Character Development: Vicki and Timmy

Whether you’re working on your next manuscript, or writing something for a school assignment, or simply writing something for your own pleasure, it’s imperative to show some type of growth within your characters. How are your characters different at the end of your story than from the beginning? Have there been any changes in your characters’ lives within the story? As in real life, we all go through changes, good and bad. These changes definitely have an impact on us. In my own personal life, there are some traumatic events that happened while I was in the Air Force that I still have trouble coping with. People going through life-changing events sometimes will have their whole thought patterns drastically rearranged. And this is the same for the characters we create for our stories. It’s vital that you, as the writer, show and tell your readers how your characters have changed due to certain events within your story. In creating the characters Vicki and Timmy for ‘Coreville Park’, it was a challenge for me to show both Vicki’s and Timmy’s reaction after Vicki had revealed to Timmy something so deeply personal, something in which she had never told anyone ever before. After this revelation halfway in the story, I challenged myself as a writer to come up with interesting scenes and interactions between Vicki and Timmy as the story unfolded towards the end. Making sure that your characters don’t all sound the same, and showing interesting character growth have been valuable lessons and tools for me. I hope that whatever writing project you maybe currently working on that these helpful reminders will benefit and make your story stronger. – Randolph Randy Camp Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/author/randolphcamp

All Teachers Need Our Appreciation and Our Support

Teachers Need Our Appreciation and Support…I owe a lot to all the teachers in Spotsylvania County, Virginia who all had a hand in shaping me. Miss Kelly, Miss Pritchett, Mr. Harrison. We all remember the teachers who made the classroom and our assignments interesting. Great teachers have the unique ability to make their students want to learn. Great teachers bring their unique personalities and life experiences to the classroom. They are human beings, not robots. It bothers me how more restrictions are being placed on our teachers nowadays, whereby some of these restrictions give the teachers less freedom to inject their own uniqueness into the classroom, which ends up hurting the students. Instead of placing hard guidelines upon our teachers, we need to pay them more, and we need to show them more of our appreciation for all of their hard work and dedication they bring into the classroom. In ‘Coreville Park a reggae novel’, the teacher did nothing wrong, but yet, she was unjustly suspended. We need to stand up for our teachers, as they did in Coreville Park. The paperback edition of Coreville Park is now available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/author/randolphcamp) – Randolph Randy Camp

Reggae Lovers Supporting School Teachers

The paperback edition of ‘Coreville Park, a reggae novel’ is projected to be released on September 15, 2023.…Rastafarians, reggae music lovers and teachers from around the world converge on a small community in Florida called Coreville to rally around and show their support for an elementary school teacher who was suspended for allowing one of her students to do his oral book report on a book about the Rastafarian culture, which wasn’t approved by the local school district.

Coreville Park, The Back Story

It was the early 1970’s when I first heard reggae music. The Wailers’ songs ‘Put It On’, ‘Small Axe’ and ‘Concrete Jungle’ instantly moved me. Just as I had enjoyed listening to songs by Curtis Mayfield and Bob Dylan during this time period, I equally became a fan of reggae, especially the roots-style reggae, and I’ve been a devoted fan ever since. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know and developed a great deal of respect for the Rastafarian culture. When I was in the Air Force I had the privilege of visiting Jamaica while on leave. Being a writer of mostly contemporary issues and subject matter, I think that it was just a matter of time before I found a creative way to insert the Rastafarian culture into one of my stories. I’ve been a book nerd all of my life, and it pains me to see the widespread book banning going on across America right now. Writing ‘Coreville Park’ is my response to all the unjustified and sometimes discriminatory book banning currently taking place across the nation. As mentioned before, I’ve been loving books ever since I was a little boy. It’s a shame and a disgrace that some politicians and school districts want to ban certain books nowadays. Placing strong restrictions on teachers and controlling how they conduct their classroom hurts the students. The classroom should be a place that nurtures open mindedness, not a place that erases history or attempts to brainwash young minds. I love it when some public libraries and book stores, large chains and small independent ones, proudly display and offer the ‘banned books’ to the general public. The paperback edition of ‘Coreville Park a reggae novel’ is projected to be released in mid-September 2023. – Randolph Randy Camp