Run, don’t walk, to listen to Inside Creative Writing

If you’d like, you can listen to this post.

I am a writer, but I am not yet the writer I want to be.

I have had very little in the way of formal training. I do not have a college degree or an MFA. I have taken a few, scattered writing courses (most recently a class on writing fantasy at the wonderful Grub Street in Boston), but mostly I’ve cobbled together random bits and pieces – like a magpie collecting shiny things to adorn its nest.

Though my journey has followed a somewhat circuitous path, I believe that I have made progress. From a seven-year-old scribbling in a notebook that I pilfered from the supply closet at the bank where my dad was a VP, I have evolved into someone who makes her living with words – crafting content for my marketing clients, writing a column for my local paper, and even occasionally penning a feature piece for a regional magazine.

But, I am still not the writer I want to be.

I ache to write fiction, but as a single mama workin’ this gig, I can’t easily afford time to play in the speculative and financially unstable world of fiction. The writing that pays my bills takes precedence. Making time to practice and study the craft of fiction is a challenge for me, to say the least.

Enter the power of the podcast.

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here awhile already know that I am a huge and unabashed fan of audio books. If it weren’t for audio books, I’d probably only manage to read a handful of novels each year. But with Audible in my pocket, I am able to “read” while I walk, drive, do the dishes, run the vacuum, etc. It’s a beautiful thing.

Podcasts are another audio format that allow me to connect with content while I’m doing something else. I have been listening to several marketing podcasts for a while, but only recently decided to investigate writing podcasts. Long story short, I struck gold with a brand new podcast called Inside Creative Writing.

Brad Reed is the writer and educator behind this podcast. As a frequent podcast listener, I can be a bit of a critic, but this guy is doing a fabulous job. His shows are highly informative, entertaining, and actionable. I frequently pause in my walk to jot down a note so I don’t forget what he’s said about a particular technique or insight. He has put a lot of thought into his format – alternating one-man shows with interviews and always including a couple of closing elements – “Wise Words” (inspirational and thought-provoking quotes) and a writing assignment (not a prompt, but an assignment on applying the techniques discussed in the show). His production quality is great, his show notes are thorough, and he even has a way for listeners to participate in the show by leaving him a voicemail with a quote for the Wise Words segment, which he then edits into the actual show. (You can hear my debut appearance in Show #8.)

Can you tell I’m a bit of a fan?

The thing is, we’re only eight shows into this podcast, and I have already learned SO much. Reed covers topics in a way that is clear and non-threatening. He makes great use of examples to bring each of the concepts and techniques to life. He isn’t afraid to take deep dives on a topic, making sure you – as the listener – really have a chance to fully absorb and process the idea. Also (and this counts in my book), he’s a really nice guy. I emailed him a quick note of appreciation and wound up having a very pleasant email chat. I can tell that Reed is doing this with his community firmly in mind.

I really can’t recommend the show enough. I was talking to a group of writer friends earlier this week about our favorite writing resources – the go-to books, blogs, and magazines that help us get a handle on what the hell we’re doing. All the usual suspects came up, but then the conversation took a turn as one of the writers sputtered, “They’re all great, but I never have time to read them!” Too true.

I subscribe to Poets & Writers. It’s an excellent magazine (probably one of the very best on the topic of writing). I always learn something when I read an issue, but – like my friend – I can’t always find time to read them. As a matter of fact, I have four unread issues sitting in a pile next to my desk right now. I feel guilty and frustrated and a little defeated when I think about how long those magazines have been sitting there, waiting for me to find a few minutes to crack their crisp covers. Alas, I don’t see that happening in the near future. However, the Inside Creative Writing podcast is filling that gap in my education quite nicely. I can honestly say that I am learning as much (if not more) about good story writing by listening to Reed as I would poring over the pages of Poets & Writers. (And, that’s saying something!)

I guess the most telling thing I can say about how much I like the show is this: I’m willing to pay for it.

In the most recent episode, Reed invited listeners to become supporters by making a voluntary donation to help offset show costs. He called it the “public broadcasting model.” I immediately went to www.insidecreativewriting.com and clicked the “Donate” button. I plunked down $36 – what I might pay for a year’s subscription to a quality, writing magazine – and was happy to do it.

After all, I can certainly forego a few lattes in the name of becoming the writer I want to be.

.

Jamie Lee Wallace is a writer who also happens to be a marketer. She helps her Suddenly Marketing clients discover their voice, connect with their audience, and find their marketing groove. She is also a mom, a prolific blogger, and a student of voice and trapeze (not at the same time). Introduce yourself on facebook or twitter. She doesn’t bite … usually.

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My muse enjoys dancing in the rain

In typing in the title for this post, I now have the song “Singing in the Rain” on high volume slamming around my brain. And I think some memories of middle school chorus are trying to push to the front of my memories. Oh my!

It’s amazing what the writer’s mind does with words, isn’t it? And that leads into my topic today.

Intense rain storm and flooding

I’ve discovered that my muse is very active and vocal on rainy days more than any other type of day. In fact, just saying ‘rain’ gets her doing jumping jacks.

She feeds me a lot of character dialogue in no particular order or manner, and seldom related to a single story. On the day I took this intense rain photo (in July ’08), Ms. Muse had all sorts of things to say, including children’s dialogue as they played at the beach, dialogue from animals (a la Dr. Doolittle) relocating from the country to the busy city, and dialogue from two 20-somethings trapped at the top of a local mountain in a blizzard.

Glorious sunshine

On sunny days, my muse is open to exploring the outside world in search of new ideas. In a way, she likes to sun herself and take it easy. She lets the world be her cabana boy and serve ideas to her instead of going out to find the delectable fruits and seeds of ideas herself. (And, yes, sometimes she falls asleep in the sun without sunscreen on, which brings a lot of adjectives out.)

Snow and Sunshine

On snow days, she likes to gander at the landscape and wonder about the critters and people moving around ‘out there.’ She feeds me ideas about how the birds don’t fall out of the trees (after all, they can get a lot of snow on their shoulders!), and wonders if all the chipmunks found their way into a hole safely (and have enough food for their families to survive behind underground for a few days). Eventually she thinks about humans getting outside and unburying their world. More poetry flows through my muse on mornings like that, than prose.

On dismal, cold days, I’ve discovered my muse likes to play around with dark fiction and suspense, anything that gets my heart rate up. It must have something to do with the brisk air. She’s very ‘sharp’ on cold days, especially evenings. Everything is pointed (like icicles), brittle (like wind chill), and dark (like the short days). She brings me a lot of visuals, movies in my mind. There’s always an over abundance of activity with the characters that I can’t possibly keep track of everything, but I do end up warming up.

During the fall and spring, when a breeze can kick up a lot of scents (I love the lilacs right now!), my muse enjoys reminding me about such things as being in my grandmother’s kitchen while she was baking, being at the sea shore, and the moment I reach the peak of a mountain after hiking through the woods. A lot of journal writing pours out of my fingers at these times.

Now I have “America the Beautiful” on a loop in my head.

Does your muse react differently to the weather and temperature?

Lisa J. Jackson loves working with words in her own work and with businesses. She also loves New Hampshire and is focused on completing several 5Ks in 2013 as a way to get off the couch consistently. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, Biznik, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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Six Writing Lessons From The Garden

 I love to garden. It’s a meditative activity – something I can do while my mind freewheels. Last Sunday, I found myself thinking how preparing a small vegetable patch is like writing a book.

Lesson 1: Writing is Solitary.

For the first time in thirty years, I’m planting the garden solo. My husband helped me install the fence posts (just as he built the studio where I write), but he prefers to nurture the orchard. I’m on my own, just as I write by myself during the week while he’s off tending to his patients’ health.

Lesson 2: Selectivity is Good.

There was a time when we grew and preserved all our food – but no longer. We’re now supplied with locally grown produce from a neighbor’s organic farm, so I’m only planting high-value items that are harder to find in local markets – shallots and leeks, fennel, escarole and Brussels sprouts – as well as items we consume in quantity – cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, hot peppers and a wide assortment of culinary herbs.

I’m leaving the prosaic vegetables – the zucchini and green beans, the carrots and potatoes – to the production professionals. In a similar way, I’ve retired from the teaching, managerial and editorial jobs that others can do as well as or even better than I can. No one else can tell the stories I imagine, so I’m concentrating on them.

Lesson 3: Limits are Helpful.

I started by limiting the scope of my garden. I’ve fenced off an eight- by sixteen-foot rectangle to keep the free-range chickens out, and to keep my intentions focused – and manageable. Our previous gardens were huge, time-sucking affairs, and sometimes we raised an equal quantity of weeds as tomatoes. Similarly, over the past year, I’ve drafted thousands of words about my character’s life. But recently, I’ve come to realize that the story I’m telling takes place over the course of nineteen months. So that’s what I’ll develop; everything else must come out, just like the weeds.

Lesson 4: Writing Takes Time.

At the outset, a hundred and twenty-eight square feet looks just as big as a 100,000-word novel, and turning it over with a hand fork appears as daunting as filling a ream of paper by pen. My husband offered to do this heavy task for me; he would have had the garden-plot ready in less than an hour. I thanked him and said I would do it myself. It took me three hours, during which time I meditated on how preparing the garden is like writing a novel. I stopped only for water and to take pictures for this post, which I was composing as I dug.

Lesson 5: Small Tasks Yield Success.

A week earlier, I’d covered my plot with a tarp to warm the earth and kill weeds. The weeds continued to flourish, however, and the prospect of turning the soil by hand and pulling the weeds out by the root was too much. So I put the tarp back in place and

Working a small section at a time.

uncovered only a quarter of the space. After I turned those thirty-two square feet, I peeled the tarp back again, turning and weeding the next section. Now, the job was half done. I folded the tarp back again and again, always giving myself a small, measurable task that I could reasonably accomplish. Writing a book is just the same: I break each chapter into sections, and each section into paragraphs, each paragraph into sentences, each sentence into words. Each time I stuck the fork into the soil, it was a reminder that books are written one word at a time.
Lesson 6: The End is the Beginning

By the time I had raked the soil into beds and outlined the footpath with string, my neck was sunburned, my back was sore, and I was ready for a bath. I was done – for the day. I now had a well-defined garden plot with clearly outlined beds as weed-free as a clean piece of paper. Even though I was done-in, I’m anything but done. In fact, I’m just ready to start.

Ellen, the novel I’m crafting, is further along than my garden. But the garden is a good reminder about how to maintain forward progress on this first draft. My afternoon preparing my garden yielded these six truths: 1) Even though I work alone, I’m deeply engaged with my characters; 2) every time I cut out a scene or a character or an unnecessary word, I gain a clearer sense of what aspect of the story to nurture; 3) knowing the limit of the narrative has helped me focus on the story I have to tell; 4) drafting the novel is taking a long time – and I make progress daily; 5) I experience the elation of success when I set myself small, measurable tasks; and 6) every time I finish a section, a chapter, an entire draft, I’m ready to begin another section, another chapter, another draft.  And even when that’s done – even when the writing and revision are finished – there’s another whole set of steps to see a book to completion, but those are chores of another season.

This growing season has just started. I tell myself, if I write word by word, weed by weed, my effort will blossom, and in time, I’ll see my book in my readers’ hands.

Meanwhile, I have a lovely garden bed ready for seeds.

photo: M. Shafer

Author Deborah Lee Luskin gardens and writes in southern Vermont and can be found on the web at www.deborahleeluskin.com

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Chipping away at the statue that is our story

You know when you are watching a movie and the camera stays a heartbeat too long on the kitchen knife and you just know that something pivotal is going to happen with that knife? In most cases, this sort of cinematic emphasis to a prop means that the prop is going to be used later on in the film – the knife will be used to cut the ropes for escape, used to stab the bad guy, etc.

And likewise, I’m sure that you’ve seen films where you’ve noticed the knife and only after, you frustratingly realize that the knife was meaningless to the story. In that case, it was a poorly directed movie, where no one paid attention to that major rule of storytelling.

If you emphasis a prop, then you need to use that prop later on.

You’ve probably heard the advice for carving a statue – take a block of marble and cut away everything that does not look like the final statue. Easy enough huh?

The same advice goes for writing.

When you write a scene, you are obligated to incorporate detail. Think of the five senses, taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. Obviously, you don’t need to use them all but you need to strive to “paint” a textual picture of where your characters are. Everything in your scene must exist to propel your story’s action or plot.

The problem is that many writers rely on their own interpretations of the scene. You might recall a fancy restaurant where you had a memorable dinner once as the scene for your characters to have a heated argument over a pending divorce.

Even though you remember the forks as being incredibly study (and trust me, I appreciate a heavy fork as much as the next person) it’s not necessary to mention the forks in your scene, no matter how impressive they are.

If, however, one of your characters is going to steal a knife and then stab the other and then frame someone else, you might want to mention the sharpness of the steak knife, the way the lighting glints off of the blade. Even if they use another knife, attention to this knife might be warranted in the guise of foreshadowing.

As writers we must use our personal filters for all of our writing. It’s a given and that’s what makes our work individual and unique. However, as crafters of stories, we need to recognize that even though we see our stories through our own eyes, we need to be vigilant about chipping away all of our words that don’t leave behind the finished statue.

***

Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

For the record, I’ve even “borrowed” a heavy fork that had impressed me.

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Resources for Writers

As writers, we are always trying to improve our craft. While I think some things are definitely worth spending money on (Crime Bake 2013, anyone?), I am not yet in a position where I can justify spending a lot of money on my writing career, but I’m always looking for ways to increase my skills as a writer.

While I have taken online classes that cost money in the past, my experience was less than satisfactory so I’ve been reluctant to plunk down my hard-earned cash to repeat the experience.

What’s a writer to do?

Try a free online writing class. It turns out, there are many options. I’m currently enrolled in a class through Coursera, and so far it is excellent. The faculty (a group of professors from Ohio State University) seem excited to be teaching the class, and the readings and videos feed my writer’s soul.

Coursera is not the only MOOC out there. MOOC stands for “massive open online courses” and there are a few companies offering them. Also, many universities offer free online courses as well, including Harvard and MIT.

Here is a list of resources for free writing courses and other writing resources.

MOOCs:

• Coursera: http://www.coursera.org This MOOC had the most courses available.
• Udacity: https://www.udacity.com This MOOC has a science/math focus, so I’m not sure they offer writing courses, but I wanted to mention it as an option.
• Open Education Database (OEDb): http://oedb.org/ Wide range of courses available here.

Other options:

• edX: www.edx.org Free online classes from leading universities. (When I reviewed courses today, I didn’t see any writing courses, but more courses are added often.)
• MIT Open Courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu I’ve taken courses through this website before and I’ve been very happy with the quality. You’d be surprised how many writing courses MIT has. Most of the courses are archived, but you can access the lectures and class materials.
• Harvard Open Courses: Open Learning Initiative: http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative Most of Harvard’s open courses are listed on edX, but there are some listed here that are from Harvard’s Extension School. I’ve taken classes at Harvard’s Extension School (writing classes and other classes) and they have always been very high quality.

iTunes:

• iTunes U: If you have iTunes on your computer, you also have iTunes U, which you can use to download classes, such as Creative Writing: A Master Class, which I downloaded (free) some months ago. I learned a lot.
• Podcasts: When I typed “writing” into the search box for iTunes podcasts, there were so many free podcasts on the topic of writing, it made me giddy. From “Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing,” to “Odyssey SF/F Writing Workshop” to “Writers on Writing,” they all sound great. I’ve downloaded some writing podcasts in the past and most have been very useful.

If you know of more free resources for writers to improve their craft, please let us know in the comments.

Diane MacKinnon, MD: I’m a full-time mom, part-time life coach, and part-time writer. I’m getting ready to submit a short story for possible publication and I’m excited to continue to put in my hours toward becoming a published author.

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5 Things to Consider When Writing Webcopy

When I write for someone else’s website, the first thing I do is hold a face-to-face meeting. I want to be able to hear the owner’s actual voice and figure out what it is about their business that makes them stand out from the competition. Some of the information I’m specifically looking for is:

What is the voice? I talk about voice a lot in my marketing writing. It’s something you hear about all the time with regard to internet writing. People want to hear your voice. But what does that mean? You, as the writer, need to gauge whether the client’s voice is friendly, authoritative, funny, or motherly to name just a few examples.

A company that offers services to declutter someone’s house is going to have a far different voice than a company that offers international shipping options. When I sit down with the client, I listen to their physical voice when they explain what it is their company does, and that gives me an idea of how they want themselves represented on the internet.

What benefits do they offer the customer? I recently saw a client who showed me his introductory slide presentation for prospective customers. It started with how his company got started (30 years ago) and continued until today. That’s clearly a presentation that was designed for a person who is very proud of his company. It was not designed for someone who wants to know what it is you can do for them. Find out what the benefits and then use that information in every piece of writing you create.

What are the Keywords? I always ask my clients, what words would I use to describe your business? Those will often be the SEO words you’ll use for much of the documentation. I then ask, what words would I use to describe you? Those are often the words by which the company wants to be known  - trustworthy, intelligent, competent, etc. It will be those attributes that you’ll  be showcasing in your writing.

What’s the best way to present the information? Is what the company does visual? If so, like in the case of a decluttering service, perhaps before and after photos would be effective. Is the company more results oriented, as in, they save the customer money? Then charts and graphs might be effective. . Does the company showcase or teach skills? Well now, there’s a case for video clips.

Figure out, based on the product and services, how best to represent that information on the web.

To whom are we targeting the information? In almost all cases, it starts with a blog. That part is easy, what becomes a bit trickier is figuring out how then to broadcast that blog material.

Figure out who the company typically sells to? Is it the CFO? If so, then don’t spend a lot of effort on Facebook and instead concentrate on sending articles and blog posts to LinkedIn groups and out on Twitter. Does the company have a more “friendly” community? If so then go guns blazing to Facebook. Get those blog posts up and invite discussion in a community format.

Not all web promotion is created equal. It’s up to you to match what you hear and understand from your discussions with the client to what is available out there and that would bring the most bang from their investment dollars.

***

Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

An important part of being a good writer is being a good listener.

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Open-Focus Writer

Sometimes, in the course of reading in my capacity as a life coach, I come across something that really benefits the writer in me. The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body, by Les Fehmi, PhD, and Jim Robbins, is definitely on that list.

Dr. Fehmi’s book is about different styles of attention. He states: “the issue is not what we attend to. Far more critical is how we attend, how we form and direct our awareness, and how we adhere—rigidly or flexibly—to a chosen style of attention.”

He makes the point that we, as a culture, spend almost all of our time in narrow-objective focus, which is a style of attention that is “an emergency mode of paying attention.” Lions on the savanna are in narrow-objective focus when they are stalking prey. There is another style of attention, called open-focus, which is the style of relaxed attention that lions spend most of their time using—unlike us. We spend the majority of our time in narrow-objective focus, despite the fact that it is a very costly way to pay attention, in terms of energy use and stress levels.

So what does this have to do with writing?  People who are in open-focus are more creative, less anxious, more confident, and less “blocked.” That’s how I want to feel every time I sit down to write.

Dr. Fehmi says you can train your brain to spend more time in open-focus. I’ve been practicing and have found some of his exercises to be very helpful, especially when I have a writing deadline or when I feel pressured to write really well—which is all the time.

Here is one exercise adapted from The Open-Focus Brain.

Sit upright in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Consider the following question:

Can you imagine the space between your eyes?

Once you have spent at least 15 seconds considering this question, try the following exercise, spending at least 15 seconds on each step:

• Focus on an object in front of you. Concentrate on it so the object becomes the foreground and everything else is the background.
• Now, without moving your eyes, expand your awareness to include everything around the object. Let your peripheral field of vision widen to take in everything around the object.
• Now, allow everything that is part of the visual background to come forward and become as important as the visual foreground (the object). Allow the background and the foreground to become equally important or interesting.
• Now, without moving your eyes, bring the object back to the foreground and allow everything else to become background.
• Again, without moving your eyes, expand your awareness and allow the visual background to come forward and become as important as the visual foreground.

My open-focus practice has resulted in productive, creative, and satisfying writing sessions. I recommend the book highly—It’s a fascinating read. Give this exercise a try and let me know what you think.

Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a master life coach, writer, mom, and family physician. You can find me at www.dianemackinnon.com and you can find my life-coaching blog at www.dianemackinnon.com/blog.

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The Trick to Getting More Freelance Work

Many of us writers pitch our articles and blog posts. We do all the right things for those pitches, we identify the audience, explain why our article fits the publication, and we include the word count and resources we’ll be quoting. Perfect.

And when our pitch is accepted, we are overjoyed. We set about writing the article and we send it in, knowing that we’ve done a good job. We’ve finished the job and it’s time for a celebratory beer, right?

Photo credit: FontFont

But not so fast. If you’ve forgotten to include this one single trick when you pass in your article, you’re missing out on easy opportunity to consistently get more work.

That trick? Always be sure to include a suggestion for another project.

“Like this article on the behavior of local bears at the dump in the winter? How about another one on how the local fox population is dwindling due to residential development?”

“I’ve included a blog post on the best way to use social media, how about another follow-on post on best practices for using social media to create a network?”

I *never* return a project without suggesting topics for new ones. In fact, I have one editor with whom I rarely even return an email without pitching another story. Fortunately, she and I have a good working relationship and I know what kinds of stories she is looking for.  But still, I’m not going to wait around to be assigned a story especially if I have a few ideas in mind.

I want the work now.

The same goes for marketing work. Whenever I submit work (website content, blog posts) I’ll always include suggestions on how to make something else better.

“You know your “About Us” page? It’s not clear exactly what it is you offer your customer. Want me to take a look at that to make it stronger?”

“Here are 4 blog posts, want me to get started on another 4 for next month so you’ll have a queue ready?”

When you make additional project suggestions, not only are you seen as a go-getter, but you are also viewed as someone who is a critical thinker. Someone who is always wondering “how can we make this better?” and “what will keep the audience engaged?”

Editors tend to like those kinds of people.

I don’t know of an editor or a marketer who doesn’t appreciate additional article and work suggestions. In the case of the editor, you are helping to fill the publication. You’re actually making her job easier. In the case of the marketer, you are helping to sell work, and guess what? Marketers like to sell work, that’s their job. When they know you can upsell like that, they are going to come back to you for work.

Again and again.

This past week I was contacted by an editor who sent me a request for an article idea I had submitted last summer as an attachment to a finished project. She couldn’t use the idea then, but she did want me to write the article now. Could I still do it? She asked.

You betcha.

Not only will I do it, but you can be sure that when I send the finished article over, I’ll be pitching a few additional articles ideas for her consideration.

***

Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

How about a post next week on the top 5 questions to ask when writing content for a website?

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Strong Words

This is a guest post by my friend and fellow writer, Sylvie Kurtz. She’s a published author and a writing teacher. Enjoy!

One of the top ten beginning students’ mistakes I see is the use of weak words to get a story across. I’m not sure if it comes from the advice I often hear from teachers to write as if you were telling the story to your best friend.

So let’s say you’re out jogging and you see a man and a dog. You saw them with your eyes, so you have a clear picture in your mind of the man and the dog. When you sit across the kitchen table and tell your friend about what you saw, the conversation might go something like this:

“I saw this guy walking with this dog and—”

“What did the guy look like?” the friend asks.

“Like a thug.”

“What kind of dog?”

“You know, one of those mean ones. A Rottweiler.”

So you fill in the sketch in her mind and soon her mind picture might look similar to yours.

The problem is that a reader can’t knock on your door and say, “Hey, by the way, what kind of dog was it?”

When you write, all the reader can see in her mind is what’s on the page. Yes, given enough details, the brain will fill in the scene, but you have to give enough seed impressions to start that concrete and specific picture building.

Let’s take that man walking that dog again and create a more vibrant sentence.

He walked with his dog. Nothing wrong with this sentence. Nothing wrong with walk. It’s an active verb. He and dog are kind of blurry though. I’m not seeing anything but silhouettes.

You’re missing three chances to create a more vivid mind picture for your reader.

He strolled along the sidewalk with a Jack Russell terrier ahead of him, tugging at the leash. Here you get the sense of someone not being in a hurry and a small dog full of energy. So now the dog and the manner of walking are clearer, but he’s still gray.

The man’s spine curbed with age and his plodding gait matched that of the golden retriever at his side. The pace here is slower and both the man and the dog give a different emotional impression.

A guy his age should’ve been working at some nine-to-five job, not striding the quiet streets of the suburbs at ten in the morning wearing a hoodie and fighting the pitbull, prancing and growling at his side. This creates a completely different picture, one that might raise suspicion.

The writer’s foremost tool is the words he uses to generate pictures that will allow the reader to experience the scene. That experience strikes an emotional cord in the reader and that emotion is the unconscious reason why a reader reads.

What do you want your reader to feel as she reads your scene? What concrete and specific words can pop up an image that’s colorful enough to give her that feeling?

Strong words cause strong pictures to fire into the brain and those strong images create emotions. It’s like taking a reader’s hand and saying, “Come along with me. I’ll give you a ride you’ll remember.”

Sylvie Kurtz (www.sylviekurtz.com) writes adventures that explore the complexityof the human mind and the thrill of suspense. She likes dark chocolate, soft wool, and sappy movies.

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Are you a “where” or a “how” writer?

I know of some writers who can’t start a project until they have the “perfect” title. Although I do admit, I’ve have stumbled across some title-worthy phrases (like “The Joy of Six” as a memoir title for our family of 6 kids) I have never really understood this approach.  Pardon my bluntness but for *me*, these writers seem to have it literally ass-backward.

I think that a more effective approach to writing stories, articles, and blog posts is to come up with the ending first and then create the story to justify that conclusion.

Remember the brilliant and hysterically funny movie “Blazing Saddles?”(Seriously is there anyone who didn’t fall on the floor laughing over the beans scene?)  I’m convinced that one of the reasons Saddles was created was so that Mel Brooks could film the ending. From the final dialog with the town’s people to the breaking of the fourth wall by having the actors get off their horses and enter a limousine. Brooks lets us know that although he makes some strong social statements, in the end, the movie is just that, a movie. Let’s all have a good laugh.

Every line, every scene led up to and justified that final gotcha image.

 

 

 

I suppose it comes down to whether you are a “Where do we go from here?”  type of person or a “How did we get here?” kind.

The “where” people’s stories tend to go all over the place, they never know what their characters are going to do or say from day to day. There is a certain freedom in this type of writing and I’ve spoken to many successful writers who use this method. They sit at the computer and let their stories dump out of their brains.

Others (like myself) are the “how” people. We know where our characters are going to finally be, but we need to work backwards in order to make sure that all steps lead to the ending. I have created what often look like reverse flowcharts for my stories.

Is this approach a little too analytical? Too stilted and restrictive of creative freedom? I don’t know. I’ve tried to work like a “where” writer and I always find that I get lost, I go down rat holes and spend time on material that ends up being cut in the end because it gets my characters nowhere. I tend to waste a lot of time.  But is that such a bad thing? Sometimes those who wander are not lost.

I’m not saying that either approach is better or worse, in the end if you are successful, then whichever method you use is the best. What I am saying is that you, as a writer, should be aware of how *you* compose a story. Do you tend to compose forward or backward? Identify which approach works best for you and then the next time you write something, don’t waste time with something other than what works best for you.

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Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.

Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens). (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com)

Yes, I keep a flowchart on my wall of the book I’m working on. It helps me see where I’ve been.

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