Character Sketch of a Pirate Hero

by Elva Cobb Martin

Portrait of Pirate Hero Captain Lucas "Bloodstone" Barrett

This is actually Scottish actor Gerard Butler in his role as Attila. 

                Character Sketch

Career: Buccaneer captain/privateer/pirate and new Christian, educated by tutor father

Description models: Gerard Butler, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor, Johnny Depp

Age: 25

Height/hair/coloring: 6' 4" tall,  long dark hair often in plaits; tanned
    by long days in the tropical sun on deck of his ship, the Blue Heron.

Build: lithe, muscular

Eyes: startling green that shoot sparks when angry (like the bloodstone   gem from which he got his nickname)

Strengths: leadership skills, master of the sea and sailing ships, physical prowess, swordsmanship, takes up for underdog, hates slavery, hard worker, determined to live our his new found Christian faith.

Weaknesses: inability to forgive master of his indentured parents and what happened to them, and wanting to wreck revenge on Spain for the Inquisition and his parent's capture.

History: Lucas was born in England of a noble mother who married a tutor and was then disowned by her wealthy family. The family came to Charles Town as indentured servants when Lucas was 10. Their papers were bought by Sir Roger Poole, Sr., who mistreated them. The parents were captured by the Spanish while being sent on a ship to the Poole's sugar plantation in Jamaica. Lucas ran away and joined the British navy and gained much knowledge about sailing and leading men. As the story opens, he has his own merchant ship which he also uses for privateering when it suits him. He has recently been led to the Lord by Rev. Ethan Wentworth and his wife Hannah when they begged passage on his ship from England to Charles Town.

Spiritual
As a new Christian Lucas has battles to fight with his old nature and with forgiveness to those who have wronged him or his parents. He is respected by most of his crew. He will find his faith greatly tested as the story progresses.

Do you have other traits to add to a hero's character sketch? Next time we may take a look at a villain's character sketch.

Thanks for stopping by. Do leave a comment and I hope you'll  share the blog on Twitter and FB, if you liked it.

Elva Cobb Martin

Detailed Character Sketch for Travay Allston

by Elva Cobb Martin @elvacobbmartin

If you read my previous blog, you will know that last week I sent in my requested full manuscript, In a Pirate's Debt, to a publishing house. Today I want to begin sharing how I prepared to write this inspirational historical novel. It finished out at 74,000 words.

In preparation to plot In a Pirate's Debt, I wrote out a detailed character sketch of my heroine and hero. Here is the sketch I completed for my heroine, Travay Allston, age 17.

First, I found a photo I liked. It's a lot easier to fill in characteristics while looking at a photo. I found this on the internet, I think for hair color ads, and I don't actually know the model's name.

Travay Allston, heroine, In a Pirate's Debt

Character Sketch

Physical and Emotional Attributes: 

Golden auburn hair, blue eyes, full lips, flawless ivory complexion, feminine, a smile that lights up a room.
Medium height - five foot seven inches, slender but well endowed (Olivia de Havilland, Maureen O'Hara)
Age: 17
Educated, able horsewoman, can do needlework, knows how to run a large house.
Fiery, proud, independent spirit, quick temper, quick to judge and jump to conclusions but also has determination, courage, and tenacity.

History

Born In Charles Town on a rice plantation to wealthy parents, Travay takes riches and position for granted and is proud. Governesses and her mother taught her how to be an accomplished, aristocratic young woman. A boy from the Poole's neighboring plantation, Lucas Barrett, the son of indentured parents, was her frequent childhood play mate whom she often got into trouble. He later ran away to sea. When she was 10 her planter father was killed by pirates coming back from a trip to England. When Travay was 12 her mother remarried a deceitful charmer and gambler, Karston Reed. He lost the Charles Town rice plantation in a game and moved Travea and her mother to their sugar plantation in Jamaica. He is cruel, heartless and greedy and Travay's mother dies an early death when Travay is 17. Her stepfather loses the sugar plantation and Travay's hand in marriage to Sir Roger Poole. The story opens with the scene of Travay running away to escape this terrible fate. 

Spiritual:
As a result of the bad things that have happened in her life, Travay has lost most of her mother's Anglican faith. She thinks she can go it alone without God (but God is waiting for her to turn to Him). 

Negative Traits: 
Travay is quick to judge and jump to conclusions. She extends little mercy to anyone, especially a confessed pirate who tries to make excuses for his pirating by calling himself a privateer. Through the course of the story, she discovers her own need of mercy and how to extend it lovingly to others.

Values: 
Travay values a good name, wealth, heritage,compassion and determination.

Goal: to escape a forced marriage and win the love of a good man, find security and regain her lost estates.

Epiphany (a sudden intuitive leap of understanding). 
Travay will come to see her pride and spoiled attitude as wrong and become humbled by her love for Lucas, whom she rediscovers as the pirate Captain Lucas Bloodstone Barrett. During the crisis of his arrest and sentencing to hang, Travay comes to a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. She determines to save Lucas from the hangman's noose, no matter what it costs her, and repay a debt she owes him for his earlier rescues.

Do you have other ideas to add to a character sketch? Next time we will look at my hero's character sketch, Captain Lucas Bloodstone Barrett.

Thanks for stopping by! Do leave a comment and share the blog, if you enjoyed it, on Twitter and FB.

Elva Cobb Martin

Before You Hit the Send Button to an Editor

by Elva Cobb Martin @elvacobbmartin 

At the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers' Conference in May I received a request for a full manuscript after pitching my inspirational historical romance, In a Pirate's Debt, to an editor.

I am so glad I had the forethought to tell her that I'd have it to her by June 5 instead of immediately. I wanted to troll back through it ONE more time. Actually, I've just gone through it two more times. I feel like I've backstroked across the Caribbean!

Here are some things I looked at carefully, besides misspelled words, grammar and punctuation:

1) The first and last pages - for hook and HEA ending with hint of Book 2

2) Deep POV: I didn't want to use she "heard, thought         wondered, felt" (Just  give the thing heard, thought, felt)
      Ex. She heard the boy call him Captain.
            The boy called him Captain.
      Ex. She wondered who he really was.
            Who was Captain Lucas Bloodstone Barrett?

3) Ellipses: space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space (four spaces,         3 dots) And do not use many ellipses!
       "But . . . Arundel!"
       "Are you hurt? Did he . . .?" 

4) Keep all dialog, action, action beats, thoughts of each character in the same paragraph unless interrupted by other speaker.

5) Avoid ing verb forms and over use of prepositional phrases.
    Ex. He must pursue his goal of finding out about his mother.
     He must pursue his goal. He would find out what happened.

6) Use contractions in dialog and thoughts to make them flow.

7) Watch for POV slips.

8) Watch for telling!

9) NOTE: To use Find and Replace to change the spelling of a name throughout the ms, be sure to put a space before and after both words in the Find slot and the Replace slot. Otherwise, words with the same letters will be skewed up. Example: I had to change Captain Ned Lowe to "Low." I did not put the spaces in and all the words in my ms with "low" in them (slowed, followed) got messed up.Whew. ( :

10) Last, I did an msword spelling and grammar check and it caught some things I had missed in spite of everything. ( :

Finally, I hit the send button and knew how baby Moses' mother felt when she sent him off in that basket.

Do you have some other items you always check when editing your novel?  Please leave a comment.

Thanks for stopping by.

Elva Cobb Martin

Blue Ridge Writing Conference

by Elva Cobb Martin

Today I am heading to the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers' Conference at Ridgecrest N.C. From the line up it looks like Alton Gansky and Edie Melson have done an excellent job bringing together the 2015 conference. Thanks, Alton and Edie! I am praying for you today and all the talented faculty who are probably stashing great handouts, breath mints and water bottles in their carry alls along about now. (:

Yes, it's an expenditure to go to this we have to plan for, but hopefully, it will bring forth some blessings. How about an agent contract? And every editor I am pitching to gushing over my package and asking for more? This expenditure also, I hope, confirms how serious I am about my writing. It takes a huge investment of time and some money to write successfully, I am finding out.

If you are not going to the conference, all is not lost. Their web site has a ton of great articles from the speakers to bless you and help lift you to the next level.

This year I have really put Edie Melson's "Notebook" idea into practice. I will carry this notebook in my tote bag everywhere I go. It's a 2-inch binder with sections for "pitch packages" for each of my three books that I will hand to agents and editors. There is a response sheet for my notes for each agent and editor I am pitching to as well as a list of the classes they are teaching stapled behind that. My pitch "package" is actually three sheets stapled together:

1)  A Cover Sheet giving fast pertinent info about the book (title, genre, completed word count), my social media addresses and home address, phone number, email, etc. and a 100-word bio and photo below that.  

2) The FIRST PAGE of my novel (don't they really just want to know if you can WRITE?)

3)  A One Sheet with pitch, back cover copy, brief synopsis, marketing ideas, endorser possibilities, market comparisons and my contact info,photo and one photo related to the novel. Boy, my One Sheets are stacked!

If you are coming, I hope to see you at the conference. If not, keep tuned to my blog. I will be sharing the highlights of what happened.

If you would like copies of my cover sheets and One Sheet. Send me an email at elvacmartin@gmail.com

Thanks so much for stopping by! Do leave a comment and tweet this if you think it will help others.

Elva Cobb Martin

Write Small - Five Ways to Make a Reader Care - Guest post

 Hope you enjoy this guest post by Mia Botha today! --Elva Cobb Martin

Guest Post by Mia Botha:

I have found my new all-time, favorite writing advice:

'The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.' ~Richard Price

I love this quote. You may have come across it before, but I saw it on Pinterest last week and I have been staring at it since. Think of the best stories - you always remember the small details.

Often, when I teach, I listen to students talking of the great stories they want to write. They want to write about wars where hundreds of lives are lost, marriages that end in divorce, the loss of a child or a horrible parent. All big issues. All great topics.

But when do I, as the reader, start caring?

• I care when I meet the soldier, scared out of his wits, hiding in the trench, trying to light a soggy cigarette, wishing he could see his girlfriend just one more time. 
• I care when he throws away the cigarette and kisses her photo before climbing out of the trench to face the enemy.
• I care when I learn that the little girl who died liked drawing purple unicorns and that she drew a new one every day she spent in hospital. I cry when her mother takes them down. I cry because there are 42 pictures and I cry because there will never be 43.

How do I write small?

1.      Create a character: How do I get to the kid’s burnt socks? I create a mother or a soldier who walks down the road and comes across them. Think of Saving Private Ryan; Private Ryan was only one soldier, but because they singled him out, he made us aware that all soldiers have families, mothers, and fathers. They are not nameless, faceless, camo-wearing, gun toting soldiers anymore. They are all someone’s son.

2.      Give that character a concrete goal: If it is a war story, then yes, the character wants to survive. But try to give them a simpler goal in the midst of the survival. Maybe, to fulfil his mother’s dying wish or in the case of The Book Thief, all Liesel wanted was a book to read. Even though a war is raging, everyday life continues.   

3.      Write with the senses: Burnt socks? You can smell them right now, right? Gunshots? You can hear the bang, bang, bang. Purple unicorns? You can see them. You can see the round shapes left by the Prestik on the glass doors of the ICU as the mother pulls down her little girl’s pictures for the last time.

4.      Find your theme: War and Death of a loved one might be too generic. Consider them ideas and they are good places to start. Work hard to make your theme specific. The farther along you get in your story the more you will be able to identify the theme. This will help you pick out the details you want to highlight.

5.      Symbolism: Once you have made your way through a draft identify scenes where you can repeat symbols. Burnt socks? Maybe give me the moment when the little boy got them. They were blue and yellow and had Batman on them. Just like his big brothers.  

Write small about the big things. Make your reader care.

Happy writing.   

If you want to learn how to write a book send an email to  news@writerswrite.co.za for more information.

  by Mia Botha

Mia Botha facilitates for Writers Write. She is also a novelist, a ghost writer, and the winner of the Mills&Boon Voice of Africa Competition. When she isn’t writing, she is the mother of two children and the wife of a very lucky man. Follow Mia on Pinterest  and Facebook and  Tumblr  and  Twitter.

Plotstorming a Novel

by Elva Cobb Martin

Cheryl Wyatt shocked me in a blog some time ago when she said she tended to write a rough draft of a novel in a week. And I want to give her credit for some of her ideas I am going to share. She writes action-romance.

How does she do it? She does a lot of prep work she calls plotstorming before she starts writing the rough draft.This includes doing Character Charts first on the main characters. (For her it also includes cooking and freezing a week's worth of meals for her family during her Weeklong Rough Draft Writing Spree).

Then comes her Plotstorm List: 

The Cute Meet: How will the heroine/hero meet?
The Draw and the Push: What plot element will keep drawing the two together and what conflict will be prying them apart?

Hero and Heroine's Story Goals
Hero and Heroine's Motivation
Hero and Heroine's Conflict: External, Internal, Spiritual, Relational
Story Setting
Inciting Incident: The chaos, disaster, dilemma, or change that opens        the story and becomes Scene 1/opening hook.
Relationship Reticence - hero
Relationship Reticence - heroine

1st Major Disaster
2nd Major Disaster
3rd Major Disaster aka Black Moment

Important Ancillary character: important character, other than hero or heroine, who is most central/important to the plot.

Basic Premise: A one-sentence summary or paragraph blurb of the basic story idea.

Scene Index Skeleton: (Not a chapter chart). One-liner plot points describing what goes into each major scene. (Normally, she has three scenes per chapter and around 20 chapters, so that's 60 scenes).

The Resolution:

In a romance she always know the H/H will get together in the end. 

Once Cheryl has all the above decided, she's ready to write her first draft in a week. 

What about you? Can you use some of these ideas to jumpstart your next novel. I did to write my second novel and it does work.

Please leave a comment and get ready to plot storm your next novel.

Elva Cobb Martin

45 Ways to Avoid Using the Word "Very" --Guest Post

Guest Post by Amanda Patterson

Have you had to work at eliminating the word "very" in your writing? I have and this chart by Amanda Patterson has been a godsend.  Print it out. It's a keeper, especially during the editing process.

Amanda Patterson has a great blog you can follow at Posthaven Posts or email her at  news@writerswrite.co.za

Do leave a comment if you find this post helpful and share on twitter and facebook.

Hope you are blessed anew in this Resurrection week!

Elva Cobb Martin