1. OUR PRIOR EXPERIENCES

Remember the scene in “Pretty Woman” where the heroine has her first experience of the Opera? Her reaction was vastly different to that of someone who might take such outings for granted – someone who had been accustomed to going to the Opera all her life. If you are poor, you tend to take for granted humble surroundings; but you notice the trappings of the rich. You may envy the rich, or you may feel that this is a lifestyle that is totally foreign to you, and you prefer a simpler life. If you are used to speaking in one language, you feel all at sea if you are surrounded by foreigners.

Make sure you show your character’s reactions in a way that fits with her prior experiences.

2. HOW THINGS AFFECT OUR SENSES

We all experience the world through our five senses, but a blind man will rely on other senses more than those who have good eyesight. The situation will determine which sense comes to the fore with your viewpoint character. If we’re in a bakery, we tend to notice the delicious SMELLS before anything else. If we’re trudging home in the rain, cold and wet, we notice the way things FEEL against our skin – cold, clammy, wet. If we’re in a dark room we rely on what we hear. When you are showing your character’s reactions, don’t automatically describe what he or she SEES. Think about the situation, and decide whether one of the other senses might be more appropriate.

Click here to read more →    Fiction Writing: How To Filter Description Through Your Characters

By Garda Parker

If you’ve always wanted to write a novel but didn’t know where to start or how long it would take to finish (if, indeed, you did finish!), this article is for you. It gives you the tips you need to finish a draft in 30 days. How can you do this? One page at time, and it’s easier than you think.

1) Know the kind of book you want to write

You probably do already; after all, you’ve been thinking about it for what seems like forever. Is it a historical or contemporary literary novel? Does it fall into genre category: western, mystery, science fiction, romance, horror, true crime, suspense, etc.?

2) Know your lead character(s)

Again, you probably have thought through at least one or two characters already. If you have more, all the better. Your opening scene should contain your lead character(s), so your readers know who is central to the story.

3) Keep a project notebook

Designate this notebook for your novel work alone. Pick one you are drawn to (e.g., one with a bright cover, one from high school or college that meant something special to you). Carry it with you whenever and wherever you can. (If you can’t, carry a reporter’s notebook or pad, so you can jot down thoughts to transfer to your notebook later.)

Once you start your novel, you’ll quickly learn that you’ll be thinking about your story all the time. Ideas and scenes will come to you. So, too, will traits about your character(s)—things like eye color, hair length, quirky clothing, tone of voice, etc. You may like to think you’ll remember them all later, but you might not.

The best thing, then, is to write these “flashes” down when they come to you or as soon thereafter. When you’re not writing, you can organize your notes into sections.

4) Plunge in!

To give yourself momentum, open the book with a strong scene that grabs your readers and brings them directly into the actions and thoughts of the protagonist. Write a great first sentence that catapults your hero or heroine in a new direction, and which sets the tone and pace for your book. This sentence will get your creative juices flowing. Example: “His bed was in the street!” Those few words set up several story questions: Whose bed? Why is it in the street? Who did it? How did it get there? What’s he going to do about it?

5) Write a set number of pages daily

Understand this: You will have nothing to expand on, edit, polish or turn into a salable manuscript if you don’t first get your story on paper. So aim to write a set number of pages daily. Exceed that number whenever you can, but try not to write less, no matter how difficult the writing is.

As a point of reference: If you write one page a day for 30 days, you’ll have a 30-page draft. If you write five pages a day, you’ll have a 150-page draft. If you write 10 pages a day, you’ll have a 300-page draft.

No matter what works for you, you will have a story at the end of the period—if you meet your quota.

Click here to read more → Write Your Novel in 30 Days —A 10-Step Guide

Causes of Freckle

Exposure of skin to sun is one of the main cause of developing freckles. Freckles will fade when sun exposure is reduced or eliminated. The basic cause of freckles are some special cells in the skin that produce a pigment called melanin. If you have melanin in your body, going on accumulating at one place, then it may result in freckles age spots.
Freckles are influenced by genetic factor also. Hormone Abnormalities can cause freckles since estrogen over-stimulates pigment-producing cells, causing them to generate excess color when exposed to sunlight.

Signs and Symptoms of Freckles

In some cases, freckles are sporadic, individual spots and sometimes there are several grouped together, making them appear larger and cover a greater portion of the skin. Freckles, age spots and pregnancy mask have several things in common. They are formed in sun exposed areas: face, hands, chest and back. These unwelcome brown patches are nothing more than accumulation of skin pigment melanin which is always produced by the skin.

Types

Ephelides (singular: ephelis, the Greek word for freckle): This term refers to flat spots that are red or light-brown and typically appear during the sunny months and fade in the winter.

Lentigines (singular: lentigo, from the Latin word for lentil): Children may develop a small tan, brown, or black spot which tends to be darker than an ephelis-type freckle and which does not fade in the winter.

Click here to read more → Beauty: Freckles – Causes, Symptoms, Types and Treatment

Before computers and all the software that lets a writer technologically storyboard his or her novel  in Excel or other “trackers,” there were corkboards on which writers laboriously pinned 3 x 5 cards outlining various chapters and defining characters in their works in progress.

Some of us still use that method – but, whatever a writer uses to visualize the components of his novel “at a glance,” the idea of storyboarding is a great one – especially for first-time novelists.

Storyboarding the Beginning, Middle and End of a Novel

Start storyboarding a novel by creating a “beginning.” Remember, the beginning should pull the reader into the story and is critical to setting up the characters’ viewpoints and personalities.

Storyboarding doesn’t have to be all-inclusive information about the novel – a few words about a chapter, how long it will be and what it should convey to the reader is enough. If storyboarding is accomplished with computer software, pictures that resemble and have the same attributes as the characters in the book can be pulled in and used as a reminder that one character has red hair and another gray, for example.

The “middle” of a novel is just as important as the beginning and the writer has to be careful that suspense, dialog and plot don’t fall by the wayside, leaving the reader baffled and frustrated.

The middle of the novel may technically be Chapter 10, but where the characters are and where the plot is going is an integral part of mid-novel. Storyboarding can let a writer know if the middle is faltering and may inspire him to create more momentum for this important part of a novel.

The “end” of a novel can leave the reader sighing with satisfaction or grimacing with frustration. Keeping track of the elements in a novel by storyboarding is especially helpful to provide the reader an entertaining and satisfying ending. Storyboarding also lets you try different endings in relation to the rest of the story. Looking at it from different perspectives tells the writer what works and what doesn’t.

Click here to read more → Writing: Storyboarding a Novel

The Universe works in mysterious ways most often in ways we cannot even perceive. I recently received notice that I had written award winning fiction. The funny thing of it is I used to think that in order for me to have the house of my dreams I would have to be living my dream life that of being a best selling author.

That is not how it worked for me.

Though it took me 50 years to achieve my dream house (one that was designed by me and built in conjunction with my husband) I did achieve it (using Law of attraction principles that I ve written extensively about in other locations on EzineArticles). And it is a beautiful house nestled on the Western Slope of the Sierra Nevada overlooking God s country and ten acres of natural wooded hills.

It is my dreaming ground.

Little did I know that when that life long dream got fulfilled, all of my dreams would come clamoring at the door, begging entrance and a chance to sup at my table. Warm heartedly and unabashedly, I opened the door and let them ALL in.

I have been a writer since I could hold a pencil. And I have reams and reams and reams of written material from before there were computers which means I had to hand type them all. Or write them by hand.

When I was in my early twenties, I wrote several children s picture books
that summarily got rejected one after the other only to find that one of the publishers I had sent my book to actually printed my book under the name of the illustrator. Argh, that was a deep mining experience, from which I am only now recovering the gems.

This was all prior to the 1976 copyright law changes that prevented them from doing just that. What I took away from that event was somehow (convoluted though it may be) I felt I was not good enough.

I did not realize how untrue that was until just a few years ago. If I had just tilted my eyes a bit and looked at it differently I would have realized that if it is good enough to steal and publish it meant that I was good enough to publish!

But as we go through life, and especially if we are working on continually improving ourselves, we come to realize that our self worth cannot be determined by anyone outside of us. We are the ones who MUST set the standard of our own self worth. Letting someone else do that for you is giving away your power.

What happened next meant a new unfolding for me. The many books I kept on the back shelf of my mind started flying towards me, flapping their covers like wings and cooing at me, hovering above my head, first this one, then that one, until finally one touched down.

Though I had completed a non fiction book before I wrote this novella, I did not really count that as part of my repertoire because non fiction is really not my gig. Non fiction is something I do easily having been a newspaper editor and reporter for several years. Non fiction, to me, is not writing it s typing to steal a quote from Robin Williams doing a parody of Truman Capote.

I prefer to write fiction because in fiction, spirit can speak more freely to the reader without the writer getting in the way. Fiction is harder to write because it has to make sense. Truth does not. And the truth in fiction is the one the reader assigns to it it is not that of the writer. Fiction is a personal experience.

Click here to read more → Writing Award Winning Fiction The Steps to Get You There

THE DETECTIVE story is a kind of intellectual game. It is more–it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws–unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them. Here with, then, is a sort Credo, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author’s inner conscience. To wit:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering someone a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions–not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

8. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se’ances, crystal gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

9. There must be but one detective–that is, but one protagonist of deduction–one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who his codeductor is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story–that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

Click here to read more → Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories

Creative Writing Tips – Whichever theme you choose, all the elements, which make up your story, dialogue, conflict, scenes, etc should be written with the theme in mind.
Your theme should progress the story.

If you find that anything in your story doesn’t progress it, it should be cut when you are in the editing stage.

Before we see an example of elements written with a theme in mind, let’s think of a theme and a story….

The theme is…

‘Arrogance Leads To Humiliation’

Very briefly, this story is about a character that believes he is better than his colleagues.
His goal is to get promoted to a managerial position. What will prevent him from reaching his goal, is the fact that management are aware of his arrogance and they don’t believe, with his attitude, he is the right person to manage the staff.

To meet his goal, the character will take on more work than he can handle. He will do this to prove to management, that he is the right man for the job. But in the end, he will make a grave error and his arrogance will lead him to humiliation.

Now let’s take a look at the elements of this story…

Click here to read more → Writing: Does Each Element Of Your Story Further The Theme

Creative Writing Tips – It should. A theme is a one-line explanation of your story.. Every story should have one because our stories are about something. When I say should, I mean that this isn’t always the case. Especially so for beginner writers, who may not know, that the theme carries the story. Or even those who’ve been writing for years may not be aware of the importance of a theme. And a theme is important. A theme is what will keep you on track as you write the story. What happens if you write without a theme in mind? Two things… 1. You stray from the subject or

2. You write more than one story. Let me give you an example of a story written with a theme in mind… The theme to a story I once wrote was, ‘Vanity Leads To Destruction.’ Very briefly, this story is about a female character that believed herself to be so beautiful, in the end she lost everything. Writing this theme on a post-it note and sticking it on my computer, I was always reminded that my story had to revolve around this theme. Having a theme helped me stick to the story I had intended on writing and not stray from it – not even a little. It also helped me to focus only on what was essential to my story.

So according to my theme, ‘Vanity Leads To Destruction’…

• Every action my character performed was to show her vanity
• Her goals sprung from her vanity
• What motivated her was her vanity
• Her words (dialogue) showed her vanity
• How she handled situations showed her vanity
• The interaction with other characters showed her vanity
• The conflict was a result of her vanity
• The highest peak in my story, the climax, showed an intense moment of whether her goal would be met (whether her vanity would work for, or against her)
• And the ending?

Click here to read more → Writing: Does Your Story Have A Theme

1. Developing Efficient Work Habits
2. Elements Of A Successful Story
   • In the opening…
   • In the body of the story…
   • In the conclusion…
   • Throughout the story…
3. Style: Checklist For Fiction Writers
4. Manuscript Format
5. Storyboarding
6. Ten Points on Plotting
7. The Story Synopsis
8. Understanding Genre: Notes on the Thriller
9. Symbolism and all that
   • The Natural Cycle
   • The Natural Versus the Human World
   • The Hero’s Quest: Mysterious or unusual birth
   • Symbolic Images
   • Symbolic Characters
10. Narrative Voice
11. Constructing a Scene
12. Show And Tell: Which Is Better?
13. Character In Fiction
    • The Character Resume
14. “Let’s Talk About Dialogue,” He Pontificated
    • Some Dialogue Conventions to Consider:
15. Writing A Query Letter About Your Novel
    • The Letter Itself
16. Researching Publishers and Agents
17. Reading a Contract
    • Delivery Of Satisfactory Copy
    • Permission for Copyrighted Material
    • Grant Of Rights
    • Proofreading and Author’s Corrections
    • Advances and Royalties
    • Author’s Warranties and Indemnities
    • Copies to Author
    • Option Clause
    • Going Out of Print
    • A Word of Advice

Afterword by the Author

Stress comes in many forms, workplace stress, family stress, grief over loss of a loved one, etc… Some can be avoided, but as we know, many cannot. Some people handle stress better than others, and some even thrive onit.Regardless, stress takes its toll.

Stress has been proven to rid your body of many essential vitamins and minerals. Particularly vitamins C, E, and B. This leads to lethargy, lower focussed mental activities (clinically stress causes more erratic brain activity and a reduction in short term and long term memory), drying out and aging of the skin (in some), and in others a increase in the sebaceous gland activity – which usually brings postules, acne, and rosacea – which all bring more stress as we then become more entangled in how others view our physical appearance.

We cannot stop all stress, but we can take steps to stop or limit its toll on our skin and body. Take a full vitamin suplament every day. Eat a well balanced diet – especially fish meat like salmon (high in omega 3′s which is proven to increase brain function and cellular activity, but it also is proven to reduce the aging process of the skin and make cuts and bruises heal faster). Eat more raw fruits and vegetables – atleast 5 servings per day – you will see a notable difference in 4-6 weeks and you will feel better (along with better colon health.

Exercise more often. Aerobic exercise has been proven to release powerful hormones that actually counteract the harmful chemicals and results of stress as it will also improve your bodys abilities to cope with oxidants.

Click here to read more →  Coping with Stress, its Effects on Your Skin and Health, and Turning Back the Clock