"Holly Lisle - Mugging The Muse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

тАв Know your expectations.
If this is the first book you've ever written, give yourself a little slack. Nice
as it is to imagine that you're going to get a million-dollar advance, a movie
deal from Steven Spielberg, and foreign sales in every language known to
humankind, the odds are against this happening. First advances generally
float in the $2,000-$5,000 dollar range, and most first novels sink without so
much as leaving an oil slick on the water to mark their passing.
While having high hopes can keep you going, having high expectations can
paralyze you. After all, if you demand of yourself that you write the Great
American Novel your first time out, every time you try to type a word on the
page, your mental editor is going to say тАЬNo Great American Novel ever
included that word.тАЭ And you'll never get beyond the first thirty pages.
Give yourself room to learn, and to make mistakes.


If you do this ground work before you sit down at the keyboard and type тАЬChapter
One,тАЭ you'll stand a much better chance of getting to тАЬThe End.тАЭ And the coolest
thing about starting a novel is having justified confidence that you're going to
eventually finish it.




HOLLY LISLE
 MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 35




How to Create a Character
No matter what sort of fiction you're writing, you're going to have to populate your
story with characters, and a lot of them, if not all of them, you're going to have to
create from scratch. Unfortunately тАУ or maybe fortunately тАУ there is no Betty Crocker
Instant Character-In-A-Can that you can mix with water and pop into the oven for
twenty minutes. There aren't any quick and easy recipes, and I don't have one either,
but I do have some things that have worked for me when creating my characters, and
some things that haven't. You may find my experiences useful. For what they're
worth, here are my Do's and Don'ts.
тАв Character Creation Do's and Don'ts

DonтАЩt start your character off with a name or a physical description.
I know this doesn't seem logical at first glance тАУ after all, you name a baby before you
get to know him very well. Why wouldn't you give your character a name and blue
eyes before you find out anything else about him?
There are a couple of reasons. The first is that you have a lot of preconceived ideas
about names and body types. Perhaps every Charlie you ever knew was a great guy,
while every Barry you knew was an idiot. So when you decide to name your
protagonist Charlie before you really get to meet him, he is automatically going to
carry along a lot of baggage that you probably aren't even going to be aware of тАУ but