Tag: current works

Writer Life Lessons #18: Finish Your First Drafts

Progress is measured in several different ways. If you are an athlete, progress is measured by how well you perform at your sport or sports. If you are an artist, progress is measured by your art portfolio. If you are a writer, progress is measured by words written on the page, and the amount of pieces you finish.

Can you call yourself a writer before you finish a piece? Of course. If you are putting words on the page, or the screen, or whatever you write on, you are indeed a writer. Can you call yourself an accomplished writer? Sure! But do you have anything to show for it?

When I first started writing, by hand, in pencil, in spiral-bound notebooks, I used to read unfinished pieces to my best friend. Yes, I was a writer,  and yes, I wanted to feel accomplished. Some of those drafts I finished, but a lot of them I just left him hanging, waiting on the next cliffhanger, for the next chapter or sometimes even word.

The lesson for this week is: Finish Your First Drafts.

There are tons of quotes out there about finishing what you start, how blank pages are ugly and how you can’t edit a blank page. All you have to do is google the words “writing advice” or “writing quotes” and you’ll get a ton of advice on how to write, how to finish your drafts, and even how to edit them.

Yes, this advice (Well most of it) is true. To move on, to mark your progress and to grow as a writer, you need to finish your first drafts, or at least move on to a new project if you get stuck. There is nothing worse than looking at an unfinished piece years later and thinking “Now where was I going with this?”.

Yes, you can leave your pieces and come back, but eventually you should try and finish them. This is an area where I need to take my own advice, I have about three times the amount of works in progress than I do works finished. The point is: I do intend to go back to them once I finish current projects, or if I don’t continue them I at least plan to rewrite.

Finish your first drafts, even if they suck, because there is always room for improvement. There are some pieces that I look at, from several years ago, and when I reach the point where I stopped writing for whatever reason, I wish there was more there. Often times I think “I wish I could remember where I was going with this”.

You can take a break from pieces, but at least write a little outline so you know where you left off, or even a little note in the margins that explains what happens next. You will thank yourself when you come back to it later.

Finish your first drafts so you can edit them and make them shine later.

Happy Writing!

Tuesday How To: Finding Characters

Writing without characters is like riding a bike without wheels, you won’t get too far. Sure, there are pieces out there that have limited characters, but they at least have one aspect that has to do with the development of a personality or skills. Look at Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E. There is no dialogue for the first half of the movie, but Wall-E and Eve have personalities and show some growth before the rest of the characters are introduced.

Characters are easy for some people, and difficult for others. Depending on the piece, characters could come easily, or they could hide from you for the first ten or more pages. I have had several experiences with characters, from my first story with the protagonist that had more than ten names, to my most recent characters who grow and become more alive with every new draft of my novels.

So this first installment we are going to talk about finding  characters. So let’s jump to it, shall we?

Depending on what your current project is, you could already have your characters. If you write fanfiction, which is writing based on someone else’s characters and setting, you already have your characters. If you are writing from scratch, you might not have any characters, or maybe just a few.

How you find characters will depend on if you have an idea or not. Sometimes characters, or their names will come first, and then their plots or ideas come after. Sometimes you have the idea and you just want to shake your character and scream at them “Tell me your name!”. Either way, I would like to believe characters want to be discovered.

With an Idea

If you started with an idea, I think the task of finding characters is easier. With an idea, and whatever parts of a plot you already have, fitting a character where they are needed becomes a bit easier. For instance, say we have the idea for a plot surrounding a bank robbery. The character we need can either work with the idea surrounding a bank robbery or be against it. What I mean by that is: Our character can have several personalities depending on the plot. Is the character part of the robbery, or just in the bank when the robbery starts? Does our character try to stop it, or just cower in the corner, crying for their mother? Make the character fit what you need the character to be.

An example that I have used in the past is the Camp NaNoWriMo April session. I was writing a novel based on someone falling into the addiction of drugs. I could have gone the easy way and said the character was male, twenty-four years old, was traumatized as a child and addicted to alcohol, but that is what readers would have expected, that seems to be the stereotype of drug dealers and users. What I ended up doing instead was making her female, type A, in medical school, and selling drugs without using them. This made her interesting, and went against all stereotypes.

Without an Idea

Coming up with characters on their own is definitely hard. Without the backbone of a plot, characters could be anything. Sometimes, characters come to me with their full names and their stories, but most of the time it’s like an awkward first date trying to pull information from them. There have only been a few instances where I come up with the character before the idea.

One of them is Georgia Rose Howell. This is a name that came to me in a flash of inspiration without an idea attached to it. I have tried several times to add her to other working ideas, but she refuses. She seems to be holding out for her own work, but she won’t give me any more information than just her name. She’s like Groot in that way.

Me: What’s your story?

GRH: I am Georgia Rose Howell.

Yeah, eventually I’ll find a place for her, but for now, she’s just a fancy name.

Next week, we’ll talk about naming characters and bringing them to life.

Happy Writing!

Writer Life Lesson #17: Don’t Be Afraid to Write the Hard Stuff

Writing, like every other form of art, strives to make people feel something. This is usually accomplished by making the work feel real, using real emotions and situations that force the reader or the viewer or the participant to feel something. Sometimes, this means including things that hurt us, or make us feel vulnerable, dirty, or embarrassed.

There are several events, and people and objects that make us feel that way, and as many things as there are, there are a thousand more ways to write them. A lot of writing advice will tell you to avoid things that will make the reader cringe or feel offended, especially if it has to do with real events, especially if you can find a better way to further the plot and your story, but I say

Don’t Be Afraid to Write the Hard Stuff

Why? Because if we avoid the hard stuff, the triggers and the pain of events, then we cannot get past them as human beings. If we sugarcoat everything in our writing, make it fluffy and pretty and wrapped up, it will not seem real, or plausible. If we want our readers to feel something, we have to dig deep and find the things that hurt us and bring them forth.

I’m not saying force yourself to write what hurts you, or force it out for the sake of readers and the ability to sell. What I am saying is when you feel that you are ready, just try writing what hurts, what scares, or what embarrasses you. You might be able to get through it, or you might not.

I know all about what it feels like to write the hard stuff and the difficult things. When my mom passed away in 2013, it was hard for me to write about her, about any mothers. So in 2014, I decided I was going to write a story similar to my experiences for a short story contest. I started to write it, but it was just too difficult, so I put it away for later. Will I continue it? Maybe. Will I throw it out for good? No way!

Hard things to write could be anything. It could be murder, rape, incest, or any other various tragedies or joys. I’m not saying add these things, or anything like them, in for shock value, but if it is necessary to your plot, to motivate your characters, or further their development, then add it in. Write it to the best of your ability, and then edit it like hell for it to have the best impact.

Don’t be afraid to write because the themes or events scare you.

Go forth and write!

Ideas and Where to Find Them

Ideas are everywhere, and can come from anything. Pictures, songs, shows, everyday conversation, anyone and anything can spark an idea. Sometimes, the more ideas you find, the more that keep popping up when you least expect them. Sometimes, all we need to do to find ideas is look, listen and feel the world all around us. Ideas are everywhere if you just stop forcing yourself to look for them and let them find you.

Over the years, I have found ideas from many places and turned them into some decent drafts, and some not so decent drafts. Some ideas lead to great works, and others fall through, but they all deserve a chance to be explored and experimented with. They deserve to be given a chance to show their brilliance.

I’ve mentioned before that my first serious idea came from my eighth grade history class, when my awesome teacher started talking about the new colonies of America and indentured servants. I have thought up several ideas from other classes, but I find a lot of my ideas in several places.

Sometimes it will be something said in conversation, or a scene from a play or movie, sometimes it’s a game, or even another novel, or short story. Sometimes it’s social media and sometimes it’s even a song or several songs. Sometimes it’s just a simple image.

My second novel I ever completed was based off of a picture. It was a school assignment, one of the last assignments in freshman year english, and it was supposed to be just a short story. That was what it stayed, a short story about a boy in love with his best friend (this seems to be a common theme in my writing), and they died at the end because I didn’t know how to end it. It stayed that way until my junior year when I found it hiding on my computer and decided it wasn’t done. So an idea came from an idea. That piece still needs a lot of work, but I at least I finished it.

More recently, my ideas come from songs. If you just happen to take a peek at my short stories page, you’ll notice they are all song titles at this point. I have always had a love of music ever since I was a young child. Sometimes as I lay in bed at night listening to any kind of music, I jolt out of bed and have to write a new idea down based on a lyric or an instrumental or both. Some of the short stories turn out amazing (Amsterdam, Congratulations, The Scientist and Samson come to mind) and some fall flat, but they become words on a page and can always be fixed later, they can always become something more.

My current novel, which has recently grown into a nine book series, got its start from a book of prompts. There were a few that were similar that I pieced together and augmented as needed. It started as just a girl in a coma close to death after a serious accident, and then became a three book series, and then a seven book series, and finally a nine book series, pulling several ideas from pretty much everywhere as it grew.

That is the power of ideas and what they can become.

The longest short story to date, and it all came from parts of a song.

Where do you find most of your ideas?