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April 2008: Read The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler. It’s a clear, concise guide to the structure of the Hero Myth, based on the work of Joseph Campbell. You’ll see how “Star Wars,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and a zillion other stories are really, at their core, the same story. And you’ll learn how you can adapt the classic structure to create your own compelling stories.
March 2008: A story begins when something changes. Identify the moment when something happens to throw your characters’ lives out of equilibrium, and make that your opening scene. You can use this technique in nonfiction, too: Start your book by describing a scene in which something happens that changes the course of events surrounding your subject.
February 2008: Write an autobiography for each of your main characters. This is the best way to get inside the character’s head. It’s important to write it in the first person so you can deeply explore the character’s feelings and make yourself fluent in the character’s voice.
January 2008: Keep an idea journal, and jot down any vague inklings of future stories you might write. When you’re stuck for a bright idea, flip through your journal. You’ll be amazed how many good ideas you’ve had that have slipped your mind completely. Good thing you wrote them down!
December 2007: Don’t be afraid to write a lousy first draft. Embrace the freedom to pour out your thoughts without self-editing. Tell yourself: Don’t get it right, just get it written. BUT don’t kid yourself that your first draft is a polished one. Now that you have a draft in front of you, you can cut, shape, rewrite, reorganize and otherwise revise it.
November 2007: Make interviews part of your research, for both fiction and nonfiction. Knowledgeable people can give you up-to-date information and often will offer insights you never thought to look for. Many experts are happy to talk to a writer who is working on a book about their area of expertise.
October 2007: If you need to use a tagline in dialogue, put it in at the end of the first spoken sentence or at the first natural pause. As long as the same character continues speaking, you don’t need another tagline unless it describes some action. Example: “I left early today,” Wendy said. “It was raining. I knew there would be traffic. There always is on Fridays.” She gazed out the window for a moment, then continued: “But it’s not usually this bad.”
September 2007: Use strong nouns and verbs, and eliminate adjectives and adverbs whenever possible. Examples: · Weak: He ran quickly. · Weak: It was a small house.
August 2007: “Like” and “such as” are not interchangeable. “Such as” means “similar to and including,” while “like” means “similar to but not including.” Examples: · “She hopes to marry someone intelligent, such as Fred.” (She would actually consider marrying Fred.) · “She hopes to marry someone intelligent like Fred.” (She seeks someone with Fred’s intelligence, but Fred is not a potential husband — maybe he’s her brother.)
July 2007: Improve your dialogue writing by really listening to people talk. Notice how they interrupt each other, complete each other’s sentences, suddenly change the subject, talk in snippets, express half of what they’re saying with gestures, say things that their body language utterly contradicts, etc. One great way for adults to learn how kids talk: Drive carpool to school, and keep your mouth shut.
June 2007: Find good names for your characters in newspaper obituaries. Mix and match interesting first and last names. Read through some of those obits, too. You’ll find a wealth of surprising, revealing, quirky details of real lives — which you can then use in creating your own fictional characters.
May 2007: Use sentence length to help convey mood. Long sentences create a feeling of leisure, relaxation, or slow movement (which can also be a source of frustration). Short sentences give the reader a sense of urgency and tension. Use short sentences in scenes involving danger, excitement, or something that must be accomplished in a hurry.
April 2007: In fiction, use environmental details to show a character’s mental state. The sights, sounds and smells the character notices can give your readers a powerful clue to what the character is feeling and thinking.
March 2007: Be careful with metaphors. They can become toxic if carelessly mixed. The rule here is simple: If an image doesn’t work literally, it doesn’t work figuratively. Example: · “They hoped their fledgling movement would take root.” Picture that. A fledgling is a young bird. If it took root, it would not get far. Better options: · “They hoped their fledgling movement would take flight.” · “They hoped the seed of their movement would take root.”
February 2007: Keep a running bibliography when you write nonfiction. Number your sources, and note in each paragraph of your draft manuscript which sources provided the information in that paragraph. Then, when your editor asks for additions, revisions, or fact checks, you’ll be able to quickly go back to wherever you got the information in the first place.
January 2007: Read the newspaper every day for story ideas. You can’t make up stuff as weird or surprising as real life. Pay special attention to briefs — those three-paragraph stories about a local fundraiser, an escape from the carnivore preserve, a bungled crime. Take that little snippet of information, add your own characters and backstories, and let your new tale unfold.
December 2006: Keep an eye peeled for clichés, and give them the old heave-ho. Not all clichés are as obvious as these. Watch out for overused phrases such as “is no exception,” “couldn’t believe my eyes,” and my personal favorite, “24/7.” If you can say to yourself, “There’s nothing wrong with that phrase, I see it all the time” — cliché alert! Hit that Delete key. Then find a phrase that is fresher and more creative.
November 2006: If you are having trouble figuring out how to start your story, pretend someone has just asked you: “What are you writing?” Explain as you would in conversation, and then go on writing from there. You can always come back and revise the beginning once you are clear on where you’re going. This works for fiction as well as nonfiction.
October 2006: Dialogue has two main purposes. It should advance the plot or reveal character. If it isn’t accomplishing one or both of these goals, it is probably slowing your story down. Cut it out.
September 2006: Adult writers — read Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Note the poetry of the author’s language, her unflinching portrayal of human darkness, and the complexity of each acutely drawn character. If you don’t learn something that makes you a better writer, you’re not paying enough attention. Read it again.
August 2006: A collective noun should take a verb that agrees with the sense of the noun in context. If the noun represents quantity (meaning, some number), it needs a plural verb. If the noun represents entity (meaning, something acting as a unit), it takes a singular verb. Examples: · A stream of people (i.e., many people) leave the theater. · A panel of judges (i.e., a unified entity) decides such cases.
July 2006: Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, check your facts obsessively. Assume your work will fall into the hands of editors, reviewers and readers who have expertise on your topic or setting. If you must take some license with the facts, include a note to readers explaining why. You can’t get away with faking it. Don’t try.
June 2006: To make your prose more accessible, you should generally choose Germanic words (which are more conversational) over Latin-based words (which are more pretentious). Examples: drink, instead of imbibe; light, instead of illuminate; earthly, instead of terrestrial.
May 2006: In fiction, be aware at all times what point of view (POV) you are writing from, and do not switch POV within a scene. An omniscient or all-knowing POV will let you tell readers what is going on in different places at the same time. But if you stick with one character’s POV, or one character’s POV in each scene, readers will feel what the character feels and get more emotionally involved in your story.
April 2006: Keep your subjects and verbs close together. If you do, even long, complex sentences will be understandable — this one, for instance — despite any digressions or clarifications you add, striving to leave your reader with a more complete picture. (Writing coach Roy Peter Clark at the Poynter Institute offers an excellent explanation of such “right-branching sentences” at Poynteronline.)
March 2006: Watch out for homonyms. As you mentally listen to your prose, you won’t notice the difference between hear and here, there and their, your and you’re. So when you proofread, force your eyes to stop on each of these and then ask yourself: “Is that the one I meant to use?”
February 2006: Get yourself a “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and refer to it often. Know the origin of every allusion, saying and cliché you use in your writing. If you do, you’ll employ them more precisely and effectively.
January 2006: Cut down on redundancy by lopping off unnecessary body parts. It’s not as painful as it sounds. Here are some examples. · Instead of “He blinked his eyes,” just write “He blinked.” (What else would he blink — his knees?) · “She clapped.” (Her toes? Of course not.) · “He shrugged.” (His nose perhaps?) · And here’s my favorite amputation candidate, a twofer: “She nodded her head in agreement.” (As opposed to, say, nodding her elbow in disagreement?)
December 2005: In nonfiction, use bulleted lists to organize and present your key facts, rather than scattering them amid less important information. The reasons: · The reader can more easily find the critical information. · You make your point more clearly. · The information has more impact if it is distilled into a list.
November 2005: Plot grows out of character. If you are writing fiction, make this your mantra. Before you write Chapter 1 or Page 1 or even sentence one, create your characters and get to know them inside and out. What motivates them? What angers them? What is their heart’s desire? Let your characters drive the story. The plot should unfold the way it does because the characters are who they are.
October 2005: Go easy on exclamation points!!! Instead, try to convey excitement and tension with lively words and short sentences. Save the most important word of each sentence until the end. That will help give the sentence real impact, instead of the limp pseudo-impact of the exclamation point. Each exclamation point you use drains power from all the others, so use them sparingly!!!
September 2005: Be careful not to go overboard — and you see this all the time — using asides enclosed in dashes. In most cases — this applies to both fiction and nonfiction — you can reorganize what you are saying so you don’t need to interrupt yourself in mid-sentence. It gets — pardon me for being opinionated on this — annoying to readers. See what I mean?
August 2005: To give your sentences maximum impact, put the most important element at the end of the sentence and the second most important element at the beginning. Make this a habit and your paragraphs and chapters will end with punch. |
