#tip number

Another option for your antagonist’s motive is the Radical Believer option.

We’ll go with the first cause that comes to mind, probably because it’s one I do want to succeed: reducing plastic waste.

An antagonist who is a radical believer in the benefits of this could start targeting companies and corporations that either A. aren’t moving toward waste free at all or B. say they are and don’t have any plans to change anything for another fifty years. They could start stealing huge sums of money from these companies since “they clearly don’t know how to spend it well” or they could start attacking their buildings “so they see how serious ignoring this problem is.”

Curiosity.

I haven’t seen this one done very often, but it can be a fun one. An example I did see recently (more recently for me than maybe for you) is from The Vampire Diaries with the Augustine Society. The premise of this society was that they learned of the healing properties inherent in vampire blood and started doing medical tests on the vampires they could catch to learn how they could use the vampire blood to heal deadly diseases and chronic ailments. Their curiosity led them to dissect the same vampires over and over again to see how far the vampire could be pushed before they couldn’t recover.

This is similar to a mentality of “I just want to know what would happen.” For example:

Hero: Why’d you blow up the building?

Villain: I was curious. Now, are you going to arrest me, or are you going to save the burn victims?

Alternatively:

Hero: Why are you doing this?

Villain: You intrigue me. How far can I push you before you break?

*Torture continues*

See what I mean?

We're approaching the more commonly written about senses. Sound is one we focus on more often, because it's one we tend to pay attention to in our own lives. Right now I'm intentionally listening to music as I focus on this blog post. I also hear the slight rat at tat tat of my keyboard as I type. I hear the notifications on my technology and the clunk of the other items on the table I'm using as a desk as they rattle because I moved too suddenly.

Sound is vital in a setting because the world is never silent. Even if you are alone and have no music playing and you intentionally lay on the floor to listen to the quiet, there's probably a clock ticking, a dog barking, the wind rattling the windows, birds chirping, squirrels climbing trees, the vents pushing air in, the hum of the refrigerator, the plip plop of water in the sink, you name it.

Now, this is one of those senses we have to be careful about. If you spend too much time focusing on it, everything slows down. By mentioning the filter in the fish tank, it narrows the scene immensely. You can use that to your advantage, but it is a strong tool. Narrowing the scene means you can have an incredible impact in whatever comes next, so use it accordingly. But if there are sounds you hear when you're writing—footsteps clinking on a metal bridge, the click of stiletto heels on a tile floor—put them in so your reader can hear them, too.

Taste is one of the hardest to incorporate, because it usually only comes up naturally when your character is eating or drinking.

However, there are other ways to go about this. Many things leave a taste in your mouth, including memories.

In the scene I was editing of my W.I.P. last night (work in progress, for those of you unfamiliar with the writing lingo), a character had a traumatic flashback to a time when a cast was cut off his arm and the fact that his father took him to go get mint chocolate chip ice cream afterward as a treat. But he was so scared by seeing that type of saw again, and hearing its whir and feeling the vibrations as it cut through an object against his skin (I have to leave some things as a surprise, right?) that the memory of the taste of mint chocolate chip ice cream was the only thing he could think about.

Probably right now, by continuing to talk about mint, you're feeling that fresh, cold sensation in your mouth followed by the sweet warmth of chocolate. And if you weren't, you are now.

Memory has a unique power to trigger tastes, smells, and sensations. Use that power in your writing when it fits nicely and can enhance the story.

There is a tangible difference between reading:

“The floor seemed to tilt, and I tried to catch myself on the table to stop my fall.”

vs

“The floor tilted and I reached out my hand to catch the table and stop my fall.”

That little adjustment made the same base sentence so much more powerful.

More examples:

“I tried to scoot away from my attacker, but his hand on the chain connected to my ankles kept me from moving.”

vs

“I kicked at the dirt floor, putting as much space between myself and my attacker as I could. His hand on the chain binding my ankles kept me from getting very far.”

It’s the same core concept but the writing in the second example is much more vivid.

“As I sunk down to the bottom of the lake, I realized I only had two options: get back to the surface or die trying.”

vs

“As I sunk down to the bottom of the lake, I was tempted to give up. But when my survival instinct kicked in, I only had two options: get back to the surface or die trying.”

I have been writing a short story every month and posting it on my blog (www.authorjjhanna.com/blog). However, this means that every month, I need at least one (1) good piece of creativity or inspiration.

As you know, as writers yourselves, this is asking a lot from my brain, and as such, I’ve had to learn how to intentionally seek out or spark creativity.

One of the things I do to make sure the good ideas don’t slip away is to jot at least one sentence about the idea in my phone notes app. If I can’t do this at the moment, I will speak the idea out loud to whoever is nearby in hopes that they’ll help me remember later.

Next, I allow myself to wander down many rabbit trails in my mind. For example, one of the stories I wrote (I Saved Him) spun off from a thought about in office bullying and what would you do if your mom was scolding you for doing what you thought was the right thing as an adult?

Another of my stories (A Night in the Snow) stemmed from my wondering what would happen if there was another car in the parking lot when I closed the coffee shop where I used to work, and if that person was a criminal. Who were they?

It’s questions like this that help me to find at least one (1) good idea every month, or at least an idea I can toss around and mess with.

And if none of that works, there’s always the option of creating fanfiction AU’s for my own OCs or spinning down the rabbit trails of “What would happen if Zuko went to Wonderland?” or “If Lucy hadn’t entered Narnia in winter, what would have happened then?”

Usually by the time I’ve explored those options, the characters no longer act like the originals, because I didn’t try very hard to maintain their integrity, and then it’s a simple matter of changing their names and seeing how it reads.

I often fall into the trap of pouring more and more action into my story, as if all that’s necessary for the characters to continue on is the sheer will power to force their way through to survival.

This has led to problems, and led to my critique group members telling me they want to hear more of my character’s thoughts and that things are too rushed.

So learn from my mistakes here. Give your characters quiet moments. Play with pacing so it feels a little slower if you go too fast. Play with writing an entire chapter through thoughts and narrative alone. (I lean heavily on dialogue, so I need to do this more often than I do.)

Alright. Buckle up, friendos.

Today I’m going to talk about what Show Don’t Tell means and how I like to deal with it.

My tips for this come from my very limited studies of scriptwriting.

In scriptwriting, you have dialogue and you descriptions and action beats. That’s pretty much it.

If the character is going to cry, you, as a writer, can say “they start crying” in the script, but it’s down to the actor to portray that, and show how worked up they are. There are many ways to cry, and it’s down to the actor to fully bring that character to life.

The camera panning in on character A’s face to character B’s face while B starts to cry is a far more effective way to show that emotion than if character B had said, “I’m just so sad right now.”

So write it that way. But in the same way, unless you’re being extremely particular and there is a REALLY STRONG REASON to show how someone walked across the room--you’re intentionally slowing the pacing to ramp up suspense, there’s a killer hiding in the closet, you want to slow time down as a character gets shot--just say they walked across the room. In a script, that would be an action beat, shortened as much as “A crosses to B.”

So show the emotion. Tell the action. And if there’s intense emotion accompanying the action, then take a little longer to show the action. But give us thoughts. Give us internal dialogue. Give us the human reactions of your characters, and let us into their heads vividly.