Books
Click on a book title above for full information on my books!
Below, you'll find the #WritingTip tweets I post on Twitter and, every Friday, exerpts from Tweet You Write, a writing guide based on my experiences teaching creative writing since 2000 and built from the #WritingTip tweets.
#WritingTip 100
The last writing tip. You want to be a writer? Then WRITE!
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
This is likely the most obvious tip in the series. And yet, possibly one of the most overlooked ones.
When someone tells you they’re writing something, a book, a poem, a story, their memoir, whatever, and you ask when the last time was that they actually wrote anything, they should say either “today” or “yesterday” most of the time. If they don’t, if they have to think about it, or they start their answer with one of those drawn out “welllllllll...” words that always precedes an excuse, or they state that they're still "thinking about it," then they’ve got problems.
They may say that things have gotten crazy at work, or the family’s really busy lately, or the kids eat up all their time, or one of a million other excuses. I used to be one of those excuse-providers as well. No more.
There’s 100 tips in this book. I started out trying to write one every day. In the end, as I finish this book, I’ll have spent exactly 104 days on the book. In that time, I wrote exactly 76303 words, or an average of 734 every day. My target was a minimum of 500 words per day.
As I finish this on June 16th, 2012, I still have slightly over half a year in which I’ll likely write at least one novel and some novellas and short stories.
The secret is to be disciplined enough to put your ass in a seat for a set period of time each day. I get up early enough to give myself about 45 minutes each day. That’s how I get stuff done.
Bum in seat, fingers to keyboard. And...go!
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” Pearl S. Buck
I love the quote above, because I often hear writers say they’ve got to wait for the right idea to hit them, or the right (write?) mood to hit them, or until they have enough time.
Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit here.
Most of us have a full time job. Most of us likely have issues with getting excited about that job five days a week. Personally, I love my day job, but I still have days where I'm not excited about showing up. That being said, if I sent an email to my boss and stated that I couldn't work for a few days, or weeks, or months because I'm still waiting for the right idea to hit me, or the right mood, or, you know, with the wife and kids and dog and cats, right now I just don't have the time.
Think that would fly? Yeah, me neither.
Treat writing like a job. Show up every day. Take any idea, work it up and start writing. Don’t expect it to be good. But pound through the entire story, start to finish, as fast as you can. If you have other ideas in the meantime, incorporate them or write them down, but don’t stop writing. When you’re done that, do the same with the next idea.
Eventually it will become good as you write, as you gain more practice and experience. And as you do that, you can then go back to some of that earlier stuff that’s not so good and decide if it’s worth revisiting.
But none of this is going to happen if you sit down occasionally when the muse hits you. I’ll tell you now that muses are a capricious lot and they get credited for a lot more than they actually inspire.
Thomas Edison wasn’t wrong when he said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
But only if you keep at it.
If you decide it’s too much work, or you don’t have enough time, or you don’t have the interest, then let it go.
But imagine what could happen if you kept at it.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Quite frankly, it comes down to this: How can you call yourself a writer if you don’t write?
So my last word on the subject is...
Write.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
The previous 99 #WritingTips.
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 99
Believe in your writing. Don’t compare your writing to others. You have your own unique voice.
#WritingTip 98
“I’m not a writer’s writer. I’m not a craftsman. I could be & that would be a one-book-a-year operation.” James Patterson
#WritingTip 97
“I hate writing. I love having written.” Dorothy Parker. Remember, writing is work, but it is rewarding. Keep at it.
#WritingTip 96
“It's. All. Coming. Together. So this is how writerly people feel? I can see how this can be addictive.” Colum McKnight.
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
First of all, who’s Colum McKnight? Colum is the go-to horror critic and co-creator of DreadfulTales.com and is passionate about what’s good and what’s not in horror. He’s also been used and abused as a fictional character in (I believe) five different horror novelist’s works. I have yet to kill him fictionally, but it's coming.
What he’s less known for--as of this writing--is his own writing. He’s recently stepped into the fiction writing arena himself and I expect the results to be spectacular.
On to the comment. A few months back, after arguing with which idea to tackle, Colum settled in and started writing. And then a short while later, he stated the above as his Facebook status. So let’s take a look at this.
This is almost in direct opposition to the next tip, #WritingTip 97, where Dorothy Parker states she hates writing. You’ll see I added a bit more to that tweet about how the act of writing is work, but it’s also rewarding.
As stated many times before, writers have to juggle all the rules, all the good habits, all the elements that make a story good...they have to keep all those balls in the air all the time. That’s a lot of work and it requires skill, experience and dedication.
I compare it to when I first learned to drive a car. The first few times, I was hyper-aware of every road sign, every other car within several hundred yards of my own, anything moving by the side of the road, be it construction worker, hitchhiker or blowing grass. My awareness also spread to the speed at which I drove, how soon to signal a turn or lane change, my exact position within the lane I was in, the exact pressure of my foot on the accelerator or brake, etc. I couldn’t even consider turning on the radio and no one knows the disasters that could have occurred if either of my hands left the ten and two positions they tightly gripped on the steering wheel.
So, in a very real way, I did the same thing back then--juggling all the rules, the good habits and all the elements of driver safety--as I do with writing.
Back then, driving wasn’t fun. It was work. It was constant vigilance, constant awareness. How could this be fun?
It didn’t take long for it to become a little more routine, and some stupid mistakes sometimes happened. Then, before too long, there I was, driving with one hand, or even with my knees as I held my girlfriend’s hand and simultaneously ate a hamburger, radio blasting and conversation happening.
Eventually, it all came together. Yes, I got reckless and I (pardon the pun) learned to curb that, but I realized that driving could be fun.
Writing’s the same way. I make stupid mistakes, I get a little reckless at times, then I reign it in and proceed in a more appropriate manner. And I have fun.
When it all comes together, when you write that section of dialogue or capture a mannerism or write a phrase that’s magic, or when that final piece of the storyline falls into place, creating brilliant synchronicities throughout the story...When that happens, that’s when writing becomes fun. It becomes magic. It becomes addictive.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
I know how addictive writing can be. I know how much fun it can be.
I also know how frustrating it can be. How the rest of your time can expand to fill in the time you should be writing. How, when the words don’t come, how compelling a game of solitaire or minesweeper can be. Or Facebook. Or Google. Or laundry.
I’m about to give you the biggest secret to be successful in writing.
Are you ready?
Here it is: Keep at it. There it is. Three simple words. Put another way? Don’t give up. Three more simple words. Let’s cut it down to two. Don’t quit. Or, keep going. Or, keep writing.
If you write, you’ll get better at writing. When you get better at writing, things will flow better for you and it will come together. When it comes together, you’ll get more excited about writing and write even more and even better. When that happens, someone will notice. Then someone will want to read more. Then someone will publish you.
But only if you keep at it.
If you decide it’s too much work, or you don’t have enough time, or you don’t have the interest, then let it go.
But imagine what could happen if you kept at it.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
I originally fell in love with this quote simply for the excitement and the passion. Colum didn’t state, “It’s all coming together.” He stated, “It’s. All. Coming. Together.”
That emphasis showed his sudden awakening to how “writerly people” feel.
I’ve always heard of “runner’s high” where, if your body hits that right stride, the endorphins get released and suddenly the runner is bouyed up with a natural intoxication. I’ve never experienced it. But I think I know how it feels simply because I’ve felt “writer’s high.” It may not be the endorphins kicking in, but there’s a definite excitement when you realize you wrote something that will entertain someone else.
It doesn’t happen a lot, but man, when it does...
That’s when you’ll understand, as Colum now does, how writing can be addictive.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 97
#WritingTip 98
#WritingTip 99
#WritingTip 100
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 95
"Writing is trying to recreate the human experience, so you need to have experiences." - Ron Marz. Go out and live!
#WritingTip 94
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. - Stephen King
#WritingTip 93
How many people know you're a writer? Put it out there, you may be pleasantly surprised at the reaction
#WritingTip 92
Always listen to feedback without being defensive. You won’t agree with everything, but take it all. Use what you can.
#WritingTip 91
Improve your writing: Let others that will give you an honest reaction read it. Make sure you hear why they like it or not.
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
This goes along with #WritingTip 92, coming up next. In that one I talk about ensuring the feedback is helpful, specific to the writing, and specific in the details.
This tip is still about getting that feedback, but the success of this one, and ultimately the feedback you finally receive, hinges on two things.
The first is how you present your material to the readers. I think the unspoken words that are carried along any time a writer hands his work off to someone for critique, review or opinion is, “I hope you like it.” Of course it is. I don’t think there’s too many writers out there that don’t hope you like their stuff. So, the message, as the reader goes through the work, slowly morphs from “I hope you like it” to “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t like it.”
This leads (depending on the reader) to considerations of the writer’s feelings, the concern that saying anything negative about the work may have an unwelcome or awkward effect on the relationship, etc.
Before you hand anything off to anyone, you better toughen up the skin and be prepared for readers to not just dislike it, but actively hate it or think it’s terrible. And no matter how much they keep the comments confined to the work and not about you, it still will be about you and your ability to get the story down.
The second thing is who you present it to to read. With a few exceptions, stay away from family. Typically moms and dads will either read it and delight in the fact that one of their offspring can string sentences together and be happy with that, or they’ll read it, not understand what’s wrong with you using all those cuss words and sex scenes and blood and violence and, not wanting to hurt their offspring, tell you either a) it was good; or, b) it was good, but it’s not their genre.
Brothers and sisters may be a little less charitable, but still unless one of these family members are in the industry, it may not be the best way to start.
Same goes for close friends.
- How you present your material to the readers. You have to impress upon them that you want clear, direct, specific and most of all, honest feedback. You have to let them know anything less than complete honesty -- even if it means they don’t like the work at all -- will be a disappointment to you.
Quite simply, you need to impress upon them that you cannot improve and grow as a writer unless you receive honest feedback, as opposed to the feedback they think you want to hear. - Who you present your material to to review. First and foremost, you need to find someone who will follow the request in step one. And the more reviewers you can find to do this, the more valuable the responses will be. The law of averages kicks in here...if eight of ten reviews are mostly positive, you’ve likely got a winner on your hands. But what if you had only given it to one of those two who were not mostly positive?
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
I often get some weird looks whenever I autograph a book for a buyer, because I sign it, thank them for the support, and then state quite bluntly that my email address is in the back and if they like the story, I’d love to hear about it, but if they didn’t like it, I’d be even more interested in hearing from them. Then I close it by saying, “It’s the only way I can get better as a writer.”
And usually, I think, they get it.
Yes, I love getting platitudes about my writing. Who doesn’t? My worst fear, however, is someone reading it, thinking, meh, and putting it aside and forgetting all about ever reading anything I wrote ever again.
Instead, I’ve had readers who told me I wished I’d taken it further toward the end of Vanishing Hope. I’ve had people tell me they wished they’d seen more transition in one of the characters. They tell me that one of the off-stage deaths should have been shown.
That’s valuable feedback, and it’s all stuff I’ll apply going forward.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
As I’ve stated before, writing is a mostly solitary act. You can bounce ideas off other writers, but when it comes to getting the words down, you’re mostly on your own.
So feedback is essential afterward. It loops back around so the next time you’re alone and writing, you can reference those specific details and address them in your revisions or going forward with new material.
Want a bonus tip? Provide feedback to others about their writing. It has three benefits.
- You’ll gain more reviewers for your work if you review other writers’ manuscripts.
- You’ll learn more about what works and what doesn’t from seeing it in works other than your own and you can apply it to your own writing.
- You’ll learn exactly what to dig out as issues with your own writing by being as specific as you can with your own reviews of other writers’ works.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 92
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 90
Choose a title that will intrigue or entice a reader. Make it work for your story.
#WritingTip 89
Writers are allotted three exclamation points to use over their careers. Period! Courtesy of @DianaTrees
#WritingTip 88
Too much revision can suck the life out of a piece. Don’t go for perfection. It doesn’t exist.
#WritingTip 87
Using tags other than “said” in dialogue? That's telling, not showing. You overload readers & draw attention to the author
#WritingTip 86
Think it’s done? Editing and everything? Great, now go cut 10% of it
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
Many editors believe that any piece of writing can be improved by cutting about ten percent of it. So a 1500-word story becomes 1350. A 100,000-word manuscript becomes 90,000.
Think it’s impossible? Stephen King’s The Stand (uncut version) ran about 465,000 words. By comparison, the three Lord of the Rings books run a total of about 475,000 words.
King was famously required to cut 150,000 words, about a third of the book, for original publication. Personally, I still believe the original, cut version works better.
My point is, if King can cut a third, you can cut ten percent.
But why is this a writing tip? Why even bother cutting that much? The answer is, ten percent is a significant amount. It’s more than just going in and removing stray adjectives and adverbs. This isn’t liposuction, this is amputation.
I know. I’ve been there.
I once wrote a short story for a competition, called Scooter’s Last Run. When I finished the story, I was very happy with it. The competition limited the word count of the entries to a thousand words. I did a word count on Scooter and was horrified to find it running about 1800 words. Almost half of it had to go. I started with those pesky adjectives and adverbs, and why not? They’re a cheap way to cut the word count somewhat. Not a lot. By the time I finished doing that, plus a little more slicing and dicing of flappy phrases, I’d brought it down to about 1550 words.
Next, I had to resort to surgery. The liposuction hadn’t worked, so now I had to go in, scalpels sharpened--okay, more delete key, but still--and start hacking. Here’s an example:
My mom and dad had split up a year before and we’d had to move. My dad wouldn’t take my dog, Scooter, and mom and I couldn’t have him in the apartment we moved to. The next best thing was to give him a good home so we arranged to have him live with George and Carol Black, friends of ours that lived not too far away. I hung out with their daughter, Debbi--and yes, there were the inevitable comments about how nice it would be if we grew up and got married that always got our eyes rolling. But at least I had a place to visit my dog. And make no mistake, no matter where Scooter lived, he was my dog.
We’d got him three years earlier, back when mom and dad still talked nicely to each other. Dad came home with a small, black, brown-eyed squirming bundle of joy and it was love at first sight for both of us. Though he was a black Lab, he had a small white patch over the toes of both hind legs that, in my mind, just made him even more fascinating. When my parents asked me what I wanted to name him, I picked the name of my favourite star on television. And that’s how he originally got the name Dino. Unfortunately, I’d meant Dean Martin. Hey, I was three and he and Jerry Lewis were the coolest duo on the tube at the time. But my parents were sure I meant the Flintstones’ family pet.
When I realized they’d screwed up my dog’s name, I renamed him Scooter. Don’t ask why. The fog of time has eradicated whatever reason my three-year-old brain may have come up with.
Three paragraphs. 290 words. Eventually, I cut this section down to:
My parents had split up a year before. My dad wouldn’t take my dog, Scooter, and mom and I couldn’t take him with us. The next best thing was to have him live with George and Carol Black, friends of ours. They had a daughter who could keep Scooter company, and it gave me a place to visit my dog.
We’d got him three years earlier, back when mom and dad still talked nicely to each other. Dad came home with a squirming Black Lab puppy and it was love at first sight. When asked what I wanted to name him, I chose Scooter. It suited him.
Big difference. Two paragraphs and 107 words. Seriously, did anyone need to know about Debbi and the the protagonist’s toddler love affair or Dean Martin?
Cutting ten percent forces you to dig into the text and ask tough questions about what works and what doesn’t. What’s muscle and what’s just fat?
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
In “On Writing,” Stephen King talked about a rejection slip he received in 1966 when he was still in high school.
“Not bad but puffy,” the editor wrote. “You need to revise for length.”
The editor provided this formula:
2nd Draft = 1st draft – 10%
Understanding that whatever you’ve written can likely be improved by some judicious pruning forces you to let go of the idea that every damn word you’ve written is a dollop of sweet honey on the page, a precious pearl of wisdom.
Though almost certainly an urban legend, as no actual proof exists about the this,it is said that Ernest Hemingway, for all his works, considered the following to be his best story. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The story surround the the six-word story is most certainly false, however the point is real. In those six words, there are questions and emotion and wonder.
Instead of saying less with more, say more with less.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
No matter how good a writer you are, you need editing. You need to look at your work, or have someone else look at your work, with a critical eye. You need to be able to strip away the excess and get down to the meaning in as concise a manner as possible.
It’s better for the writer, as you’ll learn to write stronger prose. It’s better for the reader because they’ll appreciate you getting to the point.
Lose words. Gain readers.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 60
#WritingTip 61
#WritingTip 65
#WritingTip 74
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 85
Not comfortable with dialogue? Write it, then read it aloud. Does it sound like what was in your head? If not rewrite it!
#WritingTip 84
Your secret weapon to error-free writing is to read it out loud. You'll be shocked at the mistakes you'll uncover.
#WritingTip 83
Revision copy-edit: Enhance style-eliminate adverbs. Choose verbs that convey in 1 word, action/emotion/attitude/mood.
#WritingTip 82
Revision: Copy-edit: Correct language, style & hone details. Work on concision, clarity, resonance, musical language
#WritingTip 81
Never tryst yore spelling chequer. It wont find awl the miss steaks. I'm shore I'm write!
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
I’m hoping this is one where the original tweet says it all. Spell check has got to be one of the least trustworthy, yet somehow most over-trusted tools out there.
I’m not saying it’s not useful, it most certainly is. Every time I flub up and write teh for the, it saves my butt. Everytime I type throught for through, it quietly points it out.
However, every time I type form for from or vice versa, it happily lets it go through, which is exactly why you can never just run spell check and let it go at that. There are far too many words that, even mis-typed, are spelled properly, just not the same meaning anymore.
Then there’s a host of other words that are misused with such frequency that I’ve finally learned not to cringe when I see them, and still, spell check will never find them.
What are these horrible words?
then and than
accept and except
your and you’re
through and threw
through and thorough and thought
to and too (and two)
for and fore (and four)
its and it’s
their and there and they’re
lay and lie
e.g. and i.e.
imply and infer
The list goes on and on and on and there’s far too many words to make a full list here. My point is, spell check is a good first line of defence, but you cannot allow it to be the final line of defence. You still need to dig in and ferret all those words out.
Believe me, all a reader needs to see is one sentence like
Johnny smiled as he waited for the race to begin, knowing he was faster then all the rest.
or
The Smith family had saved for years and were excited to be finally going on there trip.
or
“Aren’t you going to eat you’re cake?” she asked.
If any of these show up, you’ve likely lost all credibility with your reader.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
This is an easy one. What led me to tweet this is the unfailing blind trust many beginning writers place in spell check, only to be shocked the first time they get their work back and find it covered in red pen notes about incorrect word choice.
Every time, I hear essentially the same refrain: “But I used spell check!”
And I chuckle quietly, and think, they’ll either get it or they won’t. Which means they’ll either succeed or they won’t.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Again, I hope this is obvious at this point, but just in case it’s not, this is important because if you rely solely on spell check, your writing will never rise above the level of the painfully awkward amateur, even if the writing itself is well done.
You’ll find reviews everywhere online where the reviewer wanted to like the story but couldn’t get past all the mistakes. It won’t allow anyone to give your writing a fair shake.
This is the first step in showing how much care you put into your writing. If you treat the writing with respect, it goes a long way to others treating it with that same level of respect.
This is the first step on the road to presenting yourself as a professional.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 60
#WritingTip 80
#WritingTip 82
#WritingTip 84
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 80
You don’t need to be an expert, but learn some basic grammar. Learn to spell. Please.
#WritingTip 79
Know your words/phrases. No "could of's," no "could care less's," no "a lot of myriad," no "then" for "than"...please!
#WritingTip 78
Get rid of tired, overused phrases: black as night, smooth as glass, cold as ice, each and every, above and beyond...
#WritingTip 77
Use Find & Replace to highlight words like was, is, has, had. Then figure out a better action verb to replace them.
#WritingTip 76
Get rid of dull verbs (got, look, see, walk, put) and passive "ing" verbs - Use "ran", not "was running"
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
We’ve touched on a lot of this in previous #WritingTip entries, but not necessarily the workhorse verbs, such as get, look, see, walk, put that immediately spring to mind when writing.
There’s nothing horribly wrong with them, it’s just that they tend to be awfully vanilla. There’s so many better ways to show those actions other than with average, generic, no-hint-as-to-how-it-was-done-just-that-it-was-done verbs.
Let’s just take one of them, as an example.
If I give you something like
He got into the pool.
What am I saying here? Yes, I realize there’s no context around it, so we don’t know if he’s gotten himself into a hockey pool, a lottery pool, or a swimming pool. And we don’t know how he got into that pool. We’ve been told what he did, instead of being shown.
So, it could be reworked into something with a little more oomph by just changing that boring old vanilla verb.
He dived into the pool.
He cannonballed into the pool.
He slid into the pool.
He sank into the pool.
He careened into the pool.
He splashed into the pool.
He belly-flopped into the pool.
He torpedoed into the pool.
He shrieked into the pool.
And this isn’t even considering restructuring the sentence. It’s just changing one word. You could change it around to get even more detail from it.
The pool embraced him.
The water geysered from the exuberance of his impact.
The reluctant surface gave way to the blunt force of his body.
Love them or hate them, any of the above examples have more character than He got into the pool.
And you can do that with any vanilla verb.
Then there’s the passive tenses of verbs. Was running for ran. Was seeing or could see for saw. Yes, there are times when the passive works better. If you’re trying to highlight the tentative passive nature of a character, then go for it. There’s times when you simply need that tense.
Just know exactly why you’re using the passive was ____ing or could ____ tense. If you don’t know, then change it.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
As stated above, the vanilla verbs and passive tenses seem to come to mind first. This isn’t a problem when you’re ripping through that first draft, as that’s the stage where you’re more focused on getting the content down, not necessarily focusing on word choice.
If you can do both, lovely. But if it’s a choice between speed and word choice, go for speed (as stated way back in #WritingTip 20). Word choice can come later. It’s always easier to take a vanilla verb and change it, than not have any content to edit whatsoever. Same goes for passive tense.
Another great thing about having the manuscript written before working on word choice? You can use your Find & Replace function to dig out the was ______ings and, if you build a list of your own favourite (or, if not favourite, most used) vanilla verbs, you can F&R them too.
The point here is, don’t get hung up on this tip upfront. Deal with it on the back end.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Why is this important? Think about it the same way as you choose a life partner. It’s very much like those old songs, You Can’t Hurry Love and Shop Around. Both deal with not settling for the first partner that comes along. Both extol the virtues of trying out a few, until you ensure you’ve found the one you can live with for the rest of your life.
To a lesser degree, it’s the same with word choice, whether it’s vanilla verbs or any other word in the sentence. When you finalize your manuscript, you essentially have to live with your choices of words for the rest of your life. Unless you fall into the trap of neverending edits, which you really don’t want to do. So, finding the right word, the right verb, not the first word that comes along, becomes an important task.
Hopefully, this will help you understand the gravity of these choices. It’s not something that should be approached with a cavalier attitude.
At least not something that you intend to live with the rest of your life.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 54
#WritingTip 75
#WritingTip 77
#WritingTip 83
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 75
Find passive verbs/overused words. Use Find&Replace to find "ing" words or "ly" adverbs. Don't replace, just bold & review
#WritingTip 74
Cut words and scenes ruthlessly. Anything you cut can be reworked or built out in another story. Remember #WritingTip 24!
#WritingTip 73
2nd read-thru of 1st draft: Pay attention to pacing, scene structure, setting and character development.
#WritingTip 72
Avoid the info dump. Large amounts of info should be spaced out or delivered while something interesting happens.
#WritingTip 71
Act 3:your hero faces the darkest place - physical or psychological death. It alls leads to a logical, but surprising end.
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
Ever wondered exactly what the three-act format is? You hear about its use in everything from Shakespeare to television sitcoms, but what is it, really?
It’s simply a framing device that can, in theory, keep you on track and ensure that certain story events are happening roughly when they should.
You’ll hear it referred to many different ways.
- Conflict/Confrontation/Conclusion.
- Set-up/Complications/Resolution.
- Beginning/Middle/End.
Whatever...they're all three-act formats.
Let’s go through the three stages.
Act I: The Beginning
This usually takes up the first quarter of the story and does much of the heavy lifting of the story. The beginning provides the inciting incident, the change to the protagonist’s world that sets the story in motion. Without this, there is no story.
Act I also introduces (not necessarily in this order) the protagonist and the other major characters, including the antagonist. Conflict is introduced. The reader learns exactly what’s at stake here, what the protagonist can win or lose. The world of the story is introduced and the internal logic is made clear, which means the story could take place in a fantasy land where magic rules the day, or it could take place in our normal world. Whatever the world is, the logic must remain consistent.
This is where the viewpoint is set up. Will the story be told first-person only by the protagonist? Or will you switch off between the protagonist and the antagonist, both in third person? Or will you rotate through four different characters throughout the story? Whatever the pattern, establish it immediately, then stick to it.
Once the main storyline is set up, then you go about introducing the sub-plots as needed. If backstory is required, introduce it sparingly. The same goes for flashbacks.
Finally, Act I typically ends with a crisis. The protagonist has been thrown into this mess somehow, but now it boils to a head and they must decide whether they will accept the challenge or walk away. Just a hint here…if they walk away, your story walks away with them.
Act II: The Middle
This usually takes up the middle half of the story and it has its own unique challenges. This is where all the situations you set up in Act I now deepen and increase in complexity and it also leads to the anticipation of the climax. Act II is the bulk of the story.
Because the protagonist has now accepted the challenge, they are now faced with fighting their way through the complications and obstacles in their way. Your protagonist is tested physically, intellectually, emotionally and possibly spiritually by these conflicts and complications.
If you haven’t done so already, now would be a great time to throw in that ticking bomb from #WritingTip 51 to deepen the suspense.
This is also where you can take the time to deepen the characters as well, through backstory, flashbacks, dialogue, conflict and any other way to get them to interact. But remember, they must interact. A single protagonist interacting with the other characters on their own, but no interaction amongst the supporting cast can be boring.
Because of all of the deepening of the characters, and the obstacles, complications and conflict you throw at them and the increasing suspense, the characters should become more emotional and committed to that ultimate goal. Your protagonist should have more and more skin in the game and their motivation should be increasing as the stakes rise. They should also be exhibiting some behaviour that hints that the change they’ll ultimately go through by the end of the story. This is also where you contrast the difference between your protagonist and the rest of the characters. Show us why they are the one that needs to complete this task.
Each obstacle, delay, complication or conflict should be greater than the one before it.
There should be a major reversal in the storyline at the halfway point. Something that pushes back the end goal even more, something that perhaps sends your protagonist careening down a different path for a time, a side goal that must be completed, and completed quickly, before the end goal can be attainable.
As the end of Act II looms, typically there will be a smaller skirmish between the protagonist and antagonist, each one getting a sense of the other, but they are separated before it can become deadly. This is where your protagonist will face
their greatest fear, and they will experience despair or fear of failure. Likely there will be some internal struggle or turmoil, but ultimately they should decide to go on.
It should be obvious that this situation, whatever it may be, cannot continue unchecked much longer. Things need to change and only the protagonist can do it.
Act II ends with the protagonist locked into the goal. There’s no turning back now.
Act III: The End
This is the last quarter of the story. Your protagonist has faced their inner struggle, and now they must complete the task, win the race, defeat the enemy, or do whatever needs to be done. They are now in the most uncomfortable position you can put them in, they should be entering new, unexplored emotional territory.
It’s at this point that your protagonist faces death, whether it is physical, or psychological. It should seem impossible to go on after this if they lose.
Whatever they learned through the course of Act II and the soul searching they did toward the end of the Act should be used to attain the end goal. This should be the area of highest emotion, most action, and most stress. Very likely your scenes and chapters may be shorter and choppier.
It should all come together in a logical, inevitable, but, most importantly, unforeseen conclusion. If it’s logical and inevitable and can be predicted back in Act I, you need to do more work. If, however, you can throw in that final twist, then you’ve done your job.
Your protagonist should come out the other side changed, whether internally or externally. At the same time, all final wrap ups of subplots and secondary storylines or loose ends should be completed quickly and efficiently. Once the major goal has been attained, all your suspense has bled off and you should finish up any final scenes as quickly as possible.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
Without knowing where to start, writers will often blunder through a story, going down long, dark alleyways, making unimportant side trips, bringing in characters that aren’t needed, and generally stumbling across the finish line.
Those that read a lot will get a sense of a successful story format through repeated exposure to the three-act structure. When I went back and looked at my earlier writing, I found I’d been using it unconsciously (and not completely correctly) for years.
Even if you try to format one story to it, then decide to never use it again, then it will help you going forward. Just having experience with the three-act structure will assist you in making decisions on how to pace your story, perhaps how to open it and definitely how to finish it off. Give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen?
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
That’s a lot to remember, but, to be honest, if you want a template for a successful story, the three-act structure is it. It gives you the format, it gives you the flow, it gives you tips on where to increase the emotion and suspense.
Really, as formulaic as it is, it’s what drives most writing. Learn it, use it, love it.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 51
#WritingTip 63
#WritingTip 65
#WritingTip 66
#WritingTip 73
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 70
Act 2 cont'd: where subplots deepen, a major reversal occurs, ends with your hero facing their greatest fear.
#WritingTip 69
Act 2: deepens the story world, heightens conflict, makes things harder for the protagonist & proves resolution is needed
#WritingTip 68
Act 1: intro to the world, hook the reader & show the inciting
incident, the thing that puts your hero under STRESS
#WritingTip 67
What's the 3-Act Structure? Setup (25%), complications (50%) and resolution (25%). Beginning, middle, end.
#WritingTip 66
“‘The king died, then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.” E.M. Forster
#WritingTip 65
1st read-thru of 1st draft: Should you behead your beginning? Often start too slow, too long to intro action & characters
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
This could be one of the tougher things to see in your own manuscript, even with a little distance, but if there’s ever a time to be ruthless with your little darling, now is the time.
Cut the head off your little darling.
Quite often, as you first start writing a manuscript, assuming you’re writing it in start-to-finish order, less experienced authors will tend to work up to what they want to say. They’ll start a little slow, not a lot going on, and introduce a character at a time at a languid pace and, after this has gone on for several pages, eventually when they get enough characters introduced, finally, finally they’ll get to the action.
This is a good time to remind you that those opening pages are there to hook the reader, to grab them by the eyeballs and imagination and drag them into the pages, never giving them the chance to look away.
Hooking a reader isn’t an easy job when you’ve set a languid pace. You’re not going to grab them, you’re going to hope they like you enough and have patience enough to follow along until something happens.
You can never count on that.
So go back to the start of that story and when you get to some solid action that moves the plot forward, stop, put your finger there and mark it. Then cut everything that came prior to that.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
We went over this in #WritingTip 5, but let’s touch on parts of it now. There are four openings (I mention two in 5) that new writers tend to gravitate toward.
The weather opening. This is the stereotypical “It was a dark and stormy night” opening. You may laugh at that line, but I’ve seen all sorts of variations on it. If you’re describing the weather, the sunrise, the moonlight, the heat, the cold, the rain, the wind... Unless one of those things is going to incite an action, such as the rising moon turning your protagonist into a wolf, or the wind allowing your character to fly for the first time, find a better way to open it.
The landscape opening. Often hard to distinguish from the weather opening, as often the landscape is described by the effect the weather is having on it. If the mountain spires or the lush forests or the golden fields or the dusty plains or the long and winding roads or the bluegreen waters don’t figure immediately into the action--and I don’t mean your young and virile lovers have just ended up in a lush tropical locale with sparkling oceans and get randy, I mean that water rears up and snatches one of them out to the deep--then find a better way to open it.
The just-woke-up opening. What better way to open a story than by meeting your protagonist as they start their day, right? You can be in their head just as their eyes open and they stumble around the bathroom (looking in the mirror so the reader can get a full description of them), then down to the kitchen to feed the obligatory pet and drink some coffee before slowly introducing the other characters they live with. In the meantime, you can wallow around in their head, subjecting the reader to every thought, every worry, every problem they’re currently anticipating, right?
Wrong. Find a better way to open it.
The in-the-head opening. A variation of the just-woke-up opening. Instead of waking up, you’re jumping into the character’s head. Invariably they are the only character in the scene, or they only notice other characters in the periphery, never commenting or interacting with them. Which, much like the just-woke-up opening, you again wallow in this character’s head, making the reader suffer through the minutiae of their thoughts. They’ll stop to look in mirrors to describe themselves head to toe, they’ll run through full histories of their own upbringing or tramautic life episodes, they’ll worry about others not in the scene...
Yawn. Find a better way to open it.
If you’re character’s alone with their thoughts, or there’s too much focus on their environment long before you dive into any characters, then your story is in serious need of a beheading.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
There’s a couple of reasons authors do this. The first is simply because they’re getting used to the characters themselves, so they’re working from the inside out, figuring out how they talk, how they think, how they react. Essentially, they’re slowly falling in love with their characters.
There’s nothing wrong with that, just don’t do that in front of your readers. Do that in private and show the results, not the process, to your readers. Throw your characters into the thick of things and try your best to not throw them up on that stage all alone. Give them someone to play off.
The other reason is the author is working their way into the story. Instead of having a key to the front door and simply walking in, they’re taking a more circuitous route...through the hedges in the backyard, through the basement window, past the furnace and the exercise bike that was never used, up the creaky stairs and into the hallway.
These are your weather and landscape openings. You’re slowly finding your way to that spot you should have started at...the characters in the thick of things.
Again, go ahead and figure out the landscape or the weather they’ll be working in, but don’t force the reader into that raincoat or on that mountain trek too. Drop them in beside the character as the action starts.
This way, your reader will trust you and they will have the patience to follow along.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 5
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 64
1st read-thru of 1st draft: Missing backstories or intimate details? Bad POV changes? Is the POV right for the story?
#WritingTip 63
1st read-through of 1st draft: Look at the big picture, does the plot hang together, scenes make sense, is it coherent?
#WritingTip 62
Save all versions of your drafts—number and/or date them. I find adding the date (2012_10_30) after the title works best.
#WritingTip 61
Always create a document labelled “extras” with everything you delete from your early drafts. Don't just delete them.
#WritingTip 60
Accept the reality that revision is the other half of writing.
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
This almost sounds like one of those bumper sticker life rules, doesn’t it? Dance like no one’s watching. Accept the reality that revision is the other half of writing.
In one of my Creative Writing classes, I’d gone through most of the classes, and put brought up the topic of revising your work. One of the participants looked stricken as he said, “You’re telling me after we write it, we have to go through all that and write it again?”
Well, not exactly, but close enough.
Back in #WritingTip 21, I quoted Hemingway. He said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” If that’s the case, and most times it is, then yes, you can’t just write something, deem it perfect, and walk away from it.
I’m not sure if this is an expectation simply because many don’t understand how much work goes into a piece of writing that reads so brilliantly it looks effortless. Or perhaps it’s due to our email and text messages and Facebook status updates and our tweets that we toss off with no thought to composition, reader impact or, at the very least, basic spelling and grammar.
In any of those cases, we’ll rarely delete it. Instead, someone will point out the mistake or the revision needed, and we’ll fix it on one of the follow-up comments. That same process cannot be done in your manuscript. You need to go through it in painstaking detail and work out every issue before it’s released out into the wilds.
So, long story short (pardon the pun), when you write your manuscript, that’s a huge accomplishment and you should be proud. But you should also realize you’re not anywhere near done yet. There’s that other half of the writing process still to come.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
I see this everywhere, not just in writing. As I say up above, I regularly see Facebook and Twitter messages with spelling mistakes. I see emails that desperately needed a once-over prior to hitting that “send” button. I see resumes with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and statements that simply should not be included on a document designed to market the person.
I see manuscripts that have gotten much farther than they should, manuscripts with dull sections, unclear sections, unresolved plots, head-hopping, logical inconsistencies, info dumps (expanded on in #WritingTip 72), too many characters, not enough characters, lack of motivation, too much description, terrible and unclear dialogue, excessive adverbs and adjectives, irritating dialogue tags, too much telling and not enough showing.
I see writing in desperate need of revising and editing.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
It goes back to professionalism and having some pride in your work. If you’ve taken the time to write something...to actually wrangle those twenty-six letters into words and wrangle those words, along with some punctuation and grammatical rules, into something that’s not only coherent, but designed to entertain or enlighten or affect the reader...well, shouldn’t you go the full distance and make it the best it can be?
On the one hand, it’s your creation. It was an idea that you formulated and thought out and put down so others could read it. Take pride in that.
On the other hand, with that pride, make sure you’re showing both yourself and your work in the best possible light. You don’t want people to avoid it simply because it didn’t look professional.
So embrace the other half of writing.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 55
#WritingTip 56
#WritingTip 57
#WritingTip 58
#WritingTip 62
#WritingTip 63
#WritingTip 64
#WritingTip 65
#WritingTip 72
#WritingTip 73
#WritingTip 74
#WritingTip 75
#WritingTip 76
#WritingTip 77
#WritingTip 78
#WritingTip 79
#WritingTip 80
#WritingTip 81
#WritingTip 82
#WritingTip 83
#WritingTip 84
#WritingTip 87
#WritingTip 83
#WritingTip 84
#WritingTip 86
#WritingTip 88
(yeah, it's a ridiculously long list, isn't it?)
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 59
Finished writing your story? Get some distance from it. Age the manuscript for a month. Two is better.
#WritingTip 58
First draft method (4 of 4): Write 1st draft longhand in 1 session. Transcribe/edit pages to computer in 2nd session.
#WritingTip 57
First draft method (3 of 4): Print first draft pages & revise on the bus, waiting for appts, etc. Save for when done.
#WritingTip 56
First draft method (2 of 4): Don’t edit what you’re currently writing. Write something new, revise something older.
#WritingTip 55
First draft method (1 of 4): begin each session briefly editing what you wrote last. Just typos etc. Note bigger stuff.
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
These next four methods are all different aspects of how to approach a first draft. Some may contradict others. No biggie, just find a method that works for you and run with it.
In this first one, you’re looking to prime the well and maybe cut back a bit of editing on the back end. That’s achieved by not sitting down and immediately writing. Instead, you’ve built in a warm-up period ahead of time where you review the section you wrote in your last session.
Now this also depends on how much you wrote in that last session. If it’s a few pages, that’s fine, but if you wrote several hundred pages in a mythical Kerouac-inspired, benzedrine-fuelled marathon session, well that’s a whole different story.
What this allows you to do is ease back into the story by rereading what’s most recently happened, and, along the way if you happen to see some typos, some bad grammar, fair enough, clean it up as you go, but don’t much deeper than light editing. Keep another pad, or Post-its or some method of noting bigger issues that will need to be addressed.
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
I see some writers that get excited over something they’re writing, but that enthusiasm wanes when they walk away from it, then have to come back to continue.
Part of the reason may be simply because they don’t remember where they were going, or didn’t have an end goal when they first started (completely ignoring #WritingTip 4). Whatever the reason, it becomes a chore to carry on.
So maybe rereading what you’ve done before will light a fire under that enthusiasm again. And hey, if you can get a little spell checking in, that’s just a bonus, right?
Just don’t let the writing session turn into an editing session.
John Steinbeck said, “Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.”
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
This methods, like all of them, has its pros and cons.
The pros are fairly obvious. You’re doing what you set out to do, which is prime the pump. You’re immersing yourself back into this world you’ve created, reacquainting yourself with the characters and determining how they’ll react to the things you threw at them last time.
This method is especially handy if you tend to write in binges (completely ignoring #WritingTip 9, dammit!) and it’s been a while since you actually did anything with this particular manuscript.
The cons, however, should be noted and caution taken to not fall into their seductive traps.
The first is, if you’re just reading, that’s not too bad, but if you are engaging in any form of editing, light or otherwise, you’re now using a whole different side of your brain. You’ve switched on the logical, detail-oriented, organized, analytical side. Not the best side of the brain to have lit up when you’re preparing to write.
Also, when you get into the editing side, you may fall over the edge and decide this section warrants more editing before you can move on. That can lead to substantial delays and goes directly against #WritingTip 20 where you want to get the story down as quickly as possible.
Finally, the other danger--and don’t discount this one, as it’s very real--is that you may read over what you’ve previously written and become disheartened, deciding that it’s not good enough, it has no merit, it’s not going anywhere, you’ve got better things to write, you could write better, and on and on and on...
Then you abandon it.
Be aware of these pitfalls. I would say that, if you’ve fallen into any of these traps in the past (I know I have) then avoid this method. You want ideas that will help you, not slow you down.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 21
#WritingTip 56
#WritingTip 57
#WritingTip 58
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 54
When words like afraid, scared, confused and vulnerable are used to convey emotion, you're telling, not showing.
#WritingTip 53
What's the most improbable event in your story? List 20 reasons why it can't occur in reality, then overcome each obstacle.
#WritingTip 52
Go for maximum realism. The story should be “experienced” by the reader, not “told” by the author. Show. Don't tell.
#WritingTip 51
Create more suspense, add a ticking bomb. Could be an illness, or a deadline...or a bomb! Make time run out!
#WritingTip 50
When each scene is completed ask, How can I delay the story question further? How can I increase the suspense?
THE MESSAGE...EXPANDED
You’ve figured out why you want this scene. You know your reasons and they align with the story questions. And then you’ve written the scene.
Or, better yet, you’re still working the scene out. Either way works.
This is where you should asking yourself how you can make it better. How can you make it even more suspenseful.
Again, I’m not saying every scene needs to seem like it was directed by Michael Bay, wrought with explosions, destruction and lots of running and yelling.
Let’s take the example of the classic high school nerd who falls head over heels for the cheerleader. Patrick Dempsey made an early career out of this type of story before he grew up and into his looks.
Imagine he’s attending his first dance, simply because he knows she’s there. He’s spent weeks screwing up his courage to come and has a constant running monologue about just walking up to her and saying the exact right thing to get her to dance with him.
Just in this scene alone, you could go the easy route and have him go up and fumblingly ask her and she turns him down.
But ask yourself how you can delay the ending of that one scene--her turning him down--and increase the suspense. What can make it worse?
His zipper is undone?
A contact lens is lost, making him squint?
Some trips him on his way to her?
Someone gives him a wedgie on his way to her?
Someone yanks his pants down?
Or one of the above happens and he falls, turns over and realizes his head landed between her feet and he’s now looking up her skirt?
The song changes into a fast one that he knows he can’t dance to?
His throat closes up?
Someone else beats him to her, delaying his advance?
She sees him coming and ducks out to the washroom to avoid him?
The possibilities go on and on.
When you do settle on what things will happen along the way, do consider the future ramifications of these events. What effect will this have on any future meetings between the nerd and the beauty queen?
WHAT LED ME TO TWEET THIS
Have you ever read something, or watched something in a movie or on television and thought, this is terrible! I could do better than this!
Why did you think that? Why was your mind even in that place?
Because you weren’t engaged. The suspense was either overwrought or underwrought. While I’ve seen both, I find beginning writers tend to not go far enough, they don’t make the scenes crackle with tension and suspense. Instead, they ensure the reader knows exactly what’s going on through pages and pages of description or dialogue that goes nowhere.
Back in #WritingTip 1, I talked about not opening with the weather or landscape or dreams because nothing happened. That logic ties neatly in with this tip. If nothing’s happening, there is no suspense.
So ask yourself, how can I increase the suspense?
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Suspense is one of three key ingredients in a story. I’ll get to the other two shortly.
Without suspense, your reader will quickly lose interest, because there’s nothing there to compel them to turn the pages. Think of the last book you couldn’t put down. Why couldn’t you? I’m betting that, along with some amazing characters, great settings and a fantastic plot...there was also suspense. Heaps and heaps of it.
Don’t mistake action for suspense. JUST BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS WRITTEN IN A FRENETIC PACE THAT NEVER SEEMS TO SLOW DOWN AND THERE’S CONSTANT RUNNING AND SCREAMING AND FIGHTING AND YELLING AND EVERYONE’S OUT TO GET EVERYONE ELSE AND ALL THE CHARACTERS SEEM HYPER-CAFFEINATED AND CONVERSE WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS AND NO ONE GETS ALONG DOESN’T MEAN IT’S GOT SUSPENSE.
It may seem energetic, but it’s not necessarily suspenseful. Just busy.
Having a solid, interesting story question that the reader wants to see resolved is the suspense primer. Creating exciting, realistic delays and parceling the answers out slowly increases that suspense.
And suspense keeps the pages turning.
PLAYS NICELY WITH
#WritingTip 1
#WritingTip 35
#WritingTip 37
#WritingTip 38
#WritingTip 47
#WritingTip 48
#WritingTip 51
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 49
Increase suspense with a powerful story question. Child trapped in a well? Good. A killer in the well? Not so much.
#WritingTip 48
The basic principle of good storytelling is suspense. If the reader needs to know what happens next, they'll keep reading.
#WritingTip 47
Include all the suspense you can muster, but if your readers don't care about your characters, they won't read further.
#WritingTip 46
Dear writer! Beware of author intrusion. Don’t have your character do something unconsciously.
#WritingTip 45
(3 of 3) If your reader needs to know something: write a scene from POV of another character who knows info or learns it.
#WritingTip 44
(2 of 3) If your reader needs to know something: Have the POV character learn the information on behalf of the reader.
#WritingTip 43
(1 of 3) If your reader needs to know something: POV character must know and relate it through thought/speech/action
#WritingTip 42
Point Of View is the writer's tool to reveal or conceal important story information. Choose your POV characters wisely.
#WritingTip 41
The reader can be told nothing the onstage viewpoint character (your POV for the scene) does not know. And don't head-hop!
#WritingTip 40
Remember all the senses when you’re writing. Smell, touch, taste and sound are as important as sight.
#WritingTip 39
Healthy humans don't stay in a negative emotional state and will fight to get out of it. There's a lot of story in that.
#WritingTip 38
You need to threaten your hero's safety and push them to do things they wouldn't normally do - in relation to tip 37
#WritingTip 37
Your protagonist should ALWAYS be under stress.
#WritingTip 36
Emotional desires force characters to extraordinary lengths. Desire is linked to backstory. The protagonist must suffer.
#WritingTip 35
Don’t tell of "middle" conquests. Tell of the first one, the last one, or the one that broke your character's heart. (relates to #1)
#WritingTip 34
Don’t have characters constantly alone talking or thinking to themselves. Makes it difficult to add characterization.
#WritingTip 33
Avoid boring. Got a single character thinking about their life or problems? Get out of their head & move the story ahead.
#WritingTip 32
Choose characters like you would choose instruments for an symphony. You want each to sound different.
#WritingTip 31
The most exciting characters are a study in opposites. There's good and bad in everyone. Amplify that.
#WritingTip 30
Look at your characters and label them: Cop, Geek, whatever. List stereotypes of that label, find at least one opposite.
#WritingTip 29
Your protagonist should come out of the story changed. Not necessarily for the better, but different.
#WritingTip 28
Your protagonist MUST find their own solutions. No one else can do it for them.
#WritingTip 27
Motivation makes your character more damned if they quit than continue. Ensure your characters have strong motivations.
#WritingTip 26
The best stories always revolve around answering “who are you?” in regard to the protagonist.
#WritingTip 25
A good story has 3 things: Strong characters, strong motivation for the characters, and a strong story (or goal).
#WritingTip 24
Nothing goes in that doesn't belong and nothing gets left out that does belong in. That's called Narrative Unity
#WritingTip 23
Each story should cover 4 things: Time & space, Details, Point of View, Dialogue. That sets, grounds and characterizes it.
#WritingTip 22
Don't trust computers. Email yourself the manuscript. Save on a thumb drive, GoogleDocs, print it, whatever. Back it up!
#WritingTip 21
Don't try and get it perfect the first time. It won't be. Fix it later. "The first draft of anything is shit." - Hemingway.
#WritingTip 20
To get something done, write it as fast as you can. Don't worry if it's good, or about the spelling etc. Just get it done!
#WritingTip 19
"Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." Elmore Leonard. Seems obvious, but it's important.
#WritingTip 18
Outline your story. Would you leave on a long first-time trip without mapping out where you're going?
#WritingTip 17
If you need to research it, DO IT. Don't fake it. Readers will see the errors and your writing loses credibility.
#WritingTip 16
Carry a notebook, a recorder, call your voicemail or use your cell voice recorder. Note your ideas when they happen.
#WritingTip 15
Who are you writing for? YOU should be your first consideration as audience.
#WritingTip 14
You always hear "Write what you know." There’s more to that, however. Write what you WANT to know.
#WritingTip 13
Want to get the words flowing? Write about something that grabs you emotionally. What makes you angry ecstatic terrified?
#WritingTip 12
Writer's Block is an excuse not to write, not a reason. It makes you feel better to say it when you don't write.
#WritingTip 11
Know your subject. Ask, have I dug deep enough to know I'm not missing something vital to the story/character/setting?
#WritingTip 10
Don't write until the tank is dry. Get out what you need, and leave yourself a note as to where you want to go tomorrow.
#WritingTip 9
Write every day. Get a timer, set it for ten minutes. When it's done, you can quit.
#WritingTip 8
If you don't write, you won't hit your goals. Set a goal, even if it's 100 words/day. Then do it. http://www.caramichaels.com/defiantlyliterate/wip500/
#WritingTip 7
Don’t worry about your opening scene until the story’s mostly finished. Don’t let it block you.
#WritingTip 6
Don't start writing without knowing what exactly you want to get out of the scene.
#WritingTip 5
For most story types, start with action & explain later. DON'T start with landscape or weather. Why? Cuz it usually sucks.
#WritingTip 4
The story needs a question answered at the end. In Wiz of Oz it's "will Dorothy get home?" What's your story question?
#WritingTip 3
Know your ending before you start writing.
#WritingTip 2
Three good places to start building a story from: Loss, Anger or Fear...then make it worse for your protagonist
#WritingTip 1
Don't know where to start? On the brink of change. Send a character into a new direction or new emotional territory.
photo credit: madamepsychosis via photo pin cc
Got comments? You can email me here or use the contact form.
#WritingTip 13 - Want to get the words flowing? Write about
something that grabs you emotionally. What makes you angry
ecstatic terrified?