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Posts tagged ‘writing tips’

Aug 5

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Have a writing project to finish this month? Join #ProjectAugust

I attend at least two writing conferences each year—the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference and the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. Both are fun and offer great courses, events, and opportunities to network, but I mainly attend for the opportunity to fully, one hundred percent immerse myself in the profession of writing. Three entire days where I eat, sleep and dream everything writing.

Being part of a writing community is important to me because it immerses me in what I love and feeds my soul. This month, through author kc dyer’s blog, I have an opportunity to immerse myself in another kind of writing community.

Do you have a writing project or any writing goals you’d like to achieve this month? Need some extra motivation and a community to do it in?  Dyer is offering #ProjectAugust this month—an opportunity to make yourself accountable to finish whatever project you choose. Read more

Jul 30

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Write dialogue cues like a bestselling author

At the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference this weekend, I took a series of phenomenal classes from writing teacher and psychologist Margie Lawson. I thought I was a fairly decent writer—I have a few awards to prove it—but what I learned this weekend after taking Lawson’s classes is that “I don’t know nothing yet.”

Let’s just say that by the end of the day I literally had one brain cell left.

One of my favorite classes was on dialogue cues. For the most part, I’ve already learned to keep my dialogue tags short. He said. She said. And to avoid attributions like the following:

  • “I don’t like you,” he said, disdainfully
  • “I hate you,” she said, angrily
  • “Don’t move,” he growled
  • “Get away from me,” she hissed Read more

Jul 22

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Draw your way into a scene

I’ve been experimenting lately with different ways to enter into writing scenes. One fun way is to use a sketchpad. I purchased a 5.5 inch x 8.5 inch Strathmore Sketchpad and colored pencils for doodling and have found it immensely useful for everything from sketching scenes to settings to drawing objects that might appear in a scene.

Not a drawer? Don’t worry, neither am I.  My “people” consist of stick figures and my depth perception is nonexistent. Fortunately, you don’t need to be Picasso to use sketching as a way to ignite your imagination.

The first thing I drew in my sketchpad was a dagger. One of my characters carries a dagger and I needed to “see” it in detail. As I was drawing the dagger and the sigils on the blade, I had a vision of the sigils glowing when activated so I added this into a scene.  As I continued to draw the dagger, I realized two other things about it that I hadn’t known before—these will also go into my story. Read more

Jul 15

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How to choose small details to move your scenes forward

I was reminded the other day that writing short pieces is great practice for writing longer pieces. I had just finished my creative nonfiction submission for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference Writing Contest and was editing it one last time when I realized I hadn’t grounded my reader in the location of the initial scene. Yes, I placed it in a mobile home but where was that home in the world? I could have left it as is and it would have still been fine, but I decided that showing where the home was located would better serve the piece as a whole.

But how to include those details in a manner that served the story while keeping the piece under the 1,500-word limit of the contest? Read more

Jul 11

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Use images in a scene to ground your readers

Using images in a scene can be a good way to center an event or ground the reader in the here and now of the story. Writing images is all about going beyond the cliché and using sensory details.

One of my favorite ways to create an image is to take a simple sentence or idea and expand on it, calling in our different senses.

In my work-in-progress I want to convey at the beginning of a flashback scene that it was a hot August day. I could just state, “It was a hot August day.” This is simple and direct but, because I want to expand on the mood of the scene, I rewrote this simple sentence and fleshed it out—using some sense impressions and an image.

Rewritten example: Read more

Jul 9

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Four questions to help you mine your life for story ideas

Most of my writing is personal. No matter what genre I’m writing in—poetry, creative nonfiction, or fiction—much of what I write about comes from my personal experience. In her post, “What obsessions will end up in your writing?” my blog partner, Carly, asks us to consider what events in our lives have “marked us.” Looking to these events and memories can be a treasure trove of story ideas.

What memories or stories haunt you?

I still remember reading a news article over ten years ago about an older couple that went out for a drive and got lost for three days because they both had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t remember where they lived. This short article in the paper has stayed with me all these years. Obviously, it will become a short story someday.

What poems or spoken-word performances inspire you? Read more

Jun 27

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How to remain an artist once we grow up, part one

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up – Pablo Picasso

This quote by Picasso is touched upon in a delightful Ted Talk given in 2006 by Sir Ken Robinson who says our education system is designed to educate the creativity out of children.

When we’re children we’re curious and play without inhibitions. The world is our secret garden. Once we go to school and become educated, we worry about “making mistakes.” We worry about whether or not we have the “right answers.” This worry about being correct all the time kills our creativity and our spontaneity. Read more

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