If you’re going to live a lie, you better do it well. This applies as much to your characters as they do to real life, as one inept conman found.
As I’ve said before, writing is a form of lying and as such you need to maintain the suspension of disbelief, the big lie, or else people will see through it.
This means that if you create a character, all their actions have to be believeable – from their mannerisms, reactions, actions and speech. As Allan Debenham found to his cost.
Twitter has its detractors, but one thing I can’t deny is that it is more than ‘just’ (abbreviated) words – and that’s why Paris Brown had to step down as Britain’s first youth police and crime commissioner.
This isn’t an attack on her. She’s only 17 and while she has stepped down after dumb remarks to do with drinking, shagging, drugging and gay-bashing, these are unfortunately things lots of teenagers do. I’m not sure how many of us would want our teenage ramblings in the public eye.
However, what she does highlight is why words can’t be separated from character, both on the page and out here in the real world.
We know that word choice affects how readers respond, and there’s a great article that sums up a lot of top advice in one go.
As you know from other articles on the power of words, there are a few killer ideas on writing that can make or break your prose.
Leo Windrich, who helps run Bluffer, a site that also looks at writing and other things, has just published a great post on word power.