Category Archives: Writing

Daily Writing Tip 69 of 100, Things That Get Stuck In Our Heads

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Things That Get Stuck In Our Heads

Source – The Mind of Your Story, Discover What Drives Your Fiction By Lisa Lenard-Cook

I use the word “stuck” intentionally because when I visualize what happens when I obsess, I not only see a needle stuck in a groove on a 33 1/3 record, I hear the repetitive oddity such a scratch creates….For those of us who grew up listening to records, carefully picking up the needle and setting it down just past the offending scratch was something we did so often it never occurred to us that it took some skill and finesse

That repetition, that over-and-over with no way out unless someone physically lifts the needle from the groove, is how it is when something gets stuck in a writers head. She’ll start thinking about something she said (or wishes she said), or did, or saw, like that woman with the suitcase in the rain. She starts spinning the thing out, imagining what comes next. But then she gets to a certain point – and it’s always the same point – and she skips right back to the beginning.

These ruts can be maddening, and in fact, if we weren’t writers they likely would drive us insane. But when we write, there are things we can do with them.

I have spent a lot of time writing stuff that I knew wasn’t going to be good – stuff I didn’t really even want to write. But there was something stuck in my head and I knew the only way to get rid of it was to write it out.

That is how it is.

Daily Writing Tip 68 of 100, How Setting Acts As Your Story Backbone

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – How Setting Acts As Your Story Backbone

Source – Setting, How To Create and Sustain A Sharp Sense of Time and Place in Your Fiction by Jack M. Bickham

A common problem in writing a long story, especially something as lengthy as a novel, has to do with story unity or cohesion. “I have six subplots going, and how do I keep a sense of unity in my story was so many?” A writer may ask. Or: “I simply must change viewpoint several times, but what can I do to maintain a sense of coherent, cohesive story line?” Or (scariest of all): “My story seems to be flying all to pieces and I don’t know how to hold all the diverse elements together.”

Expert use of setting can often provide an answer to such questions.

Setting – especially the concrete, physical setting experienced through the senses of the characters or described in an occasional panorama by the author – can provide a constant, stable, reassuringly familiar backdrop against which all manners of diverse plot developments can be played out.

There are so many works of fiction that seem to be completely integrated with their setting (Moby Dick, The Shipping News, Heart of Darkness, anything set in London or New York)- that their setting actually becomes another main character – often the most interesting one.

Daily Writing Tip 67 of 100, Speech in Narration

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Speech in Narration

Source – Dialogue How to get your characters talking to each other in a way that vividly reveals who they are, what they’re doing, and what’s coming next in your story by Lewis Turco

“A tag line is a couple of words or a phrase that tells you who is speaking. The simplest and least obtrusive tag lines are ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ or minor variations like ‘he replied’ or ‘he asked’ as in this conversation between a man named Horace and a woman named Gail”:

“Hello,” he said, “my name’s Horace. What’s yours?” he asked.

“Hi,” she replied, turning in her chair to look at him. “I’m Gail Adams.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Horace said. “I’ve been watching you for about an hour.”

Fred looks thoughtful. “That’s kind of blah it seems to me. Can’t you just set up a bit?”

“Sure,” The Author replies, “but it’s best to keep things simple. Using adjectives, adverbs, and fancy verbs to describe tone of voice or show what’s going on just gets in the way of the action and characterization. This is what can happen”:

“Hello,” he croaked nervously. “My name’s Horace. What’s yours?” he asked with as much aplomb as he could muster.

“Hi,” she squeaked uncertainly, turning in her chair to look at him. “I’m Gail Adams,” she said, blushingly.

“Pleased to meet you,” Horace declared, “I’ve been watching you for about an hour,” he offered with a quaver in his voice.

Author Intrusion

Fred nods. “I see what you mean. The dialogue looks sort of amateurish, too – stilted and forced. What’s the reason for that?”

“It’s called ‘author intrusion.’ The wish of a modern author generally is to create the illusion of reality, to make the reader forget he or she is reading a story rather than a living it. Therefore, an author tries to hide himself, to make the story seem as natural as possible. Adjectives and other sorts of descriptions tend to remind the reader that somebody’s controlling his or her interest.”

It is hard when writing to simply say “he said” or “Nancy said” over and over. Harder still to go over a section of dialog and remove all tag lines that aren’t absolutely necessary (if there is any way the reader can figure out which character is talking through context – take out the tag line) and reducing all the others to ‘she said.’

It looks terribly plain and boring.

But then, pay attention to yourself when you are reading. All the “he said” and “she said” – simple tag lines – completely disappear from your consciousness. They don’t even register – no matter how repetitive and boring they appear to the author that has to type them in over and over.

There are other ways to make dialogue interesting (read the rest of the book).

So, keep those tag lines simple and remove them if they aren’t necessary.

And for God’s sake – get rid of any word ending in “ly.”

Daily Writing Tip 66 of 100, Exploring a Story’s Meaning And Purpose

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Exploring a Story’s Meaning And Purpose

Source – Developing Story Ideas by Michael Rabiger

Structural and effectiveness analyses only begin to uncover a story’s meaning. These further questions will help you decide how a story acts—or might act—on its audience:

  • What genre is this story and under what rules does its world usually run?
  • What patterns can you see that might be significant to the story’s meaning?
  • Who is the point of view (POV) character (meaning, through whose feelings and viewpoint do we mainly experience the events)?
  • What forces does the story make this character (or these characters) confront, and why?
  • What are the qualities of the main characters and what can we expect of them at the outset?
  • Does anyone in the story develop (that is, learn, change, or grow)?
  • When you compare the story’s end with its beginning, what major changes have taken place and what do they signify?
  • Does the story stay within its genre or does it break out of that genre in any way?
  • Taking the story as a whole, How does it want to act on us?
  • What does it say about the individual in relation to the way the world works? (This is often expressed as “the individual in relation to the laws of the universe”).
  • What is the story’s premise (that is, what is its content and purpose expressed in one or two pithy sentences)?
  • What is its theme? (That is, what embracing truth does it seek to establish? Examples: “Crime doesn’t pay” or “Women don’t make passes at boys wearing glasses.”)

There are these and so many other questions that need to be asked and answered in the story crafting process. I think it is very important to not ask these questions until the first draft is finished. Otherwise, at worst you will be intimidated into never writing the damn thing – at best spontaneous creativity will be suppressed.

Remember – writing isn’t writing, editing is writing. Save all this boring crap for the second through tenth drafts.

Daily Writing Tip 65 of 100, Subtlety and Misdirection

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Subtlety and Misdirection

Source – Conflict Action & Suspense by William Noble

A car engine breaks the stillness of the night… The smell of seaweed intrudes on an afternoon chess game… And unopened letter slips behind couch cushions….

These are what we might call “plot-hypers”, in that they add an element of uncertainty and tension. They create a rise of anxiety by injecting an unexplained event or circumstance. What makes plot-hypers especially useful is the relative ease with which they can be used and the impact they can have on the story.

Unexpected elements in fiction – we need to remember to sprinkle them, but with discretion. I’ve always said a story can have one extremely unlikely coincidence (they do happen, and without this coincidence you wouldn’t have a story) – but only one. Two extremely unlikely coincidences strain credulity past the breaking point.

You can have a character randomly run into one character from their past (“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine”) but that’s it… no more. If you don’t believe in the story, there is no uncertainty and tension – it’s just letters on the page.

Daily Writing Tip 64 of 100, The Unreliable Narrator and Character Voice

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – The Unreliable Narrator and Character Voice

Source – Voice & Style by Johnny Payne

For a fiction writer, the advantage of implementing an unreliable narrator is to keep the reader off-balance in strategic ways, so that character motives can be entered into more deeply and more unexpectedly. Too much sympathy can preclude a thorough inspection of human perversity.

I have always loved fiction with an unreliable narrator. There is the mystery, the surprise… and, of course, the feeling that the narrator and I have something in common.

Daily Writing Tip 63 of 100, Don’t Make Excuses

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Don’t Make Excuses

Source – The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack Bickham

If you are serious about the craft of fiction, you must never make excuses for yourself. You simply cannot allow yourself to:

  • Say you’re too tired.
  • Postpone work until “later.”
  • Fail to work because you’re too busy right now.
  • Wait for inspiration
  • Plan to get right at it “tomorrow.”
  • Give up because (editors) (agents) (readers) (critics) are unfair. (Fill in as many as you want.)
  • Tell yourself you’re too old (or too young) to start.
  • Blame others in your family for your lack of free time.
  • Say your job is too demanding to allow you any other activity.
  • Tell yourself that your story idea isn’t good enough.

Or any of a host of other excuses you may dream up for yourself.

No. Let’s get this straight right away: Writers write; everyone else makes excuses.

Jeebus… I think I’ve used all of these excuses in a single day.

Daily Writing Tip 62 of 100, Conflict: Coming Soon To a Scene Near You

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Conflict: Coming Soon To a Scene Near You

Source Beginnings, Middles & Ends, by Nancy Kress

The point to remember about conflict is that it arises because something is not going as expected. Your readers should suspect that as early as your first few paragraphs.

Calling for conflict in the opening few paragraphs of a story doesn’t mean that your first sentence must feature a body hurtling past a sixth-story window (although it might).

Yeah… that’s the ticket. A body hurtling past a window. Better get writing.

Daily Writing Tip 61 of 100, Final Words On Creating Realistic Characters

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – Final Words On Creating Realistic Characters

Source – Mastering Point of View by Sherry Szeman

Liking your characters, allowing them to live their own lives, endowing them with good and bad characteristics, the skillful use of unreliable narrators – these are all valuable tools for creating realistic characters in any point of view. Observing human nature and becoming conscious of the techniques other skillful writers use will also help you develop your own characters, especially if you become aware of the techniques authors use in different points of view.

Tip

If your readers talk about your characters as if they were real people, e.g., Asking things like, why on earth that doesn’t Bill leave Marion? Then that’s an indication that you’ve created realistic, round characters who have psychological depth and complexity.

Yes… I think it’s very important that you like your characters. If you don’t like them it’s very hard to make them round, full, and complete.

But just because you like your characters… especially because you like them – it doesn’t mean you should be afraid to kill them. Go ahead, kill the hell out of them… kill them in some particularly horrific way.

Have some fun.

Daily Writing Tip 60 of 100, The First Draft As Generation

Posted on by Bill Chance

For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.

Today’s tip – The First Draft As Generation

Source – The Passionate, Accurate Story by Carol Bly

Some writing classes start, using pure critiquing – a mixed bag at best – helping one another organize even before the author has discovered the true heart of the story. In the first draft, the author should still be brooding, maundering around the material – treating it like a hypothetical first draft. It is a great mistake at that point to start applying writing skills or anything like.

Again and again and again I come across the same advice for writing first drafts. The advice is to turn off the inner editor and freely write whatever comes to mind. Only then, later, through the process of editing, this is shaped into something useful.

It’s really hard to do. Our entire lives we have had editors hovering over us critiquing what we do, critiquing what we think, critiquing… Everything.

These voices are always there – welling up from our subconscious – harping on us. Getting them to shut up is almost impossible… like nailing jello to a tree.