5 Tips for Getting Back to Writing

We've officially come to the end of those golden days of summer and the kids are getting back into school.  Now is a good time to get back into our writing habit as well.  But where to start?  And how? Summer may be a fun time for vacation and just hanging out, but it's time to start thinking of a new project or working on one.  So how can you get back in the mood or better yet, how can you get started?


1. Try a research trip.   This might seem like a good way to delay getting started on actually writing, but it can also energize you. Fall is a wonderful time to explore those places that were crazy busy during the summer.  If you're thinking about writing a new historical fiction book, this would be a great time to visit a local history museum.  One of my plans for the coming winter is to finish my romantic suspense set in the southern Colorado plains. It can be a hot road trip in the summer time, but it's a pleasant drive in the fall. Another favorite research spot is the Denver Art Museum, for a visit to their Native American exhibits.

2. Plot a new book. Just last week someone mentioned they are starting to get ready for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month in November and that means a new project. We were urged to start thinking about what book we're going to write so to me that means I should now get started on plotting or planning my characters for that book.


3. Work on edits for an old project.  Whenever I need something to get me back into writing, I always turn to an old project that needs help. This is a good short cut to getting the creative juices flowing again. Edit something that you have left undone. This can not only help you get re-motivated, but it can get some of those older projects finished.


4. Find a new character. I am always watching for ways to create new characters or working on a character sketch.  Look for someone new to write about. I am teaching a character class this month and working on that with students is helping me to keep my own characters growing.


5. Take a writing class or attend a workshop. This coming weekend is Colorado Gold, a wonderful conference put on by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. I haven't gone in a couple of years, but it is always a great way to end the summer, get caught up with everyone on their writing projects and find new ideas.


Next week I'll report back on five things I learned at the Conference.

5 Tips for Giving New Life to Old Ideas

What do you do with old story ideas that seem like such great ideas at the time and then die on the vine? You know those stories. They come to you in the middle of the night or in the afternoon while you’re taking a walk and they energize you at the time, but then they seem to wither and die. You might even start writing the story in a mad rush and then enthusiasm flags and you forget about it until you’re going through an old notebook or cleaning out the files in your computer.

What can you do then? Delete the file? Throw out the old notebook you found it in? Come to think of it, why do those stories never get finished? Is it because they were going nowhere? I admit I have those type of beginnings all over in notebooks, scraps of paper, and the old computer files. Why do I give up on them? Why do you give up on them? Well, sometimes those story just runs out of energy. Sometimes they simply seem to hit dead ends. Maybe you didn’t think them through enough or perhaps the characters never developed into full-fledged people. Usually you will find you need both to really get the story moving forward and to keep the pages of written copy piling up. Here are some ideas for going back to those story ideas and bringing them back to life so you can finish them.


1. Re-think the story concept. Let’s face it—having a great idea for a character might seem like the perfect beginning. You can spend hours working on interviews with that character or developing the character’s inner feelings and outward traits, but unless you have a good plot to go with that person, you could still end up hitting that dead end. Did you come up a story worthy of your character? 

What is that character going to do with that great personality or all those emotional problems? The character still needs more than full development. You might have a wonderful person, but he or she still needs a plot to test his or her will. That character needs a story built around him or her to provide the person a reason for existing. Without the story you will reach a dead end with the character.

 2. Re-consider your characters. The same is true of a wonderful plot idea. I love to cultivate ideas from news stories or develop intricate plots in brainstorming sessions with friends who agree that our idea can’t miss. Inspired by those ideas I might sit down and write a couple of chapters. Invariably I hit a dead end there too. Why? In this case it’s usually because I don’t know how the character will react to whatever is going on around him or her. In this case there is no fully grown character to face all those tribulations.

Just like the character needs a good story to go with him or her, the story needs just the right character to tell that story. Think about the character who belongs in that story, who will be challenged by the plot.


3. Consider an Old Approach or Character. Huh? That may sound strange, but sometimes all those story ideas need is a little further development. So why try to re-construct the wheel. Look through some of your old ideas of character profiles or plots. What kind of character do you need for that great adventure? A great warrior? Who do you need to solve the murder? A detective? Maybe you will find someone who wanted to write a story about just sitting there waiting for their story in your idea folder.

4. Think out of the box? Maybe you need to go in the other direction. If you have a character you want to write, why not pick something totally different for that person. Why not set down your everyman character who is going to be most out of place in a great adventure and force him to get through it. Make that character develop and grow over the course of the journey. Take a character who will be most uncomfortable in a plot and make the character work to prove he or she is worthy. 


5. Play the old “what if” game.  Take your characters and plots and start reworking those plot ideas in different ways.  Try out several scenarios until you find the one that is right.  Then get started writing. Often it just takes some extra thoughts to make a story start working again. 


So don't abandon those files of  old story ideas. They can still be useful even if you don’t use them immediately. And don't throw out those scenes you might have written on the fly. Sometimes you can rework them and put them into a story you are already working on. For that matter use one of those ideas in your WIP. Put your current character into that situation and see what happens.

 You never know until you try out giving new life to your old ideas.   

5 Tips to Writing Dialogue

 As writers we all know we will need to write dialogue sooner or later. We can't avoid it. People are going to speak in your books and that is what dialogue is--the characters having a conversation. Writing dialogue should be simple for writers. We all have to do it ourselves on a dialy basis and we have all read it. Dialogue should be simple to write, but when you get right down to it, there are certain rules and guidelines you need to follow.  Here are five easy tips to consider as you write dialogue.

1. Make your characters sound different. Nothing is worse in a book than having all the characters sound alike. First of all, it is not realistic. Listen to the people around you. No one talks or sounds just the same. So how do you do that? How can you make them sound different? Again, listen to the people around you. Notice the different ways they speak and then use that in your story. Just as an educated teacher is going to sound very different from a high school student, a duchess or duke in the past would have spoken very differently than the kitchen maid.
2. Keep in mind your character’s sex.  There has been a lot of talk about the differences in how men and women speak. Many writers I know say men are much more blunt in their language than women. They’re more used to giving orders or just expecting their wishes to be carried out. I’m not sure that works anymore. Many women can be just as blunt as men and are just as forceful. But pay attention to some of those small differences as you write and keep in mind possible differences in how men and women sound.
3. Don’t get too carried away with dialects.  This is one I have had to watch myself. Overusing dialect can sometimes make it difficult to follow a story. Look for ways around the overuse of dialect. You don’t want to completely get away from it, especially when setting stories in certain times and places, but don’t over use it to the point of turning off the reader.
4. Don’t forget your tags.  Tags come in several ways. They are the simple – she said that follows the line spoken. They can also be used to tell how the sentence is spoken. She shouted is definitely going to be different that a simple said.  But you can also over use the tag too. Watch out for falling into the trap of using said on every tag. Sometimes you can do without any tag at all. And at times you can use an action tag that tells how she said something. 

“Don’t go in there!” The use of the exclamation point and even the warning can tell you she is probably sounding anxious or perhaps shouting. You might not need a tag here.

5. Don’t lose sight of who is speaking. Sometimes in a group of characters speaking you do need tags after many lines to indicate who is speaking. If you have three or more people you need to make certain that the reader knows who is saying what. Again, this can be handled with an action tag at times, but don’t let your readers get lost in long periods of dialogue without making certain they know who is talking.

If you are uncertain about whether your dialogue is working, read the passages aloud. See how your characters sound and then let them keep on talking.  

 

 

5 Tips to Setting Your Story Mood

This past weekend I attended a workshop on making video trailers for fiction books. Having spent so much of my life mixing words and video in TV news and public relations, I was intrigued. I know how to put together a news story visually and features that show a story or person, but how do you make a trailer that would show visually what a book was about?  Part of it has to do with showing the mood of the story.  That got me to thinking about how to show some of that mood inside the story itself.  Here are five tips to consider as you write your story to show location, mood, and ambience. These can all make your story stronger.


1. Consider the setting. This is self explanatory.  If you're writing a dark, gothic type story setting it in an old, dark castle or house seems natural.  But what if you're writing a dark story that is set in the tropics, or on a summer vacation?  Use that setting to make the case.  For instance, that bright tropical setting can hold lots of dark, hidden secrets in either glaring sunlight or in unusual shadows in unexpected places.  A dirty alley where the heroine gets lost as she goes home from the sun drenched beach with plenty of shadows and perhaps a scary stranger can set the mood for a darker future to come.


2. Look for just the right words to set the stage for the mood. If you're setting the story in the middle of winter, go beyond just describing the cold, make the characters feel it with chilled hands, frosty breath, numb fingers, or cold rooms.  Bring the cold even into the heart of a warm house or car, and then make the characters feel that coldness from their skin to their souls.

3.  Show contrasts. Use contrasting imagery to make the shadows darker, the light spots brighter. Take the reader from one extreme to another so that when the mood shifts, the reader's mood can shift with the story. Light moments mixed with dark can shift the mood as well.  Think about the difference of a green mountainside as compared to the charred, emptiness of a burned forest.

 4. Consider sounds. Just like with mood, light and temperature, remember the sounds that can set the mood and tone of a book.  In one of my stories I'm trying to catch the feel of a summer morning. Out of nowhere I suddenly heard a video my sister made at sunrise while walking the Colorado plains. She was trying to capture the morning sunrise and did video as opposed to still shots, but when I heard the birds as the sun topped the edge of the horizon, I had what I was looking for. Describing what I heard in that video helped me craft that early morning scene.

5.  Don't be afraid to experiment.  Play with the scene and try writing it in several different ways and then see what makes it most effective. Do you write it in first person? Does it work better from a certain character's point of view? Does it make it better if you describe the scene or if you let the character give their own impression?


All these methods can work and can help you capture the setting which in turn will make each story unique.  Good luck!

5 Tips to Making your Characters Unique

Developing characters is never simple, and how do you keep coming up with characters after you’ve written several books?  Sometimes it seems like the characters you are working on now are just further extensions of those people you created two stories ago.

Don’t let yourself fall into that trap.  Characters need to be as individual as the people you know. Certainly the people around you all have their individual characteristics that make you laugh, make you nuts and irritate you. 

Consider doing the same thing with your characters. Here are five tips to make them unique.

1. Give them a flaw.  No one is perfect and your characters shouldn’t be either. Don’t make your hero so heroic that no one can relate to him. Give him a weak spot or a flaw that he can work on. Perhaps it is spending money or smoking too much. This can be something to keep that hero from being perfect. We don’t want perfect heroes who never make a mistake. At the same time, we don’t want a hero with such a nasty flaw they will never recover from it.  Make it simple, but give the character something to work on besides the main issue of the story.
2. Give them a real life.  No one has the same sort of life, whether it is rescuing damsels in distress or just trying to survive day to day. Give the characters a real life that gets in  the way of the story or what the character is trying to accomplish. Does her mother constantly demand things of him or her? Does her brother constantly get in trouble and she has to stop her life to bail him out?
3. Make your characters come alive through emotions. This is absolutely critical and one of the main ways to make all your characters unique.  Look for a range of emotions and determine how those emotional reactions will feed into how the character reacts to events in the story. Now you’re going to come up with a character who is different from every other cardboard character out there.
4. Give your character a secret trait – something they might not even recognize at the beginning. Is she stronger than she realizes and only the test of the story makes her discover that hidden truth about herself? Bring that out. Show the character, first at her worst and then at her best. Or show her at her best before she realizes her worth and how that trait can turn the tide in her favor.
5. Give your character a quirk. No, we are not talking about a flaw, as we did earlier. This is something different, something unique, yes, something quirky. Like what you ask? Well, what are those things that drive you crazy about the people around you? Does he tend to fall asleep at a moment’s notice? Does she always check the doors over and over to make certain they are locked? Does he not bother washing his coffee cup from the previous day, but just refill it until you take it and put it in the dishwasher? How about refusing to get rid of that old jacket he’s had for years? My Dad had a thing about cars, and he was constantly stopping at car lots when we drove through different towns, “just to check.” A few times we came home with a new car.
    
   This are all unique things that can make your characters different. They can make your characters someone memorable. Come up with some ideas of your own and then think about how to use them next time you develop a character.

5 Tips to Writing on Vacation

Last week we looked at how to get through the summer and keep writing. Now let's tackle another summer distraction: vacations. If you are heading out on vacation it may be tempting to put your writing work aside, thinking it will be easy to get back to once you return to a normal schedule. Yes, that is true but there are also things you can do while on vacation to keep from breaking the writing habit.

1. Research.  We said it last week and let's repeat it again but this time with a focus on your travels. What better time to do research for a new story than while you are visiting a certain location. Recently I spent time in Vancouver for a week's vacation and since I hadn't visited in several years, I used some of the time to drive around the city to see how it had changed in case I wanted to use it again for a story.  Vancouver's Stanley Park was the location for my opening scene in Deadly Messages, and I'm currently working on a second book set there so it was a good way to get some of that old spark back when dealing with the location. I love walking along the

 

2. Brainstorming. Don't we all get bored when driving somewhere? What better time to brainstorm a new idea with family members? Let them in on what you're writing or what has you stumped and get some ideas. We spent an hour sitting at the border crossing in a very slow moving line. Talking about ideas for a story helped make the time go faster.

3. Visualize a scene. Consider taking a few moments while you're at dinner or sitting in a coffee shop, or even the airport while waiting for a flight to study the people and situations around you. I get good ideas from overhearing conversations. But I also like to study different locations, such as a wonderful little hotel where we had breakfast. I was able to think about setting a story in a quaint hotel with its narrow halls and stone steps and a little garden off the café.

4. Come up with a new story idea. I love to think when I am out on a morning walk or just wandering the streets. Think about how you might use a similar street in the story, or think about how you might describe the people of the city or the feel of the climate.

5. Use the time to critique. Just like brainstorming, use some of that driving time or while you are sitting around waiting at the airport to go over a scene you are writing with family members. It's a good way to get a fresh perspective and you have a captive audience.

Most of all relax and enjoy your time away so that when you come home you will be ready to write!

5 Tips for Knowing When to Re-write

We all have to do it, even if we hate the thought of it--rewriting. Sometimes there is no way around it. Even the best plotted story can run into a roadblock, or the story written into the mist can hit a hall before you even know what is happening. Suddenly you  can't move forward. Suddenly the characters are not cooperating. We'll look at how to rewrite the story in coming weeks but for today let's look at how to figure out when you've hit a roadblock and there is no other way around it but to re-write.

1. The characters are not cooperating.  I listed that above, but that is a big way to realize that you are heading in the wrong direction. If they don't seem to work in the scenes you are writing, you may be taking them in the wrong direction. Look over what you wrote earlier, look over your character profiles, and look over the characters themselves.  If they aren't working, then you need to re-think where the plot is headed for these people. You may need to do a little re-writing that will send those characters back in the right direction.

2.  You just don't want to write. Sure, there can be many, many reasons for not being able to just sit at the keyboard and having the words flow. But often the problem is that you've hit a point in the plot where the story is going nowhere. You may need to read over your plot again to make certain that it is going where you want it. This might be a good time to re-evaluate your plot and whether it can work in the way you originally planned. It might be time to consider re-writing some of the earlier pages or planning changes in the plot.

3. The story is going in some totally foreign direction and you aren't sure why. Again, this may be

that your plot is not working. This is a good time to try re-writing a few pages and perhaps trying a new direction to see whether you like the re-write better than the original. If you do, then keep heading in that direction.

4. The villain is getting more important than the hero. This might be a function of not having the write characters in the right roles. Again, it might be time to make that hero stronger, or to change the direction of the villain. And if you're going to have a super-villain, great!  Just make certain you are setting up the story that way. That might mean a re-write of some of the earlier pages, but they might also be fun to write with this new bad guy.

5.  The motives are not coming through. Perhaps what you have your characters doing doesn't ring true. They wouldn't take those sort of risks for no reason. Perhaps you need to re-write those motives to make them stronger, or to make those changes in your characters to make them want something more. Motivation is a big factor for your characters' actions. You need to make them strong enough.

If you do find you have to do a re-write, don't despair. Next week, we'll look at how to make those re-writes work for you to come up with a stronger story.