tales of a writer

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 

The stage is set: a blank page awaits, a blinking cursor daring the writer to type. There are no actors, no world to set the story in, but rather, all is contained in the writer’s mind. With a deep breath, they begin the daunting climb to reach the details of the story they’ve set out to complete. 

All writers know the daunting climb that a new page presents. Be it a story, poem, or character planning space, the blinking cursor is both a taunt and a blessing. The possibilities are as infinite as we let them be, and yet confined to our font color and size. We must inhabit every role; the assassin, the wizard, the enigmatic ruler and the orphaned child. We must become a thousand players, live a multitude of lives, and find the stories within those that we’re writing

A year ago, I decided to write ~1000 words everyday as often as I could. I've written over 160k words in the last year and my current average time for 1k words is 20 minutes

One of the things that helps me the most is listening to music, but not my regular playlists. Video game soundtracks at low volume (earbuds needed) is perfect. I have no other tabs open, can't hear my phone go off, and I get the right amount of suspense/background noise/adrenaline running from the music itself. Video game soundtracks are also generally designed to keep you focused on the game, which will help you write.

My favorites are Halo: 3, Halo: Reach, Anno 1800, Hades, Baldur's Gate 3, and Skull and Bones. Hope this helps all of you :)

-Benedict Smith

Imagine a writer posting writing on their blog...

Rainstorm. Hero. Slayer. Raine. Raven. Ace. Riptide. No one can quite decide what my name is around here, though everyone seems to think they’ve correctly captured who I am

Have they? No, not quite. No one has 

I suppose that once, someone did, but those times exist only between the notes I play on my aging guitar and stolen moments in the sky. Now there’s only my masked face, splintering stare, reputation, and the glint of my sword. Not that it matters; being a rogue vigilante demands a certain amount of mystery, and this is the only realistic way to keep anyone from bothering me. Solitude and stagnation were never options.

Those in Dragonhall that think they’ve figured me out never fail to amuse me. Guesses at my name and attempts at drawing me and even assassinations only fuel the need to keep what ‘Hero’ truly is safely hidden in a locked, reinforced box and hidden away from the world. At the end of the day, all anyone needs to know is my “jack of all trades, master of deception” title. 

Throwing everyone in Dragonhall a bone every once and a while seems to satiate their seemingly endless need to crack the wall of mystery I’ve so carefully crafted. A song, a whispered tale lost to the wind, even a forlorn look cast over my shoulder; none of it ever adds up, but it does what it needs. They’re like dogs, following each loose end to its frayed tip and then right back to the source, repeatedly, and yet never realizing that not a single one of them are wolves. Only dogs, destined to chase a ball whenever one’s thrown. 

“Gods have great power, but only humans have creativity, the power to change history.”

-Rick Riordan

I’ve been thinking a lot about plots and lore and character development-related things for a lot of collaborative projects recently and it just struck me how absolutely wild writing is. Maybe you’re staring out a window or listening to music or out on a walk and suddenly this idea strikes you that’s only loosely based off of what you’re doing and now it’s a whole backstory or, hell, it’s turned into an entire universe. You’re standing there, one person in over eight billion, with about as exciting a life as the rest of us; and yet, you’re the creator of universes, the destroyer of lives, the soul of countless adventures. How wild is that?

I wrote about this for a speech competition last year; writing is one of the few forms of anything tangible and close to magic that we have. We, as writers, quite literally create something from nothing. Our favorite authors have majorly influenced our lives (I know I look for blue food wherever I go and have made an embarrassing amount of friends because I answer someone’s Hello there with General Kenobi) and, oftentimes, created seemingly alternate dimensions for us to safely inhabit. It’s a ceaseless spout; in an afternoon, I can create the lore and history for a whole species. 

I’ll never stop saying that writing is an underrated skill. Beyond just the analyses and oftentimes other boring essays we have to write for our English classes, there’s a multiverse of opportunities for all of us. We create, we destroy, we live our lives through the characters we both love and despise. We’re everything and nothing, and at the same time, we’re high schoolers on our way to class, we’re college students studying late in our dorms, we’re someone’s mentor that’s looking for the right advice. Nothing can ever truly sum up the label of writer, because each of us have created in our own capacities and lived the lives of countless characters. What we can do is amazing; in another world, I’d even venture so far as to say that we are the ones with power, having stories written about us. 

“'Maybe I’m all of those things,' conceded Marie, 'but I’m also inevitable.'”

-Neal Shusterman, Gleanings

The inevitability of writing astounds me. From the moment I started Wildfire with my friends, I knew the main character would sustain life-threatening injuries. From the moment I started Rays of Starlight, my first (dedicated) solo project, I knew the trials that the gray-moralled hero would go through. And from the moment I started School of the Supernatural, another collaborative project, I knew the main character would die

It’s what comes after these inevitable events that makes the story. The spark sets the gunshot off, but it’s the impact that causes the damage

Inevitability causes the spark, but it’s intention that follows. Intentional choices, especially in the seemingly minute details, are what makes stories, poems, persuasive essays, and everything in between what they are. Word choice, punctuation, even line spacing all convey a writer’s meaning. It is, if nothing else, one of the keys to writing successfully