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Why I Write
When I write, I draw on my experiences as a woman with a painful past, a rapturous wife and mother, a world traveler, and a spiritualist. For me, writing is an art form. Like an artist, the work becomes more than I imagined it would be. When I set out to write a story with a particular idea or character in mind, words I cannot claim as my own flow from a magical and mysterious place through me and onto paper. The work takes on a life of its own; it is living art. The process fascinates me, satiates me, and makes my life more meaningful. Please read my stories! If you would like to offer me feedback on my work, please click here and sign up for a free membership: https://heftynicki.Writing.com I hope to see you there!
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Welcome!



*Star*In 2011, my main focus will be on writing a novel. Since I'm a novice novelist, I've decided to come at the project from different angles, exploring the genre and experimenting with its elements. This blog and its offsite sister blog will be my journals where I attack novel-writing one day at a time.

As I was creating my BlogSpot page, the inspiration for the blog solidified in my mind. I named that blog "One Significant Moment at a Time." In essence, I want to use the format as a reminder to walk through my life with my author's eyes open, taking in the details, feeling the emotions of the day. As moments unfold and I feel their affects on me as a person, a woman, a mother, a sister, a member of the world community, I'll let the writer in me talk about it.

Creative Nonfiction is the genre most fitting to describe what I envision accomplishing here, moreso than blogging or journaling. The style is best suited, I feel, for my ambitions as a novelist.

In addition, Friday entries will not be written by me. Instead, I'll turn the keyboard over to one of the characters in my novel. He or she will relate the events of the day as s/he saw them, through the filter of his or her perception.

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If you've read my blog before, and find yourself here again, won't you click this link and check out my BlogSpot?

http://www.nicoleducleroir.blogspot.com

*Star* Leave me a comment there, and I'll send you a WDC token of my appreciation!

*Star* Become a Follower there, and I'll send you a Supportive Merit Badge! -- You don't have to go to blogspot.com each day; in fact, I post much of the same entries here in this WDC blog. But building up a verifiable readership may prove important one day when I'm knocking on literary agent/publishers' doors!

*Right* To Follow, just click "Follow" on the right margin of my blog page. You'll have to sign in using, or create, a Google account (it's free and only takes two minutes!), and then follow the short instructions. It's easy, and I'd appreciate it so much!!


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2011 Reading Goal = 25 Books in 52 Weeks. To see the list of books I've read so far, CLICK HERE  Open in new Window.





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Thanks for reading!!






April 5, 2010 at 3:09pm
April 5, 2010 at 3:09pm
#692355
The characters I cast in my novel aren't who I thought they were. I don't know why I'm so surprised. Anytime I meet someone for the first time, the new acquaintance smiles a lot, flatters me with complimentary politeness, chooses her words carefully. I do the same thing. It's only through subsequent meetings, time spent hanging out together, that guarded moments give way to natural reactions, and the façade begins to crumble.

In the time I've hung out with my characters this week, they have begun to shown me their authentic selves. I learned the antagonist has a lifelong fascination for electroshock weaponry. And here, I thought fire was his thing. Another character informed me I had it all wrong, that he never wanted to marry his fiancée. One character up and altogether quit the project! And an Asian dude I'd pegged from the start as a wicked man turned out to be a student and a young fellow of incredible honor. It's a shame what's going to happen to him. However, it was only when he revealed himself to me that the big climactic scene -- the one I just couldn't figure out for weeks and weeks and weeks -- finally played out in my mind. Maybe I'll make it up to him by mentioning him in the book's dedication blurb...

So, I made my first self-imposed deadline: Step Six of the Snowflake Method is complete, on time, on April 3.

The steps in this method of plotting a novel are extremely well designed. For example, in Step Five I wrote a one-page narration of each major character and a half-page narration of each minor character. The exercise was to write in first person from the POV of that character, letting him or her explain his or her role in the book (relationship to other characters, goals, motivations, etc.) Then this week, in Step Six, I expanded the one-page plot synopsis of the novel I wrote for Step Four to a four-page synopsis. Today I begin Step Seven which shifts focus back to the characters and asks me to create detailed character charts for each character. It's brilliant, because I know so much more about the characters after working through Step Six, including how wrong some of my original interpretations of the characters were. I'm excited to dive into this exercise and fully flesh these people out.

Snowflake Method author Randy Ingermanson says in Step Seven notes: "You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become "real" to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good -- great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you're just saving time downstream."


How do you get to know your characters? Have you ever interviewed them? Have your ever had a character quit your novel?
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