Cameo characters are minor characters who only have a very small part to play in your story, usually to facilitate the plot. 

If you’re a dedicated novelist, you’ll usually write a great deal of detail and back story about all your characters, including history, ancestry, education, preferences, characteristics, what’s in their fridge and all that.

But is that really necessary to that for every single character that appears?

My view is that it’s not, and also that it’s also not necessary to make such an effort make sure all cameo characters are completely unique, balanced and whole human beings (or aliens or hamsters of whatever).

Your main characters have to be filled with conflicts and contradictions and not just fall into the tired old tropes or people will get bored. However, it’s not necessary to do the same with minor or supporting characters, and in fact there are arguments for keeping these characters simple.

The fact is that in real life, we don’t get to know all the nuances and conflicts that are contained within everyone, and we often will put them in one stereotype box or another for ease of reference, and then move on. Obviously, if we get to know them better, we will learn that there is far more to everyone. At that point they cease to become passing acquaintances (or supporting / minor characters) and start to become friends (or major characters).

If you try to make every supporting character too complex, your readers will start to get exhausted trying to keep up with all the nuances, and may lose the plot.

One last thing to say about cameo characters – it is a great opportunity to come up with totally over the top characters for light relief. If a main character is too much of a caricature, then they will probably become tiresome after a while and stop feeling real. But with a supporting character you can give them all kinds of eccentricities, because they’ll only be there long enough to amuse and then they will shuffle off on their way, their bit part complete.

If you're writing a novel and found this article useful, you might want to take a look at our novel writing software. It's completely free to try for 30 days. Click here to visit the novel writing software website and find out more. 

Humans are pattern matching creatures, swift to classify and categorise all elements of the world around us. This is both a great strength and terrible weakness.

As we grow up, we apply patterns and put everything in its rightful place. A chair is for sitting on. A plate is for eating from. A car is for driving.

Of course, in most cases this kind of assumption is necessary for every day life. If every time we came across a chair, we had to mentally go through all the possible ways we could use that arrangement of sticks, we would end up with very tired legs.

Children, inventors are McGuyver are examples of people that are able to think outside of the standard assumptions, and see alternate uses for every day things in order to play or solve a problem.

As authors, we need to constantly challenge these patterns and assumptions and find new and surprising ways to look at every day things in order to give our work originality. This comes in useful in everything from coming up with fresh ways to describe things, rather than resorting to hallowed clichés to coming up with a shocking plot twist that hasn’t been done a hundred times before.

An interesting way to start to break down these assumptions it to try to think about exactly when a thing becomes a thing. In doing this we can start to see that the world isn’t quite a concrete as we thought.

For example, we all know what a car is. And if you remove the roof, it’s a clearly still a car. But what if you remove the engine instead of the roof. Is it still a car now? It looks the same, assuming the bonnet is closed, but it doesn’t meet the main function of the car. What if it has the engine but no wheels or doors. At what point does it cease to be a car and become a chassis. Its’ not so easy to answer.

Similarly, if you watch a daffodil grow in the garden, at what point does it become a flower. At first it is just a green stalk. Then it starts to create a yellowish bulb and slowly the bulb unfurls, Can you pin down the exact moment it becomes a flower?

If you can encourage your brain to be more open to seeing things outside of their normal categories, you can train it to be more flexible and open to unusual ideas that can enrich your writing.

Try this writing exercise:

1.       Think of at least thirty different uses for the following things:

a.       A set of keys

b.      A cellar

c.       An iPad

d.      A wooden elephant

e.      An old tennis racquet

f.        A plank of wood

g.       A bottle of shampoo

h.      A candle

i.         A CD

j.        The Bible

Try not to be constrained by what you ‘know’ the main purpose of each of the items is. If you get stuck, try to think about different physical aspects of each of the items, including what it’s made of, its properties (strong, waterproof etc), its size and shape, conductivity, reactivity.

What you should find is that at first you will come up with obvious uses for the object, but as you are forced to think of more, your brain will work harder to become more flexible and open to unusual ideas.

For example:

A candle:

1.       A light

2.       For heating food

3.       For blocking up a hole

4.       For poking a mouse out of a hole

5.       For highlighting hidden text written in invisible ink

6.       For burning a forbidden letter

7.       For propping up a table

8.       For melting and using the wax in frisky foreplay

9.       As a time keeper

10.   Use the wick as string to tie something

11.   As a weapon

12.   To write messages on

13.   A chew or throw toy for a dog

14.   A rolling pin

15.   A signal that someone is home

16.   For sending morse code at night

17.   Use the wax to fill in scuffs in wood

18.   A drumstick

19.   To hold up a box trap

20.   To wedge open a door

21.   To weight down a helium balloon

22.   A pretend magic wand

23.   A stirring implement

24.   Carve it into a mini totem pole

25.   A spirit level (hold it by the wick)

26.   A bookmark

27.   To break up a blockage

28.   To measure the depth of oil or mud

29.   To tie a puppet to.

2.       To bring it a little closer to home, think of at least ten different endings as you can each of these tired premises:

1.       Girl meets boy – they hate each other

2.       Aliens attack planet earth

3.       There’s a bomb on the bus

4.       A bank heist

5.       A pirate adventure

For example:

Aliens attack planet earth

1.       Humans fight back and win

2.       Humans fight back and lose

3.       Aliens turn out to be an ancient generation of humans that fled earth into space and are now returning

4.       Aliens turn out to be victims of another alien race and join forces with humans to fight against the third race

5.       Humans domesticate the aliens

6.       Humans abandon earth and join the aliens

7.       Humans fight back then go and attack the aliens’ home planet

8.       Aliens integrate and interbreed with humans

9.       Aliens take humans as their slaves

10.   Aliens turn out to be humans from an alternate universe

Please post your lists in the comments below!

Credit to The Five Minute Writer by Margaret Geraghty for the inspiration for this post – if you liked it, you should buy the book.

For more articles about creative writing and novel writing, visit The Novel Factory website.

“Gee whiz, that person is doing something mighty suspicious, let’s follow him and see what happens…”

And hence the story begins.

This is fine for Nancy Drew or the Famous Five, but if you want to keep modern adult readers engaged, you’re going to need to be a bit more sophisticated than that.

Pretty much all stories are based on change and transformation, either of a situation (if the story is more plot driven) or if a character (if the story is character driven). In order for transformation to take place, there needs to be a reason. 

If Sarah has been plodding along at her nine-to-five for the past ten years and nothing changes, she’ll probably plod along for another ten. You can’t just have her wake up one day and decide she wants to be a ninja archaeologist – nobody will buy it. There needs to be some trigger, preferably which can’t be ignored.

Triggers can be ‘towards’ or ‘away from’.

‘Towards’ triggers will be something the character desperately wants. This could be a the appearance of a person, a job, a prize, an environmental outcome, a wealth opportunity etc.

‘Away from’ triggers will be something the character definitely does not want, that they are fleeing from. This could be a looming, life-threatening danger, or could be more subtle than that, just something that will disrupt their comfortable life.

Here are some examples of triggers that oblige a character to act from popular literature:

• Nala coming to tell Simba that the pride needs his leadership in The Lion King
• Juliette is offered the job of Sheriff of the silo in Wool
• Danny’s dad doesn’t come back from a poaching trip in the woods in Danny the Champion of the World.
•  James Herriot is offered a new job as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in If Only They Could Talk

Think back on the last few books you have read and make a list of the turning points or calls to action that the main characters encountered. 

Next make a list of ten triggers or calls to action that you can think of yourself. Make five of them ‘towards’ triggers and five of them ‘away from’.

Feel free to add your ideas in the comments below!

If you found this article useful, and you haven’t checked out the Novel Factory novel writing software yet, then you really should…

It is a ‘feature’ of western society that we tend to value analytical thinking more highly than creative thinking. Thus, subjects like maths and science and considered more ‘proper’ subjects than things like art and drama. Children are told to get practical qualifications, because everybody knows, artists can’t make a living.

The sad effect of this is that while our analytical processes get a good work out, our creative capabilities are often neglected, but creative skills can be learned and developed just as much as logical ones.

The more you work your creative muscles, the stronger they will become and the more easily stunning metaphors and incisive descriptions will ‘spring to mind’.

Try this exercise to give your creative brain a bit of a stretch:

1. Make a list of concrete nouns. Nouns are things, words that you can generally put ‘a’ or ‘the’ in front of, and concrete nouns are visible, solid things that you can usually touch. Some example of concrete nouns are:
•    Dog
•    Fire
•    Garden
•    Airplane
•    Handkerchief
•    Mug
•    Computer
•    Aubergine
•    Aspirin
•    Keys

Think of as many as you can, but at least 20.


2.    Make a list of abstract nouns. So, these are still ‘things’ but ones that you can’t see or touch.
•    Hunger
•    Wealth
•    Life
•    Friendship
•    Desire
•    Intelligence
•    Instructions
•    Excitement
•    Death
•    Joy

3.    Now randomly pick two of them (ask someone else to pick two numbers between 1 – however many you have or cut them up and pick them out of a hat) and put them together, then write a paragraph explaining.

For example:

Life is like computers. Completely unfathomable, with so much going on under the surface you have no hope of ever understanding the complexity. Sometimes life does what you want, but sometimes it just refuses, for no apparent reason at all. Life can be entertaining and informative, but it can also make us want to tear our hair out.

Or

Death is like aspirin. It’s tucked away out of sight and easy to ignore. But when our health is threatened it comes to the fore, fizzing in our brains, dissolving into an invisible, pervasive mist. We have no choice but to swallow it.

Think you can do better? Post your remote associations in the comments!

Credit to The Five Minute Writer by Margaret Geraghty for the inspiration for this post – if you liked it, you should buy her book.


If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory. 

Often new writers choose to write short stories as a sort of ‘warm up’ before they start writing novels, as the short story seems a lot more achievable. 

If you do this, you’ll soon get told off, and informed that the short story is a completely different animal to the novel, and one is not simply a longer or shorter version of the other.

However. I happen to think that cutting your teeth on short stories is a great way get started with writing, as it gives you something manageable and most importantly, something that you’re more likely to finish. Finishing a story is the hardest part for a new writer (after starting!).

There is a lot of advice and guidance out there for how to structure and plot a novel, and lots of tried and tested techniques, but there is less so for short stories – partially because there is a lot more opportunity to be creative and experiment with whatever you want. Readers can put up with a lot more deviation from conventions over a short term, where it might become tedious over the course of a whole novel.

Here are some ideas that you may wish to use in your short stories:

Breakdown by time

This technique is used in the TV series 24 and book series Bridget Jones’s Diary, where each section is split to represent one hour or one day. You can use subtitles to make this explicit, and it gives you a lot of leeway for skipping chunks of time and keeping a tight focus on the exciting bits.

 

Formats

Similarly to the diary example in the breakdown by time, you can use unconventional formats to make your story more unique and original. For example you could write it as an exchange of emails, a series of newspaper reports, a collection of adverts in a local parish newsletter, or conversations between passing dog walkers. Each format will have a different impact on the story and how it plays out.

Repetition of words, sentences or themes

By hanging the story on a particular hook, you can explore several ideas and still have a satisfying, whole feeling narrative. For example, you could take a sentence, such as ‘Never again’ and use it to start three different paragraphs. Each paragraph could be from a different person’s viewpoint, or the same person at three different ages. This way we can explore the nuances of the human experience.  Or you could have an item which appears over and over again – either the exact same item, or variations of the same type of item, such as different pairs of shoes.

Full Circle

It’s normal for short stories to have a twist, but if you’re really clever, you need to make sure the twist links very closely with the setup. A nice idea can be to follow through an ironic chain of events so that an action taken right at the beginning directly results in a failure to achieve the aim of that action. For example, an actor might decide to flirt with a director in order to secure the part, for which they are already a favourite. But that upsets the actor’s partner, who then wrangles it to inform the director’s spouse of some dark secret. The spouse then ensures the actor is refused the part.

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to check out our novel writing software. Designed by writers for writers.  

Nanowrimo will be here soon, so I thought I’d write an article about nanoplamo, or national novel planning month. This goes hand in hand with nanowrimo, and in my mind is the absolute key to successfully completing the challenge.

If you are completely baffled by all these nano words, then you might want to check out this article about what nanowrimo is and why it’s useful and / or this article about nanowrimo success.

A step by step nanoplamo!

Step one – get your tools in order

By tools I would include:

A place to work – preferably somewhere to call your own, where you can leave your stuff permanently, but if this isn’t an option, then at least a get a box where you can pack up all your nanoplamo / nanowrimo related things and keep them together.

Computer / software – unless you write on paper (in which case you must be insane), you’ll need a decent, reliable computer and somewhere to back up your work. All you really need for the writing itself is Word and a folder system for putting notes on various things in – but if you’re like me and hate spending time on admin when you could be writing, you might want to consider some dedicated novel writing software – and as you might imagine (because we built it) we would recommend The Novel Factory.

A moleskin notebook / app – while you’re immersed in your novel planning (and writing), lots of things you see in the rest of your life will give you ideas, and unless you have a photographic memory, you’ll need somewhere to note them down. A pocket sized notebook or an app on your phone is perfect (I use iA Writer on the iPhone).

Research materials – if you are setting your novel in a particular time or place, then borrow some books from the library on the period (or buy them from if you prefer – try Green Metropolis for ethical and cheap) and have them in lovely inspiring piles around your workplace for dipping into.

Step two – make a plan

You should have a plan of action for what you need to have achieved by whatever day of the month. It may look something like this:

Day one – write your premise

Day two – sketch out the rough overall plot

Day three – outline main characters

If you don’t want to work all of the steps out from first principles, then The Novel Factory includes exactly this step by step guide, or as we like to call it - Roadmap. You can read more about the Novel Factory Roadmap without having to download the software (which is free to try anyway) here.

Step three – follow the plan!

If you’ve followed steps one and two, then you’re in a good position to get started, and all you have to do now is have the willpower and determination to follow it through. And if your plan is in good shape before the 1^st of November, then you’ll be in much better shape to get that first draft knocked out in one month.  

Good luck!