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Showing Tag: " character" (Show all posts)

Writers, 8 questions for your characters

Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Tuesday, November 8, 2016,
Readers love characters - they are our connection with the plot, what makes us reopen the pages, what makes us care.
I sometimes hear writers say, "Well, she's a middle-aged woman with an empty nest and feeling lonely." Okay, that tells us her current circumstance but it does not tell us who she is. And who she is depends upon her past and how she now looks at her past. Has she changed? How has she changed? Have those around her changed? (Think Shirley Valentine). And before you decide to ins...
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7 tips on plotting your novel - make the ground move beneath the reader's feet.

Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Tuesday, October 11, 2016,
I receive a lot of manuscripts from new writers. I send them out to book clubs and often read them myself. However, sometimes it's difficult to read beyond a few pages. The story becomes simply a collection of words and I no longer care what happens in the rest of the manuscript.
The main part of writing any story is making the reader care. You have to make us want to turn the next page. Grab our attention so that we don't notice that our supper is burning or that we have missed our stop on t...
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What did an MA in writing do for you? Part 2

Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Friday, June 12, 2015,
There have been a few comments on my previous blog 'What did an MA in writing do for you?' And I hope to post some of the responses next week.
In the meantime, I've had a few more thoughts. Mainly, they concern dismal plot devices that I might have forgiven before I earned my MA, now they can prompt me to toss the book aside.
1. Dreams - a boring way to provide a character's fears or hopes. I did this in my dissertation MA and shouldn't be surprised that it didn't make publication.
2. Telling us...
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So much to be learned from Charles Dickens

Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Wednesday, February 8, 2012,
Much praise has been heaped on Charles Dickens this year - rightly so! His stories have engaged generations, and his depictions of life at the bottom of the ladder helped alter Victorian sensibilities. But I think we have to discuss why his work captivated so many readers over so many years.
My theory is his serialisation - his chapters, written for periodic journals, had to grab readers so they couldn't wait for the next episode to be printed. So often today, a novel might grab us in the firs...
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Yvonne Barlow Editor at Hookline Books - where book clubs and readers choose the novels that go to print.

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