Tag: Peggy Bechko on creating good characters in your writing

Peggy Bechko: Writers, Writing and Writer’s Gifts For The Holidays

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 by Peggy Bechko

Okay, it’s that time of year – starting to think about what you can get your friends who write or who just spend a lot of time at a desk? I’m not going to beat around the bush with lots of filler and ‘words’ here, I’m going to use this blog to give you some ideas. I usually do this about once a year as we head into the holidays, and I cover some stuff that’s moderately expensive all the way down to free, so here goes.

Got some cash you can part with? TheVaridesk is fantastic. It’s adjustable so the user can stand or sit easily, and its simple and quick to adjust, a pair of handles on the side and raise or lower.  I got one about a year ago and love it. Spend a lot more time standing and everything I hear points to that being the more healthy approach; a division between sitting and standing.

A new printer maybe? Just got the HPOfficeJet 8600 all in one myself. A Great machine for the money. read article

Peggy Bechko: Characters and Skills

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by Peggy Bechko

Writing is an interesting profession – you create people from scratch. Sort of build them from the ground up, or top down, whichever way you want to look at it. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s hard as hell.

In that quest to make characters real, unusual and fascinating to the reader writers look to imparting something special to that character. Something like a unique skill or an unusual talent, some ability that will set hero or heroine apart from the every day, and yet at the same time, keep that character identifiable, relatable. It could be as simple as being a chess master and using that talent in other ways or as high-profile as being a well-known newscaster, writer or movie star.

But it’s a fine line between giving that hero or heroine some special ability and going way over the top to the point where the audience (novel reader or film goer) disconnects. That can happen when the writer doesn’t match the personality of a character and that character’s past experiences and life lessons with the particular skill or unusual talent he or she’s been given. It becomes like a tag on instead of an integral part of the character. read article

Peggy Bechko: The Characters We Create – A Writer’s World

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by Peggy Bechko

Writers take us to many places from far off lands, to city streets, to other dimensions to outter space. And it’s interesting and entertaining and fun.

They also take us other places with their development of character. The inner world can be as entertaining, chilling, exciting and gripping as the outer world.

Whether we writers realize it or not, we have to cultivate a basic understanding of what it is people really want and need. There’s a sort of a basic five. read article