Tag: #voice

How to be a Great Writer!

~ Philip Shepherd ~ 2 Comments

“Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.”
—Anonymous

Becoming a talented writer is a hard job. It’s not easy to figure out how to write a plot with the perfect twist, characters so vivid they could walk off the page, dialogue with ironclad believability, all with a voice that captures readers and keeps them coming back for more.

Maybe you have days when you think about all you’ve written and wonder whether it’s all doomed for the rubbish pit. Having days when you question whether writing such drivel is worth it, or whether you should simply throw in the towel now.

Here’s the thing, though: the key to becoming a skilled writer is to write.

Wishing you were better won’t cut it. Neither will waiting until some future time when you hope you will be.

Want to be a good writer? Close Facebook, Twitter, and all those other pesky internet distractions. Shut the door so you can’t hear the TV blaring in the other room, or the clanking of pots and pans. Sit down. Moreover, just write.

Suspense is Key to Thrill

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The dramatic question is probably the single most crucial element in an entertaining story. It lies at the heart of suspense.

The dramatic question centres around the protagonist’s central conflict. Here are a few examples of exciting questions:

Is Odysseus ever going to make it home from Troy?
Will Romeo and Juliet get together?
Is the old man, Santiago, ever going to catch another fish again?
Will Michael Corleone save his family?
Is Captain John Yossarian ever going to be able to go home from world war II?
The writer’s job is to pose the dramatic question, to make the reader want to answer “yes” to the problem, and then to create suspense by raising obstacles to the question.

One genuine way to build suspense is to have a false success, where the protagonist thinks they’ve answered the dramatic question, they’ve saved the world, they’ve solved the murder. Let your protagonist revel in their success for a while.

But, then, pull the rug out from under them. It always works…

Taking Writing Risks

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“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

As writers, we can come up with some unique ways of looking at the world.

A man wakes up to realise he’s turned into a monstrous insect. A man attempts to interact with a strange, unknowable bureaucracy. Kafka imagined unconventional ways of interpreting the truth of reality.

We too have a unique perspective on the world. It might not be as bizarre as Kafka’s, or in many cases, it might be even more so.

Either way, merely own it. Don’t hold back—explore your ideas to their fullest degree. You can pull it all into shape in the, undoubtedly long editing process.

So just for now, follow all your crazy ideas as far as they’ll take you.

Today, let your book take an unexpected turn. Have you been wondering what would happen if your character said something extreme, or if they were faced with an unforeseeable plot twist?

I’ve discovered I’m drifting off into the Pantser’s world. So, take the risk and do it!

Finding an Author’s Voice

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Writing a novel is indeed not as easy as it would seem. If you have already read my recent blog posts, you will know I’m on the 100 days to my first draft of a novel course by the Write Practice.

Submitting around 5000 words every Friday and critiquing at least three other people’s submissions. Just reading 15 to 20,000 words of other people’s first drafts, it does highlight things about the craft of telling a story that you had not yet considered.

Of course, there’s point of view, past tense, and for myself, there is the grammar: Ending sentences with prepositions and seeing comma splices all over the place, for me does produce an irritation, but there’s also dialogue.

When reading dialogue that someone else is saying with either profound accents or under some considerable stress, and reflecting this in the text does cause the flow of reading to have a hickup. Alternatively, even stop and have to go back and reread it, as I did in one case:

“Brian, I’m sure,” said Tom. “Pwease ret me goooooo!” answered Brian.

I’m not trying to say this is horrid, but my attempt to show this would be:

With maximum command in his voice, Tom said, “Brian, I’m sure,” as he held Brian’s neck as tightly as he could. Brian then struggled to answer, with much distortion in his voice, he said, “Please let me go!”

Concerning accents: One of my characters in my novel is from the south of France and in the UK. I do know a Southern French woman and can say that her English is remarkably good. Much better than my two to three phrases of French. Her accent is still profound, as is the character in my novel but I’m not adding any difference to the English text but using the description of the way she said it as I found in this link here; Writing dialogue.

Show Don’t Tell

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Rule #1:

The most straightforward rule to remember if you’re trying to show is merely to be specific. Specificity will fill in the gaps from your telling and bring life to your scenes.

Here’s a very tell-tale example:

They went to New York to see Cats. They both enjoyed it very much. When they tried to go home, their flight was delayed because of the snow, so they stayed another night and decided to see the musical again.

That’s a fun story. It’s all pretty vague, though, isn’t it?

Who is “they”? At what theatre did they see Cats? Why did they enjoy it? How did they feel after their flight was delayed?

Here’s that same example with some of those questions answered:

Tanya and James flew to New York City. “I can’t wait to see the show,” Tanya said as they checked into their rooms. “You’re going to love it.” James shook his head. “I don’t get it. It’s about cats who sing and dance? Sounds sorta dumb.” Tanya smiled. “Just trust me.”

Their hotel was just a few blocks from the Foxwoods Theater, so they walked. James had never seen any buildings so tall or so many people walking on the street before. When they got to the theatre, Tanya noticed his eyes were a little more full, his mouth a little slacker.

Those two paragraphs are not perfect, but it’s a little better. Instead of “they,” we now see Tanya and James. We know a little more about them, that Tanya is a little more cultured, while James is more wary of it.

Dialogue

~ Philip Shepherd ~ 1 Comment

I am just starting working seriously on my writing, and I do go into coffee shops, eavesdrop on others conversations, and go home and write down the different ways people start and navigate a conversation.

This has helped me begin to understand how real dialogue worked, but it wasn’t enough. Before I could still write a conversation, and I had to ask WHY. Why does this character say this thing? Why did that character reply like that? How did they arrive on this subject in the first place?

I eavesdropped on conversations for a few months. It did seem a little creepy at first, but I wasn’t leaning over trying to hear. All I was doing was hearing voices that people were vocalising on the next table. It was difficult not to hear them. But it’s taught me so much about how real dialogue works.

For instance, real people do say random things.

As writers, we want our characters to talk about things central to our plot, but humans are pretty weird. They don’t talk about important things. More often than not, they talk about mundane things like the weather and the fact that their football team lost a match last week.

To write realistically random dialogue without losing track of your plot, have your characters begin a conversation about something random, and then circle around to the critical parts of your plot. But, don’t just have a full conversation on the weather today.

Day 45 of 100 Days to a Book

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I am within the 7th week of this 14 and a half week course, and things are getting harder. I usually write at least 1,000 words every weekday and have the weekend off, except for Saturday morning when I spend about 4 hours Saturday morning critiquing 3 to 4 people’s submissions that they had updated on Fridays.

We have to submit every Friday somewhere in the region of 2,500 to 7,500 words each week. By the 19th June which is the final submission day, we should have 65,000 words. Moreover, a finished first draft of our novels.

I did start my novel by pantsing it, and after about 15,000 words I did not know where the story was going. So I stopped and thought that I should outline the story of my novel. I also looked at the different genres of crime fiction and opted for the hardboiled detective.

The Write Practice has given me room for thought on where my novel is set and where I get my ideas. It is true that if you help other writers by critiquing their submissions, then you receive help back from them. The outline is relatively basic, so when I come to write that section, it is still open to a significant amount of change that comes to my mind when I go through the scene.

My First Draft Update

~ Philip Shepherd ~ 1 Comment

This update is about my progress to my first draft of my first novel in crime fiction. I am on Day 38 of 100 on a course called Write a Book in 100 Days, by The Write Practice.
Here are my observations:
1. The course is $100 more expensive, but if you complete your weekly deadlines of posting the 4,500 words you wrote during that week for 15 weeks, then you will have the money returned. While you reach a total of 65,000 words after 100 days.
I have to say, this type of deadline pressure does help you find the time and actually to meet the word count. Although, you can miss two deadlines of the course and still receive the $100 refund.
2. There are about 140 students on this course, and we are embedded in groups of 10 people. Each week on Fridays I have to submit my chapter. Before the next Friday, I have to read at least three other people’s submissions and critique their work.
This critique of 2000 to 7000 words is not as easy as it sounds. As it is a first draft then spelling, grammar and punctuation is not an issue. Not even ‘Show, don’t tell’ is an issue you can highlight.
I often write at the top of my submission that all I am interested in is how fast it is progressing and what the voice of the narration sounds like to the reader.
I have to congratulate Joe Bunting in creating such a helpful course.

The Characters within your Story

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Character Traits

At the end of the day, the characters are the most critical part of your story. They’re the ones with which your readers empathise; they’re the ones your readers will finish the book to follow. Some people have told me to write backstories and investigate every detail of their lifestyle so I can use them in a way that is consistent.

Here’s my simple principle: whatever makes it into the window frame of your story has to either impact your characters somehow or at least impact a role in a way that will grab your reader’s attention.

Build up your new world. Play and have fun. Go crazy with them. Then when it comes to your story, just make sure that the parts are seen through the window frame matter to the characters. It’s not who the characters are at the beginning, it’s what they do within the timeframe of your story. Their actions are what people see of them. A personality whom is merely upset and looks downwards is very different from a character that stands tall and slaps the face of the other actor that said something nasty.

What is your Story About?

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Well, what is your story really about?
This is a question you need to ask yourself all the time when you type one word with another on its way to the last one. I’m not discussing the unique notion idea you pitch at parties where you say your novel is about a woman, from wherever, who does this, and that occurs when she’s not entirely paying attention. It’s about what your story is about on a theme level. What does it mean to you personally? What are you telling about the world with your fiction? What in the hell is it really about?
It’s that secret hard-drive, concealed deep in the sub-conscious that urges you to get up too early and stay up late hammering out the words at the laptop or computer. Some of us write due to anger, and some of us write because of our sadness.

The only way to establish what it is you are writing is to sit in that oh so familiar position of a pen in hand and write down a list:
Ten things that make you upset,
Ten things that make you sad…