| |
| |
|
Writing Information |
|
|
|
Ten Tips to Help You Finish Writing Your Novel
1. Set aside a time to write and keep it sacred. Make this a time when you know you are at your best and feel most creative -- Saturday mornings, late at night, whatever works for you. Make writing a priority and arrange other parts of your schedule around it. 2. Remove all distractions while you write. Turn off the television. Don't answer the phone. You may need to set your writing time at a time when no one else is around to help you avoid being distracted. 3. Outline your plot. Know generally where you want your story to go. Sometimes stories and characters develop in unexpected ways, and you need to allow for that. But keep your guiding plan in mind. 4. Avoid the intimidation of a blank computer screen. Just start writing. Try freewriting about the plot of the story or a character to get "the flow" started. Begin a dialogue between two characters and see where your flow takes you. Sometimes that ends up in an embarrassingly bad scene, but that bad scene may just have the seeds of something a lot better in it. Once you've got something written, you can always improve it, but you have to get something, anything, written first. 5. Keep a draft mentality. Nothing you write has to be permanent. Everything can change. If you get into a good flow and there's a word that you just can't think of, don't interrupt the flow by pondering over the word or going to the thesaurus. Leave a blank space and keep writing. There will always be time to go back and look up that word. At this stage, spelling and grammar don't matter; just write and create. 6. Don't feel compelled to begin at the beginning. You don't have to write your story in chronological order during the drafting phase, especially if you know the main events you want your novel to cover. Work on the chapter you feel like working on. The first sentence and the first chapter will probably require the most work, so don't get frustrated by trying to get them perfect before you write anything else. 7. Organize your files, especially if you are not going to write in order. Create a different file for each chapter you write. That way you can dip in and fool around with a few words or draft a scene and then save it, close it up, and move on to a different section of the story. When you can easily work on what you want, you are also preventing writer's block. 8. Revise, revise, revise. Someone once said, "Writing is revising." Change and polish and delete and rearrange and change some more until you like the sound of the words. Often the best way to revise a sentence is to delete it. 9. Don't be afraid of putting yourself out there. Make a list of writers who have written mediocre books (the incentive: "If HE can do it, so can I.") Be emboldened by writers whose works don't impress you much. The only thing they have over you is their persistence. There will always be critics, but you have to separate the wheat from the chaff: some people's criticism means something; most people's criticism is just so much noise. People keep writing novels despite the criticism. You might as well be one of them. 10. Only you can determine when you are finished. Show your writing to a trusted friend, preferably one who knows about writing. Friends are likely to tell you how wonderful your novel is, as friends will do, and this of course is not helpful at all. Read between the lines of their compliments. Ultimately, you have to be the judge of your own writing. Make up your mind to finish your novel, and you can do it. The only thing standing in the way is you. About The Author Ann Roscopf Allen is a college writing instructor and the author of the historical novel A Serpent Cherished, based on the true story of an 1891 Memphis murder. Visit her website - http://www.aserpentcherished.com/pages/1/index.htm
MORE RESOURCES:
Writing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
A Writers Tools William Faulkner, the great Mississippi writer, said, "The tools I need for work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky."Every writer needs certain tools to accomplish the task of being a writer. Memories Dont Fade Like Hair Does: Memoir Writing Help for You, Our Elders, to Tell Your Story ~~~Old age, to the unlearned, is winter; to the learned, it's harvest time. ~ Yiddish saying~~~You can tell your life story by biography, which is a whole book that starts from the start and ends at (or near) the end. Whose Story Is It? Whenever you sit down to plot a story (or even to think about a story) one of the first things you have to ask yourself is this: "Whose story IS it?"It seems like a simple question - but your story can succeed or fail depending on how you handle this. Told from the wrong point of view, a story can founder before the first chapter has come to an end. Writing Dialogue That Make Your Characters Come Alive Characters in a good novel really carry the story along more than any other concept in writing. A problem I too often see in my clients' writing is stale dialogue; the kind that sounds like every character is the same person. Apotheosis - the Seminal Insight of the Hero for Screenwriting Every hero has a seminal insight - the apotheosis. Once you know what that insight will be, you can start building your story up to and beyond that point:In Casablanca, Rick's insight is that if you love someone, you sacrifice yourself for their happiness. The Dreaded Daily Word Count Open any book on 'how to write,' and somewhere you will find a discussion of how many words you should write every day. Forget the struggle to get ourselves to the paper or the computer every day, now we have to produce a certain number of words?Me? I don't write every day (Quick! Call the Writer Police!), I don't do 2000 words, and you don't have to either. Story Structure - Final Conflict Beyond three and four act story structure, lies the Hero's Journey.The Hero's Journey is the most usable story structure consisting of at least 106 stages and the template for successful contemporary stories, from Star Wars to Al Pacino Scarface to The Incredibles to War of the Worlds to The Dirty Dozen to Midnight Cowboy. Gaining Writing Experience GAINING WRITING EXPERIENCE Some Catch-22, huh? In the writing business, you can't get published until you have some experience. If you can't get published until you have experience, how do you get experience? How do you get publishing clips to show all those publishers who want to see "previously published clips"? It's almost as if Lily Tomlin's telephone operator character came up with this: "Is this the party to whom I'm speaking? Are you the unpublished writer who has published clips I can look at? (Snort, snort!)" What's an unpublished writer to do? Get published, of course! I'm not being flippant; I'm serious. Realize Your Book Dream In 2005! If you haven't realized the success you wanted last year, here's a way to reap the harvest with 86% improvement!Use the power of visualization.When you see, hear, and feel your book project already manifested through specific outcomes, you'll be in the 86% success group. Tell the World About You You have a new website, or a new business, or both - or your site isn't getting the kind of traffic you want and need. How are you going to tell the world about what you have to offer and where to find it?If you have deep pockets, you can start buying ads in newsletters and ezines and hope somebody reads them. How to Multiply Your Freelance Writing Work You can turn your $200 fee to write a press release into $2,000 to carry out an entire PR campaign simply by convincing clients to invest in campaigns, instead of individual assignments. Campaigns achieve better results and cost less in the long-term for clients, compared to individual assignments. Writing Made Them Rich #4: Paulo Coelho Paulo Coelho was born on August 24th 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.At age 17 he announced his intention to be a writer. If The Viewpoint Character Is A Secondary Character, Have You Established Who He is? Creative Writing Tips -I have said above that if a secondary character tells the story of the main character, then the spotlight should be kept on the main character.This shouldn't be taken to the extreme though. Open a Vein If you want to be a writer, you must write and that requires sitting at your typewriter or computer and writing although it may not be easy. That also means avoiding all distractions that will keep one from writing-visitors, friends, relatives, television, radio, and anything that will keep the writer from concentrating on the task. Tips For Better Writing It is certainly true that we don't get a second chance to make a first impression. As the impression we make on the Internet is almost always with the written word, is it unfortunate that there is so much poor writing bouncing around in cyberspace. Learn How To Write Poetry! A poet isn't born; you must work at crafting your art. If you have the desire to write, you can learn how to write poetry or simply improve your writing. How to Write Funny -- Its All About Timing My Dad has this old joke that goes, "What's the most important thing about humor?" After a short pause, he interjects, "TIMING!"I've rolled my eyes many a time over this joke.But here's a new version for writers: "What's the most important thing about writing funny? . 8 Reasons Why A Freelance Writer Should Use the Internet What a wonderful resource the Internet is!Students find information to help them with their studies; business people keep in touch with important clients and stay up to date with important business developments; stay-at-home-parents can find ideas for children's activities and feel less isolated by forging friendships with other online parents; and even small children have the opportunity to learn how to use the technology that will take them into the future.It seems everybody has a reason to use the Internet and writers are no exception. Through the Eyes of an Artist As writers, we initially tend to be either more cerebral or emotional than perceptive. Its occurs to me that writers are driven to express what they actually haven't figured out how to say verbally, but long to say somehow. Getting To Know Your Characters Interesting characters that readers care about are the most important 'ingredients' in your novel.That might sound like a fairly sweeping statement, but think about it.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
