Tag: author

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!

Living Fire

Near the volcanoes to the south, where I searched for salamanders, I met a group of people of a composition I had not thought possible. Climbing through arid stonescapes, I saw, in the evening, what I thought for certain was a brushfire. It was the middle of summer and rain had not touched the region for close to a month, causing all but the most resolute succulents to wilt and die off, making this a reasonable assumption. What was a concern, both to me and my guide, was the thought of the blaze spreading across the landscape and razing those few plants still clinging to life. To prevent this was the aim that pulled us over to the orange crackling flames and led to our discovery.

How surprised we were when the fire turned towards us as we arrived. Clothed in woven grasses, astonishingly not ash in her flames, the being seemed confused and frightened to see us. Its flames flickered as it pulled back from the tree it was disassembling into a basket it carried; staring at us with wide eyes near lost among its shimmering face. With caution, we attempted to address it, and, after a series of reassurances and queries, it spoke.

Words slipped out of the slit of its mouth; crackles beneath a hissing smoke. It was rather enchanting, the sound. The lady, who gathered materials outside of her community, led us back to meet with the head of her family who better knew our language and welcomed us as academics.

The elder explained the life of Living Fire; how they, for generations, have labored to keep the dry region from catching fire to protect several settlements near the mountains. They trade and work with those villages as well, which is how they have learned our speech.

Living Fires have a unique makeup; we were given an in-depth examination for the purpose of scholarship. Starting with a recently deceased member of the community, we were shown how, at the core of each Fire, is a solid body similar to a human’s but shrunken. It’s skin hard as rock, inside are organs familiar despite their different composition. For this reason, though large quantities can be fatal, water is still a necessary part of their system. It is far less than any other living thing, and is attained through the consumption of fruits and other watery foods.

This core must remain lit for life to be viable, the flames licking through their blood alongside streams of moisture that maintain them. The flames themselves build out most of their form, solid and warmer than the flesh of humans without being hot. Unless you were to anger them. Despite their normal control, they do have the same traits as fire when they choose to implement it. Even those individuals colored in jewel tones unfamiliar to normal flame possess the same effects.

This gives rise to the necessity of the way their society is structured. Family is the quintessential apex of their lives. An elder will be over his children and siblings, their family stretching out in a network of life down at least to the third generation. Once great-grandchildren arrive large families may break away into sub families, remaining close despite the split. If the family is smaller, however, it is common for them to keep their bond until the area they inhabit cannot house them further.

At the center of these units is the understanding that family is the greatest priority. They keep, nourish, and maintain each member which prevents any from falling behind due to illness, disability, or age. They also instill a knowledge of consequences: should a member commit a grave offense such as murder they know with their entire being their family will be the first to take action to correct them. It is not seen as a burden or imposition; rather, it is a duty, an honor, and the security of a grand future for the unit. Not even elders are immune to such correction, with self-reflection and independent reasoning the second and third most preached lessons. I can express nothing but greatest admiration for their structure and rearing.

Though we were unable to stay longer than those few hours with them, I feel they are shining examples of community. Given the chance, I would love to spend more time interacting with them in the future. For now, the journey continues.

Self-Marketing and Quarterly Goals

I’ve been writing and thinking about writing for years. I’ve worked on stories, and I’ve even published some early, less than stellar works on free publishing sites when I was younger. Recently, I decided to buckle down and create a novel fit for publishing. To help myself, I began to search the internet for tips and tricks to perfect my craft. Among the grammar and style tips were things that I not only didn’t expect to see, but things that downright terrified me. As you can likely guess from the title, self-marketing, and marketing in general, was one of those horrifying new realities.

Not only am I an introvert in real life, I’ve always been more of a creeper on social media as well: I never think to pull out my camera when something happens, I don’t feel the need to talk about my day, and I’ve never wanted to spend hours keeping track of myself online. This has led to a handful of problems from stopping and starting, overstretching myself, and being unrealistically frustrated at every turn. Just looking at the dates for posts here shows some of this.

Setting realistic goals is probably my biggest struggle when it comes to anything in life. I have always had a tendency to bite off more than I can chew, which quickly results in me falling flat on my face. When I first heard about self-marketing, I panicked and opened accounts on multiple platforms, some that I had never used before, and I poured over them for hours before staring in frustration at the two likes and three followers that had appeared after a few days, unsure of what I was doing wrong.

This was when I first dove into this over a month ago. It took stepping back from it all to realize how ridiculous I was being. No one becomes well-liked overnight, especially when everything is so inconsistent due to me being overwhelmed. With this in mind, I have been trying to get a better look at what I am doing. My blog here has become one of my steady accounts, and I feel I’ve had some nice results (when I stick to my schedule). My AO3 account, where I post small story chapters in the hopes of getting an idea about what I can change about my writing on an ongoing basis, is another I’ve been keeping up with this past month, and I’m happy with the results I’ve been getting. The other accounts I made in that panicked flurry have either been dropped or merely followed along with the occasional like and retweet.

I have still been running into issues with consistency, and, despite an adjusted outlook, I feel that I could still be seeing better results than I am. This has led me back to the drawing board to think of ways to incorporate those other platforms and to improve both my quality and consistency.

It’s not much of a surprise that working a full-time job and trying to write my first full novel takes up much of my time. Trying to make three 1,000 word blog posts a week, three 2,000 word chapters a week, and planning to add even more content on top of that isn’t realistic for my situation. For this reason, I’m scaling back on my commitments. From this point on, I’ll only be posting two blog posts a week, two chapters, two Instagram posts, and a few other platforms as well. Essentially, in creating my plan I decided that the best solution for me right now is to have One Thing that I focus on each day.

Another problem that I’ve run into, in part due to over committing, is having next to no idea what to post. A video on Skillshare by Kickstarter that gave real-life examples of other people’s outreach gave me ideas about how to move forward in that regard. My schedule no longer has vague squares too broad to fill. Now, when I look at my plan, I see exactly which kind of content I am going to prepare for each day.

For each of the eight blog posts in a four-week cycle I have a set type of article I’m going to feature. The fourth week Tuesday will always be my book review. The first and third Fridays will always be me adding to my Beastiary. I’ll have to do the selection from there, but it’s a much more controlled setting and I’m feeling confident about it. The only problem is going to be how it migrates through the month, which I plan to solve by adding a fifth week every three months.

It still remains to be seen how this works for me. I will, in all likelihood, still need to tweak it several times. Hopefully it leads to less stress and better content, so thank you for reading and stick by as I sort this out!

As a last bit, I want to share my writing and life goals for the next three months. Multiple advice blogs say this is the best way to stay motivated and accountable, so I’ll give it a shot.

  1. Moderate edit of act one of my story.
  2. Finish writing act two of my story.
  3. Miss no more than five social media posts.
  4. Lose 5 pounds.
  5. Have a total of 100 followers across my media pages.
  6. Read a full-length novel.

Some of those may seem low, but I’m still guessing my way though. If I hit any of them too easily, I’ll try to double what I planned. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great day!

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.

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.

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.

Kelpies

Today was a most difficult one. I was moments away from failing to save a young boy hardly old enough to leave his mother’s arms. Though it was, in the end, a happy occasion; I cannot help but think what may have happened if I had been a few moments longer on my way. Nor can I rid my mind of every venture ended when none were around to intervene. Thus my writing today highlights the dangers of the Kelpie, a creature responsible for many deaths.

Born of water and malcontent, these beings are the incarnation of loathing. This I do not say lightly, as I know many across the worlds are quick to cast many of our elemental friends and neighbors into a demonic classification. As much as I withhold from speaking such words normally, I shout them most seriously at the Kelpie.

None have seen this beasts true form and lived to tell the tale. It possesses the abilities of a morph and will only show itself to humans in the form of a dark horse at the water’s end. Rarely, it will also take the form of a human woman; unclothed and voluptuous. This form is where the questioning sprang from in the pursuit of determining the personhood of the creature. It was quite quickly determined that there was no such thing to find in these monstrous beings as they quickly slew all who would draw near; dragging them into the water that they call home.

Though distasteful in my sights, the scholar in me cannot rightly fault them their ways. Determining that there is no person in the mass of agitated water in the form of a beast removes the possibility of true malice behind its actions. Indeed, like any creature it is only hunting for its next meal. My bias, perhaps, comes from the way its methods taste like trickery and frequency humans find their way into its clutches. There is also the void of mystery which envelops the beast as once it has disappeared into the murk of its lock there is no sign of how it looks or acts.

Kelpies are, in my own opinion, quite easily spotted. They will take the form of a horse on the edge of a body of water as their lure. The horse is always dark grey to black in coloring, with murky blues in its main and tail. There is a distinct wildness, an unkemptness verging on sickliness, to the look of them. Their tails are exceedingly long, and always touch the surface of the water. It may be that the tail is one with the water as the creature is known to be unable to leave whatever area of water it inhabits. If, by brush or other obstruction, you cannot see the tail, there are still more oddities to spy due to its morphing nature.

Morphs of all kinds always have a tell. With the Kelpie, that tell is twofold. Its feet are in every instance backwards. Whether hooves or feet on a human-like form, they will face the improper direction. The other tell is their glowing red eyes. Some, perhaps through limited trial and error, have discovered that humans do not take well to the sight of such ocular oddities and do their utmost to cover the glowing orbs. However, they are not free thinking and are quite easy to trick into revealing that trait as they know not the reason behind the apprehension.

This trial learning is most likely too why Kelpies are far less likely to appear in the guise of a woman. Less a tell and more an inability to grasp the niceties of human expression and thought, the face on a Kelpie woman has been explained as fleeting in beauty. Indeed, it could be there was no beauty to be had above the bust line and that fleeting was more of the guidance of grace guiding their eyes up and away from the temptation of base objectification. Whatever the case, fewer and fewer travelers fell victim to their human form and the Kelpie has in many cases abandoned such a form.

Kelpies thrive upon children and the elderly: children due to their innocence and love of all creatures, the elderly due to their lack of vision. Even these will likely determine the truth of the creature’s identity upon inspection. However, by that time it is normally too late. This is due to the sticky substance that is present on the skin and mane of the creature. Once a hand has been placed on the neck to stroke the mane, the trap has been sprung. Nothing save white hot iron is able to cleave the hold of the beast and it takes the entirety of a community to hold the victim in place while the fire is stoked.

The simple solution is to avoid a horse by the waterside at all costs. Call it to yourself inland should you wish to approach it. This is a task the Kelpie could not achieve even if it had the sense of a man. And, in all things, practice caution and prudence so you may reach home from your journey alive.

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!