Camp Time Again!!

It is July, and so with hot days, open windows at night, mosquitos, and a longing to dip into a pool comes the obsessive need to get my 1000 to 2000 words written for camp.  This year I started by calling my novel Camp, but changed to The Butterfly Specialist last week.  Speaking of change - its time for the Character Archetype!  I love believe-ability, even with dragons and cyber-punk dystopians, as I reader I want to believe!  This worksheet helps with your arc of change the character goes through.  Helps you set motivation, build tension, break your character at a proper breaking point to move him/her/self to change, and then slide down the arc taking prisoners, resisting and dying, or whatever your character is going to do.  This year, I have typed out all the words in the video so that you don't have to take notes or watch the entire thing for suggestions to create your own character arc worksheet.  Here you go, campers!!  Subscribe to my vlog: http://youtube.com/KaraSkyeVlog New videos every Tuesday and Saturday and every other Wednesday.

Click read more for the typed version of this video.

On a Lighter Note -

New color page from Owl Skate, e-book creation vids.

After all the posting about the Hachette and Amazon dispute - press (sidebar) - and stress about the Oregon Book Awards, I've been coloring!

I've had a few days to kick back - no, not really - but my duties to create some color pages for kids felt a lot more like play than work. I've been making videos for a series Create a Picture E-Book on Youtube; and, someone suggested colorbook pages. I thought, "What a great idea!" So far, I've made two download-and-print color pages from the character development color sketches in the videos.

If you have kids who like to color, skateboard, or love animals and nature, check out these new pages for some fun viewing and coloring: Kids-Explore-Nature, Urban Explorer, Portland.  You'll also find silly and not-so-silly animal matching games, word games, and hidden pictures, and art activities for kids.

Writing For Children: Believable Dialogue and Likable Characters

A few simple rules, can bring characters of children's literature into the lives of astute child readers through the author's door, believably.

In this day and age, children are bombarded with almost a constant media flow of information. The internet, television, moving advertising screens, billboards, magazine ads, and just about every type of app and web ad a parent could imagine (and those they don’t want to think about). Therefore, the rules of writing dialogue for children’s books have changed.

The first rule was once: Don’t talk down to children in a children’s book. These days it’s a bit more