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Posts from the ‘Craft’ Category

Sep 3

How to create memories for your characters

In an interview with author and journalist Pete Hamill, he explains how he researches his novels and in the process creates memories for his fictional characters.

If his fiction is set in the past, he reads histories, letters, memoirs and old newspapers.

“Then I let my notes marinate for awhile, usually a few months, until they become memory…the memory of one or more of the characters.”

Many newspapers have placed archives online and for older editions of newspapers that aren’t online, check the archives at your library. You’ll also find letters, artifacts, photos, and historical documents at local and state libraries and historical societies.

Read the full interview with Hamill in the December 2011 issue of The Writer magazine.

Aug 30

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How writers turn journal entries into novels

Writing in a journal is a powerful way to create the bits and pieces that become literature.

Journals serve as workbooks and a place to note descriptions, thoughts, ideas and character sketches.

Graham Greene set two of his novels, “A Burnt out Case” and “The Heart of the Matter” in Africa. The book, In Search of a Character: Two African Journals: Congo Journey and Convoy to West Africa, reveals the raw material — observations about people and the world — that eventually turned into his novels.

Read more

Aug 29

How scene cards can build a bridge in your story

As I’m working on my next manuscript, I have a feeling for the beginning and end of my story but I don’t really know much about that big, sticky, middle section yet. But after reading The Writer’s Guide to Writing Your Screenplay by Cynthia Whitcomb, I’m using a technique she discusses to help me discover more of my story.

Basically, using a stack of 3×5 index cards, you write your working title on one card, Act I, Act II, and Act III on three others, and then write out as many scenes from the beginning and ending that you know you’ll have. Write down the basic information: where, when, and what. Some of these will be “obligatory” scenes, i.e. in a romance story, you have to have a scene where boy meets girls. In a mystery, you have a scene with a dead body. In a thriller, the bad guy is introduced. Read more

Aug 28

A haunting memory and Ray Bradbury inspired this writer’s short story

Where do you get your ideas for short stories? I like to think of them as slices of life. An event or image sparks an idea with an emotional response at its core.

Author Sam Weller says a haunting memory sparked, “The Girl in the Funeral Parlor.”  An image of a woman and her baby in a casket formed the kernel of an idea. At the end of the story, he explains how it came to be, including how he was influenced by author Ray Bradbury. Read more

Aug 27

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Write your book blurb first to stay on track

In working on my new manuscript, one of the things I do from time to time is look at my main idea to make sure I’m on track or to see if it’s changed. In The Writer’s Guide to Writing Your Screenplay by author and screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb, she suggests that you spend a little time figuring out if you can tell your story in an abbreviated fashion.

She’s talking about screenplays here, but the advice also holds true for novels or nonfiction books:

“Write the ad copy. Write the TV Guide blurb. Write what people will tell their friends about this great movie they saw last weekend. Word of mouth is powerful…. This simple exercise, done before you write the script, could be helpful all the way down the road. If you can tell it in a strong, abbreviated version now, it will be easier for you to get it right as you write (And then to pitch it, too).” Read more

Aug 22

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Try these techniques to amplify emotion in your writing, part 2

I’m intrigued by the ways writers can show emotion through words and pacing.

Recently, I wrote a post about how author Sigrid Nunez used several literary techniques in A Feather on the Breath of God to show how the narrator of her novel felt distanced from her father, a Chinese-Panamanian immigrant.

Here is another example of how Nunez employed a rhetorical device called anaphora –repeating a word or two in successive clauses or sentences to create emphasis. Nunez also used cliches to represent distance and the lack of understanding and communication the narrator felt with her father.

“Chinese inscrutability. Chinese sufferance. Chinese reserve. I recognize my father in the clichés.” Read more

Aug 20

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Practice will get you published

Practice, practice practice. That’s what it takes to be a published writer, says author Anjali Banerjee.

“It’s good to go to the end,” she says. “If you don’t write a manuscript from beginning to end, you might get stuck on the first chapter, rewriting the beginning ad nauseum. Or you might ditch the manuscript altogether and start another one for whatever reason — fear of failure, fear of success, or a difficult problem with the storyline.”

Banerjee has made it to the end of nine published books (and two unpublished ones). Enchanting Lily, her most recent novel, is about a young widow who’s content to hide out in her vintage clothing shop on a Pacific Northwest island until a cat runs in and turns her life upside down. For a deleted scene told from the cat’s point of view, read Banerjee’s guest post at Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries, and More.

Banerjee offers insight and tips for writers: Read more

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