And no i don't mean the crutches that help one to walk!
I mean their gestures, movements that are idiosyncratic to your characters.
Do you have lots of shrugging, huffing, or frowning?
Julie Coulter Bellon has a great post here about this, which she found on Jordan McCollum's blog.
One of the commenters on Julie's blog mentioned a great book "The Emotional Thesaurus" which may prove useful to help explain your character gestures, instead of restricting it to a few. I think i'll get that for my kindle (really, i just love my new kindle so any chance to get a new book for it!).
So, pull out your manuscript, read through a page or two and see if you have repeated gestures or crutches, then 'find' them all and see if you can make them better.
This is a great way for your readers to see what the characters are thinking, even if they don't say it, or say something completely contradictory!
I feel the same way about my Kindle! Glad you found the post useful. I'm a new follower of yours! Great blog. :)
ReplyDeleteHello Kerrin
ReplyDeleteI found your blog today. I've looked at so many things today I can't remember quite how I stumbled upon you. I have it a feeling I googled something like "a story begins how it should end" and you have a blog post on that.
I shall look forward to having a good read through everything you've had to say. I have just started a blog (a few months back). What I enjoy is going right back to the first thoughts writers had to say and see why they started the blog and how they got started. It's 2008 for you which feels like forever ago!
I'm also interested in you as a "on the road to publication" writer... Good luck to you on that front. I hope the excitement remains after you've been away (sounds like it from latter posts) for much of this year.
Cheers
Lily