Toy Guns

What I hear most often from writers switching from short fiction to novels is: how do you stay invested for the long haul? How do you care about the same story for the time it takes to finish an entire book?

As someone who began with novel writing and never really mastered the art of the short story, I’ve always had the opposite question (how do you keep it to a minimum? how do you condense your ideas into just a few pages). But this doesn’t mean I’ve never had that age old book commitment problem. Even the best stories can drift away from us, and even the most dedicated writers will experience the occasional hiccup in their writing schedule. Too much time away–whether it be a busy schedule, a new child, an illness, or just general lack of inspiration–it can make coming back to the book after a writing drought seem impossible. You sit down in front of your story, see these words so old you hardly remember writing them in the first place, and think, how can I possibly keep going? 

Coming back to an old story can feel a lot like a high school reunion: bumping into people you once knew so well but who have now become strangers, and now you hardly know to strike up a conversation. But just like a reunion, you have two choices: runaway and give up on the relationship for good, or force the smalltalk until you break into something real. If you’re lucky, by the end of the night, you can be laughing and having a great time, saying it’s like things “never changed at all” before you’re through. A book is the same way. 

Just as we bring up “the good ‘ol times” in conversations, it’s important to revisit what made you write the book in the first place. Some things that have helped me have included: 

Taking notes of my character’s planned emotional and physical arcs over the course of the book. This way if I lose investment or take too much time away and begin to lose that connection to their emotional state, I can return to my notes and see where I wanted them to be and start to understand their state of mind again and their purpose in my story. 

Take notes of your planned plot or, if you’re not a structured planner, some things you hope to happen in the story or directions you might like it to go. This will be your road map later if you get lost along the way. 

Make a playlist (or other art form, if you’re a painter, poet, etc.) that reminds you of your story. Listening to these songs later can help you to revisit the mindset you were in while writing and spark that creativity. 

Go back and reread some of your older, already written chapters. This can help you to remember what the tone of the story was and how the dialogue was sounding. If you don’t and take a long break in the story, there’s a large chance that your story will end up disjointed with two separate narrative styles and tones that will be jarring for the readers (and yourself as you read it back later). This can also trigger the memory of how it felt to write this story last time and to hopefully help you to continue writing it again. 

Practice writing a scene with your character(s) that won’t make it into the book. Jumping right back into the novel can seem daunting at times, so it may help to open a new document and write a random event just for practice on regaining and writing your character. Other useful exercises might include an interview, biography, or sample social media account for your character if applicable. 

Just keep writing. Sometimes you have to write something terrible to break through to something good. But don’t worry. The delete button exists for a reason, and the editing process will be a lifesaver down the line. 

To all the writers out there: how do you keep yourself focused and interested during the course of writing a novel? Do you have any tips for maintaining writing momentum?

We all know that plagiarism is wrong. If you’ve written at all, you’ll have it engrained in your head that copying is theft and stealing creative works is one of the worst things you could do in the writing world (no matter how much we wish we could have written that one book, you know, the really really good one). But what about accidental copying?

Every writer I’ve ever met has at some point said to me, “I really like this story, but I think it’s already been done” or “I just finished my book and found out there was one published last year that’s the exact same thing” or “I started reading this book, and I think I accidentally stole its plot.” I know I’ve been there, staring at my favorite books and wondering if I was just a bit too influenced by them, if our plots are a bit too similar, if our writing styles mesh too well. 

But then we have the well-repeated Mark Twain quote: “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” And this just might be the most important quote a writer–or any artist–can ever see. 

Plagiarism is stealing fully formed concepts (or words, or sentences, or pages). Plagiarism is taking the full design. Plagiarism is writing a story about an orphan boy in glasses with a lightning bolt on his head who goes to a wizarding school and defeats the evil wizard who killed his parents with the aid of his redheaded best friend. Plagiarism is not writing a story about a wizard. It’s not even writing about a wizaring school. Harry Potter doesn’t own wizarding schools anymore than it owns orphans. Yes, it has been done before. Yes, it can be done again. 

General concepts are not owned. Magic, teenagers with terminal illness, vampires, werewolves, “quirky love stories”–all these things can be done again. Just make sure there’s a reason for it, make sure that your version is different than the last one, that you’ve “turned the kaleidoscope” so to speak, and are giving to the world a story that only you could write: a brand new take on what’s been done again and again and again. 

And this is a question we should  be asking ourselves no matter what: is what I’m writing important? Is it a story that needs to be told, and one that only I can tell? It doesn’t have to be earth shattering, doesn’t have to be an instant classic. Important can just mean “it will make the right people smile at the right time” or it can mean giving representation to a lifestyle that isn’t often seen. It can mean different things to different people, but it should mean something to you. When you’re off trying to sell this story, agents are going to ask just that: why are you the author to make this story a reality? Why could you and only you write this story? 

But by all means, be inspired by what you read and watch. Media is meant to be absorbed and used, to be a springboard into new media. 

To all the writers out there: how do you determine the uniqueness of your story? How are you influenced by the stories you read and how do the play into what you write? 

When I went to speak with a group of high school writers (the event that prompted this “series”,  almost all of them asked me about “worldbuilding.” Wikipedia defines worldbuilding as “the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe;” I define it as that thing I always forget to do. 

Worldbuilding is particularly important if you write fantasy because in a completely made up universe, everything is up to you: there are no pre-established rules. You event the landscape, the towns, the people, the hierarchies, the leadership. You are god. 

But for all of the realistic fiction writers out there, world building is a little different. It’s certainly less overwhelming, definitely takes less memorization, but it does have more rules. The question I always find myself asking is: do I base this story in a real town, or do I make it up?

What I’ve found to be the best solution is a mix of both: I choose a town I am familiar with, and I base my “fake town” off of it. This means I can add in a grocery store that doesn’t exist, a local pool that was never built, and, of course, if I want to talk about how terrible a place is, I don’t have to defame a real location. 

The advice “write what you know” is probably the most prominent in settings, which is why it’s so common to find all of an author’s books set in the same location (or coincidentally in all the different locations that author has lived in throughout their life). The way I see it, there are so many other things I need to keep track of (like character arcs, plots, actually writing) that I don’t have the patience to also research and learn new places, but for some writers, this is the best part, the chance to escape the place they know and go anywhere in the world via their writing. 

If you fall into this second category, here are a few rules of thumb:

Just because a place is “foreign” to you, does not mean it is to everyone, so please don’t treat your setting (especially if it’s in a different country) as “exotic” (as this can often come across as a fetishization of a race, people, culture, or land). It’s also, frankly, just less realistic. If your character lives in that place you desperately want to live in, they’re not going to see it every day with the wide eyes and fascination that you, the author, have. They’re going to complain that the drug store on the corner isn’t open and bitch about the weather. (This is different, of course, if your character is a newbie in this land and visiting, if they are seeing it for the first time; then the wonder and first impressions are valid to express.)

It might help to get a map. Finding a city website will also help (there you’ll find information about parks and rec, town history, libraries, public buildings, etc.). But being able to actually visualize the place will you allow to drop your character into that setting with a better idea of what will really be surrounding them. If you can visit the place even better! But what’s important is to get a street view one way or another, an idea of what it looks like to the left, right, forward, and back of where your character will be standing. Will they see hills on the horizon, just above the buildings’ tops? Is there a skyline? Is the air cool or muggy? What amenities does the town have? What is the wild life like? (Don’t write a squirrel into the scene, for example if there aren’t any in that climate.) 

Don’t let the setting hold you back. If there is no city on Earth that has everything in it that you need for your story to take place, it’s okay to make a place up. Just make sure that place has its own set of rules that make sense and add up logically (don’t say it’s a town of 300 people and then give it a strip mall, for example–that sort of thing would never be built for that population).

Keep track of your location! Whether your setting is real or made up (in which case you should keep a folder of your notes and maybe a hand drawn map), you should have something (a map, a list of places, a picture, etc.) to refer back to while writing. In order to keep the surroundings consistent, I find myself constantly scrolling up to an earlier moment in the story; I can never remember if I made the local park have a purple slide or blue. It sounds silly, but it’s all in the details, and the more accessible you can make this information, the easier a time you’ll have later (and the less time you’ll spend editing).

To all the writers out there: how do you figure out your setting and what are you tips for keeping things consistent and realistic throughout a larger work?

So you’ve plotted the story out, you’ve made all the characters, and now you’re ready to sit down to actually write: how do you do it? There’s the time old advice that says wait for inspiration, that you can’t rush creativity, but for those of us who have deadlines and can’t wait for the lightbulb to turn on, how do you push through and get to writing anyway?

I’ll split this one into two sections: what I do, and the best advice I’ve heard from other people (and that I sometimes follow).

What I Do: Getting Ready to Write (And to Keep Writing)

In Series #1 I mentioned that I cast my characters. This comes up again now, because in order to remember what my “actor” looks like, I often pull up a youtube video or other media and just listen. It’s important to note that I don’t copy; I’m not using this “actor” so that I can immortalize them in a movie–I’m simply using them as a base. I take into consideration their body language, their tone of voice, the way they hold themselves when they interact with others, and I keep that stored in the back of my mind. This doesn’t have to be done with a celebrity; the same applies if you go to a park or other public place to people watch. The point is to be a witness, to zoom in on human interaction and to remember that characters are people, not just these fantasies we’ve created in our heads. They should act realistically. 

Secondly, I grab a few of my favorite books and set them beside me. I try to keep these books as similar to what I’m writing as possible (if I’m writing a YA first person novel, I’m likely to grab a YA first person novel) and I read a few pages. Again, this isn’t to copy. Let me repeat: do not copy the book! This isn’t a guide on how to plagiarize. The purpose in reading something published is to re-familiarize myself with literary language. In everyday life, we’re surrounded with text talk and casual conversation, and it’s very easy to forget literary sentence structure until we throw ourselves back into that mindset. 

The most readily given advice for any writer is to read, and this applies again here. Reading even just a page–or better yet a full chapter–reminds us how books are organized, the sort of pacing, sentence structure, and narrative theory behind every page. You shouldn’t be copying the words, but you should be copying the novel structure. Find the sort of book you wish you had written, the sort of book that would sit next to yours on a book shelf and really study how it’s organized. Find out how it works, what they did right, and then follow that lead. 

Your book shouldn’t sound like every other book out there, but it should sound like the sort of book you want to read and write. And this is only to begin. You’ll quickly find that once you start writing, you find your own voice and style and are able to roll with it. It’s generally just the white blank page or the starting point that trips us up. 

And sometimes, just having books around me–even if I don’t open them–reminds me what my goal is. It helps to keep from being distracted by the internet or other non-writing activities. 

Other helpful tips: 

Make a playlist (I can’t actually write while I’m listening to music, but I often find that it pumps me up to listen to songs that remind me of the story before I begin)

Set a timer. When I get truly stumped, I set my phone for 5-10 minutes and tell myself I have to keep writing, nonstop, until it’s finished. It doesn’t mater if it’s terrible, just keep writing. Usually, the first few minutes are a bust, but after that, I break into something I can actually use later. 

Turn off the internet. Go into a quiet room. Eliminate distractions. (And if there is something you just can’t get out of your head–like that the floor isn’t vacuumed–go do that thing and try to brainstorm about our story while you’re doing it; while vacuuming is a great time to think after all). 

Other Useful Advice Others Have Given To Me

Write an interview between your character and someone else. Having them answer questions on a spot will force you to hone in on their tone of voice and their outlook on life (what are they willing to share, and what do they keep to themselves? etc.) You may not use this information in the story, but it may just help to drop you into the character’s mindset. 

Draw, paint, photoshop, or otherwise make a creative edit of your characters that helps you to visualize them. Sometimes once you can see them, they’ll come to you more regularly on paper. (This might also include making an edit of their wardrobe, their house, etc.)

Just keep writing. No matter how bad it is, no matter how much you hate it, keep writing. Eventually you’ll break through to something good. (This was described to me as wading through the mud; eventually you’ll get to the other side of the swamp and back onto solid land, but you have to keep going.) You may have to throw out the first few pages, but if you refuse to give up, eventually you’ll come up with something good. 

Work on other chores. A good writer once told me that she does her dishes or dusts the house and pretends that the character is doing those chores instead. This helps to get other obligations done while also getting her excited about the characters’ headspace and learning a bit about how they live their life. 

To all the writers out there: how do you fight past writer’s block or get started on a new story? What helps you to “get in character” and get to work?

Ok so I’ve finally gotten around to doing this highly requested post based off this post and I’m sorry to all those who had been waiting for ages for it to come out but here it is!!!

How to Annotate a Novel Efficiently

Look I’m actually doing the play Medea at the moment so this can be used for other texts apart from novels too!

Like I’ve said before, I know lots of people don’t want to taint their texts with writing and highlighting, but to me, it is so so satisfying when I finish with a fully annotated book with tabs flying out of every page and all that, plus it acts as a sweet resource once it’s done.

((Hopefully by the time you’ve gotten around to this level of annotating, you’ve read through your text already and maybe even put down some initial thoughts in the margins.))

To put it simply, I have three levels of coordination when it comes to annotating a novel: words, tabs and sticky notes.

1. Sticky notes

Use for big chunks of text you can’t fit in the margins of your book, such as summaries of characters, themes, etc

They can also get those big chunks of info to stand out from the rest of the novel

 If you’re reading a larger text with chapters, it’s quite handy to use big sticky notes to summarise each section. 

2. Tabs (and highlighting)

Yep so these are the tabs I have sticking out of my book and they’re used for quick references, where I can easily search up a type of quote quickly in the novel without having to flip through every page.

The colours of the tabs I use are the same colours as my highlighters, so it is easy to see where the quote is and which tab it corresponds to.

ACTUALLY HIGHLIGHT the specific quote rather than leaving a tab there by itself, for future reference when you need a specific quote, but if you’ve got a massive chunk that is just too important to pick out a small quote, use a square bracket on the inside margin. Smaller quotes are better.

Have a tab for broad topics such as characters, themes, literary devices, plot developments, context, etc. If you have more colours, you can always make your categories more specific (for me, the character of Medea is separate to the rest of the characters)

I write the main idea on the tab itself, a.k.a. the reason why I highlighted or tabbed that quote there.

Which quotes to highlight depends on

a)     What we go through in class

b)     What is written as an important quote in the text guide we are given/the internet suggests

c)     What I think is important. If you’re not sure, ask yourself WHY is that quote important and if you can answer that, highlight it!!!

  3. Words

The further explanation of quotes is written on the actual pages, and often right under a tab to elaborate.

I recommend using a thin pen as in 0.38 to really fit in as much as possible.

This step as well as tabbing is so so important, because you can highlight as much as you want, but it really won’t mean anything until you’ve written down its significance, and even if you have an amazing memory, this is vital ok. Even a few words along the margin explaining the quote can mean the difference between good writing and great writing in your upcoming essay.

What do I actually write? If it’s a literary device, I’ll name it (e.g. Metaphor) and explain its symbolism, or the author’s intention for putting that in. If it’s a theme related quote, I’ll explain the message that the author is trying to convey through that quote. If it’s a character related quote, I’ll explain how that quote adds to their character, maybe finding contrasts, etc.

Supplies that I used were:

- Mildliners (pink, orange, yellow, blue, aqua; gotta get that colour coding)

- Pilot Frixion Point

- Uni-ball Signo TSI (erasable like the frixion pen so that if I’m not too sure about what I’ve written as an annotation, I can check with the teacher and erase if need be)

- A set of 1000 tabs in total, divided among pink, orange, yellow, green and blue

- Pastel square sticky notes

As an optional step, I highly recommend making use of the back cover or spare pages in the book. I use them for writing definitions of recurring words, good vocabulary to use in the future when writing the essay and also character maps, explaining the relationship between each character.

I hope you all find this helpful!

((disclaimer: this is just how I do it so don’t shank me pls))

Some writers hate this part; they’d rather move on to writing the next book, or else they think this book they have now is so perfect that they wouldn’t dare to change it. Now, to the writers in the second category, I’d like to give you a round of applause: having confidence in our own writing isn’t easy, and you’re probably right, your story probably is great. To finish a book–to actually set out on a single idea and see it to fruition–is no small thing, and you should be damned proud of yourself. Hold onto that feeling. Because great or not, it’s time to change everything. 

I am in the (perhaps small) category of writers who actually love to edit. I consider it the fun part, the mystery part, the puzzle, the game. I now get to dive back into the story and idea that I loved so much to begin with, and I’m able to figure out all the parts that made be excited from the start. The hard part–the every day sitting down to write part–is over, and now it’s time to play. I can move sentences where I want them, add in characters that matter, take out ones that don’t. I can find the holes in the plot and character development (that moment when you read and think: that happened suddenly, or that character changed their mind suddenly and you have to come up with a new scene to bridge the gap). I can make sure my characters feel authentic, well rounded, and fully developed. I can make sure the plot has time to unfold and figure out what needs to be cut so it doesn’t drag on too long. I can chop out the bad sentences, the terrible descriptions, tighten the word choice, and make all those long days hunched over my computer actually worth something. 

The first bit of advice I have for editing is: put the story away. If you’ve just written the last sentence, closed the final chapter, by all means, set it down and go out to celebrate. Congratulations! Be proud of yourself! You’ve accomplished the near impossible. Now tuck it away, don’t look at it, think of something else. Put that baby in a drawer or the fridge or under your bed (or you know, just don’t open the file on the computer ) and let it sit. Right now, you’re too close to the project, and it’s all too raw. You need time to come back and look with fresh eyes. 

When you do, when you finally come back, you’ll find that the typos stand out easier, that the sentences you thought you liked might not sound so great after all, and the ones you weren’t so sure about may have grown on you. We’ve all probably heard the advice ‘kill your darlings,’ but cliched or not, it still holds truth: you’re going to have to detach yourself from those sentences you loved so much. As you edit, you should be asking yourself:

Does this sentence matter? Does it lend credibility, information, or development to the story?

For dialogue: would my character actually say this? Does it match their voice consistently throughout the book (often, the character voice changes from the person we thought they’d be at the beginning to who they end up being halfway through the book)

Does this sentence make sense? 

Am I interested while reading?

If you answer no to any of the above questions, chances are, the sentence needs to be changed or edited out entirely. If it’s a good sentence, something you just can’t stand to see go (but it still doesn’t fit in the story), try adding it to a ‘good sentences’ word document and saving it there. You just might find that while it didn’t work for this story, it still may find its place in the next. 

All of this can be done alone, but it’s better to have a friend. Personally, I use Agent Query Connect. It was there that I met my lovely full time beta reader with whom I have been exchanging writing with for close to five years. She’s my go-to reader, the one who will always tell me when something’s great and when it’s really really not great. She catches what I can’t find on my own, and, in short, has saved my writing life and made me the writer I am today. 

Sites like these are free and easy, but always be careful: don’t give away your full manuscript until you know you can trust the other person, and generally until you get their material in exchange. Book theft doesn’t happen too often (I hope) but it does happen, so always be savvy about who you’re sharing with. Chapter by chapter edits are always the safest. 

And if you don’t trust the internet, finding friends and family to read your stories is always helpful; but make sure they understand creative criticism! Telling you your story is great and nothing should change won’t help you, but saying everything is terrible won’t either. Find someone you can trust and who actually understands what your goal is and how your genre or story type operates. Even the best writer can offer poor advice if they’re reading only to make it into their style. An example of this might be:

“I prefer stories in third person. This would be better in third person.” 

“I don’t like these types of characters. Maybe it’d be better if you changed them to someone else.” 

Sometimes changing from third person to first or vise versa does improve a story, and sometimes characters do bog a story down, but make sure this advice is about your story and not just your readers’ personal isolated opinions. (And remember that F. Scott Fizgerald was told The Great Gatsby would be a better book “without that Gatsby character”).

And as with all writing advice, take what you hear with a grain of salt. You should listen–absolutely listen, and always take it into a consideration–but at the end of the day, only you know what’s best for your story. Know when to cave and to make the change and when to stick to your guns. All changes should be in the story’s best interests, not to please someone else (or to be self gratifying either). 

To all the writers out there: what are your best editing tips and how do you begin the process? How do you know when you’re finished?

Everyone has their own strategy for this one, but it’s also probably the aspect of writing that we ask each other about most of the time: what do you do to figure out your plot? How do you stick to a plot? How do you know where a story is going? How do you stay interested long enough to finish? How do you keep from getting lost? For first time writers, this is particularly daunting, as we tend to think of a book–all 80,000 words or so–as overwhelming and more than we know how to accomplish, as something too big or unattainable. 

Some writers sit down with a single idea and go from there, letting the story come as it may and waiting for the ideas to strike as they write. For many writers, this works. For me, it doesn’t. 

My process looks a lot more like this:

Wait for an idea to strike (and I mean strike; it has to come to me, haunt me, bug me, until I’m sure I can do nothing but write it)

Plot. Plan out everything. Write it all down, outlining each chapter–what will happen in each and how many there will be.

Write. 

Edit. 

Edit again. 

Step One: There are lots of good ideas out there, and my notebooks are filled with ideas; ideas that occurred to me in the middle of the night, ideas I thought up after witnessing something in a park or listening to a good song. New ideas are exciting and can lead to great things, but I won’t turn any of them into a book until I’m sure the idea won’t go away. 

I don’t write it down. That’s the first test; if I haven’t forgotten it the next day, or the next, or the next, then I know it might actually lead somewhere, that it’s not a fleeting idea that will tempt me and then leave me hanging. I let this go on for a month–yes, a whole month–and if at the end of that month, I still can’t let that idea go, if it’s still rolling around in my head, waiting to be explored, then I move onto step two. By then, I know that the idea and me are long-term, that we’re in this for the long run. 

Step Two: I plot. I plot everything. 

I start with the main arc: where do I want the story to start, and where do I want it to finish. In my most recent story, for example, I knew that I wanted the main character to begin cynical of love and relationships, and I wanted the story to end with him opening his heart to the possibility (even if he wasn’t yet in a relationship–that bit I’d find out later). I knew I wanted the three strangers at the beginning of the story to be best friends by the end. I knew they’d all start with some trauma, and I wanted them all to successfully be on the path to recovery and healing by the end. 

Then I looked to time: I believe it’s important to know just how much ground, chronologically speaking, a book is going to cover. I needed to know how long my characters would have to experience the emotional growth mentioned above (the less time, the more the plot would have to directly affect them, the more intense that plot would need to be). I gave them the summer. Just three months to learn and get to know each other, which meant every day was going to count, and I wasn’t going to be writing a lot of moments skipping ahead in time. (If the story was to last five years, for example, I’d have a lot more room to build these relationships, and so things could unfold more subtly and with large chunks of time between.)

Then I look to characters: I write down all the main and minor characters (naming them is a good first step, though this can change later) and I write down both their emotional state when the story starts and what they’re actively doing with their lives, and their emotional state when the story ends and where they’re at/going with their lives then. 

As you’ll see, there’s a pattern here: I figure out point A and point B. Then I make a list of little things I want to happen, different scenes that have begun to play out in my head, interactions I want the characters to have, pitstops no the way from A to B. And slowly, I build the story around them. I begin to figure out how we get there, which road the story is going to take, and little by little, the story comes together until I have an outline that looks a bit like this:

Chapter One: Opens in [setting]. Character A talks to Character B about [topic] They meet Character C. Ends with Character A realizing [topic]. 

And so on, until we get to the last chapter. In a way, this outline becomes a script, my go-to plan. 

Do I always stick to the script? No. But when I begin to write, I keep that list pulled up beside my new blank word document, and I read it from time to time. Sometimes, once I get writing, once I begin to know the characters a bit more, and once the story finds a voice of its own, I go off script, and the story takes me places I wouldn’t have expected. But I always make sure I refer back, make sure that one way or another, I come back to to road map. It’s okay to take a pitstop on the path, to go off on a tangent, but the plot map allows me to find my way back to what’s relevant, to what I know has to happen to get from A to B. 

For any writers out there who worry about making their stories big enough, who have trouble thinking of side plots, this is also a good way to map that out and see where your story has room to grow and what it can encapsulate. It lets you see just how big the story will become and if it belongs in novel format or if, perhaps, the idea is better suited for a short story. 

I think the most common advice writers hear from one another is: write every day. The last time I heard this bit of advice, the writer in question went on to say that she began by writing every day for 30 minutes, and moved steadily up to writing for 6 hours a day. Now, for many of us, 6 hours just isn’t feasible–not with paycheck jobs, school, families, etc. But I liked the idea behind what she said, that you have to start small and build tolerance, that just like working out at the gym, you have to work the writing muscle, build the writing muscle, grow it, and become stronger as you go. 

But that’s easier said than done. 

When it comes to my own writing, I don’t worry about timing, and I don’t write every day (as much as I would like to) but I do I worry about results, about content, and I strive to set and complete clear goals. (This is not always good content, not always perfect results, but we’ll get back to that later.) Everything in my life is scheduled–from the calendar filled with dates and appointments–to the day to day to-do list. And you can bet that writing is on that to-do list. 

For me, the schedule is broken down a bit like this:

For the month: Write 2 Chapters

And a hypothetical week might look like this:

Monday: 1,000 words

Tuesday: 1,000 words

Wednesday: –

Thursday: 1,000 words

Friday: 1,000 words

Saturday: 500 words

Sunday: 500 Words

I don’t write well on Wednesday (too many real life distractions) and over the weekend, I don’t have as much time to sit down and write (too many family obligations), so I lower the expectation. But the goal is always the same: 5,000 words a week, and 5,000 words equal one chapter. 

This is not an exact science. Some of my chapters end up closer to 3,000, some closer to 6,000, and of course it’s never on the dot. The story will go where it wants to go, and one chapter in the hundreds I’ve ever written has ever finished at an exact 5,000 (and I took a screencap; I was overjoyed). 

The point is not to be exact but to have a goal, and I have found that 5,000 words makes for a well rounded, well develop chapter (around 20 pages, just enough to really dive into a scene or moment, extract some character development or plot movement, then exit, leaving the reader wanting more). 

5,000 is my comfy spot, but it won’t be for everyone. Some stories are made to have short chapters: quick and sweet, a handful of pages only (see any James Patterson book). Some chapters are long and packed full. That’s not what matters. What matters is consistency. While there are always exceptions, it’s a good rule of thumb to try and keep your chapters all at the same length if possible. This gives the story a sense that it was well-planned, and it gives a natural pace for the readers. 

Averaging two chapters a month with 16 chapters in a book, this schedule brings the grand total of first draft writing time to about 8 months. When you add in real life distractions, complete plot derailment, unforeseen chapters, that character you added in at chapter 12 and had to go back and add to all the previous chapters, it usually takes closer to a year. And then comes the fun part: editing. But more on that next week. 

To all the writers out there: how do you work writing into your day in a way that keeps it manageable and keeps you from losing your mind? Do you plan it out, force yourself into a schedule, or do you write whenever the mood strikes? 

Everyone has their own strategy for this one, but it’s also probably the aspect of writing that we ask each other about most of the time: what do you do to figure out your plot? How do you stick to a plot? How do you know where a story is going? How do you stay interested long enough to finish? How do you keep from getting lost? For first time writers, this is particularly daunting, as we tend to think of a book–all 80,000 words or so–as overwhelming and more than we know how to accomplish, as something too big or unattainable. 

Some writers sit down with a single idea and go from there, letting the story come as it may and waiting for the ideas to strike as they write. For many writers, this works. For me, it doesn’t. 

My process looks a lot more like this:

Wait for an idea to strike (and I mean strike; it has to come to me, haunt me, bug me, until I’m sure I can do nothing but write it)

Plot. Plan out everything. Write it all down, outlining each chapter–what will happen in each and how many there will be.

Write. 

Edit. 

Edit again. 

Step One: There are lots of good ideas out there, and my notebooks are filled with ideas; ideas that occurred to me in the middle of the night, ideas I thought up after witnessing something in a park or listening to a good song. New ideas are exciting and can lead to great things, but I won’t turn any of them into a book until I’m sure the idea won’t go away. 

I don’t write it down. That’s the first test; if I haven’t forgotten it the next day, or the next, or the next, then I know it might actually lead somewhere, that it’s not a fleeting idea that will tempt me and then leave me hanging. I let this go on for a month–yes, a whole month–and if at the end of that month, I still can’t let that idea go, if it’s still rolling around in my head, waiting to be explored, then I move onto step two. By then, I know that the idea and me are long-term, that we’re in this for the long run. 

Step Two: I plot. I plot everything. 

I start with the main arc: where do I want the story to start, and where do I want it to finish. In my most recent story, for example, I knew that I wanted the main character to begin cynical of love and relationships, and I wanted the story to end with him opening his heart to the possibility (even if he wasn’t yet in a relationship–that bit I’d find out later). I knew I wanted the three strangers at the beginning of the story to be best friends by the end. I knew they’d all start with some trauma, and I wanted them all to successfully be on the path to recovery and healing by the end. 

Then I looked to time: I believe it’s important to know just how much ground, chronologically speaking, a book is going to cover. I needed to know how long my characters would have to experience the emotional growth mentioned above (the less time, the more the plot would have to directly affect them, the more intense that plot would need to be). I gave them the summer. Just three months to learn and get to know each other, which meant every day was going to count, and I wasn’t going to be writing a lot of moments skipping ahead in time. (If the story was to last five years, for example, I’d have a lot more room to build these relationships, and so things could unfold more subtly and with large chunks of time between.)

Then I look to characters: I write down all the main and minor characters (naming them is a good first step, though this can change later) and I write down both their emotional state when the story starts and what they’re actively doing with their lives, and their emotional state when the story ends and where they’re at/going with their lives then. 

As you’ll see, there’s a pattern here: I figure out point A and point B. Then I make a list of little things I want to happen, different scenes that have begun to play out in my head, interactions I want the characters to have, pitstops no the way from A to B. And slowly, I build the story around them. I begin to figure out how we get there, which road the story is going to take, and little by little, the story comes together until I have an outline that looks a bit like this:

Chapter One: Opens in [setting]. Character A talks to Character B about [topic] They meet Character C. Ends with Character A realizing [topic]. 

And so on, until we get to the last chapter. In a way, this outline becomes a script, my go-to plan. 

Do I always stick to the script? No. But when I begin to write, I keep that list pulled up beside my new blank word document, and I read it from time to time. Sometimes, once I get writing, once I begin to know the characters a bit more, and once the story finds a voice of its own, I go off script, and the story takes me places I wouldn’t have expected. But I always make sure I refer back, make sure that one way or another, I come back to to road map. It’s okay to take a pitstop on the path, to go off on a tangent, but the plot map allows me to find my way back to what’s relevant, to what I know has to happen to get from A to B. 

For any writers out there who worry about making their stories big enough, who have trouble thinking of side plots, this is also a good way to map that out and see where your story has room to grow and what it can encapsulate. It lets you see just how big the story will become and if it belongs in novel format or if, perhaps, the idea is better suited for a short story. 

Let’s start off right and talk about the most important part of any story: the characters. 

I’ve discussed on this blog a few times the benefits of the RP and fanfiction communities, and I’m going to say it again: it’s good practice. It’s a fun and welcoming space (usually) in which starting (or veteran) writers get to practice their craft in the writers’ version of public; their writing partners give them instant feedback and it’s a much faster way to gauge and practice your skills than writing a story alone and waiting years to (try and) publish it. 

But here’s another thing we can learn from RP: how to cast our characters. In RP communities, when you write a character, you generally use a celebrity’s face to represent that character. This is called a “face claim” and is a lot like casting a character in a movie. When I first create the characters in my novels, I do the same thing. It’s not something anyone will ever see or need to hear about (unless one of my books one day gets made into a movie and I have the chance to plead and beg for that actor), but by “casting” my characters with real celebrities, I have a go-to guide whenever I’m feeling lost. 

The celebrity is not my character. I’ll repeat: the celebrity is not my character. They’re a mold, a springboard, a jumping off point. I don’t look at pictures of the actor and describe their every feature. The character is still mine, and if I want them to have freckles on their chin but Actor #1 doesn’t have freckles on their chin, you better bet I’ll still give them those freckles. In fact, by the time I finish writing any book, the character tends not to look like the celebrity at all, nor share any of their personality traits. 

So why do I do it? Well, casting brings the character to life in those beginning stages where the white page is terrifying and everything is horribly new and uncertain. When you’re just starting a book, everything is up in the air, and it’s daunting to approach a blank page with little else to go off of but the ideas stored in your head. By casting the character, I take a bit of the stress off my shoulders and it gives me something solid to lean on and to refer back to. 

Watching an interview of Actor #1 when, in times of need and distress, can remind you how natural body movements work, how people hold themselves, how their hands move when they speak, can give you a voice in your head to go along with your character–the nuances of speech and accents. In short, it helps you to build a human, just as a wooden drawing doll helps an artist to remember form. 

Perk 2: It’s fun. For a little bit, you get to pretend to be the director in your own make believe movie, and who hasn’t had that dream at least once? 

For a lot of writers, creating a character is a huge process. Some can find themselves halfway through writing their novel and find that they don’t know their character. And if the writer doesn’t, bad news, the readers won’t either. So what do you do? (Video version here.)

Make a character profile. Questions spark development and add personality to your character. Pull a list like this one offline and get going! Answer them as if your character is in an interview and is being 100% honest. This will be hard for some of them.

Start with a base. This may sound like cheating, but if you do it right, your character will be completely different by the end. Base them off of an archetype, a person, or bits and pieces of both. Once you have a base, you can build your character from Frankenstein’s-monster-esque to novel ready. 

Imagine they’re real. If they were right next to you, what would they be doing? If they went through your day how would they react differently? How would they respond to current events? Curl up into a ball and cry? Flee the country?

Find your connection. For me, this step is huge. My characters are like locked houses that I can only study from the outside looking in. That is until I find a connection and the door clicks open. This connection is generally raw, like depression, loss, love, or hardship. Make pain your gain.

Take quizzes/tests for your character. There are stupid ones like everything by Buzzfeed (love ya Buzzfeed) or you can take the Myers Briggs Personality Test. You can spend days reading up on the results and they are very revealing. Many times the information looks very similar to your existing character notes.

Watch the video version here.

not every story that includes gay characters has to include homophobia and gay angst

if it’s a fantasy world, you can just mosey on down and say that being gay is as accepted as having brown hair

if it’s a real-world setting, guess what? you could still do this. of course in certain circumstances there may be angst but sometimes you don’t have to.

bend the rules of society. throw them all in the bin and start again. that’s what writing is.

see: the raven cycle, ink and bone, a darker shade of magic.

your story is not about homophobia, it’s about dragons and magic and murder and whatever the hell else you wanna throw in there.

it’s your world, you make your rules. go ahead and make your happy gay characters in their happy gay worlds. i’m rooting for you.

make genre fiction your bitch.

Good question! You’ll definitely want to be realistic about this, as I think when we first start writing these sorts of things, we assume the person just needs to lose a lot a lot of blood–which doesn’t sound very scientific at all. (Fun fact: it’s actually 40%!) Here’s what I could find (and I’ve checked to make sure the majority of these articles have medical backing and sources listed): 

Breaking Point: How Much Blood Can the Human Body Lose?

Internal Bleeding

Exsanguination (The Technical Term for Blood Loss)

The entire reason we want to have writing “rules” is so that we can break them. 

Between my annoyed ranting and my personal opinions, it slipped my mind that many people haven’t been told this, and it’s only been brought to my attention recently that my own posts (and many others) don’t emphasize this point nearly enough.

Please take every writing guideline with a grain of salt. 

If someone says don’t do this it should never mean don’t ever do this but rather do this sparingly in order to get the effect you want out of it.

If you use stammers and ellipses to show pacing throughout your story, those things become the pacing itself. But if you use the sentence structure and action tags to show pacing, you can use stammers and ellipses to show anxiety, or create a unique speech pattern for a particular character, or a multitude of other cool things.

If you constantly use epithets to describe every character in your story, they become a long, often annoying alternate to a pronoun or name. But if you cut out most epithets, and just use a specific one to refer to a particular person or group of people, you can show something about your pov character’s view of the world, whether prejudice or admiration or adoration; the possibilities are endless. 

The same idea can be applied to most things pertaining to writing. Remember that almost anything you use frequently throughout your writing will loose its point. That’s why said is such a good dialogue tag. Once you use it enough times, most readers don’t notice it anymore. 

So when you read a writing guideline, one of your first thought should not be that’s a foolish rule or wow my writing must be terrible, but rather in what ways could this rule be broken in order to achieve a certain effect? 

Once you know that, it’s much easier to tell if the rule itself (and the breaking of it) is something you think would benefit your writing, or if you’d be better off ignoring it entirely.

(If we could pass this around the writeblr community that would be wonderful!) 

Disclaimer, sarcasm, and more info below the cut:

It sounds to me like there’s not going to be any easy factual answer for the sort of plot you’re working on and that you’re likely going to need to make a lot up, but that’s alright–that’s where science turns to science fiction. Your best bet, it seems to me, is to invent the drugs yourself–name them, state their cause, state their affect, make the drugs do what you want them to do. (And this doesn’t mean your whole story has to be science fiction or fantasy. In The Fault In Our Stars, an otherwise completely realistic, real-world, YA novel, the author, John Green, invented a cancer fighting drug to temporarily buy his character more time, though such a drug does not yet exist. That’s okay. This is where fiction fills in the blanks for reality.) 

With that in mind, the drugs should be somewhat realistic and at least have some backing in science to make it believable for the reader, so you’re on the right track in researching all these different drugs and the neurological affects they may have. Here is what I could find that I think will be the most helpful to you:

On the Brain In General:

How Your Brain Works

10 Surprising Facts About How the Brain Works

Understanding How The Brain Works

Secrets of the Brain (National Geographic)

10 Unsolved Memories of the Brain

On Pain:

Pain and How You Sense It

How to Increase Your Pain Tolerance

People can raise their pain threshold by altering brain chemistry, study in arthritis patients shows

How We Feel Pain: Overview of the Nervous System

On Emotions: 

Maybe Pain Relievers Numb All Your Feelings

5 Ways Your Brain Influences Your Emotions

Which Area of Your Brain Influences Your Emotions?

Your Emotional Brain

Study Cracks How the Brain Processes Emotions

How the Brain Processes Emotions

On Memory: 

The Human Memory

How Human Memory Works

How Does Your Memory Work? 

How Does Memory Work (2)

Fortifying Your Memory With Supplements

On Drugs:

Brain Enhancing Drugs: Do They Work?

13 Nootropics to Unlock Your True Brain

Nootropics: Review

Note: Please use this guide for fiction only. This is not an endorsement of any drugs or a guide on how to treat your mind or body at home. Please refer to a doctor for personal concerns or questions. These links, even from credible sources, are only to help better understand the brain, not to help self medicate or treat any illnesses. 

This is one of the most well known bits of writing advice, you’ve probably heard it a dozen times. Sight, taste, smell, sound, touch- and maybe even the ‘sixth sense’. These are the most known human senses, but the idea we only have five is a common urban myth, humans actually have a lot more than that.

Here’s some more senses to consider when writing descriptions!

Nociception

Similar to the sense of touch, nociception is the body’s ability to sense pain and damage or irritation to the body.

Proprioception

To put it simply proprioception is the sense of where your limbs are in relation to your body. You know when you’re in pitch darkness and you can still ‘see’ your hand in front of your face? Similar principal.

Thermoception

You probably can guess this one. Thermoception is the sense of temperature, particularly the difference in hot and cold.

Equilibrioception

The sense of balance and the ability to maintain it. Equilibrioception can be affected by heights, ear damage and trauma.

Thirst & Hunger

Pretty straightforward. But still often left off the list of senses.

Pressure

Again, very similar to touch. Without the sense of pressure you couldn’t detect the heavy feeling of water crashing down on you, the feel of a trigger, the ripeness of fruit.

Chronoception

The sense of time and it’s passage. Chronoception allows you to perceive how quickly or slowly time drags by, whether it’s day or night and sense of rhythm.