Weekly Writing Memo: Where does it end?

Posted: May 25, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Every ending in a story is a pause. Some pauses are long, like the end of a novel. Others are short, like the end of a sentence. Whenever you have an ending of some sort in a story, your audience is taking a pause before going on so you need to choose those moments carefully. You want to make the most of the endings in your work, and use them for a purpose that helps your story. Never make an ending, just to end something.

Weekly Writing Memo In a Sentence:

Something I know I’ve had trouble with in the past, is when to end a sentence. Sometimes, I like to make long sentences that pack in a lot of detail, and go on and on, because I like the flow of them. Other times I keep things short. If you do too much of one type of sentence, however, it can lead to a very repetitive rhythm in your writing which can get tedious to read. The key is to choose your sentence endings carefully, and to try and vary your rhythms now and then.

If you want to emphasize a specific detail, sometimes it works better to put it in a short sentence that stands out. If you want to create a flow of description, sometimes a long sentence works better. Figure out what the most important element of your sentence is, and however you write it, make sure that element is being given the focus and attention it needs. If it is, then however you end your sentence works.

In a Paragraph:

Oddly enough, there are a lot of writers I’ve talked to who struggle with figuring out when to make a paragraph break. Paragraph breaks help the reader read more smoothly, and not get lost in a huge chunk of writing. It also gives them an opportunity to pause if needed, without risking losing their place in the story. Beyond that, a paragraph break can be used for:

Emphasis – such as when you want a detail to stand out, so you make it a paragraph of its own. Or, if you want to emphasize an image, you can end or start a paragraph on that image, which forces the reader to pause on that image.
Transition – if you’re going from one setting or plot element to another, a new paragraph can help the transition by creating a physical break between the words.
Dialogue – as most know, paragraph breaks are also used to distinguish dialogue speakers from each other, and to help break the dialogue out from the action so it’s easier to read and recognize at dialogue.

Overall, the purpose of paragraphs is to help the flow of the text, so use the endings of paragraphs to help the flow of your story.

In a Novel:

In a novel, there are chapter endings, as well as the novel ending. Each chapter should have a small plot arc of its own that is developed. Whenever that minor arc is finished, it’s a good opportunity for a chapter break. These give the reader a chance to catch their breath, and it gives the write the chance to move the story forward by jumping in time, setting, or character as needed.

As for the ending of novels, then when you think you’re at the end, ask yourself “if my story ends here, what would the reader still want to know that is important?” If there are things left, then write a bit more to answer those questions. If you find yourself starting to set up a new plot or conflict too much that would lead to another story, then you have gone past the ending. There can be set-up for another story, but it should be minor and imply what the next story should be about, not completely set-up the next story.

In a Script:

In a script, most endings come out by the ending of a scene or a conversation. So when do you end a conversation between two characters? When do you end a scene? In general, every scene or conversation should end as soon as all the information that needs to be established in it has been delivered. Of course, you’ll want to make sure you have a natural transition in and out of the scene so there may be a line or more extra, but you don’t want much beyond that. Before you write any scene you should know what the purpose of that scene or conversation is. If you know this, then you know when you’ve achieved it with your writing. As soon as you have, find a way to end or wrap up the scene so you can keep the story moving forward.

Final Notes:

Endings are hard, because figuring out if you’ve told the audience too much, or too little, requires you to have an objective perspective. Since the writing is yours, that is not always easy. To help, whenever you’re writing some form of ending, ask yourself three questions:

Have I told my audience everything they need to know?
Is there anything I’ve told them that they don’t need to know?
Is there anything that I can remove without changing the story?

If you can answer those questions, then you know what needs to be in the story, and you know where your endings are.

Weekly Writing Memo: How to Start Writing

Posted: May 18, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Screenwriting, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Leave a comment

It’s easy to say w Weekly Writing Memo hat should be in the beginning of a story and pretend like that is the answer to start writing, but knowing what’s in a beginning is not the same thing as knowing where to begin. If you’ve my old blog post on Author the World: What’s in a Beginning? then you know I believe there should be three things established in the first few pages of a story: character, tone, and something of substance that represents the heart of the story. That is the first step, but what else is needed to get started writing?

Know the Basics.

You have to build your story from something. A character, a setting, a conflict…something. So the first step is to establish the three keys to a beginning. Who is your character? What is the heart of the story about? What tone do you want the story to be told in?

Now, the “heart of the story” may not come right away, but you should have something in mind to start with, and if it changes as the story develops that’s fine. You just have to remember to go back and revise with the new “heart of the story” in mind.

If you’re having trouble establishing these things, then…

Follow the Protagonist.

Personally, I usually start by finding my protagonist. Then I mentally (or sometimes in freewriting) put them in various situations to figure out how they’d react and what kind of person they really are. I follow them around until I have a solid mental picture of who this character is, and then I use that to figure out what kind of trouble they’re most likely to get into.

For example, I have a mystery novel with an anxiety riddled, insecure protagonist. Her name is Cassie. The moment I wrote her I knew the trouble she was most likely to get into was letting her anxiety get carried away and imagining something simple was much worse than it was. In my story, she finds her brother’s apartment in a mess and decides he’s been kidnapped or murdered. Then I asked myself, what if she was right but because of her anxiety and tendency to over-exaggerate no one believed her? Imagine the trouble she’d get into if she had to try to investigate this missing person all on her own.

If you follow your protagonist, and really understand them, then you should be able to see what kind of trouble that protagonist would naturally fall into and find your plot. Finding the plot, or the challenge your character has to overcome, will help you find not only the heart of your story, but the tone as well. For my mystery, the heart of the story is that everyone has multiple sides to them, and sometimes crazy people aren’t as crazy as they seem. The tone for my mystery is humorous, and involves an unreliable narrator.

But where to Begin?

Once I followed my character to discover the conflict, I had to decide where to start her story. I could’ve started off with Cassie going to work and then going to visit her brother, but I didn’t need all that build up to the discovery because the discovery wasn’t the surprising thing in the story, the surprising thing is that no one believes Cassie at first.

I chose to start the story the moment AFTER Cassie discovers her brother’s disheveled apartment. I don’t show her initial panicked reaction because it would have made her immediately seem overly dramatic and unreliable. Instead we see her moments later when she has slight control over her anxiety and is fighting it, which makes her seem like she knows she’s overreacting. She presents the evidence, and tries to rationalize it in various ways but always ends up back at the worst case scenario.

By the time she’s done, the audience is almost convinced that maybe something bad has happened because we’ve seen her thought process and we want to believe her. Then, Cassie’s other brother arrives to the scene and Cassie’s ideas start to seem a bit less believable with a more rational head present. By the time the duo goes to the police station to appease Cassie’s concerns, the audience is all but convinced she’s probably overreacting while Cassie is more convinced than ever that she’s right. This chain of events put her on track for the rest of her story to go off and investigate on her own, and bit-by-bit to prove herself reliable again.

For me, following the protagonist and knowing what I needed to establish early on helped me find where to start my story. That being said, following your protagonist may not always work so there are several other methods for finding where to begin your story.

Work Backwards.

An alternate method to finding your beginning is to start from the scene you do know and work your way backwards in an outline or mental form. Ask yourself what has to happen in order to get your characters to that one particular moment you do know? Okay, now what part of those events does the audience absolutely need to see in order to enjoy and understand the story? If you only can find big key moments, then chart those.

Try to find the big moments of the story: The Inciting Incident (where things first go wrong), the Catalyst (the thing that forces your protagonist to actively try to solve the problem), The False Win (where it seems like the protagonist has it all figured out and then things go SUPER wrong), and the Resolution (where the problem is finally solved). There are others, of course, depending on which story guide you look at. So choose your favorite story arc spread, decide where the moment you know fits into it, and then plot out the moments that have to happen.

Just remember, you don’t need to write every moment between every key point. You only need the ones that the story, or the character, wouldn’t make sense without.

Find Normal.

This method doesn’t work for all story types, but for stories that are about a main protagonist being thrown out of their “normal” zone this method can work. Most stories involve this in some way, shape or form, but sometimes it’s not as obvious as others.

For example, if you look at a movie like the action flick “The Losers” with Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The team’s “normal” is being military guys doing missions. When they’re thrown out of their “normal” it’s not that they’re sent back to civilian life or something completely opposite, but rather that they’re forced to work outside the military on their own, outside the law.

To find your story’s beginning using this method start by discovering what your protagonist’s “normal” is. Find a moment as close to when that “normal” is about to be upturned in the story to begin at so you can show the readers what normal is before you throw your protagonist’s life into chaos (so to speak) with the events of the story. You want to do this so your reader can see how the events of the story change your protagonist.

In my mystery, Cassie’s normal is being unsure of herself and filled with anxiety, but the moment her beliefs are rejected by her other brother as well as the police she gains some confidence and determination to act, even if she’s still somewhat unsure of herself. Through investigating her brother’s disappearance, she forces herself to overcome her anxiety and insecurity in order to save her brother. Which completely throws her out of her “normal” zone.

Start Where You Know.

If you can’t backtrack, and you can’t find “normal”, one of your other options is to simply start where you know. Start at the moment you know is part of the story and write forward until you reach the end, or until you get stuck, or until you figure out more of what comes before. Once you stop writing forward, look back at the story and figure out what else your reader needs to know in order to understand the events you’ve written. Then backtrack if necessary and add those events into the beginning.

Also look at what you’ve written and at the character and plot and see how their arcs look. Does the character change and grow because of the events of the story? Does the plot have a solid beginning, middle, and end? If yes, then maybe the moment you knew and started at was the beginning, you just didn’t know it. If no, then again, backtrack as much as necessary until you have completed the arcs as needed.

Final Words.

No matter how you find your start, or where you start, always remember that once you finish the first draft you absolutely should go back to your beginning and see if the character, tone, and story core you established in the beginning fits the story now that it is over. Many, many times while writing I’ll find that as I’ve written, the character grows, or the tone shifts, or the heart of the story becomes something else. If this happens and you don’t revise your beginning to fit the future text, then the beginning will feel false and disconnected from the rest of the story.

The last thing I’ll say is a piece of advice I got from one of my mentors at the MFA program I graduated from and something to keep in mind whenever you’re writing. I don’t remember if he made it up himself or if he heard it somewhere else, but he always told me to: “start every scene as late as possible, and end every scene as soon as possible.” If you do that, it’ll minimize the excess words and keep your story focused on what’s important.

Weekly Writing Memo: Word Choice is Everything

Posted: May 11, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Screenwriting, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | 2 Comments

Weekly Writing Memo Whether you’re writing a screenplay, fiction, or non-fiction, the words you choose to tell your story are vital to relaying meaning to your audience. Word choices set tone, establish character, relay plot, create tension, draw the audience in, and much, much more. The wrong word used in a story, even in a screenplay, can completely change the meaning of what is happening.

In a screenplay, words are used to portray information for how the film should be produced. A bad word decision can take a serious scene and turn it comedic, ruining what the writer intended. In a fiction or non-fiction novel, poor word choices can lead to lack of clarity, lack of character or plot development, and even boredom in the audience. There are a lot of ways you can use word choice to enhance your story, but some of the most common ones are:

Setting the Tone

The way you write about what is happening in the story creates the tone for the story. If you use slang instead of proper terms, it can create a more laid back feel to the story. If you use vague language to describe something technical, it creates confusion and the explanation can lose meaning. Similarly, if you use a lot of words when one will do, it can make the story feel muddled and like it is rambling without purpose.

The key is, you have to decide what the tone you’re going for in your writing before you get too far into telling your story. If you’re going for something light in tone, then the way you write about events, and the words you use to describe them, will change. For example, if you want to describe a dead body and you want it to be serious, you would keep things more technical or focused on the circumstances or scene:

“The woman’s body spilled across the mattress, arms askew and eyes hidden behind movie-star sunglasses. Blood poured from the gunshot in her chest, dripping into a puddle on the floor.”

If you want to make it a scene with a lighter tone, you’d talk about the scene in a different way, and focus on different things:

“The woman sprawled across the mattress like she was sunbathing with her clothes on. Her eyes were masked behind large sunglasses, not that there was any life left in them to be hidden.”

The first example is more serious, focusing on the wound and the damage. The second example lightens things somewhat by comparing the body to something light (a sunbather), and by the narrator having an attitude and being flippant about the body’s eyes being lifeless.

If you look at the first example you’ll also notice I used the word “body” to describe the woman, while I used nothing but “woman” in the second example. This word choice changes the tone as well. In the first, the word “body” draws attention to the fact that someone is dead and immediately sets a more serious tone. The lack of any indication that the woman is dead until the end of the second example helps create the lighter tone.

The tone is set by the words you choose to use, and how you choose to use them, but also remember that sometimes it’s the words you choose NOT to use that matter.

Improving Dialogue

The purpose of dialogue in story is to do two things, to establish character and to further the plot. Every word your characters speak tells the audience something about your character. Do they use slang instead of proper speech? Do they use the wrongs words to describe something? Do they use a lot of words to say something simple?

Whenever you write a character’s dialogue, focus on who that character is and make sure that the dialogue is true to them. If they didn’t graduate high school, they’re most likely not going to speak like a PhD. If they are from a foreign country, they may slip in foreign words now and then. Whoever your character is should come out in their speech, so always figure out each characters’ distinct speaking traits before writing so you can stay consistent.

When using dialogue to further plot, you also need to consider word choice. If you spell things out simply—“I want the diamond or I’ll kill you”—then the dialogue is kind of boring. It’s too straightforward. If, however, you have the threat come out in a different way, such as the classic—“we have ways of making you talk.” It leads to the audience having a different experience.

The vague language leaves room for the imagination to go off and come up with all sorts of possibilities for how the person will be made to talk. In most cases, it’s always better to find a way for characters to say things without them saying “I want this” because most people in real life don’t say directly what they want. People ramble, they beat around the bush, and they play games, so your characters should as well.

Enhancing Descriptions

The words you use to write your descriptions are one of the most important elements of your story. If you use weak or vague words to describe parts of your story it can lead to a lack of clarity and take away from the vividness of your story.

For example, if you say “Mary took a very long walk to the park. She was tired.” It’s not a very interesting sentence, and it’s also kind of vague. What does long mean? A mile? Two miles? A few blocks? How tired is Mary?

Instead, you could say something more specific: “Mary walked the three miles to the park from her house. By the time she returned home, she was sure she could sleep for a month.” It’s not the best pair of sentences in the world, but it’s more descriptive than the first version. The point is, the language you use can relay a lot of information, and if you use vague words like “long, beautiful, tall, smart, etc” then you are missing out on opportunities to create a clearer picture for your audience.

Ultimately, all your audience has to rely on for understanding your story is what you give them, so give them the best that you can.

Weekly Writing Memo: 4 Methods for Easier Editing

Posted: April 27, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Weekly Writing Memo One of the hardest parts of writing is to go back and edit your own work. The problem is, you know what is supposed to be on the page, so often times your brain will fix what you see so you miss things. There are a lot of things you can do to help you edit your work, but there are four things that I find help the most.

Use a New Format

One of the simplest things you can do to make editing easier is to look at the work in a format that is different from how you write. So if you write in a word document, try looking at the work in a PDF. If you write on your computer, try printing out your writing so you can edit it by hand.

One of my favorite methods is to send the document to my Kindle and read it as if it is an eBook. Then I use the highlight function to indicate different types of notes—yellow for typos, blue for story issues, red for inconsistencies, etc. You can also do what a friend of mine does and change the font size of your writing when it’s time to edit, or even change the font itself.

Switching up the format you read your work in when editing can be a major help because it changes the writing from what you are used to seeing and helps create some distance. For me, putting it on my Kindle is a huge help because it makes it easier to tell myself it isn’t my writing and to force myself to look at it objectively. So try several methods until you find the one that works best for you to get into a critical, and objective, mindset.

One Step at a Time

A lot of writers tend to overwhelm themselves when editing by trying to focus on too much all at once. Whenever I go through, I focus on one specific element at a time. Am I look for story, or am I proofreading? The way you look at the story is different for the type of editing you are doing, so make sure to tell yourself up front what your goal is and stay focused on that.

This doesn’t mean you can’t find typos and such when editing for content, it just means that your focus should not be to try and catch everything. The more you try to catch everything in one pass, the more you’ll miss. You should be doing multiple passes anyway, so deciding on a specific type of editing for each pass will help you do a more thorough job, and keep your editing focused.

Stay Detached

It’s incredibly easy when reading your work for editing to get involved in the story and start enjoying your writing. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your writing or your story, but the more you are focusing on the activity as being one for pleasure or enjoyment, the less critical you are being. So whenever you find yourself getting involved in the story and sitting back to enjoy it, take a break. Stop reading, stop revising, and walk away for a few minutes if needed.

Then, focus on what your goals are as far as editing, and go back at the work like an editor, not a reader. If you let yourself get sucked into your story, you’re going to stop seeing the mistakes and just focus on what you like. So always stay conscious of HOW you are reading, and force yourself to stay somewhat detached.

Take Breaks

Editing is a much harder task than a lot of people think it is. It’s easy to go on autopilot and just start reading without being critical. To prevent this, set specific reading periods and break periods.

When reading a novel, I always stop at the end of every chapter and ask myself a few questions about what I read. Did the characters work? The plot? The setting? Is there anything I’m unclear about? Whatever notes I come up with I jot down, and then I refocus on my goals for editing and start the next chapter. Pausing between sections helps keep you focused, and gives you an opportunity to really think about what you’ve been reading. For something like a screenplay, I set my break times by page number. So every 10-15 pages I stop, let myself process what I’ve read, and then go back at it.

Just remember, the breaks aren’t just about taking time off from reading; they’re about keeping you in a critical mindset, they’re an opportunity to ask yourself questions and analyze what you’ve read so far, and they’re a chance for you to get a sense for the writing.

The biggest thing to remember about editing and revising is that it is a process, and a long one. So give yourself a chance to rest between readings, and make sure as you read that you aren’t growing tired with the task. And remember, while it may be a tedious task, the more serious you take it the better your work will be in the long run.

Weekly Writing Memo: 4 Ways to Establish Tone

Posted: April 20, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing | 1 Comment

Weekly Writing Memo Tone is one of the basic elements within a story. It sets the mood for the audience, and gives context and meaning to the story. Every element within a story works together to set the tone, so it’s important to stay conscious of your choices when writing. If you set the wrong tone for your story, it could turn a comedic story dark, or a serious story comedic. So how do you establish tone in a way that is consistent, and useful?

Language in Narration

The language you use to tell the story plays a huge part in setting the tone. Every word you use has a connotation to is, and if you choose the wrong word you can create conflicting tones within your story. For example, if you describe a dead body in an insulting or amusing way, then it takes a serious element and makes light of it which sets either a comedic or flippant. If you’re trying to write a serious mystery, than setting this kind of tone could be damaging to the story.

The key to figuring out what sort of language to use is to figure out who your narrator is. Are they a comedic person? Sardonic? Serious? They’re the one telling the story, so things should be described in their words. They set the tone of the story. If you want a serious story, a hardened detective story or something, then you need to tell the story from a hardened detective’s point of view and have him describe things as a hardened detective would do.

Another element to keep in mind for narration is the choice of phrases used. Part of tone is setting the time period for the story, and if you use phrases that are common slang when writing something like a period story, then you run the risk of ruining the tone. So be aware of slang and usage of idioms and such as well.

Character’s Speech

How your characters talk helps set the tone of the story. Are they all fast talkers and quick witted like in Gilmore Girls or The West Wing? Do they make dirty jokes like Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool? The way characters talk and interact with each other creates a tone for the story and tells the audience how they should be interpreting a scene. If none of them are taking the problems of the story seriously, then the audience will see no reason to take it seriously.

Setting

Where your story takes place can change a story completely. If you look at the show Burn Notice, it has a light and humorous tone about it which is fitting for its location being Miami. If, however, Burn Notice was set in some place like Chicago, it would become a much darker and more serious series. Chicago and Miami have very different personalities, and such distinctions would change the behaviors of the characters living there.

For your story, always be conscious of the setting and what it says about the story and the characters. Do you want a setting that complements your story, or a something you can contrast your story against? How will your character be different because of their setting? How will the plot have to be different? The important thing is to consider the setting carefully, because it doesn’t just impact the tone, but the story and characters as well.

Antagonists, Conflicts, and Solutions

The antagonist in a story, and the conflicts the protagonist have to go up against are something else that set the tone of the story. If the antagonist is someone the audience can’t take seriously, then it’s going to give the story a comedic tone. If the problems or conflicts the protagonist comes up against are simplistic or easy to solve, then they can give the story a young adult or children’s story tone.

Think about the villain and conflicts of the story and ask yourself what they say about your story. If you’re writing a serious story, then your characters need serious problems. If you’re writing a comedic story, you can have serious problems but how they are handles has to be comedic. The tone is established through how the conflicts are handled, and the types of conflicts or antagonists, as well as through how the protagonist interacts and handles them both.

Final Notes:

Every choice you make when writing contributes to the tone of the story. Without the proper tone, a story can fall flat and not work. If you don’t believe me, look at some of your favorite stories, be them movies or books, and see how they’d be different if their tones were shifted. Would that comedy still be funny? Would the action movie still be exciting? Figure out how the things listed above are portrayed in whatever story you chose, and see how they helped set the tone for the story. The more you analyze how it’s been done before, the easier it’ll be for you to do it yourself.

Weekly Writing Memo: 3 Keys of Writing Relationships

Posted: April 13, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing, Writing Process | 2 Comments

Weekly Writing Memo Whether you’re writing friendships, families, couples, or even enemies, the relationship between the characters has to be established very clearly in order for the audience to understand it.In general, any time two people are in a scene of a story together, there is some kind of relationship between them, even if it is something as simple as salesman to client.

Those passing relationships are easier to establish because there’s not any history between the two people so there’s less subtext going on. All you need to show for those relationships is to establish what each character wants, and keep their actions true to their goals.

The want of each character is of course something you establish for anyone in your story, but for core characters your protagonist interacts with there is a bit more that should be shown. The three key things that need to be portrayed to make the relationship work for an audience are listed below. These are things that are especially true for when you are portraying newly established relationships such as in romantic stories, or team-up or friendship stories.

What brings the pair together?

Sometimes this element is a given, such as when the characters are family, coworkers, classmates, etc. You have to show the audience why these two characters are together for the story. We don’t need to see their entire history of how they met or anything, but we need to understand what it was that brought these two characters into each other’s lives.

In romantic stories, often times two characters are brought together initially by physical attraction. In fantasy or action stories, often times characters are brought together because of a similar goal. The key is, the audience has to understand how these two particular characters, whatever their relationship is, came to occupy the same space and form a relationship.

For example, if you have two best friends, one who is a hobo and another a CEO, and you don’t give us some indication of how they came together, the audience will not buy the story. This doesn’t mean you need to spell it out, all it means is you need to find a way to imply. In the CEO/Hobo example, you could spell it out by having the pair meet because the hobo parks outside the CEO’s office building. OR, if you want to go for a subtler and a new type of connection, maybe the CEO already knows the hobo and comes to him for advice, and the hobo says something that implies he once was a big businessman himself. That would give the audience an idea of how they could have met—when the hobo wasn’t a hobo.

The point is, the audience needs to understand how the two characters you are showing us were brought together. Did they work together? Are they family? Do they go to school together? Are they invited by a wizard to a secret meeting in the Shire? Etc. What is it that makes their worlds collide?

What keeps them together?

This is something I see often gets forgotten in stories involving friendships between odd pairs. Writers like showing us really quirky friends, but they often forget to show us why these two people who are so different are friends in the first place. People come together for a variety of reason, but the reason they end up maintaining the relationship is not always the same as the thing that brought them together.

This is important to show because even if we believe that two people were brought together because of a specific thing (like high school or work), if they don’t seem like two people that would continue spending time together than we won’t believe the relationship has lasted. There has to be something shown that is strong enough to keep these two characters maintaining contact with each other despite their differences.

For example, the hobo and the CEO. Maybe they used to work together, and that is how they met. Their lives have taken very different paths, and for a lot of audiences it’d be hard to believe that the CEO would continue to hang out with the hobo, or that the hobo for that matter would continue spending time with a big CEO who might look down on him. IF, however, you establish that the CEO comes to the hobo for advice, and that the Hobo comes to the CEO for aid now and then, then you have shown the audience what keeps the pair coming back to each other.

Whatever this element is that keeps the pair interacting, it has to be mutually beneficial/appreciated by the pair. Otherwise, the audience will be asking themselves why the characters bother with each other since they are so different. This thing is often show in stories about couples who have been together for a long time. We often see them longing for whatever the initial thing was that brought them together, and through the story we see the characters discover that while they no longer have that initial thing, they have something stronger that is the thing that has kept them together for all the years of their relationship.

What pulls them apart?

Every pair of people, when thrown together, has something that they disagree on and differ on. This can be as simple as the fact that one person is messy and the other is organized. The reason this is important to show in stories is that how people deal with conflict between friends, lovers, family, etc, can tell the audience a huge amount about the characters themselves and the type of relationship the two people have.

For example, if you have two best friends disagree about something as simple as dinner, how they go about the disagreement can tell the audience a lot. Do they get into a vicious argument that ends abruptly and then revert back to friendly banter? Does one character give in to whatever the other wants? Do they both refuse to concede?

Arguments are great at showing the dynamics between two characters. If one always concedes, they might be the peacekeeper, or the other might be domineering. If the argument is written in a way that the audience can see this pair has had it before, it can show very quickly that the pair has a long history together. The point is, you can learn just as much, if not more, by showing what characters disagree on rather than what they agree on.

This also works well to establish relationships because showing that two people are still in a relationship of some sort despite what they disagree on, can show the audience how important that relationship is for the pair. If a character is willing to ignore huge flaws in another character, then there must be something of value there. Just remember to show us why the characters ignore the flaws if they’re ones that are big enough to be relationship ending.

Weekly Writing Memo: It’s Your Story

Posted: April 6, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Opinion, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing, Writing Process | 2 Comments

If you spend enough time writing, and receiving feedback on that writing, eventually you will run into feedback on your work that you disagree with. As I said in my piece on receiving feedback, there’s nothing wrong with that and it’s to be ex Weekly Writing Memo pected. So how do you deal with feedback you don’t agree with, especially when it comes from someone you respect and admire, and someone you know knows their stuff?

Do you ignore it outright? Do you argue? Do you grit your teeth and make the change because they’re an expert? What do you do?

Treat every piece of feedback as if it were true.

This is the hardest thing to do as a writer because it involves looking at your work as if it were someone else’s, and focusing on what might be bad about it. Writing is a personal thing. We get attached to our creations, and as friend recently put it, it’s like being in a relationship. You’re so close to it that it can be hard to step back and see all that’s really wrong within it until someone else points it out. Even then, our instinct can be to defend it to the very end because it’s personal, and we’re emotionally invested in it.

If you really want to improve, however, you have to consider everything as possible in your work, even being wrong. To do this, you have to force yourself to put aside any emotional reaction the feedback may cause and focus on the question the feedback is asking. Try to think of it as being honest with yourself. If the feedback is right, then being able to accept it will let you fix it and make your writing better. If you are stubborn and insist you’re right and nothing needs to be changed without thinking about it, then you’re risking having a story that will not be as good as it could be.

So the first step when getting feedback you don’t agree with, whatever it is, is to tell yourself it is right. Even if you later decide it’s wrong, tell yourself it is right and force yourself to look at your work as if it is.

Try to prove the feedback right.

Once you’ve forced yourself to think that the feedback is right, the next step is to try and prove it right. Look at it like looking at a scavenger hunt within your own work. If you spend at least five minutes analyzing things and trying to find elements that prove the feedback right, you may surprise yourself with what you see. Even if it seems like a stretch, force yourself to consider it.

For example, if someone says your character is flat or boring, then look at that character critically. Find all the traits you’ve shown about that character. Have you shown them, or told them? Find all the dialogue for that character. Do they say everything plainly, or do they have personality? If you covered up the name, would you know who is speaking? Look at as much about the character as you can, and see if you’ve been too subtle with your efforts, or if you’ve missed a key character element.

If by the time you’re done analyzing, you’re convinced the feedback is wrong, then maybe it is. But only settle on that after you’ve given an honest effort to try to prove it right. Is there anything you can do better or add to the story, without adding needless things, to help anyone who thinks the character is boring change their mind? If you find anything while you’re analyzing that may be what made the critic feel the way they did, then try to fix it so other readers don’t get the same reaction.

The point is, if you treat the feedback like it is right, and then analyze your story trying to prove it is right, you’ll be more likely to maybe see what the person giving feedback is talking about. If after all the analyzing you still can’t prove the feedback right, then maybe the feedback is wrong or focused on the wrong thing.

Trust yourself.

Ultimately, people are not perfect, and every writer and reader has a different idea of how things work, and what is good or bad. The most important thing to remember is that it is your story, and while I strongly, strongly encourage considering every piece of feedback and thinking critically about each piece of advice, sometimes you have to simply thank the feedback giver for their time and ignore part of their feedback.

Breaking down a story and being able to explain exactly how it works and why is not an easy thing, and sometimes as writers we do things instinctively based on years of reading and watching and taking in stories. Sometimes, you get a piece of feedback that you know is wrong but you don’t have the tools to prove it wrong.

At this point, if you’ve given the feedback an honest chance and just don’t agree, it’s time to trust yourself. It is your story, and unless the person telling you to change it is your boss who won’t pay the bill if you don’t change it, then listen to yourself. As one of my former professors used to say, “At the end of the day your name is what’s on the page, so you get the final say.”

If you’re really concerned because the person giving the feedback is more experienced, or more knowledgeable, and you aren’t confident in ignoring the note, then your alternative is to make the change and see what happens. Try it out. Does it improve the story? Or does it ruin something you were going for? Even if you do this, however, you still have to trust yourself enough to look at the change and decide if it is improving or hindering your story.

Whatever you decide, it’s your story, so trust yourself. You are the one telling it. No one knows it better than you, and no one can make a decision for you. So think critically, try to be honest, and trust yourself. And remember, even if you go through the process of trying to prove the feedback right, and end up deciding the feedback is wrong, it is never a waste of time. Just the act of forcing yourself to analyze and think critically about your writing will help you be a better writer overall. After a while, you’ll find it far easier to analyze each piece of feedback, you’ll get faster at doing it, and you’ll be better equipped to defend your work because you’ll be used to breaking it down in a critical way.

Weekly Writing Memo: Do’s and Don’ts of World Building

Posted: March 30, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing, Writing Process | 1 Comment

Weekly Writing Memo World building is something I hear writers spend a lot of time anxiously freaking out about. All the tips on Where to Start a Story and How to Make Your Audience Care won’t help you get writing if you’re stuck in the preliminary stages of world building, so I thought I’d do a post on the basic do’s and don’ts of developing the world for your story.

When I talk about world building, I don’t just mean fantasy worlds or futuristic science fiction stuff. World building encompasses every story ever written, even ones based on true stories. Whenever you write you are building the world for your audience, so that those whose world view is different can “buy in” and believe the world is real. So every story involves showing the world it takes place in, the ones based on the real world just take a little less set-up because it’s easier for people to accept and figure out.

DO establish “normal”

Every story has a baseline for what is normal in it. Establishing this just means you are saying to your audience that this is the world the story takes place in, and everything from this point forward will be based on that. To decide what needs to be established in this way, think of what is different in your world than the world we live in.

Do you have monsters that kill people? Do your characters have strong emotional/societal differences? Like in Invention of Lying where they can’t tell a lie, or in horror movies where the monster is supernatural, these things have to be established early on to orient the audience in the world of the story.

You don’t need to show us everything, but do show us what is important for understanding your plot, characters, and anything necessary for the story to work. It’s about small details, and consistency. So first decide what needs to be established, and then look for the easiest, and shortest, way to establish it, preferably in a way that helps move the story forward.

DON’T over explain

It’s easy to get wrapped up in describing the details of a world because it can be fun to write. If you spend too much time laying out the world, however, it’ll start to feel like a history book of facts rather than a story. The key is to find a balance.

How much information does your audience need to know in order to understand the story? How much do they need in order to get a feel for the world? If you tell the audience just enough to get oriented in how the world works, without going too far past that, they will know what they need for the story and not feel like they’re bogged down by unnecessary details. Ask yourself with every detail, whether it is pertinent to the story, and how the story would be different without it.

DO find one specific thing

The rule I use whenever I’m world building is to give one specific detail about anything that may be different from our modern world. So if I invent a new corporation, or a new style of car, I give one specific detail about it that tells the audience what this thing is, and how it fits in my world. This gives the audience something to latch onto for visualization, and something to define this “new” thing by.

As a side note, I also use this for minor characters and such in stories. I give them at least one specific detail about them that stands out, be it physical, personality, or history. It helps personalize each character, and make them their own.

DON’T spend more time world building than writing

I’ve heard more than a few stories about writers who spend years building the world of their story. They think they need maps, and history, and every species planned out, and religions, and etc. While this kind of thing is a version of storytelling in itself, if you aren’t actually ever getting to write the story, you aren’t writing.

The key, as mentioned above, is to figure out what is important to the story and plan those things without going off on any side tangents. If you really feel you need to develop more of the world in order to deepen your story or to solidify the world for yourself, that’s fine, but set limits. Tell yourself you can plan out 3 or 4 main things that are the core of that subject (religion, politics, geography, etc), then force yourself to move on. If it’s not the core of your story, then you don’t really need more than that to get writing.

DO remember to touch on the big things

Even though I say don’t get sidetracked by things that aren’t necessary to your story, there are several big things that should be touched upon if you are creating a new world. These things are things that are a part of every society, and even if your story works without them, it’ll be more realistic if you have some mention (even minor) of them.

The big 5, I think, are: politics, religion, culture (fashion, music, art, etc), transportation, and commerce (agriculture, industry, production, markets, etc). There are more, but these are the ones that no matter where your character is, there will always be touches of them present somewhere.

They don’t require an in depth expository segment on them, they just require the small details being integrated throughout your story wherever there is an easy opportunity for them. Your character passes people in a hall, we’ll see touches of their culture in clothes and appearance, and maybe even faith in jewelry or tattoos and such. The passing details can tell us a lot.

DON’T compare

Don’t go the easy route and say anything that can be summed up as “unlike the world you know, this world works like this.” If you’re creating your world, our world probably doesn’t exist in it. Now, if you’re writing a character who is from “our” world and goes to another, then of course this doesn’t apply. If, however, you’re writing your completely original world, then it doesn’t make sense for your narrator to talk about a world they shouldn’t even know about.

You can use things from the known world in your world, that’s done all the time, just don’t point them out as being from our world. Your narrator is the one telling the story, so stay true to how they’d describe things. If their world doesn’t have bicycles, don’t describe something that looks like a spoked circle as being “like a bicycle wheel.” You have to stay true to the narrator.

Final Notes:

All of this kind of sums up to one major point. Do only as much planning as necessary to develop the basis of your world, and try to avoid overindulging in the development stage. A lot of the world building can happen as you work.

Personally, I develop what is necessary for the plot first, then start writing. While I write, I keep a Word document with new details I add. If I name a gadget or a city as I go, I write it on the Word document so I don’t forget what it’s named. It’s something I keep open as I write so I can reference and update it as needed. As with the post on researching, the thing to remember is that all roads should lead to writing and telling the story, so try to world build with that in mind.

Weekly Writing Memo: 3 Ways to Make Your Audience Care

Posted: March 23, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing | 2 Comments

In last week’s memo, we answered the question “What do I write?” This week we’re going to talk about making your audience care about your story. If your audience isn’t invested in the story, if they a Weekly Writing Memo ren’t interested in it, then they aren’t going to want to stick with it through to the end. Lack of investment is what makes people walk out of theaters mid-screening and give up on books before they get to the end of the story.

So how do you get your audience invested? How do you make people care?

As with everything else to do with writing, there isn’t a guide to follow or a cheat sheet to guarantee your audience will care, but there are several steps you can take to give your story the best odds.

Make your characters rounded and “real.”

It’s hard for people to get invested in characters that are flat or stereotypes. The more rounded your character, the more depth that they have, the more they will feel like real people. Without characters that are more than just a stereotype or shell to carry out the plot, it’ll be incredibly hard to get an audience invested in the story.

Even in real life it’s hard to get invested in people we don’t know, or people who are theoretical to us. We often think of people as the role they fill in our lives—the barista who makes your coffee, the cop who gave you a ticket, the taxi driver, the security guard. It isn’t until we learn something about them that is personal—a habit, their family, their hobbies, etc—that those people become something more to us than their jobs. Friends and family mean more to us because we have a wealth of experiences with them, and knowledge about them as people, that give them meaning to us. Characters in stories need to create these same feelings

Without the depth to your characters, the audience will never be able to think of them as more than functions. There are a lot of ways to create deep characters, and it’s different for every story. My past blog posts on Making Likable Characters and 5 Tips for Establishing Characters are good places to start. Essentially, it comes down to making your characters real.

Give them more backstory than what pertains to the plot. It doesn’t all have to be explained, but do hint at it and let glimmers shine through to show that there’s more going on beneath the surface. Give your characters habits, and families, and favorites/dislikes. Give them personality, and let it shine in their narration, their dialogue, and their actions. The more “real” you can make your character, the more depth you can give them, the easier it will be for people to get invested in them enough to want to stick around through the entire story.

Create a plot that matters.

Having a character with depth is only the first part. If the character doesn’t have a conflict that is interesting, something that matters, then even if the character is well done, the story itself may not be interesting. The plot of your story has to have something major at stake for your protagonist, and the story should have different levels of plot to create more depth (Read 3 Types of Plot for more info on plot levels).

The plot of the story has to have something at stake for the protagonist that anyone in those shoes would see as life altering. This can be anything from their life being at risk to their one chance at finding true love. If you show that it is something pivotal for your protagonist, then your audience will look at it with the same mindset.

You want your audience to care about what is happening in the story, so the protagonist has to care about it and SHOW that they care. They can’t just say “well if I don’t get this job I’ll have nothing.” You have to show how not getting that job will ruin their life—show their financial situation, show their potential future without the job, show them starving and spending their last dollar. If you make the audience understand the consequences of the protagonist failing to succeed in the story, then you will make the audience understand why the conflict of the plot is so important to the protagonist. You’ll make the plot matter, and get your audience invested.

Ask questions that your audience wants answered.

Every scene of your writing should create a question that your audience is wondering. Where is the protagonist going? Who died? Who’s the murderer? What is going to happen next? These questions are what keep your audience invested and curious to keep reading because they want the answers. The only time your audience should have all the answers, or close to, is at the end of the story, and that is only true if the story is not a series of some sort.

Every scene of your story should, at the very least, lead your audience to ask themselves “what will happen next?” If not, then the scene is not driving the story forward. Scenes that do not drive the story forward have no purpose in the story and will most likely feel boring, slow, and will often be places where the audience stops paying attention. They lose their investment in the story because they have no reason to keep reading.

You can create more “questions” in the story by making sure your scenes don’t give all the answers to the plot, by adding conflict, and by letting your characters and the plot be exposed gradually rather than in bulks of exposition.

For example, instead of doing a chunk of dialogue or exposition about who your protagonist is, let your audience figure it out as the story develops. Give them doses, enough to keep them curious about the character, but don’t spell it all out for the audience. That keeps the audience asking “who is this character?” If you can keep your audience asking questions, you’ll most likely keep them reading to find the answers.

Final Notes:

The one thing to keep in mind about all of the tips above is that they are all useful in moderation. You can tell us too much about a character, make a plot too complicated, or create too many questions for your audience. You want to give your audience enough to keep them interested and entertained, enough for them to understand the story, but not so much that they are overwhelmed, bored, or confused.

Some great popular examples of too much of something are Lost and Game of Thrones. When Lost was on, many people complained because it constantly created questions for the audience without giving enough answers. Similarly, in Game of Thrones many complain because there are too many characters and audiences had trouble getting into the story.

Now, both of those franchises are highly successful so clearly people can get past those things, but both show the dangers of too much of something. Both of those series, however, also use all of the things I listed above to keep audiences invested. They have deep characters with backstory beyond the events of the core plot that the audience sees. They keep the audience asking questions and wanting answers, and their plots have huge things at stake for the characters.

You’ll never be able to keep everyone invested all of the time, but if you strive for balance, and create deep, meaningful characters and plot, then you should be able to keep your audience invested in the story.

Weekly Writing Memo: What Do I Write?

Posted: March 16, 2016 | Author: Author the World | Filed under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Weekly Writing Memo, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Books, Creative Fiction, Fiction, Writing, Writing Process | 3 Comments

Weekly Writing Memo I think the writing questions I hear the most are questions about where to get ideas, and what ideas are good ones. People constantly want the secret formula for the next bestseller, or confirmation before they start writing that the idea they’re working on is great. The problem is, there is no magical way to tell before something is written.

Of course, there are ways you can help improve an idea before writing, but there isn’t a secret guide to a guaranteed selling idea. That being said, there are some tips to help you decide whether the idea you have is one you want to pursue.

What do I write?

Ideas are everywhere. Look at friends and family, look at the news or celebrity magazines, and find what interests you. I always advise writing something that truly gets you involved and not just something that you think will sell. The more you love the story, the better the writing will be, and the audience will be able to feel your enthusiasm for it. So find a story involving something you love, or something that fascinates you.

Once you have a topic, the next step is to figure out your character and your plot. Those things are blog posts of their own, so I’ve posted a few links to previous ones I’ve written on the subjects below for more in-depth information. In general, though, you need to understand who your character is and how they would behave, and you need to know what kind of trouble they are going to get into that will disrupt their world.

Beginning a Story: What’s in a Beginning?; Tips for Finding Your Story’s Beginning

Plot: 3 Types of Plot; 5 Ways to Increase Tension in Story

Character: 5 Tips for Establishing Character; Relatability or Likability

Is my idea good enough? Interesting enough? Sellable? The next big hit?

Maybe you already have an idea, but you’re not sure it’s interesting or sellable. You can always ask a few people and get a second opinion, but in general until the story is written there is no way to say one way or another. A great idea can be presented in a poor way and make people think it won’t work, but then you write it and it does. A bad idea can be made to sound wonderful, but then it can fall apart in the writing.

The only way to find out if your idea works, is to write and see how it turns out. That being said, you can help increase the chances that your idea works by doing your homework up front. Outline, develop your characters, develop your setting, and learn as much as you can about writing as possible. No matter how good of a writer you are, there is always more to learn.

Has it been done before?

Beyond the concern of whether a story idea is interesting, the other concern I often hear is whether the idea has been done before. It’s easy to look at your story concept and think of everything similar that has been done. You’ll start to feel inadequate, or like a mimic, or that your story doesn’t measure up. This is a valid concern because you don’t want a story that is too similar to an existing one, but all stories have elements that overlap with other stories. There is nothing wrong with being inspired by another story, or having something similar with another story, but the key is to have something to distinguish your story from the existing one.

For example, an easy reference of distinguishing traits is to look at the movies White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. The two movies came out around the same time and had incredibly similar plots, but what distinguishes them from each other, besides actors, is tone. White House Down isn’t a comedy, but it does come off as a bit more lighthearted and comedic at times. Olympus Has Fallen, on the other hand, is more of a serious action movie in the vein of the original Die Hard. Now if the movies had been written one after the other, whichever was written second would have had to do even more to distinguish itself from the original, but because they came out at the same time they get away with being so similar.

The important thing is to remember that as long as you’ve taken steps to separate your idea from whatever existing idea you’re looking at, then you should be fine. Focus on making it your own, on writing it the best you can, and embrace your story, and always have something that makes your story your own unique, be it style, viewpoint, character, or plot.

Final Notes:

The easiest way to truly learn to understand stories, and to know what is and isn’t sellable, is to consumer stories that are selling. Read, watch movies, listen to podcasts, check magazines, and take in stories in all of their forms. One of the easiest ways to learn about writing and telling a story is to see how it’s been done for centuries and think critically about them.

You need to take in stories wherever you can, and always take note of what you like, what you didn’t, and WHY. The more you study existing works and learn how the storytelling is executed, the more techniques and tools, so to speak, you’ll have at your disposal for your own writing. So study, explore, and embrace your idea. In the end, once you get it out you can always verify with someone else whether the idea is too similar to something that exists or if it’s any good, then tweak as needed, but until it’s on paper, no one will ever be able to say for sure. So go write, stop procrastinating with worry and self-doubt, and maybe you’ll surprise yourself.