Month: June 2019

Seven-Point Story Structure

I think I’ve said something similar before, but I feel like I was cheated out of a great deal of lessons when I took classes on writing in high school and college. There are so many unique and interesting ways to order a story and to think about progression that I honestly don’t understand how the basic three act structure managed to monopolize all of our lessons. Perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that our teachers had to squish stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, and more into a single semester. It is a shame how some of the most enjoyable parts of life and education are cut down to the point of being hardly covered.

The seven-point story structure is one that has caught my attention with its heavy focus on cause and effect. It is simple and helps to keep the story moving forward if applied correctly. It is also a great template to add to and subtract from to create a more flexible work. I’ll talk about each of the seven points, and illustrate this flexibility.

Hook

The hook is, as always, the initial bit that latches onto the reader and drives them to pick up your story beyond that first chapter. It should be the introduction of the main character and, in most cases, the main objective and stakes as well. These are especially important in a shorter story where you don’t have a great deal of time for expositing. Longer stories can usually get by with focusing on the main character and the setting as long as something interesting (and plot relevant) takes place.

First Plot Point

The hook captured the audience and flung the protagonist into their journey. As a result of them taking off, they are going to encounter something new and central to the objectives of the story. Whether that is a guide, a contest, a quest, a match on their dating profile, something that carries them to the goal and forces them to make a decision is going to pop up.

First Pinch

Your character made the decision to engage with the first plot point. They signed on with a mentor, accepted the quest, or entered the death mash gala. Actions have consequences, and their decision is the action that is going to propel your character straight into the gaping maw of their first real problem. Does their new teacher have a stuck-up favorite student who trashes your character on the first day? Does the quest prove to be 10x more dire than they have the training for? Did they think the death gala was about metal music and not having an ax shoved in their face sharp side first? These are all things that your character is going to have to deal with very quickly.

Midpoint

Your character survived their encounter with the first pinch. Maybe they were able to pull a trick out of their back pocket and get away, or maybe someone had to bail them out, but they emerged all the same and are now at a cross roads. Are they going to keep acting in a way that will allow the first pinch to cycle back into their life? Or, the much better option, are they going to change something about themselves and how they act to enable them to deal with any future issues? Hiding behind the teacher is only going to get you pummeled again. Training your butt off and learning to defend yourself is an active way to prepare for the next attempt so you don’t wind up flat out on the train grounds again.

Second pinch

The midpoint has passed and your character decided to be a doer and not wait to get in trouble again. This, however, does not stop trouble from arriving. In fact, their decision to not run away and hide is the precise reason trouble decided it was within its rights to waltz up to your character and strike once more. Depending on your story, and the specific choice your character made that propelled them from the midpoint to the second pinch, the second pinch will take shape. A larger group of bullies, a secret organization that wants the hero dead, your character’s crazy abusive ex with a baseball bat at three in the morning in a dark alleyway; these are all potential second pinches as long as they stem from that midpoint choice and bring your character to the brink of disaster. We’re only two points away from the end, after all, so if it’s really the main second pinch of the story, it’s going to be a big deal.

Second Plot Point

Your character started a journey. The faced a trial and decided to change themselves to reach the goal they set out to accomplish. This did nothing to stop another problem from knocking them down to a level of pain and despair that they didn’t realize could exist. What decision did they make to get out of that darkness? They resolved to be stronger before, what is there to decide now? There is a climax looming in the distance and one more decision that needs to be made.

Resolution

Did they make the right decision? Did they get back on their feet from the pit of despair and continue on? If so, you’re going to reach the climax and resolution of your story. Everything else should have been building to this moment, all the character’s training and suffering have led to what is happening here and now. They’ve made their choices and dealt with the consequences. This is their final consequence to face and the glory they receive afterwards.

Flexibility

It’s not much of a surprise to think that as long as you have a set of probably cause and effects, you can carry a story like this on for more than just the initial seven points. You can also increase the length and strengthen the pacing by overlapping several characters’ decision arcs to create an ample supply of sub-plots to fuel your story. The seven-point structure is also good for a wide variety of genres due to the fact that decisions are made in romance, fantasy, sci-fi, and more. If you’re looking for a plotting structure with options and simplicity, I would definitely recommend giving this a try.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland was one of my favorite movies growing up. Like Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz, it crafted a magical land that let my imagination run wild; even if I didn’t care for the main character as much as I like Ariel or Peter or Tinker Bell. When the reimagined Alice in Wonderland came out just after I finished high school, I adored the land even more and finally had an Alice that didn’t annoy me completely. Love the world of imagination and nonsense as I did, I never managed to read the book itself as a child. I decided to rectify this when I came across an old copy.

The book, while containing all the wondrous wackiness that made it into both films, had exponentially more insanity than I would have imagined. It also had more annoying, know-it-all Alice. The narrator’s humor, which pointed out how silly she really was the whole way, actually helped to balance out the girl who thinks a bit too highly of herself.

There was an introduction poem before the main story got underway, All in the Golden Afternoon, that was turned into a song for the animated version. I could never understand the lyrics when I was younger, but reading them really put me in a different mindset about the story. It talks about little children begging for a story and the author delivering one that spun fanciful for hours as they repeatedly asked for just one more verse, one more chapter. The story has a feel like that: a narrator who is just taking the whims of a young audience and flying through whatever thoughts they prompt in the silliest way possible. I think it would be fun to see more stories like that, winding and weaving like the imagination of a child.

Other parts of his writing style are not as endearing, however, and left me baffled in an entirely different way. On the second page of his manuscript, Carroll writes a paragraph that is 145 words long. This wouldn’t be odd if it wasn’t also a single sentence. There are parenthesis, quotations, commas, and semicolons strung together one after the other in a way that I both admired and feared. As unimaginably odd as it was: having snips of dialogue hidden in parenthesis, trifling thoughts pushed into the middle of the sentence to interrupt the flow, and sentences that wound on forever with nary a period in sight; I have to admit it added to the overall feel of whimsical insanity the book had. You could feel the way thoughts started and stopped, and the way it felt like the author was making it up as he went along. Dinah, Alice’s beloved cat who she continuously torments a mouse and other small creatures with, is introduced (in parenthesis) halfway though Alice’s ramblings about her beloved pet.

So much about the book throws everything that story telling “should” be out the window. It has odd pacing, subjects, and characters that are all handled in the manner of the fun uncle who was left to babysit on a rainy day. It adds a level of charm to the story that can’t be recreated in a film. It also has a deranged cook and a crude Duchess and several other things that just couldn’t make it into the movie but were all fair game for an old children’s book.

I’ve heard debates centered on this particular story and the meanings woven into it. I’ve read articles and heard reviews that say the book is about puberty, drugs, anxiety and the effects it can have on your mind, among others. I’ve also heard it said that Lewis Carroll himself dismissed such claims and held fast that it was merely the rambling musings of the mind of a child. Reading through, I can see why the argument would happen as I can easily spot hints of both in the work. There are times when all that you can see is pure and innocent fun, and then between the cake and the potions and the mushrooms edibles seem to be secret meaning. In my own opinion, I think there is a bit of both going on.

When writing it, Carroll most likely had nothing but humor on his mind. However, no person, adult or child, exists in a vacuum. Our experiences, both good and bad, are melded into how we perceive the world around us. This means that if anxiety tinging the author’s reality gave him the occasional sense of being taller or smaller (called Todd’s Syndrome or Alice in Wonderland Syndrome) even if he didn’t intend to include it as a tribute to the illness, the symptoms still made their way onto the page.

Things like this happen in most, if not all, stories. Biases and trauma make their way into the work, even if we aren’t yet aware of what we are experiencing. Going over my earlier writings I’ve found plenty of examples of this happening. My favorite are the Happy Time flowers I invented as a child which could both help you relax from any amount of stress and give you jitter-free energy, depending on the color and tone of the flower or leaf you consumed. It also had the ability to clean out your lungs of all other damage if you smoked it. Knowing now that I have general anxiety, and taking into account that I lost my grandmother to lung cancer, it’s easy to see where these ideas stemmed from when ten-year-old me just thought I was being clever and silly.

Even if such experiences snuck their way into the story, it doesn’t take away from the whimsy of the book itself. It doesn’t remove the spirit of fun and adventure and silliness that was created. In fact, I think one of the things I like the most about the story is the way it showed how the fun could go on, even when things became odd and stressful. Every moment of tears has its fun after. Every terror filled moment will give way to the discovery of something new. Taking yourself too seriously is the real enemy in life. So throw aside the over analysis and just have fun.

Satyr

Now for the next part of my explanation on the differences between hoofed humanoids, when the argument in the tavern mentioned in my page on Fauns truly began. A Faun is simple enough to recognize, a Satyr, however, is less so.

When I mention Satyrs, I refer to the old type. The original holders of this title who have in recent years seemed to become less prevalent or less willing to interact with humans on a regular basis. These Satyrs are, in fact, human and horse hybrids. Akin to the Centaur, yet they have only two hooves for their hind legs and horse-like tails and ears.

This is often contested, I won’t pretend this is the first night that I’ve been engrossed in attempting to knock drunkards off their self given throne. However, in the annals of the Greeks it is easy to find the recordings of these true Satyrs. It was only a few centuries later when the contended holder of this nomenclature was recognized more than the original.

Satyrs have, again like Centaurs, never been as easily enfolded into human society. Their strength and pride causes them to craft their own communities and laws in many cases. They also tend to favor other animal humanoids over humans proper. This has led to a long line of intermarriage with Fauns. These unions most often produce the hybrid offspring that most associate today with the the title of Satyr when it would be more fitting to call them a Goat Satyr or a half Satyr.

The standard and goat Satyrs tend to have many similar features. Both come with the firmer, shoe-able hooves of a horse, both have a face much more human than a Fauns, and both have less body hair on their human half than Fauns. There are also some distinct differences between the two as well.

Fauns generally pass their horns and goat-like tails to their descendants. Goat Satyrs as well are more inclined towards the elemental as opposed to the raw physical strength of the True Satyr. This is not to look down on their physical strength as, unlike a typical Faun, Goat Satyrs in many cases are much stronger than a human. This coupled with their mischievous nature and tendency to have a greater interest in human settlements can get them in a great deal of trouble.

This prevalence near cities and the absence of true Satyrs is perhaps why the confusion comes around. It is also occasionally attempted to wedge the Goat Satyr under the title of Faun which is similarly incorrect.

Considering that both Fauns and Satyrs are part of the process of arriving at their split offspring, in causal conversation it would not be inexcusable to use the terms interchangeably. When one attempts to exchange the grit at the bottom of their tankard of mead for a knowledge of paleontology to rival both explorers and the learned, that is when I personally find offense. So too do I think the proper preservation of terms is useful when it comes to a crime that might otherwise be placed on the head of another.

Balancing Writing and Revision

Writing is a long and sometimes difficult process. Some days, it feels like you just can’t write no matter what you do. Others, it’s like a burst pipe streaming content onto the page at all hours. Mostly, it’s a steady medium which is enough to get your ideas down on paper. However, no matter the speed of writing, there is always one thing that needs to be done throughout the process: editing.

While looking through some tips on the lesser known sides of writing, I came across many different ideas on how the editing process should work and what should be avoided. I’m going to point out the top five ‘do’ ideas that have worked for me, and the top five ‘don’t’ ideas that I feel need the most attention.

My Top 5 Editing Do’s

  1. Do a brief edit every few chapters. How many that ‘few’ is will be up to you to decide; five, ten, or twenty could all be appropriate depending on your style and the size of your chapter. Some would put this in their ‘don’t’ category, but I find that it’s helpful to overall story progression to go back over, do a brief look over for typos, and check the overall pacing and plot progression. It’s especially helpful if you’re stuck in a rut and feel like nothing is happening. It can be helpful to step back and take in part or all of the story again to help put the one sequence you’re working on into prospective. It can also be helpful for keeping details like injuries or upcoming events fresh in your mind so you don’t have a scar that disappears for long periods.
  2. Do take a break before diving into your editing. If you’ve been struggling to put words on the page, you’re likely going to be frustrated with your story once you end that chapter. If you’ve just gotten off of a six-hour binge of writing, you’re most certainly going to be exhausted. If you feel like you still need to keep going that day, take a fifteen-minute break to drink water, make sure the blood circulation in your legs is still going, and take care of any other health or sanity needs that you’ve been putting off. This not only will help you to clear your mind and allow you to have a fresh take on the issues at hand, it will also prevent that nasty, aching feeling in your body that will be a major distraction to anything you try to do.
  3. Do edit for one thing at a time. There are many different things that you’ll need to be looking for during edits. Grammar, spelling, flow, overuse of a word or phrase, consistency; all this and more will be striving for your attention. It can be overwhelming when you attempt to switch back and forth between tasks. This is why you shouldn’t do that; especially at the end stages when you are working with your entire work. Take one piece at a time: get rid of those red and blue squiggly lines on your first read through, then search for any word that stuck out to you during that read-through, and then you can move on to more in-depth things.
  4. Do have multiple edit cycles. I’ve already mentioned how you should edit every few chapters and edit at the end for a list of things. To add to that, you will likely have multiple edit cycles like this. You will also eventually involve others in the process and will need to repeat the cycles afterwards. Don’t just look it over once and then mail it to the publisher, you won’t really like the outcome.
  5. Do involve others. When I was younger, I knew what editors were. I was mistaken to think that they were optional. Beta-readers are still a new concept to me, though I did have my mom and a few friends look over my old pieces. That doesn’t tend to work if they are super nice or don’t know how to give feedback. Neither process is optional, and if I’m not mistaken, can also take several tries to make sure your piece is as good as it can be. Skipping either step will likely show drastically when the final product is scrutinized.

My Top 5 Editing Don’t

  1. Don’t skip editing. This may be obvious but it bears keeping in mind, don’t skip the editing part of the novel writing process. People will be able to tell. If you are aiming for traditional publishing, they will be able to tell too. Especially an editor you hire will be able to tell that you skipped the self-editing process and will fill the pages so full with red on small details that there won’t be room for serious edits.
  2. Don’t wait until the end to edit. Again, some may disagree, but I feel that if you don’t go over your work occasionally, you are more likely to have plot holes, inconsistencies, and be completely overwhelmed when it comes to the final edit. Balance is key, so it’s also important that you…
  3. Don’t go overboard with the edits. While multiple rounds of edits are extremely necessary, there has to be a cutoff point. Editing every chapter more than a quick glance over is pushing it, trying to edit every page as you go is only going to grind you process to a halt. You need multiple cycles of the editing process, but if you’ve done five rounds of beta reading with ten self-edits in between, you’re never going to get your book published. Perfection is an illusion, it’s unobtainable. At some point, you’re going to have to take a deep breath and go for broke.
  4. Don’t lowball hiring an editor. You get what you pay for is as apt here as it is in most other industries. If you are searching for editors and one sticks out for having dramatically slashed prices, chances are they are going to have dramatically slashed results as well. Going for the most expensive isn’t the answer either, necessarily, but you don’t want to spend money on something cheap only to turn around and realize you have to buy the more expensive option anyway.
  5. Don’t rush the process. By the time you reach the final editing stages, you’re probably about done with your book, your writing, the colors black and white, and anything and everything associated with the process. There can be a temptation to rush through the final stages and just get through with it. This would be the greatest disservice you can do to yourself and your novel. Hang on for a bit longer and make sure all your hard work has the biggest success imaginable.

Top 10 Ways to Corral Your WIPs

Writing has been a passion of mine from a young age. From the little books written on construction paper and stapled in the middle to fan fiction of movies and books before I even knew what fan fiction was to finally starting to pursue original works; I’ve always had a few projects swirling around in my mind.

While I’ve always loved the way my mind has been a fountain of creativity, the constant influx of inspiration has lead to moments of frustration, times of feeling overwhelmed, and periods of wanting to avoid writing all together. It has never been my burden to lack ideas, but in exchange I am one of the many writers who faces the conundrum of what to write when or which idea can be worked into what story.

I’ll admit, I don’t think the struggle will ever be something that I can completely do away with. That being said, I’ve come to learn a handful of ways of managing the ideas and cutting back on the negative side effects of having approximately twenty-six different story ideas floating around.

1) Keep Your Notebook or App Close by

Ideas can come from anywhere: a billboard, a conversation, a small detail in a show that is interesting but completely overlooked, a dream. Having a notebook or using your note app on your phone is a good way to record an idea or inspiration when you run into it. Whether it’s an idea for a new story or something you might add to your current project, being able to write it down and know it’s not going to disappear is a good way to cut stress out of your writing process. It also enables you to pull your thoughts away from it for long enough to give you a fresh perspective when you return to it later.

2) Lists are Your Friends

My current WIP list is in a word document that is separated by degree of completion. The categories are: currently writing, full or partial outline, and ideas only. It helps me to keep track of what I have in the works and makes it easy to know which project I should pick up next.

There are many different ways you could organize a list of projects. It could be by genera, something I note on my list. It could be by series. Alphabetical order or order you thought of them are also viable options as long as you find it understandable. That’s the main goal of making a list: easy comprehension of what you have to work with.

3) Get to Know Your Characters

What do characters have to do with WIP lists? Everything! Knowing your characters is an important step to knowing what ideas will and won’t work in a story, what kind of story you will be writing, and how long your story will wind up being. Knowing your characters will prevent you from getting bogged down by unnecessary ideas during the planning process and will keep each project heading in the right direction.

4) Outline

One of the most frustrating things about having multiple WIPs in the works is gaining new ideas to add into your novel as you think and work with it. This is probably the #1 reason I did not get a book published when I was younger. Whenever I would get an idea, it would usually be transferred onto my favorite original characters and things would swing wildly out of control.

Soon, I had a hero’s journey in a college on two different planets with aliens and there was this library with special books and also… you get the idea. I had no control, nowhere to start, and was just about ready to give up on writing all together to get rid of the terror of trying to untangle the mess that I had made.

This is why I strongly suggest making at least a partial outline for each of your WIPs, even if it’s only as far as the short synopsis. If you are using a model similar to the one I talked about in my early posts (that I would be ever so grateful if you checked out by using the outline tag in my tag nest) you will have the main five of your story—character, setting, objective, opponent, and stakes—all tied together in a paragraph for your convenience. Knowing this will help to limit what you try to squeeze into one story. So killer robots from the future? You’re going to have to go in a different story than my Victorian era romance. So sorry.

5) Write Your Stories!

This is probably the most obvious one on the entire list. The best way to cut down on your list of WIPs is to turn them into works completed. Once you have your story written and published, it’s no longer in progress.

6) The Great Big Book of World Building

Knowing my luck, there is probably a book out there with this title, but I’m not referencing it here. What I am referencing are those massive books that come out a few years after a major movie is made, most often if it was a huge process or if the fandom for the book is large and spans generations. They normally walk you through the creative process of both the movie and, if applicable, the book it was based on. One thing that many of them have in common is the added cannon lore that affected the work but never made it into the final product.

This is part of the reality of media. The mind is a massive expanse that we still are incapable of knowing fully. The imagination goes on for miles and never runs out of ideas or areas to explore. There is no real way to work every idea or every character into a story.

Once, these ideas and characters were relegated to the cluttered notes of writers that rarely saw the light of day except in the occasional appendix. Many went unknown until after the author’s death and were placed in examinations of their work. We aren’t so limited now. With social media and blogs, it’s possible to spread the ideas around and even use them to whet people’s appetite for what’s to come. Just make sure it works with and supports your story and doesn’t contradict your work to appeal to a group of individuals or a fad. People won’t like that.

7) Add a new WIP

I know, this may seem a bit counter intuitive to suggest in a post about getting your WIPs under control, but hear me out. Sometimes books need sequels. Not all the time, but some times they do. Sequels can prevent a story from coming off as rushed or from being too intimidating for many readers to pick up.

If you can’t get rid of the school, the library, the aliens, or the international politics, you are probably going to have to break it down into different stories. First a school coming of age story with a library with special books that hints at world issues. Then a sequel that makes those world issues its main focus as the different world governments try to come together to work on a solution to the alien problem. Those two books will seem far more manageable than the one mega compilation, and admitting you need two books and planning for it will help you feel better and calmer about your situation as a whole.

8) Schedule an Update Day

If you couldn’t tell, most of the previous tips are about adding to or deleting from your list of works. This is going to be a flowing process and if you don’t take the time to deal with the main spreadsheet, you’re going to have a larger mess than before you decided to organize. And if you try to organize all the time, you won’t get anything else done. This is why I would say once a month or once a quarter, go through and clean up your list. It will be up to you to decide what works best for you.

9) It’s Okay to Let Go

I never want to let go of my ideas. It’s hard, especially if I’ve held onto them for a long, long time. Sometimes, it’s for the best. Recently, I had to scrap the majority of one of my book ideas and start from scratch with nothing but my characters and an overall idea. Not only was it too busy, but when I was honest with myself, too much outside influence had crept in and it felt like I was more mashing other people’s works together as opposed to honoring ideas from those I admired. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but sometimes, it’s for the best.

10) Don’t be Afraid to Dream

This is probably the most important one. Yes, too many works unorganized can be daunting, and yes, not everything will make it onto the page, but don’t shut down your thinking, your dreams, no matter what. Ideas are the real tool and inspiration that we work with, they power not only our writing but our view of the world. Don’t let the struggle to work on one project close you off to others. It’s easy to write down an idea and move on, it’s difficult to come up with a new idea when you’ve trained yourself to ignore them.

Faun

I became embroiled in an argument at a tavern the other night, and spent several hours attempting to sell the locals on my knowledge of the subject of our non-human person neighbors. The argument, I have found, is a frustratingly common one; therefore, I’ll be adding them to my book now and filling in any details on the pages later when I run into the species in question.

The conundrum is founded in the morphing titles given to three kinds of humanoid hybrids, or two kinds and a sub-kind as it may be. The first of this set that I’ll cover is the Faun.

Fauns are goat-human hybrids that tend physically towards the goat appearance. They have animalistic features such as a muzzle–as opposed to a more human visage–and tend to have more body hair, though it is not inconceivable to find fauns who maintain the curls on their upper body to remove some of their animal appearance. They tend to have curved horns, though occasionally will have the straighter horns depending upon their region of origin.

Another of their animal aspects is their cloven goat hooves. They are not good for shoeing, even if the faun in question would want them shoed, and they have to pay close attention to where they are stepping to avoid anything that could poke into the soft area between the toes. They also require frequent use of rocks or files to keep maintained. City dwelling faun have a slight advantage if their area has stone or brick paved roads.

A difference that is not due to genetics is their attitude towards life and society. Despite their obvious personhood, the prominent animal features Fauns possess mean both an unfortunate level of scorn from others and a majority who choose to live a wild lifestyle. The wild faun, as opposed to the city or town dwelling “tame” faun, spend their time in the fields and forests.

Wild fauns tend to be further subdivided into civilized and brutish. Those deemed civilized tend to, though there are exceptions, live immediately surrounding settlements. They also, in all cases, act in a proper manner. They cover themselves, wash, and will follow laws and statutes regarding things like property and assault—both violent and carnal in type. 

Brutish fauns, on the other hand, tend to avoid populous areas and are also frequently solitary. They are generally described as volatile, unkempt, and have been known to be a grave danger to travelers who enter their claimed territories. They are a burden on all their kin in the eyes of society due to their insistence on acting in a way more befitting a deranged wild animal than a person with a conscience.

It’s a shame, seeing the damage done to those of good standing due to the nasty plots of some of their kin. It is especially so due to the difficulty of tracking down those who commit such grave misdeeds due to their knowledge of mountains and deep forest territories. Fauns are not the only ones to suffer for this problem, and it does not help when people cannot properly distinguish what is and is not a Faun. In my next passage, I will cover another close relative who can often get an innocent Faun into trouble.

Poetry

Poetry is one of the oldest forms of creative writing, mainly due to the fact that they have been around since before reading and writing were things people had the ability to do or easy access too. A poem is a way to pack emotion into a condensed space with set rules that allow for easier memorization to keep the story alive as accurately as possible. The spreading of writing only served to increase the ways poetry could be experienced, meaning that there will always be a love for this kind of writing; even apart from songs.

Building Blocks

There are many different kinds of poems and therefore many different building blocks available to help structure them. These building blocks normally come together to create the well-known styles that we are accustomed to seeing.

Meter is one such block. It is the rhythmic measure of a line or the pattern of the beats. Another way to think of it is the pattern you use when emphasizing the syllables of a line when speaking a line. Take the word ‘behold’ for example. It has two syllables be-hold. When speaking, you will typically emphasize or accent the ‘hold’ syllable while the ‘be’ syllable is less stress. This gives the word ‘behold’ an iamb meter (UE).

If you switch the emphasis around, like in ‘mournful’, the word would have a trochee meter (EU). Meter also works with phrases as well, any syllables on the same line, and you can have a dactyl meter (EUU) like ‘this is the’ or anapest meter (UUE) ‘on the sea.’

Another component in many poems is the rhyme scheme. This typically refers to the patter of rhyming words at the ends of lines. However, it is possible to have an internal rhyme scheme as well. This doesn’t mean that all poems rhyme, something that blew my mind in third grade, but when they do, they tend to fall into a few different categories. Some of the schemes are ABAB or alternating, ABBA or enveloped, AABB or couplet, and ABCB or ballad. The rhyme scheme can also be irregular which is a way of saying “I rhymed once or twice in this entire work and need a simple way to say so.”

Rhythm, at first glance, seems to be a duplicate of meter in definition. It’s the beat or movement of a poem. The difference is that, while meter is focused with the emphasis of syllables in the line, rhythm is concerned with the speed and movement of the poem as a whole.

The last subject I want to cover is the stanza, or the groups of lines in a poem. Stanzas go back to the origin of poems, when the main method of learning and spreading them was orally. For this reason, most stanzas are between 3-7 lines, though they can be more or less. That’s also why most other parts of the poem are based around the stanza.

Types of Poems

There are many different types of poems that use and ignore various aspects of the building blocks I listed above. Each type tends to be defined with specific ways of pairing these different aspects.

A sonnet is a poem with 14 lines, most often grouped in stanzas of 4, 4, 4, and 2. The most common rhyme scheme for sonnets, popularized by Shakespear, is alternating for the four-line stanzas followed by a couplet. ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

A haiku is a fun kind of poem. The haiku throws out the need for rhyme making it completely optional. Haikus possess a set three-line stanza and the art comes in when you find the way to express your idea in the restrictive 5 7 5 syllable limit. It takes practice to get it right!

Inspired by haikus is the cinquain poem. These have five lines instead of three, and don’t necessarily rhyme. As with most spinoffs, there are a handful of them in use. Some place the emphasis on meter, others on syllables to make a visual pattern, or the use of certain types of words in each line such as adjectives.

The epic is a long narrative poem that is about a hero or an adventure. This is different from the ballad which is a long narrative poem about a legend or folk tale. Ballads also have the distinction of often having clear-cut morals or life lessons and are frequently performed as songs.

Speaking of, songs are poems! And so is free verse which is more performance based and tends to send all normal qualities into the irregular zone.

The tradition of poetry carries on from prehistory to today; a link across time that unites our species in their pursuit of entertainment, knowledge, and creativity. It’s a lucky thing to be able to keep up the tradition and to inspire it into the future.

Writing Tools

Today, I want to talk about a novel writing tool that I didn’t know existed until recently when I was searching random templates on Microsoft Word. That tool is the Microsoft Word Novel Template. The program also has a book format, story format, and non-fiction format that offer different nuanced changes to the overall style, but the novel template offers the most detailed tips as well as a few extra features that seemed lacking in the others. I’ll outline some of those features and perks so you can decide if it sounds like a good match. Later, I may go over the other templates in a single comparison article to point out what’s different, better, or lacking about each.

Quick and Easy

This template really takes the guesswork out of formatting. Between the fill-in-this-here bubbles and the blue text tips scattered throughout, it doesn’t take a computer genius to put a story in an acceptable layout that you and your editors, agents, and beta readers will love.

Most major pieces of formatting are either done for you (header, footer, page count– all done), selectable from the styles bar on the Home tab of the ribbon, or spelled out in detail like you’ve never used them before. This is good because I’ll admit I had never used the page break tool in Layout and would have had to search it online if the steps weren’t written out for me.

Amusingly, some of the tips are surface level writing tips like: “use the opening few paragraphs to hook you reader’s interest,” “use visual writing,” and “make sure there’s enough motivation at the end of your chapter to keep the story moving forward.” It’s a mixture of funny and mildly terrifying to think of someone opening this kind of in-depth template with zero prior work done on their novel. Perhaps that’s just me.

Layout

There are several pages of information that are available before even reaching the actual story content, ranging from necessary to optional, this template has in store for you to fill out.

The first page is, rather obviously, the title page. There are boxes to fill in: any agent information that you may have if you are going a traditional publishing route, the title, your author name (which can be your legal name or a pen name), the approximate word count to fill in at the end, and your legal name and contact information.

Second is one of the technically optional features that I think is very necessary; the table of contents. I don’t think I’m the only one who gets a bit indignant when books don’t have one of these, even if they don’t title their chapters. Don’t make me flip through trying to figure out where something I’m trying to reference is located! Please?

The table of contents is also an active table in the document. As you add chapters using the heading and sub-heading styles you are able to hop up to the table of contents page and right click to update the field. Once updated, not only will your chapters be in the table of contents, but they will appear in the navigation side panel which makes it easier to jump from one point to the next while working.

The next major bit of formatting are the header and footer that appear on all but the title page. The header contains the author last name, title, and an automatically tracking page number. The name and title are linked to their title page counterparts and the page number is even programmed to use lower case roman numerals up until the Chapter 1 page like a fancy novel. It’s even smart enough to keep track of your table of contents taking up four pages or you adding an extra page because your novel is split into three books. (I picked the habit up from one of my favorite childhood authors, Brian Jacques and now stories seem a bit odd without it.)

The footer contains the full author name and a year insert for copywrite information. You wrote it and if you decide to print out your 200+ page manuscript for some reason, you’re going to want people to know when they come across the pages that it’s owned.

The final bit of layout to mention are the heading, scene, and body formats. Each one helps you to keep your chapters consistent from start to end.

Things I Learned

Apart from now knowing how to operate a page break and what tables and headings are good for in a word document, there were a few things about book formatting in general that I had either never noticed before or completely forgot that were pointed out to me in the blue tip text. Somehow, I managed to take two college level creative writing classes, score high nineties in both, and still never had most of these things pointed out to me.

When you start a new chapter, the title is located 1/3 of the way down the page. I found this to be true in most of my books and reason I might have overlooked it because many of the books I’ve read don’t care much for blank space. They usually have a square illustration in that gap before the chapter heading that can seem more like an illustration choice than a formatting one.

The opening paragraph of a new chapter or a new scene within a chapter is not indented! This honestly blew my mind; if there’s one thing that elementary school taught me about paragraphs it’s that they are always indented! Except if they start a chapter as I quickly learned when I searched through my bookshelf for confirmation.

I had known it was possible to have more than one scene in a single chapter, but what I didn’t know was that when formatting a novel, you will use a center aligned # to indicate the break. The template does have a new scene style on the Home tab, but it doesn’t affect the navigation side bar or anything else, so it’s much easier to just ctrl e in my opinion.

This last one was more of a reminder; you don’t underline things in your novel. I think the wires were crossed for this due to writing reports for classes. You definitely underline things like titles in those reports (or some of them anyway, there are so many different rules) however, when it comes to novels, italics are your best friend for emphasis.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a very helpful tool for a writer, especially one further along in their process. There are a few features that don’t pan out exactly as expected, but overall it makes formatting simple and quick. And if you can check one thing off your nightmare list of things to research and piece together yourself, a smart writer will take it.

In my current novel, I have finished Book 1: Debut and transferred it from the working documents onto the novel template so I could see it in all its pulled together glory. So far, I have 252 pages of content, 31 chapters, and 67,314 words. My table of contents is already two pages long, and I’m excited. Thank you for reading this post, and happy writing!

When Things Don’t Go Your Way…

When things don’t go your way,
The first instinct is to give up,
Give in to failure,
Avoid the mistake,
Withdraw from any reminder
That flaws pervade the self.

When things don’t go your way,
Temptations can grow
Multiply
Spiral
Out of Control.
Did you ever have control?

When things don’t go your way,
Doubts fill the mind,
Pain the heart,
Darkness the soul,
As perfection proves itself a paper sheet
Covering the weak and vulnerable.

When things don’t go your way,
When imperfection is exposed to the light of day,
Relax,
Unwind,
Remember,
That every failure,
That every mistake,
Is not an end
But instead
A turning page.

When things don’t go your way,
Start a new chapter,
Don’t put down the pen.
Get back on the horse,
Don’t throw away the saddle.
Try again,
And again.

Because every time
Things don’t go your way,
It’s an opportunity to show,
What lies beneath that imperfection;
Weakness
Or Strength.

Rough middle of the week. I’m going to spend the weekend trying to get some posts pre-written to give myself more consistency. Thank you for understanding and I’ll be back to normal on Monday!

Monday Motivation

Today seemed like a great day to tackle tips for staying on track with writing, or whatever you’re working on. I’ve had a TB test for work, a blood draw, and found out I have a cavity; so I need a positive spin on a grumpy Monday. Everyone has had a moment where they thought they couldn’t press on another step so I’m going to talk about some things that I have used before and rate them on their effectiveness.

Disclaimer: This sort of this is, obviously, subjective so feel free to try or ignore what I have to suggest. I’d also love to hear what helps you! Thanks for reading and commenting.

Take a Nap

I have always used dreams as a source of inspiration in my writing. At least the ones that make sense on some level of reality anyway. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, lost, confused, or frustrated, a nap can help me set aside the issue and come back to it with a fresh mind and possibly new inspiration.

Effectiveness: 55%

Reason: Easy to overdo and not always an option if you’re trying to write within a time constraint. Dreams also don’t care they have the ability to inspire your writing and might just stick you with the stressful “wake up only to realize you’re still asleep sixteen times in a row until your brain starts to malfunction and you have to will your body into consciousness” nightmare.

Work on a Different Project

This one is going to get under the skin of some people. However, there are times when I just can’t look at my WIP for a second more or I’m going to cry because I can’t deal with the emotions or the one spot I’m having trouble navigating. To both pull away from the issue while still being productive, I’ll pick up another, often less developed, WIP and start to work with it. It can be anything from working on the long outlining process to writing a chapter or two for a casual fanfiction. It is a good way to come at the problem from a different angle. Sometimes you have to take a break from fantasy politics to explode an alien attack ship in order to realize that there is an entirely different way for your elves to handle the meeting; aka what the exploded aliens realize they should have done to not have their guts scattered across an asteroid.

Effectiveness: 85%

Reason: You’re always working on something so you aren’t wasting any precious time by staring at a blank page and waiting for the answer to jump out at you. The downside is if you don’t keep yourself in check you can be like 19-year-old me and have 12 WIPs open at once and spend precious years screaming at a blank page and waiting for one of them to grab your attention more than the others. Never a good look. There is also the chance of getting your story streams crossed which can both be a simple sign of a writing style or come out looking like a copy paste extravaganza.

Just Write Something

This is the one that is most common to hear, just keep writing. You’re never going to get through your work unless you are putting words on the page. It doesn’t matter if you are stuck for a week and only manage 500 words a day. This sort of stagnation will pass and the next thing you know you’ve spat out three chapters, totaling 11 pages, in an eight-hour binge. It will always balance itself out eventually.

Effectiveness: 80%

Reason: Many would disagree with my thoughts on this but, even with the best intentions, there is only so far that you can go if you’re walking on broken feet. If you are seriously stumped and getting to the point where you are questioning life and everything involved in it, you need to step away from the problem for at least some time. Skipping around, writing nonsense, and forcing things to happen are all going to cause you greater problems and hours of alterations or total rewrites in the future. If your problem is more motivation than inspiration, that’s when this tip will be most effective. Yes, that little game on your phone is pretty but you need to buckle down and produce something if you’re going to get past the first draft.

Do an Activity

Preferably, this is exercise or something at least semi-social. Writing, even if based on a time and place far removed from the here and now, is attached to our feelings and interactions. Dialogue will sound better if you interact with people. Nature descriptions will be more vivid if you get out into it. It’s much easier to write if you’re not jittering from your third coffee as you reach your ninth hour at a desk.

Effectiveness: 75%

Reason: From what I’ve heard, many writers are introverts and have small social batteries. I am like that to a degree, mostly I have a hard time finding friends who are cool with the fact that I prefer watching things than participating in them on many occasions. Exercise is a good part of this too, though depending on health and the weather it might be hard to do. Just remember, even if you are stepping away for something other than a different project, never do nothing. Unless you’ve scheduled some me time as a reward.