From the daily archives: Monday, March 15, 2010
The Regency debutante comes in very handy for authors like me, even though she is as individual as the writers who create her. She can appear in just about all shapes and sizes–within a framework of having the ability to attract “Mr. Right,” of course. (In other words, she can be anything as long as it’s attractive enough for the purposes of a romance.)
Half the fun of a Regency (or any romance) is being able to understand and relate to the heroine; therefore, she must be wonderful in some ways and definitely lacking in others; she must be attractive but not so perfect that you can’t believe in her; she must strike a chord in every female reader who picks up your book, and any writer can create such a character simply by making her human. That is the one thing we ALL have in common, our humanity, with all its foibles and faults.
But what is a Regency debutante? How is she different from other fictional heroines?
A dictionary will tell you that a debutante is “a young woman making a formal debut into society.” In our case, it is Regency society, which is the other half of the fun of a Regency novel. No other time period was quite like the Regency; Jane Austen taught us how to poke gentle fun at it while also caring about those who were part of it; and Georgette Heyer showed us ways to really turn up the volume (of fun), concocting plots full of characters plucked from many layers of that society.
The interesting thing about the debutante of the Regency, is that she could be most anyone, from anywhere. Families came from abroad for the ‘season’ to debut their favored young ladies among the English rich. Most of the time, they, too, had money and therefore were supremely ‘qualified’ to join the “marriage mart.” But they might also be hiding a bankruptcy—it wasn’t always easy to discover the truth in those days of slow travel and communication (by today’s standards).
Likewise, any country miss and her mama might aspire to a London “season” and there was always the chance of making an astounding success. (You see how it easily makes for the stuff of romance novels?)
So the Regency Debutante was any young lady of gentle birth making her “come out” into the wider society of adults of her community; If she were wealthy or could gather enough financial backing, (or had good connections) she could make that debut into London or Bath society, circles where the possibility of making a good match (marriage) were greater.
Not all Regency novels use debutantes as their heroines, but to understand what “the season” was about, one must recognize this formal female creature! She often was not in for fun and games, despite the whirl of social entertainments on her schedule, but if she happened to be pretty, and even more important, wealthy, then upper class society was sure to welcome her in.
Another aspect that makes Regencies so enjoyable is the clothing needed for the debutante’s season. The quantity AND the quality–it all counted, and it all makes for fun reading. That, along with descriptions of social customs and manners, makes delving into the era an experience you will likely want to do again and again.
The Regency? You’ve got to love it!
Linore Rose Burkard writes Inspirational Romance with a special interest in the Regency. She also writes articles on Regency Life, Parenting, and Self-Improvement. Get her FREE monthly eZine “Upon My Word!” which includes a monthly fre.e download at HERE
“I hope you don’t think you done writing your article.” Because it’s proof reading time. And I’m going to show you things to look for and add that will double your CTR%…
1. Read your articles aloud. This one is also effective. Try reading your articles silently and count the errors that you were able to find. Then, read your articles aloud and you’ll be amazed as to how many errors you have missed earlier.
2.Sleep on them. What I do is I leave my articles by themselves for at least 24 hours. Then, I edit them the following day, first thing in the morning. What I realized is that doing this gives me more objective and a more effective proofreading. I was able to spot a lot more errors and I can easily identify sentences that do not make any sense.
3. Explore free grammar sites. There are some reliable sites that can show you what’s wrong with your grammar and sentences construction. While a few of them are not really helpful, others are pretty fantastic. You just need to post your articles on these sites and they will highlight your mistakes. Then, they will give you useful hints on how you can improve your article.
4. Get a neutral third party to read over your articles. Get somebody, preferably an expert writer or an editor to critique your work. This person has to have the capability to tell you what’s wrong with your articles and must be able to give you recommendations on how you can turn your weaknesses to strengths.
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Part Three: Let Your Characters Live
Character development for fiction is an essential step in the writing process and can mean the difference between a work that is welcomed by a publisher and one that is stuffed in the rejection pile. The time you invest in developing three-dimensional characters before you begin writing will reward you with more productive writing time and a stronger story. Just as you would frame up your story with an outline, you need to properly build the characters that bring life to your work.
In the third installment of this four-part series on story character development, we’re taking the fundamental traits, behaviors, and backstories you’ve developed to this point and helping you to push the limits of your characters.
In the previous two articles, we looked at the first four steps in this seven-step process:
1. Label their desire essences
2. Label their fear essences
3. Get specific with your backstory and
4. Describe their current behavior.
Now, we’re ready to step out of the structural mode of novel character development and let these creations stretch their limits and contribute to an exciting story.
5. Raise the stakes: Emotions are extreme
Play in the realm of this extreme when dealing with the fears and ambitions of your characters. These essences are all encompassing; meaning that we spend our lifetimes with them. Don’t cheat your characters by being afraid to raise the stakes as high as you can. Needing to find a precious stone to sell to an art dealer by midnight to raise the financing to save your character’s mother’s house before the bank takes it away from her tomorrow is exciting!
Look back at your own life and think of how seriously you take your essences. When your essences are threatened, will you fight to extremes to defend them? Just as when they are fulfilled, do you enjoy some of your greatest moments in life? Play in the realm of the extreme. Raise the stakes. Your essences are life and death to you
Corey Blake is President of Writers of the Round Table, Inc., a unique literary development and author management company that assists best-selling authors, directors, executives, magazines, publishers and producers to generate writing content of substantial quality and bring it to market. Visit Writers of the Round Table, Inc., to receive a free quote on how we can help you bring YOUR characters to life!
Tagged with: Bring • character • Developing • Development • fiction • Life • People • Real • Secrets • Steps
When you seek help with your debt you may look around for companies that manage your debts for you. With help from these companies all you need to do is make one big payment for all your debts and they will take care to disburse the payments to your creditors.
Usually people take up such services if they cannot manage their own debts. You may have problems with payment, may not be able to co ordinate with lenders on time. Such consolidation companies help manage your debts on your behalf. There are scam companies that you must recognize and avoid. It is always better to go in for debt consolidation non profit organizations.
Though non profit debt consolidation companies say they are non-profit, they usually do charge some fees towards the service that they provide you.
Things to know about a non profit debt consolidation company
The first thing to know is that a non-profit organization may not really be non-profit. They usually charge a fee for their services. However the fees charged is not unreasonable but deserving. Such companies are usually reliable when consolidating your debt. They will negotiate with your creditors to lower the payment amount or at least the interest that the creditors are charging on your account so that you can pay off the debt smoothly. These organizations assess your financial conditions and after considering all obligations including your debt and income will consolidate as much as possible. They may even renegotiate terms with creditors for an extended re-payment plan. These organizations may also offer budgeting services along with dealing with the actual debt. They will advise you on how to prepare a budget, how to manage your check book as well as how to use your credit card (s) appropriately.
Debt consolidation can be really helpful if you are having a difficult time managing your debts. But beware of scams. Do your research before settling for any company. Remember you are already in debt and losing money to a fraud company will take you in to deeper troubles.
Author Bio:
This article has been written by Jason Holmes, a community writer of Debt Consolidation Care. He has gained a vast knowledge on debt consolidation process over the years. He has also been writing on debt consolidation non profit, debt settlement, debt pay off calculator, debt consolidation, credit card debt, debt consolidation loans and various other financial aspects.
To really benefit from article marketing, you need to submit lots of quality articles with targeted keywords to the article directories. This way the search engines will pick up your articles, and expose them to people who are looking for your keywords.
Article marketing is a numbers game. The more articles you submit, the bigger chance publishers will use them and bring visitors to your website.
Now, a problem that you may face when you want to write lots of articles is finding a unique article idea.
There are a few ways to get inspiration. You can do your research online by using Google, or other search engines, to find new topics that you can write about. But did you know that Amazon is also a great place to find topics for a new article?
Picture yourself, standing in a gigantic bookstore. Now imagine that you had all the books on the subject you were researching, open at the same time right in front of you. How would you like to be able to flick through all the books, and instantly find the pages with your subject’s keywords on them?
This is exactly what Amazon has done for you. They have created a brilliant tool that is perfect for researching content, called Search Inside.
It’s an article writer’s dream; laser-targeted pages of content that you can read, digest and rewrite, and best of all, delivered to your computer in seconds.
Here’s how to do it.
Log in to Amazon. In the search box at the top, select Books and enter your search term or keywords in the box beside it. It is like a Google search but only 100 times better.
Example: if you want to do research on vegetable gardening, enter the exact term in the search box.
A whole list with books that cover your niche will appear. When you click the Search Inside link on top of the book cover that interests you, you can peek inside the book.
When you open the book, the table of contents appears. You can take notes of the book contents, and use them later to create your new article. If you have an Amazon account, you can even read whole chapters of the book for free.
Another great way to use Amazon for your research is the option to see all the keywords that are being used to bring up the book. You can place these keywords strategically in your own article, to get the search engines happy, and attract more visitors.
Amazon is an incredible and free to use resource tool. You can use it to do unlimited searches on any topic that you can think of. All of the books listed are written by professional writers, who know what they write about.
Every time you need inspiration for an article, you can go back to Amazon. It’s a great and fun place to find unlimited article topics and ideas.
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Part Four: Getting Down to Work
If you’ve read the first three articles in this series, you know that the time investment in fiction character development pays a hefty dividend into the writing process, the quality of your story, and the likelihood of getting accepted. Let’s continue!
So far, we’ve worked through the seven-step process to create convincing, intriguing, and believable characters:
1. Label the Desire Essences of each of your main characters.
2. Label the Fear Essences of each of your main characters.
3. Get specific with your backstory.
4. Describe their current behavior.
5. Raise the stakes.
6. Don’t meddle.
7. Let your characters play.
Now that you’ve got the framework for effective story character development, let’s put this knowledge to work!
Problem
Let’s begin with an underdeveloped couple of characters – a man and a woman in the romantic drama genre. We’ll put these two in a used book shop for their initial meeting and write without developing them:
Rachel entered the bookshop looking around. She needed a book for a dear friend and though she had passed this book shop a million times, she had never been inside. She browsed around for awhile, and then pulled a few books off the shelf trying to find a suitable gift. “Is there anything I can help you with?” said a voice from behind her. She turned to see an attractive young man in his twenties. “Are you looking for anything specific?” he asked. “No,” was her reply. “You’re very pretty,” said the man. “Thank you,” she said blushing.
Solution
Now, after putting these two characters through the story development process of labeling their essences, getting specific and raising the stakes, this is where we stop meddling and we let them truly play:
Rachel entered the bookshop, making a quick visual sweep of the interior. She browsed awhile, scanning the shelves and trying to avoid the other patrons (her desire to hide). Coming around a corner, she caught her reflection in a mirror and surveyed herself for just a moment. She was noting how her baggy jeans and sweatshirt hid her features well, when the classic literature section lured her like a magical door (her desire to live in a different reality). Gently, Rachel pulled a copy of “Leaves of Grass,” from the shelf (her desire to be appreciated for her intellect) and held it gingerly in her hands.
“A woman who enjoys Whitman is hard to find,” said a deep voice from behind her (his desire for connection). Startled, Rachel stumbled back into the shelf (her fear of the opposite sex) before she felt a hand on her arm trying to steady her. She looked up and saw a tall man with a thick crop of curly brown hair and rich, dark eyes looking at her with a mix of concern and amusement.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” said the stranger, whose warmth only slightly melted her discomfort. “My mother and I used to read Whitman together,” he continued. Rachel stood there, still silent and feeling awkward. “I think that’s where I got my love of reading. How about you?” he asked her. His powerful gaze was penetrating (his high stakes).
“There is little else that I believe in,” she mumbled (her desire to connect). Her eyes never left the floor (her desire to hide is strong).
He nodded. “I love getting so lost in a story that the rest of the world fades away.”
Rachel drew her eyes slowly up from the floor, catching his only briefly before flicking back to the book in her hand. The jitters in her stomach were dancing so wildly that she was amazed her body wasn’t jerking. Although she would normally have shuffled away and avoided any interchange, she found her feet were somehow cemented in this spot, unable to pull away from his presence.
“Would you like to take a walk over to the pub (his need of a drink)?” he asked.
She raised her head (her strong desire for connection vs. fear of the opposite sex and desire to avoid alcohol). “I have to go now (her fear wins).” She darted from the store, the book still in her hand. She peeked back as she ran and saw the young man pull some cash out of his wallet, hand it to the cashier and then begin chasing after her (his need to connect outweighs his fear of rejection).
In this example, you have emotions, behavior, and history driving each subtle action and reaction. Every person is a complex network that should continue to unravel before the eyes of the reader in such a way that each page is compelling them to read on. In depth character development is the key to unlocking this kind of writing! Try to experiment with this novel character development process yourself and see if you too can bring your characters to life on the page!
In the meantime writers, keep your rear in the chair, your fingers on the keys, and your writing reaching for the stars.
Corey Blake the co-author of EDGE! A Leadership Story (Morgan James, 2008), is President of Writers of the Round Table, Inc., a strategic literary development company that assists best-selling authors, award nominated directors, executives, and publishers to generate writing content of substantial quality and bring it to market. Visit Writers of the Round Table, Inc. to receive a free quote on how we can help YOU bring your characters to life!
Tagged with: Bring • character • Developing • Development • fiction • Life • People • Real • Secrets • Steps
The purpose of your ebook writing effort will determine your actions to go about it. Are you marketing a service, introducing yourself as an author or a subject matter expert? Be clear as to why you are choosing this method over others since you will find your motivation waning in the absence of clarity.
1. What’s it about?
What is the subject of your ebook about? Have you browsed the net for the availability of similar books and found them lacking in some way. Does your approach simplify or clarify to the reader what other books are not able to do? Scour the net for ebooks related to the subject and find a way to make your book stand out for its uniqueness or simplicity.
2. Evaluate your options
You could settle for being a regular article contributor or get yourself published in print. If you think that these are cumbersome or will not yield the desired results, define your expectations out of this endeavour. Ebooks that can be downloaded for free are popular with viewers however, if the reader has to pay for reading, it helps if you are a published author with a reputation for your style of writing.
3. What do you need?
Once you have decided to go ahead with ebook writing, understand your needs. A computer with software that helps writers is all you require. You might need to get your work edited and if you think it takes too long to make the whole effort alone, opt for freelance writing help.
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Non prescription sleep aids are becoming ever popular throughout America. There are some serious side effects that occur quite often when using a prescription sleep aid that can be avoided by using a non prescription sleep aid.
Nearly 99% of all non prescription sleep aids are either one of two things: doxylamine (dox il’ a meen) or diphenhydramine (dye fen hye’ dra meen).
Doxylamine is an antihistamine that helps people fall asleep by slowing down their central nervous system. It sounds kind of scary, but doxylamine is relatively safe, and is one of the main ingredients in the NyQuil line of products. Doxylamine is mostly used for allergies but also makes you drowsy which is why it’s in most non prescription sleep aids. However, it does have a few side effects that one should be aware of. They include, dry mouth, nose, and throat, nausea, headache, and nervousness.
The other major ingredient in non prescription sleep aids is diphenhydramine. Diphenhydramine is also an anti-histamine which works by blocking histamine effects at H1 receptor sites. In plain English, diphenhydramine helps relax your smooth muscles and makes you feel less itchy. This is why it’s a popular ingredient in non prescription sleep aids. It’s mostly sold under the brand name Benadryl, but is found in most other sleep aids and allergy medicines. Now you know why they tell you not to operate heavy machinery when taking Benadryl on the side of the box. However, like doxylamine, diphenhydramine also comes with a lot of side effects. Most of them are about the same and include dry mouth, nose, and throat, and headaches.
If taking doxylamine and diphenhydramine for your sleep troubles doesn’t seem to be up your alley, there is another non prescription sleep aid that doesn’t include doxylamine and diphenhydramine. It’s called Sleep Once Again and uses 100% all natural ingredients that can be found in nature. Because of this, almost all of those ugly side effects that are found in other non prescription sleep aids can be avoided, and you can be left to a calm, natural sleep.
Best of all, it comes in a dissolvable sublingual strip that releases the active ingredients into your mouth and directly to bloodstream almost instantly. Because of its fast-acting technology, it’s considered to be the best sleep aid product on the market.
Here’s a link:
The Best Sleep Aid
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