Wednesday, March 17, 2010
To writers and/or Stephen King fans, his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (a title I do hope is self-explanatory) might seem the most obvious source of WILAWriTWe material. Yet nay, my dearest inklings, my King-related thoughts for today come not from his how-to, but rather from one of his how-dids. Or maybe I should call it a how-didn’t. By the time I finish writing this, I might have a clearer picture, and so might you–but I’m still not going to change my previous sentence, because I like it, and this is my article, and I don’t have to kill my darlings if I don’t wanna. Nyah.
For your exercise, I want you to write a scene that’s all dialogue. The gameshow featured two characters, but you can put as many as you want in the scene. They’re only allowed to ask questions. That’s the gimmick. You’ve got to convey information (and do your best to make it feel natural) with nothing but questions.
Today’s post is more a story than a lecture, but it’s a story rich with writing advice. It harkens back to a creative writing exercise from January, and foreshadows a worthwhile topic for future discussion. It’s also a pretty sweet story, when it comes right down to it.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tweet This week, my dearest inklings, I find myself seventy-four pages into Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and enjoying it beyond words. But since the point of this article is to share with you–in words, no less–what I am learning from what I am reading, I give you here my attempt to […]
So your assignment is to craft a scene showing a strong character of the opposite sex. Give us 300-900 words, and show your work. Whatever aspect of gender writing troubles you, face it head-on, and then polish it up until you get it right. Or, as close to right as you can manage, anyway. A couple hours getting into that character’s head could make worlds of difference in your writing, and help you connect with readers who wouldn’t have given you a chance before.
Julie read my whole novel, and told me the female character was flat. Five hundred pages of adventure, magic, politics, armies at war and dragons in the air, and all she wanted to talk about was the love interest. The girl barely had two dozen pages! She barely had a backstory! But that’s all Julie wanted to talk about. I rolled my eyes at my “feminist friend,” but her comments bugged me.
We writers are people with ideas…except when we’re not. The initial sit-down-and-start-scribbling-like-mad ideas are not a problem. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve got that covered. But what happens after the first bout of hectic, joyous franticness fizzles out?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Anyway. Write a Character Record Sheet. If you’re working in fantasy, dig up an RPG CRS like I was talking about yesterday (and you can email me if you don’t have one handy). If you’re working mainstream, or really any other genre, you’ll have to settle for real life. Develop a Facebook profile for your character. Either way, I want physical descripti0n, relationship status, family background, core beliefs, profession, and personal interests. Give me at least a full page of information.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Maybe you don’t care at all about role-playing games. Maybe you rolled your eyes and growled “Nerd!” when I mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. It doesn’t matter. As a storyteller, that last paragraph should have your mouth watering. The job of the storyteller is to create characters that adhere to certain rules, that behave consistently and believably, that create a cohesive and rational experience out of of a bunch of people doing things their own way.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Last week, Aaron posted an article on writing and procrastination and the benefits of not procrastinating on your writing. On Monday, he followed up with a writing exercise designed to help us writers write without procrastination. In keeping with that theme, I am going to share with you my story of How I Beat The System And Gave Myself A Migraine. I shall also attempt to refrain from starting every sentence with an adverbial phrase.
