Create A Clinic Review

Holly Lisle's Create A Character Clinic is a very valuable resource for the fiction writer. Her exercises flesh out the characters and story in amazing ways.

I decided to use it to create the main character for a newly formed novel idea. This idea was very small. I only knew my inspiration -- how the world of online gaming connects people together -- but no idea of how to pull it off.

Through Holly's techniques, I found my character. And a load of surprises. Instead of a male character, as I imagined in my preliminary idea, my character turned out to be a young female in her twenties named Muriel. Also, instead of owning just one or two of the possible life and personality traits from my list of inspirations, she has nearly all of them now.

How could I possibly show a character with so much going on? At first, I balked when she developed so many traits. This was stepping out of my comfort zone with characterization. Holly's exercises and techniques not only show me how a character could work with so much going on, but also how the story itself could evolve out of those traits. I now have pieces of the beginning, middle, and end of my novel, and I know how to connect them.

What's really amazing for me is the fact that this novel is outside my normal genre.

The surprises Holly's clinic brought didn't stop there either. Characters around Muriel leapt out of the exercises and into my story. Her exercises not only fleshed out my main character and the story, but also brought life to the secondary characters.

Holly Lisle's Create A Character Clinic is one resource I'm going to use over and over again.

Click here to try Create A Character Clinic, by Holly Lisle for yourself!

How to Find Your Writing Discipline

I bought and have fully used Holly Lisle's "How to Find Your Writing Discipline" critical skills series.

This is a great tool for the busy writer, especially those new to the writing career, such as myself. I did have to tweak it a little because I'm working on setting up my work in both copywriting and freelance writing.

Now to be fair, I didn't have multi-colored index cards, so I had to use paper. And I did have an idea of perhaps using colored post-it notes instead. I may try that next week.

The ten-minute strategy is Holly's strength in this course. It really is magic when you think of everything in ten minute increments. ANY ONE who is having a hard time organizing their time to meet their goals should get this course.

This week, of course, is a bit jumbled because of holiday time with the family. Monday and Tuesday were out as work days. Then yesterday went downhill fast, when I found a problem with my wonderful dog Sable and got her to the vet - which involves a lot of time since we only have one car and hubby had to work. So between the scheduled dog baths in morning and the running for Sable - I only got about an hour to work on anything. The circumstances weren't conducive to writing, so I worked on the website instead. Finally set my homepage the way I want it.

As for Sable - She has a huge cyst that gets removed on the 11th or 19th. Then it will be tested for cancer. I suspect cancer. There's been a lot of things I've been fighting and she's had skin problems for years - these things make me think it will be cancer. By the end of the month, I should find out.

In the meantime, I've used Holly Lisle's method of breaking everything down into ten minute increments. I have 12.25 hours of work for today and tomorrow. Not really that bad - a lot of time is studying and reading research, so it won't feel like that long. I only scheduled 2 hours each day of revision work on TKQ ... that's the part of the job that feels long to me. LOL

December 21, 2007

I’m an affiliate of Holly Lisle's Shop.
I’m a member of her website;
and I subscribe to her newsletter.

One of the valuable resources recently presented to me is a free mini course, “Create Your Professional Plot Outline.” I, of course, snagged it right up. Not because I have problems with plotting (yet), but because Holly Lisle’s techniques are motivating, thought-provoking.

In this, she presents the plotting technique of using your character as a starting point in this mini-course. I chose my character Oriel. It worked great!

Now, I have sent those results off to the side now. I have to complete the other projects first. But I am excited to try this method with other projects. Even to fill in blanks on a few projects where I feel I need more content.

I’m also interested in if I will come up with a reason to use her techniques in building a two-book series into three. I have a two-book series that works as is. But there is the chance an agent, publisher, editor, etc. would request that I make it into three. I know what happens during a two-year period I can build that third book from, but not the guts of it. I believe her plotting techniques would help me a lot there.

This mini-course tells me all I need to know about her full clinic: “Holly Lisle’s Create A Plot Clinic.” Buy it now! You’ll be glad you did, and so will your characters.