Boo #7: "Gnome-Mobbing" (or 'the short tale of too many character arcs'!)

So 'Gnome-Mobbing" might be a bit of a confusing title for this first Boo of 2014 (apologies for missing recording a Boo in January by the way, and, yes, I DID miss January, not February, as I say at the beginning of this Boo!) but I've been busy getting re-organised with "my gnome gnovel"... As you draft a book, I find you need to keep re-organising yourself and keep restating your position in order to keep any writing lethargy setting in, and keep your momentum going... That said, what I've been also working on (and thus where the 'gnome-mobbing' comes in!) is trying to conceive a conclave of character arcs for all the major characters of the book... Put simply, any character, but especially the main character(s) need to have an initial "motivation" to explain their existence as a book opens and then the reader needs to see the character(s) come up against "obstacles" until the final resolution where they've overcome those obstacles, and with a bit of luck, have changed for the better by the book's close. This is the "journey" that the character(s) AND the reader embarks on in any given story...

The book I mention in this Boo that's been particularly helpful to me is Stewart Ferris's 'How to be a Writer' and you can see more on his website here... (his book has examples of character bio sheets):

http://stewartferris.com/books/how-to-be-a-writer/

And the podcasts on creative writing I've been drawing inspiration from recently are the Warwick University audio challenges from David Morley and can be found here:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/writingchallenges/