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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

Nov 14

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Four ways to write about your life

There’s more than one way to craft a personal or family story. Consider how you could create a form that fits your personal style and passion.

If a memoir is a slice of life, you might want to write one based on your recipes, gardens you’ve grown, or cars you’ve owned. Find more ideas about structuring your life story in the examples below.

A life in lists. In a workshop I attended, Patricia Charpentier, author of Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time, shared different approaches to writing a life story, including one made up of lists. She once worked with a man who never wrote a complete sentence. He processed his life by making daily lists. Charpentier said the man had been making a list every day for 30 years. Topics included, “What I like about so and so,” the headlines of the day, and what movie was showing.

If you’re interested in writing a life story in lists, check out Listography Journal: Your Life in Lists by Lisa Nola. Read more

Nov 13

Draw on all five senses when you write a sex scene

In my previous post, I wrote about the “Bad Sex Scene Award” and how NOT to get one.

In Elissa Wald’s article “The Do’s and Dont’s of Writing Erotic Fiction,” one “do” is to draw on all five senses when you write a sex scene.

One way to do this is to break down the scene as follows:

First, make a list of the senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Then, think of the characters involved in the scene and your scene’s setting—where is the scene taking place? Bedroom? Living room? Tree house? Dining room table? Middle of the forest? Read more

Nov 11

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The Bad Sex Scene Award: how NOT to get nominated

London’s “Literary Review” has just announced its winners for the 2013 Bad Sex Award—Britain’s most dreaded literary prize.

The prize is meant to “draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel and to discourage it.”

This year the nominees included author Amy Tan’s, “The Valley of Amazement,” for this line: “He flayed against me, until our bodies were slapping, and he took me into the typhoon and geologic disaster.”  Read more

Nov 7

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See how these famous writers outlined their work

As I experiment with outlining my novel, I’m learning that there are as many ways to outline as there are writers and types of writing.

For the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling made a hand-written table that contained the outline of her entire series.

Joseph Keller’s outline for “Catch 22” was meticulously ordered like an Excel spreadsheet.

Dylan Thomas’s outline for one poem contained a list of words.

William Faulkner wrote the outline for his short story “A Fable” on his office wall.

To see more famous authors’ outlining methods check out the Daily Mail’s article by Tara Brady here.

If you’re a writer who outlines, how do you go about organizing your thoughts?

Nov 5

What is your writing style? Part one

I recently decided to take a break from writing scenes in my current manuscript until I get a better feeling for where my story is going.

While I continue to brainstorm scenes, there is one thing I’m working on—my style.

For a writer, style is how we put words together on the page. Style is syntax—the order of our words. Style is poetry—choosing just the right word. Style is the underlying foundation of everything we write. Style is being conscious of what words we choose, how we order our sentences and paragraphs and pages, and why. Read more

Oct 31

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What stops an agent from wanting to read more of your story?

One of the most popular events each year at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference is a workshop called SIWC Idol.  Think American Idol except for writers. Anybody who’s brave enough can submit the first page of their manuscript to be read in front of a panel of judges—four literary agents.

Author Jack Whyte, in his deep and resonant voice, reads a random selection of first pages in front of the 200 or so writers. He reads until at least two of the agents raise their hand indicating this is where they’d stop reading if they were reading the submission in their office. The agents then explain why they stopped where they did.

I was lucky enough to be one of the few submissions where a hand wasn’t raised. But what exactly stops an agent from wanting to read further?

  1. Too much description up front that’s not interwoven into the action and dialogue. A long paragraph of description. Read more

Oct 30

How to keep readers turning the page: tips from bestselling author Diana Gabaldon

How to keep readers turning the page was the title of a workshop I attended last weekend by author Diana Gabaldon at the Surrey Writers’ Conference.

Gabaldon, bestselling author of Outlander now being made into a TV series, knows what she’s talking about. She has an avid fan base and for good reason—she knows how to tell a good story and how to keep her readers turning pages.

Have you ever read a book or heard of one that was poorly written but developed a big following? Several come to mind that I won’t name here. But there are reasons for their success.

One bestseller from a few years back was set in an art museum and, despite trying to read the novel three times, I could never get past the first third of the book. But others evidently did as it sold millions of copies and spawned a movie. This book kept readers turning the page because the author used cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. Read more

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