Tag Archives: Johnnie Mazzocco writer

How to Use the Crown Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the last in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Crown (seventh) Chakra rules Spiritual Power and Understanding. The crown relates to the ability to conceive of and create spiritual context for life experiences, which leads to resiliency and bliss. The Crown Chakra says I KNOW.

By considering how your characters connect to their own meaning-making (from the Third Eye Chakra), you’re able to take them through their transformation—their new normal.

Below is a brief explanation of the Crown Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Seventh Chakra – Crown Chakra

Location
Top of head

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Faith in inner guidance/trust that overrides fears, mystical/intuitive connections, ability to create and live by a personally chosen belief system, ability to put life’s challenges in a spiritual context, positive attitude, awareness in the divine—whether in a self-proclaimed higher power or within other humans/living entities

This is about how your character responds to situations that call for them to have gained perspective, to be on the other side of their struggle(s) throughout the story. 

Primary fears and fearful expressions
Disassociation, ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude, spiritual crisis, inability to let go of the past, greed, lack of inspiration, apathy, elitism/superiority

This is where you’re able to see your character’s “full circle” or “transformational” moment. This is where they arrive in a more settled place after having run the gauntlet of the story’s trajectory, have put it in perspective, and are in a position to start living their “new normal.”

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Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Crown Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has completed a difficult thing—taken difficult action, spoken out against the powers that be, put themself in physical danger, ended a relationship, etc. 

Questions to begin your exercise:

• What is the thing they did?

• How did this inform their understanding of the situation, of themselves, of the world?

• Where does this new-found understanding leave them?

  • What will they do next—in the next week, the next month, the next year (whether this belongs in the story or not)? 
  • How do you, the writer/author, see them now that you’ve guided them through?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

How to Use the Third Eye Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Third Eye (sixth) Chakra rules Mind Power. The third eye relates to the ability to distill wisdom from life experience, clarity about what is best for one’s highest good and joy—it’s about the intuition. The Third Eye Chakra says I SEE.

By considering how your characters connect to their intuition and ability to make meaning of life will give you clues about the ease with which they move through the world and within the story.

Below is a brief explanation of the Third Eye Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Sixth Chakra – Third Eye Chakra

Location
Lower forehead, between the eyes

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Strong intellectual abilities/skills, self-acceptance, mental flexibility, ability for objective contemplation, high emotional intelligence, open to wonder

This is about how your character responds to situations that call for them to think beyond the here and now. This is how they make meaning (and have made meaning) of life, and what they do with that understanding. 

Primary fears and fearful expressions
Fears of one’s shadow side/looking within, inability to self-reflect or identify illusion, pushing oneself to extremes, poor intuition/concentration, fear of unknown, judgmental/overly analytical, mental fog/overwhelm 

This is where you’re able to start seeing your character respond in ways that may not make sense to them, as if they’re driven by something they don’t see or understand.

_____________________


Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Third Eye Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has just done something they are not proud of. There is one person in the world they trust—living or dead. Write a letter from your character to their trusted person. 

Questions to begin your exercise:

• What is the thing they did?

• When did they do it? Was it recent or many years ago… something they’ve been carrying around, like a dead weight?

• What has moved them to disclose this now?

• What happens—both within them and in their life—after the disclosure?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

How to Use the Heart Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the heart (fourth) Chakra rules Emotional Power. The heart relates to how your protagonist shows love, forgiveness, compassion, and trust. The Solar Plexus Chakra says I LOVE.

By considering how your characters connect to their compassion—or not—will give you clues about how they will respond and react to all situations and scenarios in your story, and especially those that hold big emotional impact.

Below is a brief explanation of the Heart Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Fourth Chakra – Heart Chakra

Location
Chest

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Courage to take emotional risks (to trust, love, and feel loved), power to heal (oneself and others), ability to be inclusive and take responsibility for one’s life

This is about how your character responds to situations that require forgiveness, understanding, and empathy.

Primary fears and fearful expressions
Loneliness, commitment, withholding, jealousy/bitterness, anger/hatred, judgmental/critical

This is where you’re able to start seeing your character get in their own way, whether through self-doubt or self-loathing, or through their lack of willingness to forgive, and even experience/express self-love and self-forgiveness.

_____________________


Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Heart Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has just learned about a betrayal by someone they know. This betrayal could have been intentional (a shop owner whose employee stole cash from the register) or unintentional (a shop owner whose employee who forgot to lock up at the end of the day because they had an emergency at home, and the shop is robbed and vandalized). 

Both are betrayals of a sort.

Depending on who the shop owner is and depending on their degree of emotional intelligence (the condition of their heart chakra), their reactions and responses to both situations will vary.

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Establish your character’s level of compassion, forgiveness, and self-love. What would their immediate response be?

• Do they take time to sit with what happened, or do they respond immediately?

• Do they stand by their response (immediate or delayed), or do they regret it?

• How does their emotional responses, actions, and their feelings about those actions inform the story’s trajectory and drive it forward?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

Getting to Know Your People’s Histories: Using Backstory to Inform Character Development

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In my last post, I wrote about the importance—necessity, even—of knowing your people… that is, your characters (for fiction and memoir) and your Ideal Reader, and yourself, (for non-fiction how-to self-help books).

Backstories

After we delve into who our characters and Ideal Readers are, we can get to know them even more deeply through their backstories—or histories. These histories are what shaped their beliefs and identities. (This is true also for those wanting to write the self-help or how-to non-fiction book and will apply to you, personally, as well because your personal story—the life events that brought you to write your book in the first place—will likely be woven throughout your book.) Through these beliefs and identities shaped from our characters’ backstories come their desires.

When we understand, on a deep level, our people’s heart-felt desires, we can develop compassion for those desires, and embrace the motivations behind them and the behaviors that prevent our people from attaining them. This will not only inform our story trajectories in fiction, it will also inform a deeper understanding of ourselves in memoir and the true pain points of our clients and potential customers and readers in non-fiction books.

Another facet of a character’s backstory we want to think about is setting. Setting is both temporal and spatial.

Temporal Setting

The temporal setting of a book or story is the era in which it takes place. The temporal setting of your characters’ backstories is important because it will inform much about your characters’ beliefs, social mores, and behaviors. Think about a teenage girl born in the 1950s and one born in the 2000s. They will be two very different people simply because of the time in which they were born. Now, place one of those girls in the U.S. and one in the UK or Africa or Asia during each of those times periods. You’ll have five distinctly different people.

When we can get clear on the temporal setting of our characters’ backstories, we can start to think more deeply about the WHYs behind their desires, motivations, and behaviors, and we can not only have a deeper understanding of them as people, but we can also represent them with more integrity and compassion on the page.

Spatial Setting

Spatial setting includes spaces and locations that figured into the shaping of the character’s identity because spaces shape who we are. Think about your own significant spaces and locations: your childhood home, your bedroom, your family’s kitchen, your school, your backyard, your school bus, your family’s car(s)… Now, think about how those spaces shaped your identity, what you care about, what you want, and what you don’t want. The same is true of our characters.

A young man raised on a farm will come to his college experience with a far different set of beliefs and desires than one raised in Manhattan. Think about how each of these characters might show up to an accounting class or a writing class and what their expectations, intentions, and fears might be. When we put together our characters’ pasts with their present-day fears, we’re writing from a place that will generate stories of universal appeal because we can get to the emotional experience of life. And no matter where we were raised or when, we all experience emotions the same. This is the bridge between us and our readers.

Characters’ backstories may not show up in the stories we write about them, but knowing and understanding them will inform us and influence the stories we write about them.

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Write 2-3 pages for one of your characters, your Ideal Reader, or yourself giving deep thought to their backstories and settings, and leave a comment below. I’d love to hear about what you discover.

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Best,

Johnnie
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Your Life as Fodder – Or How to Grow a Story

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So often I hear people say they want to write but they struggle coming up with ideas. That they feel compelled to write at all tells me they already have ideas. It could be that they just don’t know how to get them outside themselves (remember the jar full of frenzied bees?). Or maybe they don’t know how to transform their ideas into a story and execute it. Or maybe they don’t believe anyone would care to read what they have to say. To all of that, I say this…

First of all, believe in yourself. (You can do it!) Second of all, you’d be surprised at the difference sharing your story can make for another person. (Really.) And third of all, if you really believe you’re out of ideas, simply look to your own life and go from there. (Your life is magical, mystical source of fodder.)

I’m not saying that you ought to write personal essay (unless that’s what you want to do) but that you can take snippets from your life and turn them into fictional stories. Treat those snippets like seeds that you can plant (put them on the page – just get them out of your head – and see what starts to sprout), water (stay with it, tend it, and add what’s needed – trust yourself to know), and prune (edit, cut, and relocate). When you commit to the growth of a story, it will grow.

Here are a few examples of events, phases, facets of my life that I can use to create fictional stories…

  • I had always wanted to experience living in an apartment building and managing it for the benefit of free rent. My personal story didn’t quite go that way – I managed SEVEN buildings (while working two other jobs), and I got a measly $250/month credit on my rent. My romantic fantasy became a horrible reality – the worst job I’ve ever had. (And that’s saying something.)

    Upper management was difficult to work with due to systemic dysfunction and a total lack of awareness that change was needed. One person, in particular – the Assistant General Manager with a bull-in-a-china-shop presence who perpetually, even angrily, chomped on a big wad of gum – was consistently rude and dismissive – even cruel. To me. I worked non-stop with no one to give me a break (even though they “sold” the job as one with TONS of flexibility – they lied). Some residents were demanding and rude. Some were lovely. The building was a “charming” old one in downtown and fraught with problems. I also got up close and personal with the homeless problem in ways I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I saw the underbelly of humanity.

    I moved into the apartment of the previous, beloved maintenance man who had died just a few months before. Management neglected to tell me he died in the apartment (until I asked). But it all worked out because he left a calming presence in the space. And the maintenance and painting crews were fun guys and treated me well. They were, by far, the best part of the job. Think a Raymond Carver-esque short story.

  • Just before taking the manager job at the apartments, I lived in an artists’ community. Sounds cool, right? It wasn’t. Rampant disregard for authority by residents who were underdeveloped emotionally and mentally, partially due to the enabling of the manager who was a lovely person as a person I’d want to know outside that context. You can bet that, someday, the people I met there will wind up in a screenplay, as will the four sane people I also met there. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with art and lots of weed and alcohol.

  • When I was 11, I came home from school one day. My grandma was there, as usual, and I could tell she had been crying. When I asked her why, she stalled, but I eventually learned that when she arrived at our house that day, she found a note on the kitchen table – It was a narrow sliver of torn, lined paper, just wide enough to accommodate two sentences – from my dad saying he was leaving us. I remember immediately going to my parents’ bedroom closet to find his half of the closet empty except for the several naked dangling hangers. The image of that emptiness was seared into my brain and serves as a metaphor for the emptiness his decision made in my life. While I long ago came to terms with that period of my life, it’s an image I can use to tell a story about family, selfishness, grief, infidelity, insanity, growing up too soon, strength, and more. Think a Joyce Carol Oates-esque short story.

So, if you’re compelled to write a story but can’t think of what to write, take some time to scan through your life and all the experiences you’ve had. You’ll find more ideas than you can handle. To start, make three lists:

  • Events/phases – like my working as a manager or living in an artists’ community
  • People – like the brutal Assistant General Manager or the uplifting maintenance crew and painters at the management company, or the enabling but very likeable Manager and “crazy” residents at the artists’ community
  • Images/objects – like the image of my parents’ half-empty closet and all those meager empty hangers

If you’d rather not write about yourself and your life, spin off from one small thing from your life and see what happens. The truth is… we can tell more truths about humanity through fiction than we can through writing from our life experience, anyway. So free yourself up. Draw from your life, then let your imagination take over. Not only will it free you up, but you also won’t have to concern yourself with being called out on “the facts.”

Give it a try and let me know what you come up with in the comments below.

Sending you mad writing mojo…