Tag Archives: Writing Tips

October 24, 2015 · 1:22 AM

If These Walls Could Speak

There’s just something about abandoned places that speaks to me; each one has a unique history, and an ending that seems somehow premature. Whether it be a shopping mall in Thailand now occupied by goldfish; cities within range of the radioactivity of Chernobyl; an island that was once inhabited but now forlorn; an underground station or even an entire train station in the middle of an inhabited city, or an abandoned house, they each have a story to tell. If their walls could speak, what would they say? What have they seen? What would they have liked to see but were prematurely cut off from the habitation or transient experiences of humanity?

Overtoun House. Image Credit: Stephanie Huesler

I once lived in a manor house in Scotland, called Overtoun House; it was often my home over the years that I lived in the UK; once we moved away it fell into disrepair, ransacked by vandals and left to rot by the town council that was charged with its maintenance. Several years ago I went back to visit and actually cried at the state it had fallen into – it was literally like finding a good friend face down in the gutter. Finally, a few years ago an organisation moved in to restore the building to its former glory, and it will be used to house women in distressed circumstances. My husband and I met there in 1991, and this past summer we went back for a visit; it was comforting to see her in good hands once more.

If you google “abandoned places”, you’ll find thousands of photos and stories just begging to be told: Salton City, former Olympic venues, World War Two installations, train stations, castles, theme parks, homes, libraries (abandoning books is just wrong), subway / underground stations, shipwrecks, asylums, private homes, and even (most tragic of all) the abandoned dead in the “death zone” of Mount Everest. Each one with a history and a reason they were abandoned, yet also an inspiration for writers to dig below the superficial surface to create an untold tale.

If those walls could speak to your inner writer, what would you hear? Write it!

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Filed under History, Research, Writing Exercise

Tagged as "Death Zone", Abandoned Buildings, Abandoned Places, Chernobyl, Creative Writing, Libraries, Mount Everest, Olympic Venues, Salton City, Shipwrecks, Subway, Underground Stations, World War Two, Writing Exercises, Writing Tips, Writing Tools

October 15, 2015 · 1:16 AM

SWOT Analysis in Fiction

Writing fiction often brings the writer to a crossroads: Should I take my character(s) down this road or that? Will they decide this or that, and what will the consequences of either choice or decision be? Which would fit best into my plot? All of these questions can be answered by applying a corporate business tool called the SWOT analysis chart. I have this baby hung on a magnet strip near my desk, along with other prompts such as the sensory image, and I apply it frequently. Just last week I faced a crossroads: Would A) my character run away, or would B) another character (or C) take her away? On the latter question, I had another two options (thus, B & C); I needed the SWOT.

This image shows you the variables of each option; internal vs. external influences or attributes of a situation or choice; helpful vs. harmful in reaching the character’s goals, or the consequences of the choices laid before you. What are the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of each path at your character’s feet?

I’ll give you the example of my thought process as I applied it to my historical novel’s fictional situation: If my character ran away (A) , the strength would be that she would be taking her destiny into her own hands – it’s what you want your main character to do; the threat would be that such an action might raise assumptions that would damage her reputation (was she pregnant?). The opportunity of doing things in her own timing was overshadowed by the weakness of practicalities: How would she, without support, get from her family’s estate to Portsmouth, at least a good half-day’s journey by carriage? If the “B” character (her mother) took her to Portsmouth, the main character would be passive in the decision – the action would happen to her rather than her controlling or causing it. The opportunity of solving the weakness of “A” by giving her a ride to Portsmouth was a strong incentive, but would raise a bigger threat in that it might seem like the mother was being just as manipulative as the father, forcing the main character into making a choice to suit the mother, which wasn’t the case. If “C”, her future husband, came to sweep her away from the problems at home, again it would seem that the main female character wasn’t strong on her own two feet, or was too pliable and passive.

I took each scenario through the SWOT rigorously, and in the end I decided – well, when the book comes out next year, you can find out for yourself!

Applying such tools helps you focus your energies on finding solutions, rather than finding yourself stuck in writer’s block.

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Filed under Articles, Images, Nuts & Bolts, Plot Thots & Profiles, Research, Writing Exercise

Tagged as Character Development, corporate business tool, Creative Writing, Decision-Making, Fiction, Historical Fiction, opportunities, strengths, SWOT, SWOT analysis chart, threats, weaknesses, Writer's Block, Writing Exercise, Writing Prompts, Writing Tips

September 12, 2015 · 9:42 AM

The Psychology of Colour

I was recently talking with someone, and the topic of the psychology of colours came up in connection with health care; it got me thinking about how it could be applied to practical applications, as well as writing fiction. My particular practical application is crocheting hats to donate to the local cancer patient clinics, and I wanted to know which colours would be more appropriate.

In writing fiction, colours play an important part as well; they help set the scene: Is it a dark and gloomy scene? Don’t choose pink or pastels – unless you want to make it a creepy-gloomy scene. The colour of the sky, the grass, the sand, living room walls, a person’s eyes – they all help set the stage, or paint the backdrop of your fictional character’s life, situations, or the overall tone of the book; it can also help establish your character’s personality: Are they a compassionate, stable person? Perhaps beige combined with a bit of pink. Is your character blind, (figuratively or literally)? Red is the easiest colour for a visually impaired person to see, so accent their home in red. You get the idea! Advertisers have been using the psychology of colours to manipulate consumers for decades; the more we understand the application of colour, the more we can see through the tactic and at the same time apply it to our writing. Here are a few images to consider as you think into this topic and apply it to your own fictional characters.

Writing Tips: Dialogue

Dialogue is (to point out the obvious) vital to a novel; it displays the voices of your characters and helps the reader get to know and care about the characters, understand their motives, their interrelationships, and distinguish each character’s point of view. If you don’t get the dialogue right, you rip the reader out of the story, or worse – make them put down your novel and add your name to “never again” lists! So, here are a few pointers and tips to keep in mind as you develop your characters and put words into their mouths:

1) Develop your characters well enough to make their voice distinct; do they have catch-phrases, or local dialects that influence their vocabulary? Do they tend toward long or short sentences, or are they from a past time and place that had a different way of speaking? Educate yourself if necessary in various modes of speech .

2) Dialogue is an illusion of conversation; but it’s also about what is not said. Non-verbal actions reveal:

a) How a character says something

b) What a character chooses not to say, but inadvertantly reveals through actions.

c) Why the character says what they do.

Do they have particular actions when they are upset or aggitated that communicate their moods to the reader? Do they bounce their knees when excited? Does their body language confirm or contradict their verbal message?

3) Fictional dialogue needs to cut to the chase; if there’s no point to the text (revealing motivation, character or plot point), then chop it!

4) Avoid the trap of using dialogue as exposition (the proverbial villain’s monologue as he prepares to destroy the hero), but rather reveal essential information through action, or narration.

Explore your characters and develop their voices, and above all – keep writing!

Writing Tip: “Sense” Your Scenes

I try to read a book a week; it’s usually on a Saturday, when I have time to sit down and read a good chunk at a time. This past weekend I read a book which prompted thoughts around this concept of “sensing” a scene, and reading it aloud to hear any howlers that might have crept into the writing. The author of that book obviously did neither, though her editor might have told her to beef up descriptives – so they were clumped all together, staggering me as a reader to a halt while I tried to figure out the context of the pages of descriptives before remembering what the characters were doing there in the first place, and often the dialogue sounded very stilted (e.g. using “vocalized” instead of “shouted” – the latter of the two would have fit into the character’s time and place far better) – a good reading-aloud editing session might have done wonders for the novel.

Senses This image is one I have printed out on a card and hung near my desk when writing; it reminds me to apply all of my senses to a scene, to enrich the imagery and draw the reader in. Describe the sights, smells, sounds, feelings and taste of a scene; make it a sensory experience and it will be far more memorable; this is done through sentence structure and the pacing of those elements, but sometimes also through “camera angle” – looking at the scene from a particular perspective. How does your character feel in the moment? What are their perceptions? Does a smell remind them of something or someone? Here are a few tips to achieving these goals:

While adjectives are useful for adding colour or depth to a sentence, think of them as pepper; too much can spoil the scene. If using more than one to describe a noun, familiarize yourself with the rule of order for adjectives.
Use action verbs rather than passive/being verbs with adverbs. E.g. “She stumbled down the hill” rather than “She went unsteadily down the hill”.
Most importantly: Read your sentences and scenes aloud! I cannot stress this enough – if it sounds choppy or stilted to your ears, or doesn’t sound like something your character would say or do, then change it!

Writing is a dynamic process, and being a writer means constantly striving to improve oneself – building vocabulary and learning how to use words effectively, building your knowledge through research, studying, and reading, reading, reading! Keep on writing!

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Filed under Articles, Images, Nuts & Bolts, Plot Thots & Profiles, Writing Exercise

Tagged as Adjectives, Adverbs, Character Development, Creative Writing, Editing, Goal of Writing, Parts of Speech, Senses, Writing Tips, Writing Tools

February 8, 2015 · 4:50 PM

Writing Tip: Layering

If you’ve ever painted a picture more than a colouring book or a paint-by-number, chances are you’ve learned something along the way about layers. Layering is also a digital graphics technique in programs such as Photoshop, and as each layer is made, the image changes, taking on the shapes or colours as you add the consecutive elements.

Besides being a writer, I am also a vocal coach. I only take on students who are already in bands, or preparing for recordings or competitions, and one of the things I teach them is layering within a vocal performance: The nuances of thoughts, the power of imagination, the colouring of the vocals through not only the physical placement of the tone within their instrument (their body), but the placement of their imagination. One can communicate boredom or interest or empathy with the exact same wording by merely varying the intonation, and that comes through the layering of the performance.

Writing is much the same way: It is through the employment of grammar, spelling and punctuation that we signal the reader to prepare for a particular experience; as Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Oh, the difference between, “It was rainy last night,” and “It was a dark and stormy night”!

So the next time you feel like your manuscript or poem is falling flat, take a minute to think about the layers, and see what creative brush strokes you can give your work.

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Filed under Articles, Nuts & Bolts, Plot Thots & Profiles, Writing Exercise

Tagged as Grammar, Layering, Linguistics, Mark Twain, Nuts & Bolts, Painting, Punctuation, Quote, Syntax, Vocal Coaching, vocal performance, writing, Writing Tips, Writing Tools

January 26, 2015 · 12:49 AM

7 Steps to a Powerful Opening

A powerful opener…

Anyone who writes novels worth reading can tell you that, as with any relationship, the first impression you make is the most important. You know that you need to get your character from A to Z through the story, but how you introduce A is more important than B through Z – in other words, if you lose your reader’s interest from the get-go, they might not stick around long enough to find out where you want to lead them. Here are 7 steps to remember that will lead you to that great first impression:

Dive in! Hit the ground running! Begin your story in the middle of an action scene, or in the middle of a conversation. Let your reader feel like they’re eavesdropping on a decisive moment in your character’s life. Make them wonder, make them ask questions they want answers to! Who’s speaking? What’s the context? Why is there X problem / challenge / discussion?
Make your character human: Give them sympathetic traits, a relatable nature, and attitudes that readers can identify with. Do this through dialogue and actions, or by internalization (getting inside the character’s head, an “inner dialogue”). It will help you to prepare your main characters by writing out a biography for them. Give them memorable names (not complicated ones, or names that are difficult to work out how to pronounce). The main character must be somewhat larger than life (more interesting than the average person in some way); do this through giving them idiosyncrasies, habits, a quirky sense of humour, etc.
Romance: If your character is real, there will be romance – some kind of heart-to-heart relationship that touches that key human emotion. I’m not talking about slutty romance novels; I’m talking about real human connection and rich emotional landscapes, whether it’s a small-town story, a science fiction planet, or a war zone.
Supporting character: This might be a sidekick, a friend, partner, companion, or even an object or pet. It is someone or something for the main character to share their experiences with. The supporting character should contrast your main character – perhaps someone who asks the reader’s questions, or wants explanation of terms or concepts the reader might not be familiar with, without becoming “teach-y”. They might be the voice of reason to an impulsive main character, or the voice of adventure to a staid hero/heroine.
Antagonist: This opponent is an obstruction to the main character’s goals. They create problems, sometimes danger. They may be human, or non-human (e.g. man vs. nature), or may be an internal struggle of the main character (haunted by their past, or an addiction, a weakness such as impatience, etc.).
Emotion: Build an emotional landscape (this links closely with # 3). Show the main character as life-like, and develop relationships, or show struggles the character has with particular issues that give them depth and breadth.
Style: Bring it all together in a style unique to your character’s voice and biography. Show their feelings, conflicts, adding complications and subplots to take it deeper. In your first chapter the goal of your character should come out – what their desires are, their determination, problems to solve, etc. – without making the arrival at that goal all too obvious!