Tag: written

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]

Perfect Horror Short Story? Yes, please.

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[found on fecklessgoblin.blogspot.com]
    1. “Pick something that could happen to your reader.
    2. Pick a location that’s familiar to your reader.
    3. Eat, drink, sleep the horror that you have created before you actually begin to write. Lie back in a darkened room and really visualise it. Scare the pants off yourself.
    4. Go to your location or one that looks like it and sit there quietly for a while. If your story takes place on a quiet street in the early hours, find one, get up in the early hours and drink it up. Take a pad and write down some notes about what you see and how you feel.
    5. Try to see the story from three or four different views even if they won’t be in the final version. Choose someone timid, someone thick skinned, someone religious. The choice is yours.
    6. Take your time, build up the pressure, slowly but surely. This may be a short horror story but you’ve got more time than you think to lay out your stall.
    7. Stay focussed. Don’t get bogged down in back story. In fact, try giving back story a miss altogether.
    8. Anticipation is nine tenths of the horror story battle – let your reader know something bad is going to happen, lead them there by the hand.
    9. Dig deep into that horror. Choose one that scares you. If it doesn’t scare you, how do you expect it to scare the hell out of your dear reader?
    10. Throw a few red herrings in there, twist them on their heads. The old cat jumping out of the fridge is a bit of cliché but you get my drift.
    11. If you’re scared of heights, go and stand on the edge of a tall building and lean over, if you’ve got a spider phobia, go and put one on the palm of your hand. Remind yourself how real fear feels.
    12. Don’t overload your reader with gore. It becomes boring and they quickly attain sensitisation. A splash of blood here and there will do fine.
    13. Don’t over describe. You’re not Dickens. Give your reader some credit that they can imagine your ultimate horror. Don’t be afraid that they won’t get the point.
    14. Keep the monster/horror hidden for as long as possible.
    15. Read the best and the worst of horror. Reread the passages that got your heart racing and try to see how the author did it. Look at the way you reacted and imagine that’s what you want your reader to feel.
    16. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles. Write a couple of different versions of your story to see how it comes out.
    17. Leave your first draft for a decent amount of time so that you come back to it fresh. For some people that’s a couple of days. For others it’s a couple of months.
    18. Always, always read your draft through once without touching it before you sit down to edit.
    19. Check you have the right vocabulary to scare. Choose the words to describe your fear with care. Make sure they fit and sound right. Try not to use unusual words that your reader won’t readily know the meaning to. It will break the flow. You’re trying to build fear not a larger vocab.
    20. Don’t forget that your story isn’t written in stone. It can change. It can evolve. It can be totally different from the original. Don’t be afraid to delete stuff that doesn’t belong.“

Happy, & Now You Know It

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“Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it’s a big deal to bow–or kneel or get knocked down–to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else’s. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.” 

― Patricia Hampl

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

To contest? Or not to contest?

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[found on blog.nathanbransford.com]

“What should writers know about contests?

The absolute most important advice I can give you is this: read and understand the fine print.

Know what you’re entering. Know what happens to your work in the event you win (or even/especially if you don’t win). Make sure you’re completely comfortable with it.”

For more information on writing contests from Nathan, click HERE.

[found on  http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/12/all-about-writing-contests.html]

One Word to Rule Them All

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“If you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.

— (J.R.R. Tolkien to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955.)” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

How To Write A Biography

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[found on biographybiography.com]

  • “Decide whom you want to write about, your parents, grandparents, great grand parents, ancestors, other relatives, friends, idols, heroes, yourself or any other special person.

  • Collect as much information as you possibly can, from his or her birth date to the most relevant facts of his or her life through letters, journals, newspaper clippings, pictures, and most importantly, through conversations with elder family members (it would be a good idea to take notes or record conversations). .

  • Organize your thoughts before starting to write, think of that part of the person’s life you would like to highlight. Some useful questions can be: who?, what?, where?, why? and how?

  • Other questions to ask would be: what makes this person so special and interesting? How can he or she be best described? Which were the events that marked or changed his or her life? In what way was he or she an influence to family, society or professionally?

  • When writing about somebody else, describe his or her appearance, habits, features and way of talking. If you do not remember a name, use replacements such as: friend, mate or boss.

  • Edit the biography; read it aloud to feel of the rhythm and the sound of it, it will also help you notice if you are repeating information.“

[found on http://www.biographybiography.com/howtowriteabiography.html]

Book Construction

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“For as long as I could remember, I’d been making vague and confident assurances that any day I would finish the thing [my book]. If and when I ever did, they would probably feel an almost physical sense of relief. I was like a massively incompetent handyman who’d been up on their roof now for years, trying to take down a gnarled old lightning-struck tree trunk that had fallen against the house, haunting every gathering, all discussions of family business, any attempt they made to sit down together and plan for the future, with the remote but ceaseless whining of my saw.” 

― Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys