Give a Man a Hammer (or Other Cool Ability): Fifty-Seven Ways it Can Be Used

I wrote Tuesday about how to make magic, the supernatural, or paranormal abilities believable in your story. Well, I skipped one—because it doesn’t have to do with the magic system, per se, but with how your characters will respond to a world where magic—or their cool technology,  works.

You know that old saying, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail? I’d argue that the same holds true for your characters. If they have a magical or paranormal ability, chances are that they will turn to it to solve a variety of nonmagical problems.

Take the following list of actions and ask yourself: how can my character accomplish these using his or her unique abilities?

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Tuesday Ten: How to Make Magic Real

You want to write a book with magic in it. When you imagine your story, the world is beautiful, the magic system seamless, and you’ve got all these cool twists that will make this story UNIQUE, in a big, fantastic way.

And then…you start to write. And somehow your beautifully-imagined world feels flat, the magic forced, and all those cool, unique ideas that make your story stand out? Not so much.

You need chocolate. And wine. Pronto.

If you’re anything like me, the above scenario feels a little too familiar—no matter what genre you write. It’s enough to make you crazy! How do you figure out what makes one story world complex and believable and yours…not?

My strategy? I go back to the books I love and try to figure out how those authors created magic on the page.

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Five Writing Lessons I Learned From TV

I used to spurn TV. Why would I waste all that time sitting in front of the tube when there are so many other things to do in life? Why not spend the time writing, instead?

*Photo credit

Well, despite that lovely black-and-white vision of the world, I now watch the occasional TV series. Why? From a writer's perspective, there are numerous reasons to indulge in this visual form of storytelling:

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People-Watching with Purpose: Twenty Tips

I’m a huge fan of people-watching. The more we watch, listen to, and try to understand real people, the better we’re able to get inside the heads of our characters. 

I wrote earlier this week about the mix-and-match art of character creation and how you can collect details from friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers. Once you’ve collected a nice selection of show-stopping specifics, you can play around with them the way you might play around with a Mr. Potato Head, popping in different eyes, glasses, financial crises, psychological profiles, crazy relatives, and so on.

People-watching can yield other types of inspiration as well. It’s a fantastic way to get past first draft plot snags and a rich source of ideas for complications and surprises and…well, you get the idea.

The next time you need to replenish your pool of creative ideas, take yourself someplace with people, grab a latte, and enjoy some quality time with your idea notebook. Here’s a list of people-watching possibilities to get you started—use these as a jumping-off point, if you’d like, but above all pursue the details that inspire. Enjoy!

Twenty People-Watching Tips

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Mix-and-Match Characters

I played with a cool “puzzle” as a kid: three blocks stacked on top of one another, with a rod threaded through them so they can rotate independently. The result is a 3-cube stack with a different picture on each of the four sides. The top third of each image shows a head, the middle third a body, and the bottom pictures the legs and feet.

Line up the images, and you have four simple characters: for ex., a cartoon tiger, alligator, hippo, and monkey. You can also twist the blocks to connect the monkey body to the hippo head and alligator legs, or connect the alligator body to a tiger’s tail and a monkey’s head. (Now, of course, this puzzle is available as a smart phone app….)

Sometimes I think character creation works the same way: you borrow the geeky appearance of one person, add in the always-in-motion high energy of another, mix in a quirky turn of speech you overheard in the elevator and the girl-next-door’s fluorescent pink high tops…and pretty soon you’ve pieced together your protagonist.

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Ten Reasons to Practice Freewriting

Many writers I know think of freewriting as writer-style therapy—a way to get worries out of your head and onto the page. However, freewriting has so many more applications. The Faculty Leadership for Writing Initiative at the University of Nebreska-Lincoln defines it as “an invention strategy where students write for a certain amount of time for the purpose of generating ideas…”

Great. But what does “generating ideas” really mean? The truth is that I don’t *want* new story ideas when I’m supposed to be editing my current work-in-progress. New story ideas = distractions, so if that’s your view of freewriting, you’ll probably shove it on the shelf until you’re ready for a new project (or a new therapy session…) And that would be a shame, because freewriting has a lot to offer writers at all stages and skill levels.

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Seven Strategies to Keep Momentum When You Don’t Have Time to Write

Over the past week, I’ve had a flood of freelance and contract writing—which is wonderful and fun, but makes it much more difficult to maintain momentum on my work-in-progress (WIP). Back in January, blogger Jill Kemerer wrote about how momentum is vital to success. 

I wholeheartedly agree. When I lose momentum on a project, I often dread returning to it. I know it will take me days to get rolling again, and I’ll be plagued by the ghosts of ideas that I meant to write but can’t quite grasp anymore. So how do you keep writing momentum when your time is limited?

Here are a few tricks that have worked for me:

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