Skip to main content

An Author's Guide to Playtime (Where Grace gets very dark)



Here is a guide for all authors about how they can have fun when playing with their toys. 😇
Stage One
First of all, you need to make your reader fall in love with your characters. This can be achieved by:
  • The character having an awesome personality. e.g. Halt (Ranger’s Apprentice), Glory (Wings of Fire), Percy (Percy Jackson), Connor (The Land of Stories)
  • Making your character relatable. e.g. Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), August (Wonder)
  • The character having gone through a lot so the reader can sympathize with them. e.g. Felix Salinger (Once, Then, Now, After), Newt (The Maze Runner), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)
  • A plot twist shining a new light on your character, causing the readers to fall for them. e.g. Severus Snape (Harry Potter), Evly (The Land of Stories)

Stage Two
This is the time when you wound your victim (cough, cough, I, of course, mean the character, not the reader at all...). Mwahahahaha!
Now, there are several ways to break your readers' hearts. Some are:
  • Kill your characters! Be careful to kill the ones they love, avoid the annoying characters at all costs.
  • Wound your characters’ hearts beyond repair!
  • Bomb down your ships! The ones everyone love, of course.
One thing you should always remember, though, is that you should never go destroying too much. Even though causing havoc in book worlds is not yet illegal, you do not want to turn your readers off your book from too much grief. If that happens, you will have no victims to have fun with! So, always keep your readers on the edge of overwhelming grief and loving your book.

I do have a little secret for you… shhhh… keep very quiet… we do not want readers knowing our secret to our great success… here it is… drum roll.... You can destroy everything at the end of your book/series! What’s the point of leaving your readers with a happy ending when you can haunt them FOREVER? Or, even better, it all was not real! It was just a dream. Yes, villainous authors, we can use cliché endings to destroy hearts forever! Now go out into the world, my little friends, and write your heart breaking books.

Hope you feel inspired,
Grace

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ostrich short story

She holds her elegant neck high above the masses which she saunters through. Like a diva at a show she flaunts her plumes, casts a wary eye about for rivals, and turns up her nose at her drab brown and cream comrades.  Behold, an animal of distinction and refinement. Here is the ostrich, queen of the winged kingdom. Around her, antelope bow their heads in shame, cringing at their inferiority. Where she steps the grass seems to wither in embarrassment. Even the sun seems reluctant to disgrace her chestnut and ivory feathers. Stop. Look around. Sour musk lines the brisk breeze. She lowers the foot which was held aloft a moment ago, her previously serene expression now one of incandescent disapproval. The antelope prick up their ears. A glimpse of golden pelt in the grass and an explosion of hooves signifies the beginning of the chase. She runs like a demon, head pointed forward and wings outstretched. Long legs kick up turf, spraying it into the streak of gold fur b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palaces and Purposes - A Short Story

I wrote this for school when I was almost 16 and I think the fact that I still like it speaks to some degree of quality. I hope you enjoy it, too. It's got a very different feel to my novel, so it was nice to have some variation while writing it. Palaces and Purposes With shallow breaths and bare feet unmoving on the marble floor, I gazed at the dais. What were they? Strange contraptions, some made of wood, with strings running parallel down the middle, across large holes. Others were all of metal and seemed to be twisted into knots. Still others seemed to be nothing more than smooth sticks with evenly placed holes down their lengths. All were relatively small and looked lightweight. What kind of crazy country had I come to that a platform in such a vast, opulent hall, beautiful beyond any of my imaginings, was home to simple wooden chairs and these objects of no conceivable use? All my instincts, trained and honed by months of unnoticed thievery and silent spying, scr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cool Words. Because Why Not?

- Jo - This should come as no surprise to you: I like words. They're useful things on the whole and almost all of them have or have had huge value. However, I am of the opinion that all words are not created equal. Some of them are useful and boring, while others are more fun than a dozen more combined. Now, I don't know if you do this, but I find myself often interrupting myself to remark on my admiration for a particular word that had come up in conversation. Unfortunately, the reasons for this love are as varied as they are arbitrary, so there's no telling which word will next catch my fancy. And you never know, some of these might actually come in handy to you, too. Still, it's important to note that this is by no means a comprehensive list. Gelatinous - I was in the car on the way to church some weeks back and I had a question sloshing around in my head: "Are there words in English that have all five vowels? Surely, right? So, how many of ...
Post a Comment
Read more