Characters

When writing, your book will need characters. So having well developed ones is a good idea. But of course characters always ruin things. It might seem easy to get them to do something, but actually characters all to easily develop a mind of their own, as this poem by Lissie shows.

A Character and His Author - by Lissie

I told him to go left... he went to the right

I told him to stay... he went to go fight

I made his hair black... he made it burgundy instead

I made him mute... you should hear the thing's he's said!

I told him he was blind... he decided he could see

I told him I'm in control... he ignored me

And that really explains a characters relationship with his author. They are in control, so don't be fooled! If you let them make the decisions then they will be true to their personality.

A few of my favourite characters have me under their control. Their personality does tell whether they will be the one telling you what they should do. My favourite is probably Valla. She is female, and has quite a overpowering temperament. She is my favourite character from the Traders of the Snowy Peaks series. Despite only appearing once so far for a brief period of around 10,000 words. The other character from that series is Jamie. He is a main character, but not the main character. He tags along, quite happily. His personality is not very strong but he is likeable. Unfortunately for my second favourite character, his life is hanging in the balance as I write. In my current book, he will probably die.

Then an unwritten character as yet, whom I like is Lars. He is from my series of five books and is going to be one of the main characters. He is a mellow person, dislikes mixing with people but will if necessary. The reason for his loneliness is the fact he is a mage. This marks him out when people know it, mages are supposed to be bad though Lars has saved many people with his powers. His fellow main character is Annika. She is much like Valla, but acts more on her impulses. She is a knight of the city, and meets Lars when it is falling.

I hope I'll be able to create many more characters that are interesting, and fun to write and read about. Many thanks again to Lissie for her beautiful poem.

Writing Novel's

So, lately I have been writing quite a few books. Two novels and one Novelette.

There are five main book sizes.

• Micro Fiction - under 100 words
• Flash Fiction - between 100 and 1,000 words
• Short Story - between 1,000 and 7,500 words
• Novelette - between 1,000 and 20,000 words
• Novella - between 20,000 and 50,000 words
• Novel - between 50,000 and 110,000 words
• Epic - 110,000 plus

All publishers look for the number of words, not pages in a book. The average book is between 65,000 and 100,000 wor

ds.

Anyway back to my books. My two novels are

both in the same series, Traders of the Snowy Peaks. The first one was the first book I ever completed - Moon City - it took me rougly six months to write, edit and proof read it but a few weeks ago I held the first copy in my hands. In the time I was getting my parents to proof read it I was writing the next one - Outlawed - I finished this one lately but haven't got round to editing. At the moment I'm writing the next and second to last in the series Twisted Dreams. I have just reached the 10,000 word milestone so that's pretty good

The cover of my first book is brilliant and I would like to thank Fena Lee for making it, she has amazing skill and has made the other two covers and will hopefully make the last! I'm not sure how long it's going to be but I estimate about 30,000 although the way the plot is going it could take a lot longer!

I'm also planning a series of five books which I am doing carefully and slowly but haven't even started writing. I'm not sure the series is going to be called but I know the names of the books will be - Mage, Stone, Spell, Divide and Quest - I am just finishing a few details and I should be able to start writing.