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onship to elizabeth will be when he arrives he ll either seduce her with false promises or be outright menacing and threatening to her but neither is what ends up happening onto the clip this takes place a few in game hours after you ve rescued elizabeth for those of you with the inability to watch it while elizabeth and booker are trapped in a malfunctioning elevator elizabeth freaks out because a bee has gotten in booker tells her to kill it but elizabeth protests saying that it will sting her she decides instead to use her special power to get rid of it but it doesn t quite go as planned and they almost get attacked what happens in this short scene isn t particularly noteworthy in terms of story development we learn that elizabeth has mysterious powers but we already sort of knew that but it s pretty damn important in terms of character development my favorite moment though is just one word when booker exasperated that she won t kill the bee just says elizabeth i love everything about it i love how despite the fact that you never see booker s face or the way he holds himself you know exactly what he looks like and how he stands when he says it he s probably slumped over he s tired he s frustrated i love the sense of familiarity how we can tell that he cares about elizabeth even though they ve only known each other for a few hours i love how it swiftly eliminates booker s image as the false shepherd making him more than just a generic evil man in a black cloak but it also makes it clear he s no knight in shining armor we get all that from just one word the scene in general is so great it shows us that despite his streetwise skills booker is capable of real fear and vulnerability and it shows up so much about elizabeth how though she s probably not evil she s far from an innocent lamb she has an unbelievable power but she doesn t know why and she can t understand the consequences of using it until it s too late but still in this scene i fall for her as a character she knows very well they re about to face enemies way more powerful and scary than a simple bee but in that moment she can t hide her fear and overreaction and how many of us can relate to that this scene is where i most connect to both of them because it s quiet and allows them room to breathe as characters to grow for the brief moment they re not facing an onslaught of enemies undeserved misfortune is great from a writing perspective elizabeth obviously has plenty booker s an asshole with sometimes bad intentions but it s made clear that something terrible happened to him that caused him to go into debt but neither of those things would make me care throughout the story if i didn t also have moments like this moments where i get to see them interacting and being ridiculously human we know our characters can t be exactly like real people but they need to be pretty close booker and elizabeth know that they re about to face things way worse than the bee but just like a lot of real people would when faced with a tiny yet difficult problem they can still overreact they can still make us fall in love with them even though they re capable of doing awful and dangerous things sometimes with no regard for the consequences so what can we do as writers to insert these moments in our writing how can we make our characters more than sufferers of their own fate how can we make the reader love them when they re at their worst and how can we make them human we interrupt this writing session to let you know that i m writing 21 jan 2014 1 comment by rachellieberman in uncategorized tags writing okay i admit it i m a bad writer or i have been lately my afternoons aka my writing time have been mostly filled for the last few weeks with revising my manuscript working on my query and synopsis submitting and some days things that have embarrassingly little to do with writing but not with real raw writing i know i can be forgiven for that at least i hope i can but today i thought i need to write again but i needed a break from my current project i have another one that s been tugging at me but i didn t know where to start i generally don t do much pre writing my style just doesn t work that way but for this project it seemed necessary to play to feel around in my characters and let them do things not related to the plot for a little bit until i m ready to ruin their lives er i mean tell their story so i opened a word doc and wrote one paragraph and i experienced what can only be described as what coffee drinkers feel when they have their first shot of espresso for the day probably i don t drink coffee but you know what i m talking about the kind of excitement that s so wonderful you just have to tell someone you just want to jump on the couch tom cruise style and scream i m writing again you re getting your hands dirty with words and it feels so amazing that i think is what being a writer is all about getting through the days where the thought of writing fills you with dread until you finally hit that day where just writing a few sentences makes you want to take out an ad in the paper to let people know even if you re not writing today i hope you re doing something that makes you breathe happy you should be reading 20 dec 2013 1 comment by rachellieberman in uncategorized tags reading writing writing advice i feel like the importance of reading if you want to be a writer can t be over emphasized i feel like as much as we hear it on our writing journeys we could always hear it one more time so this is my contribution battle cry to any skeptical writers out there you need to be reading i mentioned it in an earlier post but i wanted to devote a whole post to it because i ve met an alarming number of people who want to be writers but don t want to be readers in college i had the opportunity to attend a panel of writers that included stephen king he had edited a collection of short stories and the other panelists were writers whose work appeared in the collection they were all wonderful but for the most part the other writers were younger and had thus far shorter careers than king at one point an audience member asked if the panel had any advice for aspiring writers the other panelists gave lengthy heartfelt answers but king leaned forward into the microphone and said very quickly read a lot and write a lot it must have seemed pretty callous compared to the other answers but it was my favorite i don t remember what the other panelists said but i remember not only what he said but how he said it i could tell he was both expecting and dreading that question i could tell he d been asked it countless times before and i could tell that he was used to people not believing him when he said it was god advice i think it was the best piece of advice i heard that night maybe the best piece of advice i ve ever heard in terms of writing but i m constantly meeting people who don t believe me particularly the part about reading the writing part seems sound enough but the reading they re not so sure i can understand their skepticism i m just a twentysomething with very little published writing and no published novels to my name if they re not going to believe stephen king why should they believe me most of the time their objections have to do with time they barely have time to write why should they take time away from that to read another objection i ve heard is i write because i don t like what s out there i want to do it better and worst of all i ve had people just come out and tell me that even though they want to write they just plain don t enjoy reading all of these are excuses and none of them are particularly good excuses if you have time to write you can and should devote some of that time to reading yes even if it takes time away from your writing if you don t like what s out there and you re not willing to read chances are you re not going to actually do it better and very few successful writers have made a career out of showing up the literary world and as for the last one i ll get to that soon but first why is reading necessary reading makes you a better person it s an opportunity to hone your craft by carefully looking at how other authors have built worlds created compelling characters used beautiful language and all the things that you need to do as a writer it humbles you it teaches you there are a million good reasons to read there is exactly one reason to not read because you don t know how and if you re reading this you do so consider yourself lucky and go pick up a book so how much should you read i ve been asked this before there s no straight formula but if you ask that with apprehension then however much you think is enough is probably not i read about 50 pages a day and i wish i could read more which brings me to my next and potentially controversial point you ve been warned i don t think you always need to love writing in order to be a writer i know plenty of writers who hate writing sometimes writing can be a constant wrestling match with the page and it s not unusual to have days where you don t enjoy it if writing is something you re meant to do you ll probably feel the pull and desire again soon but i don t believe you can be a writer if you don t love reading if you don t look forward to cracking open a book and getting lost in the pages i m not saying you need to want to read everything nor do you need to love or even finish every book you pick up i ve read plenty of books that i hated and there are many genres you ll probably never catch me reading but i think you have to want to read despite that you have to hope every time you open a book that this time you re going to read something amazing and this is probably going to be the most harsh fact of all but if someone tells me they re a writer and when i ask about books they like to read they tell me they don t read i don t think of them as a writer i ll still like them as a person i ll still want to hang out with them and be their friend i m not going to be nasty or lecture them or even respond to it or bring it up again but in my brain in the part where everyone i know is separated into the writer group and not writer group they ll be in the not writer group i believe it that strongly you can be a reader and not be a writer but you can t be a writer and not be a reader every rule has exceptions except for this one there is no author living or dead who has been an exception who has been able to write brilliantly without reading or in the days before reading sharing stories and absorbing them you are not an exception either and to be honest if you were if you could write wonderful prose or poetry but you never had to crack open a book to do so i d feel sorry for you because i can t imagine a life without reading the two sides to torturing your characters 11 dec 2013 1 comment by rachellieberman in uncategorized tags character writing i don t know about you but i ve been told this a fair amount that i m being too easy on my protagonists that i m not beating the weight of the world into them enough it s good advice it really is people who aren t writers might not realize how difficult it is once you have a fully formed character who you want to follow through a whole novel to then take that character and crush them it s hard it s so hard we might tell ourselves no you ve suffered enough i ll ease up on you when really they haven t suffered nearly enough why do they have to suffer oh you know the usual reasons because when a character isn t challenged or put in danger the story has no tension no drama there s no story at all when everything goes great for the character all the time assuming you ve created a character we love and care about making them suffer is part of the deal we don t want to see them in pain but we want to see what they ll do in response how they ll get themselves out but there s another factor that though i may have unconsciously known about it already i didn t really consider outright until recently i ve been working on my novel for awhile and for most of that while there was something about it that just wasn t quite working okay multiple somethings but there was one big thing that i needed in order to make the story compelling my protagonist had to save another character and obviously there needed to be obstacles in her way but what should they be well it s a fantasy so why not just throw in some riddles some swords some growling monsters and voila right well not quite there was still an element that was making it feel generic and i couldn t figure out how to pull myself out that s when i showed it to a friend who asked me a simple question that changed everything what does your character fear it was one of those smack on the head moments for me what does she fear when i learned what my character feared i knew how her story would go before she was wandering aimlessly now she had real obstacles because here s the thing a challenge needs to be more than just a challenge if i put a sword in my character s hand and told her to go fight a dragon well that d be difficult for her but it wouldn t be tied to the story or who she was it would just be a random difficult thing that she has to do but when i realize that what she fears most is her memories and saving the day involves forcing her to confront those memories well then i m getting warmer think about harry potter what does he fear losing the two most important people in his life ron and hermione not having them when he needs them the most what does he have to do in the final battle to get the philosopher s stone fight without them not only does he have to fight without them he has to leave them at the very last second enter the last room seconds after he was with them you feel his pain his fear that he ll never see them again you re not sure if he can do it alone because he s not sure if he can do it alone he s not going alone because some random wizard decreed it mind you there needs to be a good reason besides it ll be good for you to face your fears but when you find your character s fear and when you find a compelling reason to put them in the face of that fear then you re making the reader care more than if you just gave them a sword and told them to fight a dragon some of you might be saying well duh but maybe not maybe one of you is reading this and is thinking about this in a different way for the first time i know i wish i d been actively aware of this a lot sooner i think i always knew it on some level i just couldn t figure out how to translate it to my own writing so what does your character fear are you putting up obstacles that force them to deal with it are there good reasons to have these obstacles that make sense within the context of your story it s not enough to torture your characters you need to tailor the torture so that when he enters that chamber alone i know exactly why that s so terrifying so i feel scared right along wi...