Creative Writing Tips: Story and Characters

In this installment of Creative Writing Tips, I will be going over story and character development. There is not necessarily a right or wrong way to develop a story or character, but there are many ways to go about it. Each way can depend on your style of writing, and any can be used effectively. They will depend on how structured you want the process to be essentially.

Military Novels Revised

I finished reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien and started reading Shadows of Blue and Gray by Ambrose Bierce. Common criticisms for The Things They Carried is that it is written in such a way that the characters feel real, even though O'Brien has said the stories are made up. From that point of view, it could be true, but when looked at from the point of view that the stories are not real, the book itself is sub-par.

Social Commentary Rolled Up Into One Word

To understand this one word, it is important to know in what context it is, and what the entire meaning is. Our culture has a love/hate relationship with the human body, and the breasts in particular. It is flaunted everywhere, yet scorned and censored in movies and TV. There is very little reasoning behind it other than the well being of children. It is also ironic that once a child is weened off the mother's milk, the means in which it is given instantly becomes taboo.