Once I have the idea for a story, I start collecting all kinds of helpful information and storing it in three-ring notebooks. For example, I may see a picture of a man in a magazine and say, ‘That’s exactly what the father in my books looks like!’

— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (via writingquotes)

How to finally finish: A guide by a terminal procrastinator.

rhymingslang:

Now, now- theres nothing dirty about that title so if you’re giggling then be ashamed and clean that filthy mind of yours.

I figured that if you’re on Tumblr a lot of the time then you are one prone to procrastination, so here are a few tips to help combat the symptoms of ‘I’ll-do-it-lateritis’ that I hope will help get you in the mindset for writing.

1. TURN OFF THE INTERNET-                                                        Are you ok? Breathing? Heart good? Ok, now let me explain what I mean. Unless you need it for research or because you store your work somewhere online then you do not need the internet on and keeping it on will only make you more tempted to do an internet instead of doing a book (heh). Having the temptation will make you morelikley to take it and, when you’re trying to concentrate, seeing that little number next to the tumblr tab will just make you itch to refresh the page rather than do some writing. So, turn it off, set a queue and let your followers do without you for a while. 
2. TELL PEOPLE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE DOING-                      Telling people what you’re doing will give you more incentive to actually do it. Its all well and good keeping your project to yourself but that’s also less of a drive to actually get it finished. If you get other people excited for what you’re doing and supporting you then you’ll be less likely to want to just give up and ignore your targets. Its easy to ignore targets you’ve set for yourself, but no so much if you’re ignoring other people as well. Get your friends to support you, tell them the plot and get them excited to read it. 

   Note: Not only will this get you motivated but it will make you more excited and proud of what you’re doing. Like you already have a little fanbase of your very own to love and cherish and kill off their favorite characters brutally and without remorse. 

3. TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT IT-                                                   While this may sound very similar to the last one it does differ in some ways. Get your friends interested, or your partner or even your grandma. Talk through plot points with them, let them know what happens. If you’re going through a rough spot or experiencing writers block then conversing about your novel and the characters will stir up your love of writing and get you excited to go home and write more, get the next chapter down. Me and my other half, for instance, are always talking about their characters and novel and whats happens. It gets them excited and eager to get their ideas down. You need to work up a passion for your characters (not like that you dirty minded people) and a love of the plot (oi, now you’re just being silly) in order to want to do it. Trust me, talking it through and chatting about it will seriously help you get motivated. 

   Note: If you don’t have any friends then come talk to me about it, my ask box is always open and I am always happy to get chatting about your ideas.

4. MAKE A PLAYLIST-                                                                         Get your iTunes open and start compiling songs. Give one to each main character, get songs that just encompass the feel of the novel and songs that would go perfectly with certain moments. Fighting songs, breaking up songs, death-of-a-character songs. Get it all down then put it on while you write. Music is always a great motivator and having it playing while you write will certainly help you get to the emotional level you need to be at to scribble everything down. Not only this but if you keep the list on your iPod when you go out then each song will provide reminders for events in the novel and serve as a constant reminder of your project. In short- keep the songs that help you get the emotional level needed to write. Trust me, it helps. 
5. TARGETS, TARGETS, TARGETS- If you’ve ever taken part in NaNoWriMo then you will know just how important targets are and if you haven’t then I congratulate you on not being a dangerously insane human being. Targets give you something to aim for, something to achieve for and something to keep you writing. Set yourself reasonable targets, stuff like ‘4, 500 words a week’ or ‘Get to chapter 18 by the end of May’. This will help you pace yourself and give you that indescribable feeling of pride when you actually hit your targets. With a massive project you need to keep chunking it up into bite-size pieces, like cake. Mmm, cake….anyway, give yourself something to hit. Give yourself a goal to aim for. Buy yourself a sticker chart from Poundland and give yourself a gold star every time you reach a goal or buy yourself a cupcake or something to keep you going. Targets are the most important tool in a novelists arsenal, plus, they’re really good at keeping you sane. 

Strengthen Your Writing With Three Self-Editing Tips

writersfriend:

by Melinda Copp   

The English language, like mathematics, has rules that make your message clear and understandable. In today’s era of e-mail and text communications, some may feel the rules of communication are largely unimportant as long as one gets the message across. But we know from verbal communication that how one says something is often as important, maybe even more important, than the actual words being said.

When you want to ensure your written communications are professional and clear, knowing the following three self-editing tricks can enhance your prose.

1. Check Your Commas

One piece of punctuation that frequently trips up even the best writers is the comma. While the comma has many different rules and uses, one of the most helpful is this: don’t use a comma if two sentences divided by a period will do. Make a statement. End the sentence. Following this rule will help you avoid run-on sentences and keep your writing simple and easy to read.

2. Simplify Your Sentence Construction

Grammar rules are difficult to understand, even for English students. But knowing what a strong sentence looks like, and then not straying far from that construction, can be helpful.

Every sentence has nouns and verbs. For example, consider three parts of the sentence, “The boy runs to the store.” The most important part is the verb, or action word, “runs.” The other two parts are both nouns. “Boy” is the subject, the thing doing the action, while “store” is the object, the thing being acted upon. In effect, this structure amounts to noun, verb, noun, or “a something does something to something.”

An easy way to figure out if a sentence is strong and active is to make sure the answers to the following three questions are clear in the way your sentence is constructed:

• What is being done? 
• Who or what is doing it? 
• Who or what is it being done to?

Now consider this sentence: “It is the boy who ran to the store.” It has the same three parts from the first example. “Boy” is the subject. “Ran” is the verb. And “store” is the object. However, it has extras words that weaken the sentence’s meaning: “who,” “it,” and “is.” And adding these words broke away from the “a something does something to something” model, weakening the overall effect.

3. Activate Your Verbs

Another important rule is use the imperative verb form rather than the form with the suffix “-ing.” The imperative form is a verb’s un-conjugated form. For instance, “to deliver” is the imperative root of “delivers,” “delivered,” “will deliver,” and “delivering.” In many cases, “-ing” verbs are a sign of a weak or awkward sentence.

Now consider the sentence: “The boy runs to the store delivering apples.” While the sentence is not incorrect, the imperative form can be used with a stronger clarifying effect: “The boy runs to the store to deliver apples.”

Self-Editing Your Writing

Although it always helps to have your work professionally edited, you can use these tips to eliminate many of the grammar and style issues that weaken your writing. These rules make it easy to find unclear sentences and keep your writing active, concise, and professional.

5 Ways You’re Accidentally Making Everyone Hate Your Character

the-hardyest-rpcw:

…and by consequence, hate you.

Read More

Comparison is an act of violence against the self.

—  Iyanla Vanzant  (via ceedling)

More About Poop: A Celebration of the Mundane

fuckyourwritinghabits:

writeworld:

We reblogged this article recently about excluding mundane things from novels. Poop was used as an example. (It’s always a good move to use poop as an example. It gets people interested.) The article suggested that books leave out things that people do every day because everybody does them. Why include the mundane in books?

ENTER O’S OPINION.

This is why blanket statements about writing never work (except, perhaps, the blanket statement asserting that blanket statements never work). There are great ways—brilliant ways—to write characters that pee, or characters that brush their teeth, or characters that, say, make grilled cheese sandwiches.

The word “exciting” is not a good requirement for deciding whether or not to include something in a story. A story does not need to have car chases and drug dealers and zombies to be exciting. Stories can be something aside from exciting. They can exhibit, as Flattery O’Connor called it, “the mystery of personality.”

And if you’re getting into the mystery of personality by describing your character hitting the john, then, doggone it, you do you.

Here’s an example:

By the time I get home from the late-late shift at Taco Bell I’ve probably downed like six 24 oz. Baja Blasts. I need a little something to keep me going, dealing with those red-eyed fourth-mealers, but all of that Baja really gets me Blasting, so by the time I waddle into my apartment I really gotta take a wiz.

But tonight when I get back I trip over my roommate’s skateboard, which was brilliantly lying there in front of the door like he wants me to come in all bleary-eyed, bladder-burstin’, and nearly lose my life in an accidental kickflip. And I’m lying there on the floor vowing vengeance against his sorry self.

I leave the door open to the pisser and pop his room open to maximize his listening experience. I rip down the pants and let the river flow. The piss thunders into the bottom of the bowl, it’s a Noah’s Flood of nitrates as I’m screwin’ up my face trying to pee as hard as I can. When I’m done I give an obnoxious sigh of relief and turn the water on full blast so I can wash my hands as loudly as possible.

Sure, I could have written a different scene about our humble narrator’s passive-aggressive roommate situation, but I didn’t. Why? Because this scene gives us a window into this character. A very specific kind of person tries to muster the force of his own urine to wake his roommate. This narrator is that kind of person, and I want you to know it.

An aside: Sensitivity to the volume of one’s urine is something that most humans have probably considered at least once in your life. Does it not make sense, then, to include such a thing in a story, if applicable?

Maybe your characters don’t pee. Maybe you don’t think it’s worthwhile for your characters to pee. For me, though, if they gotta take a leak, and I can write an important scene that characterizes and gives interesting details, you bet I’m going to write it. There is an exception to every rule, but this one had a few too many exceptions for me to keep quiet.

This is also a good time to point out that we do not agree with everything that we reblog, and not every admin agrees with everything that is posted. This is because of the subjective nature of writing; each person has different styles and different tastes and that is exactly as it should be.

Besides, poop is exciting. And it looks great in the title of an article.

- O

This is basically how I feel about this topic! Your mundane things should be used to say something about the character, situation, setting, or to forward the plot. Don’t just let poop simply be poop!

How To Make a Plan

thewritershelpers:

This will not help everyone and some of you may plan in a completely different way. However, a lot of people struggle with where to begin so here we go.

Where do I start?

I would make a mindmap of everything you already know about your novel. This can be the amount of characters, personality of them and where your story is heading. It isn’t that important to have all the names of characters sorted but it is useful to jot some names down you could use.

How I use a mind map to build stories

Mind Mapping for writers

Sorting through your ideas.

Firstly write down your story idea and the plot of your novel. Here you are laying out all of your ideas and you can begin to see which ones work well and which ones don’t. You can then start creating and thinking about making a timeline for your novel.

You can make this as detailed as you want, it’s up to you. You may find yourself with a large gaps between major events but that’s fine.

Use a Timeline whilst Novel Writing

Creating/Developing Characters

Create a fictional character from scratch

Five ways of creating three dimensional characters

How to create a character

Ask yourself this question, what is the point of this character?

Then start to think about how they fit into the plot, their attributes both positive and negative that contributes to the story. Then you can start creating their personality, quirks and background. 

I always find creating a character the most interesting bit. If you’re struggling, create a mind map to help you visualise your character. 

It’s also a good idea to start thinking about this characters relationship with other characters. I like to write this down on each character profile.

Worldbuilding

We will at some point do a more detailed post, this is just the basics.

Top down approach: Create a general overview of the world and determining broad characteristics before then going into further detail. It can require a considerable amount of work before you have enough detail.

Bottom up approach: Focussing more on the small part of the world where the novel is set putting great consideration into the parts that are important to the novel. However this approach can cause inconsistencies. 

[x]

The rules of quick and dirty WorldBuilding

World building help (Forum)

What Next?

You can plan further and continue expanding your ideas. I prefer to write a brief summary for each part of the novel, with bullet points with what I want to happen and when. This just gives me a focussed outline. And I enjoy it!

Writing frames are also useful to help you flesh out your ideas further. 

But really, just get writing!

-S

Neil Gaiman’s Rules of Writing

Top 10 Storytelling Cliches Writers Need To Stop Using

fuckyourwritinghabits:

amandaonwriting:

1. Characters describing themselves in mirrors
2. Broadcasting an upcoming plot twist
3. Blaming bad behavior on bad parenting
4. Too many inside jokes/references
5. The chosen one
6. Countdown clocks
7. Veiling your message in a dream
8. Using sex as wish fulfillment
9. Magical Negroes and Noble Savages
10. Knocking characters unconscious for plot convenience

Follow the link to find out why you shouldn’t use them.

This is a good list. Here are some ideas on what to do instead.

1. Describe your character’s appearance by how they feel about it. People have complicated relationships with their appearance and even what they wear. Don’t let the chance to explore your character slip away by neglecting that!
2. Don’t broadcast - foreshadow. People broadcast plot twists because they think it’ll keep the reader’s attention. Hinting at what’s to come instead, with in-story clues or even just a general sense of foreboding, is a great way to keep your readers hooked.
3. Explore the parents, don’t blame them. Your bad guy’s parents are just as much characters as anyone else in the story, even if they’re not actually there. If the villain blames his parents, why? Are they just trying to throw blame off themselves?
4. Make your jokes accessible. A little reference here and there isn’t going to hurt anybody, but the more readers that can understand it, the more they’ll be able to enjoy it. This runs the risk of explaining the joke, but it can be done!
5. The wrongly chosen one. The chosen one trope is never going to go away. All the more reason to screw with it as much as possible. Maybe they’re not the chosen one after all, but the sidekick. Maybe they were wrongly chosen, intentionally or not. Mix it up!
6. Use time to your best advantage. The last second countdown is a trope that only works in certain mediums, and even then, sparingly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to
7. Don’t discard the use of dreams, but do tread carefully. Probably one of my favorite uses of dreams was a very brief mention of them in a webvlog horror series. The characters had no idea how relevant the dream was, but the viewers did, and that’s what made it effective. Dreams can be used right, but you have to make it work!
8. Use as much sex as you goddamn want, as long as it’s plot relevant. People like to write sex. People like to read sex! If your genre of choice is romance or erotic lit, there’s going to be a lot of sex. There’s gonna be sex in other genres too, because, hey, it happens. One difficulty with it is that too few writers use it to advance the plot, but sex can easily used to show something about the characters. If you are working on some sex scenes, consider the plot and character development that might come from it.
9. Don’t be a goddamn asshole and treat all your characters as people. Sorry, I’m pretty tired of these goddamn tropes. They’re lazy and racist and yes, so-called ‘positive stereotypes’ are racist. Your characters are people. You’re a good enough writer to write them as people. Don’t let other lazy writing tell you otherwise.
10. Find other ways to take your character out of the action. There are plenty of reasons to take a character out of the action for suspense and plot necessity, but often times it turns into Because The Plot Says So. If you have such a scene, look at it carefully. Outline out alternatives; they might even be better than the original plan. Like the original post says, a blow to the head is going to cause a medical emergency, not a quick blackout. Don’t fall into this shortcut, because it’s just more lazy writing!

-Agent Black