Sarah Kanning

about the writing life

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Entries Tagged as 'character development'

characters and emotion: a short bibliography

July 30th, 2010 · No Comments · book review, character development, revision

I’ve been struggling with a problem that I think is probably pretty common for writers: getting the emotions of a point of view (POV) character across in a way that is vivid and engaging yet not hokey or too “on the nose.” Of course my first impulse was to look around to see what other writers have to say, and I found some useful resources, which I’m happy to share with you.

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review: black blade blues

June 30th, 2010 · No Comments · book review, character development, reading

I just read Black Blade Blues, the debut urban fantasy novel by J. A. Pitts and first of a series of three from Tor, and it was a LOT of fun. The the book features left-handed lesbian blacksmith and martial arts expert Sarah Beauhall, who inadvertently reforges a magic sword, befriends a six-foot tall dwarf [...]

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writer’s bookshelf: the tough guide to fantasyland

November 10th, 2009 · No Comments · book review, character development, plot, storytelling

Up this week is The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones. This book has been around since 1996 (first publised in the UK, now available from Penguin the US through their Firebird imprint) and has been justly lauded and reviewed LOTS of places, so I’ll be brief. The Guide is arranged as an [...]

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Just for fun (or if you’re really stuck): the Fantasy Name Generator

May 18th, 2009 · No Comments · character development

If you are really, truly, very bad at naming characters, and you write fantasy fiction, here at last is help: the Fantasy Name Generator. I wish I could think of the author who did this, but I was reading about someone (whose writing I respect and whose invented names generally went well with her characters [...]

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Saving yourself from (your own) stereotyped characters

July 3rd, 2008 · 1 Comment · character development, editing and revising, generating ideas

A few months back, I ran across a huge controversy about The Stolen Word, a short story by Lisa Mantchev, which was published in Fantasy Magazine and immediately came under criticism for its portrayal of “peddlers,” which many readers took to be thinly disguised Roma (aka Gypsies) or Tinkers (a distinct racial group in Ireland [...]

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