writing help a vexed mind? To ease troubling thoughts, often we must make them tangible, something that can be metaphorically held, that can be kneaded and pressed in our hands. As a writer, you do this by working your thoughts into the material world of ink on paper or words on a screen.

By being able to identify and visualize our vexing thoughts and emotions, we can press out the knots and relieve the unpleasant pressure they create. Through honest writing, we explore solutions to those matters by structuring our ideas or having a protagonist experience them vicariously for us.

Refusing to address troubling thoughts by putting them “out of mind” or denying them assuredly leads to ever-increasing strain and stress. Though counterintuitive to some, when enough time is spent massaging troubling thoughts, the pain and tension they generate actually will be lessened and even alleviated. In the end, we are like the protagonist who’s overcome his central problem and has restored peace and order in his story’s universe.

Just as a hand works out the knots and soreness from your shoulders or back muscles, so writing is the Rx for troubling thoughts that convolutes the mind and keeps you awake at night. Welcome the power of creativity and imagination to inspire you and to bring a sense of peace and joy.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Sell more books via email marketing campaign

The key to selling books is to “make contact with” or reach potential readers of your titles. After all, if a reader doesn’t know about your book, she can’t purchase it. Among the best ways to reach readers is through email marketing.

Email marketing involves sending people emails that promote your book, such as speaking appearances. It might notify readers about an upcoming book release, about your upcoming blog tour, an award that your title just won, specials you’re running, and more.

At this point, you may be thinking “spam.” Some readers undoubtedly will think of your email as spam; they think that of any unsolicited offer arriving in the inbox. If done responsibly, however, your email marketing need not be spam to the majority of readers.

Email marketing starts with building an email list. There are a couple of ways this can be accomplished. First, you can create your own subscriber list. A subscriber is a reader who has agreed to be part of (or has “opted into”) your mailing list. Such readers can give you their emails at book readings, a sign-up form on your website, via a link at the back of your ebook, or in any of a number of other ways. Secondly, you could use other people’s lists. This typically occurs when you run promotions with specific companies. More readers are likely to consider emails sent from such services as spam than if they opt into a mailing list.

As your email list grows, you’ll quickly need the services of an email service provider, such as MailChimp. Most email providers limit the number of emails you can daily send from your address, so once a list reaches a few hundred people, an email service provider will help overcome this problem as well as provide you additional useful services, such as tracking clicks on your email and easily removing email addresses who want to opt out of the list. Many email service providers are free for the first couple of thousand emails, and should your list go beyond that number, the time savings alone likely will make it worth paying for.

Sometimes you will need to encourage readers to join your email list. The best way to do that is to give them a “gift” for doing so (and as doing so, mentioning that they always can opt out of your email list at anytime). Among the most popular gifts is offering a free chapter from an upcoming book or an unpublished short story. Another method is a giveaway, in which adding one’s email serves as entry into the contest. Usually one of your books is good enough to give away; besides being expensive, objects like Kindles and iPads tend to attract lower quality subscribers because they’re not really interested in your writings but in the free tech you’re offering. Posting a request on your social media sites for signing up also is useful, though you’ll probably net fewer subscribers than using the other two methods. The upside is your social media followers typically are very interested in your books (or they wouldn’t be following you, after all). Pinning an email signup link to the top of your Twitter and Facebook profiles works well.

The next step is to create an email campaign. We’ll cover topics for email marketing campaigns and the parts of such emails in upcoming entries.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Don't confuse readers with misplaced modifiers

English is a word-order language, meaning where a word appears in a sentence helps establish the sentence’s meaning for users. Sometimes in a conversation this word order can be broken, as the participants have enough context to understand what was meant. In writing, however, words that appear out of order usually result in confusion or lead to an unintended, humorous line.

A common word order error in writing is a misplaced modifier. This occurs when a word, phrase or clause describing something doesn’t appear next to the word(s) it describes. For example:

Jane kicked the ball donned in a Packers jersey.

This sentence reads as if the ball were wearing a Packers jersey. As Jane was the one wearing the jersey, the modifier donned in a Packers jersey needs to be moved:

Donned in a Packers jersey, Jane kicked the ball.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Four writing prompts: Innocence lost

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise from gaining a new awareness of pain, suffering and evil in our world. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on innocence lost.

Man vs. nature
While in the wilderness on a camping or backpacking trip, something occurs that causes our young main character to almost die and in the process to gain a broader awareness of evil in the world. Feeling the pain of this new awareness, how does he survive not only his only mental anguish but also the wilderness as he makes his way back to civilization?

Man vs. man
How do two people who feel guilt about the loss of their loved ones come to feel love for one another? Why do they feel this guilt? How do they overcome it? How do they come to understand that they are right for one another when they each think they’ve lost the love of their lives or the only for them?

Man vs. society
What if our protagonist, to get out of a jam (maybe to pay off a gambling debt or to avoid bankruptcy) decides to strike a deal with the devil (perhaps a crime syndicate or a hard-nosed but wealthy employer) to cover him. How does this deal make his situation worse for him? How does he extricate himself from it?

Man vs. himself
Our main character possesses special abilities that make him vital to solving a great crisis. Yet those abilities means he will be responsible for incredible – but seemingly inevitable – atrocities. How does he come to grips with the clear consequences of his growing abilities as they are honed for solving the great crisis?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Don’t overwhelm reader with too many subplots

Sometimes writers get too creative for their own good. Such is the case when they think about all the stories their characters – major and minor – could experience.

While the writer’s understanding of the world he’s creating is laudable, for the reader all of those storylines can be overwhelming. There simply is too much to keep track of, and a lot of times those subplots have very little to do with the main story.

The simple solution is to cut some of the subplots. Usually this decision can be done by determining which of the subplots are necessary to ensure the main story will work. For a short story, one subplot and at the most two if a longer piece, is the norm. A novel can survive with two or three subplots. All of the other subplots ought to be cut.

If there’s just a lone fact or two in a subplot that needs to be know for the main story to work, the subplot still can be deleted. That need-to-know fact can be incorporated into the story through a quick line or two of dialogue between characters.

Getting rid of a subplot doesn’t mean that writing must go to waste. Perhaps that subplot can be saved for another story set in that world. Another possibility is using it as a “bonus” story on the website that promotes the book.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotations about the Writing Life

“I’m writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.” - Neil Gaiman

“It’s been my experience that most writers don’t talk about their craft - they just do it.” - Alfred Lansing

“While I’m writing, I’m far away; and when I come back, I’ve gone.” - Pablo Neruda

“Writing is like daydreaming through your fingers.” - Jenna Alatari

“First time I ever put pen to paper, I had one goal – to build something no one had ever thought of before.” - Carla H. Krueger

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Recent editing client publishes his first book

A recent editing client of mine has published his first book. Dr. Henry Phung’s “Life at the Crossroads” describes the spiritual growth and lessons he experienced during his father’s long illness. Through this difficult time, Phung learns much about his father’s life, which began as a successful Cambodian businessman to being a refugee and second-class citizen in communist Vietnam until his eventual immigration to the United States. Writes Phung, “We live in a time in which traditional beliefs have been attenuated, ridiculed and mocked. Dealing with obstacles is stressful and overcoming diversity can be fearful…” but “When you follow your own heart, you can find passion and dream to redefine your purpose in life.” Phung’s book is available online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Editing client publishes first self-help book

A recent editing client has published her first self-help book. Sharon Elizabeth Balli’s “Dare to Grow: 8 Steps to Find Freedom and Fulfillment” shows how to bring forth your true desires through personal transformation courses and programs so you can find freedom and fulfillment.

A former manager in a Fortune 500 company, Balli now operates Natural Longevity, which offers personal transformation coaching. The book is available online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.