Tag: writers

What Real Authors Use For Tools

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[found on flavorwire.com; by Alison Nastasi]

“It’s no secret that writers can be quite particular about their writing tools. Some might call it an obsession or fetish, but the pens, pencils, notebooks, and other implements that authors have used to create their most famous works endlessly fascinates us. After reading an ode to the beloved Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencil, adored for its smooth, firm graphite, we had to find out more about the tools of the literary elite. Take notes, and save your pennies to purchase these writing instruments for yourself.”

To see these incredible writing tools listed from Flavorwire, click HERE.

[found on http://flavorwire.com/410384/the-writing-tools-of-20-famous-authors]

It Takes A Writer….

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“People talk about books that write themselves, and it’s a lie. Books don’t write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you’d believe.” 

― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors

Magician? No, Writer.

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“Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It’s also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.” 

― Suze Orman

 

Too Weak To Write? Take Two Adverbs, and Don’t Call Me In The Morning

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[found on darcknyt.deviantart.com]

“The real question to ask isn’t whether Mrs. Swingingjowls was right or wrong in teaching you to modify your sentences with adverbs.  The question is, why are you modifying your verbs with adverbs?

This is an easy one to answer, when you think about it:

Because your verbs are weak.

Mark Twain once said, “Adverbs are the tool of the lazy writer.”  Amen, Mark.

See, what’s going on is, you’re using a word that doesn’t really convey the sense, the feeling, the mood or whatever, you’re hoping to get across to your reader.  “Walk” isn’t a very exciting word, and it doesn’t get across the antsy feeling you’re trying to portray in your description, so you make it “walk quickly” or “quickly walked”.  You want your reader to see the force, the power in your characters’ argument, so instead of saying “they shouted across the table” you say “they shouted angrily and vehemently across the table.”

The problem is, the verbs you’ve chosen aren’t doing the job you wanted them to do in the first place.  You don’t want your character to walk, you want your character to hasten, hurry, quick-step.  You don’t want your characters shouting, you want them spitting words through clenched teeth, veins throbbing on reddened necks, molars locked and spittle misting between them.

The reason you’re reaching for adverbs to tell the story is because the verbs you’ve chosen are too weak to do it for you.  The adverb isn’t the solution, however.  Strengthening your writing is.

Think about this: If the verbs you’re using to describe the action in your story are weak and flimsy, the action description may be weak and flimsy too.

You wouldn’t be writing something with the intent of being flimsy or weak, would you?  The reason you’re grabbing adverbs in the first place is because of discontent with what’s being said without them, right?

Why bother with modifiers for words that aren’t cutting it in the first place?  The real crux of the problem is finding the right actions and descriptions for those actions, so that modifiers — adverbs AND adjectives — will be needed with rare and prudent infrequency.

When you’re writing adult fiction, the need to limit — if not eliminate — adverbs altogether becomes pretty obvious.  What adult wants to read a grade school type of book?

No, adults want to be pulled into the story, and be engaged by it.  The use of adverbs won’t get the job done, and loses the reader early on.

Show, Don’t Tell — Adverbs are NOT Good Description

With the evil adverb dragging your writing down, it’s now safe to say that using adverbs isn’t a way to make a lousy description good.  It’s a lazy way to make a weak description obvious.

What adverbs do, in a nutshell, is tell the reader what’s going on in the story.  That’s NOT what you want to do.

“But — I thought I was TELLING a story here?”

No.  You’re not.  If you’re a serious writer, you’re not “telling” a story, you’re SHOWING a story.

Don’t be lazy.  Be specific.  Use specific nouns and verbs to do the bulk of the work in your writing.  By letting good, descriptive words do the heavy lifting, the occasional adjective and adverb aren’t the problematic, amateur-flagging beacons common in weak writing.”

For more great tips from DarcKnyt, click HERE.

[found on http://darcknyt.deviantart.com/journal/The-Use-of-Adverbs-in-Fiction-Writing-214175181]

In The Trenches, Sigh In—Sigh Out

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“Please don’t entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike — breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? … Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you’ll wait for ever.” 

― Ngaio Marsh, Death on the Air and Other Stories

How To Write Historical Fiction

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[found on caroclarke.com]

“…The realities of the everyday things in your chosen time period will shape what your characters can and can’t do. This will constrain your own plot choices. It’s part of the challenge and joy of writing historical fiction to share with your characters the real problems, the real world, they live in. It stretches your imagination. If you aren’t fussy about your details, if you think it’s all right to have Willem know latitude and longitude or for Maria Dolores to carry a purse, then you aren’t up to the demands of historical fiction. Your characters will not be real, your story will have no life, and you will have failed your readers. If you’re that kind of writer, you’ll have stopped reading this essay as soon as you hit the word ‘research’. But you’re that other kind of writer, the historical novelist, the one who cares. You’ll have done your mountain of research both for the love of it and for the love of your story. What to do with all those cherished, hard-won facts?

…Once you’ve created your plot, you begin to write. Knowing the realities of the small, everyday things of your time period now allows you to conjure an authenticity into Willem’s and Maria Dolores’ lives. Long skirts swept the floor. Willem knows she’s hiding in the courtyard because he sees the lines her skirts have made in the sand his sister sprinkles on the paving tiles. Maria Dolores seizes a tankard to brain him – it’s leather, not metal, and her escape attempt collapses in laughter. When a Calvinist mob, incited by Willem’s sister, bays for the blood of the Catholic woman hidden in their midst, Willem and Maria Dolores are able to escape across the ice in the harbour, for this is the time of the Little Ice Age, when broad rivers froze.

Notice that the sand on the paving tiles, the material of the tankard, the unusually cold winter, are only included because they help propel the plot. As much as you’d love to discuss the construction of the typical Dutch house or the rise of Calvinism in the Netherlands, these aren’t pertinent to the actual events in the story. It’s pertinent that the leader of the mob has skates, it’s pertinent that the gunpowder in Willem’s pistol cakes when soaked with ice-water, it’s pertinent that the woolen skirts of the time were thick and heavy enough to stop a bullet. But if a beloved fact (the wheat for their bread came from Poland) doesn’t propel the action of the story, it doesn’t belong. You’ll use less than 20% of the facts you’ve researched in the events of your story, but the other 80% filling your head will give you a heightened understanding of the period, illuminating your characters and their world for you so that what the reader sees is the distillation of your sympathetic imagination, a richness condensed….”

For more great insights about historical fiction from Caro Clarke, click HERE.

[found on http://www.caroclarke.com/historicalfiction.html]

Does Your Writing Have YOU?

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“There’s one thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice — you must be on that page. In the end, you can’t make the magic happen for your reader. You can only allow the miracle of ‘being one with’ to take place. So dare to be yourself. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true…If you are, everything else will fall into place.” 

― Elizabeth Ayres