These questions can be answered in different ways. You may like to conduct written, or even tape-recorded, interviews with your characters. You can also take these questions as prompts and write a scene or two to flesh out your understanding of your characters. At the very least, this provides background information to help understand how a character will act in different circumstances, and at times the information uncovered through this preparation work can become a crucial part of the story.

The best questions to ask about your characters are ones that will take you away from the predictable paths of family, schooling and employment, so that when you return to their everyday world, you find it enriched by the knowledge you have gained. Here are five of my favorites to ask:

1. What keeps your protagonist awake at night?
2. What is in their purse, wallet or desk drawer?
3. What is their biggest fear and, crucially, why?
4. What did they dream last night?
5. What is their favorite food and what is the one thing they would starve rather than touch?

If you find prompts like these helpful, Peter Elbow has a very extensive list in his guide Writing With Power. Kate Walker also has an excellent selection in her Twelve Point Guide to Writing Romance.

However, there is no need to turn to expensive writing guides. You can easily collect a wealth of questions in everyday life, from sources like TV chat shows and celebrity interviews in newspapers and magazines. While you are at it, why not imagine how your hero or heroine’s story would be presented on Jeremy Kyle or Oprah? Thinking of their responses to the host’s questions will provide an insight into your character’s reactions to a challenging situation, while considering how the show would headline the interview highlights the aspects of their story likely to intrigue your readers the most.

READ: You cannot be a writer if you do not read. And by that I mean voraciously. It is the one true way to learn how it is done. My own opinion is that if you do not love reading, why on earth would you want to write?

LEARN: You can do this by reading as many books as possible in the genre you want to write in. You can do online courses through certain colleges and universities. You can read books on writing (and there are tons). There are also writing magazines in both North America and abroad that are very good. Read with the intention of learning. Take notes, journal about what you have learned.

FEEDBACK: reading and learning are part of it; but to take it to the next level you need to travel with a pack of writers. You need other writers to read your work in order to make it better. Your mother and your best friend do not count.

For instance, when you start out as a nurse in a hospital, you are finished with reading the nursing textbooks, taking tests and learning. Now you are doing it. And on the floor, they will buddy you up with another nurse for the first six weeks to show you how it is actually done. Not your mother or your best friend. Another nurse. Same for writing: you need to be in contact with other writers and it really helps if some of them are published. You can join a local writers’ group or hook up with a writer in residence program — all can be found online.

WRITE: Practice does indeed make perfect. You cannot be a writer if you are not writing regularly. And surprisingly, your writing does get better with time. Just go back and read something you wrote five years ago. Or just two. What you thought was perfect at the time will now appear riddled with rookie mistakes.

If you are serious about writing, it does not necessarily have to cost a fortune or require a specific degree; you can be self-taught and successful.

This thing we do, writing, what’s with that? Do you understand it? I don’t. Not the compulsion to write down every thought, not the running commentary in my head, not the characters I have neglected over the years who refuse to go away, not the jealousy I feel when I read something I wish I had written.

What drives us to write when recognition and rewards are few? You might call it The Writing Thing.

Another common question is, “What is a writer?” That one is followed closely by, “Am I one?” Some people are fluid at turning out pages; some people struggle to tap the well. We all, though, engage in this writing thing by showing up at the page.

Many years ago I was at a writer’s conference. John Updike began his keynote speech, “How many here want to be writers?” We all raised our hands. “You’ve all failed,” he said. “The real writers are home writing.”

He was funny, but he was wrong. Writers needs writers. The first thing about this writing thing is that the game comes with doubts and uncertainties. Most of us have no one but each other to say to us, “Yes, you are a writer.”

Let us do that for each other. I do not mean chat away in your daily check-ins; I mean hold it in your hearts that we are in this writing thing together and we are all deserving of the title writer.

Welcome to This Writing Thing. I look forward to the adventures ahead.

• Make an appointment with a librarian. Some libraries will let you do this online. In the main library system, you can usually walk in off the street and have a librarian at your side, but with your smaller local library, that may not be the case, especially if there is only one person manning the desk. Making an appointment literally guarantees having an assistant for an hour.
• Be prepared. Know ahead of time exactly what it is you are researching. Going in blindly with a vague, nebulous idea will be just an exercise in frustration and a big waste of time for both you and the librarian. Be as specific as possible about the topic that you want to research. At the same time, be open-minded; one topic might go off into a topic that you had not considered.
• Use the main library of your county, if you possibly can. Their volume of resource is much greater. If not, your local library can get whatever you need on inter-library loan; you might just have to wait a few days for it.
• Make a note of all references used. For two reasons, to give credit where credit is due and in case you have to go back and look at the original source again.
• Try to go during an off-peak time if possible. Tuesday morning might be better than say a weekend or an evening.
• Plan for more than one visit if the need arises.

However you decide to use the library, rest assured that it will not only be a treasure trove of facts for your WIP but will add credence to the edict: write what you know.

I admire Jim Steinman’s lyrics as much as Meat Loaf’s performances, so I was excited to find the songs interspersed with short interviews with Meat Loaf, Steinman and others. During one of these, Meat Loaf made a remark about why he thought his songs had outlasted and outsold so many others of their era. It was, he said, down to the genuine passion which he and Jim brought to expressing their feelings about life and love through music. He thought audiences heard that passion and responded to it.
Something clicked in my head when he said that.

Passion is not just for song writers. It is not just for romance writers. It is for all writers. Our detectives need a passion for solving crimes; one that drives them to risk life and limb, their safety and their relationships to get that one last collar. Our sporting heroes need the passion to keep coming back from behind, so that our readers can believe in the final underdog-comes-good scene.

More than anything, our heroes and heroines need passion for each other, so that when we wrap up that final romance plot, or sub-plot, the reader sighs with satisfaction that FINALLY the world sees the depth of feeling in the characters that our perceptive reader has always known is there.

A writing tutor once told me that all good stories are love stories, and that interview with Meat Loaf gave me a deeper understanding of what she meant. Take a look at your favourite book, or at the story you have just written. Can you feel the passion? If you can, it is a pretty good bet that your readers will too.

I spoke to a lovely librarian named Kathy from the eBranch system of the Buffalo-Niagara county library system and these were some of the things she had to offer about using a librarian to help do research for your work-in-progress (WIP). Please note, it will be the patron (that’s you buttercup) and not the librarian who does the research. They do not do the research for you and hand it to you gift-wrapped. They will show you how to do proper research; their role is almost a semi-teaching capacity.

Here are some of the things a librarian could help you with:

• learning all the different topical points of your research field
• how to be analytical in your research and putting the patron in touch with original sources to review wherever possible
• show the patron how to be cautious with sources whether those sources are hard copy or digital and how to investigate them to determine if they are a primary reliable resource.
• pinpoint resources that may not be immediately available to the patron as well as gather materials from other libraries including academic ones

The librarian will be there step by step to assist, guide and suggest, but most of all they will teach the patron how to do research themselves. As she so aptly put it: “We don’t give them the fish, we teach them how to fish.”

Here are some things that are necessary for a writer’s space:

• Desk or table and chair (obviously) must be comfortable, because the muse will exit right centre if you are thinking about your aching back.
• Desktop or laptop computer.
• Pen and paper–for taking down notes as you go along or writing your first draft in longhand–yes, some of us still do.
• A dictionary, thesaurus, and elements of style are necessary requirements. I do not think that you can be a proper writer without them.
• Bum glue to keep your butt in the chair and get the writing done.

The following are optional:

• A great view that inspires but does not distract.
• Favorite quotes or personal photos to motivate you.
• Music to inspire or relax. You can even create a playlist for each work-in-progress, which is not only a lot of fun, but sets the tone for your writing.
• Writing reference books for a quick look to see how it is done.

But most of all, your writing space should be comfortable, individual to you as a writer and the place where you sit down with the muse.

What are some of the things you would like to have in your dream writing space?

When I am reading certain books to learn more about the craft of writing, I look for certain things.

First, if it is a best-seller, I try to tease out all the relevant points that I thought made it a bestseller and why. I may even list them (I love lists). I might ask myself how they revealed things about the main character (MC) that made them sympathetic or made me care about them enough to keep turning the pages. I also look at the flip side as well: what was it about the MC that turned me off to the point that I did not bother even finishing the book.

I may pay extra attention to areas that I consider myself weak in: such as pacing of suspense or handling multiple points of view (POV). Another area that I can tend to struggle in is verb tense. What is the tense employed and how effective is it? What kind of hooks are used? How do they keep the secondary characters secondary and prevent them from stealing the show? How do they pare down description and monologue so that it is seamless and not chunky and bogging down the whole story? How is the dialogue realistic and not stilted?

Most importantly, how did they make their MC evolve from beginning to end and what about the plot? Does it work? Is it enough to move the story forward?

The next time you pick up a book to read, enjoy it by all means, but read it through your eyes as a writer.

Five Places to Go for Research

The internet can lead you to all sorts of sites that will help you research your subject as well as lead you onto other paths that you had not thought about before. But buyer beware: you will need to verify anything you find on the internet as some of it can be dubious.

The library is a great source as well. I love the library–it is such a great concept–reading available to everyone for free! Librarians are there to help and can be a great asset when doing research. They really are unsung heroes but that is a post for a different day.

If it is possible, go to the actual place of your novel’s setting. Whether it is downtown Toronto or the Cornwall coast in England, nothing will help you describe your setting better than by actually experiencing it and discovering its history. (If travel is definitely out then I refer you to number one — travel blogs can be an amazing resource.)

Interviews. Say you are writing a book about the experiences of a WWII veteran, after reading a few books about them, try to find someone you can interview. Unfortunately, the years are passing and there are not many left. Or you can talk to the daughter of a vet and ask how his experiences affected his homecoming. Writing about a medieval knight? Ring your local university and have them direct you to the nearest expert. Think outside the box.

Take a class to learn more about your subject. Perhaps your main character is a stained glass artist–and the only thing you know about stained glass is what you see in your church’s windows. Find a class teaching that craft and immerse yourself in it.

And then there is the research of your subject through books, DVDS and newspaper articles.

There are lots of ways to do research and not only will you learn something that you did not know before, but it can be quite fun as well. By the time you have finished doing your research, you will know what you are writing about.

Granted it is still difficult to get published in the traditional way–that unfortunately has not changed. What has changed is the writer’s accessibility to the industry itself.

• When I started writing as a teenager – many moons ago – I used an electric Smith-Corona typewriter. And a lot of white-out. And a lot of paper. Now the laptop does the heavy lifting. Made a mistake? No problem, just hit the “delete” key. Need to replace a word in the text? Fine. Use the “find and replace” under your “edit” menu on your Word document.
• Most agents and publishers are paperless these days too. Everything is done by email. So your manuscript arrives instantly at an agent’s office. No more spending tons of money on postage or special envelopes. SASE? What’s that?
• Social media. Nothing gets the word out faster than the internet. Now writers have more control over their own PR using Facebook, Twitter and blogging. Whoever heard of these things fifteen years ago?
• The Kindle. If all the other reasons are baby steps, this one thing was a giant leap for mankind. It revolutionized the publishing industry in the same way that the printing press changed the world all those years ago. Because of it, even the way we read- with a physical book in our hands has changed. E-publishing is accessible to all writers. Anyone can publish a book today.
• Again, the internet. The writer’s world is now global. You are not limited to the writing group at your local library. You can live in an igloo in the back of beyond and as long as you have an internet connection, you can belong to any writer’s group or forum anywhere in the world.

Whether you think all of this is good or bad, the internet has had a profound effect on just about everything. Aren’t we lucky to be front and center while history is being made?