Another Day . . .

So I've had trouble with my leading man. What woman hasn't had problems with the man she loves, or the one she's creating. (Wait are these two things separate)? So when sinus pressure like stabbing sticks pricked my face all yesterday and my face felt like a swollen balloon I once again worked on my craft.

I'm sure you're asking what craft is that. Well I am a writer, and yes I'm in the middle of another short story. I hope to sell this one to Decadent Publishing for one of their popular story lines, but again I'm getting off track. So when no ideas came to me yesterday, I worked on developing my male character.

I thought of actors that had the same qualities I'm giving my leading man, but since I've pictured my guy looking like a slightly older Alex Pettyfer, (my character's name is Alex, and I swear it was a coincidence). I've had trouble putting the personality traits with the face.

So yesterday I went hunting. My son, a Technical Architect, (it's hard to explain what he does with computers, but he designs software, tells others how to build what he's designed, builds software as well, and implements what he's built). Anyway, he is also a writer. So over the weekend we discussed motivation reaction units (MRU) in connection with his latest novel. It's concept developed by Dwight Swain has been around for decades. We all strive to write using motivation reaction units, but many times we fall short. So my son and I went over the basics during the weekend, and I realized many times I'm not using MRU's properly.

I have dyslexia and my form has me rearranging sentences. Instead of giving the emotion before the action I put it after. I don't have problems with comprehension and reading, but as a child I wrote from right to left and and transposed the first letter in words when I spoke. For instance If I wanted a little bit of something then I would ask for a bittle lit. With this gift I can read upside down almost as well as I can right side up.

I know you're asking yourself when am I going to get to the point? I am a writer you know and we like to to hear ourselves talk, so stick with me. Well it seems Swain with his MRU concept hit upon the fact that if you follow this motivation reaction unit your writing would get to the point that you'd sell a lot of books. Bottom line, that's why I'm here. For readers to like my stories, want purchase my stories and hook them from the first sentence in chapter 1 so they can't put my book down until they've read it through.

I'm the kind of person that goes back and rereads books. I want my readers to want to do the same for my stories. Sorry, I'm getting off my topic again. While I was studying the model I came across the website, Writing the Perfect Scene by Randy Ingermanson. (If you want to read a website that is informative and the author is really full of himself then I suggest you look it up). He actually does know what he's talking about.

While there I checked out a few things and I must say he broke down MRU's quite thoroughly and if you're looking for good information on motivation reaction units then I suggest you check out his website. But MRU's isn't where I found information to help me with my leading man. I clicked on the link Architecting Your Novel. It describes the Snowflake Method.

I've used only part of the Snowflake Method in the past, but I took a long look at it yesterday. I really am coming to my point, so stick with me. I began using steps 2-5 on Ingermanson's website to develop my male character. And it worked. I know more about him today than I did in the last month of writing. Possibly more than I know about my own husband, ha ha, wink wink.

Here I must confess I'm a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. It is the way I create. I write on the computer, I have notebooks lying around the house and I have printed pages of my stories scattered everywhere marked up to the hilt.

It is a lot of work to write the way I do. It is a lot of work editing the way I do. So for once I'm going to implement sound advice and plan better. Yesterday as I planned this upcoming story using both MRU and the Snowflake Method I found it didn't hamper my creativity, it enhanced it.

So I'm off to write and I hope soon you'll see my next short story being sold by Decadent Publishing.