Authors: Do you Know your Top Strengths…

Have you ever heard of the VIA Institute on Character? If you go to their website, they ask if you want to do a free survey to find out what your top strengths are, and how you can apply them in your life. Character Strengths are the positive parts of your personality that impact how you think, feel, and behave. So, me being the consummate learner, I decided to take the survey. You have to create an account just to take the survey, then you can unsubscribe if you wish. Of course, if you want more information about your strengths, you can pay for the certain packages, but I declined. I was more curious on what this survey—which takes about ten minutes to complete—would reveal. They give you three categories: your tops strengths, middle strengths, and lesser strengths. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to share my top strengths with you.

Drum roll please. My number top strengths are…

Honesty (flagged under Courage): Speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions.

Kindness (flagged under Humanity): Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them.

Humor (flagged under Transcendence): Liking to laugh and tease; bringing smiles to other people; seeing the light side; making (not necessarily telling) jokes.

Spirituality (flagged under Transcendence): Having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe; knowing where one fits within the larger scope of life.

Gratitude (flagged under Transcendence): Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks.

Wow. I was impressed! Especially with all those transcendence flags. I actually checked in the mirror to see if I had wings. LOL! Having no expectations, it was a fun survey to do, and I’d have to admit quite eye-opening. So, how can I put these strengths to good use in my author life, I wondered? Since our characters stem from our imagination, and are part of our psyche, it would make sense to pass along one or a few of these strengths along to your characters. I noticed that I’ve done this in the past with most of my characters. Guess you really write what you know! I’ve done this through showing, rather than telling. A gesture. An act. A dialogue with another character. Bringing out your character’s strengths can help you connect to your audience all the more. It’s like part of your authentic self is tucked into your character’s pocket or up a sleeve.

This technique can work well with animals too, if you choose to include them in your book like I did
with Lost and Found. Each shelter animal had their own personality and strengths to add into the story mix, and made them so relatable. If you’re thinking about doing this survey, then also include your middle or lesser strengths to make your characters all the more believable and yes, even flawed. Funny, my last lesser strength (there’s a total of 24 altogether) was Leadership (flagged under Justice). Makes sense since I’m a writer, and used to working alone.

Ready to take the survey? Have I piqued your interest? Give it a go if you dare. You just might learn something about you, and the characters you create. Comment and let me know if you’ve taken or would like to take the VIA survey. Would love to read your comments. Cheers and thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I appreciate you! 

Resonating with your Readers…

Note to readers: Originally posted on Lisa Orchard’s blog.

If you write it, readers will come. Or so you thought. But what if your readers don’t come? Worse yet, what if they can’t find you in an ocean of authors begging and bartering for attention? Writing is hard work. The business of writing is even harder work. So how DO you RESONATE with your READERS? I think the key here is that you have to RESONATE with YOURSELF first. Think the Law of Attraction: like attracts like, and you’ll know what I mean. You attract what you want (or don’t want) through your thoughts and feelings to create your life circumstances.

Let’s start by defining the word resonate:

Resonate: to be resonant; resound. To produce resonance.

Hmmm…let’s look up resonant and resonance:

Resonant: resounding or reechoing. Increasing the intensity of sounds by sympathetic vibration. Full of, characterized by, or intensified by resonance.

Okay, then. Sit tight. I narrowed down the next definition to reflect this post specifically for writers:

Resonance: an underlying or pervasive quality or a particular type, especially in a work of art or literature.

And just for fun, here’s what my thesaurus says about the verb resonate: echo, reverberate, resound, ring, vibrate, boom, have far-reaching effects, impact, have deep consequences.

 

Now we’re getting somewhere! In order for authors to build a readership, they have to LOVE what they write. They have to be passionate about what they’re writing. Don’t do it for the money, that affair won’t last. You’ll run out of steam before you even get out of the station. Remember Amanda Hocking? She was deemed an overnight success with her paranormal romance books. Um. Yeah. No such thing as an overnight success. That girl had a tough day job, then came home, did what she loved to do (wrote and published books), and sold over a million copies of her ebooks. Amanda is considered one of the exemplars of self-publishing success in the digital age. Her books also resonated with readers because of the genre made popular by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight explosion. Boom!

Here’s the BIG question: Who are you writing for? If you answered ‘ME’, that’s a step in the right direction to create resonance with readers. Write what you want to read, what makes your heart sing and vibrate (resonate) to a different beat. There’s an old saying, ‘Do what you love and the money will come.’ It certainly came for Amanda Hocking. And it will come for you too. As long as you permeate the publishing world with books written from your heart.

What genre do you love to read? Are you writing what you love? Or are you writing what’s popular or trending at the moment? Would love to read your comments! Cheers!

When Characters Must Die…

My hubby and I have an ongoing joke. When a character is killed off or leaves a TV show, we call it a contract dispute. For example, the character of Lance Sweets from the show Bones was killed in the Season 10 opener. Boy that was a shocker! Other major characters have left or met their demise on other popular shows such as NCIS and CSI. The most recent contract dispute falls in the lap of Doctor Derek Shepherd who went out with a bang (literally) when his car gets T-boned by a truck, and he hangs on for dear life for at least a couple more episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. A sad day indeed. Sniff.

The exit of these characters got me thinking. When is it the right time to kill or remove a character from an ongoing book series? Is it when the character stops meeting the readers’ needs and expectations? Do the characters become boring? Stop growing? Refuse to change? Perhaps. I guess the best sounding board would be the readers. Listening to them on the social media or reading the reviews they post. Are they sick of Character X? Does Character Y make them want to vomit? Or do readers even relate to Character Z? Mind you, I’m not sure killing a character off would have the same effect in sales as it does for TV ratings, but you never know until you try. Bahaha…

However, if you kill the wrong character you’ll have blood on your hands and angry readers. Case in point—when Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes by sending him over a waterfall with his arch enemy Professor Moriarty in tow, it wasn’t pretty. I mean for Sir Arthur, and the readers demanded satisfaction. Seriously? What was he thinking? Note to self: don’t piss your fans off!

In my time travel series, The Last Timekeepers, I’ve seriously thought about replacing certain characters to freshen up the series as it progresses, although nothing is written in stone yet. Readers are continually looking for new and improved characters to keep them invested in any series. That’s the reason why TV shows keep introducing new characters into a series. Even J.K. Rowling added new characters (and killed off a bunch) throughout her Harry Potter series.

So my question is: when must a character die or leave? I’m guessing there are so many answers to that question, but the reason I’d off one of my characters is when there’s no more room for character development or growth. That’s what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attempted to do when he killed off Sherlock Holmes—he tied up all the loose ends and made sure Holmes lived a full life. Unfortunately, Doyle underestimated his readers, even though he wanted to cash out and move on to writing other books. And to this day, Sherlock Holmes has survived his creator, and duped death. Now that’s one loved character!

Thank you for reading my blog! So, what characters would you like to see killed/removed from your favorite book series? Love to hear your answers! Cheers!