There are so many blogs out there about writing and they all offer advice. Some of them contain sound advice and some are so vague they barely count as helpful. My intent is to share advice and tips that will help someone have a real career in this business, whether in fiction or nonfiction. If I ever stray in this goal, feel free to nudge me back on course.
’Tis the season for resolutions. In Part I of this two-part series, we talked about ways to learn, stretch your skills, connect, be kind to yourself and commit to reading and writing in the new year. Below are more resolutions to take up in your pursuit of writing.
There’s a writing axiom that states everyone should learn the rules before they break them. I happen to agree with this rule. But I also believe in breaking rules. It’s a tenuous position for a blogger who focuses on how to write. Today’s blog is about what I truly believe.
Trust your instincts.
The past few blogs we’ve focused on complications, tension and raising the stakes. Now we’re going to look at how that plays out by breaking down a fairy tale. We’ll begin with Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The story typically starts out with the bears discovering their porridge is too hot and deciding to go for a walk, leaving their home unoccupied. I say typically starts out because there are many versions of this tale, each with its own quirks and variances. But let’s work with this opening as the hook. Talking bears who live in a house and eat porridge. Check. I want to read that.
This blog examines the types of stakes you can use to raise tension to its highest levels.
A good place to begin is with some questions:
What happens if the protagonist fails?
What is at stake? Personally? Publicly? Morally?
Why can’t your protagonist just walk away?
Tension is a key element in storytelling. It’s that strain and uncertainty that hooks the reader. What’s making that creaking sound? Will the hero save the world? Can the kidnapped boy escape before the villain returns? Will the heroine ever recover from the spell the witch cast or is she doomed forever?
Putting your characters in peril pulls your reader into the story and makes it interesting. When there’s no tension, stories can feel flat or boring. But how do you add tension to a story?
It’s October and writers everywhere are scrambling to prepare for NaNoWriMo—that one month when dreamers put pen to paper and write. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. It’s a glorious, exhausting plunge into writing that I highly recommend trying.
The trick to NaNoWriMo is to take the motivation you feel during November and experience it throughout the year when it’s back to just you and your words. No fellow writers feeling the pressure. No write-ins or all-nighters with like-minded folks. No common goal for the month.
Taste is directly linked to smell. It, like smell, also happens within the body. We have to take in the food in order to taste it. Taste cannot happen passively. It is an active act, a decision. We drink the wine, eat the pizza, and savor the chocolate. As it’s linked to smell, I am going to limit my commentary, but I highly encourage you to include taste in your work.
Experts say that smell is the sense most closely related to memory. The one that can transport us in time. It is also the sense I am least able to discuss. I was born without the sense of smell (congenital anosmia). I have not smelled anything in my life. Never will (so please do not ask me to smell things, especially things like ammonia. Been there—done that—can’t smell it).
When we’re young, we learn about the world through touch. We put dirt in our mouths, Run our toes through the grass. Embed our hands into the dog’s shiny coat. As we grow, we learn not to touch dirty things and to keep our hands out of our mouths, but we never lose that desire to touch our world—to run our hands over objects of our desire.
Hearing is a physical reaction within the eardrum. A vibration that carries meaning. Everything your character hears should do the same. It should resound within the story or characters.
Welcome to the Sense Series. The first part was an overview of sensory writing. Now we’ll tackle one sense per week. First up: Sight.
Sight is the most common sense used in writing and the most important. Visual words and phrases bring that world to life. Through words, we recreate the world around us or invent an entirely new world for our reader.