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Inspiration for your Writing: Getting to know your Characters

Inspiration for your Writing: Getting to know your Characters

Happy Tuesday, I’ve been spending a lot of time writing, re-writing, editing this month. Last week, I had an epiphany which put my writing in perspective. Currently, I am writing a new WIP, Nellie Stockbridge Mystery, and an old work entitled Woman in a Pale Dress – a MS I completed “ages” ago, but was such a mess I threw it in a drawer. While writing on both, at different times during the day, I discovered a startling difference between…

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Nellie Stockbridge – Real Life Character

Nellie Stockbridge – Real Life Character

Works:  Bully of Burke and Nellie Stockbridge Mystery Name: Nellie Stockbridge Born: 1868, Illinois. Died: May 22, 1965, Wallace, ID. In 1898, at age 30, Nellie Stockbridge left her home in Illinois to work with Thomas Barnard at his Wallace, Idaho photography studio. A year after her arrival the area exploded — April 1899 Coeur d’Alene Mining Insurrection — which she and Barnard documented. Over the next decades, working often to exhaustion, Nellie photographed the people and places of one of…

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Does Your Novel have Flavor?

Does Your Novel have Flavor?

If you start with substandard ingredients your broth will be clear and your soup unflavorful and disgusting. You wouldn’t serve cold french fries and stale bread to your in-laws would you? (OK, don’t answer that!) Every stew begins with individual ingredients: stock, veggies, meat, herbs and seasonings, flour for thickening. These ingredients are similar to preparing your story: characters, location, conflict. It is the type of ingredients we choose and how they are combined that determines the quality of final…

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Discovering Depth in My Characters

Discovering Depth in My Characters

I just finished a great 2 hour writing session — 1000 words based on introducing two of sub-characters in my book “Bully of Burke.” I am fascinated by history, and when they state “a picture says a thousands words” it is so true. I have been scouring the photographic records of TN Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge from the Coeur d’Alenes, and with each photo – a new character comes to life. Over 10 years ago I outlined my mining story…

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Alvin Shoestring Wilson: Character (Nellie Stockbridge Mystery)

Alvin Shoestring Wilson: Character (Nellie Stockbridge Mystery)

BACKSTORY: Shoestring Wilson “I am always going to live in Spokane. It’s the best city I was ever in.” Purpose: Developing Characters (from real life) for Nellie Stockbridge MysteryLocation: Spokane, Washington 1900 Accessed Nostalgia Magazine article (February 2021) Born in Illinois in 1861, Alvin L. Wilson worked as an electrician in the cutting edge world of electricity. Electricity and the new technological advances were exciting and new, and Alvin excelled at his profession. When, at the Chicago 1893 fair, he watched President…

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