Category: Writing Tips

Forbidden Words in Writing

When wrapping up my first draft of Debut, part or book one of my current WIP, The Great Awakening, my mind started to turn towards thoughts of editing. Polishing and nailing down all the different plot threads introduced before moving on to the next sections made the most sense to me. As this is the first work I’ve ever extensively edited, apart from school reports, I turned to the annals of knowledgeable, established authors on the internet to learn what I could.

There were a handful of tips I found. From the obvious ‘self-editing does not replace the need for a professional editor’ to the less obvious tips for checking for voice inconsistencies in your characters; there was plenty to learn. One repeated lesson stuck out to me: words to avoid in your writing.

Top ten lists are dedicated to the subject, some even go so far as to suggest there are fifty or more words you absolutely should never use when working on a novel or other piece of writing. I was incredulous when I first came across articles and videos on the subject. Surely, words we know and use in everyday life can’t be ripped from writing wholesale? Yet a majority of the articles emphasize they are not making a suggestion; claiming you won’t get published if you don’t heed their advice.

The reasons given for the rule follows a consistent line of reasoning: the selected words can bog down your writing, they are unnecessary filler, and/or they are associated with showing as opposed to telling. Articles that give more leniency admit dialogue is an entirely different beast, taking these words out completely is just unrealistic. Some even suggest using dialogue to sneak in the words you “can’t” use in your narrative voice.

I decided, due to the overwhelming presence of this topic, to attempt pulling these words out of my writing. Right away, I ran into issues. The first of which is the fact many lists can’t agree on what words are forbidden. Yeah, that will put a damper on things.

The first step became trying to pinpoint which words I was supposed to take seriously. Some of the most common words to avoid were: that, very, like, and all adverbs (-ly words). Expanding from there, it was said you should avoid any simple descriptors (big, small, good, nice, many), shouldn’t use any form of ‘to be’ (which is one of the most common verb groups in language), and definitely can’t use any words that ‘tell’ (feel, seemed, thought).  

As you can see, it gets ridiculous in my not so humble opinion. But I was willing to try; after all, I do agree it’s a bad idea to have an excess of repeated words on the same page and as these are all common words, I knew they would be a good place to start with killing the repetition in my novel at least. Some of the words, I didn’t use at all; others, I overused, and, so far, I’ve been liking the changes being aware of these words has led me to make.

That being said, as you can see from this article alone, there are times when I think it makes more sense to leave the words alone than to take them out. One of my biggest observations is taking out every single suggested word can lead to over-flowery writing that is a chore to read.

While I’m still working on perfecting my craft, I find myself in camp “use sparingly and be aware of your word use” as opposed to camp “cut every instance out of your writing.” My suggestion, that I think is far more worth your time, is to use a word breakdown tool on your writing. There are several you can find online; how they work is you post your writing in their script box and it will process your most common words. If you work in Microsoft Word, you can also open the Find tool and type in words to search your manuscript for repeats. Most importantly, read your work. Does a word stick out as repeating too frequently? Do your descriptions lack a vibrant feel? These are both much better indicators of the health of your manuscript than some arbitrary list of words.

Also, don’t forget the beta reader process and to hire a professional editor. Both are again, far more effective than an impersonal list.

Thank you for reading and sharing! I’d love to know what you think on the topic in the comments!

Book Setting

A primary factor of any story is the setting in which it takes place. The where of your story will be not only a backdrop to the action, but a central cog moving events taking place. The weather, people, environment: all contribute to a good story, meaning an author will devote hours of writing and development time to their setting.

What makes up a setting?

The dictionary definition of setting is the location something is or happens. In a book, there is much more to it, though location is a sizeable part of the equation. It also tends to be the easiest decision to make, at least in the broad sense.

When you have an idea for a story, in most cases you already have a rough idea of where you want it to take place. Are you writing a historical fiction pirate story? Your setting will most likely be the Caribbean ocean. Is your story about the first generation of human enrolling in an intergalactic school after mankind enters into a pact with other races? Your setting will probably be on an alien planet. This part is simple enough, but only the first step of journey.

Once you have the general idea of when and where your story will take place, it’s time to dive into location specifics. This part will absolutely take research, even if you’re writing about the city you grew up in. What plants grow in the region? What are the rivers like? The topography? The last thing you want to do as a writer is add a plot hole by introducing a plant or animal into your story which absolutely could not survive in the environment you have it set in.

It is also important to look into what sort of housing is available in a given region. Indiana won’t have adobe houses, but Texas will. Your icy alien planet will most likely need heavily insulated, practical buildings as opposed to open, glassy show pieces. Environment will also dictate jobs, needs, and behaviors.

Once you have the environment and cities planned, the people who will be part of your world also need to be thought up. Depending on your needs, you will have to decide how each community your characters will interact within is going to function. What diversity is present? If you’re in a pre-Civil War southern town in America the answer will be not much. If you’re in present day New York City, the diversity will be much higher.

Even if you create a planet, if you’re not looking for a homogeneous masked society where any one person can be mistaken for another, looking at real life statistics for the distribution of social groups, morals, customs, and other aspects will make your writing far more believable. Speaking of morals and customs, what are those? People are hard pressed to agree on those even when they try; it is unrealistic for any place to be of one mind. Unless you’re dealing with a hive-mind situation.

Challenges with Setting

As you may have guessed, this is far from an all-inclusive list. Each piece of what makes up a good setting for a story can be given a full-length 1,000-word article. Similarly, an article could be devoted to each different challenge presented during setting construction.

The first coming to mind when going over a list like this is just how much more an author will need to come up with than will ever reach the novel page. You might not spend a long time detailing plants in your book, but you had better know what kinds are local to your organic herbalist. The local customs of your alien race may seem trivial, until you have them all acting in a certain way but can’t pinpoint why. Multiple book and movie franchises will release some of this lore in exploratory compilation works. Other than that, much of it won’t reach the page.

Skipping out on the research stage can create an entirely new laundry list of problems, primarily with consistency. Why did this group act differently than that one? How can your character tell one person or group from the next? How did a parrot get involved in a story set in Michigan? Even if you plan on handwaving the event through science, magic, or irresponsible pet ownership, it helps to know what needs to be handwaved and how soon to avoid alienating your readers with a mix-up.

The Great Awakening Setting

The setting for my current WIP, The Great Awakening, is our present-day earth. I haven’t made any extensive changes to what you might experience on the streets today. What I did include is an alternate, sealed away history (so it won’t be remembered or contribute to how the world runs), plus a process of change taking place throughout the story to relearn lost information and return the world to how it once was.

That, of course, doesn’t eliminate my need for research. Most events take place in Washington state. I’ve never been far west of Indiana, so there were definitely things I’ve had to learn about the weather and where the most desolate locations are; to name a few.

I’m also trying to be slightly nebulous with some facts, not wanting to single out any place too specific to free up the imagination. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t look up what sorts of trees grow in the national parks in the state, nor does it completely erase some subtle clues to real-life counterparts to some background characters, even if I only give then a title.

There is also time travel involved in my story. Ancient time travel. To make it believable, my main character is going to have an opportunity to learn a dead language from one of the few ancients who still remember it before hand so she will have a reason to understand what is going on once she enters the past.

If you’re a writer, what is your favorite part of world building? What part could you just as soon do without? For readers, what book or movie has your favorite world building? The worst? Thank you so much for reading and commenting! Have a great day!

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.

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!

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.

Subplots

While making the skeleton outline for the main story, I mentioned that some stories have subplots that run alongside their primary narrative. Not every story does, especially if you are writing a one-shot short story, and there is nothing wrong with taking a single topic and following it through without any detours. However, many (if not most) stories have subplots that run alongside the main story. From a love interest in an action piece to that pesky job that prevents the protagonist from spending as much time as she would like with her family, subplots should always contain something that is paramount to the overall story even when it pulls away from the main action.

I’ve read too many books, and I’m sure you have too, where the subplot becomes more of a side tangent. It’s not relevant plot-wise, nor is it a sub category of the main story. This is something that, even if interesting, would be better suited for a prologue, epilogue, or completely different story. Keeping the story on track means that anything you write about that isn’t one of the primary plot points should still pick your characters up and send them hurling across the pages in that direction as opposed to letting them meander their way three towns over. No reader enjoys having to slog through the storm of unfulfilled tension to grab your characters by the ear and drag them back to where the action is because the author forgot to do it for them. There’s evil afoot and dagnabit we need to be doing something about it!

If you’ve read all the preceding articles, you probably would have picked up on what I’m going to suggest to help prevent wandering plots.

Stick to Primary

During the two character posts, I mentioned sticking to PCs or primary characters while doing the exercises. The reason is simple, to help guide you through this step. The first rule to making sure your subplots stay on track is to make absolutely certain every plot point contains at least one of the primary characters doing something important. In the majority of cases, that one character will be your main character. But, if you are writing in third person omniscient, it could be any of them.

Having a primary character does not automatically assure that a thread is a worthy subplot, however, and there are more classifications.

Make it Matter

The second rule to crafting a worthy subplot is to make sure it matters to the main plot of the story. If it isn’t, it probably doesn’t belong. The one exception would be introducing something into the first book of a series that will come back later on to be important.

Sticking to the first part, keeping it relevant, I will give a quick example of what I mean. To explain for those who have never watched anime, and to re-traumatize those who have, many popular shows run into a frustrating problem comparable to this point. Manga, the Japanese comics that anime tend to be based on, are often picked up for shows as soon as their popularity takes off. This means, in many cases, that the manga itself is not fully written and is continuing to release issues as the anime is being made. Do you see where this is going? With the majority of the story already written, character designs already made, and larger teams able to work with and compile the shows, anime often times quickly catches up and surpasses the amount of material the original author has made.

There have been two routes normally taken by animators when this happens, because stopping production of a popular show is absolutely unthinkable. The first is to get a team together and scrape together a satisfying conclusion to the story that may or may not have anything to do with how the manga will end. This is used in shows that have very serious subject matter in most cases as any deviation will completely throw off the meter of the story.

The other route is filler arcs. 99% of filler arcs fall into the side tangent category as opposed to the subplot category. You don’t know frustration until you’ve sat through a twenty-episode tournament, received five episodes of plot, and were then blindsided by Tournament Zero: it’s like the last one, but the same! Don’t write a tournament zero. Also, don’t write the details of your side character’s multiple love affairs in extended detail unless a messy divorce or twenty summonses (I can’t believe that’s actually the plural) for child support are going to play into the overall plot of the story. We can know that he’s been with one of every bipedal species in the realm without having to hear about it. Unless you’re writing a bard erotica. But it wouldn’t be the side plot in that case.

From A to B

If you stick with primary characters and maintain subject matter that is important to the main plot, you’re almost guaranteed to create a working subplot. Almost. There is one last thing to keep in mind when you look over your sidelined ideas that didn’t make it into the main plot of your story. Does it keep the main plot moving, even if we’ve stepped away from it?

Sometimes, that’s easy to answer. If one of your obstacle bullet points is needing a key to get to the bad guy, a side plot where the heroes go on a dungeon crawl to obtain said key is a pretty safe bet. If well written, not only do your characters obtain the much-needed item, but they learn a new ability that will come in handy later without having to completely stop the action for a training montage.

Other times, it’s a bit harder to balance. Comedic minor villains are a great way to break up the tension and even help the hero once they realize the main baddy is too terrible to support. But if you start dissecting their tragic backstory in two in-depth chapters three chapters away from the climactic battle, you’ve probably overdone their involvement.

Put it All Together

This can be one of the more difficult parts of the process. You know what points you want to add to the main skeleton, but where do they go? The key quest clearly comes after learning a key is needed, but will it be fully complete before the villain makes their next move? Does it make more sense to put the major argument of the couple before or after the accident? How will it change the perspective of the characters and the impression the readers have of them?

You might have to do some rearranging, because if you wanted subplot x to happen between main plot b and c but subplot x needs character 3 and character 3 isn’t introduced until after main plot d, you are going to have a problem on your hands. Maybe it is possible for subplot x to happen after main plot d. If not, can character 3 be introduced sooner?

No one but you can answer these questions. After struggling with it myself, I’ve come across many different suggestions on how best to spread out your ideas to help you decide. You can use sticky notes to have easy rearrangement, a solid line to squeeze points into so you don’t over fill one part of the story, whatever you need. My only recommendation is to keep it organized so you don’t have to worry about being confused later.

Sorry this wound up being a day late. It has been storming where I live and my internet keeps kicking in and out. Thank you for reading and keep imagining!

Characters

            If you’re following along, I’ve outlined how to go from a basic idea for a story to a full skeleton outline. That’s a lot of work and, in some short stories, that might be all you need to get your project underway. However, often times in novels you will need more to flesh out your pieces and that normally falls to side plots. So how do you choose side plots? The first thing to consider is your characters.

            The main plot is your main character interacting with the antagonist and the objective they are trying to solve. In many stories, your character can’t do it by themselves and needs help from others. While making your skeleton for the main plot, you most likely realized that there were characters, or needed to be characters, at certain points in the story. Maybe it’s a best friend, maybe it’s a mentor, or maybe it’s the guys being paid to help with the scheme. Though they touch into the main part of the story, they probably wouldn’t have enough room to be introduced and grow without a few side happenings. How do we know what scenes we need to add to keep the plot moving believably?

            First, we need to meet the characters. By this point you should already have some idea who your primary characters are. Even if you don’t have names, you should at least have some place holders like: male hero, evil wizard, protagonist’s mom, friend who wants out of the friendzone, etc. Just like in the real world, these are all different people who will have different ideas, beliefs, goals, and motivations. Knowing what all of these are will be the key to crafting a realistic set of side plots to help get everyone to the final goal.

            For this exercise, you’re going to want to stick to the main characters who are going to impact the main plot line. These I’ll refer to as Primary characters. Later, you’ll need to think through Secondary characters, those who only affect a side quest in a significant way, and Background characters, those who are there but could really be swapped out for anyone without change. But for now, we’re concerned with the big guns and not Drunk Guy Randy who lives at the local tavern because Martha left him for shoving 15 peanuts up his nose whenever he gets drunk. Unless Randy knows where the magic amulet of liver health rests. Then you can worry about him now.

            Take out a note book or a piece of paper or a Microsoft word sheet. Got it? Good. Because now it’s time to figure out who is going to be in this story and write… you guessed it: a sentence to let us know who we’re dealing with. Don’t worry, this will be expanded upon later.

Sentence should contain

            First, we need to decide your PM’s name because that’s important. No more place holders for you! Behind the name is a great tool and doesn’t carry the stigma of a sixteen-year-old girl walking into the bookstore to buy a baby name book. I swear, I’m just working on a book! Remember, unless your society is weird, parents choose names for their babies. The rich, white, Europeans are not going to name their child after an anime character and the nerdy anime cosplayers who live on minimum wage are not going to name their kid Sir Reginald III. So, make sure your name matches what their parents would have chosen, as well as your character.

            Next, we need to come up with each PM’s defining trait. How would people who know them describe them? Idealist? Jokester? Happy? Sad? Shouty? This is a snap shot of how the world perceives them that will dictate how they tend to act. If a character is going to tell jokes and play pranks, they’re a jokester or trickster. If they are a sunny ball of happiness, they are an optimist. If they think things should be done a certain way to lead to the best outcome, they are an idealist. You will want to choose something that will be easy to show at all times, unless something major happens to pull them out of their typical mood. I won’t list any dos or don’ts here because it completely depends on your own style and talent to decide what is and isn’t reasonable for you.

            Now that we know what the PM acts like, what drives them? Why do they do what they do? Is your character a dad fighting to make the world a better place for his children? Is your character like my MC: a dreamer who has a vision of a better future and wants to act on it? For your main character, this is what will get them to accept the main quest. For your villain, it will be why they are evil, even if it’s just because they want to be evil. For PMs who aren’t the MC or the villain, why do they help or hinder the hero? What do they hope to gain or are afraid to lose?

            Different from their drive, what is your PM’s main goal? This is what they are heading towards. The villain is evil because of his drive. His goal is what he hopes to achieve with his evil. The children are their father’s drive, but his goal is to topple the evil regime and make the world better.

            What is the character’s role in the story? Are they the main character? Main villain? The love interest? The Mentor? A minor villain? Why do they deserve to be in this story at all and what makes them count as a PM?

            And those are our pieces! With this, you should be ready to craft a killer one to two sentence character description that will help you know how to move forward with your story. Next Monday, I’ll talk about fleshing out those sentences and Wednesday I’ll cover creating the side plots. In the meantime, I’ll see you Friday with another bestiary entry and leave you with an example sentence. Thank you for reading and liking! Feel free to comment with any questions or other methods that you have found that work for you on each subject.

James Mooney, a hardworking immigrant with a dark sense of humor, wants to lift his family out of poverty and away from the scaffolding that his brother died working on by making quick money with good moonshine and teaching others how to do the same.

Starting the Plot

Welcome back! I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has read my last piece. I was not expecting to see so many views in just a few days so early on!

In my last post, I talked about finding the Main Five of a story: the Character, Setting, Objective, Opponent, and Stakes. These are the foundational pieces of a story; you can’t build a novel, movie, game, or anything else without knowing the who, what, when, where, and why. Now that the foundation is set, where to go from here?

The simple answer is plot. The less simple question that follows it, how do you come up with the plot? Personally, I didn’t have a great deal of trouble with this step other than having far too many ideas for any sane person to work into a story. However, I’ve had friends who will know one or two things that they want to transpire in their final masterpiece but don’t know how to string them along and link them together coherently. Between some of my own trial and error and getting a few others involved, I think I have a good two-part suggestion for anyone facing similar struggles.

Premise and Synopsis

So the first step in part one is to create a premise and a synopsis to help guide you and keep you on track. That way, when you are pulling together the main plot points later you have a cut-and-dry guideline to keep you moving in the right direction. This way, unlike me in some early cases, you don’t wind up sobbing at the cutting table when you realize you’ve written three or four books at the same time and none of them are going anywhere near a coherent conclusion.

I found many different websites offering the premise and synopsis advice, which is where I came across the concept to mull over, but none of the ones I found had what I considered to be a satisfactory answer as to what these should encapsule. I knew they were supposed to be short (a sentence for the premise and a paragraph for the synopsis) but that was the primary advice. About your story and short… not so helpful as it would turn out.

Part of the problem may be me and my over-wordiness or my uncanny ability to get sidetracked into a spiraling cyclone of writing whenever I set my hand to the pen or keys. My sister has the opposite problem, as more of an artist than a writer, yet having the need to write the basics of a story so she can craft her comic around it, she doesn’t get nearly as overblown as I do: which is where I finally realized what the answer to the issue was. In trying to get my sister to write more than three words before coming back to ask again how to proceed, I introduced her to the premise and synopsis in the following way.

For your premise, write a sentence containing all five of your main five as they will be presented in your story. If your main character is Joe the paperboy, your setting is New York during the 1920’s, your objective is helping Joe’s mother with her cancer treatment, the opponent is the loan shark who works with one of the local mob bosses, and the stakes is Joe, his mom, and his dog will all die if he fails, your premise might look something like this:

Joe needs to help his mother pay for her cancer treatments but the local mafia’s loan shark wants more than a paperboy in 1920’s New York can afford, putting the lives of him, his mother, and their dog at stake.

Simple, right? “What about the synopsis, then?” you may ask. The best way to think of it is a paragraph detailing the relationship of each of the main five to the other. This will put you a step deeper in explaining your story while still limiting what you can put in it. This was a life saver for helping me to keep on track. Don’t worry about a love interest, don’t worry about the mentor, or anything else. Just stick to those main five in a small paragraph. Here’s another quick example of what I’m talking about.

Joe is a 15-year-old paperboy who lives in New York in the 1920’s. Joe’s mother has cancer and can’t afford her treatments on her small maid salary and Joe’s paperboy money. Against his mother’s warning, Joe goes to the local mafia to get a loan from their loan shark who just so happens to be the 20-year-old bully who has harassed Joe since he was three. The loan shark is a dangerous and evil man who wants to give the loan for 350% interest with only one year to pay it off. There is no way for him to pay it back, but Joe can’t stand the thought of losing his mother so he takes the deal. Now he has to pay off the loan quickly or the shark will kill him, his mother, and their dog for good measure.

That almost sounds like it could be on the back cover of a novel or movie, doesn’t it? And we only know five things with just a bit of added information to flesh out the idea. Now we can look at this for the rest of our drafting process to make sure our story stay’s on track. If we come up with a great idea for Joe to find a wife, but it won’t happen until he’s 18, that’s going in a sequel so put it aside. If you come up with a story about some of the mafia members who don’t really factor into that exact synopsis, their story belongs in a spinoff.

The Flurry

Step one of part one is complete, but I can’t very well leave it alone at that. Don’t worry, this next part is straightforward which is why I didn’t think this needed to be it’s own part or article. I’ve made the mistake of skipping this part, possibly because it’s often forgotten or assigned to a different stage of the process, but this is the best place for it in my personal experience.

After you have your premise and synopsis on paper, you probably have a great number of ideas buzzing around in your head. After all, before the antagonist was just a loan shark and now he’s a loan shark who has made your protagonist’s life miserable for twelve years. For that reason, it’s the best time to put those trains of thought to good use before they careen off the bridge of distraction into forgetfulness cavern or get turned around and wrecked in the tunnels of overthinking plot classifications.

That’s why for the second half of this tip I want you to do the exercise of many names at this point. Some call it brain storming, other info-dumping. I’ve heard it called the morning minutes, word vomit, and a litany of other monikers. It’s like icee-pops: everyone calls them something different. The concept is completely the same in all instances. You set a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes (the most you can tolerate in one sitting) and you write.

Take those five foundational stones and the premise and synopsis mortar that bind them together and write about them. Just ideas. Why is the loan shark a bully? How long has mom had cancer? Why does the loan shark hate dogs? Where is dad? Why didn’t Joe find a better solution to his problem? Whatever questions come to mind, answer them. Don’t worry about anything like the hero’s journey, or three act structures, or anything that will come later. Just write like you took fifteen minutes on the first question and have fifteen minutes to answer the last three.

That is part one of the two part plot point outline: premise, synopsis, flurry of writing. The next article on Monday will pull together what to do from that point. Yes, I did say Monday and that is because Fridays are my days for building up my bestiary! I’ve always loved mythical creatures and as a fantasy author my works do and will include so many of them! I want to have a place to display my takes on these myths and legends, and will likely include other fantasy elements later on like my plants, races, languages, worlds, and the like.

Thank you again for reading! I hope to see you around and to pass on more of my writing tips and stories.