Category: Daily Fix

Rehearse Your Writing

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[found on dailywritingtips.com; by Mark Nichol]

“Rehearse your writing by explaining the feel of a room, a street, or a park. Is it expansive, or economical? Friendly, or foreboding? Clean, or chaotic? What do your other senses tell you? What is the noise level? How does it smell? What are the textures like? Is it easy to walk through or along, or to otherwise navigate, or do obstacles interfere?

If your story takes place in a natural landscape, describe the terrain and what associations it has based on whether it conjures a sense of grace, harmony, and peace or whether it is full of bleak, harsh, jagged features. How does the presence of vegetation, or bodies of water, contribute to the feel of the terrain? What effect does the weather produce?

Place your characters in the context of their locations by showing, without telling, whether they are at home in their setting or whether the environment is alien to them, and how they respond to their feelings.”

For more great tips from Mark Nichol, click here.

[found on http://www.dailywritingtips.com/physical-descriptions-put-readers-in-your-place]

How to Make a Who-Dun-It

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[found on blog.karenwoodward.org; by Karen Woodward]

“1. Know who your murderer is and why they did it.

– What was their goal?
– What are the stakes?
– What motivates the killer?

By the end of the story make sure you’ve answered these questions in your manuscript.

2. Leave clues

The clues “do not have to be obvious or even fully explained. You’ll want to leave some “mystery in your mystery.”

3. After you finish the first draft add in clues where needed

Price’s tip: Red herrings are much easier to add in after the book is written as long as you don’t write yourself into a corner with your characters, such as explaining everything they do and why.

4. Don’t fully explain everything

Price writes: “Let your characters retain some mystery.”

People aren’t fully explained any more than they are wholly good or bad, your characters should reflect this.

5. Your protagonist doesn’t have to know everything, at least not right away

Like you and me, it’s okay if your sleuth doesn’t have all the answers and is unsure about what happened … as long as she gets there in the end.”

[found on http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/04/5-rules-for-writing-murder-mystery.html]

Name That Face

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[found on writersdigest.com; by Elizabeth Sims]

There are many different styles of naming your characters, one is the ironic choice.

“Ironic Names

Large chunks of Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling 44 Scotland Street series concern the difficult life of Bertie Pollock, an Edinburgh schoolboy. Two of his schoolmates are lads named Larch and Tofu. Though minor characters, they’re there for a distinct purpose.

The names interact with a savory irony. Tofu and Larch’s names obviously have been bestowed by parents with finely tuned ideals. Political correctness abounds: One boy’s name is a legume paste, the other a tree. Yet the characters, we learn from their actions and words, are as shallow and phony-hearted as their names are sophisticated.

Smith gives us, by contrast, the simple, direct, honest Bertie. He is worth more than both Tofu and Larch put together. His is an ordinary, unpretentious name; his surname, Pollock, is a common fish. Bertie, then, is the humble everyman who must endure everybody else’s idiotic, self-serving vanities.

But for pure triumphal irony, can anything top the Veneering family, of Dickens’ classic Our Mutual Friend? Such a vaguely grand-seeming name for a vaguely grand family. Simultaneously, of course, their name clues us in that they are nothing but surface. And we enjoy watching them try—and fail—to live up to their banal aspirations.

Ironic names are easy to create: Just think of your character’s opposite qualities and brainstorm liberally. Let’s say you’ve got a clumsy guy who lives with his parents and aspires merely to avoid work and download porn. You could give him an ironic name like Thor or Victor or Christian or even Pilgrim. Or you could give him a first name that’s a family surname, like Powers or Strong.

Authors who want to use ironic character names should strictly limit themselves to one per story or novel.”

To see other options of name choice from Writer’s Digest, click here.

[found on http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/namedropping-finding-solid-names-for-your-unique-characters]

Plot Now, It’s Time

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[found on fictionwriting.about.com; by ]

“Give Some Thought to Plot.

Writing a novel can be a messy undertaking. The editing process will go easier if you devote time to plot in the beginning. For some writers, this means an outline; others work with index cards, putting a different scene on each one. Still others only have a conflict and a general idea of where they plan to end up before diving in. If you’ve been writing for a while, you already know how your brain works and what kind of structure it needs in order to complete big projects. If you’re just starting out, then this may be something you’ll learn about your writing process as you revise your first novel.”

To read more tips from Ginny Wiehardt, click here.

[found on http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/novelwriting/tp/noveladvice.htm]

Fiction Writing Tips

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[found on writingforward.com; by Melissa Donovan]

“The writing tips below focus on the technical and creative writing process rather than the business end of things….

    1. Read more fiction than you write.
    2. Don’t lock yourself into one genre (in reading or writing). Even if you have a favorite genre, step outside of it occasionally so you don’t get too weighed down by trying to fit your work into a particular category.
    3. Dissect and analyze stories you love from books, movies, and television to find out what works in storytelling and what doesn’t.
    4. Remember the credence of all writers: butt in chair, hands on keyboard.
    5. Don’t write for the market. Tell the story that’s in your heart.
    6. You can make an outline before, during, or after you finish your rough draft. An outline is not necessary, nor is it written in stone, but it can provide you with a roadmap, and that is a mighty powerful tool to have at your disposal.
    7. You don’t always need an outline. Give discovery writing a try.
    8. Some of the best fiction comes from real life. Jot down stories that interest you whether you hear them from a friend or read them in a news article.
    9. Real life is also a great source of inspiration for characters. Look around at your friends, family, and coworkers. Magnify the strongest aspects of their personalities and you’re on your way to crafting a cast of believable characters.
    10. Make your characters real through details. A girl who bites her nails or a guy with a limp will be far more memorable than characters who are presented with lengthy head-to-toe physical descriptions.”

For more tips from Melissa Donovan, click here.

[found on http://www.writingforward.com/writing-tips/42-fiction-writing-tips-for-novelists]

Grammar Up, It’s Important

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[found on writerstreasure.com; by  ]

“Read up on Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation

Before you get offended for me saying such a suggestion, let me elaborate. There are some common misspellings found on the internet; two such lists are found here and here. “It’s and its”, “there and their”, “loose and lose” and so on. So if you make such a common mistake, people will see you as an amateur.

Grammar mistakes are as common as spelling mistakes. Some new school people say go ahead and break the grammar rules. That may be good advice for a few of them (for example, you should break the no sentence ending with a preposition rule and you’re perfectly free to begin a sentence with ‘and’ and ‘but’ if it appeals to you).

But not all grammar rules were made by stodgy people, and most make sense. If it appeals to you to break them, go ahead, but you must know the reason why you broke it in the first place, and why it wasn’t appropriate. If you don’t know that you broke a rule or why, your credibility goes out of the window.

In the same way, people make punctuation mistakes often without realizing that they did it. The confusion between “me, myself and I”, the improper and incorrect use of the apostrophe (some people have campaigned for its being banned since it causes so much confusion among people) etc has become rapidly larger and larger.

So that is why, if you really want to become a credible writer who is not governed by the rules, go read up on grammar, spelling and punctuation. A single book or two will clear confusions, enable to break rules knowing why you broke them, consciously following sensible rules and more.

Tip: – Don’t rely on Microsoft Word’s Grammar Checker. Its spell check is all right, but the grammar tool is atrocious. Many has been the time that it shows up its infamous green line under my words and calls out for incorrect and so called grammatically correct changes. Have you ever seen a “Fragment (consider revising)” call to change? It’s perfectly all right to ignore that, because you’re not writing a textbook, you’re a creative writer.”

For more excellent tips on writing from Writers’ Treasure, click here.

[found on http://www.writerstreasure.com/how-to-improve-your-creative-writing]

Prompt Your Way

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[found on writingforward.com; by Melissa Donovan]

“Creative Writing Prompts

  1. You’re digging in your garden and find a fist-sized nugget of gold.
  2. Write about something ugly–war, fear, hate, or cruelty–but find the beauty (silver lining) in it.
  3. The asteroid was hurtling straight for Earth…
  4. A kid comes out of the bathroom with toilet paper dangling from his or her waistband.
  5. Write about your early memories of faith, religion, or spirituality; yours or someone else’s.
  6. There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper…
  7. Write a poem about a first romantic (dare I say: sexual) experience or encounter.
  8. He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw…
  9. Silvery flakes drifted down, glittering in the bright light of the harvest moon. The blackbird swooped down…
  10. The detective saw his opportunity. He grabbed the waitress’s arm and said…”
[found on http://www.writingforward.com/writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts/25-creative-writing-prompts]

Strong Words Where Stand Ye?

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[found on writershelper.com]

“Writing Tip #5: Use strong verbs and nouns

The verbs are the action words. They put things in motion. Make yours as strong as possible.

The verb to be (am, is, are, was, were) puddles on the floor. Eliminate it wherever possible. I spent a year in Ukraine and experienced Russian, where the verb to be exists, but almost never appears. People simply leave it out and I found the effect powerful. In English we can’t leave verbs out of our sentences, but we can make those we use work hard for us.

Nouns name the people, places, and things in our world. English has multiple words for almost everything. A male parent can be father, dad, pop, daddy, the old man, pater, progenitor, sire, begetter, conceiver, governor, abba, papa, pa, pap, pappy, pops, daddums, patriarch, paterfamilias, stepfather, foster father, and other family nicknames. Choose the noun that does the best work for you.

Short words are usually best. They have more punch. They hit the gut hard.

The paragraph above has only one word with more than one syllable.”

For more exciting tips on writing from Writer’s Helper, click here.

[found on http://www.writershelper.com/writingtips.html]

Authors on Authoring

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“Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.”

—Elmore Leonard

“You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.”

—Margaret Atwood 

“Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it.”

—Geoff Dyer

 

Which or That?

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[found on writetothepoint.com; by Gary Kinder]

“The difference between “that” and “which” might be the most confounding piece of grammar in the English language, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s what you need to know: Grammarians call the words following a “that” or a “which” a “relative clause.” That relative clause either “restricts” (I like the word “distinguishes” better, but grammar texts have long called the word “that” “restrictive”) what it modifies, or it “does not restrict” what it modifies. The writer tells us which it is by the word he chooses to introduce the clause.

“That” at the beginning restricts; it means that the writer wants the relative clause to distinguish one thing from a universe of like things. “Which” at the beginning means the writer addresses only one thing, and he simply wants to add information.”

[found on http://writetothepoint.com]