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Hi, my name is One_Unive
rse
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 | My Personal Writing Tips |
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 4.76 with 17 vote(s)
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| Created: 2009-03-03 02:35:18 |
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Welcome to my writing tips. (And well done if you read all of this. You are a genius. You have one gorgeous concentration span; God I envy you.)
First things first, they are not traditional writing tips (So do not expect them to be that simple, or the perfect answer, or a concise guide. It is just a step up from that). They make no mention of spelling and grammar, or the use of poetical devices. Those things are, or they can be, an essential or a base for good writing.
But writing is an art. Really, once the basics are adopted, there are no rights and wrongs, or blacks and whites. My sole purpose, of which I hope I do achieve, is to inspire someone. You may notice a lot of “I think” in this guide. It is opinionated, and it has to be. My way of thinking is not the be all and end all of everything. I am not THAT big headed.
I am an amateur (obviously). I have been writing for five years now, though still, it is not widely known by my friends and my family that I write. (If you’ve read some of my writing, then perhaps you will understand why that might be). It became a casual hobby, when I was twelve years old. It was somewhere where I could escape, and get away from the world that surrounded me. That was my sole inspiration. And then it sort of kept hold of me. Now I have regular ideas, and feel urges to persist and to continue, and so I write now as often as I can get the time.
1) And so, logically, we begin our journey by assembling an idea. In some ways, I think this is the hardest stage. Everybody wants to come up with something… that brain wave… or the genius idea. I think a lot of people… they want something different, or as we all know it as, “original.”
Let me let you in on a secret. I do take some of my inspiration from what people call the bad stories… the ones that are written by people who use their bad grammar and their spelling and their “unoriginal” ideas. If you really want to write something, there actually isn’t any need to come up with something really complex, or even something that has never been done before.
It is a bit like business, I guess. You’ve just got to think… “Wait, I can do that just as well …or differently” or even… “I can do it better than that.” Or maybe one day, you will just come up with that brain wave idea. But to be honest, if you have the drive, and you have that motivation, even the simplest idea could stand out amongst the best.
You could start writing it now. A boy meets a girl. The boy cheats on the girl. She dumps him.
What I am trying to say is…it is not the idea that really makes the story good. It is the portrayal of that idea. That is my main message. Finding an idea that inspires you… it can be difficult. But if you want it to be it can be easy, too.
Think about it.
2) Once you have a basic (or complex) plot, in my opinion sometimes it is a good idea to make some notes about it, or a brief plan. It is something to AIM for. This means that you can plan out what will happen in each part or what will happen throughout the entire piece of prose, if it is a short story. This might not even be actual physical events. It could be about feelings. If you have a running metaphor, you could make notes about this too. Where are the crucial moments where you want to fit this in?
Over planning, however, is not always a good idea, at least not for me. Maybe if you have a really complicated plot line, you might need to make a lot of notes, but I would try not to stunt your creativity by adding too much in there. A plan for each part could simply be a line of ten words, in brief, of the main point of the chapter.
Here’s an example of a simple plan:
“Part 1: Introduction to Joe’s life, his family, hobbies etc (and any other important points that you might want to consider)
Part 2: Joe meets Mary (You might want to briefly say how, where why etc.)
Part 3: How the relationship between Joe and Mary progresses. Towards the end of this part Joe begins to notice changes in Mary’s behaviour towards him.
Part 4: Joe finds out that Mary is cheating on him with his best friend Darren.
Part 5: Joe confronts Mary.
Part 6: Joe leaves Mary. A conclusion might go here, and an explanation of the impact that Mary had on Joe’s life and why this was a significant turning point for him. What did he learn? How has he changed (maybe)?”
This can be, in itself, a form of motivation. Now you will know that your story definitely has a beginning, middle and an end. You will not get lost for ideas, and it helps avoid flaws in your plot. It also means that you will not miss out that killer line, that idea you don’t want to forget.
3) Now this is a difficult one. Characters… they are always difficult. Most of us have heard of a “Mary Sue/ Gary Stu.”
And we should also know that “Mary Sue’s/ Gary Stu’s” aren’t always bad, and that they aren’t always unrealistic. And I’m not going to talk about this. I don’t care about this. I will give you my side of the story.
But just take this, for an example. Think about the people around you, the people you meet everyday. Even, just think of yourself. Now I seem pretty boring, as a person. I’m a college student. I look boring. I’m ugly. I have no personality; I don’t talk, I don’t gossip. I’m not bonny or lively. I’m just a person. There are no out of this world… dramatic… gob smacking stories behind me.
But I’m not boring. This is the phrase that I always use.
“I am a human mind, trapped inside a human body”. I have feelings right? I think…
And we all have opinions, about our experiences and lives, however big, however small they may be. And we can ALL make them interesting. Passion can make someone think that simple and boring and pointless ideas are so relentlessly exciting. And the same applies to people.
It doesn’t really matter who the story is coming from, at the end of the day. The readers could hate the character, but love the story, and love the hatred they feel.
It’s all… loose and contemporary…
And that is the gist, really.
There is one last thing… I almost forgot it. (You can tell I have not planned this one out).
It is also not the amount of characters that you have that matters; you could have one character, or two characters, or millions. Judge yourself correctly. Would that wreck the atmosphere of the story, to have that many characters? Could I make you attached to them all, in that short space of time? Do I want you to be attached to them all?
Or could I seriously pull that off?
Depends, really, it depends. I can’t say any more on this. It is beyond my feeble mind. I think it is really important that you judge your own characters, and honestly.
Also, in addition I think it is important that you make sure that your story revolves around the plot AND the characters sometimes, not just the plot OR the characters. Sometimes people can be as important as places, or places as important as people.
It is okay to put a little bit of yourself into a character, even just a glow, or a tinge. I always do. It can be inspiring for you. You can write up a story, to try and express something. My ideas, they usually have some sort of moral, or message behind them.
Take a recent series of mine, “Lady Sitting.” (I won’t bore you with this bit too long, so don’t worry.) The whole idea of that series was to address a sensitive issue (which if you have read it you may know is the sxxual abuse of the child). But it wasn’t just that. I wrote it because I wanted to leave a mark on the character of Benjamin.
People who leave bad situations are corrupted sometimes. I know that, and you might know that all too well. People who are victimised do not always leave innocent. There are chains of abuse, and those who are hurt and then inflict it on others become guilty. It isn’t often someone leaves a situation like that without some kind of scar.
And the people who withhold are the heroes. It is a tough world. There is no sympathy, or more so empathy. But it is a trait of weakness.
So there you go. There’s my take on it. Characters tie into plots, and plots tie into characters.
Simple pimple.
4) Once we have got an idea, we begin to write our story. We have the skills (maybe (but I’m sure you do)). We all have our individual writing styles. Some people are very emotive, and somehow more feeling revolved, others are entertaining and their stories are action packed and callous. People are all different. We all write differently. There is neither, not one that we can all call worse. Our readers have preferences too.
Some people say “you should write in “present” tense to create suspense” or “you should write it using “second person” to make it personal for the reader.” Really, it does not matter what tense, or what person you are using and where. It can still be suspenseful and personal. It all depends on the sort of atmosphere that you as a writer want to create. Yes, those statements might be true sometimes, but they aren’t always true. Come on people. This is about creativity and expressing ourselves. There are no definite “rules”.
I think there is also an issue of length. Now we all, at this sort of stage, expect a story to be of some sort of substantial length. But… what do you mean… substantial length?
Your first part could be… ten thousand words long. It could be… one hundred words long. And yeah, your story might be “long”. But it really depends on how you split up that length, or then what length is necessary for each part. Just chill out and do it, like this:
I’ll take us back to Joe and Mary.
“Part 4: finds out that Mary is cheating on him with his best friend Darren.”
We might want this part to be short. After all, not much has happened, really. He just found something out. Or… wait… has it? Is not Mary the love of Joe’s life? This is terrible… this is going to be really long, and drawn out; I’m going to go, and dig deep, deep, deep into all of his feelings and then link up all my metaphors here.
Yeah, you get the point. We can take things in various ways. Length is NOT an issue. None of the approaches above are right or wrong.
If you want something simple, then here it is. My guideline (usually) is at least 1000 words, no less, slave, no less, every time I visit my computer. Write. Write. Write.
5) Yeah… write. That is the problem.
Sometimes, we lose that motivation. You know… that buzz that you had at the beginning when you first came up with your idea, but that you no longer find, that you just can’t remember?
I think this can happen for various reasons.
Maybe it is because you weren’t all that passionate about the idea in the first place, because you find it hard to get ideas that appeal to you. Maybe you weren’t writing it for you, but you thought that it would make you “popular” or something along the lines of that… or something. In this case, I can’t help you, other than what I have already said. You must have it in there, somewhere. You must, if you really want to do this. If you are really inspired, I know that the drive will just come to you.
Secondly, it could be because you have too many ideas. You think… oh, I am bored of that idea now. I have had so many new ones since then. Your hands can’t keep up with your mind.
I have… some sort of an answer for you.
Your readers are still passionate about that old story. Come on, I love it. Write it. Please. Continue. Please.
But then… what do you do with your other ideas?
It is simple, really. Save them. Write them down, briefly, somewhere else. Then you will have an abundance of ideas for the future. I know for a fact that working on several projects at a time CAN be difficult. It depends on who you are. I know for a fact I am not a real woman. I can’t multi task, at all. I would never give birth. It would kill me.
I also think that the further and further, and deeper and deeper that you get into a story can make you more and more attached to the characters, and the plot, and everything your idea entailed, almost to the point where you can never imagine wanting to leave that old story, and stop writing it. And when you finish the story (if ever) you might miss your old characters.
You know, there is something amiss in my mind. I keep forgetting what I was going to say.
Ah… yeah. If you do happen to complete a project, you will feel satisfaction. It is good to complete something. And then people will prefer you for it. I know, as a reader of work, that I get disappointed when I begin to read something, and then it goes downhill, and I can see that the author loses interest. It makes me lose interest too, and I don’t want to lose interest. What also does me in is the potential.
I hate it when potential is not exploited. Think back, yes, to your original idea. What was it that made you want to write that story? Can you imagine the feeling, even if you can’t really feel it? You should start to feel it. Think about the potential that it had when it was fresh and young. It is almost always a good idea to refer to your original inspiration, because that, my love, is where your idea was born.
I can’t help you anymore. I’m just a person, a dumb person. My opinion is as good as yours, but then it all needs to be spoken.
6) And now for my final tip. (Eh… wait… why does everything always land on six for me? Oh well. Just forget it.)
Work. Hard. Throughout.
Sometimes. It. Is. Hard. Work.
Complete things before you present them. Don’t rush, just work. You don’t have to write everything all in one go.
But revise your work. It is good to try and set some time aside so you can get it all right. I know what it is like to have no time. This is not my top priority hobby, to be honest. It is just my personality which gives me any sort of pathetic edge that I have. I am actually an artist, primarily. I want to set up my own business (hence the business reference earlier on in this post).
I am no one to boss you around.
So go on. Do it. Be creative.
My aim is not to get anywhere in this particular profession. My time is tied up in other things. I want someone else to do this, and to live this so different dream. As I have said, I have only been writing for five years. I have been a passionate artist for about fourteen years.
I did not expect you to read all of that. And if you did, a special well done to you, just for hearing me out. Not many people listen to me.
In fact, like I said I don’t talk. So here is a rare little piece of my soul.
Cheers,
Des xxx |
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