This week’s “other cool blogs” is another Magical Words author. You may know him as D.B. Jackson of the Thieftaker series (historical urban fantasy) or as David B. Coe of Blood of the Southlands series. Either way the man writes some pretty amazing stuff, all character driven. And he obsesses about POV. Stories are viewed by the reader from the narrator’s Point of View (POV); usually the POV character is the hero or heroine of the book in genre fiction.
The January 26, 2016 blog, The Power of Secrets, is about … secrets (shhhh). Read the blog – link here: http://www.magicalwords.net/david-b-coe/quick-tip-tuesday-the-power-of-secrets/
WRITING EXERCISE: Create a secret for your present WIP.
For Honestly, Troy, the hero, has a lot of secrets. Some get revealed in the story, some get only partially revealed, and some never are shown but are driving him.
The most obvious of the revealed secrets is his amputee. Initially he hides everything under clothes and mannerisms. As he gets to know Kassandra, he shows more and more of this weakness.
The partially revealed secret is his present government work. He does translations. But for whom and why? … and what is he translating?
A secret I never shared with the reader since the POV character, Kassandra, did not learn about it during the story is how Troy’s mother died. Yet the secret drove him to quit school and join the military and even now drives several of his decisions. The reason he won’t let the pain control him lies with what happened to his mother.
YOUR TURN
If you are a writer, what secret does your characters have and how does it shape them? Are you going to reveal this to your audience or keep it a secret.
If you are a reader, what is a secret in a recent story you read? How did it drive the plot?