Tales From My Memoir Writing Class: Character Study

Today's memoir writing class was a lot less intimidating than the first session. For one thing, the class crazy dropped out so we no longer had to deal with her. In our last class, she'd flipped out over our instructor's (rather mild) critique. Apparently her anger went further than that; after class, she literally cornered and threatened our teacher. Yeesh! I hope this woman never decides to submit her work to agents because she's in for a rough road if she can't take the slightest constructive criticism. Needless to say, I'm happy that she's gone because I dreaded having to comment on her work.

Next week we'll begin critiquing each other's work, but today we discussed the introductions of two memoirs: Stitches, a graphic novel by David Small and Seeing Ezra by Kerry Cohen. I'm not a big fan of comics or graphic novels, so reading a memoir in that form took some getting used to. But it's a compelling story about a boy's horrific child and I'm interested in reading more. Seeing Ezra, which is about a mother coming to terms with her autistic son, was less gripping in my opinion, but still very well written.

I really enjoyed participating in the discussions of these books. Everyone had different opinions and interpretations of the stories, but we were all fired up and eager to share our views. I felt as if I were back in a college literature class! It was fun and very invigorating.

After, we talked about the "characters" in our memoirs and how we can present them and flesh them out. I'm still not sure if I'm going to actually write a memoir for publication, but I feel that I took away many ideas that could be used for my novel. Even though I took a memoir writing class, it's really a course about simply writing well.

I handed in my first assignment today so we'll see what the teacher thinks of my work. All I know is that throughout the class, I kept wishing that I could go back and edit some things. I'm sure that whatever suggestions I'm given will be helpful.

Meantime, please read and review my novel REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.

How To Write Kick-Ass Characters In A Story

Today's stop on my Virtual Blog Tour is at The Official Blog-Zine Of Terra Little. I wrote a guest post for her very cool blog where I explain what makes a character realisric and memorable.

And yes, once again, I bring things back to soaps! But you have to understand, I spent about a third of my life (so far) at Soap Opera Digest. For 14 years, 15 if you count my internship with Soap Opera Weekly, I lived and breathed soap operas. I've only been away from the industry for a few months, so I still feel like I'm a part of it. In fact, I'll probably always feel a connection to it.

I do think that there is something to be said for looking to soaps for ideas on what works -- and what doesn't work -- when it comes to creating a character. Soaps air almost every day of the year and all of the remaining soaps have been on for decades. This means that the characters have to stay interesting for all of that time! The lame ones eventually disappear; the audience is savvy enough to recognize them. Even if the shows try to shove someone down the audiences' throats, the show will *eventually* get the hint and make that character disappear. But the great, iconic characters -- the Erica Kanes, Dorian Lords and Jack Abbotts -- keep the viewers' attention for a really long time.

Of course, writing for TV is much different than writing a novel. For one thing, I don't have to deal with actors when creating my characters. There were no contract or salary disputes when I wrote Melinda and Josh. They just did whatever I told them to do! However, I do think that critiquing television for such a long time gave me some advantages when writing characters. I pictured them as real people, as they would appear in a movie or on TV. I tried to incorporate those visual cues that would make them come to life -- sort of the same way that a screen writer adds visual cues into a script.

It's a shame that daytime soaps are dying in the United States because I believe that they're a valuable piece of literary history. They've gotten a lot of flak over the years, but they're persisted in some form since the days of radio. I hope that my book has half as much influence and longevity.

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, now 99 cents.