From the Writer's Eye

How do those characters readers fall in love with look before they finally come to life in a book? Before they're fleshed out, before they make readers laugh or cry by almost marrying the wrong man, by spilling soup all over their date right before the prom, by singlehandedly keeping the bus from careening over a cliff? Were they always that beautiful, that endearing, that comical, that needy? Yes - in the author's heart, but no - in the author's first draft(s). Characters go through their awkward years on a page - those miles of paragraphs where they're gangly, dull, and sometimes with a mind of their own. With the power of "Backspace" I have wrestled Paul, in "Mine to Tell," into the role of being the most annoying brother a heroine could expect to have. I have kept Martha, in upcoming "Love on a Train," heading into a marriage she knows in her heart isn't right. I kept Cletus as the villain throughout pages and pages in "Asked For" no matter how much my heroine begged me to knock him off so she could be free. Characters - great characters - begin with a vision, something only the writer sees. But after months of hammering away on the keys and hammering out the character's resistance, a hero worth crying over and a heroine worth dying for are born.

Colleen L. Donnelly, Author of
Amazon #1 Bestseller "Mine to Tell"
"Asked For"
"Love on a Train"