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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

May 29

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Waste a notebook with your random ideas

One day when I was in the fourth grade, I got in trouble for not paying attention in class. I was scribbling away on my tablet, writing notes that had nothing to do with what my teacher was talking about. She said I was daydreaming. She said I had to go sit in the hallway. I narrowly avoided a visit to the principal’s office.

Writing in a notebook has been part of me for as long as I can remember. In my notebooks, I write interesting words or phrases, the title of a good book recommendation, the date of the next book club meeting, words of a song that sound like poetry.

At some point, I type the notes from my notebooks into my computer so they’re easy to search. I know that in this electronic age, many people type everything on their digital devices, but I don’t enjoy typing with one finger. Mostly I just enjoy the act of writing with pen in hand. And it gives me a good excuse to buy more notebooks.

Little did I know, with all my scribblings, I was creating a “waste book” in the tradition of 18th century German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who had a habit of collecting aphoristic notes, ideas, and lists. According to a Scientific American review on Amazon.com, in his student days, Lichtenberg began the lifelong practice of recording his observations and reminders in notebooks that he called “Sudelbücher” after the waste books that English businesses used to enter transactions temporarily until they could be recorded in formal account books.

This is one of my favorite of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms: “The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.” Lichtenberg’s writings have been translated in The Waste Books.

My waste books might seem a morass of random scribblings to some people, but when I look back at them, I find a gem here and there — an idea that may find it’s way into a story, the root of an essay, or a character waiting to be born.

For another take on keeping a notebook, read my previous post, A twist on the writer’s journal: The commonplace book.

 

May 27

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Stay in your writing groove with this tip

One of my biggest challenges is staying in the flow of my writing. I find it especially hard to stay in the groove if something interrupts my regular writing practice. Long gaps between writing sessions make it hard to maintain creative momentum.

I’ve been inspired by my friend Mandy who takes pages of her manuscript, or sometimes the whole thing, with her wherever she goes. She says having the pages with her helps her stay connected to her project. She can also take advantage of down time while waiting in a doctor’s office or commuting to her day job.

Mandy uses her breaks at work to read pages, make edits, or just think about where she’ll take her story next. The pages are a constant reminder of how important writing is to her.

Mandy says it’s hard to find quiet time when she gets home at night and is caught up with the demands of her family: fixing dinner, helping children with baths and homework, and getting ready for the next day. So those moments on a break or during a commute are golden for grabbing quality writing and revising time. And on those days when she’s too tired to write, reading the pages maintains her connection to the words.

If you want to create a strong link to your project in process, consider carrying a few chapters with you. Just having your pages close by may be enough to help you stay in your writing groove.

For more writing practice tips, read these posts:

Talent vs hard work: 5 tips for a deliberate writing practice

Don’t beat your head against the wall: Try these tips to develop a daily writing practice

May 20

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How to delete B.S. (backstory) from your novel

Artists can be creative, quirky, eccentric, motivated, focused, visionary, delusional, imaginative, paranoid….Ah, the highs and lows of living a creative life. The other day, I caught myself practicing a little delusion.

I’ve been taking an online class this month “Creating Compelling Characters,” taught by author and writing mentor Rhay Christou through the Margie Lawson Writer’s Academy. One section is on managing backstory in your novel. Backstory (aka B.S.) is mostly the stuff that never makes it into your novel but that you have to know in order to understand and flesh out your characters.

If you include any backstory at all, one of the best ways to do so is to drip it in only when needed in small bits—a line or two at most. I know this. I thought I was practicing this. But one of our assignments was to read through our chapters and tag any sections of backstory so we could then analyze how we inserted them into the story.

I discovered I had a three-paragraph section of backstory in chapter one! And, after I tagged this B.S., I began making excuses for having it there—it’s necessary information that the reader needs to know, it’s shorter than it looks, etc.—yes, I was deluding myself.

Fortunately, Rhay called me on my B.S. So now, once I finish my first draft, I’ll go back to this area and employ the “shard and slip” exercise described in Margie Lawson’s post, Write Fab Back Story: Not BS!

Read Margie’s post to learn about some of the best ways to include backstory and eliminate any B.S. that will bog your story down. Then, stay tuned for my next post on backstory.

 

 

May 8

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How to make your characters come alive

In his video “Make Your Characters Come Alive,” author James Scott Bell discusses the wisdom of mixing “plot” and “character.”

He says:

Plot without character bonding = action without engagement

Character without plot = overstaying a welcome

Bells also advises that plot needs to be about death. Physical death, professional death or psychological death. This applies even to comedy. Death is what raises the stakes. It can be death of a career, a job, a reputation, or the death of a way of being.

True character, he says, is revealed only in crisis—where death is on the line.

For more on Bell’s thoughts about creating characters that come alive watch his 8-minute video here:

For more tips on plot, read my earlier post, “Plotting a story is like solving a puzzle.”

May 6

Dialogue tips: listening from the inside out

In the short video below, “Telling the Story: Making Your Characters Talk—Writing Great Dialogue,” Irish authors Carlo Gébler, Sinead Moriarty and Declan Hughes, share tips for creating great dialogue.

They suggest to try “putting on your character’s clothes” and really feeling what they feel inside. From that inside-out perspective, pay attention to how they speak. What are their rhythms or accents? And, think snappy dialogue. People don’t usually talk in long monologues or “info dump” blocks.

Before writing your character’s dialogue, you have to hear their voice in your head. And, most importantly, listen to people around you. Listen for the nuances in their speech.

The other night at dinner, we were seated next to a 60ish couple. During the 15-minutes before they paid and left, I listened to the man berate and belittle his date (it was obvious from their conversation that they weren’t married or lived together).

“Look at me, when I speak to you,” he said, his voice hard as the wooden chair supporting his lean, compact frame. “I don’t think you’re really listening to me. How could you be?” He wiped his puckered trout mouth with a napkin, as if the words sent in her direction left a putrid taste on his tongue. “Every time, I know what to expect. Every time. Three hours at your house. I know it’s a minimum of three hours. You’re so predictable. How can you be so predictable?”

I don’t remember the rest of his rant because at some point it was just too painful to listen to. She didn’t speak a single word, not even when they got up to leave, as if she knew any words would only feed his condemnation.

Can I imagine one of my characters speaking this way? Absolutely. I can even see amping it up a bit, making it larger than life. That’s the trick to good dialogue, too—making it sound like real dialogue but without the boring parts.

To watch more “Telling the Story” videos click on the above video’s sidebar.

 

 

Apr 22

Inspire your manuscript by creating a photo book

As a writing coach, I’ve seen many ways my students approach writing their manuscripts or screenplays. Whether you’re writing a memoir or novel, photos can be an entry into your story world.

One of my memoir clients pulled out a binder he had created with photos of characters in his story that he’d scanned from old photos and newspaper articles, and magazine photos of places he was writing about. He arranged the photos and other images in the order he visualized the scenes taking place in the manuscript.

To write scenes in my own memoir, I scoured photo albums and searched for historical images of the time period when my grandfather would have immigrated to the United States. The images of street scenes inspired descriptions and a sense of the time. Details from the photographs sparked even more concrete images that helped lend authenticity to the scenes that I needed to imagine.

Young adult author Walter Dean Myers creates a photo collage to build out his characters in the pre-writing phase of his work. He finds photos that represent his vision of the character, and his wife creates a collage of them that he hangs on the wall by his computer. As he writes his pages each day, the characters become more real to him. He feels he gains understanding and this helps him build out their personalities.

To learn more about how Myers develops his stories, read How to be a prolific writer like Walter Dean Myers: A three-step process.

For more information about Myers, visit his website.

For another idea to create structure in your story writing process, read Create a chaos board to capture your writing ideas.

What is your process for diving into your writing?

 

Apr 17

6 Comments

How to get readers to care about your characters

In the short video below by screenwriter and director, John Truby, he says one of the biggest mistakes writers make is how they create their characters.

Truby says most writers create characters by making them as detailed as possible. We’ve all heard this advice, right? Make your characters detailed, use all five senses, etc.

But Truby says having detailed characters does NOT make your audience care about your characters.

What makes them care is discovering two things:

1) what is the character’s fundamental weakness — their fundamental flaw?

2) what is the character’s story goal?

Truby says the best stories will show the character going after their goal, which will then make them deal with their greatest internal weakness.

To hear what else Truby has to say about creating great characters, watch his video below and check out some of his other videos:

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