Tag: writing

Creating Characters: Ann, Mary, and Susan

The secret to staying young is by having someone base a character on you!

February 10, 2018

Creating Characters: Ann, Mary, and Susan

Just like in the creation of the characters in Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters, the characters in the Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries are based on real-life people.

These stories were originally oral stories told for my little sisters.  Thus “Ann” and “Mary” are my baby sisters at the time of the series origin.  “Susan” is a compilation of several friends they had visiting our home.

Ann is the serious one.  Older than her sister, Mary, and her cousin, Susan, she is often the one who discovers the answer to their mystery.

Mary is the baby of the trio.  She is giggly, fun-loving, and mystery-seeking.  Anything at all that she can’t instantly see the answer to is “a new mystery!”

Susan loves following Mary around and joining her adventures whenever they are found no matter how small the mystery appears to be.

Developing these characters was another easy task as they are based on actual people.  The challenge when a writer has a continuing series yet the people they base their characters on grow faster than the series progresses is to keep the characters in their “time capsule.”  Sometimes I have to reread my books to refresh myself and “reenter” my characters.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Creating Characters : Brantley Station Saga

February 8, 2018

Creating Characters: Brantley Station Saga

One of the last set of characters I created were for a youth adventure series called “Brantley Station Saga.”  This entire set was built off of one comment by my Dad.  He was helping develop a website when he observed, “all of your series stuff is for girls.  Have you ever thought of writing for boys?”

Thought about it?  (Yes!  Web of Deception, The Living God, many other single stories, and most of my “in progress” works are aimed primarily at boys in middle and high school levels.)  However, he was right about one thing.  Outside of my rooster in the Adventures of Long Tail, there isn’t a main male character in the Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries or in Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Even in my Melacotia Saga books, although Jeremy Scott is a primary character, the books were written for my sisters to read and Sarah is the primary character.   

From there, I dove into the adventure world I’d dreamed of writing.  I developed Brantley Station using my futuristic model from the Melacotia Saga.  I created a narration storyline following an underappreciated unclaimed youth, Ethan.  (I started him at 14, with The Protector.  This changed when Rebeccah wanted the “Pirate Baby Story” in full.)

This jumping backwards did give me an opportunity to illustrate the origin and development of Ethan’s character.  (In these two first books, the spotlight is shared by Jamie, a young submersible pilot.)  Ethan is a shy boy who aims to please.  His melancholy personality pushes him to perfection, which makes him a good worker, and enables him to be content to be invisible.  Ethan’s goal through his life is to keep unnoticed.

I imagined this child whose traumatic early childhood is scarred with death of his mother and the distance in grief of his father.  He had a close cousin who tried to fill this gap and cheer him up, but only a few months afterward, Ethan is kidnapped by pirates.  He becomes essentially a slave.  Because of several injuries while he was fighting with his captors and Ethan’s shoving his “dream-memories” of his earlier life away as a coping measure, Ethan doesn’t remember anything before the  pirates.  He manages to live through this for a long unknown amount of time – a few years – until he’s trying to hide from an abusive pirate in the captain’s docking sub.  This providential hiding place sends him to Brantley Station.  Here he ends up trying to fit in because he has a primal desire for the deep.  He is scared by wild stories of “topside” by the military police at the station.  Ethan finds himself taking up the lowest position and hiding from most people by keeping himself busy with work.  He works diligently and easily learns new tedious tasks; by nature he hates disorder so many of his tasks end up being cleaning jobs.

I imagined how his character and personality, originally Melancholy-Phlegmatic, could have changed with experiences and time.  Was he distanced from people by his mother’s death when he felt his father’s dealing with grief by retreating?  How did he keep his people-pleasing, obedient, truthful, positive character amid the abuses of being held captive?  How does being forced to live in the guard barracks affect him?  Ethan chooses to stay honorable because of voices he hears from his past – he calls them “dream-memories.” I gave Ethan an inner strength that helps keep him grounded.

I created a memory that would connect him with his past – using a book read nightly by his older cousin from which Ethan recites passages and a song Ethan’s mother used to sing which the boys created their own new words for.

In creating Ethan, I wanted to craft a believable, dynamic character.  Each of the secondary characters like Bria Addison, Corey Skitter, Makayla Ervin, Chef Brummen, and Victor Potter are also carefully designed to be as realistic as possible.  You can read about these members of Brantley Station in the young adult series, Brantley Station Saga.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Character Creation: The Funny Sisters

February 7, 2018

Creating Characters: The Funny Sisters

One thing I love about reading is meeting amazing characters!   I’ll be feeling the same betrayal and hopelessness that twists into revenge alongside David Balfour as he watches his uncle get smaller as his prison of a ship carries him into unknown waters. (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped)  I’m puzzling out the mystery with Nancy Drew in dozens of fun chapter books – and I scream at Bess, “Don’t open that door!” but she doesn’t listen.  When the rough man beats and drags Buck into the cold shack, I’m crying and praying for his release. (Jack Loudon’s Call of the Wild) Vivid characters make a story real to me.

I’m one of those crazy readers who actually talks to her book people.  I think about them as real people even though I know they are fictional – and when I find (or raise!) another crazy reader, we can discuss these characters as if they were real people for hours!   (This makes for interesting conversation: I’ve been part of discussions about characters’ psychology and conjecture regarding how they would handle said modern situation.)

Because of my reading quirks, when I write, I want to create believable characters.  (And I’m a nut for continuity, so I was very irritated when my first publisher cut my ending ceremony and didn’t add my 13 error-correction edit!)  But that’s a story for another time.

My first step is to figure out who I’m writing for.  For example: “The Funny Sisters” Series.

The Funny Sisters Series began as a few fun stories for my daughters.  They wanted stories about sisters like them.  Each character reflects the distinctive traits of each girl at the time the series was started.

Tina is an avid reader who likes to try to lead her younger sisters.  She sometimes gets irritated, but usually laughs it off.  She ends up in all kinds of odd situations caused by her younger siblings.  Tina is bouncy, fun, and at the age where she is trying to be grown up but also loves to do goofy stuff with her sisters.

Becky, another character, doesn’t like to get up in the mornings.  She gets cold easily, laughs a lot, likes to tell jokes and make puns, loves animals, and makes up cool pretend games.  Becky gets mad at people sometimes.  She is a perfectionist and likes things to run smoothly.  Becky and Ellen have a special understanding because they are so alike.

Kim is rambunctious.  She almost never walks or seldom does anything slowly.  She runs.  She jumps.  She cartwheels.  She slides into the oven and pulls on the handle so it falls on top of her.  Kim has a boisterous personality.  Kim almost never gets mad at anyone.  Kim is friendly.  She laughs loud and lives life boldly.

Ellen’s quiet personality hides her inner dragon.  She is always thinking, always contemplating her next move, always observing everything around her.  She usually knows where everyone else is and what they are doing.   She carries a blankie. (This just had to be since Jaquline wouldn’t have the stories without her blankie-that-went-everywhere.)  Ellen is determined, thoughtful, and factual.  She says what she sees.

Jill is the baby of the family.  She’s a typical two-year-old who loves fun, dancing, running, and keeping her sisters and parents guessing as to her next demolition target.  Of course, she doesn’t mean to decimate things, she just sometimes does.  Jill would rather not wear clothes.  She loves to sing!

These characters interact together to create funny family situations.  Most are copied from real life.  (Some events in the books are exaggerated while some are toned-down!)  Once these books became a “for sale” series, each character was tweaked just a touch to make sure they could entertain various age groups.  They are made to be read-aloud like bedtime stories.  The inclusion of the spread of ages gives the Reader an ability to say, “she’s just about your age!”  The thread of clean humor is woven through to make these books fun for the Reader as well as the bedtime audience.

This is the simplest example of my character creation.  Each of my books or series has its own backstory: some were created to reach a specific audience and characters created to meet that need (Brantley Station Saga) while others were created around a character I liked (the Adventures of Long Tail) or a story I created characters around (Web of Deception).

I’ll write about the different character creation method I use at a later time!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Finding Perspective

For whom am I writing? An author’s first question to be answered before beginning a story.

December 20, 2017

Finding Perspective

One of the most important things for me to find when I’m writing is the perspective of my target audience.

Simply: for whom am I writing?

For Web of Deception, I was writing to the adventurous young adult (myself and my brother), for the Brantley Station Saga, my target is young adults, and my target readers for The Devonians are those in first through fifth grade.  The Funny Sisters stories are written to be read-aloud so they are more complex.  My goal for them is to entertain both the mom or older child reader and the younger preschool or elementary listener.

Story From the Inn was written when one of my girls mentioned, “I wonder what it was like to work at the inn where Jesus was born.”  (We had just watched a show about the culture of Jewish life in Jesus’ time and read through a book about growing up where Jesus lived.)

I imagined the small inn at Bethlehem run by a family (most were in that time) and one daughter (one my girls could relate to) always trying to help yet always getting underfoot.  This became the eyes and ears of my target audience (my little girls).  Children would relate to Rachel and see, hear, and feel that inn, culture, and special event through her eyes.  I dove into some more specific research and developed Rachel’s story of Jesus’ birth as remembered by a beloved grandmother while entertaining several grandchildren awaiting a new baby’s birth.

Rachel epitomized most children: full of life and expectancy, eager to help, longing to please, and constantly asking questions.

In the moment, Rachel doesn’t understand the magnificence of the event, she only feels elated that she gets to help with a birth (something “big”) and hold a newborn baby (for the first time).  As the storyteller, she reflects on this as an adult, to complete the circle.

Check out Story From the Inn to read Rachel’s story!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Birthday Day Off

October 26, 2017

Birthday Day Off

We are a homeschool family.   Sometimes this means we goof off and play games on birthdays instead of do bookwork.  But consider how much learning is crammed into everyday life!

Money skills: Today’s practicum included working and saving (racing around to do enough chores to raise the difference from their savings to whatever toy they wanted to buy for birthday sister), budgeting (oops, that pony figure is outside of my budget!),figuring tax, and checking change received.

Math and Science Lab: This included addition (1 cup milk + 1 cup milk = 2 cups milk), subtraction (Lucas dropped an egg!), fractions (1/2 cup sugar, please?), chemistry (solution versus compound, various states of matter, and a lengthy comical discussion of how the ingredients became a cake!), and even biology (answering our first-grader’s question of “does the sun help grow sugar?”).  Finally, our “home economics laboratory” produced a gluten-free chocolate cake with buttercream icing as requested.

They brought home the “best addition” to the cake – a miniature model of the Millennium Falcon, birthday girl’s favorite Star Wars ship.   (It’s her dream to have the Millennium Falcon Lego set – oddly enough, same one Mom wanted as a teen!)  We perched this on a good spot.

Language and Creative Writing: (each student wrote and colored a birthday card for Rebeccah).

Pyrotechnics and Fire Safety followed.  (This is otherwise known as lighting candles and hearing Mom’s 275th lecture on keeping hair away from flame!)

Music: (where everyone tries to get “…and many more” in the lowest baritone possible and the kazoos attempt to play some tune!)

Now for the guinea pigs to taste the experimental laboratory creation!  (A+ everyone lived!)  Creativity flowed during Art – the party hats turned into eye patches, unicorn horns, and noses.

Sometimes life takes over our classwork.  That’s okay.  We get a lot of practical work done on “days off!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

The Shelly Seashore

“The Shelly Beach”… a real, fun place!

September 4, 2017

The Shelly Seashore

In Sisters at the Seashore, the Funny Sisters, Tina, Becky, Kim, Ellen, and Jill visit the seashore with Mom and Daddy.

Like the Funny Sisters’ home, this seashore is actually a real place!

As a family, we end up meeting our family at this specific beach because it’s closer to most of them.  It isn’t the girls’ favorite beach because of the tiny broken shells that replace sand as the shoreline.  They have a special nickname for it: “the shelly beach.”

Whenever we go there, these shells get everywhere!  They get stuck in between toes, in bathing suits, and I think they even use the salt as a glue to attach themselves to human bodies.  Oh, there’s a beautiful stretch of pretty white sand up to the waterline, but past that are tiny shell fragments that carpet the beach even out into the water.  One must carefully step so as not to cut the bottom of one’s feet.  The good news is that, just like a carpet, the shell blanket is not very deep.  Usually, someone has already shuffled their feet through the shells like a bulldozer to make a thin shell-free sandy path into the water.  We look diligently for these tiny safe-foot-paths.  If we can’t spy one, we make one.

The water here is slightly greenish and usually clear enough to see various sea life in the shallows.  Often as the tide changes the younger girls will dig for various mollusks and crabs.  These tiny creatures are usually less than a quarter of an inch in length!

Once, though, we saw a giant conch!

Rebeccah loves to collect very small complete shells; these you have to uncover in the sand as the water grounds them to fragments quickly.

This is the beach that the Funny Sisters visit.  We have many fun cousin-time days here!  Because of the unique properties that make this one of my favorite beaches to play at, North Vilano Beach at the walkover has become “the beach” for the Five Alive series!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Lost in Translation: Awesome

Awesome: journey of a word.

August 30, 2017

Lost in Translation: Awesome

One of my favorite words is “awesome.”  This is because the prefix of this word “awe” first meant “terror.”  The root word in its original form has one meaning – “pain” (Greek achos) which translated into “terror, dread” (old English ege, eige, aege) When this translated into the Middle English spelling, “awe,” it still meant “terror, dread.”

Around the 1600s, “awe” began to mean “reverence” as well.

So during the majority of Elizabethan Literature, the word “awesome” meant “inspiring terror, dread, or reverence.”

In the turn of the 1900s, the additional definition of “amazement” was added to the root word “awe” thus creating a secondary definition for “awesome” that meant “inspiring amazement.”

Today, we generally think of the secondary modern definition, “excellent, exciting, remarkable,” when we hear “awesome.”

Our primary dictionary definition says “a feeling of reverence, admiration, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, or the like.” This is the most popular written meaning today, but as with many other words, the spoken secondary meaning is overtaking the written primary.

Most modern dictionaries list a “dated” or “archaic” secondary definition for “Awesome” that reads “causing awe or terror, inspiring wonder.” Some list an “obsolete” definition as “the power to inspire fear.”

When you read “the river is awesome” and the writing dates before 1900, it would have meant “the river is terrible, inspiring fear, demanding respect.”  This gives more weight than our current modern-definition thought of “the river, amazing.”

This word morphed from “pain, dread” (as in, “I’m scared to death of this power!”) to “excitement, amazement” (as in, “that is so beautiful, wonderful!”); “awe” has lost its dread.  The undercurrent of danger and respect has been washed out.

Just a little bit about our dynamic language of English.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Chloe

Meet a bold girl with a wild spirit: Chloe in Web of Deception Child of Miny’lyra

August 29, 2017

Meet Chloe

Sometimes when authors create a character, the character is based on a mash-up of features and attributes they admire in many people or desire in themselves.  Chloe in Web of Deception is such a character.

Chloe has beautiful dark skin with dark hair sensibly braided and clothes she’s managed to make out of skins.  Her leather clothes are because she denies using the linen tunics common to the slaves in the household where she’s been captive for many years.  Chloe is determined (some say stubborn).  Keeping her traditional dress reminds her that she will not remain a captive.  She keeps memories of her homeland even though she was very young when she was captured.  Chloe is bold but quiet.  She is calculating and analytical.  She prides herself on not being emotional; her captive life has taught her emotions are only a weapon others can use against her.

Chloe’s deer-like appearance hails from her birth land.  She blends into the forests and jungles like a ghost.  Her boldness and shrewd logic are qualities I wanted in myself.  Her passionate fire and unstoppable determination were qualities I observed in my sisters.  Her bane is a streak of passion that can ice to frigid darkness – this is the evil twist of her positive qualities.

Creating Chloe was a challenge and manipulating her character believably was complicated.  This is what makes her character fit perfectly into the dynamic of Web of Deception’s storyline.

Chloe has lived waiting for a specific person to enter her village.  She has one close friend, Vi’liam, a military trainee with no family, who listens to her and sees her as a little sister to be protected.

She feels the presence of this person when a captive is taken by the military commander and she determines to release and follow him.  This captive is Jordan.

Be sure to check out the rest of Chloe’s story in Web of Deception on the nook!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

A Storm and Chicken Story

A sneak peek at Long Tail and the Big Storm

August 26, 2017

A Storm and Chicken Story

One day we were playing outside and a storm came up.  Not a cute little Pooh bear thundercloud with a few raindrops, but a giant, hurricane-wind, flash-lightning-fireworks-in-the-sky, shake-the-whole-house-thunder, all-people-hide-inside kind of thunderstorm.  (Okay, it was a simple, everyday, Florida thunderstorm.)  The winds were swirling chicken feathers and fluffing them out like towel-dried cats.  Smaller chickens were hop-flying to stabilize themselves as they fought for the safety of the henhouse.

After drying off from the first wave of rain, the girls peeked outside and giggled at the chickens until the raindrops were so large we couldn’t see the henhouse anymore.  The late summer winds blew the tree limbs around like strong autumn breezes scatter just-raked leaf piles.

“Mom, can you tell us a story with a storm?” Asked Rebeccah.

“A Long Tail story!” yipped Kimberly.  She was five, and she loved Long Tail.

So we snuggled on the couch with lightning flashes illuminating the room through the big windows and started what would become “Long Tail and the Big Storm.”

The chickens of the yard were ruled by Long Tail, the great yellow chief, and guarded by Long Tail and Alfredo, the white rooster imported some time ago.  Under this rooster team, the hens and pullets scratched and gossiped and laid eggs all day with no worries.

On one autumn day the bright sky darkened with angry clouds.  The sun hid.  The birds in the woods started crying warnings and flying away.  Two small humans who were playing in the henhouse with the baby biddies, heard a booming crack of thunder and jumped!  They put the baby biddies back in the safe brooder and left the henhouse.

“Look at those little humans!” cawed Alfredo, laughing, “running like rabbits!”

A giant bolt of lightning lit up the sky just behind the woods and a cannon-loud BOOM of thunder shattered the air.  Alfredo scrambled into the henhouse and hid under the brooder.

All the hens laughed at the silly rooster.

Even Red Feathers and Golden Eye, two of the youngest pullets, laughed at him.

Long Tail strutted by, “when the water falls from the sky, we come in.” Long Tail was not afraid.

A big wind shrieked through the henhouse.  It blew the people door open!

Can Long Tail save his flock?  Be sure to check out Long Tail and the Big Storm to see just how this courageous rooster accomplishes this brave feat!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Corgi Dawflawn

Sometimes decisions that appear minuscule actually end up leading to the biggest adventures!

August 21, 2017

Meet Corgi Dawflawn

Corgi was one of those characters who originally had a bit part in the story, yet was loved by my proof-readers.  Because of their suggestions (repeated begging and sadness when I laughed at bringing Corgi into a larger role), this character morphed into a secondary player.

Corgi Dawflawn was born to Warrior-Spirit parents during the early stages of the Border War.  He was recruited into the military school of Ja’hline.  He becomes a member of the Klnu’mori and ascends in rank quickly.  Corgi enters the story in the upper ranks of training at Ja’hline.  Upon graduation, he chooses the Cobra discipline which specializes in bare-hand techniques.

Corgi gets assigned to the Border Wall, finds a skill with a machete to become a machete-master, and his commander discovers he can read and write in several languages.  He becomes a scribe.

He reads a message instead of tossing it.  By this tiny split-second act, his life is forever changed.  (You can read his full story in “Web of Deception.”)

Just like Corgi, sometimes decisions that appear minuscule actually end up leading to the biggest adventures of life.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

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