The Makeover – Literary Style

By Robin Weaver

All of us watch those shows (even if we don’t always ‘fess up).  You know the ones I mean.  A frumpy stay-at-home mom and a Goth-looking college student walk onto the set. An overly bubbly announcer introduces some wonderful product and an amazing makeup artist. Then, voila.  A curling iron and a bottle of hair gel later, Frumpy and Dumpy are now the hot momma who could play Mrs. Robinson and the fraternity girl most likely to get an STD.

I am, of course, talking about the infamous makeover. I can’t tamp down my skepticism enough to believe Frumpy and Dumpy really looked that bad prior to the makeover.  Surely the show’s producers intentionally frizzed hair for those hideous “before” images.  Maybe they even put gray paste on the To-Be-Made-Overs’ faces.  I’m also certain some production assistant scoured thrift stores in search of the worst clothing possible.  When the assistant finds her prize, she stomps on the shapeless dress or baggy jeans with combat boots prior to dressing the poor “volunteers.” When presented in cocktail dresses for the REVEAL, like any woman who goes from Goodwill to couture, the makeover models look one heck of a lot better. 

Seriously, though? Short of surgery or drastic liposuction, how much can you really do in a short period of time to improve your looks?

Fortunately, for us writers, fiction is different. Forget hair products. You, the great and powerful Wonder-author, have magic at your disposal. With a few strokes of your literary pen, you can take a bad manuscript and make the tale into a fascinating story.

Have a heroine you don’t like?  Kill her off on page one and promote the amazing sidekick to leading lady. Are you main characters boring? Just add equal parts tension and quirkiness, and Ozzie and Harriet morph into Morticia and Gomez Addams.

You can even reshape your basic plot into a totally different story. Believe it or not, you can do this with minimal rewrite.

In Forbidden Magic, my first novel, I created vampire-type characters living in a world without warm-blooded creatures.  My vamps existed on a mineral mimicking the properties of human blood. Naturally, the mineral was becoming depleted (aka external tension). Unfortunately, no one wanted yet another vamp story.

So, I instigated a makeover.  First, I made my characters Dökkálfar and —ancient elves.  Since my hero and heroine were no longer vampire, they no longer needed blood. Thus I needed another rare substance necessary to my characters’ survival. To keep my external conflict from disintegrating, I decided the sun on my fictional world wouldn’t have the spectrum of Earth’s solar unit.  Naturally, I made this missing spectrum necessary to elfin survival.

So what could emulate sunlight? What else? Crystals. And all the quartz had been mined.

I kept the same plot. My characters’ goals, motivation, and conflict didn’t change. Yet my novel had a completely different look. A makeover.

If your novel isn’t getting the attention it deserves, if your manuscript is dated, or if you just need more oomph, you too can perform the same type of literary makeover. No license required. Remember, a good story (regardless of genre) needs great characters, with great conflict, and a goal worth achieving. The rest is just…well, hair product and cocktail dresses.

How about you?  Performed any literary makeovers on your manuscripts?

A Simple Christmas

By Diana McCollum

Christmas season is upon us everywhere we go. Christmas music plays in the stores and on the radio. Houses are decorated inside and out. I love the colored lights and the music and everything about Christmas. The best part of course, is sharing Christmas with family and friends.

I enjoyed a Christmas pot luck lunch with a few writer friends in Bend last week. Kathy had her house decorated so pretty!

Husband and I are having a simple Christmas this year. Family is not coming from CA this year, and I'm having surgery too. We've opted to not have a tree. I've just put a few simple decorations out. We need some joyfulness! I wanted to share some decorations that I love with you.

This is the entry way to the house. The little snow man holding a sign with our last name on was made for us by my daughter over 20 years ago. I had to have that out this year, and every year.

The poinsettias at the top of the page we bought one at Costco, and the other I order every year from a girl across the street. The money goes to the Bend choir she belongs to.

Last year the group toured England and Scotland and sang with choirs from those countries.

The two pictures of the Christmas elves and angels only shows about half of all the ones we have.

I call them my Iowa elves. There is a story behind them. My sister Sarah and family were helping an elderly lady move out of her house in Iowa. She was going into an assisted living home and asked that Sally and family take what they want and get rid of the rest. That is how the story went, isn't it Sally?

My Sister was kind enough to send this collection to me. Every year the Iowa elves sit on my kitchen window sill so I can look at them every day.

On our coffee table is an arrangement with a candle and twinkle lights. The wooden Christmas train I painted a long time ago. My husband loves it and I do too! So the train got to come out of the Christmas box for this year.

That is all the decorations for 2019!

Do you decorate a lot or not much or not at all? and what part of the Christmas tradition is your favorite? And if you don't celebrate Christmas, what part of the holiday season do you enjoy?

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!