Resources for Richer Characters, Plots, Voice, Dialogue

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“Deborah Halverson on Why Perfectly Nice People Make Perfect Bad Guys”The Editor’s guest post on the great Cynsations blog, which is featuring and tweeting “best of” guest posts while host Cynthia Leitich Smith is on summer hiatus.  Excerpt: “Some antagonists seem perfectly nice when you first meet them. They can have very obvious moral centers. They might even be friends with the protagonist—or would be, under different circumstances. But in the circumstances you devise to get and keep your story rocking, that character provokes your protagonist, challenges him or throws roadblocks in his path or pushes him into situations of actual physical peril. The antagonist causes wonderful, juicy conflict even if he still seems inherently nice otherwise…. How can you make your antagonist believably sympathetic? Here are five ways…”

“Four Fixes for a ‘Flat’ Story” webinar w/ The Editor & Katie Davis – This 1.5-hr webinar covers four ways to fix your story when an editor tells you, “I couldn’t get into the story…. The story feels flat…. The voice isn’t distinct…. The dialogue doesn’t sound natural.” It was created as the grand finale for The Editor’s Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies Blog Tour but you can still view the full webinar (free) on Youtube.

7 Comments

  1. Darn! I’m 2 years too late to enter the giveaway at that Cynsations blog post. 😉 But I am interested in using your editorial services. Did you get my email from yesterday?

    I also can’t wait to watch the Katie Davis video when I’m in town with high speed internet.

  2. Thanks so much for your helpful webinars! I intend to contact you when I have taken my novel as far as I can on my own.

  3. LOVE this, Deborah! Thank you so much for sharing this information. Just another reason why your website and your books are a MUST for every writer.

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